BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Someone at National Catholic Reporter has committed a heresy to his publication's credo! But let me not delay -
here are two remarkable blog entries by Michael Winters that are self-explanatory....


On devotion to the papacy

Oct. 04, 2010



The USCCB has issued a new book about the Holy Father, Pope Benedict: Essays and Reflections on His Papacy, edited by
Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, the director of media relations for the Conference. It is a splendid book not least because it will make
a perfect Christmas gift for my Dad. (Oops – there goes the surprise!)

My Dad would not read a book of theology. But he loves the Pope. He loves this Pope. He loved Pope John Paul II, in part
because of ethnic pride: Our family name was Wojtczuk before they anglicanized it. He loved Pope John Paul I, as did we all,
in the few weeks he was given to us. He loved Pope Paul VI. You get the picture.

In the 1960s, many American Catholic homes were adorned with pictures of both President Kennedy and Pope John XXIII. Good
Pope John was the first Pope of the television age, and his warm smile and grandfatherly ways reached a worldwide audience.

But popular devotion to the papacy is older than the age of television. [And this, as I have often remarked on this Forum, is what most people,
especially non-Catholics, do not realize. Looking up to the Pope as Christ's Vicar on earth is no small veneration!]

In 1782, Pope Pius VI ventured to Vienna in an effort to improve relations with the Hapsburg Emperor. The Emperor exposed him
to a series of petty humiliations, but the thing that is most remembered about that visit, and which was something of a surprise
to both Pope and Emperor, was the fact that devoted Catholics lined the Pope’s route to beg for his blessing. Pius VI was not
a very good Pope, but he was a rock star before there were rock stars.

I recall the first time I went to a General Audience in the early 1980s. It was a slightly disconcerting experience. Held in the Paul
VI Hall in the Vatican, the crowd was maddeningly intent on pushing and shoving to get a slightly better glimpse of the Pontiff as
he entered. (The good sisters were the most pushy as I remember, with elbows as sharp as a too tart pinot grigio.)

There was no recognizable liturgy, although we recited the Lord’s Prayer. I recall entertaining the impious thought that the scene
was too rife with the cult of personality, that it resembled too much for comfort the scene that accompanied the funerals of
Nasser or Stalin. I have always been suspicious of cults of personality, no matter whom their object, and everyone should be
suspicious of mobs of any variety.

But, my suspicions were wrong. I came to realize that what the crowd in the Paul VI Hall wanted was to be close to the successor
of the man who is the direct descendant of the man who was Jesus’ best friend when he walked upon the earth.

It was not Pope John Paul II’s out-sized personality that drew the people to the hall and they would have been just
as eager, and just as pushy, if they were waiting for a more reserved Pope.

We Catholics like to touch our faith. We like the smell of incense in our nostrils. We like the taste of the Most Previous Blood
on our lips. We like the feel of Holy oils on our foreheads. We like the kiss of peace with our brethren. We want to worship in a
beautiful church that excites our eyes as well as our imaginations.

Our faith is decidedly incarnational because our God is incarnational. The papacy is a part of that. Our tradition is
not only held in our minds as a great principle of faith. You can see the successors of the apostles. You can shake
their hands. And you can fill the Paul VI Hall and stand on your chair, and scream and shout when the successor of
Peter enters the room.

One is tempted to say that it is not the man, but the office, that the people love but that is precisely wrong too. That day in the
Vatican, the crowd wanted, and I have come to desire too, to be close to the man. We Catholics want to touch the human face
of our faith.

The crowds would not have assembled to acclaim a book. They would not have been so ecstatic over the arrival of some
abstraction. Just as our Lord took on human flesh, we Catholics cling to the human in our lives and seek to bless it.

We bless our fleets at great ceremonies and with great celebrations. We bless our meals with grace. We bless our calendar and
our clocks with the Calendar of the Saints and the Liturgy of the Hours. We bless the gifts of bread and wine and offer them, and
our lives, to be transformed on the Altar. We crave to be united into the community of love that we call the Trinity. The quotidian
is where we find God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and, through the ministry of the Church, we believe He dwells
among us still.

This new book brings the man who is Pope closer to us still. It contains short essays in which those who have met with him
describe him, his personal kindness and understated charm, his keen intellect, his sense of pastoral solicitude.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley offers a beautiful, if painful, recollection of Pope Benedict’s meeting with the victims of clergy sex abuse
during his 2008 visit to the United States.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond recalls meeting the Holy Father after receiving the pallium this year. He told the Holy Father
he brought the prayers of the people of New Orleans with him and the Pope replied immediately by asking about how the rebuilding
was proceeding, five years after Katrina!

I admit it. I am a huge, make that HUGE, fan of this Pope. I was among those progressive Catholics who worried what
a Ratzinger papacy would look like when he was elected in 2005, but as Pope Benedict demonstrated recently in his trip to
the United Kingdom, he has become an extraordinary pastor, gently guiding the flock, proposing a renewal of Christian faith
to cultures that have lost their sense of the divine, presenting thoughtful dissertations on the role of the Church in society.

He has not been the kind of “in your face” pastor some feared and for which others hoped. His encyclicals are masterpieces
of thoughtful engagement not thunderbolts of condemnation.

His appointments to the hierarchy have been outstanding, elevating pastors, not apparatchiks considered mostly for their
presumed loyalty to an agenda, to the ranks of the hierarchy.

He has encouraged the new ecclesial movements that bring together clergy and laity to preach the new evangelization.

People may quibble with this decision or that, and the Vatican is still maddeningly slow in facing certain crises and in perceiving
the way our hyper-ventilating media age works, but I think any fair-minded person must recognize that the papacy of Pope
Benedict is proving to be a blessing to the Church. [What an understatement!]

This new book will help all Catholics, from the most simple to the most sophisticated, appreciate the many faces of Pope
Benedict’s papacy, but most of all, this book brings the human face of our faith, in the person of the Pope, closer to us.

To commemorate this new book, the Q & A segment of this blog will feature discussions of Pope Benedict’s contributions to the
Church for the next two weeks.

I contacted ten people via email to comment on Pope Benedict’s papacy and tune back in later today to find a first submission
from Father Robert Imbelli of Boston College. Bishop Jaime Soto, Father Ken Himes, CUA President John Garvey and Father
Julian Carron of Communioe e Liberazione will be included during the rest of the week.

Next week, we will get to hear from the young theologians who participated in the Fordham Conversation Project about their
thoughts on Pope Benedict. And, tomorrow, I shall write about this Pope specifically in these pages.


Why I love Benedict

Oct. 05, 2010


I can recall precisely where I was when I realized that Joseph Ratzinger had been elected Pope. I was jogging on Varnum Street,
near Providence Hospital.

For those familiar with Washington, D.C., the Brookland section of town, where I then lived, is known as “little Rome” because
it is home to so many Catholic institutions: CUA, the Shrine, the Franciscan monastery and other religious houses, Providence
hospital, etc. The bells in the Shrine began to ring. It was close to noon, so I assumed they were pealing the Angelus. But, they
kept ringing.

I cut my run short and as I got closer to my home, the thought occurred that if the cardinal electors had reached their decision
so quickly – it was the first full day of the conclave – they had to have selected the frontrunner, Cardinal Ratzinger. I got inside
and turned on the television and shortly thereafter, Cardinal Medina Estevez stepped on to the loggia of St. Peter’s and
announced that, indeed, the cardinals had elected Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope.

I admit that my first thoughts were not well disposed to this new fact in the life of our Church. I shared the general – and we
now know mistaken – belief that Cardinal Ratzinger had been one of John Paul II’s most conservative advisers, that he had been
one of these pleading for a rollback of the reforms of Vatican II, that if anything it was John Paul II who had reined in Ratzinger
rather than the other way round. I admit it – the thought occurred that this election could prove a disaster.

But, in those first few days, I also heard someone wiser than myself make an observation that would be borne out in the months
and years ahead: “Do not confuse Cardinal Ratzinger with Pope Benedict.” Still, I remained concerned at first, especially when
people like George Weigel were gloating that “The ‘progressive’ project is over,” and Bill Donohue predicted that the “gnashing of
teeth” had already begun in liberal circles.

Those of us who had been aghast at the way certain American bishops had used Sen. John Kerry’s Catholicism against him in the
recently completed presidential campaign feared the worst.

But, then a funny thing happened. There was gnashing of teeth alright, but most of it came from those same conservatives who
had rejoiced at Benedict’s election.

First, he appointed William Levada to his old post as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Levada is
no liberal, to be sure, but he also was no culture warrior.

The right was appalled by his appointment because he had, in the 1990s, reached agreement with San Francisco’s mayor about
the extension of health care benefits to same sex couples employed by agencies that contract with the city government. The
right had wanted a showdown but Levada deftly avoided one, and did so without an ounce of compromise of any doctrines of the
Church. This appointment was cited by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus as a principal reason for a “palpable uneasiness”
among Ratzinger’s former admirers.

There were other hints that the crazy cons [That's not nice!] had misjudged their man.

During EWTN’s coverage of the papal Mass at Washingon’s Nationals Park, Neuhaus and host Raymond Arroyo mocked the “multi-
cultural exhibitionism” of the Mass but Benedict appeared to be thrilled by the rich tapestry of American Catholicism on display.
[Their remarks were shocking to me, too, watching the replays later, still rapt in the euphoric high of a most exhilarating and uplifting day in Washington
and two 'close encounters' of a kind with Benedict XVI - my very first. And hhe Mass I had watched on the jumbo screens outside Washington Stadium
was part of that high. Whatever 'quarerel' one may have had with the choice of music, it all came across as very authentic and genuinely
spiritual.]

That same day, I was among those waiting to hear the Pope give his address to educators at the CUA and before the event,
Neuhaus’s comments on the Mass were already causing disgust and dismay among the assembled hierarchs.

Then came the encyclicals. [Actually, the first two encyclicals preceded the US visit!] They were powerfully and beautifully written and they
shared a common thread and theme, that the Church and individual believers must orient ourselves to Christ first. This is the
point of departure for Christian witness in each and every aspect of human life.

In his encyclical on social justice, Caritas in Veritate, he clearly challenged those of us on the left to ask ourselves to explicitly
link our concern for social justice with the cause of the unborn.

In that same encyclical he challenged those on the right to stop worshipping at the pagan altar of the free market. Both sides
often start with their politics and look for justification in the Scripture and magisterial teaching, but Benedict insisted that
approach was wrong, irrespective of whether one started on the political right or the political left. Our politics must grow out
of our faith, not the other way round.

The response to Caritas in Veritate showed how wrong I was to be afraid on that April morning when I heard the Shrine’s bells.
As I wrote at the time:
“Unsurprisingly, Weigel celebrates Centesimus Annus which he claims ‘jettisoned the idea of a “Catholic third way” that was
somehow 'between or beyond or above capitalism and socialism – a favorite dream of Catholics ranging from G.K. Chesterton to
John A. Ryan to Ivan Illich'.

"Actually, both Centesimus and even more so, Caritas in Veritate. stress that the "Catholic way" must be prior to the claims
of any economic theory, that the disposition for grace and communion must be part of the system, not a mere add-on, that unjust
systems produce unjust results, and that a system that produces – at the same time - material wealth and spiritual poverty
must be seen as morally and humanly suspect.”

Indeed, Benedict’s critique of capitalism is very radical, in that it goes to the core, the radix, in pointing out that insofar as the
system is built on the manipulation of a human vice, greed, it is just so unchristian.

It is not just that this Wall Street banker was corrupt or that employer was exploitative. The system itself stands in the docket.
There is not an American politician alive today with the courage to say such a thing.

Of course, the other thing that Benedict did shortly after assuming the See of Peter was cashier Father Maciel. It has become
clear that as a cardinal, Ratzinger had pushed for tougher action against Maciel but he was frustrated by those closest to Pope
John Paul II.

I would suggest that the episode must also serve to qualify our judgments about Ratzinger’s time at the CDF. We do not know
what battles he fought and lost. We do know, from Jason Berry’s excellent, if painful to accept, reporting here at NCR, that some
of those close to the late Pontiff were frankly corrupt and it will be decades before we have access to the archival information
that will tell us the true story of what happened in John Paul II’s final years, when he was too ill to manage affairs.

Finally, the thing that most distinguishes Pope Benedict’s papacy from the hopes heaped upon it by the right has been his
example. On the flight to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict was asked about the impending protests of anti-religious zealots.
He replied that he would face anti-Catholicism “with confidence and joy” which is precisely what he did.

In his speeches in the UK, Benedict spoke clearly, but without a hint of triumphalism or condemnation, about the role of the Church
in society.

His thoughtful, challenging speech at Westminster Hall was vintage Benedict: He made his points beautifully, but did so in a way
that invited his listeners in to his mind and heart. He did not beat up on his opponents. He did not mischaracterize the positions
of others. He did not impugn anyone’s motives. And, lo and behold, people listened.

His speech was not only thoughtful, it was effective. I hope that some American bishops who fancy themselves brilliant
expostulators on the role of the Church in society, but who evidence a penchant for slamming their opponents and demeaning
those who dare to disagree, took notice. They bemoan the press. Benedict won them over.

There have been missteps to be sure. I do not understand all the politics behind the revival of the Tridentine Rite, and on the
merits, I have no problem with it. [No politics there! Just a matter of doing the right thing by correcting a blatant historical error.]

But chasing after the Lefebvrists is a fool’s errand: That crowd has been disloyal to the papacy since Leo XIII. [No, Michael, it's not
a fool's errand, and it never is a fool's errand, for the Successor of Peter to seek to repair schisms and safeguard the unity of the Church!]

I think way too much has been made of the apostolic visitation of women’s religious orders here in the U.S. – these things come
and go and are quickly forgotten – but Rome should have done a better job explaining its purposes beforehand because there is
no justification for insulting, or even appearing to insult, women who have dedicated their entire lives to the Church.

And, of course, the response to the sex abuse crisis, although better than before, should be more robust.

I will leave it to the fine theologians we have at Q & A this week and next to discuss Pope Benedict’s specific theological
contributions to the life of the Church.

But, I ask all those – and they are many – on the left who have a visceral dislike for Pope Benedict to think again, to take
another look, to be open to the possibility that they may find more in his papacy to admire than they thought.

I have come to the conclusion that the Holy Father is not interested in pursuing an ideological agenda one way or
the other. His goals are, properly, not easily given to ideological classification. [That would have been evident to anyone
who read his fundamental writings before he became Pope!]

This, combined with his extraordinary theological vision, has made me a fan of his papacy and of his person.

Those fears I entertained on that April morning when I heard the bells announcing his election were profoundly misplaced.

There's a wealth of post-visit commentary now in the Italian media on the Pope's triumph in Palermo, which, of course, does not quite make up for
the failure of the editors themselves to give the visit the coverage it deserved in their Monday editions... But it will take some time to translate
even just the three or four best ones so far... So I will start with the easy ones, those that do not need to be translated and short anecdotes
like the one about the dog...


The Pope as pilgrim:
A key to his successful trips
by Edward Pentin

October 04, 2010

The Holy Father has again confounded the skeptics, attracting very large crowds on his trip to Sicily over the weekend.

As CNA reported: "Contrary to preliminary reports from Sicily on Sunday, the crowds attending papal events in the island’s
capital city were 'never before seen in Italy'. According to an official from Holy See’s Press Office who was on the ground at
the event, this is just the latest occurrence in a continuous 'crescendo' of 'miracle' turnouts for Pope Benedict XVI".

Some might argue that this isn’t so surprising given that Sicily and most of southern Italy are probably the most Catholic parts
of the country. Still, the turnout was impressive for what is a moderately small Mediterranean island, and after all the sufferings
of the Church this year. The warmth the Pope received was also unmistakeable, according to the article.

But as the Pope made clear on his trip to Britain last month, numbers are all well and good, but they’re not the goal. What
matters to him most, and what’s most probably the key to the success of his visits, is his commitment to directing believers
and non-believers not to himself, but to Christ.

As he said last week when discussing his upcoming visit to Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela:
“I will personally make a pilgrimage soon to the tomb of the Apostle Saint James, who was a friend of the Lord, in the same way
that I have made my way to other places in the world which many of the faithful visit: with fervent devotion,” he said.

“In this regard, from the beginning of my pontificate, I have wanted to live my ministry as the Successor of Peter with the
sentiments of a pilgrim who travels over the roads of the world with hope and simplicity, bringing on his lips and in his heart
the saving message of the Risen Christ, and strengthening his brothers in faith.”




This is from the excellent French site which keeps up-to-date on reporting and commentary about the Pope and the Church, and is written by Gerard
LeClerc, one of the most eminent Catholic journalists in France...

Benedict XVI vs. the Mafia
Editorial
by Gérard Leclerc
Translated from


Oct. 4, 2010 - After the stunning success of his visit to the United Kingdom, the Pope continues his pastoral visits with the same
determination.

He was in Palermo on Sunday where he received an extremely warm welcome. Tens of thousands of faithful wre present at the
Mass he presided over at Foro Italico, attnetive to his message encouraging them to hope, even if Sicilians are prey to many
evils, especially organized crime.

Throughout the day, Benedict XVI hammered home the message that it was the duty of the faithful to oppose the Mafia in all ways.

Before the priests, religious and seminarians at the Palermo Cathedral, he dwelt on the example of Don Pino Puglisi, a
neighborhood parish priest who was assassinated in 1993 because he actively preached opposition to the Mafia, defying their
threats. The cause for his beatification is in process.

In the afternoon, during his meeting with young people and families, the Pope enjoined them "not to yield to the blandishments
of the Mafia, which is a way of death, incompatible with the Gospel... Do not be afraid to oppose evil! Together you will be like
a forest that grows, perhaps in silence, but capable of profoundly renewing your land".

And to conclude his visit, Benedict XVI carried out a symbolic gesture, stopping along the road to the airport at the place where
Judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and their security escorts were killed by the Mafia.

Offering a bouquet of flowers at their memorial stele, the Pope said prayers for all the victims of the Mafia and organized crime.

A part of French media, on the basis of a Reuters news story, claimed obstinately that Benedict XVI did not have the courage of
John Paul II who had anathematized the Mafia during a 1992 visit to Sicily.

They cited the Reuters story saying that the Pope had "disappointed anti-Mafia activists" byt 'failing even to cite the Mafia by
name" in his homily.

This is the same sector of the media which wants to present the Pope as a discredited leader.

What to think, for instance, of the fact that the weekly magazine L'Express published online that only 30,000 had taken part
in the Mass in Palermo, even if the Italian news agency ANSA [citing Palermo police] had reported early enough that there were
250,000.

[As I remarked earlier, AP, Reuters and AFP each filed a story about the Mass in Palermo, and all cited the 30,000 number they claimed to have come
from the Palermo police. And of course, they never corrected the figure, if only because that was the only story they filed about the Pope's entire day
in Palermo. missing all his direct statements about the Mafia. If it had been about an event involving any other well-known figure other than the Pope,
they would normally have filed a 'CORRECTION' notice to their original story, but of course, they didn't even bother to do that for Benedict XVI.
That this must be seen 'of course' is indicative of their serious and journalistically condemnable bias against Benedict XVI. ]

P.S. CORRECTION & APOLOGY TO AFP:
It turns out that the French news agency's English service did file a second wrap-up story from Palermo that makes up
for its initial report. It is indicative that only one newspaper appears to have used the story (the Sydney Morning Herald) and that Gerard LeClerc
makes no reference to an AFP story in the agency's French service itself.


Pope warns against 'deadly path'
in Mafia heartland Sicily
by Catherine Jouault

October 4, 2010

PALERMO, Oct. 4 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI urged Sicilians to turn their backs on the "deadly path" of Mafia membership,
during a day-long visit Sunday to the island, the heartland of the criminal organisation.

"Do not give in to the temptations of the Mafia," he told the crowds gathered in one of the main squares in the city of Palermo,
to applause from the faithful.

"Do not be scared of confronting evil!" he added.

"Together you will be a forest of faith," capable of "profoundly renewing your land", he said. Organisers said his audience
numbered 26,000 young people.

The Pope, speaking towards the end of a day-long visit to the island, which is in the grip of a social and economic crisis, also
offered the example of several saints that could act as models for local young people.

And he paid special tribute to Pino Puglisi, a priest who had worked in a difficult district of Palermo that was assassinated by
the Mafia in 1993, and whom local people would like to see beatified.

Earlier in the day Benedict celebrated an open-air mass in the Sicilian capital before tens of thousands of pilgrims, but
disappointed anti-Mafia campaigners had said they felt his address did not go far enough.

"We should be ashamed of evil, of that which offends God and man," he had told the crowds.

"We should be ashamed of evil which wounds the civil and religious community with actions that do not like to be brought
to light," he added.

The Pope's later remarks however were welcomed by Toni Dell'Olio, a priest and one of leader of Libera, Italy's largest anti-
Mafia organisation.

"This is exactly what we expected, a clear statement that the Mafia and Christianity are incompatible", he said.

The clergy, he hoped, would "put into practice these statements from the Pope," he told AFP.

Some members of the clergy had been guilty of compromising their values, he said, giving the example of a priest who
celebrated Mass in the hideout of a wanted Mafia chief.

Before the visit to Sicily, Benedict's first since becoming Pope in 2005, anti-Mafia campaigners had called on him to deliver
a strong condemnation of organised crime.

Following his denunciation of the Mafia and just before he left the island, the Pope made an unscheduled stop to lay a wreath
at a monument dedicated to judge Giovanni Falcone, killed by the Cosa Nostra in May 1992.

The Pope arrived at and left from the island's Falcone Borsellino airport, named after two judges killed by the Sicilian Mafia
in 1992.

Earlier Sunday, Benedict had travelled through Palermo in his popemobile as residents hung welcoming banners from their
houses.

But the atmosphere was subdued, in part due to restrictions on movement and a heavy security presence.

Celebrating Mass that morning in Palermo's Foro Italico square, the Pope urged pilgrims to have faith, despite the "shortage of
jobs, uncertainty about the future, moral and physical suffering, and organised crime" in Sicily.

"I am here to give you a strong incentive not to be afraid to testify clearly to human and Christian values, so deeply rooted
in faith and in the history of this land and its people," he said.

Organisers said around 200,000 people had packed into the square and surrounding streets to attend the Mass, celebrated by
the Pope in bright sunshine against the backdrop of the glittering Mediterranean.

"People of Sicily, look to the future with hope," the Pope told them. "Live with courage the values of the Gospel to shine a light
on good. With the power of God, everything is possible."

Benedict XVI has in the past condemned the Camorra, the dominant organised crime group in Naples. During an open-air Mass
in the southern city in 2007, he called for "a struggle against all forms of violence".

The Italian Episcopal Conference, the organisation of Italian bishops, issued a report on the Mafia earlier this year, calling it
a "real cancer" and "one of the deepest wounds" in Italy's more impoverished southern regions.

Many thanks and Brava! to Catherine Jouault for her professional and objective report. It's not her fault if editors and other AFP
subcribers chose not to use it. She did her job.





The Pope and his four-footed friends:
He pets a dog that wandered onstage
during youth meeting in Palermo
by Salvatore IZZO


PALERMO, Oct. 4 (Translated from AGI) - They sought in vain to stop the dog, but in Piazza politeama, a stray black dog
succeeded Sunday to reach the stage, to the great consternation of the Pope's security, just as the Pope was winding up
his encounter with young people and families.

According to eyewitnesses, there seemed to be no way to drive the dog away without causing undue fuss. But Mons. Georg
Gaenswein, the Pope's secretary, resolved the situation.

He approached the dog and led him towards the Pope, who bent to caress the animal.

Two weeks ago, at the Birmingham Oratory, Benedict XVI also caresssed a large black cat named Pushkin (after the Russian
writer) presented to him by one of the Oratory fathers.



And later, before leaving Oscott College for Birmingham airport, he bent to pet a muzzled police dog held by one of the officers
while the Pope was thanking them for the work they had done during his visit.

Lella on her invaluable and incomparable blog

noted the dog story first from a Gazzetta del Sud item, and has this very relevant comment, translated here, about the story:

---

...In the time of Papa Wojtyla, items like this would have been on Page 1 of the newspapers.

But perhaps, to publicize episodes like this would destroy the prefabricated picture that the newspapers and television
have of Pope Benedict. In other words, it would not serve their cause...

What a pity! In those days, it would have been on all the front pages, it would have been the top novelty on the TV
newscasts, Rita dalla Chiesa (a TV presenter) would have lauded the Pope in Forum, Bruno Vespa would have built around
it an entire episode of Porta a Porta, and Lica Colo would have been moved to tears...

Times change, but not the media. They remain with salami slices plastered over their eyes, a brand called 'stereotyped
prejudice'...

---

PRESENTATION OF WORLD YOUTH DAY 2011



VATICAN CITY, 5 OCT 2010 (VIS) - A press conference was held this morning athe Holy See Press Office to present the next
World Youth Day, which will take place in the Spanish capital city of Madrid in August 2011.

Participating in today's presentation were Cardinal Stansilaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity; Cardinal
Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, archbishop of Madrid and president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference; Bishop Josef Clemens,
secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity; Bishop Cesar Franco Martinez, auxiliary of Madrid and co-ordinator general for
WYD 2011, and Maria de Jaureguizar, vice director of the WYD communications department.

Cardinal Rylko stressed:
"The Pope lays much emphasis on the fact that WYD should not be reduced merely to a moment of festivity. Preparation for
this great event and the attention that must be given to ordinary pastoral care are an integral and decisive part thereof. The
festivities and the event itself act as a kind of catalyst to facilitate an ongoing educational process. In this sense, Benedict XVI
sees in WYD a prophetic response to the educational emergency of the post-modern world".

In his remarks, Cardinal Rouco Varela explained that "World Youth Day is a clear invitation addressed to all Spanish society to
draw near to Christ and His Church. ... If we mange to reveal the beauty of the faith, many young and not-so-young people will
proudly discover or rediscover the unearned privilege of being Catholic, and the responsibility we have to transform this world
of ours into a better place for everyone".

WYD, he went on, "will be possible thanks to many people's help", first among them "dozens of permanent helpers and - when
the crucial week of 16-21 August draws near - up to 20,000 Spanish and international volunteers". Many families of Madrid will
also welcome pilgrims into their homes.

From an economic point of view, "WYD is supported by a vast civic platform, made up of many small donations as well as of
contributions from firms and institutions, in money and in kind, who have agreed to become patrons and to share the
responsibility of organising WYD, for the benefit of the youth of the world".

"I must not fail to mention", Cardinal Rouco continued, "the positive climate of collaboration which has existed since the start
with the Spanish public authorities. The welcome given to WYD by the national government, the Autonomous Community of
Madrid and the city authorities, was favourable and effective from the first moment".

Bishop Clemens analysed the Pope's Message for WYD, noting the autobiographical references he includes in the text:
"The Pope mentions his personal experiences on three occasions", said Bishop Clemens. "In doing so he shows - as he has
during meetings with children and young people in the past - great closeness and sensibility towards the specific challenges
and difficulties youth must face. His words and gestures demonstrate a sincere desire to share with young people, revealing
great tact and an attentive and realistic language".

"The Holy Father's first autobiographical reference begins with the experience of his own youth as a period of 'great seeking',
but also of 'seeking what is great'", said Bishop Clemens.

Benedict XVI speaks of the Nazi period, but his experiences are in some way "transferable to the situation of young people
today who, though in a different way, also experience being 'closed' in a world where consumerism and personal relations
based on interest often prevail".

The second reference is to youth as a time of great decisions, and the Holy Father recalls his own decision to become a priest.

"The Pope's words", the bishop said, "reflect the experience of many young people who well know that great decisions, often
difficult decisions, must subsequently be re-conquered and defended. We all know the widespread difficulty of our time of
taking and remaining faithful to great decisions, of committing oneself for a lifetime. It is in this context that the Pope points
out the virtues ... of faithfulness and coherence, of willingness and service, as indispensable premises for an 'authentic' life".

Thirdly, in his Message Benedict XVI identifies the response that will guide us throughout our lives.

"A response that comes from the depths of his heart and from the experience of his long life", said Bishop Clemens. "This
response is God, it is faith in Him, it is the meeting with Jesus Christ; ... the real Jesus, not the Jesus of a hypothesis or a
scientific theory. As an 'existential foundation' he offers the experience of his own 'personal search for the face of the Lord',
which he achieved and developed over long years of study, prayer and meditation".

For his part, Bishop Cesar Franco Martinez focused his remarks on the programme and the organisational aspects of WYD.
According to information collected from various episcopal conferences, he said, WYD 2011 promises to be one of the best-
attended of those organised in Europe although, because of the economic crisis afflicting Spain, it will be marked by a certain
moderation.

It will also be a "very Spanish" WYD because the Pontifical Council for the Laity, indicating that each WYD must be firmly
rooted in its host country, has asked that there be "a special presentation of Spanish history and culture".

The principal aim of WYD in Madrid is to relaunch pastoral activity among young people. "Society is witnessing a fall in religious
practice among youth", the bishop explained.

"The latest official information shows that among under-twenty-fives the level of religious practice is less than ten percent,
while 48.1 percent of young people declare themselves as non-practicing. It is precisely them we wish to reach".

On the subject of economic support, the bishop gave the names of various organisations that are supporting the event. He also
explained that anyone wishing to make a contribution can visit the portal www.muchasgracias.info where they will be able to
decide the quantity and purpose of their donation.

Pope names participants in
the Mideast synodal assembly


VATICAN CITY, 5 OCT 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father has appointed the following persons as participants in the forthcoming Special
Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, to be held in the Vatican from 10 to 24 October on the theme: "The Catholic
Church in the Middle East. Communion and Witness. Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul":

MEMBERS

- Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals.
- Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, major archbishop of Kyiv-Halyc, Ukraine.
- Cardinal Walter Kasper, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
- Cardinal John Patrick Foley, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
- His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, patriarch emeritus of Jerusalem of the Latins.
- His Beatitude Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, major archbishop of Trivandrum of the Syro-Malankars, India
- Archbishop Edmond Farhat, apostolic nuncio.
- Archbishop Riccardo Fontana, of Arezzo-Cortona-San Sepolcro, Italy.
- Archbishop Mounged El-Hachem, apostolic nuncio.
- Archbishop Cyril Vasil, S.J., secretary of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
- Bishop Bohdan Dzyurakh, C.SS.R., auxiliary of Kyiv-Halyc, Ukraine.
- Bishop Dimitrios Salachas, apostolic exarch for Greek Catholics of Byzantine Rite resident in Greece.
- Bishop Bosco Puthur, curial bishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly of the Syro-Malabars, India.
- Msgr. Archimandrite Robert L. Stern, secretary general of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA).
- Msgr. Mikael Antoine Mouradian, patriarchal vicar of the Institute for the Patriarchal Clergy of Bzommar, Lebanon.
- Fr. David Neuhaus, S.J., head of pastoral care for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem of the Latins.

EXPERTS

- Fr. Nicolas Antiba, archimandrite of the Greek-Melkite Catholic Church in Paris, France.
- Fr. Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, M.C.C.J., president of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome.
- Fr. Jean Azzam, secretary of the episcopal theological and biblical commission of the Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops of Lebanon (APECL).
- Fr. Hani Nasif Wasif Bakhoum Kiroulos, secretary to the Coptic Catholic Patriarch, Egypt.
- Fr. Claudio Giovanni Bottini, O.F.M., dean of the Faculty of Biblical Studies and Archaeology in Jerusalem of the Pontifical "Antonianum" University.
- Fr. Frans Bouwen, M. Afr., editor of the magazine "Proche Orient Chretien".
- Msgr. Claude Bressolette, vicar general of the Ordinariate for faithful of oriental rite resident in France and without their own ordinary.
- Fr. Nicola Bux, professor at the Theological Faculty of Puglia, Bari, Italy.
- Fr. Jalil Canli Hadaya, O.F.M. Conv., judicial vicar of the apostolic vicariate of the Latins in Lebanon.
- Fr. Elias Daw, president of the ecclesiastical court of appeal of the Greek-Melkite Catholic Church, Israel.
- Martino Diez, director of research at the International Oasis Foundation, Italy.
- Fr. Peter du Brul, S.J., founder of the department for religious studies at the University of Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories.
- Fr. Pier Giorgio Gianazza, S.D.B., professor of theology at the Salesian Theological Institute of Jerusalem.
- Fr. Rafic Edward Greiche, head of the press office of the Catholic Church in Egypt.
- Fr. Gaby Hachem, C.S.P., associate professor of ecclesiology at the Faculty of Theology of "Saint-Esprit" University at Kaslik, Lebanon.
- Fr. Damian Howard, S.J., professor of theology at Heythrop College of the University of London, England.
- Sr. Eudoxie Kechichian, S.A.I.C., superior general of the Armenian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, Lebanon.
- Fr. Antoine Louis Mouawad Khalife, O.L.M., director general of "C.H.U. Notre Dame De Secours" at Jbeil Byblos, Lebanon.
- Msgr. Rafiq Khoury, pastor of "Bir Zeit", patriarchate of Jerusalem of the Latins.
- Fr. Hanna Kildani, professor of the modern history of Christianity in the Holy Land, Jordan.
- Annie Laurent, member of the Association of Catholic Notaries and of the International Union of the Francophone Press.
- Fr. Philippe Luisier, S.J., professor of Coptic language and literature at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.
- Fr. Peter H. Madrous, doctor of biblical theology and biblical studies in the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
- Msgr. Ermenegildo Manicardi, rector of Rome's Almo Collegio Capranica.
- Fr. Frederic Manns, O.F.M., ordinary professor of the Faculty of Biblical Studies and Archaeology of the "Studium Biblicum Franciscanum" in Jerusalem.
- Fr. Sameer Shaba Maroki, O.P., professor of oriental spiritual theology at Babel College, Iraq.
- Fr. Paolo Martinelli, O.F.M. Cap., president of the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality at the "Antonianum" Pontifical Athenaeum in Rome.
- Graziano Motta, journalist of Vatican Radio.
- Sr. Telesphora Pavlou, teacher of dogmatic theology at the "Studio Teologico San Salvatore" in Jerusalem.
- Fr. Paul Rouhana, O.L.M., rector of the Faculty of Theology of "Saint-Esprit" University at Kaslik, Lebanon.
- Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, S.J., professor of the history of Arab culture and Islamic studies at St. Joseph University, Beirut, Lebanon.
- Fr. Selim Sfeir, judicial vicar of the eparchy of Cyprus of the Maronites.
- Fr. Mark Sheridan, O.S.B., member of the International Association for Coptic Studies.
- Msgr. Salim Soussan, vicar general of the archieparchy of Haifa and the Holy Land.
- Fr. Guy Tardivy, O.P., prior of the Dominican convent of Saint-Etienne, the French biblical and archaeological school of Jerusalem.
- Dietmar Werner Winkler, director of the department of biblical studies and ecclesiastical history at the University of Salzburg, Austria.

AUDITORS

- Fr. Faez Alfrejatt, O.B.S., monk of the convent of the Holy Saviour, Joun, Lebanon.
- Hanna Almasso, member of the national team of leaders of J.O.C. Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
- Msgr. Michel Aoun, episcopal vicar of the eparchy of Beirut of the Maronites, Lebanon.
- Anton R. Asfar, council member of the patriarchal exarchate of Syro-Catholics of Jerusalem.
- Said A. Azer, member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
- Agostino Borromeo, governor general of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
- Msgr. Philippe Brizard, director general emeritus of "L'Oeuvre d'Orient".
- Tanios Chahwan, president of the National Council of the Laity in Lebanon.
- Hares Chehab, secretary general of the National Committee for Islamic-Christian Dialogue, Lebanon.
- Jacques F. El Kallassi, director general of "Tele Lumiere" and president of the managing board of "Noursat", Lebanon.
- Amin Fahim, co-founder of the Christian Association of Upper Egypt.
- Joseph Boutros Farah, president of Caritas International for the Middle East and North Africa.
- Daniella Harrouk, SS.CC., superior general of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
- Marco Impagliazzo, president of the Sant'Egidio Community.
- Jocelyne Khoueiry, president of the lay movement "La Libanaise Femme du 31 May".
- Naguib Khouzam, director general of the SETI Centre Caritas Egypt.
- Pilar Lara Alen, president of the Foundation for the Social Promotion of Culture.
- Anan J. Lewis, professor of English poetry (Victorian and modern), at the department of English of the University of Baghdad, Iraq.
- Regina Lynch, project director of Aid to the Church In Need.
- Sobhy Makhoul, secretary general of the Maronite Catholic exarchate of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan.
- Rita Moussallem, member of the Focolari Movement.
- Huda Musher, director of Caritas Jordan.
- Sr. Clauda Achaya Naddaf, R.B.P. superior of the convent of Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, Damascus, Syria.
- Fr. Georges Dankaye (Kevork Noradounguian), rector of the Pontifical Armenian College in Rome.
- Fr. Raymond Leslie O'Toole, S.F.M., assistant to the secretary general of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC).
- Fr. Rino Rossi, director of the "Domus Galilaeae", Israel.
- Sr. Marie-Antoinette Saade, of the Congregation of Maronite Sisters of the Holy Family.
- Epiphan Bernard Z. Sabella, associate professor of sociology at the University of Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories.
- Paul Saghbini, hospitaller of the Lebanese Association of the Knights of Malta.
- Rudolf Wilhelm Maria Solzbacher, member of the presidency of the "Deutsche Verein Vom Heiligen Lande".
- Harald Suermann, head of the Middle Eastern section of "Missio".
- Sr. Karima Tamer Hendy Awad, R.B.P., provincial superior of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, Egypt.
- Christa Von Siemens, director of the commission for the Holy Land of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
- Husam J. Wahhab, president of Catholic Action of Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories.

Elizabeth Scalia on her FIRST THINGS blog calls attention to this lengthy blog entry from a British blogger who goes by the nick Venerable Bede (though
he is apparently an atheist), and whose blog is accordingly named quite cleverly....'That guy' cited in the title is Head Atheist Gonzo Richard Dawkins, and
some of his hate-filled, irrational anti-Benedict prose is inevitably quoted...


Did we prove that guy wrong or what?


Sept. 23, 2010

Comments like "religion must continually allow itself to be purified and structured by reason" might be thought to sit uneasily
with a personality supposedly representing the nadir of religious intolerance, but you have to get used to paradox and
misrepresentation when the subject is the Pope. He was over here last week. I expect you all knew that.

And you probably knew that it wasn't going to be exactly a love-in all the way. Tempers were up on both sides. He for his part
had a few stern things to say to us about how we have turned into puerile idiot exhibitionists [Not that he said any of it that way!],
and we... well, we had some rude placards and umbrellas with rubber johnnies hanging off them to wave at him. Love-fifteen to us,
I think.

And then there was that business with his advisor or whatever he was {Cardinal Kasper, retired from the Curia since June] who was all
set to tag along too, until he said something along the lines of Britain being one of the leading crapheaps of the world and an
insanitary nest of hectoring atheist bigots, and suddenly remembered he had the gout and couldn't come after all. Shame.
We sure proved that guy wrong too.

The commentary has been, to say the least, hot-tempered. Tanya Gold, a breathtakingly witless Guardian columnist who
makes larky unfunny videos in startling illustration of what a once serious journal of record now feels, doubtless correctly, will
divert its readership, was especially forthright. No pootling little accusations for her: "In his actions on child abuse and AIDS,
Joseph Ratzinger has colluded in the protection of paedophiles and the deaths of millions of Africans".

So over he came, and nothing happened. [NOTHING BAD or really harmful to the Pope, that is!]

The police did arrest what all the papers cautiously described as "six North African street cleaners" - though I would personally
prefer to call them North African manual workers so as not to stigmatise street cleaners generally, the majority of whom are
peace-loving - but it turned out that they had been merely discussing how to kill the Pope hypothetically, over tea and biccies
in the works canteen.

But what about the Church of Dawkins? Weren't they going to have him arrested or something? That's what they were all
saying. They even drafted in 'prominent human rights lawyer' Geoffrey Robertson, who nobly offered to take time off from
his usual work - defending pornographers, the Brighton bombers and even The Guardian - to take on the heroic work. He even
turned his findings into a book that for all I know you might still be able to buy in remainder shops alongside that one about
Lord Lucan being found alive in the jungle.

Did they even try? True, the idea that they had serious legal and moral grounds for pulling such a stunt was so silly that even
an American tv anchorwoman was capable of rattling Dawkins just by asking him to explain it to her. (Depressing evidence
here.)

But his belligerence had hardly abated when he took to the stage in London for this miserable performance. And though his
latest tragic idea is to issue a DVD of the protest (the tears well in my eyes as I type, and they're not from laughing), he has
written elsewhere of his disappointment that his speech was severely truncated due to time constraints. The original draft is
even worse; here are some despicable highlights:

---

Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, was respected by some as a saintly man. But nobody could call Benedict XVI saintly and keep a straight
face. Whatever this leering old fixer may be, he is not saintly. Is he intellectual? Scholarly? That is often claimed, although it is far from clear what
there is in theology to be scholarly about. Surely nothing to respect...

Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity. He is an enemy of children, whose bodies he has allowed to be raped and whose minds he has
encouraged to be infected with guilt. It is embarrassingly clear that the church is less concerned with saving child bodies from rapists than
with saving priestly souls from hell: and most concerned with saving the long-term reputation of the church itself.

He is an enemy of gay people, bestowing on them the sort of bigotry that his church used to reserve for Jews.

He is an enemy of women – barring them from the priesthood as though a penis were an essential tool for pastoral duties. What other employer is
allowed to discriminate on grounds of sex, when filling a job that manifestly doesn’t require physical strength or some other quality that only males
might be thought to have?

He is an enemy of truth, promoting barefaced lies about condoms not protecting against AIDS, especially in Africa.

He is an enemy of the poorest people on the planet, condemning them to inflated families that they cannot feed, and so keeping them in
the bondage of perpetual poverty. A poverty that sits ill with the obscene riches of the Vatican.

---

All this plus all the usual stuff about whether Hitler was an atheist or a Catholic, and whether atheism should be considered
a factor in the crimes of Stalin (any more than his moustache! Brilliant!!!) and the doctrine of original sin and the concept of Hell -
oh how wicked, how evil, how disgusting etc.

Unlike my opponents, I really do get tired of saying the same things over and over again, so responding to this sort of stuff
every time they open their yaps is something of a chore, but I suppose I must.

You may wonder why the incessant harping on whether Hitler was an atheist, or why it doesn't matter that Stalin was, or that
there is no correlation between atheism and acts of wickedness. Dawkins goes through this so often, and so intensely, that it
is not hard to speculate on whom he is really trying to convince.

For while there is of course no direct link to evil from atheism, Dawkins knows all too well the connection between nihilism,
selfishness, cruelty and lawlessness and the lack of an overarching, self policing system of restraint and governance, such as
religion once provided.

He knows full well that the gradual erosion of this system, and its footsoldier stigma - a system that led to all manner of petty
injustices and cruelties, of the sort that still light bonfires of fury in the libertine breast, but kept at bay those vastly more
serious evils that are now rampant - is what accounts for the descent into callous individualism, ignorance and triviality that
besets most modern democracies.

He knows that his brave new Godless world, freed of religion's control, is not rushing to evolutionary biology but to drugs and
pornography and idle sensation; not to reality but to virtual reality.

He knows that humans left to their own devices cannot be expected to behave selflessly and altruistically en masse. He knows
this because his specialism tells him so. The two disciplines of sociobiology and game theory tell him so, and in his younger,
nobler days he was happy to explain why it is so. (Tellingly, that was when Darwinism was routinely attacked by the Left as
an agent and ally of social conservatism.)

He knows that anarchy is the inevitable consequence of the loss of social restraint: as late as The God Delusion he was
quoting Steven Pinker's account of how a police strike in Montreal led almost instantly to wild acts of public lawlessness, and
then - despite choosing to quote the passage himself! - was unable to bat it away with anything better than "Perhaps I, too,
am a Pollyanna to believe that people would remain good when unobserved and unpoliced by God."

There, I speculate freely, speaks a troubled conscience. The only way to maintain civil society other than with a system like
religion, which polices morality through myth, stigma and example, is under the boot of a police state.

Most of us know which we'd prefer, but Dawkins, whose naivety is helping to create the conditions of the latter, prefers to
fantasise a third way, in which the vast mass of humanity suddenly decide to give reason a try.

In his less guarded moments he seems as if he'd even be happy with the totalitarian option, provided the people in charge are
all enlightened rationalists like himself. (But on this eternal question I hand over to Popper - and I'll leave that for my
next post.)

For now, let us return to the more concrete idiocies and hypocrisies of the Protest the Pope caper.

Because I still cling to the belief - these days more a hope, perhaps a prayer - that Dawkins has not lost his integrity but is
merely hiding it under his crass new vestments, I take solace in the continuance of this peculiar habit he has of undermining
his own claims, in isolated bursts of self-destructive honesty, such as the reference to Pinker cited above.

It's as if there's two of them: the one that wrote The God Delusion in control, but with the one that wrote The Extended
Phenotype still inside, fighting to be heard.

He does the same with the single biggest issue supposedly uniting the Protest the Pope campaign, and on which he expounds
so foolishly in his London address: Ratzinger's supposed complicity in priestly child abuse.

I'll deal - briefly - with the truth of the matter in a moment, but first let us consider the motives of the accusers. Most of these
moral crusades atheists use to sublimate their essentially primitive hatreds crumble with a little probing, but this one is so
nakedly spurious they stand exposed from the start.

The only relevance of the child abuse allegations to this campaign is that they get reasonable people on board. It was never
central to the atheists' beef with Catholicism.

Dawkins has admitted as much: this extraordinary passage from The God Delusion leapt from the page at the time - now
it fair near pole-vaults (italics mine, American spellings his):.

---

Others have noted that we live in a time of hysteria about pedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witch-hunts of 1692. In July
2000 the News of the World, widely acclaimed in the face of stiff competition as Britain's most disgusting newspaper, organized a 'name and
shame' campaign, barely stopping short of inciting vigilantes to take direct violent action against pedophiles... In fairness to the News of the World,
at the time of its campaign passions had been aroused by a truly horrifying murder, sexually motivated, of an eight-year-old girl, kidnapped
in Sussex. Nevertheless, it is clearly unjust to visit upon all pedophiles a vengeance appropriate to the tiny minority who are also murderers

---

. Notice he says that it is unjust to condemn paedophiles for acting upon their impulses, merely those who go so far as to
commit murder. Here he stands foursquare with the sexual revolutionaries that make up his fan base, and incidentally
alongside Peter Tatchell, who can be seen holding the placard alongside Dawkins... and who Peter Hitchens has quoted as
saying that "while it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex
involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful" in a letter to the Guardian defending a controversial book about
‘Boy-Love’.

Dawkins knows that paedophilia makes for good tabloid fury, and is happy to court it so as to create a smokescreen behind
which to whip up anti-Catholic sentiment. Anyone who hates the Pope can join the party, hence the irresistibly tragic spectacle
of creationist Ian Paisley lending his voice to a campaign orchestrated by atheists and supported by Peter Tatchell.

All bedfellows considered, depending on the nature of the campaign: Protestants who think the Pope is the devil when it's
Catholics they're after, 'pro-Palestinians' and Islamic extremists when it's the Jews.

Naturally, they're a heap more cautious when it's Muslims, and I assume I'm not the only one that spotted the irony that the
only time this banner gets proudly waved in London is when there's a Catholic in town. [The banner reads 'Science flies you to the moon;
RELGION (sic. misspelled) flies YOU into buildings'. Whoever devised it probably thought they were being very clever!]

The bravery! It fair near takes your breath away.

The rest of that passage from The God Delusion is even more striking (again, my italics):

---

Priestly abuse of children is nowadays taken to mean sexual abuse, and I feel obliged, at the outset, to get the whole matter of sexual abuse into
proportion and out of the way...

For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can't help wondering whether this one
institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America.

I suppose some additional public resentment flows from the hypocrisy of priests whose professional life is largely devoted to arousing guilt about 'sin'.

Then there is the abuse of trust by a figure in authority, whom the child has been trained from the cradle to revere. Such additional resentments
should make us all the more careful not to rush to judgement.

We should be aware of the remarkable power of the mind to concoct false memories, especially when abetted by unscrupulous therapists and
mercenary lawyers...

There's gold in them thar long-gone fumbles in the vestry - some of them, indeed, so long gone that the alleged offender is likely to be dead and
unable to present his side of the story.

The Catholic Church worldwide has paid out more than a billion dollars in compensation. You might almost sympathize with them, until you
remember where their money came from in the first place.

Once in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic
priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage
inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.

---

It takes a very specialised, technical kind of bigotry that permits one person to say two entirely opposed and contradictory
things about an issue and yet be equally wrong both times.

Readers not given to such prodigious feats of intellectual elasticity may find themselves as repelled by the callousness of the
over-inflated rhetoric quoted above as by the phony moral posturing that magically replaces it in the public address last week.

Why not be both honest and consistent, and simply say something like, "I hate Catholics because they don't agree
with me and then have the effrontery to continue disagreeing with me even after I've set them straight"?
It's quicker, for one thing.

Now to the facts of the matter, as promised. The claims, repeated widely as certain fact, that Ratzinger was soft on sex
abusers in the church, covered up their crimes and attempted to sidestep civil prosecution are blatant untruths, compounded
of vindictiveness and ignorance in equal parts.

As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he investigated American cases of child abuse without fear or favour,
publicly expressing his revulsion at what he termed the "filth" of it. He has created new systems of visible accountability that
are designed not to sidestep civil prosecution but the opposite, to ensure that allegations go straight to the police rather than
via any church body. He has been relentless in his pursuit of the criminals.

The idea that he was engaged in any kind of cover-up is absurd, and one taken entirely on trust by so many who shriek it with
such convinced passion - including Dawkins, as that terrible American tv clip demonstrates.

Far from the "Boss of the world's largest sex abuse gang" (as a protest placard read), Ratzinger has done more than anyone
else in the church to expose the perpetrators and make the Church accountable.

And so we move on to AIDS. Tanya Gold sees it all pretty simply:

---

Condoms can protect Africans from AIDS. But who can protect them from Ratzinger? The Catholic church has long pursued a no-condoms policy...
AIDS, Ratzinger says, "cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems". That is a lie. Not
a fantasy, like virgin birth and all the other magical, mystical nonsense, but a dangerous lie.

---

I suspect that the poor love simply doesn't understand what he means here, though it's pretty basic. He's not saying that
condoms are of no use as a protection against AIDS. He is saying that they ultimately do not address the problem, and
therefore will not arrest it, because the problem is caused by sexual promiscuity. No condom offers the protection of
abstinence.

His point, which you are free to disagree with but not to crassly misrepresent, is that the ultimate question is one of attitudes.
The free availability of condoms, and the attendant message that sex is an act of pure pleasure divorced from any wider
consequences or responsibilities, will exacerbate the destructive attitudes that are at the heart of the problem. The answer lies
in restoring seriousness to sex - and that's what they really hate.

The condoms are an absurd distraction from this basic antagonism, and the argument that he or the Church are somehow to
blame for AIDS is among the silliest in the anti-Catholic kit bag.

With the casual contempt that comes so naturally to the Left, Tanya Gold calls the African AIDS epidemic "the church's own
holocaust", a phrase for which a few millennia burning in Hell might seem a fair exchange. (If only I weren't an atheist.)

The fundamental logical absurdity of this claim has been exposed many times, but for some reason it just doesn't sink in.
The following very simple argument does not originate with me, but demands repeating.

First, let me get this right. The Pope is opposed to artificial birth control [which condoms are], Africans are having unprotected sex
and getting AIDS, ergo: the Pope causes AIDS. Good argument, fellas - verging on adult in its sophistication.

But the Pope doesn't sanction unprotected sex either, does he? He prescribes abstinence. So what you are saying is that from
fear or love of the Pope, Africans obey one half of his edict and not the other. They willingly disobey the Pope on the whole
issue of sexual abstinence, but then risk their lives out of respect for him when it comes time to put a rubber on.

There's an adjective for this kind of argument. We call them crap arguments. They can only survive if they meet a deep-seated
need that is utterly impervious to reason: ideological certainty and religious certainty, it seems, have that much in common.

In the light of this collosal refusal to think sensibly, there seems little point in adding that the church is the largest provider of
AIDS care in Africa. [And elsewhere for that matter!]

One other thing announces itself with curious clarity in Dawkins's diatribe, and that's his resentment at Ratzinger being
acclaimed as an important intellectual. I doubt it's of the least interest to anyone else in the crowd, but for Dawkins, who
believes in the Platonic notion of the intellectual's right to rule, it really rankles.

The only way to dispute Ratzinger's stature as a major intellect is to refuse to listen to anything he has to say; the
only way to deny that his view of modern society's ills is cogent and valid is to deny his central thesis, and cling to
the 'everything is wonderful in our secular paradise' mantra that Dawkins and all the rest so shamefully endorse.

Ratzinger is a bigger thinker, a better thinker, because he starts from the premise that there is something deeply wrong:
the grown-up's premise.

To merely accept this as a starting base takes courage, but without doing so nothing can be achieved. A world view - still more
one that assumes entitlement to authority - that does not begin from this base is dangerous, cowardly and irrelevant.

If, like me, you don't like some of Ratzinger's answers then great - let the civilised adult debate begin. But if you'd rather
attach condoms to an umbrella and parade through London with a bunch of dipsticks you rule yourself out of all serious
consideration.

Ratzinger is asking for a debate on some big subjects, and the best these supposed intellectual heavyweights can
do is call him names, ignore the questions, and congratulate each other as the waters rise around their ugly
necks.

Reason is not a wall that doesn't need defending, or a talisman incapable of perversion or misuse. It needs rigorous vigilance
and bravery to safeguard it from without, and a larger context of legitimisation to prevent corruption from within. Left to fend
for itself in the marketplace of ideologies it can never hold its corner against more basic passions, bigotries and appetities.

If Dawkins wants us to believe he has not this knowledge, Ratzinger is rather braver, telling the Italian senate in 2004, "reason
is inherently fragile", and ideologies based in the claim either that it can function without morality, or comes with morality
attached, "become easy targets for dictatorships".

This, he explains is what happened in Nazi Germany - and that is what Dawkins and his cronies choose to misread as blaming
atheism for Nazism. I wish it were only stupidity, but Dawkins is not stupid, so it can only be cowardice. [And the most flagrant
intellectual dishonesty!]

But compare Ratzinger's rigorous analysis of the "loss of an awareness of intangible moral values" in a culture that "sees in its
own history only what is blameworthy and destructive [and] is no longer capable of perceiving what is great and pure" - with
the ghastly fluffy-bunny 'consciousness raising' of Dawkins's recent sermons and decide for yourself in whose hands your future
would be safer.

As George Weigel writes in the recent issue of Standpoint magazine [previously posted on this thread], from which all the above
quotations have been sourced:

---

And that, in turn, is why Ratzinger constantly asks the contemporary West to reconsider its hyper-secularist reading of
the past, in which black legends of Christian perversity dominate the historical landscape and the dignity of man is
asserted only with effective cultural and political force in the Enlightenment.

Thus, in his lecture to the Italian Senate, Ratzinger, echoing the opening sequence in Kenneth Clark's TV series,
Civilisation, reminded his audience that Christian monasticism saved European culture when it was in grave danger
of losing hold of its classical and biblical heritage.

In remote places such as Iona and Lindisfarne, the monks of St Benedict, he recalled, were the agents of a rebirth of
culture, and did so precisely as "a force prior to and superior to political authority" (which, in the Dark Ages, had largely
disappeared from the scene).

Moreover, Ratzinger proposed, it was Christianity itself that initially suggested and defended that "separation" of religious
and political authority (or, in the vulgate, the "separation of Church and state") so prized by modern secularists: in the
first instance, when the late-fifth-century Pope Gelasius I drew a crisp distinction between priestly and political authority.

Later, in the 11th century, when Pope Gregory VII defended the liberty of the Church against the Holy Roman Emperor
Henry IV's attempts to turn the Church into a department of the state by controlling the appointment of bishops.

Remove Gelasius I and Gregory VII, Ratzinger suggested, the rich social pluralism of European life in the first centuries
of the second millennium would have been much less likely to develop — and, to bring the point home in terms of Britain,
there would have been no Magna Carta and all that flowed from there.

It was the Church, in other words, that made the first arguments for the "separation of Church and state",
not the philosophes of the continental Enlightenment.

Which, as Ratzinger surveys contemporary European high culture, brings us to yet another irony: the inability of the
rationalism proclaimed by the Enlightenment to sustain Europe's confidence in reason.

As the late John Paul II saw it, and as Benedict XVI sees it, "Europe" is a civilisational enterprise and not simply a zone
of mutual economic advantage.

That civilisational project rests on three legs, which might be labelled "Jerusalem", "Athens", and "Rome": biblical religion,
which taught Europe that the human person, as child of a benevolent Creator, is endowed with inalienable dignity and
value; Greek rationality, which taught Europe that there are truths embedded in the world and in us, truths we can grasp
by reason; and Roman jurisprudence, which taught Europe that the rule of law is superior to the rule of brute force.

If Jerusalem goes — as it has in much of post-Enlightenment European high culture — Athens gets wobbly: as is plain in
the sandbox of post-modernism, where there may be your truth and my truth, but nothing properly describable as
the truth.

And if both Jerusalem and Athens go, then Rome — the rule-of-law — is in grave trouble: as is plain when coercive state
power is used throughout Europe and within European states to enforce regimes of moral relativism and to punish the
politically incorrect.

---

Dawkins has tasted some of that intolerance in the past, and his blind faith that the relativists' new found love for him is now
absolute and eternal is nothing if not touching.

Says Ratzinger: "There is a clear comparison between today's situation and the decline of the Roman Empire. In its final days,
Rome still functioned as a great historical framework, but in practice it was already subsisting on models that were destined
to fail. Its vital energy had been depleted."

Even if some of his shrill new allies have not the courage to see this nor the wit to comprehend, Dawkins must do. What will it
take to get him to see reason again?

If it's a short sharp lesson in the fickleness and superficiality of the mob then fine: I fear that may be coming, and it would be
nice to think that some good will come of it.


Since we are on the subject of reason, I must add to this post Ms. Scalia's own excellent essay today
in the FIRST THINGS group blog:


The reasoned loyalty of Catholicism
by Elizabeth Scalia

Oct. 5, 2010


In the weeks leading up to the beatification of John Henry Newman, more than one writer asked whether the Anglican convert
might be embraced by some, particularly by progressives, as “the patron saint of dissenters.”

Newman’s willingness to launch his spacious intellect into debate within the Church was so glamorous to contemplate that
some writers lost sight of the fact that what is now called his dissent, honed by his openness, was always
exercised in full conformity with the church's teaching.

Loyalty, as it were, not only won out, it was the ground of this dissent.

Intellectual rigor and loyalty are not mutually exclusive, as some progressives are prone to insist. What Newman models is,
perhaps, a willingness to apply one’s own intellect to any question with enough openness as to leave room to be
surprised at one’s own conclusions.

In that sense, Newman is hardly the first prominent Catholic to wonder “yes, but . . .” and then prostrate. Dorothy Day was
able to reason with such openness, and she self-identified as “an obedient daughter of the Church.”

Reasonable Catholicism is reasoned loyalty, or sometimes even loyalty with gritted teeth; it is loyalty that insists
upon the application of reason lest its value be questioned. By the same token, intellectualism that is not
tempered with loyalty ends up pickling itself in its own ego. Either one, by itself, is incomplete. Both are required.

This openness is the difference between reading Paul’s words to Timothy that women “will be saved in childbearing, provided
[they continue] in faith, love and holiness” and either rejecting them as the discriminatory and archaic utterances of a
misogynist, or grimly trying to conform to the stricture without question, which may also mean without understanding, and
possibly without charity.

Believing that nothing in Scripture is accidental, Catholics are obliged not to sneer, but to wonder about the theology behind
Paul’s words and to discern what in that surprising verse is worth pondering, in an era where human life is held cheap.

Can we discern within the verse a notion that women are, in God’s sublime and mysterious mercy, privileged in their ability to
assist God in his continual re-entering into our world, disguised as he is within that helpless, vulnerable, and unconditional love
that instantly forms between mother and child, father and child, siblings, and grandparents and child?

If we can openly allow ourselves to reason upon the foundational stipulation that God wants only our Good, we can surprise
ourselves with our conclusions.

Suddenly “misogyny” looks like an expedient and human explanation, and blind obedience looks so unsatisfyingly empty;
the whole verse is suddenly fraught with a deeper, holier and ultimately more idealistic meaning than either the intellectualist
or the unquestioning loyalist could have imagined.

The Church is egalitarian in whom it regards as holy; the canon of saints includes the highly educated Augustine and the loyal
little bourgeoisie known as Therese and calls both of them Doctors of the Church.

She recognizes that intellectual gifts are only remarkable because they are, in fact, gifts, conferred over a lifetime, as with
Newman, or spontaneously bestowed, as upon Catherine of Siena.

When intellectualism and loyalty are open to each other, all understanding is enlarged. The first without the second breeds
cynicism, and the second without the first tempts it. And both breed complacency and self-satisfaction, and close us off from
the mystery.

Sometimes, the commingling of faith and reason is a neat and natty thing. More often it is a bit messy, but once our intellects
have thrashed a matter to its frayed ends, we realize that we have stumbled into mystery and then, if we are open, we (very
reasonably) throw our hands up to heaven and submit to it, because we know mystery for a good adventure, and we are loyal
to it.

It is a loyalty that peers into a mirror, darkly, but is never wholly blind.

Another outstanding post in the Catholic blogosphere today...
Both the contribution and Deacon Nick's comments are exceptional..


The martyrdom of Pope Benedict

October 5th, 2010


Fr Sean Corkery, Diocese of Cloyne, has sent Protect the Pope his insightful reflection on Pope Benedict’s address at Westminster
Hall, and its implications for each one of us and the Church in general.

---

Benedict XVI: A modern Athanasius
by Fr. Sean Corkery
Diocese of Cloyne (Ireland)

The Holy Father’s lecture in Westminster Hall is 60 years of his labour of love condensed into one extremely accessible talk.
The Holy Spirit appointed Joseph Ratzinger Pope so that he could (among other things) bring this particular teaching to
a world audience.

If we can take note of its content and consider its implications as an international community of human persons, then
the papacy of Benedict XVI will be the divine gift to humanity in this present generation.

We are at a crossroads, no less vital than 100 years ago before war broke out in Europe. Communism has been exposed,
capitalism has failed with devasting collateral damage inflicted in its wake. And now, the philosopher advocates of both
ideologies are presently searching for something to put their faith in.

The Holy Father wouldn’t thank me for aligning him with the Biblical prophetic tradition, but I do think, and believe most
fervently, that Benedict XVI is a prophet and despite the nay-sayers best efforts, he is being heard; being
heard, most of all, by today’s younger generations.

Young people so easily see the contraditions in mid 20th century liberal thought and are not taken in by the
cheap promise of superficial happiness.

The relationship between faith and culture and Catholicism’s role therein is going to dominate the next half century in
a very significant way. It will most likely mean a form of martyrdom for those who will stand for the truth of human existence
to be upheld and cherished.

I have been thinking of late that Benedict XVI can be seen to the 21st century what St. Athanasius was to the
4th century at the time of the Arian Heresy. At that time, even the Pope was being bullied into accepting that
Christ was not God. It was Athanasius who, despite all the odds, never flenched from repeating the simple
truth that Jesus was God among us.

In our time we see Benedict being bullied by the 21st century forces of expediency. In ways, he is showing us
what 21st century Western martyrdom is going to look like. It is going to be the joy-filled knowledge that
Jesus will protect and bring us inner peace and secure freedom from all falsehoods and inadequate compromises
about the truth of human and divine natures.

---

Protect the Pope comment: There is much to think about in Fr Sean’s reflections, and I’m going to focus on just one theme –
the martyrdom of Pope Benedict.

The Church has long recognised different types of martyrdom – red martyrdom and white martyrdom. Obviously red martyrdom
involves the shedding of one’s blood. Pope Benedict’s martyrdom, to date, has been a white martyrdom. A white martyr
heroically lives for Christ alone, willing suffering persecution in order to remain true to Jesus Christ and His Gospel.

Unlike fundamentalist ‘martyrs’, the way of Christian martyrdom has always been one of non-violence, gentleness, and love.

Despite the brazen attempts to blacken his name by the media, despite the endless lies and mockery from groups like Protest
the Pope around the world, Pope Benedict heroically shows the virtues of faith, hope and love. This was evident in an exceptional
way during his state visit to the UK. He was radiant with the grace and holiness of Christ, and this drew crowds in the
hundreds of thousands on to the streets to catch a glimpse of him.

The forces of evil suffered a setback during the state visit, for them an unexpected setback which in their pride and self-puffery
they never imagined.

Already we see sections of the media resuming their banal, twisted repetition of lies about Pope Benedict and the Catholic
Church. The martyrdom of Pope Benedict continues, because they hate him even more now.

The Holy Father is showing us the way to remain steadfast and true to Our Lord and His doctrine preserved in the Catholic
Church during this growing Dark Age. Are we willing to join him?

Here's a nice sidebar and photograph from a Palermo blog...And more photos of the youth event with the Pope from the Palermo edition of
La Repubblica...


Young people thank the Pope
for 'Summorum Pontificum'
by Antonella Folgheretti
Translated from




Oct. 3, 2010 - At the encounter of youth and family representatives with Benedict XVI at Piazza Politeama, a group of
traditional-Mass enthusiasts had a large banner across one of the residences overlooking the square, which read "Thank you,
Holy Father, for the gift of Summorum Pontificum".

The gratitude is for the liberalization through the 2007 Motu Proprio of the traditional Mass also called the Latin Mass or the
Gregorian Mass.

In some Sicilian cities, the traditional Mass is celebrated every Sunday with the participation largely of young people who have
received the Pope's Motu Proprio very favorably.

But apparently, some people in the building who do not welcome Summorum Pontificum used their influence with the authorities,
because eventually, some men from the city's special operations division showed up to demand that the streamer be removed!

[The story does not say whether the streamer was removed, after all, since the photo provided seemed to have been taken rather late - I lightened up
the picture through Photobucket editing enough to show the words on the streamer.]

On Saturday evening, many pilgrims from out of town who arrived in Palermo for the Pope's visit took part in the prayer vigil
in Piazza San Francesco promoted by traditional Sicilian religious associations.





And here are more photos before and during the youth rally from














The Pope listens to
the young people of Sicily
by ALESSANDRA TURRISI
Translated from

Oct. 4, 2010

PALERMO - They want a compass to help them follow the right way even as so many sirens are tempting them with attractions
that last only briefly.

All they needed was a gesture, a word said in the right tone, and all it took were the words 'Take courage' said by the Holy Father
for them to explode into shattering applause, as though they had been liberated.

The young people of Sicily - or their representative present on Sunday afternoon - showed that they believe in being agents
of change, despite all the troubles of their land.

Piazza Politeama was a tide of people by the early hours of the afternon. They enjoyed performances by Sicilian groups, until their
emcee announced the arrival of the Holy Father in the Popemobile for the last event of his day in Palermo.

Benedict XVI made the rounds of the crowd to greet them before taking to the stage. He embraced emcee Massimo Minutella who
appeared to be in seventh heaven but nonetheless articulated a plea for the Pope not to forget the young people of Sicily
and to carry them in his heart.

Two very enthusiastic young people, David and Giorgia - like the rest of the crowdm, they had attended the two-day regional
conference on and for young people and families held Friday and Sunday - bounded onstage, and a few steps away from the
Pope, they mastered their emotions enough to speak to him in behalf of all the others about their dreams.

"From this our beautful island, from our schoolrooms and corrifors which are dense with life and dreams, all we wish is to be
educated well," said Giorgia, a high school freshman in Palermo. "We insist on having teachers who are witnesses to the truth,
committed to the transmission of knowledge and the daily relationship that should exist between teacher and students."

"We have much to receive and we have already received much from the Church and our priests. But we also have a lot to give
if anyone wishes to accept us, to listen to us, to make us even more enamored of Jesus Christ".

The audience was silent, listening and agreeing - she was speaking for them.

Then it was the turn of David Roccaro, a law student who said he believed in formation and study as 'an opportunity for rescue and renewal'.

"We do not wish to give up on the dream of a better Sicily, made fertile by the blood of so many martyrs of justice and faith
like Falcone, Borsellini, don Pino Puglisi and Rosario Livatino," he named them to a burst of sustained applause.

"We are living an exceptional historical time in Sicily," he went on. "Never before has criminality been so struck against and placed
in difficulty. Therefore, it is time to reinforce our commitment in defense of Christian and human values, which should also guide us
in our studies, our education, our work - which we do not now have".

Before the Pope came to join the young people, he had spoken to some 2,300 priests, male and female religious, deacons and
seminarians, whose enthusiasm was overwhelming.

They left the Cathedral thankful for the Holy Father's call to prayer and to spiritual nourishment, said with the severity of a good father.

"He told us that above all, we must live in prayer, from which everything will follow," said Don Angelo Milone, rector of the seminary
in Acireale. "and that as priests, we must share the sufferings and joys of our people."





Pope learns of boy's death in
a house fire as he leaves Palermo
Translated from


PALERMO, Oct. 4 - The Holy Father eexpressed his condolence over the death of 6-year-old Ivan Viviani who died in a house fire
on the day of the Pope's visit, the archbishop's press office said.

He also sent a message of spiritual closeness to the boy's family who are hospitalized for injuries, and asked Archbishop Paolo
Romeo to visit them after he saw off the Pope for Rome on Sunday evening.

Mons. Romeo has asked the diocesan Caritas to attend to the immediate needs of the stricken family. They are poor and now homeless.

Wednesday, Oct. 6, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. BRUNO OF COLOGNE (1030?-1101), Founder of the Carthusian order
This saint has the honor of having founded a religious order which, as the saying goes, has never had to be reformed because it was never deformed. He was born in Cologne,
Germany, became a famous teacher at Rheims and was appointed chancellor of the archdiocese at age 45. He supported Pope Gregory VII (May 25) in his fight against the
decadence of the clergy and took part in the removal of his own scandalous archbishop. As he had always dreamed of living in solitude and prayer, he persuaded a few friends
to join him in a hermitage and they eventually settled in Chartreuse near Grenoble under the protection of the Bishop of Grenoble, the future St. Hugh of Chateauneuf.
They lived a monastic life, and their chief work was copying manuscripts. Meanwhile, one of Bruno's former pupils had become Urban II in 1080, and he asked Bruno to come
to Rome as an adviser, a job he performed very discreetly. In 1091, with the Pope's blessings, Bruno and some friends retreated to a hermitage in Calabria, southern
Italy, where he eventually died in the first year of the 12th century. His friend Urban II preceded him by a few months. He He was never formally canonized, because the
Carthusians were averse to all occasions of publicity. Pope Clement extended his feast to the whole Church in 1674.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/100610.shtml


No papal stories in today's OR, and no real news on Page 1 either.


THE POPE'S DAY

General Audience - In his catechesis today, the Holy Father spoke of St. Gertrude the Great, a contemporary
of the 12th-century Mathilde of Hackeborn who was the subject of last week's catechesis. He reminded the faithful
that tomorrow is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary and that October is the month of the Rosary.



Reminder of the next papal liturgy:

October 10, XXVIII Sunday in Ordinary Time
CAPPELLA PAPALE
MASS TO OPEN THE SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS
9:30 St. Peter's Basilica

Except shortly after the Conclave of 2005, it's very unusual that two books in English about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI come out at the same time...
Here's a look at this fall's twin offering...

Benedict XVI:
'One of the last truly great
European voices' against secularism
By Brian Welter

Oct. 6, 2010


BENEDICT XVI: ESSAYS AND REFLECTIONS ON HIS PAPACY
Edited by Sister Mary Ann Walsh, RSM
Sheed & Ward, 224 pp., $29.95

THE RATZINGER READER: MAPPING A THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY
by Joseph Ratzinger
Edited by Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion
Continuum, 286 pages, $34.95


While Pope Benedict XVI is undoubtedly a much different Pope than John Paul II was, the depth of the current Pontiff’s pastoral
concerns are, surprisingly to some, as deep as his predecessor’s. Few would have foreseen that such a brilliant, often polemical
man could possess these qualities. [What a negative premise to start from! And why was it necessary to, yet again, bring up a comparison with
John Paul II?]

Yet writer after writer in Benedict XVI: Essays and Reflections on His Papacy, a collection of the thoughts from Catholic
America, extols not the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s intellect, as formidable as that is, but his personality
[of which his intellect is but one part!].

Contributors tell of their encounters with Benedict the pastoral Pope, as when he came to the United States and reached out to
victims of abusive priests.

Or when he wrote a pastoral letter to Chinese Catholics, again reaching out and asking for unity within the Chinese Catholic
Church fractured into the underground and the governmentally sanctioned parts.

Or when he began to be seen as a “green pope” for putting solar panels on the Vatican and appealing to safeguard the
environment. As one writer notes, he has made a unique contribution to the environmental movement by linking “natural
ecology” with “human ecology.” In other words, how it goes with our families and communities is how it goes with our
treatment of nature.

The current Pontiff has continued Pope John Paul II’s concern for human rights, as when he linked human rights with
forgiveness, and noted that peace was “relational.”

Yet the contributors to Essays and Reflections on His Papacy are nonetheless impressed by the former Cardinal Ratzinger’s
deep intellect. He critiques the Protestant over-reliance on Scripture (“sola scriptura”) for undervaluing tradition and making
“faith depend on the always-changing findings of scholars.”

This traditionalist Pope therefore appreciates liturgy, sharing in the concern of many American Catholics over the sloppiness in
postconciliar worship.

Pope Benedict’s traditional stance is likewise apparent in The Ratzinger Reader, a collection of his writings as a “private
theologian,” that is, when he publishes essays and books as an individual rather than when speaking as a Vatican official.

The reader includes succinct commentaries by the editors, which helpfully situate Cardinal Ratzinger’s thoughts within the
secular versus Catholic battleground in the decades following the Second Vatican Council.

The commentators, Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion, argue that Cardinal Ratzinger has not deeply changed
his basic positions, even though many others, such as Father Hans Kung, have accused the current Pontiff of just that.

Cardinal Ratzinger highlighted a more traditionalist position as the 1970s wore on. However, this was not so
much a reactionary stance as it was the position of a priest who was deeply concerned with the secularization mot
only of Western society, but within the Church itself, as many seminaries, religious orders and Catholic schools
lost a sense of being Catholic.

In one writing, Cardinal Ratzinger calls on the faithful to become more deliberate in the way in which Catholic education or
health care is indeed Catholic.

Some of the writings testify to the polemical style with which Cardinal Ratzinger often defended the faith. His strong words
extend to his ecclesiastical brethren who misunderstood the council: “The tragic one-sidedness of the last conciliar debates
came about because they were controlled by the trauma of underdevelopment and by a pathos of ‘caught-up modernity.’”

The polemical nature of some selections in no way reduces the elegance, precision and clarity of Cardinal Ratzinger’s writings.
This reader also indicates why he is becoming so popular with Catholics.

Not only is he the pastoral Pope, as witnessed by Essays and Reflections on His Papacy, but he is one of the last truly great
European voices against the continent’s wholesale rejection of its Christian heritage.

Welter is studying for his doctorate in systematic theology and teaching English in Taiwan.

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY:
Catechesis on St. Gertrude the Great

In his catechesis today, the Holy Father spoke of St. Gertrude the Great, a contemporary of the 12th-century Mathilde of
Hackeborn who was the subject of last week's catechesis.

St. Gertrude is the fourth of the great medieval female saints in the Pope's current catechetical cycle that he began when
he resumed the General Audiences after the summer break. His first two subjects were Hildegarde of Bingen and Clare of
Assisi.

He also reminded the faithful that tomorrow is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary and that October is the month of the Rosary.

Here is how he synthesized the catechesis in English:

---

Our catechesis today focuses on Saint Gertrude the Great, a remarkable figure associated with the monastery of Helfta,
where so many masterpieces of religious literature were born.

Saint Gertrude is the only woman of Germanic descent to be called "Great", an honour due to her exceptional natural and
supernatural gifts. As a youth, Gertrude was intelligent, strong and decisive, but also impulsive. With humility she asked
others for advice and prayer.

Eventually, she experienced a deep conversion: in her studies she passed from worldly pursuits to the sacred sciences,
and in her monastic observance she moved from concern with external things to a life of intense prayer.

In her writings, she sought to explain the truths of the faith with clarity and simplicity, while not failing to develop
spiritual themes associated with Divine Love. In her religious practice, she pursued prayer with devotion and faithful
abandonment to God.

Dear friends, may we learn from Saint Gertrude the Great how to love Christ and His Church with humility and faith, and
to cultivate our personal prayer through an intense participation in the Holy Mass and the sacred liturgy.

---

Saint Gertrude the Great:
A model of faith and humility

Oct. 6, 2010

The Pope today stressed the importance of prayer, and faith during his catechesis, at his weekly general audience.

Pope Benedict arrived into an autumnal but sunny St Peter’s Square on Wednesday to be greeted by thousands of pilgrims and
tourists.

As has become customary at his weekly general audience the Holy Father in his catechesis this Wednesday focused on great
women of the early Church, recalling the figure of Saint Gertrude the Great:

“Saint Gertrude is the only woman of Germanic descent to be called 'Great', an honour due to her exceptional natural and
supernatural gifts. As a youth, Gertrude was intelligent, strong and decisive, but also impulsive. With humility she asked others
for advice and prayer.

"Eventually, she experienced a deep conversion: in her studies she passed from worldly pursuits to the sacred sciences, and in
her monastic observance she moved from concern with external things to a life of intense prayer.”

The Pope then went on to talk about this Saint's written works which drew on spiritual themes:
“In her writings, she sought to explain the truths of the faith with clarity and simplicity, while not failing to develop spiritual
themes associated with Divine Love. In her religious practice, she pursued prayer with devotion and faithful abandonment to
God. Dear friends, may we learn from Saint Gertrude the Great how to love Christ and His Church with humility and faith, and
to cultivate our personal prayer through an intense participation in the Holy Mass and the sacred liturgy.”

Towards the end of his audience the Holy Father welcomed all the English visitors and pilgrims and he especially extended his
greetings to the Candidates for Diaconate Ordination from the Pontifical North American College.

One of those candidates listening to the Pope’s words was Seminarian Jim Baron from Colorado Springs in the U.S.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to be with the Holy Father today, especially with all my parents and friends and family, with my
bishop as a real sign of the importance of the family.”

The Pope also had greeting for to the new students and staff at the Pontifical Beda College, and to pilgrims from, Dublin
in Ireland.

Shortly after the Popemobile started touring the audience sectors, Mons. Gaenswein put on the Pope's saturno for him, against an October sun that is still fierce in Rome.










Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's catechesis:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

St. Gertrude the Great, of whom I wish to speak today, brings us this week back to the German monastery of Helfta,
which gave birth to some of the masterpieces of religious literature written by women in Latin and German.

To this world belonged St. Gertrude, one of the most famous of mystics, the only female in Germany to have merited the
appellative 'the Great' for her cultural and evangelical status. With her life and thought, she left an incisive impression
on Christian spirituality.

She was an exceptional woman, endowed with special natural talents and extraordinary gifts of grace, with the most
profound humility and ardent zeal for the salvation of her neighbor, one who had intimate communion with God in
contemplation and in her promptness to aid those in need.

In Helfta, she was systematically confronted, so to speak, with the example of her teacher Mathilde of Hackeborn, whom
I spoke of last week; she was in the company of another medieval mystic, Mathilde of Magdeburg; and she grew up under
the maternal, kind but demanding care of the Abbess Gertrude [elder sister of Mathilde of Hackeborn].

From her three fellow nuns, she drew treasures of experience and wisdom, which she elaborated and synthesized in her
own way, as she followed her religious itinerary with unbounded confidence in the Lord.

She expressed the wealth of spirituality not only in her monastic world, but also and above all, that of the Biblical,
liturgical, patristic and Benedictine worlds, with a most personal stamp and great communicative efficacy.

She was born on January 6, 1256, on the Feast of the Epiphany, but we know nothing of her parents nor where she was
born. Gertrude wrote that the Lord himself revealed to her the meaning of her first uprooting:

"I chose her for my dwelling because I wished that everything that is lovable in her should be my work... For this reason,
I took her far away from her parents, so that she should love no one because of consanguinity but that I should be the
only reason for the affections she has" (Revelations, I, 16, Siena 1994, p. 76-77).

At the age of 5, in 1261, she entered the convent, as they used to do in those days, for study and formation. And it was
there that she spent her whole life, whose most important stages she herself tells us.

In her memoirs, she recalls that the Lord had provided with patience and infinite mercy - forgetting the years of her
infancy, adolescence and youth, which, she wrote, "I would have gone through with such mental blindness in order that
I could... think, say or do without any remorse all that I wished to do and wherever I could - if you had not provided for me
both through an inherent horror of evil and a natural inclination for the good, as through the external vigilance of others.
I would have behaved like a pagan, even if you had wanted that from age 5, I should live in a blessed shrine of religion
in order to be educated among your most devoted friends" (Ibid., II, 23, p. 140s).

Gertrude was an extraordinary student - she learned all that could be learned of the sciences of the Trivium and
Quadrivium, which was the formation required at the time. She was fascinated by knowledge and devoted herself even to
profane [i.e., secular] knowledge with ardor and tenacity, achieving scholastic success beyond all expectations.

If we know nothing of her origins, she herself tells us a lot about her juvenile passions: she was captivated by literature,
music and song, and the art of miniature painting. She had a character that was strong, decisive, immediate and
impulsive. She says she was often negligent - she acknowledged her own defects which were with her to the end, and
there were those who wondered how, despite this, the Lord should have favored her so much!

From being a student, she went on to consecrate herself totally to God in the monastic life, and for twenty years
afterwards, nothing exceptional took place. Study and prayer were her principal activities. She excelled over her
colleagues with her gifts, and she was tenacious in consolidating her culture in diverse fields.

During the Advent of 1280, she started to feel distaste for all this, realizing their vanity, and on January 27, 1281, a few
days before the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, around the hour for Complines, in the evening, the Lord
enlightened the dense shadows that had settled on her.

With gentleness and kindness, he calmed her disquiet and anguish, a disquiet that Gertrude saw as a gift itself from God
"in order to knock down the tower of vanity and curiosity that, alas, although bearing the name and the habit of a
religious, I had been raising up with my pride*, thinking thus to find the way for you to show me your salvation" (Ibid.,
II,1, p. 87).

She had a vision of a young man who showed her how to overcome the tangle of thorns that oppressed her soul, taking
her by the hand. And in that hand, Gertrude recognized "the precious traces of those wounds that had abrogated all the
accusations of our foes" (Ibid., II,1, p. 89), recognizing him who had saved us on the Cross with his Blood, Jesus.

From that moment, her life of intimate communion with the Lord intensified, especially during the most significant
liturgical times - Advent-Christmas, lent-Easter, the feasts of the Virgin - even when she was unable to join the choir
because of illness.

The same liturgical humus that had nourished her teacher Mathilde, Gertrude described in more simple and linear, more
realistic images, symbols and expressions, with more direct references to the Bible, to the Fathers, and to the Benedictine
world.

Her biography indicates the two directions of what we might define as her particular 'conversion': In her studies, with her
radical passage from profane humanistic studies to theological studies; and in her monastic observance, from the life she
had defined as negligent to an intense, mystical life of prayer, with exceptional missionary ardor.

The Lord, who had chosen her from her mother's womb and had made her take part, since she was a child, in the
banquet of monastic life, reclaimed her with his grace "from external things to the interior life, and from earthly concerns
to love of spiritual things".

Gertrude understood that she had become distant from him, to the point of dissimilarity, as she said, echoing St.
Augustine: having been dedicated with too much avidity to liberal studies and to human wisdom, while neglecting
the spiritual science, depriving herself of the taste for true wisdom.

Now she was led to the mount of contemplation, where she would leave behind her old being to put on a new one:
"From a grammarian, she became a theologian, with tireless and attentive reading of all the sacred books that she could have
or procure. She filled her soul with the most useful and sweetest sentences of Sacred Scripture, so she always had
an inspiring and edifying word for those who came to consult her; as well as all the Scriptural texts most suitable to refute
any erroneous opinion and to shut up her opponents" (Ibid., I,1, p. 25).

Gertrude transformed all this into an apostolate. She dedicated herself to writing and expressing the truths of the faith
with clarity and simplicity, grace and persuasiveness, serving the Church with love and fidelity, in which she was found
useful and pleasing by theologians as well as by pious people.

Little is left for us of her intense spiritual activity, chiefly because of the events which led to the destruction of
the monastery of Helfta.

What is left to us are L'Araldo del divino amore (the Herald of divine love), also called The Revelations, and
the Spiritual Exercises, a rare gem of mystical literature.

In her religious observance, our saint was "a firm pillar..., a most steadfast proponent of justice and truth" (Ibid., I, 1,
p. 26), her biographer says. With her words and example, she inspired great fervor in others. To the prayers and penitences
prescribed by the monastic rule, she added others with such devotion and trusting abandonment to God, that she inspired
in those who met her the consciousness of being in the presence of the Lord.

Indeed, God himself made her understand that he had called her to be an instrument of his grace. Gertrude felt unworthy
of this great treasure from God, and confessed that she had not safeguarded and appreciated it enough.

She exclaims: "Alas, if you had given me in your memory, as unworthy as I am, even a single thread of sackcloth,
I would have had even greater respect and reverence for all that I had because of your gift!" (Ibid., II,5, p. 100).

But acknowledging her poverty and her unworthiness, she followed the will of God, "because," she says, "I have availed
so little of your graces that I cannot bring myself to believe that you had provided them to me alone, but your eternal
wisdom must not be frustrated by anyone. Therefore, Giver of every good, who has gratuitously given me such
undeserved girts, grant that in reading this, the heart of at least one of your friends may be moved to think that your zeal
for souls has led you to leave for some time a jewel of such inestimable value in the abominable mud of my heart"
(Ibid., II,5, p. 100s).

Two favors in particular were most dear to her more than any others, as Gertrude herself wrote:
"The stigmata of your health-giving wounds that you imprinted on my heart, almost like precious jewels, and the
profound and salutary wound of love with which you marked it.

"You flooded me with your gifts of such beatitude that, even if I should live a thousand years without any internal nor
external comfort, their memory alone would be enough to comfort me, illumine me, and fill me with gratitude.

"May you still wish to introduce me into the inestimable intimacy of your friendship, opening to me in various ways
that most noble shrine of Divinity that your divine heart is...

"To this wealth of good things, you have added that of giving me for my Advocate the Virgin Mary, your Mother, and to
have commended me to her affections as the most faithful of husbands might commend his beloved spouse to his own
mother" (Ibid., II, 23, p. 145).

Striving for communion without end, she ended her earthly life on November 17, 1301 or 1302, when she was almost 46.
In her seventh Exercise, that of preparation for death, St. Gertrude wrote: "O Jesus, you you are immensely dear to me,
be with me always, so that my heart may remain in you and your love perseveres in me without possibility of division,
and that my passage may be blessed by you, so that my spirit, loosed from the bonds of flesh, may immediately find
repose in you. Amen" (Esercizi, Milano 2006, p. 148).

It is obvious that these are not simply things of the past, historical, but that the life of St. Gertrude continues to be
a school of Christian life, of the right road, which shows us that the center of a happy life, of a true life, is friendship
with Jesus, our Lord.

This friendship is learned in love for the Sacred Scripture, in love for liturgy, in profound faith, in love for Mary, so that
we may know God in an ever more real way, and thereby, true happiness, which is our goal in life.

Thank you.

At the end of his plurilingual greetings, he said this in Italian:

Tomorrow the Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. October is the month of the Holy Rosary, inviting us
to value this prayer which is so dear to the tradition of the Christian people.

I ask you, young people, to make the Rosary your daily prayer. And I encourage you, dear people who are ill, to grow,
thanks to reciting the Rosary, in trustful abandonment into the hands of God. I call on you, dear newlyweds, to make
the Rosary a constant contemplation of the mysteries of Christ.

---

*Speaking of the 'pride' that the saint refers to, I cannot resist reporting a quotation attributed to Gertrude the Great, from the website
www.kloster-helfta.de/seiten/22.htm
of Kloster Helfta (the monastery has been under physical rehabilitation since 2003 from its earlier destruction):
"No man shall surpass me in learnedness."

Papal primacy:
Russia leads resistance against Rome
The Patriarchate of Moscow is a great admirer of the current Pontiff.
But it is also the most hesitant to recognize his authority over the Orthodox Churches.
What took place at the recent talks in Vienna.



ROME, October 6, 2010 – While the Eastern Churches are slowly approaching the convocation of the pan-Orthodox "Great and
Holy Council" that should finally unite them in a single assembly after centuries of incomplete "synodality," the other journey of
reconciliation, which sees the East in dialogue with the Church of Rome, is also taking small steps forward.

The object of this dialogue concerns the only real sticking point dividing Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the primacy of the Pope.

A few days ago, in Vienna, from September 20 to 27, the joint international commission for theological dialogue between the
Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church met as a whole, precisely on the universal role of the Bishop of Rome during the first
millennium of Christian history.



At the head of the Catholic delegation was the new president of the pontifical council for Christian unity, Swiss archbishop Kurt
Koch. For the Eastern Churches, there was the metropolitan of Pergamon Joannis Zizioulas, a great ecumenist and trusted
theologian of the patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, as well as an old friend of Joseph Ratzinger as theologian and Pope.

The Orthodox were fully represented, with the sole exception of the patriarch of Bulgaria. There was the metropolitan
archbishop of Cyprus, Chrysostomos II, another champion of ecumenism, whom Benedict XVI met this year during his trip
to the island.

The Patriarch of Moscow had sent to Vienna his most prominent associate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, also fresh from
a meeting with the Pope, with whom he has a relationship of great respect.

The presence of the patriarchate of Moscow in Vienna was all the more important because in Ravenna, in 2007, when
agreement was reached on the document to serve as the basis for discussion on the universal role of the bishop of Rome,
the Russian Church was not there [their delegation walked out on Day 1], because of a disagreement with the patriarchate of
Constantinople.

The disagreement was smoothed over, and the Ravenna document was also approved by the Patriarchate of Moscow, which had
helped to prepare it.

The document affirms that "primacy and conciliarity are mutually interdependent." And in paragraph 41, it highlights the points
of agreement and disagreement:

"Both sides agree that... that Rome, as the Church that 'presides in love' according to the phrase of St Ignatius of Antioch,
occupied the first place in the taxis, and that the bishop of Rome was therefore the protos among the patriarchs. They disagree,
however, on the interpretation of the historical evidence from this era regarding the prerogatives of the bishop of Rome as
protos, a matter that was already understood in different ways in the first millennium."

"Protos" is the Greek word that means "first." And "taxis" is the structure of the universal Church.

Since then, the discussion on controversial points has advanced at an accelerated pace. And it has started to examine, above
all, how the Churches of East and West interpreted the role of the bishop of Rome during the first millennium, when they were
still united.

The outline of the discussion was, until this point, a working document drafted by a joint sub-commission at the beginning of
autumn 2008, at a meeting in Crete.

In October of 2009, in Cyprus, the joint international commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the
Orthodox Church, with the Russians present, examined and discussed the first part of this outline, on some historical cases of
the universal exercise of the "primacy" of the bishop of Rome, in the first centuries of the Christian era.

The discussion was supposed to continue in Vienna. But there were surprises right from the beginning. The Russian delegation
raised objections against the working text provided in Crete, and ultimately succeeded in having it rewritten.

The main objection of the Russian Church was summarized by Metropolitan Hilarion shortly after the meeting, in a note
published on the website of the Patriarchate of Moscow:

"The 'Crete Document' is purely historical and, speaking of the role of the bishop of Rome, it makes almost no mention of
bishops of other Local Churches in the first millennium, thus creating a wrong impression of how powers were distributed in the
early Church. Besides, the document is lacking any clear statement that the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome did not extend to
the East in the first millennium. It is hoped that these gaps and omissions will be made up in revising the text."

As a result, the Russian delegation asked and obtained that the text from Crete not be included among the official documents of
the commission, not bear the signature of any of its members, and be used simply as working material for a new rewriting of
the working outline. A rewriting more attentive to the theological dimensions of the question.

In effect, at the end of the talks in Vienna, the participants agreed to set up "a sub-commission to begin consideration of the
theological and ecclesiological aspects of primacy in its relation to synodality."

Next year the sub-commission will present the new text to the coordinating committee of the commission for theological
dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. So that the following year, 2012, the commission will be able
to revisit and continue – on the basis of the new outline – the discussion begun in Cyprus and Vienna.

The two co-presidents of the commission, Archbishop Koch for the Catholic side and Metropolitan Joannis for the Orthodox, at
a press conference on September 24, gave a positive assessment of the talks under way.

Koch recognized the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox visions: while the Catholic Church has strong primacy and
weak synodality, for the Orthodox Churches it is the other way around. So it is necessary "that we exchange our respective
gifts, as done, for example, by Benedict XVI when he welcomes the Anglicans into the Church with all of their traditions
and liturgies."

Joannis said that he agreed: the Orthodox must clarify their conception of primacy, just as the Catholics must strengthen
synodality.

He observed that the history of the first millennium shows that the Church of Rome was universally recognized as having
a special role, but the Pope exercised it by consulting with the other bishops.

As for the continuation of the talks, the metropolitan of Pergamon said that a move will be made to "a slight change of our
subject, namely to make the historical material focus on theological questions more."

The journey will not be easy, if one looks at the extremely restrictive views that the patriarchate of Moscow, through the pen
of Metropolitan Hilarion, says of the Pope's role in the first millennium:

"For the Orthodox participants, it is clear that in the first millennium the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome was exercised only
in the West, while in the East, the territories were divided between four patriarchs – those of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch
and Jerusalem.

"The bishop of Rome did not exercise any direct jurisdiction in the East in spite of the fact that in some cases Eastern hierarchs
appealed to him as arbiter in theological disputes.

"These appeals were not systematic and can in no way be interpreted in the sense that the bishop of Rome was seen in the East
as the supreme authority in the whole universal Church.

"It is hoped that at the next meetings of the commission, the Catholic side will agree with this position which is confirmed
by numerous historical evidence."

In this regard, neither the patriarchate of Moscow nor the Orthodox Church as a whole is forgetting that Benedict XVI, in one of
the first actions of his pontificate, removed from the attributes of the Pope listed in the Annuario Pontificio the designation
"Patriarch of the West."

When it became known, this decision prompted protests from many representatives of Eastern Churches. Some saw it as "proof
of the claims by the Bishop of Rome to universal primacy."

On March 22, 2006, the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity published a statement justifying the change.

On June 8 of that same year, a note from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople stated that, if anything, the Pope would
have done better to have stopped calling himself "Supreme Pontiff of the universal Church," because "the Orthodox have never
accepted his jurisdiction over the whole Church."

After that the disputes died down and the two sides began that direct examination of the question which, begun in Ravenna and
continued in Cyprus and Vienna, promises further steps forward.

But as can be seen, the question is certainly a thorny one, with no solution in sight.

MORE SNAPSHOTS FROM TODAY'S GA

Few people are like Benedict XVI whose snapshots often have the quality of portraits as in the following series:






And photographers today shot a whole series on
HOW TO PUT ON THE POPE'S SATURNO

For those who always fault the Holy Father for his supposed lack of collegiality... OK, the Assembly in 2005 on the Eucharist was
one called earlier by his predecessor, but it produced the memorable but not-enough-recpgnized post-Synodal exhortation
Sacramentum caritatis. Then he called a synodal assembly on the Word of God, followed by the one on Africa, and now this one
on the Middle East. That is a truly remarkable record but little noted and little credited!

Background on the coming Synod:
Why Benedict XVI has called
his 4th synodal assembly in 5 years
From the Missal for the Opening Mass

---

“NOW THE COMPANY OF THOSE WHO BELIEVED
WERE OF ONE HEART AND SOUL” (Acts 4: 32)

In a meeting with the Eastern Patriarchs and Major Archbishops on 19 September 2009, the Holy Father, following his
pilgrimage to the Holy Land (8-15 May 2009), announced the convocation of a Special Assembly for the Middle East of the
Synod of Bishops, to take place from 10 to 24 October 2010.

This initiative concerns the “anxiety” of the successor of St. Peter “for all the Churches” (2 Cor 11:28) and is an important
event demonstrating the interest of the Universal Church in the Churches of God in the Middle East.

The Churches themselves in the region are invited to become particularly involved in this event so that it might indeed be
a grace-filled happening in the life of Christians in the Middle East.

Pope Benedict XVI’s pilgrimages to the Holy Land (Jordan, Israel and Palestine) and Turkey (28 November – 1 December
2006), with the many, significant speeches given on these occasions, provide special assistance in better understanding
the Word of God and reading the signs of the times, so that we can thereby discern the vocation of our Churches and how
to conduct ourselves as Christians.

The Aim of the Synod

The Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops has a twofold goal: to confirm and strengthen Christians
in their identity through the Word of God and the sacraments and to deepen ecclesial communion among the particular
Churches, so that they can bear witness to the Christian life in an authentic, joyful and winsome manner.

Our Catholic Churches are not alone in the Middle East. There are also the Orthodox Churches and the Protestant
communities. This ecumenical aspect is basic, if Christian witness is to be genuine and credible. “That they may all
be one, so that the world may believe” (Jn 17: 21).

Thus, communion has to be deepened at all levels: within the Catholic Churches in the Middle East themselves, among
all Catholic Churches in the region and in relations with other Christian Churches and ecclesial communities.

At the same time, we have to strengthen the witness we give to Jews, Muslims, believers and non-believers.

The synod also offers us the opportunity to assess the social as well as the religious situation, so as to give Christians
a clear vision of the significance of their presence in Muslim societies (Arab, Israeli, Turkish or Iranian), and their role and
mission in each country, and thereby prepare them to be authentic witnesses of Christ where they live.

Accordingly, this involves reflecting on the current situation, which is a difficult one of conflict, instability and political
and social evolution in the majority of our countries.

A Reflection Guided by Sacred Scripture

Our reflection will be guided by Sacred Scripture, which was written in our lands, in our languages (Hebrew, Aramaic
or Greek) and in the cultural and literary contexts and expressions we hold as our own.

The Word of God is read in our Churches. The Scriptures have come to us through our ecclesial communities, having been
handed down and meditated upon within our Sacred Liturgies.

They cannot be ignored as a reference point, if we are to discover the meaning of our presence, our communion and our
witness in the current situation in our countries.

What does the Word of God say to us here and now, to each Church, in each of our countries? How does God’s loving
Providence reveal itself to us in both the favourable and challenging situations of our daily life? What is God asking of us
at this time: to remain so as to commit ourselves to these events which are under the care of Providence and divine
grace? Or are we to leave?

Therefore, it is a matter – and this is one of the aims of the Special Assembly – of rediscovering the Word of God in the
Scriptures, addressed to us today. The Word of God speaks to us in the present and not merely in the past, and explains to
us what is happening around us, just as the Word did to the two disciples of Emmaus.

This discovery comes about primarily from reading and meditating upon Scripture, whether done individually, in families
or living communities.

What is essential, however, is that this reading guides the choices we make each day in our personal, familial, social and
political lives.

---

Lest we forget the immediate reason for the Pope's visit to the UK...

Newman’s faith
by George Weigel

Oct 6, 2010


Two postcard portraits of the recently-beatified John Henry Newman have graced my office for years. One is a miniature painted
by Sir William Charles Ross in 1845, the year of Newman’s reception into the Catholic Church. The second, by Emmeline Dean,
gives us the aged cardinal, a year before his death in 1890, in cardinalatial house cassock and walking stick.

Between those two portraits lies a spiritual and intellectual pilgrimage within Catholicism that, combined with Newman’s pre-
Catholic journey from evangelicalism to high-church Anglicanism and the Oxford Movement, remains one of the most compelling
such tales of modern times — a path the Church has now officially recognized one marled by heroic virtue, miraculously attested.

The times being what they are, it was inevitable that gay activists and their allies among progressive Catholics would try to claim
Newman as a patron-saint of gayness, citing letters he exchanged with his longtime friend Ambrose St. John, with whom he
asked to be buried.

As the pre-eminent Newman biographer, Father Ian Ker, pointed out, however, suggestions that Newman and St. John were
homosexually involved (even if in a non-carnal way) testify to the ignorance that our culture exhibits about deep friendships,
especially deep male friendships.

He might have added that letters between such friends written in a 19th century literary style ought not be scrutinized through
the foggy lens of twenty-first century homoeroticism, which saturates everything from Abercrombie & Fitch ads to prime-time
banter these days.

These crude efforts to recruit a holy man to a dubious cause are a distraction from measuring Newman’s greatness as a thinker,
writer, and preacher — a man who anticipated the Second Vatican Council in his own navigations through the whitewater of
Catholicism’s encounter with intellectual modernity.

Newman was also ecumenically prescient, if not in precisely the way that some ecumenists would celebrate. He left the Church
of England for Rome when he could no longer accept Anglicanism’s claims to be apostolically grounded.

And as the recent travails of the Anglican Communion have demonstrated, Newman was right, if ahead of his time, in recognizing
that Christian communities untethered from apostolic tradition inevitably end up inventing do-it-yourself
Christianity, taking their cues from the ambient culture of the day.

I once had the honor of spending time in Newman’s rooms at the Birmingham Oratory, which are much as the aged cardinal left
them at his death in 1890. Over the altar, which occupies one side of the room, are tacked-up notes by which Cardinal Newman
reminded himself of those for whom he had promised to pray.

In the sitting room, a tattered newspaper map, also tacked to a wall, bears silent testimony to Newman’s interest in Kitchener’s
efforts to lift the siege of Khartoum and rescue General Gordon from the Mahdi, a 19th century jihadist (Gordon died with
Newman’s poem, “The Dream of Gerontius,” in his pocket).

Perhaps most touching are Newman’s Latin breviaries, which he began to use as an Anglican, causing much controversy about
such popish practices.

It is as a man of faith that the Church beatified John Henry Newman, however: the kind of man of faith who could write the
following (which I take from another prayer card I’ve had for years, given me by Catholic Worker artist Ade Bethune):

---

God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not
committed to another.

I have my mission. I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught…

Therefore I will trust Him, whatever I am…He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my
spirits sink, hide my future from me — still, He knows what He is about.

---

[Benedict XVI cited this prayer in his mily for the Beatification Mass. It is one of the most powerful and beautiful expressions possible of the uniqueness
of every human being.]

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us and for the unity in truth of Christ’s Church!

Pope's visit will cost 500,000€
to the diocese of Barcelona

Wednesday, October 6, 2010


BARCELONA - Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming visit to Spain is going to cost the diocese of Barcelona between 500,000 and
600,000 euros, without taking into account the cost of security or the setting up of a press centre, according to Cardinal Lluís
Martínez Sistach the archbishop of Barcelona.

The archbishop explained in a press conference this morning that the diocese had already managed to raise 300,000 in public
and private donations.

The Pope will celebrate Mass in the Sagrada Familia church on November 7th, after which the emblematic church, designed by
Antoni Gaudí, will become a basilica. Almost 7,000 people, including the King and Queen of Spain, are expected to hear the Mass.

Chairs will be provided for some 40,000 more people on the eight islands of the Eixample area of Barcelona around the church,
most of whom will come from other parishes within Barcelona and Catalunya, schools and associations, many of whom have
already requested their invitation.

Martínez Sistach was understanding with regard to the numerous demonstrations that are being organised to protest against
the Pope's visit, and said that the city of Barcelona would know how to be "respectful" towards the Pope, adding that Benedict
XVI's "controversial" recent visit to the UK turned out to be a "success" in the end.

Numerous anti-religious people have announced protests against the Pope's visit to Barcelona.

Atheists and agnostics, as well as those who believe, in general, that the Vatican should 'move with the times' are planning
demonstrations in the city on the eve of the arrival of Benedict XVI.

They include free-thinkers, feminists and the gay and lesbian community, all of whom feel rejected and persecuted by the
Catholic church.

They consider the Pope's attitude 'intolerant' and have also criticised the amount of money that the visit will cost.

“Every hour that the Pontiff spends in Spain will cost the state 800,000 euros,” a spokesman for the protesters claimed.
“Benedict XVI has every right to visit Spain, but his expenses should not come out of our pockets.”


[It's not coming out of their pockets at all, if they are not Catholic. From Cardinal Martinez's words, the costs he speaks of are being borne by the Church
entirely. As for the costs of security, the city of Barcelona is not spending anything extra because they are already providing security
for the King and Queen of Spain! And for this occasion, the security requirements coincide and do not necessarily double.]

P.S. Here's a translation of the news release from the Archdiocese of Barcelona on today's news conference:

Diocese publishes
Popemobile route
Translated from

Oct. 6, 2010


Lower left photo shows the Popemobile route traced in blue from the Archbishop's Palace (near the Cathedral) to Sagrada Familia. Right photo is an overview of Barcelona. The Old City (Ciutat Vella) grew up next to the port on the Meditarranean. The Montjuich area left of the Old City is the plateau where the Olympic Stadium and Barcelona's major museums are located.

Pope Benedict will pass through the heart of Barcelona's Eixample district in the Popemobile to get to the Sagrada Familia which he will consecrate on Sunday, November 7.

[The Eixample (extension) is the newer part of the city center that was built up in the 19th century and early 20th century, and where Gaudi's landmark buildings, as well as those by other avant-garde Barcelona architects of the 20th century, are located.]

He will be leaving the Archbishop's Palace in the city's Barrio Gotico - its most ancient quarter, where the Cathedral, City Hall and the Catalunya regional government seat are located.

The motorcade is timed to arrive at Sagrada Familia at 9:30, when the Pope is scheduled to have a private meeting the the King and Queen of Spain.

The Holy Father's visit is generating great international media interest. already, more than 2000 journalists from around the world have been accredited.

Televisio de Catalunya will broadcast all the papal events live. At least 150million people worldwide are expected to be watching the satellite feed.

The Archdiocese is preparing a zone around Sagrada Familia equipped with 40,000 seats and jumbo screens. The area will accommodate representatives of parishes from around Spain. The attendance within teh church itself is limited to 7,000.

Cardinal Martinez expressed the hope that city residents will welcome teh Holy Father along the city streets "to thank him for the gesture of coming from Rome to visit us".

The archbishop revealed a few other details of the program.

- The Pope will lead the Angelus after the dedication Mass from the church's lateral facade of the Nativity.
- After the Angelus, he will re-enter the Church to unveil a marker designating teh Sagrada Familia as a basilica.
- The famous boys' choir from the Benedictine monastery of Our Lady of Montserrat outside Barcelona will be among the choirs singing at the dedication rites.
= Benedictine nuns from the Convent of San Pedro de las Puel have been working on the altar cloths and other fabric accessories to be used during the Mass.
- The Benedictines of Montserrat are also preparing t300 ceramic ciboriums to be used in the distribution of communion.

The coordinator of the visit, Jesuit Fr. Enric Puig, advised the public and the press to consult the visit's website for all information
www.papabarcelona2010.cat


Sagrada Familia dominates Barcelona's skyline in a way no other church does except St. Peter's, which does not have SF's soaring spires; left panel
shows a giant welcome banner attached to one of those spires with respect to which it looks like a handkerchief.

From the site of the Irish Bishops' conference today - but not yet posted on the Vatican site:

On preparatory meetings for
Apostolic Visitation in Ireland
October 6, 2010

The following press release has just been issued by the Holy See Press Office:

---

On 5 October 2010, the Prefect and the Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops and representatives from the Holy See
held a preparatory meeting in Rome with the Apostolic Visitators named by the Holy Father for the Apostolic Visitation
to the four Metropolitan Archdioceses of Ireland:
- His Eminence Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor;
- His Eminence Seán P. O’Malley, O.F.M. Cap.;
- the Most Reverend Thomas C. Collins;
- the Most Reverend Terrence T. Prendergast, S.J.

Mindful of the tragic abuse of children that has taken place in Ireland, the participants discussed the particular aspects
of this important Visitation.

Pastoral in nature, the Visitation "is intended to assist the local Church on her path of renewal" (Pastoral Letter
of Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland) and is a sign of the Holy Father’s desire, as the Successor of Peter,
to offer his pastoral solicitude to the Church in Ireland.

The Visitators will give particular attention to victims of abuse and their families, but will also meet with and listen
to a variety of people, including ecclesiastical authorities, lay faithful and those involved with the crucial work
of safeguarding children.

On 6 October 2010, as had been previously planned,
- His Eminence Cardinal Seán B. Brady, Archbishop of Armagh,
- the Most Reverend Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin,
- the Most Reverend Dermot Clifford, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, and
- the Most Reverend Michael Neary, Archbishop of Tuam,
celebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit together with the Visitators and Superiors from the Congregation for Bishops and
the Secretariat of State.

The meeting that followed, marked by fraternal warmth and mutual collaboration, summarized the discussions from
the previous day and focused on the organization of the Apostolic Visitation and the Archdioceses involved.

All participants are hopeful that this significant endeavor will be an instrument of purification and healing
for the Church in Ireland and help to restore the trust and hope of the faithful there.

---

Thursday, Oct. 7, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

Illustrations, from left: Sculpture of St Dominic and the Virgin of the Rosary; Battle of Lepanto, by Veronese, 1572; prayer card to the Virgin of the Rosary;
image of Our Lady of Pompeii with Sts. Dominic and Catherine; Mysteries of the Rosary, Lorenzo Lotto, 1539; stained glass window of St. Dominic and the rosary.
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY
Although the rosary had been prayed in some form as early as the second century, St. Dominic is credited with institutionalizing it as a devotion after a vision of the Virgin Mary in 1208. In 1541, the victory of the Holy Fleet against the Ottoman Turks in the naval battle of Lepanto off western Greece was attributed to Our Lady of the Rosary, and the October feast was instituted 30 years later. The rosary reached its present form in the 16th century — with 15 mysteries (joyful, sorrowful and glorious) for meditation. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the Mysteries of Light to this devotion.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/100710.shtml



OR today.

Illustration: 17th century painting of St. Gertrude from Queretaro, Mexico.
At the General Audience, the Pope speaks of St. Gertrude the Great
'An exceptional woman'
Other Page 1 stories: An editorial commentary on the Nobel Prize in medicine says the scientific world should focus on fighting the causes of infertility instead of developing assisted reproduction and all its unwanted consequences; international pressure mounts on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to extend the Israeli moratorium on new settlements in the West Bank in order to salvage proposed peace talks resumption; a terrorist rocket attack in Yemen strikes a British diplomat's convoy.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- H.E. Fernando Zegers Santa Cruz, Ambassador from Chile, who presented his credentials. Address in Spanish.

- Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, outgoing President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum

- The officials of the bishops' conference of Venezuela, accompanied by Cardinal Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino,
Archbishop of Caracas

- Participants in the Congress for Religion Writers sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
Address in Italian.



Two major Curial changes today, as the Holy Father accepted the resignation of two Curial heads upon
reaching canonical retirement age, and named their successors:

- Mons. Mauro Piacenza as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, succeeding Cardinal Claudio Hummes.
Piacenza was Secretary of the Congregation.

- Mons. Robert Sarah as president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, succeeding Cardinal Paul Cordes.
Sarah, emeritus Archbishop of Conakry (Guinea), was Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization
of Peoples.

Cardinal Scola confirms second known
pastoral visit for Benedict XVI in 2011


VENICE, Oct. 6 (Translated from ASCA) - With great joy and emotion, the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angela Scola, announced today that the Holy Father has accepted an invitation to make a pastoral visit to Aquileia and Venice on May 7-8, 2011.

Cardinal Scola made the announcement at St. Mark's Cathedral during the traditional encounter between the Patriarch and the Venetian clergy at the start of the canonical year.

[Aquileia, about 100 kms northeast of Venice, is an ancient Roman city founded about 180 B.C. and is one of northern Italy's most important archaeological site and a UNESCO World Heritage site.]

"This gift from the Holy Father to the Patriarchate of Venice coincides with the end of our own pastoral visits throughout the Patriarchate that have been underway since 2004," Scola said.

"By preparing ourselves with care and experiencing this extraordinary event together, we will better understand the valuable signs that the Holy Spirit disseminates among us at this time of grace and open up our hopes for the future.

"As the Holy Father has reminded us in his recent visits to the United Kingdom and to Palermo, faith, nourished by liturgical and personal prayer, by charity, and the Word of Christ, reveals its extraordinary 'convenience' and relevance for men and women in our time.

"The Holy Father's visit among us also responds to another circumstance that has emerged during our own pastoral visits in the Patriarchate: the usefulness that Christians serve for all residents and visitors to Venice, 'city of humanity', in the exercise of Christian living that is also for the good of society.

"Also significant is that the Holy Father has accepted to inaugurate a year of inter-diocesan preparations for the Second Congress of Aquileia, where representatives from the dioceses of northeast Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Austria will be in attendance to meet the Holy Father.

"In the name of all the bishops of the dioceses concerned, let me now invite all the ecclesial organizations, parishes, movements and associations, as well as civilian society and the various institutions to mobilize together to welcome Benedict XVI, who will be visiting Venice 26 years after John Paul II visited here, and almost 40 years since Paul VI's visit, while honoring at the same time Pius X, John XXII, and John Paul I, the three Patriarchs of Venice who became Popes in the last century."

[Last week, the Bishop of San Marino-Montefeltro announced that the Pope will be visiting his diocese, which comprises the Republic of San Marino and the adjoining Italian zone of Montefeltro in east central Italy, on June 19, 2011.]

Pope conveys thoughts for Chile
on the 2nd centenary of its independence
in receiving the new ambassador




06 OCT 2010 (RV) - Pope Benedict XVI said on Thursday that he “carries the people of Chile in his heart”, especially the victims of a recent earthquake as well as the 33 miners trapped since August in a collapsed mine.

The Holy Father said this in his greeting to the new Chilean Ambassador to the Holy See Fernando Zegers Santa Cruz.

In his address the Pope said, "From the outset I wanted to express my closeness to the people of Chile and, through the visit of my Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, I sent my comfort and hope to victims, their families and the many affected, who are always present in my prayers”.

In February this year an 8.8 magnitude earthquake shook the South American nation triggering a tsunami which devastated several coastal towns, killing over 500 people and leaving thousands homeless.

The Pope goes on to say that neither does he forget the fate of the 33 minors trapped in a collapsed mine in the remote region of Atacama since August last, adding that he “fervently prays for them and their loved ones”...

Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words to the new ambassador:

---

Mr. Ambassador:

It is my pleasure to receive Your Excellency for this solemn act of presenting the letters accrediting you as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Chile to the Holy See.

I express my most cordial welcome, as well as my gratitude for the words of greeting you conveyed from the President of the Republic, Sebastián Piñera Echenique, and his Government.

Your presence in the Holy See mreminds me vividly of your country which I carry in my hearat, although it is geographically quite far from here, and particularly after the terrible earthquake that it endured recently.

From the outset, I wished to show my closeness to the Chilean people, and through the visit there by my Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, I sought to extend comfort and hope to the victims, their families and all those who suffered damages, all of whom I remember in my prayers.

Nor do I forget the miners in Atacama abd their dear ones, for whom I pray fervently.

In this regard, I wish to highlight and appreciate the unity of the Chilean people in the face of disaster, their generous and fraternal response to the suffering of others, as well as the immense efforts being undertaken by the Catholic Church in Chile, many of whose communities were sorely tried themselves by the earthquake, to aid those who are most in need.

Your Excellency is starting your mission at the Holy See precisely in the year when Chile celebrates the bicentennial of her independence, which gives me the occasion to highlight once more the role of the Church in the most significant events of your country, and in the consolidation of her national identity that is profoundly marked by Catholic sentiment.

The fruits of the Gospel in your blessed land are too numerous. Abundant fruits of holiness, of charity, of human promotion, of the constant search for peace and coexistence.

In this sense, I wish to recall the celebration last year of the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with your sister nation Argentina which, through Pontifical mediation, put an end to conflict in the southern hemisphere..

This historic accord will remain for future generations a luminous example of the immense good that peace brings with it, as well as the importance of preserving and promoting those moral and religious values that constitute the most intimate fabric of a nation's soul.

One cannot attempt to explain the triumph of the yearning for peace, concord and understanding if one does not take into account the depth to which the seed of the Gospel has rooted itself in the heart of Chileans.

In this sense, it is important, the more so in present circumstances having to do with facing so many challenges that threaten your own cultural identity, to promote, especially among the younger generations, a healthy pride, a renewed appreciation and revaluation of their faith, their history, their culture, their traditions and their artistic wealth, and all that constitutes the best and richest spiritual and human patrimony of Chile.

In this context, I wish to underscore that, although Church and State are independent and autnomous in their respective fields, both are called on to a loyal and respectful collaboration in order to serve their respective personal and social callings (cf. Gaudium et spes, 76).

In fulfilling her specific mission of announcing the Good News of jesus Christ, the Church seeks to respond to the expecttations and questions of men, relying as well on the ethical and anthropological values and principles that are inscribed in the nature of the human being.

When the Church raises her voice on the great challenges and problems of the day, like wars, hunger, the extreme poverty of so many people, the defense of human life from its conception to its natural end, or the promotion of a family founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, and that has primary responsibility for the education of children, it is not acting for any special interest or for principles that can only be perceived by those who profess a certain religious faith.

Respecting the rules of democratic coexistence, it does so for the good of all society and in the name of values that every person with right reasoning can share ( cf. Address to the President of the Italian Republic, Nov. 20, 2006).

In this respect, the Chilean people know well that the Church in that nation collaborates sincerely and effectively, and wishes to continue doing so, in everything that contributes to the common good, to just progress. and to the peaceful and harmonious coexistence of all those who live in your beautiful land.

Mr. Ambassador, before concluding this meeting, I extend to you my best wishes for the fulfillment of your high mission, even as I assure you of cordial reception and accessibility on the part of my collaborators.

With these sentiments, I invoke from the heart upon you, Your Escellency, your family and the other members of your diplomatic mission, and on all of the beloved Chilean people and their leaders, through the intercession of the Virgin of Carmel, the abundance of divine blessings.

---

See preceding page for earlier posts today, 10/7/10.






Pope Benedict's discourse to
participants of Catholic Press Congress





07 OCT 2010 (RV) - At midday today the Holy Father received participants in a congress on the Catholic press promoted by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. The congress has been taking place this week in Rome.

Addressing the participants, who come from 85 countries, the Pope referred to two specific aspects of the role of the Catholic press.

On the one hand, he said, "there is the specific nature of the medium: the press; i.e., the written word and its importance and effectiveness in a society which has seen the burgeoning of dish antennae and satellites. ...

On the other hand, the 'Catholic' connotation with all its attendant responsibility of remaining explicitly and substantially faithful, through daily commitment to following the path of truth.

"Catholic journalists must seek the truth with impassioned minds and hearts", he added, "but also with the professionalism of competent workers equipped with adequate and efficient means".


Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's address to the journalists:

---

Dear brothers in the episcopate,
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen:

I welcome you with joy at the end of your four days of intense work sponosred by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and dedicated to the Catholic press.

I greet you all, who come from 85 nations, and work in newspapers, weeklies or other periodicals and on Internet sites. I greet the president of the dicastery, Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, whom I thank for speaking in behalf of everyone, as well as the secretaries, the undersecretary, and all his officials and personnel.

I am happy to be able to address you with a word of encouragement to continue, with renewed motivations, in your important and specialized work.

The world of the media is undergoing profound transformation even from within. The development of new technologies, and particularly, of widespread multimedia capabilities, appear to call into question the role of the more traditional and established media.

Opportunely, your Congress has dwelt on considering the specific role of the Catholic press. In fact, two particular aspects emerge from a careful reflection on this subject:

On the one hand, the specificity of the medium, namely the press, that is, the written word and its relevance and effectiveness - in a society that has seen a proliferation of antennae, parabolas and communications satellites which have almost become emblems of a new way of communications in the era of globalization.

On the other hand, the description 'Catholic', with the corresponding responsibility that you must be faithful to it in an explicit and substantial way through your daily commitment to follow the royal road of truth.

The search for truth should be pursued by Catholic journalists with passionate hearts and minds, but also with the professionalism of competent workers who avail of appropriate and efficient means.

This is even more important in this historical moment which demands that the journalist, as the mediator of complex currents of information, undergo a profound mutation.

Today, for example, the world of images has increasingly more weight with the development of ever newer technologies. But if all of this doubtless has its positive aspects, image can also become independent of reality, it can give rise to a virtual world with varying consequences, fhe first of which is the risk of indifference to reality.

Indeed, the new tecnologies, along with the progress they bring, can make the true and the false interchangeable; they can lead to confusing the real and the virtual.

Moreover, how an event, whether happy or sad, is reported, can turn it into a spectacle rather than an occasion to reflect. The search for ways to promote the human being becomes secondary because the event is presented principally to play to the emotions.

These aspects are like alarm bells. They invite us to consider the danger that the virtual takes us even farther from reality, which does not stimulate the search for what is true, for truth.

In this context, the Catholic press is called on, in a new way, to express its potential to the utmost and to give daily proof of its irrenunciable mission.

The Church disposes of a faciltiating element since the Christian faith and communications have a fundamental structure in common: the fact that the medium and the message are one and the same.

Indeed, the Son of God, the Word incarnate, is at the same time, a message of salvation and the means through which salvation is achieved.

This is not a simple concept, but it is a reality that is accessible to everyone, even to those who, despite being protagonists in the world's complexity, are still able to keep that intellectual honesty that is characteristic of the 'little ones' in the Gospel.

Moreover, the Church, mystical Body of Christ, who is present contemporaneously everywhere, nourishes the capacity for more fraternal and more human relationships, as a place for communion among believers, so that together, they are a sign and instrument of the vocation of everyone to communion.

Her strength is Christ, and in his name, she 'follows' man on the highways of the world to save him fom the mysterium iniquitatis which operates insidiously in the world.

The press evokes in a more direct manner, compared to other means of communication, the value of the written word. The Word of God came down to men and has been transmitted to us through a book, the Bible.

The word continues to be the fundamental instrument - and in a certain sense, the constitutive instrument - of communications. These days it is used in various forms, but even in the so-called 'civilization of image', it continues to retain all of its value.

From these brief considerations, it is evident that the communications challenge is, for the Church and those who share her mission, very demanding.

Christians cannot ignore the crisis of faith which has overcome society, or simply trust that the patrimony of values transmitted through the centuries can continue to inspire and shape the future of the human family.

The idea of living 'as if God did not exist' has been shown to be harmful; rather, the world needs to live 'as if God exists', even without the power of belief, otherwise it will only produce a 'dishuman humanism'.

Dearest brothers and sisters, whoever works in the communications media, if he does not want to be "a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal" (1 Cor 13,1) - as St. Paul would say - should keep the option strong within him that enables him to deal with the world by always placing God at the top of his scale of values.

The times in which we live, although they are remarkable for many positive things - because the threads of history are in the hands od God and as his eternal plan reveals itself farther - are nonetheless marked by so many shadows.

Your task, dear workers in the Catholic press, is to help contemporary man orient himself to Christ, the only Savior, and to keep alight in the world the torch of hope, so men may live today worthily and construct the future adequately.

And so, I exhort you to constantly renew your personal choice for Christ, drawing from those spiritual resources that the worldly mentality under-estimates, though they are invaluable, indeed indispensable.

Dear friends, I encourage you to continue with your none-too-easy task, and my prayers go with you, that the Holy Spirit may make your work ever more profitable.

My blessing, full of affection and gratitude, which I gladly give, embraces all of you present here and those who work in the Catholic media all over the world.

---

With regard to the Pope's call for Cathoolic journalists to be Christian above all, there is a tendency among some in the Catholic media, particularly those with with recognizable bylines, to be 'journalists' first before they are Christian!

In the name of supposed 'objectivity' - which is really a preemptive and defensive justification of themselves to their MSM colleagues, as in 'Hey just because I'm Catholic does not mean I don't see the rot in the Church!' - they consciously follow the herd mentality of the MSM in denouncing perceived (some of it, real enough) errors and failures of the Church and its hierarchy - but often failing to balance it off with the Church position. Or else, as in the reporting and commentary on the sex-abuse 'scandal', content to present the Church position with platitudinous generalizations instead of researching specific facts pertinent to whatever case is being discussed!

For Catholic journalists, bearing Christian witness should mean serving the truth, above all, not dominant opinion or their reputation among their secular peers.

Leave it to Fr. Schall to highlight some fundamental verities in the Holy Father's discourses during the recent trip to the United Kingdom....




October 7, 2010

---

"All of us, in our different ways, are personally engaged in a journey that grants an answer to the most important question of all — the question concerning the ultimate meaning of our human existence."
- Pope Benedict XVI
Meeting with Representatives of Other Religions
Twickenham, London, September 22, 2010 [1]

---

I.

The visit of Benedict XVI to Great Britain was an occasion that we can long ponder. Preparations for the visit seemed to indicate that there would be much opposition from many sources, most of which failed to materialize.

Instead, the journey to England culminating in the Beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman was a dignified and indeed happy occasion. Pundits misjudged both the English and the Pope.

The Holy Father spoke or preached in many different places, in churches, in universities, in Westminster Hall, in parks in Glasgow, London, and Birmingham, and even in castles. The Queen was there. Bless her, and the Prime Minister.

Baroness Hayman, the Speaker of the House of Lords, after listening to the Holy Father's address in historic Westminster Hall said touchingly: "But for me, perhaps the most important and long-standing thing that I will take from what you said was the need for an ethical foundation as each and every one of us approaches the complexities and the difficult issues facing us as individuals, as communities, and facing the world today."

The amount of teaching and instruction in this visit was enormous. The Pope never lost an opportunity to speak to the young about their lives, about prayer and vocation. [One can really say that of every pastoral or apostolic visit that he makes, whether it's one day as in Palermo, or four days as in the UK, during which he is able to synthesize and distill all the essential points of his Magisterium - of the Christian faith, really - in the most concise, clear and direct ways possible.]

In Westminster Cathedral, at a blessing of young people at the font of the Cathedral, Benedict said: "Every day we have to choose to love, and this requires help, the help that comes from Christ, from prayer and from the wisdom found in his word, and from the grace which he bestows on us in the sacraments of the Church."

Benedict quietly teaches us how to take care of our souls. "Deep within our heart," he told these young folks, "he (Christ) is calling you to spend time with him in prayer. But this kind of prayer, real prayer, requires discipline; it requires making time for moments of silence every day."

Such advice is right out of (Thomas) A' Kempis or John Paul II, St. Bernard and St Benedict, in whose shadow, as the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked, all of England stands in buildings stemming from the Benedictine tradition.

I will not touch on here the various references and talks that the Holy Father devoted to Newman, a man whom Pope Ratzinger (as he acknowledged in Hyde Park), has studied all along in his life.

But I do want to emphasize two comments that Benedict made concerning Newman in the Hyde Park Prayer Meeting (September 18, 2010).

First, "Newman, by his own account, traced the course of his whole life back to a powerful experience of conversion which he had as a young man. It was an immediate experience of the truth of God's word, of the objective reality of Christian revelation as handed down in the Church."

The important phrase in that passage is that Christian revelation is an "objective reality." Benedict's JESUS OF NAZARETH is precisely about the objective nature of Christ's reality and presence.

Secondly, Benedict recalled that in "one of the Cardinal's best-loved mediations is included the words 'God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another.'" [From that wonderful prayer!]

We cannot help but universalize such a passage and apply it not only to the Pope's own life but to each of our own. This too, when we come to see our lives spelled out, will be the case.

We are created for some definite service, a service that we can refuse, but in refusing, no doubt, God's plan will work out another way.

During this visit, the Holy Father did not hesitate to mention those Catholics who suffered martyrdom in England, often for the defense of the office of Peter — Sir Thomas More, those killed at Tyburn, and St. Thomas A'Beckett.

Many of the great English, Welsh, and Scot saints are mentioned — Bede the Venerable, St. Ninian, St. Columba, St. Mungo, St. Margaret, St. David, and St. Edmund Campion. My only disappointment in the trip was that, though he cites him elsewhere, the Pope did not cite Chesterton.

Perhaps my favorite comment of Benedict took place during the interview with reporters on the flight over to Great Britain. The pope was asked if there was anything that could be done to make the Church more "attractive." Benedict responded:

---

A Church which seeks above all to be attractive would already be on the wrong path, because the Church does not work for itself, does not work to increase its numbers so as to have more power. The Church is at the service of Another; it does not serve itself, seeking to be a strong body, but it strives to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ accessible, the great truths, the great powers of love and of reconciliation that appeared in this figure and that came always from the presence of Jesus Christ.

---

[In many ways, the most emblematic expression of Benedict XVI's Magisterium.]

This is a constant Christian theme. We did not invent our religion. We received it and are to keep it in the world in the basic form in which it was handed down. If people listen, fine. But if they do not, we can only accept their choice. "The Church is at the service of Another."


II.

At several points in the visit, the Holy Father gave brief, even pithy, explanations of what it is all about. I cited in the beginning the universal question that all men must face — "What is the ultimate meaning to our existence."

This question was placed before the members of other religions. The Pope went on to say:

---

Yet, these disciplines (the human and natural sciences) do not and cannot answer the fundamental question, because they operate on another level altogether.

They cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'

---

It might be noted that Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., in his recent appearance on the Larry King Show, elaborated on this very question.

In spite of Professor Stephen Hawking's claim that he could explain everything so that there was no need of God, Spitzer pointed out very carefully that the scientific formulae that the human mind derives from investigating things does not itself make the formulae or place their operations in cosmic things.

They do not come from nothing, in other words. Their only initial source can be from outside the cosmos itself, which is not a self-created entity.

In an Ecumenical Celebration in Westminster Abbey, Benedict, summing up what was held in common with Anglicans, said that our society has often become "hostile" to Christianity. Yet, the resurrection is the only real response "to the spiritual aspirations to men and women of our time."

The Pope then reflected: "As I processed into the chancel at the beginning of this service, the choir sang that Christ is our 'sure foundation.' He is the Eternal Son of God, of one substance with the Father, who took flesh, as the Creed states, 'for us men and for our salvation.' He alone has the words of everlasting life."


III.

In terms of worldwide political interest, the Holy Father's address in Westminster Hall was of great significance. The Pope began by praising the English common law tradition from which we Americans have our legal roots.

Of the famous men and women who were in this Hall, the pope singled out Sir Thomas More. This is the very place where he was condemned, who "chose to serve God first." The Pope acknowledged the relation of More's execution to his own office, the Chair of Peter.

The British took significant steps to limit subsequent arbitrary political power — "freedom of political affiliation, and respect for law, with a strong sense of individual rights and duties, and the equality of all citizens before the law."

Catholic social thought, Benedict pointed out, also includes such limitations. Pragmatism itself cannot consistently justify such principles. The role of the British Parliament in the abolition of the slave trade is praised because it was not mere pragmatism.

But what grounds these principles?

---

The central question at issue, then, is this: Where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.

According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers.

---

One cannot overestimate the importance of this passage. In public debate, whether it be about abortion, gay marriage, war, taxes, welfare, or education, Catholics do not first appeal to revelation as the source of their position. It may back it up, but they primarily appeal to grounded reason that is not closed to anyone else in argument.

Religion assists to "help purify reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This 'corrective' role of religion vis-a-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves." These views do not give due attention to reason.

The Church remains in the public order today the principle defender not of revelation but of reason. Religion and revelation need one another even in the public order, in this sense.

The public expression of religion is a good thing.

---

There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silences or at least relegated to the purely private sphere," the Pope tells the English politicians.

There are those who argue that public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.

And there are those who argue — paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination — that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their consciences.

---

The Pope's reason sees the contradictions of logic in such arguments.

Such views do not understand the rights of citizens or the reality of religion in public life. In the cooperation between the Church and state, "religious bodies — including institutions linked to the Catholic Church — need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles and specific convictions based upon the faith and the official teaching of the Church."

In his talk to other religious leaders, the Pope took up something that needs much more emphasis, namely, the lack of reciprocity in granting religious freedom in many areas. The Pope does not name China, Islamic countries, and other restrictive cultures.

---

I am thinking in particular of situations in some parts of the world where cooperation and dialogue between religion calls for mutual respect, the freedom to practice tone's religion and to engage in acts of public worship, and freedom to follow one's conscience without suffering ostracism or persecution, even after conversion form one religion to another.

---

The fact is, we have no real idea of the amount of persecution and discrimination that goes on against freedom of religion in many parts of the world and diplomacy or weakness prevents us from pointing it out more forcefully.

In his departure, with the British Prime Minister present, the Holy Father expressed his appreciation to the Queen and Parliament, to the Anglican Archbishop, as to the whole of the Islands for their gracious courtesy during his visit.

But my final words to be cited from this trip are those of Benedict to the Anglican Primate:

---

Fidelity to the word of God, precisely because it is true word, demands of us an obedience which leads us together to a deeper understanding of the Lord's will. An obedience which must be free of intellectual conformism or facile accommodation to the spirit of the age.

This is the word of encouragement which I wish to leave with you this evening, and I do so in fidelity to my ministry as the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of St. Peter, charged with a particular care of the unity of Christ's flock.

With such words, spoken on English soil, I think, we have again made present in that land what was once rejected with so much blood. The unity of the flock is fundamental. The one charged with it is the Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

---

[I agree. This was perhaps the most overlooked significant passsage of the entire trip: simply phrased but unusually powerful because very direct statements of Benedict XVI's own strong sense of his mission as the custodian of Christian unity, the very essence of true ecumenism. It brought tears when he said it because of where he said it and to whom he was saying it.]

On reflecting on this visit, no Briton, I think, whatever be the fame of English practicality, can help but wonder, if he has not before, "What is the ultimate meaning of our existence?"

He did not have this question addressed to him in the Times or the Guardian but in the reflections of Benedict XVI, the Successor to Peter. It is still the most fundamental question of the modern age.

ENDNOTES:

[1] Benedict XVI, Meeting with Representatives of Other Religions, Walgrave Drawing Room, St. Mary's University College, September 17, 2010, L'Osservatore Romano, English, September 22, 2010. All references in this essay will be found in this edition of L'Osservatore Romano.



I'm posting the following essay by Fr. Baker with Fr. Schall's essay not because it is a lesser piece, but because it is not directly about Benedict XVI, and yet, it remainds us once again about the acknowledged sources of the Catholic Church's teachings and practices, often underscored by Benedict XVI himself, including Tradition with a big T.


Tradition and Catholic faith
Editorial
by Kenneth Baker, SJ

Issue of October 2010


Recently I read a little book by the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper called Tradition: Concept and Claim (St. Augustine’s Press, 2010). In the book Pieper offers some reflections on the important notion of tradition.

He is not primarily concerned with tradition as it is understood in Catholic theology, but what he has to say is very applicable to tradition as a norm of Catholic doctrine and morals.

Tradition, Pieper says, is the process of handing on or transmitting some truth, such as a teaching, a statement about reality, or a proverb; it can also be a custom, a legal maxim, or a holiday, like the Fourth of July.

An essential point regarding what is handed down as a tradition is that it is not changed in any way by either addition or subtraction. It is handed down from one generation to the next, like a precious diamond that always remains the same.

Traditions like that help to unify a people or a nation. Common traditions tend to bind people together; we see that in this country at Fourth of July celebrations, when people of different ethnic and social backgrounds get together to celebrate the founding of the country.

Pieper makes the point that a physical science, like physics, does not have a tradition in the same sense, because it is constantly undergoing change and revision. In a sense everything is up for grabs as new discoveries are made.

He also says that teaching is not the same thing as tradition. The teacher forms students according to his own way of proceeding and according to his own insights and way of thinking. He may pass on some traditions, but that is not primarily what teaching is about. He strives, or should strive, to communicate truth to his students, and that truth is constantly being added to.

Tradition as it is understood in the Catholic Church is something quite different from the description given above because what is handed down from one generation to the next is divine revelation —either as the word of God or divine events such as the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That revelation is also called the “deposit” of faith. We find it expressed in the liturgy of the Church, in the Bible, in the Fathers of the Church and in the Magisterium.

Tradition in this sense is also called “sacred” because it comes from God himself — it is not a human invention. Church authorities — the Pope and bishops — have a serious obligation to hand on the deposit of faith without adding to it or taking anything away from it. Their task is to hand on unchanged what they have received ultimately from God.

What, then, is the role of theology, which is faith seeking understanding? Theology’s task is to reflect on the deposit of faith, to seek new insights into divine revelation and apply them to the age in which it takes place. Examples of this are Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Of course, there is such a thing as the development of doctrine, but this means coming to a deeper understanding of divine revelation and making explicit what was implicit in what God said or did in the past.

The Church’s most recent teaching about tradition is found in chapter 2 of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. [DEI VERBUM, the Vat-II document that Fr. Ratzinger worked on directly, and which for him is fundamental, as he expressed in many wyas during the Synodal Assembly on teh Word of God.]

There we read that there is “a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end.”

Revelation, however, is broader than just the Bible and was communicated to the Church before it was written down. In the same place Vatican II says, “Consequently, it is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed” (§9).

So there are revealed truths in tradition which are not written down in the Bible. On this point the Council said, “Sacred tradition and sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, which is committed to the Church” (§10).

“The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ”(§10).

According to the Council, then, Scripture, tradition and the Magisterium are united and stand together as the source and norm for Catholic theology, spirituality and liturgy.

Pope Benedict confounds his critics
[Yet again! But they never learn]
by William Doino, Jr.

Oct 7, 2010

Three weeks have passed since the Pope’s visit to Great Britain, and memories of it still fill my mind, because it was a triumph few had expected.

Of all the remarkable things I saw, while blogging about it for First Things, nothing more surprised me than this: on September 18th, as his Popemobile rolled toward Hyde Park — with Benedict waiving to his supporters packed along the streets — a BBC reporter, watching in amazement, suddenly burst out: “The 83-year-old pontiff has confounded his critics!”

To appreciate the significance of that comment, one has to understand the BBC. For years, it has been among Benedict's most cynical media foes, questioning every aspect of his pontificate. The coverage has been so bad that Scotland’s Cardinal Keith O’Brien felt it necessary to speak out (Catholic bishops in the U.K. tend to keep their heads down), denouncing the network’s “consistent anti-Christian institutional bias,” particularly against the Catholic Church.

Yet there was that BBC reporter, undergoing an awakening, if only for an instant. [Alas, that seems to be the operative word in these, by now, recurrent media scenarios about Benedict XVI. Again and again, he proves himself undaunted and firm, courageous and constant, often inspired and original, in 'being the Pope'. But again and again, under identical circumstances, his detractors manage to create the devil's illusion of a hapless Pope riding for an inevitable fall. And they are confounded again and again - if confounded is the right word, rather than 'proven wrong'. They keep getting 'confounded' because they keep functioning from the same wrong premises, the consequence in turn of arguing from pure prejudice and refusing to look at facts.]

Even more astonishing was the reaction of another commentator, Joe Wilson, of BBC Radio Lancashire: “Somehow as the four days progressed, bit by bit, the Pope’s visit transformed from the worry of embarrassment that reaction would be tepid, to the glow of the eventual warmth given off by the obvious love so many felt for him.”

He quoted a pilgrim “still floating on a cloud somewhere” over Hyde Park: “It was really, really wonderful. We were just surrounded by so many different people. Young people, elderly people, more young people than elderly people, people of all nationalities. It was awesome.”

This was not supposed to happen.

In the weeks leading up to the papal visit, the secular media’s coverage was almost universally negative. “Pope Faces Protests and Apathy on Visit to Britain,” headlined the Guardian of London. “Pope Benedict to Encounter Hostile Audience in U.K. Visit,”reported the Religion News Service. “How do You Welcome an Unpopular Pope?” asked The Atlantic sarcastically. Time magazine assured its readers that Benedict’s journey “promises to be the chilliest — and potentially rudest — welcome of his 17 trips abroad.”

Although Catholics in Britain kept insisting that Benedict’s visit would “bring energy and inspiration,” to quote the Archbishop of Westminster, the media had its own agenda. They weren’t interested in what the faithful had to say.

But it would be the faithful, and their spiritual leader, who would have the last say. From the opening moments of his voyage to his departure at Birmingham airport, Pope Benedict’s pilgrimage was virtually flawless. For a papacy supposedly unskilled in communications, the Pope and his entourage delivered a tour de force of public relations.

It would be a mistake, however, to judge the papal visit purely as PR. For as memorable as the visuals were, it was the substance of the visit that counted most.

On the plane ride to Scotland, and throughout his visit, Benedict made clear how serious he was in combating clerical abuse. The “first interest” of the Church, he said are “the victims.” He promised to do everything in his power to help them “overcome the trauma, to refind their lives.” His private meeting with victims, and commitment to justice on their behalf, impressed the British public, disproving any notion he was out to dodge or minimize the gravity of the issue.

He then did what every Pope is called to do: he bore witness to Jesus Christ. He did so in the heart of secular Europe, with diplomatic aplomb and mutual respect.

He praised Britain’s many social achievements, but defended the Church’s liberty and faith in the public square. He pushed back against a rabid, unhealthy secularism. He pointed out that a secular society is only as strong as the beliefs that undergird it — and reminded the British of their Christian history, and why it has given them so much to be thankful for.

He bucked up the spirits and convictions of the British bishops and thus gave hope to all British Catholics. He called Great Britain back to its religious heritage, proposing its citizens draw on it again, to heal contemporary ills.

He met with interfaith groups, and gave new life to the Church’s ecumenical mission, but also paid tribute to the unique virtues of Catholicism, honoring two of its greatest sons, Thomas More and John Henry Newman.

And he did something else, not often mentioned: he conveyed a sense of Christianity’s overwhelming beauty. “The most positive effect of the Pope’s visit was one that even the BBC could not prevent - and that was the public display of Roman Catholic ritual at its most gorgeous and replete,” wrote British philosopher Roger Scruton perceptively.

For many television viewers the Mass at Westminster Cathedral was their first experience of sacramental religion. The mystical identity between the ordinary worshiper and the crucified Christ is something that can be enacted, but never explained.

It is enacted in the Mass, and as Cardinal Newman recognized, it is the felt reality of Christ’s presence that is the true gift of Christianity to its followers. . . . [That is why for Vatican-II misinterpreters to see the Mass as nothing more than a communal feast and social gathering, rather than a solemn but joyous recreation of Christ's ultimate sacrifice, is so objectionable and downright un-Christian!]

For many Englishmen, I suspect, the Pope’s Westminster Mass was the first inkling of what Christianity really means.

As these transcendent events were taking place, the British public got an opportunity to contrast — up close and first-hand — the beautiful message of Benedict with the ugliness of his unbridled critics. What they heard from the latter must have sounded surreal, given the gentle witness of the actual man.

“Joseph Ratzinger is an enemy of humanity,” declared scientist Richard Dawkins absurdly. Philosopher A.C. Grayling called Catholicism a “criminal conspiracy” under Benedict.

“In all my years as a campaigner,” said secular activist Claire Rayner, “I have never felt such animus against any individual as I do against this creature. His views are so disgusting, so repellent and so hugely damaging to the rest of us, that the only thing to do is to get rid of him.”

This is the face of modern atheism. Or, at least, much of it. Columnists Padraig Reidy and Simon Heffer wanted no part of this embarrassing intolerance, and rebuked their fellow atheists.

The tone of these critics, said Reidy, is like that of “Ian Paisley’s rabidly anti-papist Free Presbyterian church, not of rational secular debate.”

Heffer wrote how “dismayed” he was by “the aggression and militancy” of the anti-papal atheists, and said their antics “threatened to compromise our reputation as a civilized and hospitable country.”

But it would be that very civilized tradition that would uphold British honor in the end, allowing the public to hear Benedict’s elegant voice. The Pope reciprocated, and didn’t miss his chance.

“Although he had come with a fierce message about the vital importance of the place of faith in public life and education,” wrote Austen Ivereigh, “it had been framed, throughout, in terms and language and symbols which pointed to the value of dialogue and respect. It is this, perhaps above all, which floored his critics. The Pope’s was a message which all could instantly recognize as the true humanism.”

Ivereigh’s views were echoed by strikingly favorable editorials in the secular British press. “Pope Gives Britain a Lesson in Candor,” hailed the Daily Mail. “The Pope Puts Religion Back in the Spotlight,” affirmed the Daily Telegraph.

If there is one man in Britain who deserves credit for bringing all this to fruition, it is Chris Patten, the official appointed by the government to help oversee the papal visit.

Lord Patten is a rather unlikely hero. A “progressive” Catholic, his faith has often been described as tepid and fashionable, very much like that of Tony Blair’s. In the days leading up to the papal visit, Patten was widely mocked, by both Left and Right, as a hapless figurehead, who was obviously overseeing an impending disaster.

But it was Patten, for all his imperfections, who never lost faith in Benedict, and in his ability to inspire a secular audience. In a combative interview with the BBC, Patten described Benedict as “the greatest intellectual to be Pope since Innocent III,” a “world class theologian,” who had a “really important message about the Christian roots of civilization in this country, and in Europe, and the way in which we can become more self-confident in asserting those Christian traditions.”

Nobody can argue, said Patten, “that Pope Benedict doesn’t have very thoughtful and intelligent ideas to offer.” Most of those who know Benedict, “regard him as a very sympathetic figure.” He noted that his previous visits “have all confounded the critics who existed before, because of the way he’s dealt with the public, not just the Catholics, but others as well.”

Asked if he was worried about protests, he said, “No, not at all,” and predicted the visit would be a “huge success.” He had every right to celebrate, therefore, when his prediction proved true.

[As grateful as we all are to Lord Patten for the yeoman's job he did, it's too much to credit him with the lion's share 'for bringing all this to fruition'. Bishops of England and Scotland, even those who have openly defied Benedict XVI on Summorum Pontificum (notably the bishops of Edinburgh and Glasgow), closed ranks and publicly stood solidly behind the Pope. And what of all the priests who organized their parishes to take part in the visit in every way they could? And most of all, the Catholics of the United Kingdom who showed the Pope affection and respect even if they may disagree with what the Church teaches on life and death issues.

Benedict XVI, we always knew, would play his part to perfection as he always has. What we did not know was what effect all the anti-Church media hype would have on the participation of the British faithful. And now we know that their good sense and what I call the impulse of faith withstood and rejected all that hype, Deo gratias and God bless them.]

Perhaps the most revealing comment about the papal visit, came from a source outside Britain. “What has made this trip such a palpable success?” asked the Italian daily Il Tempo. “Above all, because we’re not talking about an ‘idea,’ but rather a ‘presence.’ The Pope is a real presence, not a clerical idea, of what religion is all about.” [Sorry I missed that editorial I must look it up!]

The journey also affected Benedict. Upon his return to Rome, he affirmed that Christianity was still “strong and active” in Britain, despite many challenges, and shared his “profound conviction” that “the ancient nations of Europe have a Christian soul.”

Benedict’s stay, concluded Lord Patten, “was in the most profound sense a visit to remember. . . . Its lessons and messages will reverberate down the years.”

William Doino Jr. is a contributor to Inside the Vatican magazine, among many other publications, and writes often about religion, history and politics. His 80,000-word annotated bibliography on Pius XII appears in The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lexington Books, 2004).


The Archdiocese of Barcelona says some 2000 journalists have already applied to be accredited to cover the Pope's visit there on Nov. 7. My only question at this point - though I would love to be proven wrong - is how much of a pre-visit negative hype will the Spanish media give him? Barcelona is not only Spain's most sophisticated city but also its most secular and outspokenly ultra-liberal.

Pope's interview book
comes out on Nov. 24
Translated from the 10/8/10 issue of




Seewald interviews the Pope in Castel Gandolfo (taken 7/21). From the front page of tomorrow's OR, from a bad PDF image. Surprisingly, the picture was not posted as a regular jpg in the summary webpage.

At the Herder presentation in Frankfurt - both the dummies for LICHT DER WELT and GESU DI NAZARETH-2 on display. I am unable to bring out the book titles clearer in this photo enlarged from OR online.

There is great anticipation for Benedict XVI's interview book with Peter Seewald which will be published in German on November 24. Its full title is LICHT DER WELT: Der Papst, die Kirche und die Zeichen der Zeit (Light of the world: The Pope, the Church and signs of the times).

This was announced today at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the presence of Seewald who previously published two interview books with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: Salz der Erde: Christentum und katholische Kirche an der Jahrtausendwende, 1996 (Salt of the earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the turn of the millennium), and Gott und die Welt: Glauben und Leben in unserer Zeit, 2201 (God and the world: Faith and life in our time).

"I am still overwhelmed by the kindness and availability of the Pope", said Seewald, saying that like the first two times, before he became Pope, Benedict XVI did not shy away from any question.

"I believe", Seewald said, "that everyone will be surprised to find the Pope so accessible and open".

Seewald met newsmen at a forum hour arranged by his German publisher Herder and Libreria Editrice Vatican (LEV), the Vatican publishing house, to present the interview book and Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH-Vol. 2.

Don Giuseppe Costa, director of LEV, said that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's writings are in great editorial demand around the world.

"There is an eagerness among the faithful for the messages of the Holy Father, and therefore, an interest by publishers worldwide to meet the demand". Fr. Costa said.

One consequence is the growing partnership between LEV and Herder. "We both share the historic responsibility of translating into products for the book market the words and writings of a Pope who employs language that is easy and immediate, synthesizing and clear".

On the Pope's decision to grant an interview to Seewald, Fr. Costa said "The simple fact that he agreed to do it means he appreciates the use of books as a communications tool".

He says the book will certainly stimulate new contemporary reflection on the Church.

Before having seen the text, 12 international publishing houses have already acquired rights to publish the book. including Ignatius Press for the United States and Bayard in France, which were represented at the session by Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio of Ignatius and Frederic Boyer of Bayard.

As for JESUS of NAZARETH, the first volume was a worldwide best-seller, with at least 3 million copies sold in 30 languages. A similar success is expected for Volume 2 to be published next spring.

On July 11, 2007, Benedict XVI said, addressing a diocesan convention at the Lateran Basilica: "For Christian education and formation, prayer and our personal friendship with Jesus are decisive: Only he who knows and loves Jesus can introduce others to a vital relationship with him. Urged by this need, I thought it would be useful to write a book that will help to know Jesus".


Unfortunately, the article does not say when the first translation of the Seewald book may be expected, presumably in Italian, as it will be published directly by LEV.



The centerpiece of the LEV booth in Frankfurt: Vol. 1 of Joseph Ratzinger's OPERA OMNIA (Collected Works) on the liturgy, which has just come out in Italian. Five books in the 16-volume series have already been published in German. [Thanks to Gloria for this photo.]

Benedict XVI:
Pilgrim, Pastor, Prophet
By Kathleen Naab



WASHINGTON, D.C., OCT. 6, 2010 (Zenit.org).- When one opens Benedict XVI: Essays and Reflections on His Papacy, two elements immediately jump out.

First, there's a wide variety of people who offered personal or scholarly reflections on this Pope: His own secretary of state provided the first introduction, but King Abdullah of Jordan and President Shimon Peres of Israel penned the following pages.

And the second eye-catcher? The pictures. Page after page of glossy prints reflect Benedict XVI in countless settings: smiling, scholarly, prayerful. Surrounded by his brother priests, or flanked by leaders of other creeds in their religious garb. Embraced by children and world leaders alike.

According to the editor of the work, this 224-page volume is a recording of some of the most extraordinary accomplishments of just five years -- spanning from 2005, when the Holy Father was elected, to this year.

ZENIT spoke with Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, about the book and the Pope it portrays.

What is the aim of a book such as this?
The book records the extraordinary accomplishments of the first five years of Pope Benedict's reign. These early years have been full of inspired teachings on faith, hope, and love and on key events including war in the Middle East, environmental challenges, and the explosion of technology in the new millennium.

There have been moments of triumph, such as his well received visit to the United States; moments of tension, such as his visit to Regensburg, in Bavaria, where he once taught; poignant moments such as his visit to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz; and moments of pain, such as his meetings with persons who have suffered from sexual abuse by clergy.

How did you decide what to focus on in the pontificate?
We identified key themes of the papacy, and the photos, essays and reflections combine to illuminate issues and teachings under each theme.

One that has been prominent these past five years is the desire to achieve unity, which stands out in several ways. The Pope is reaching especially to Orthodox Christians so that the Eastern and Western “lungs” of Christianity can breathe together again. He has met with the archbishop of Canterbury and the patriarch of Constantinople, for example. He has invited the followers of the schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to return to the Catholic Church and agreed to welcome groups of Anglicans seeking corporate reunion with Rome.

Another theme is the relevance of faith to contemporary issues, including war -- he thinks the answer to peace lies in religion, especially in the Middle East. He has addressed environmental issues -- he’s called the Green Pope. When he met with American young people at Dunwoodie Seminary in Yonkers, New York, he told them: “The earth itself groans under the weight of consumerist greed and irresponsible exploitation.” He recognizes the growth in technology -- YouTube was invented in 2005, the year he was elected. Four years later he was on it. In Church time, that’s nanoseconds. He is not afraid of technology.

He has shown his concern for the Middle East by personal trips to Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Turkey. His visit to the Holy Land was eight days long. He sends a message of reaching out to others with his trips to Muslim nations and their shrines -- he prayed shoeless beside his Muslim hosts at the Dome of the Rock in Turkey -- he prayed at Jerusalem’s Western Wall -- and honored the memory of Jews at Vad Yashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial.

His three encyclicals are telling.
The first, "God is Love," was a very human expression of what God’s love means. He said he was speaking of “the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.”

His second, "On Christian Hope," spoke to a troubled society. “No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering,” he said, but added that with Jesus “there is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an 'undoing' of past suffering, a reparation that sets things right.”

His third, "Charity in Truth," was a remarkable piece which showed the Church’s relevance to the environment, the economy and other 21st century problems.

The book presents the Pope in three facets: pilgrim, pastor and prophet. Explain the choice of these divisions and the reasoning behind them.
These three facets are the essence of the Holy Father's life and work. He is a pilgrim who brings the Good News of Christ to the world through his travels and through his speeches, letters and prayers. He often travels as a pilgrim in the literal sense, visiting sacred shrines and holy places.

The section on Benedict as pilgrim covers his support of Africa, China, Europe and the American continental mission; ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue; relations with Jews and Muslims; and papal travels such as the 2008 visit to the U.S.

He is a pastor to the world's 1 billion plus Catholics and to other people as well, teaching, guiding and bringing hope and comfort with a compassionate pastoral heart. His role as pastor includes his response to the sexual abuse crisis; encyclicals on hope and love; views on Catholic education and the role of the family; support of young people; liturgical reform and participation in the Eucharist; support of the priesthood, religious life, and vocations; and devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the saints.

He is a prophet whose voice illuminates Scripture and Church tradition and brings truth to bear on a range of current issues, including Catholic social teaching and the encyclical on social charity; views on faith and politics, human rights, justice, war and peace, bioethics, the environment, and immigration, and his use of social media.

Just browsing through the beautiful pictures in this book gives an immediate insight into the "humanity" of this Pope. Whether patting the head of a St. Bernard or blowing out the candle on his birthday cake, the Holy Father is seen to be just like any of us. Is the "humanity" of a Pope difficult to convey?
It can be difficult because the Pope is such a revered figure, and a world leader. In the case of Pope Benedict, before he became Pope, he spent the previous 25 years of his career as the guardian of the Church’s deposit of faith. He gained notoriety in that job for reining in theologians who pushed the envelope too far.

So his warm, pastoral side may have come as a surprise to many who thought of him as a brilliant scholar and theologian and "watchdog" of the Church.

After his election papal observers began to see another side: the compassionate father, "Il Papa," as the Italians call the Pope affectionately, and they were pleasantly surprised. They saw him as the pastor who could hold a woman’s hand amid the rubble of the earthquake-stricken town of L’Aquila in Italy.

People thought of Benedict as a teacher in the stratosphere. They discovered that, like the best teachers, he is down to earth. His writings are accessible. His visit to the United States turned into a love fest when warm crowds greeted him at assemblies and in the streets of Washington and New York. The Pope and the people responded to one another. He may be an introvert but people connect with him.

The extraordinary photos give you a glimpse of the man at work, at prayer and at leisure. You see him pastorally interacting with children -- very tender pictures; you see him pensively and intently at prayer, both in his private chapel and alone in a garden. You see him at play -- one I like shows him with St. Bernard dogs. This is a man who appreciates animals. Others show him tenderly touching or holding a child -- he’s grandpa here. The book shows he’s quite human, from his laughter while interacting with young children to his broken wrist on vacation.

As editor, do you have a favorite reflection and/or a favorite photo?
Some of the brief anecdotes make me laugh. I like one about his being stopped when he was a cardinal by tourists who wanted him to take their picture in St. Peter’s Square. Do they know their photographer became Pope? I enjoyed the essay by Mar Muñoz Visoso of our staff about the Pope as a pianist and how he relaxes with Mozart. I love the photo of the Pope with the China Philharmonic Orchestra and Shanghai Opera House Chorus. The idea of a Chinese symphony playing for the Pope at the Vatican is amazing, given the late 20th century history of the Church in China.

by Cindy Wooden: Catholic News Service - October 7th

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- "Light of the World," a book-length interview with Pope Benedict XVI will be released Nov. 23 in the world's major languages, including English, the head of the Vatican publishing house said.

Addressing journalists Oct. 7 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Salesian Father Giuseppe Costa, the director of the Vatican publishing house, said the text of the book based on interviews conducted in July by the journalist Peter Seewald had already been consigned to 12 publishing houses from around the world.

In the United States, the book will be published by Ignatius Press, which also published the two book-length interviews Seewald conducted with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became pope.

The Vatican publishing house, LEV, said it expected to sign publishing agreements with other companies before the Frankfurt fair ended Oct. 11.

The book is based on conversations Seewald and the pope had the week of July 26-31 at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome. The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said the conversation covered a variety of topics, such as Seewald's earlier book-interviews, "Salt of the Earth" (1996) and "God and the World" (2002).

During the news conference, LEV also announced that it had already signed contracts with 24 publishing houses to print and distribute the second volume of Pope Benedict's work on the life of Jesus.

"Jesus of Nazareth: From the Entrance in Jerusalem to the Resurrection" is scheduled to be released in 2011.

Thirty-two different editions of the first volume, which covered Jesus' life from his baptism to the transfiguration, were published and almost 3 million copies were sold, LEV said in a press communique.

www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1004103.htm


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

I do not know what source the CNS reporter used, but two posts above, I posted a translation of the article coming out in the OR tomorrow, and the publication date is clearly Nov. 24. Also, the OR story does not say that any edition other than the original German will be out on Nov. 24. (I WISH!) I have checked the LEV webpages if they have posted a new press release but the last one is still the pre-Frankfurt story they had in September.

TERESA

Flag signed by trapped miners presented
to the Pope by Chilean journalist


VATICAN CITY, OCT. 7, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The group of 33 Chilean miners trapped 700 meters (2,300 feet) below ground has made its presence felt in the Vatican, in a flag they all signed that was presented today to Benedict XVI.

The miners have been underground since a cave-in Aug. 5. There is hope that the first drill to reach their refuge will break through on Saturday, and the process of hauling the miners up will begin soon thereafter.

But today, the miners were in the minds of representatives of the Catholic press who met with the Pontiff to conclude a four-day meeting sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

The 230 journalists came from 85 nations, including Chile. Jaime Coiro, director of communications for the Episcopal Conference of Chile, was part of the Chilean delegation.

At the end of the audience, Coiro was able to present the Pope with the flag.

His twitter feed recounted some of the details:

"I gave the flag to the Pope. He was very interested. He became very happy at seeing the miners' signatures.

"The Holy Father asked me if they would be rescued on Saturday. I told him that the rescue is expected in the next few days.

"He took the flag and together with me, unfolded it, looking over the signatures. He told me that he continues to pray."

The flag came to be signed by the miners because of the initiative of the wife of one of them, Claudio Yáñez. The woman asked her husband to get the miners to sign a flag so that she could take it to a school.

Yáñez obliged, asking his companions in the mine to sign the flag and adding his own message: "The 33 of us are alive in this refuge" and a dedication to the school.

However, to ensure that the flag would make it to its destination, a second flag was similarly signed. This second flag was given to the director of communications of the Diocese of Copiapo, to be used as an offering in a national meeting of Chilean journalists last week in Santiago.

At that gathering, the journalists decided to send the flag to Rome as a token of gratitude to the local Churches of the world that have shown solidarity with the plight of the miners, and prayed for them.

"But the opportunity to give [the flag] to the Pope was a true surprise," Coiro explained, "because God speaks through these mysteries."

He noted that he was part of the group that was able to greet the Pope personally today because he had replaced someone from the Latin American bishops' council (CELAM) who was unable to attend.

Benedict XVI picks an Italian
to head the Congregation for the Clergy
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from

Oct. 8, 2010




Benedict XVI has named a bishop from Genoa as his new minister for all the priests of the world: Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, who was until yesterday secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy of which he is now Prefect, succeeding Cardinal Claudio Hummes of Brazil, who has retired one year after reaching age 75.

Piacenza's nomination is crucial for the Pontificate of Benedict XVI who has rewarded one of his most faithful collaborators, the 'spark plug' of the recent Year for Priests which concluded last June.

In recent months, because of all the media scandal over sex abuses against minors, Catholic priests have been in the eye of a cyclone, and the new Prefect will be fully immersed in a reform of the clergy strongly desired by the Pope.

Born in Genoa on Sept. 15, 1944, and ordained in December 1969, Piacenza was a parish vicar and then confessor of the major seminary and chaplain of the University in Genoa. He then became the archbishop's delegate to the university, professor of canon llaw at the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, a judge of the diocesan and regional ecclesiastic tribunal of Liguria, professor of contemporary culture and the history of atheism at the Ligurian Superior Instutte of Religious Sciences.

He first began working at the Congregation for the Clergy in 1990, where he became a department head in 1997 then under-secretary in 2000.

In Nov. 2003, John Paul II named him bishop in appointg him to head the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church. Piacenza was ordained a bishop by the then Archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

In 2007, Benedict XVI asked him to return to the Congregation for the Clergy as the number-2 man to the new Prefect at the time, Cardinal Claudio Hummes.

The Pope's new 'minister for the clergy' is an affable and frank man, a tireless worker (in the past few years, waiting time for responses from the dicastery has been drastically reduced). one who does not frequent social salons, rarely gives interviews, and never misses joining a daily rosary meeting.

In the past few years, he has increasingly become valuable for his superiors. Papa Ratzinger, who has known him for some time and has great esteem for him, has therefore named him Prefect - it is rare that s dicastery secretary then goes on to become its head.

After yesterday's announcement, Mons. Piacenza automatically becomes in line for a cardinal's hat, because he heads a very important dicastery that has always been led by a cardinal.

Before the end of October, Benedict XVI is expected to announce a consistory to name new cardinals on the Feast of Christ the King in November. Thus, Genoa, which alrady has a cardinal arhbishop, will be getting a second cardinal.




Pope names African archbishop
the new head of Cor Unum




Mons. Sarah with the Pope at a Missionary Children's event last year, when it was speculated that he would be named President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. But the African who was named to that post was Cardinal Turkson of Ghana.

Vatican City, Oct 7, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI has appointed 65-year-old Archbishop Robert Sarah as the new president of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum." He steps into the shoes of the now retired Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes in leading the Holy See's department for charity and relief.

Promoted from being secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Archbishop Sarah will bring nearly a decade of experience in the Vatican to the mission of "Cor Unum"

The objectives of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum" are to provide assistance in the Pope's name for humanitarian relief or to promote projects and initiatives for integral human development. The council also encourages and coordinates the initiatives of Catholic organizations worldwide.

Archbishop Sarah was ordained in 1969 in Conakry, Guinea. After his ordination, he worked as the rector of a minor seminary and as a parish priest before his election to the archbishopric of Conakry at just 34 years old. At the time he was the youngest bishop in the world.

Almost exactly nine years ago, he was appointed secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, where he worked under Cardinal Cresencio Sepe until 2005, then under the present Prefect, Cardinal Ivan Dias.

Sarah's nomination came as Pope Benedict accepted the resignation of now emeritus President, Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes of Germany, who reached the Curial retirement age of 75 last year and had served as Cor Unum head for the last 15 years.

Friday, Oct. 8, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. GIOVANNI LEONARDI (Italy, 1541-1609), Priest and Founder of the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God
He was a pharmacist in the Tuscan city-state of Lucca when working with victims of a plague led him to become a priest. He was ordained in 1572 at the peak of the Counter-Reformation and after the Council of Trent. He founded a Confraternity for Christian Doctrine to teach correct doctrine to the young, and published a compendium of Christian doctrine which was widely used in Italy till the 19th century. He also propagated devotion to the Eucharist, to Eucharistic Adoration and to the Blessed Virgin. He and other priests who were attracted to his work started thinking of a new congregation for diocesan priests. Their ideas were rejected by Lucca authorities who did not favor the new Protestantism but also thought Leonardi and company were against reforming the Church. Eventually exiled from Lucca, he ended up in Rome where he became friends with the future St. Philip Neri. In 1583, he founded the order of Clerks Regular of teh Mother of God, which was approved by Pope Clement VIII in 1595, who also appointed him to reform the Benedictine monks in two Italian monasteries. He died in Rome during an influenza epidemic when he was helping take care of the sick. He was canonized in 1938.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/100810.shtml


OR today.

The Holy Father reiterates the irrenunciable mission of Catholic journalists in the digital age:
'Truth and reality at the heart of the communications challenge'
Other papal stories: The Pope receives the new ambassador from Chile; and the announcement that his interview-book with Peter Seewald will be out on November 24 (photo above shows them on 7/21 during the weeklong interview series in Castel Gandolfo). Page 1 international news: A new UN report identifies 22 countries as having chronic food shortage in the past decade.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- President Nicolas Sarkozy of France

- Seven Brazilian bishops from Brazil's North-Northeast Sector I) on ad limina visit

- Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (weekly meeting)


A news briefing was held at the Vatican today preparatory to the Special Assembly for the Middle East
of the Bishops' Synod, which begins on Sunday, Oct. 10, with Mass at St. Peter's Basilica.

Waiting to know what’s in
the next Pope interview book
by JOSIE COX
Faith World

Oct 8, 2010 06:59 EDT


What’s a journalist supposed to do with a successful author who declares that his next book about Pope Benedict will “go down in history” — but refuses to give any details of what’s in it? [Did she really think Seewald needed to 'pre-sell' his book by citing any specifics from it?]

When he says it will “shed new light” on the sexual abuse rocking the Roman Catholic Church — but says none of that will illuminate issues that abuse victims want to know about? [?????]

When the most he will say about the revelations in his sure-fire bestseller is that it will reveal “the secret behind the famous episcopal miter”?

That was the situation I faced on Thursday after I interviewed Peter Seewald at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The amiable Munich-based journalist has an inside track to one of the most prominent personalities in the world, Pope Benedict.

He has already produced two long interview books with him, back when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s top doctrinal official.

Seewald got to sit down with the Pope for an hour a day for a whole week recently at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence. The text of their long talk will come out in book form under the title “Licht der Welt” (Light of the World).

Judging from his two earlier books — “Salt of the Earth” (1996) and “God and the World” (2000) — Seewald probably has some interesting insights into the Pope’s thinking in the new book. He even gave some tantalizing hints about the contents when I asked about the clerical sex abuse scandals.

But he kept his cards so close to his chest that it was hard to imagine what to expect when the book, which is being written in German, comes out in 10 languages on Nov. 24. [Coming out simultaneously in 10 languages was not in the OR story about this, only that contracts had been signed for piblication rights by ten foreign publishers. Could the OR reporter have gotten it wrong?]

“The Pope seemed very understanding of the criticism that he did too little too late about the sex scandals, but the book certainly sheds new light on the whole issue and debate,” Seewald said during a pleasant chat over a cup of coffee.

But pressed for specifics, he remarked: “For victims of the sex scandals in the Church, I do not think this book will shed light on many issues, and may be consoling to an extent. Of course, it won’t undo things that have been done and it’s no way of excusing what has happened.”

See what I mean?

He then went on to say: “I believe many people will be shocked at the way Benedict XVI is portrayed in the book. Many people may not like it and many people may not believe it.”

Shocked? Hmmm … It’s hard to imagine that Seewald — who was raised a Catholic, turned from the Church to Marxism at 18 but returned to the faith under the influence of the long interview with Ratzinger that became their first book — will do a hatchet job on the Pontiff. Now that would shock people — especially journalists who would wonder why he should “burn his source” when things seem to be going so well.

What little he decided to divulge on this point — “He’s not a lone ruler and has not got the hard shell many people think he does. He’s a servant, not necessarily a knight or a ruler” — sounds like what we hear from everyone else who gets to see the Pontiff in person.

He’s very kind and considerate, at ease even during an interview, Seewald said — not at all the Panzerkardinal or “God’s Rottweiler” that the tabloid press made him out to be when he was elected Pope five years ago. [DUH! Sewald has always known that!]

Pssst! – journalists got that message already, quite a while ago. Definitely not a shocker.

So I asked about Seewald’s impressions of the now 83-year-old Ratzinger himself, especially whether he’d changed since the last time he sat down for a Q&A with him a decade ago.

“I don’t actually believe he has changed that much,” he said. “He still has so much energy and life. He is so disciplined. His secret recipe for this, he says, is to live each day only with the pressures of that day and not worrying about tomorrow or yesterday.”

OK, that’s interesting. Says a bit about the man himself. But we still don’t know much about what’s in the book. [DUH! She should have followed that line of questioning - ask him more about the Pope than about the book! - then she might have had a real news story, not just this whiny piece!]

It’s hard to imagine there won’t be a lot in Light of the World to interest readers who want to know more about the liife and thoughts of Joseph Ratzinger. The Frankfurt Book Fair just wasn’t the place to go find out what it will be.

BTW the Munich diocese radio station, Münchner Kirchenradio, didn’t have much luck eithe in their telephone interview with Seewald (in German).