NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

It is finally out. Read, learn and rejoice...

www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est...
--------------------------------------------------------------
Some writers today have said the encyclical is 48 pages long, another said 70, but the 8-1/2x11 printouts of the English text and the Latin text, as published online by the Vatican, are only 24 pages (of which the last 2 are bibliography references); the German version has 27 pages (including 2 of bibliography). It may be best to describe it as having 42 numbered subdivisions, each one having 1-3 paragraphs, and ending with a short prayer to the Virgin Mary.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/01/2006 4.34]

A RATHER NICE REVIEW OF THE ENCYCLICAL

From the Sydney Morning Herald


Love is … a letter from Pope Benedict

By Linda Morris Religious Affairs Writer
January 26, 2006

THE Pope has tried to solve an age-old question that has troubled philosophers, playwrights and poets: what is the meaning of love? His answer - erotic desire without sacrifice and spiritual devotion cannot be true love.

Benedict XVI's long-awaited first encyclical is entitled Deus Caritas Est, or God is Love, and suggests a softer, gentler papacy than critics might have predicted from the former disciplinarian.

In his 70-page letter, the Pope distinguishes between unselfish love and sexual desire and explains that the church should be an instrument of love through charity. Without self-sacrifice, the Pope says, desire debases the body and reduces it to that of a commodity, "a mere thing to be bought and sold".

At its purest, love is unconditional and self-giving. It is an exclusive life-long union founded on the Christian faith and love of God.

The Pope does admit that love is "ecstasy" but not in "the sense of a moment of intoxication". Rather it is a journey, "an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God".

"No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved; it becomes renunciation and it is ready and even willing to sacrifice."

The leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics said he chose to dedicate his first encyclical to love because the word had become "wasted" and "abused" in modern times.

The second part of the encyclical refers to the church's fulfilment of the biblical commandment "love thy neighbour".

The Pope explains charity is not just about doing good works, but bringing a human sensitivity and love to the act of generosity.

He says love should not be a means to political change, or used in the service of "world stratagems" or for proselytising. "Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends," he says.

The topic underlines the Pope's belief that the way to tackle Europe's crisis of faith is to shape culture and its underlying philosophies.

Absent from the encyclical, which the Vatican released overnight, are all references to church dogma or law as might be expected from the one-time doctrinal guardian of the faith.

Instead, said the Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Julian Porteous, the letter was a lyrical reflection on the nature of love founded on Christian faith. "In this encyclical [the Pope] wants to establish a platform for his future teaching and pontificate," he said.

"What has emerged is a document that is positive, uplifting and inspiring in a number of respects, and I think it reflects his own spirit and a warmth and sensitivity to people. His reflections on love are very much from his heart and his own sense of what it means to be a Christian. He sees the church as an instrument of love."

The Pope's predecessor wrote 14 encyclicals during his near 27-year reign, his first being on redemption. Benedict has said he does not expect to be as prolific.

DEUS CARITAS EST: POWERFUL TEXT ON CORE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH

VATICAN CITY, JAN 25, 2006 (VIS) - At midday today in the Holy See Press Office, the presentation took place of Benedict XVI's first Encyclical "Deus caritas est." Participating in the press conference were Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Archbishop William Joseph Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum."

In his remarks, Cardinal Martino made reference to that part of the Encyclical in which the Pope considers the relationship between justice and charity, and indicates certain points concerning the field of jurisdiction of the Church and her social doctrine, and the jurisdiction of the State, in achieving a just social order.

After highlighting how the building of social and State order is not immediately incumbent upon the Church but rather upon the political sphere, the Pope points out that "the Church is duty-bound to offer, through the purification of reason and through ethical formation, her own specific contribution towards understanding the requirements of justice and achieving them politically."

The Holy Father, Cardinal Martino went on, "affirms that, in building a just social order, the duty of the Church with her social doctrine is that of reawakening spiritual and moral forces." In this context, he continued, "lay people, as citizens of the State, are called to participate directly in public life." Their mission "is to mould social life appropriately, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens, according to their respective areas of jurisdiction, each under their own responsibility."

"The presence of lay people in the social field," the cardinal continued, "is here conceived in terms of service, a sign and expression of charity which is made manifest in family, cultural, working, economic and political life."

For his part, Archbishop Levada affirmed that the Encyclical, is "a powerful text on the 'nucleus of Christian faith,' understood as the Christian image of God and the image of man that derives from it. A powerful text that seeks to counter the erroneous use of the name of God, and the ambiguity concerning the word 'love' that is so evident in the world today."

"In order to explain the novelty of Christian love, the Holy Father seeks first to illustrate the difference and unity between two concepts inherent to the phenomenon of love from the times of the ancient Greeks: 'eros' and 'agape'." These two concepts "do not oppose one another, but come harmoniously together to offer a realistic concept of human love, a love that involves the entirety - body and soul - of the human being. 'Agape' prevents 'eros' from abandoning itself to instinct, while 'eros' offers 'agape' the fundamental and vital relationships of human existence."

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith then went on to point out how "in the indissoluble marriage between man and woman this human love takes a form that is rooted in creation itself."

"Love for others, rooted in the love of God, is the duty, not only of each individual faithful, but also - and here we come to the second part of the Encyclical - of the entire community of believers, in other words the Church. From the historical development of the ecclesial aspect of love, which dates back to the very origins of the Church, we may draw two conclusions: firstly that the service of charity is part of the essence of the Church, secondly that no one must lack what they need, either within or outside the Church."

In his Encyclical the Pope, Archbishop Levada added, "offers some illuminating comments on certain aspects of the Church's service of charity - 'diakonia' - in modern times. He responds to the objection according to which charity towards the poor is an obstacle to the fair distribution of the wealth of the earth to all mankind."

At the same time the Pope "praises new forms of fruitful collaboration between State and Church bodies, making reference to the phenomenon of voluntary work."

In summing up the Encyclical, Archbishop Levada pointed out how it "offers us a vision of love for others, and of the ecclesial duty to practice charity, as being a way to implement the commandment of love, one that finds its roots in the essence of God Himself, Who is Love." The document, he concluded, "invites the Church to a renewed commitment to the service of charity ('diakonia') as an essential part of her existence and her mission."

The last to speak was Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, who highlighted how "today's text is the first ever Encyclical on the subject of charity." Perhaps, he suggested, the presentation had also been entrusted to him as president of "Cor Unum" because his dicastery "puts into effect the Pope's personal initiatives as a sign of his compassion in the face of certain situations of misery."

"The Church's charity is made up of concrete initiatives," said the archbishop. "It includes political initiatives, such as those for the elimination of debt of the poorest countries. We wish to promote an awareness of justice in society." However, he went on, "Pope Benedict XVI [also] wished to illuminate charitable commitment with a theological foundation. ... He is convinced that faith has consequences on the individual who acts, and therefore on the manner and intensity of his acts of charity."

"The social doctrine of the Church and the theology of charity are, without doubt, inter-linked," the prelate said, "but they are not exactly the same. Indeed, the former expresses ethical principles associated with the search for the common good and moves, therefore, more at a political and community level. On the other hand, caring - both individually and together - for the suffering of others does not call for a systematic doctrine. Rather, it arises from the word of faith."

"In our society there exists, fortunately, a widespread feeling of philanthropy, ... but this can give the faithful the idea that charity is not an essential part of the ecclesial mission. Without a solid theological foundation, the great ecclesial agencies could become ... disassociated from the Church, [and] ... prefer to identify themselves as non-governmental organizations. In such cases, their 'philosophy' and their projects would be indistinguishable from the Red Cross and the U.N. agencies. This, however, contrasts with the two-thousand-year history of the Church, and does not take into account the intimate rapport between ecclesial action on behalf of man and credibility in the announcement of the Gospel."

"We must go further," Archbishop Cordes concluded, "the present sensibility of so many people, especially the young, also contains a 'kairos apostolico.' This opens notable pastoral prospects. There are innumerable volunteers, and many of them discover the love of God in the giving of themselves to others with disinterested love."
ENC/DEUS CARITAS EST/... VIS 060125 (1150)

212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/dinamiche/a0_en.htm

MORE KUDOS

Papa's encyclical is getting a great reaction from the world press, most publications making similar positive comments. This one goes a bit further.

From Spiegel Online

The Pope's Labor of Love

By Alexander Smoltczyk in Rome

Some had expected a treatise on the dangers of moral relativism. Others thought the new pontiff's first encyclical would focus on the pitfalls of the modern world. But love? Pope Benedict XVI tells all.

Pope Benedict XVI has love on his mind.

It's dozens of pages long, reminiscent of a university thesis and complete with references to Nietzsche and Marx. But the document, clear, easy to understand and powerful, is Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical. It is entitled "Deus Caritas Est" -- God Is Love. "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant," the pope writes. It's the document's only reference to Islamism and terrorism. The rest is about love, love, and more love.

A new pope's first encyclical -- the most important form of papal writing -- is seen as a pontiff's manifesto and indicates the main topics and points he will focus on during his time at the head of the Catholic Church. In 1979, Pope John Paul II's first encyclical -- called "Redemptor Hominis" -- was a plea for universal human rights and was clearly a message intended for the Soviet Union. From the current pope, however, many had expected a polemic against the "dictatorship of relativism" in the vein of many of his previous speeches.

Instead, Benedict XVI has decided to follow directly in the steps of his predecessor. Until just before his death, John Paul II had been working on an encyclical about Christian love. Benedict XVI's treatise, addressed to "men and women religious and all the lay faithful," completes that project and begins with a reference to love as "one of the most frequently used and misused of words."

The body as a commodity

The pope dedicates much effort to distinguishing "eros," or erotic love, from "agape," which is spiritutual love. "Eros, that love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings" -- is a gift of God. Love, he writes, is the promise of infinity and eternity and cannot be attained "simply by submitting to instinct." The body, of course, cannot be rejected "as pertaining to ... animal nature alone," but for true Eros "purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation." Eros, Benedict continues, "reduced to pure 'sex,' has become a commodity, a mere 'thing' to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity." More 1950s, in other words, and less 1960s.

The German-born pope formerly known as Joseph Ratzinger is as radical as he is thorough. He could have written about the dangers of globalization, about genetic engineering, Darwinism or of course about his "dictatorship of relativism." But this pope cares more about detail than about publicity. He is more concerned with establishing truth than he is about creating spectacles. Benedict XVI would rather write about love.

"Deus Caritas Est." It doesn't get any simpler or more radical than that. In his text, the pope confronts head on Protestant adversity to the body. Eros, the covetous love, and agape, the altruistic love, cannot be separated, he writes. Love does not merely serve reproduction, but rather is "concern and care for the other." At this point in his encyclical, the pope refers to the Old Testament "Song of Songs," perhaps the most sensual sentence in the entire Bible.

But before getting his readers too atwitter, the pope quickly turns it down a notch to make it clear he's only talking about one type of erotic love -- that between a man and his wife in the marriage bed. "From the standpoint of creation," the pope writes, "eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose." A God, a husband and his wife. It may not quite represent the most up-to-date ideas of gender research -- much less the scenes in some seminaries -- but it does have the advantage of dogmatic precision.

On charity and the Church

A meditation on the Gospel of Luke -- the function of charity as a "practical commitment here and now" -- leads to part two of the encyclical: "Love is 'divine' because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a 'we' which transcends our divisions and makes us one."

The function of the Church is charitable activity. Caritas. And Benedict XVI isn't just talking about charitableness in a worldly sense, but rather the institutional expression of God's love for his creation: "Within the community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life." In other words, ministry is the Catholic Church's core competency. "In today's complex situation," the pope writes, "not least because of the growth of a globalized economy, the Church's social doctrine has become a set of fundamental guidelines."

Ratzinger also takes a look at one theme that he developed in his debate with the philosopher Jürgen Habermas: the role of faith in reason. "Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly." The Church, he continues, "cannot and must not take upon itself the political battle." Rather, it must constantly be a reminder to the state of justice -- "both the aim and the intrinsic criterion of all politics."

And in a seeming nod to the neoconservatives, he adds: "We do not need a state which regulates and controls everything, but a state which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need." Even within the Church, the pope assures us, rules are never an end in themselves, rather they must be borne by the spirit of selfless love.

As I'm still at work and have only been able to flit in and out of the forum this past hour, I have not had a chance to rview the Italian and German press for first reactions to the encyclical, but I see that Rocco Palma's Italian connection has already given Whispers in the Loggia a scoop of sorts from ANSA, the Italian news agency:
-------------------------------------------------------------

From ANSA, a translation....

The Swiss theologian [Fr] Hans Kung has applauded the first encyclical of Pope Ratzinger and desires a second encyclical meant to intensify the dialogue with the far-flung and marginalized groups inside the Catholic church. "As Catholics, we are happy that the first encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, isn't a manifesto of cultural pessimism or of restrictive sexual morality towards love, but to the contrary takes on central themes under the profile of theology and anthropology," Kung said in a statement released from Tuebingen.

With a "respectable, solid" style, this document, according to the theologian, one of the most critical against the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, confronts the theme of love that "for Christians must shine through in their witness."

"Papa Ratzinger takes on with his inimicable theological style a richness of themes of Eros and Agape, of love and charity," and scatters "the delusions that they are different." "A good sign," said Kung, hoping that it is "received warmly, with respect."

whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/
--------------------------------------------------------------

Nice of Kueng to be the first major figure to comment on the encyclical - in a prepared statement yet! But to call Papa's prose "respectable, solid"??? Of course, he also later refers to Papa Ratzinger's "inimitable theological style" but I think he means the argumentation, not the prose style....

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/01/2006 3.57]

Thanks to Beatrice in the French section for this article from the French newspaper Le Monde
on the encyclical. Neither the paper nor the writer Henri Tincq has been particularly nice
(an understatement) to Ratzinger/Benedict before this, but who can throw brickbats at love?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Love- the subject of Benedict XVI's first encyclical
By Henri Tincq
January 25, 2006

The first encyclical of a new Pope is always a much-awaited rite.

Benedict XVI has not broken speed records in publishing this document entitled
‘Deus caritas est’ Wednesday, January 25, in Rome, 9 months after his election.

Coming from the former Cardinal Ratzinger, at one time so prolific, this encyclical
surprises by its brevity (45 pages). Instead of a programmatic discourse, as tradition
would have it, Benedict XVI proposes instead a highly philosophical meditation
on the theme of human love.

The modest Benedict has spent the past few days, unveiling himself the subject of
his encyclical and its outlines, to dissipate any surprise effects. He will never
be a Pope of lightning coups like his predecessor John Paul II, who, in Redemptor hominis
(Redeemer of man) – his first encyclical published shortly after his election in 1978 –
caused surprise by placing the Church in the vanguard of the struggle for human rights,
in a world that was still dominated by the threat of communist countries.

Ex-professor Ratzinger has chosen to dialog with contemporary culture, an area in which
he is more at ease.

The theme of love, which he has chosen to be the ‘preface’ to his Pontificate, is not
surprising from the pen of a Christian author, but also very topical.

The term “love” is one of the most ‘worn-out” of words, he says at the outset. “And
the fashion of exalting the body which we are seeing these days is misleading. Eros
debased to mere sex becomes a commodity, a simple thing one can buy and sell. Worse,
man himself becomes merchandise.“ This encyclical is a concerned alarm a
ddressed to the world.

The Pope refutes the teme of two philosophers – Germans like him – who fed modern
anti-Christianity and were at the origins of the crisis of faith: Nietzsche (1844-1900)
who, in “Beyond good and evil” accused Christianity of having poisoned eros; and
Marx (1818-1883) who held the “charity” of the Church historically guilty for
having “deflected the rich from their obligation to justice and leaving their consciences
at peace.”

The Pope denies these firmly, and recalls that the concept of human love developed by
Judaism and Christanity under the term agape represented progress for humanity,
compared to Greek philosophy and its “false divinization” of eros. For him, there
should not be a gap between eros and agape, but continuity, unity
leading to love of God.

One is struck by the multitude of references to the Jewish tradition on this theme,
as if the writer feels that “degradation” of human love is a very important stake for
both monotheisms.

But pursuing the grand tradition which goes from St. Augustine (often cited) to John Paul II,
the Pope sets out above all to show that Christianity is not the enemy of eros,
of carnal love, of desire, of the body: “The Christian faith has always considered man,”
he writes, “as a being in whom spirit and matter interprenetrate, resulting in
the experience of a new nobility. Yes, eros wishes to elevate us in ecstasy to
the divine, to bring us beyond ourselves. But that is precisely why we need a road to
follow, we need renunciation, purification, healing.”

The second part of his refutation: far from supporting the injustices of history,
“charity” – another worn-out word - is the indispensable complement to political
action. The activity of churches, of humanitarian and charitable organizations
is powerfully encouraging. But that should not excuse politicians from their
primary responsibility where social justice is concerned.

“Justice is the intrinsic measure of all politics,” he underscores. And in
the same way that there can not be true love outside the union of eros and agape,
so too politics, ensnared by considerations of power, cannot suffice by itself.

In this sense, the Catholic faithful are called to keep up the charitable tradition of
the Church, which the Pope is fearful may be diluted by large ‘compassionate’ movements
in vogue:
“For the Church, charity is not a kind of social assistance which one can well leave
to others, but something that belongs to its very nature. It is an expression of the Church’s
essence, which it cannot renounce.”

This encyclical of Benedict XVI on love does not resemble the normative documents published
by his predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II, on sex and the morailty of couples.
Not that the Pope is rupturing with them, but he assumes that their teachings are known.
He does not revolutionize anything, but the vocabulary is no longer the same. Resolutely
philosophical and spiritual, this encyclical is on a high level of principles and has depth.


----------------------------------------------------------------

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/01/2006 4.21]

Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006
Love, Vatican Style
Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical is a stark restatement of the essence of Christianity
as selfless love
By JEFF ISRAELY/ROME

The title of Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, "God is Love," might suggest
a religious twist on a late Beatles song, but to those who know the life's work of Professor
Joseph Ratzinger, the 72-page document "Deus Caritas Est" carries the imprint of
an exceptionally clear-minded and utterly convinced Catholic theologian.

As the title of the first comprehensive theological teaching of Benedict's papacy suggests,
there is little grist for those looking for controversy or doctrinal bombshells. Yes,
the Pope confronts modern sexuality, declaring that " 'sex', has become a commodity,"
and even takes a parting slap at Marxism in his defense of a Christian vision of good
works. But the message is ultimately a clear and simple call for Christian love and
charity. Popes typically use their first encyclicals, the most authoritative form of Church
writing, to set the tone for their reign rather than to spark debate or overhaul Catholic
teachings. With this work, released Wednesday by top Vatican officials, the pontiff may
have once and for all moved beyond the caricature painted by his opponents of a cold
and rigid doctrinal enforcer from his quarter-century as John Paul II's chief of orthodoxy.

Citing the First Letter of John as the source for the work's title, Benedict lays out
his simple vision of Christian faith. " 'We have come to believe in God's love':
in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life.
Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but
the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and
a decisive direction."

The pontiff-theologian then dissects the two categories of Christian love: "eros"
(erotic love) and "agape" (spiritual love). Modern society, he argues, has debased eros,
put sex up for sale, and defied the singularity of monogamous man-woman love. "Eros
needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure,
but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence," he writes. He concludes
that eros and agape ultimately share a single destiny. "Love is indeed 'ecstasy', not
in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing
exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through
self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God."

Benedict thus connects his initial reflections on love to the second part of the
document, which focuses on charity. Here he has a message not just for individual
believers, but for the Church as a whole. "As a community, the Church must practice love,"
he concludes. In practical terms, Benedict uses the document to reaffirm that the Church
must not "replace the State," which must be responsible for caring for the needy
and creating a just society. "The Church cannot and must not take upon herself
the political battle to bring about the most just society possible," he writes.
"But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ
aside." He said Catholics doing good works need not proselytize in the process, but
added that "a Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is
better to say nothing and to let love speak alone."

Despite Benedict's references to modern sexual mores, the encyclical does not
single out the issues of birth control, homosexuality, divorce or married priests.
At Wednesday's presentation of the encyclical, veteran Vatican correspondent
Marco Tosatti asked Archbishop William Levada whether a reference to the
Eucharist was a sign that Benedict was reconsidering Church policy that denies
communion to divorced and remarried Catholics. Levada, who has Ratzinger's old job
as the Vatican's top doctrinal official, politely told Tosatti he was reaching.
"I hadn't even considered it before your question," he said. Though he has already
said that he plans to issue far fewer documents than his predecessor, one might
expect a future Benedict encyclical to address emerging questions in the field
of bioethics, a topic he's raised several times in public remarks since his
election last April. The old caricature of the "panzer cardinal" may indeed
be fading, but the Pope's opponents will no doubt have their chances to rejoin
the doctrinal battles anew.

Still, Ratzinger's writings — dating back to his seminal 1968 work "Introduction to
Christianity," in which he confronts many of the same themes addressed in "Deus
Caritas Est" — stand out for their depth of thought and clarity of prose.
He never shies away from confronting the modern challenges to faith head-on,
rendering his work relevant for believer and non-believer alike. An avid Mozart fan,
the new Pope might even be open to the message from the old Beatles' song
"All You Need is Love." He would insist, of course, on ergo to the title:
"All You Need is God."

Well, finally, Father Joseph Fessio has released a statement clarifying what he said in a radio interview earlier this month on the subject of Benedict and Islam.

On 1/22/06, I posted an item from Corriere della Sera, of which I said- "This is the third published statement so far disputing Father Joseph Fessio's report of remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI about Islam, during the reunion of Joseph Ratzinger's Schuelerkreise in Castel Gandolfo last September. The first was Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, who aslo cited a letter written to him by the Jesuit priest Father Christian Troll, who had prepared a paper on Islam for the Castel Gandolfo reunion. He denies that the Pope said, as Fr. Fessio reported, that 'There's no possibility of adapting it [the Koran] or interpreting it.' Now, Muslim scholar Magdi Allam writes in Corriere della Sera today (1/21/06) to dispute the same statement, if the Pope did indeed make it. I do not know why some enterprising journalist does not get Father Fessio on the phone and ask him to straighten out exactly what it was the Pope said, as his version appears to make the Pope's knowledge of Islam "faulty."

Now, we have the clarification:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Castelgandolfo Revisited:
The Jesuits Come to the Pope’s Defense
Fr. Fessio agrees with his fellow Jesuits Troll and Samir.
And he testifies together with them that, for Benedict XVI, Islam is capable of reform
and can be harmonized with modernity. But at a steep price.
by Sandro Magister

ROMA, January 26, 2006 – A few hours after the previous article ['Islam and Democracy- A Secret Meeting at Castelgandolfo, 1/23/06, also posted in this thread] on Benedict XVI and Islam was published online by www.chiesa, the contrasting interpretations over the pope’s thought were smoothed out.

The disagreement hinged upon whether or not Islam can be reformed, and consequently upon the relationship between Islam and modernity.

The American Jesuit Joseph Fessio – who participated, together with other former students of Joseph Ratzinger, in a meeting with the pope for the purpose of studying the concept of God in Islam – had said in a radio interview on January 5 that, at the meeting, the pope had asserted that Islam and modernity cannot be reconciled.

But other participants at the meeting – Jesuit Islamic studies scholar Christian W. Troll, from Germany, and Samir Khalil Samir, an Egyptian – gave a different version of the pope’s thought. According to their testimony, Benedict XVI had judged the reconciliation of Islam and modernity as very difficult, but not impossible.

The pope’s drastic view on the impossibility of reform within Islam – as it was related previously by Fr. Fessio – did not pass by unnoticed in the United States. There were lively discussions on the online forums of “The Asia Times” and “The National Review,” and there were comments from two famous columnists: Daniel Pipes, in the January 17 issue of “The New York Sun,” and Diana West, in the January 20 issue of “The Washington Times.”

Meanwhile, the other version – that of fathers Troll and Samir –received little attention.

But this is the version that more correctly conveyed the pope’s thought, as Fr. Fessio himself now acknowledges.

In a January 20 letter to “The Washington Times,” and in a January 23 message to www.chiesa, Fr. Fessio admits having “misrepresented what the Holy Father actually said.” He acknowledges that “Samir Khalil Samir’s recollection is accurate.” And he explains:

“The most important clarification is that the Holy Father did not say, nor did I, that ‘Islam is incapable of reform.’ [...] I made a serious error in precision when I said that the Koran ‘cannot be adapted or applied’ and that there is ‘no possibility of adapting or interpreting it.’ This is certainly not what the Holy Father said. Of course the Koran can be and has been interpreted and applied. I was making a (too) crude summary of the distinction which the Holy Father did make between the inner dynamism of the Koran as a divine text delivered as such to Mohammed, and that of the Bible which is both the Word of God and the words of men inspired by God, within a community that contains divinely appointed authorized interpreters (the bishops in communion with the pope).”

Fr. Fessio adds that language difficulties were also involved:

“The meeting was an informal one of the Holy Father and his former students. The presentation and the discussion were in German, and the Holy Father was not speaking from a prepared text. My German is passable, but not entirely reliable. My later remarks in a live radio interview were extemporaneous. I think that I paraphrased the Holy Father with general accuracy, but my mentioning what he said at all was an indiscretion, and my impromptu paraphrase in another language should not be used for a careful exegesis of the mind of the Holy Father.”

In essence:

“I would like to set the record straight and avoid unnecessary embarrassment to the Holy Father. The truth is always crucial, but especially so here where the stakes are so high. I am disconsolate that I have obscured the truth by my ambiguous remarks.”
* * *
On January 17, Fr. Toll also intervened to clarify the pope’s thought, in a letter to Daniel Pipes.

Here it is:

“I took part in the seminar that Fr. Fessio mentions and I happen to be the person who presented the paper about Fazlur Rahman referred to by him.

“I can only say that the reported remark of the Holy Father, among others, points to the well-known point of essential difference between classic mainstream Muslim and classic mainstream Catholic theology concerning the Word of God and of revelation/inspiration. It also suggests that Muslim theological thinking must deal with the weight of this deep-rooted faith conviction and the theological vision it continues to shape.

“However, I cannot remember at all the Holy Father having said the words reported at the end of the indented paragraph in D. Pipes's report, ‘The Pope and the Koran,’ that ‘There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it.’

“The Holy Father is well-informed enough to know that there have existed and that there exist today, probably increasingly, other interpretations of the Qur'anic evidence with regard to a theology of revelation. These considered Muslim views and approaches do not (yet?), it would seem, inform the thinking and approach of a sizable Islamic movement or organisation – and we do not know what future problems lie ahead in this regard – but it does exist and is vividly discussed in many places, both in academia and beyond.

“An open debate on these matters does not yet seem to be possible within the Arab world but Turkish and Indonesian society grant relatively more room for airing and discussing such ideas, and the so-called Western countries offer even more space.

“Recently, I published ‘Progressives Denken im Zeitgenössischen Islam’ (‘Critical Survey on Progressive Thinking in Contemporary Islam’), Islam und Gesellschaft, Nr. 4, that looks at such religious thinking. The German original (and the English translation of it) are available from Franziska Bongartz, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. D-10785 Berlin, Hiroshimastr. 17, e-mail: Franziska.Bongartz@fes.de.”
* * *
Finally, on January 24, the following clarification came to www.chiesa from professor Stephan Horn, from Germany. He is a member of the Society of the Divine Savior and coordinator of the Ratzinger-Schülerkreis, the group composed of the present pope’s former students:

“Dear Sandro Magister, regarding the private (not secret) meeting of the Ratzinger-Schülerkreis with the Holy Father I confirmed the correction which Father Joe Fessio sent to the editor of the Wahington Times. Your contribution ‘Islam and Democracy’ also is in need of correction. The topic of the gathering was not ‘Islam and Democracy’. Speaking about the contribution of Prof. Troll, Father Fessio referred to the proposal of a certain muslim theologian to explain the Koran to the modern western world. Doing this Father Fessio explained this to the participants of the Hugh Hewitt Show using also the word ‘democracy’. He alluded to a contribution made by the Holy Father which is in fact a theological topic: the difference of the concept of revelation in the Koran and in Christian revelation. So your article gives an erroneous impression to the reader regarding the thought of the Holy Father. Respect for the Holy Father and for the truth obliges me to offer this correction of your presentation, in the name of the Ratzinger-Schülerkreis”.
* * *
Other comments on these issues were sent to www.chiesa by Gerald E. Nora, of the United States, and by Stefano Ceccanti, of Italy.

Nora – who teaches law at Loyola University in Chicago – emphasizes that “it is important to distinguish the different contexts of separate statements by the pope on Islam. The pope's insight that Islam has an impediment to change that Christianity does not have (ie, a Quran that is the literal, non-interpretable word of God vs. a Bible containing multiple words of humans inspired by God) is important to raise when westerners over-optimistically anticipate Islam's reformation. Therefore, it was appropriate for the pope to raise the point when the discussion group at Castelgandolfo went off on the wrong track. This is not inconsistent with his other remarks that recognize the many forms (i.e., the non-monolithic aspects) Islam has assumed over its history within the strictures of Quranic law and different governmental systems.”

Ceccanti – who teaches constitutional law at the Rome university La Sapienza – recalls that “in studying the Islamic declarations on the law, I have noted that what is blocking the recognition of democracy and human rights is precisely the weight of the Koran, which is used directly as the applicable law, since it is seen as the unmediated word of God. In order to bring a lasting solution to this legal and political conundrum, we must first address and resolve the theological one. In fact, in examining the individual constitutions of the Muslim countries, one finds even today nothing but pragmatic concessions (such as defining Shari’a as ‘one source of law’) which do nothing to prevent these countries from turning in upon themselves. So the Muslim world’s progress toward democracy is possible, but it faces serious obstacles.”

www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=45185&eng=y

Passionate prose is a real revelation

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2010463,00.html

PASSIONATE AND ROMANTIC

Thanks, Moriah, for that article. I was wondering when the mainstream media would figure out what a passionate man Papa is. Everyone on this forum could sense it and, of course, the writer of that article being a woman picked up on it. I think the secret is out now, which will mean a lot more competition, ladies. It will also mean a lot more media prying into Papa's past to find out how he knows so much about eros.

Here , in Brazil, the midia ia really surprised by the encyclica. A very famous comentator about everything , said on TV, "I think that we were all wrong about Ratzinger. He is not
the rotweiller we used to think, he must be a very nice and heartfull person, who undertands and knows what love means, the real love".

Nessuna, that is great news about the Brazilian media. I've been reading a lot of the media reports coming out around the world about the encyclical and I notice that especially those written by women are very complimentary of Papa. It seems that the only women who aren't pleased are some militant feminists who are unhappy that he mentioned the Biblical passage referring to woman being created from man's rib or being man's helpmate. I guess they would prefer the Bible to say it the other way around. Otherwise, the legions of Papa's admirers are growing.

Girls, I am sure no one in the forum will mind if I post here the London Times article that Moriah referenced above, with a bit of comment, and the main article on the encyclical in the same paper. They deserve to be seen here in full.

Deliberately, it appears, and in a positive way, the titles to the two pieces are "Pope Benedict puts body and soul into declaration of love" and "Passionate prose is a real revelation" - both pieces being a most unorthodox appreciation of the Pope.

First, the main article:
----------------------------------------------------------------
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2010462,00.html
The Times January 26, 2006
Pope Benedict puts body and soul into declaration of love

By Richard Owen in Rome and
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

POPE BENEDICT XVI yesterday praised the “ecstasy” of physical love between a man and a woman as a pathway leading to the divine love of God.

In an encyclical charged with the language of eros, or erotic love, the Pope cautioned against the “debasement” of sexual love as a “commodity to be bought and sold”.

Quoting the Hebrew Bible’s Song of Songs, a book that exalts both the physical and spiritual aspects of conjugal love, he uses the document to reclaim for Christianity the divine potential of the erotic.

The Pope concedes that Christianity has been regarded at times as having been opposed to the body, and says that sex is meaningless if not combined with spiritual or divine love.

But in Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), his first encyclical since being elected in April, he says that through God, eros can be enobled and purified.

The Pope also defends the right of Christian aid agencies to carry out charity work, saying their efforts showed that God and religion can be used for good rather than misused in the name of “vengeance, hatred and violence”. Christian aid workers must not proselytise but inspire faith by example.

The encyclical is significant because as his first, it sets the tone for his pontificate. Although focusing on love, it is also a sophisticated working-out of the relationship between Church and State, with references to earlier Catholic social teaching.

To the surprise of some Vatican insiders, however, it does not address the social and ethical issues that face the Church, and which Pope Benedict handled as guardian of doctrine for the late John Paul II.

This week the Pope, 78, told a Vatican conference that he had chosen the theme of love and charity “because the word love is too much abused in the world today”.

In the encyclical he says: “I wanted at the beginning of my Pontificate to clarify some essential facts concerning the love which God mysteriously and gratuitously offers to man, together with the intrinsic link between that Love and the reality of human love.”

The first half — on love — was written by the Pope in his native German at his summer retreat of Castelgandolfo in the hills south of Rome. The second half, on charity, is a reworking of a draft text which John Paul II — Benedict’s mentor — did not have time to complete before his death.

Vatican sources said the merging of the two halves had proved problematic. Last week the Pope admitted that publication had been delayed by “translation” difficulties. Sources, however said there had been “differences of substance” after the text was passed for re-drafting to papal advisers. Asked at a Vatican press conference whether he had been surprised that a “great theologian” such as Benedict should have involved his advisers so closely Archbishop William Levada, the Pope’s American successor as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, replied: “A bit, yes.”

In the 70-page encyclical, issued in Latin and translated into six languages, the Pope discusses the relationship between eros and agape — the Greek word for spiritual or higher love. Man, he says, “now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body.”

Benedict also explores the Church’s work in caring for the poor and sick, which he says was as much a part of its mission as spreading the Gospels. But, he argues, Christian charity workers must never proselytise or push an ideology.

“Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends,” he writes. “Those who practise charity in the Church’s name will never seek to impose the church’s faith upon others. They realise that a pure and generous love is the best witness to God”.

Benedict rejects the Marxist criticism that charity is “an excuse to keep the poor in their place”. Marxism had failed because it could not respond to every human need, he said. “There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.”

Monsignor Andrew Faley, the assistant general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said: “The Pope in this document speaks to us not from on high, but in a much more personal way than we are used to.

“Benedict is reminding us of what being human really means, particularly through the Christian lens. He is also reflecting on the central truth of the love that is in everyone’s heart. What I found particularly poetic was the way he kept coming back to reflect on God’s invitation to love and our response to that invitation.

“He makes it clear that just sitting in church being Christian is not enough. It has to be practised, in agape, in service to the poor and to the disadvantaged and weak. It is a wonderful encyclical. It gives us a clear message about his passionate, pastoral concern for the world and every human person.”

Among the first to criticise* it, however, was Hans Kung, the controversial Swiss theologian and the Pope’s former colleague. Mr Kung said the Pope should have made explicit reference to the charity the Roman Catholic Church should show towards loving couples who use contraception, those who divorce and remarry, and Protestant and Anglican clerics, “One would hope that beyond the Roman Catholic congregation of the faith there is a congregation of love,” he said.
*[Interesting that the Times singled out what was negative about
Kueng's statement and left out the positive things he did say. See ANSA news item posted earlier.]

ON LOVE
“Today, the term ‘love’ has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words . . . Amid this multiplicity of meanings, however, one in particular stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness.”

ON SEX
“Christianity of the past is often criticised as having been opposed to the body . . . Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex’, has become a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity.”

ON CHARITY
“Love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy, is as essential to her (the Church) as ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel . . . For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity . . . but a part of her nature, an expression of her very being.”

ON JUSTICE
“The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice."

ON PRAYER
“It is time to affirm the importance of prayer . . . a personal relationship with God and an abandonment to his will can prevent man from being demeaned and save him from falling prey to the teaching of fanaticism and terrorism.”

----------------------------------------------------------------
And Ruth Gledhill's sidebar-
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2010463,00.html

Passionate prose is a real revelation
By Ruth Gledhill

I STARTED reading Deus Caritas Est expecting to be disappointed, chastised and generally laid low. An encyclical on love from a right-wing pope could only contain more damning condemnations of our materialistic, westernised society, more evocations of the “intrinsic evil” of contraception, married priests, homosexuality. It would surely continue the Church’s grand tradition* of contempt for the erotic, a tradition that ensures a guilty hangover in any Roman Catholic who dares to indulge in lovemaking for any reason other than the primary one of reproduction. How wonderful it is to be proven wrong.
*[But despite being proven wrong about her expectations, she still referenced the so-called 'Church tradition of contempt for the erotic..' that the encyclical said was false!]

The first half of the encyclical, the part on eros written by the new Pope himself, is a startling revelation, almost akin to reading one of George’s Herbert’s poems on love and God, or C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. The language itself verges at times on the erotic. [Really?!?! If Ratzi read this piece, he would be chuckling!]

The word “intrinsic” remains one of his favourites, but not as an appendage to evil. Instead, it becomes the “intrinsic link” between human and divine love, eros and agape. He acknowledges the power of the “apparently irresistible promise of happiness” between men and women when body and soul are “inseparably joined”.

Recognising that the Greek word eros does not appear at all in the New Testament and just twice in what he refers to as the “Greek Old Testament”, he quotes Nietzsche, who said that Christianity had poisoned eros. Here he repeats the widely held perception voiced there by Nietzsche, a fellow German: “Doesn’t the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life?” Yes, he criticises the reduction of sex to a commodity and the consequent debasement of the human body. But then he indulges in some of the most beautiful and passionate writing I have ever seen in papal prose. He acknowledges his debt to Solomon’s Song of Songs, the book of the Bible with passages so explicit that few priests would have the courage to read them out in church without blushing.

Legitimate criticism will come from some feminist circles. Although it is biblical, some women will not be happy at being referred to as rib-made helpmeets. His analysis of the role of the Church in bringing God’s love to fruition is also likely to be provoke accusations of implicit replacement theology.

With its repeated reference to Greek myth and Latin learning, the encyclical is indicative of Benedict XVI’s formidable intelligence. But it also opens a new window into the soul of the Pope, showing a surprising depth of insight into what it means to love and be loved.

Every sentence, stop and comma speaks of orthodoxy. It is steeped in the tradition of the ancient Church. The Pope was former head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the body once known as the Inquisition. But this encyclical is not the work of an inquisitor. It is the work of a lover — a true lover of God.

---------------------------------------------------------------
By the way, girls, have I got work to do!! I've just printed out the initial reaction articles and commentary from the German and Italian press, and at least one from the French, not to mention a 5-page commentary by Cardinal Lehmann in German - I will have to prioritize but I will need HOURS!!!!! A German
writer beat me to it and called it Papa Ratzinger's hymn of love!

I have yet to see a negative reaction, except for snide remarks by Marco Tosatti, the Stampa journalist who has not gotten over the bill from the Vatican for his unauthorized use of the Pope's words in a book that sells for 9 Euros, and claims he can't quote even a line from the encyclical for fear of being charged again! Some people are just mean, in both senses of the word!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/01/2006 2.26]

Corriere della Sera has saved me at least one translation - this article by Lugi Accatoli appears in the "Italian Life" English section of the Italy's leading newspaper:
--------------------------------------------------------------

Love, Utopias and Politics – Ratzinger’s Encyclical
Polemics on Nietzsche, Greece and Marxism
Role of the Church in society
By Luigi Accatoli

VATICAN CITY – The subject is compelling, the greatest of them all – love and charity.The opening sentence – “God is love” – has Biblical force. There are two adversaries of the first order: Nietzsche, who accuses Christianity of having “poisoned” love, and Marx, who reviles “charity” and makes it the accessory of exploitation. The encyclical’s exposition is elaborate and even laboured, as befits a theologian pope who wants to leave no question unanswered.

This is a brief outline of Benedict XVI’s first encyclical letter, “Deus caritas est” (God is Love). The 73 pages contain 42 paragraphs with a “speculative” – as the Pope himself calls it – first section; and a second “more concrete” part on the love “exercised” by the Church.

Awaited for three months and signed on Christmas Day, the encyclical was presented yesterday morning at the Vatican Press Office by Cardinal Renato Martino and archbishops Levada and Cordes. The document’s main focuses are the dispute with Nietzsche on whether love is “poisoned” or “healed” by Christianity, and the exaltation of the commandment of love as the centre of the Christian life.

“Love is sufficient and saves man. He who loves is a Christian,” wrote Ratzinger the theologian in 1965 in “Vom Sinn des Christsein” ["On the Sense of Being Christian"], published in 2005 by Queriniana in Italian as “Tempo di avvento”. Here the affirmation is less vivid in form but identical in content. A Christian knows “that God is love and that God’s presence is felt at the very time when the only thing we can do is to love”.

The Pope also offers a historic contextualisation of his concentration on God-as-love. “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant”. The theologian pope then turns to the heart of Christianity, defending it against misconstrual and proposing it (love) as the appropriate word for our age. But there is more. In the sea of this great issue, he privileges love between man and woman as the “epitome” – that is the word used, and it means prototype or model – for all others.

German-born Benedict XVI writes about the love of man and woman with enthusiasm and only in positive terms. He does not go into the specifics of what is acceptable, and makes no appeal to dogmatic teaching. You might say that he completes on a doctrinal plane the acceptance of the body expressed poetically by John Paul II when he said that through meeting young couples he had “learned to love human love”.

Contesting the Enlightenment and Nietzsche, the Pope defends the Christian vision of love in which “eros and agape – ascending love [or desire – Ed.] and descending love [or love that gives itself – Ed.] – can never be completely separated”. Agape, love grounded in faith, does not “destroy eros”, as Nietzsche affirms, but saves it from “degenerating into vice”. One of the most significant passages in the long diatribe reads “True, eros tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing”.

The Pope admits that “tendencies” opposed to the body “have always existed” in Christian history but he denies that “man’s great ‘yes’ to the body” cannot be affirmed today by Christians. Biblical faith, he assures us, “accepts the whole man; it intervenes in his search for love in order to purify it and to reveal new dimensions of it”.

In the second part of the encyclical, Benedict XVI defends Christian love from the charges of the “inhuman” philosophy of Marxism, which considers charitable activity jointly responsible for the perpetuation of social oppression. “There is admittedly some truth to this argument, but also much that is mistaken”, for “people of the present are sacrificed to the moloch of the future”. But the longed-for “world revolution” that was to produce a different, better world has not taken place. “This illusion has vanished”.

“The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible”, states the encyclical with a possible reference to liberation theology, “yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice."

In addition to Nietzsche and Marx, the encyclical quotes Aristotle, Virgil, Julian the Apostate and Augustine (“State which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves”), Gregory the Great and Descartes. From the saints of love, Mother Teresa of Calcutta is mentioned three times.

And here was Vittorio Messori's first take on his friend and co-author's first encyclical - I think the headline writer skewed Messori's main points :
---------------------------------------------------------------
The Pope's Manifesto:
Leave politics to Caesar
By Vittorio Messori

Having reached the Papacy at the threshold of 80, and at the peak of his theological development as well as ecclesial experience, Joseph Ratzinger seems determined not to waste time on questions secondary to the global perspective for the faith.

Advocate of moderation, he has already pruned his agenda of dispensable commitments – trips, liturgical celebrations, meetings – and does not even intend to maintain the rhythm of doctrinal “production” kept by his beloved predecessor. Concerned about the situation of the faith (and its weakening, which, according to his diagnosis, has caused the crisis of the Church), he has decided to go to the roots with his first encyclical, which will probably be the only one for a long time.

He has therefore chosen (as subject) the core of Christianity, he has turned his attention directly to God himself, to his reality, and consequently, to man as the image of God. In his “circular letter” (the literal meaning of encyclical) to the pastors of the Church - the main addressees of such documents - he focuses attention on three short words of John which make up the distinctive hallmark of Christianity and differentiate it radically from every other religion: “God is love”, with the consequence which the apostle John describes: “Who remains in love is in God and God in him.”

Thus, he goes back to the beginning, the very basis of belief, and realizing later – but only after he had chosen his topic -that the theme of love has dramatic currency, seeing that we find ourselves living “in a world in which the name of God has come to be linked with vengeance or even an obligation for hate and violence”. An explicit reference to Islamic fundamentalism, but probably, not just to that.

The text is brief, compared to the average length of John Paul II’s encyclicals. Once again, a Ratzingerian choice in favor of moderation.

But the pages are of a density that will provoke full-bodied commentary on the part of experts. Here, we must limit ourselves to indicating a key to its reading, a sort of "instructions for use”of this document. Especially in the first part – the most doctrinal, intended to clarify what we mean by “love” – it seems evident to the astute reader that probably the only person responsible was Benedict himself, which should not be surprising. Usually, for these documents, the Pope gives an outline and instructions, then works (onl) on the final draft which is structured and written by a group of collaborators.

This does not seem the case here: everything appears written from Benedict’s own pen. In his diligence and seriousness, Joseph Ratzinger confirms his “German” nature, whereas the text shows to what extent his perspective on faith (instinctive, later deepened by his experience in Rome) is “Latin” - at least in the sense of “catholic”, in its fullest sense. It reminds us that the law that of Catholicism is that which has been called "et-et" ("and-and”), the compositio oppositorum or union of opposites, “this as well as that”, “one and the other”, the synthesis and balance between extremes, as Jesus himself was man and God at the same time, who came “to complete not to destroy”. And like the cross itself: the “and-and” par excellence, made up of a vertical and a horizontal arm.

To this global vision, which does not intend to renounce anything (“I am Catholic because I want everything,” Jean Guitton once told me), Protestantism opposes its “aut-aut” , “or-or” – which calls for choice, refusal, the condemnation of many aspects of reality.

Already at first analysis, this first encyclical from the German Pope shows to what extent the perspective of the Catholic formula (compositio) is operative. A union of opposites which seems to mark a style which weds papal consciousness to an almost familiar tone, to expressions which are sometimes quotidian.

As for the contents, we can tick off a series of “and-and” : Christian love as a synthesis of human eros and divine agape, of carnal instinct and spiritual impulse, quite in accordance with human nature, which is an inextricable synthesis of body and soul; love which is addressed both to a single person and to all of humanity, which is obliged to give but equally obliged to receive; which unites mysticism and practice, utopia and realism, culture and ethics, sentiment and will.

Finally, love which becomes militant charity, in aid of one’s neighbor (the theme of the second part), which should unite prayer and action, spontaneity and organization, a declaration of faith as well as silent service, sharing bread in both the material and spiritual sense. It is a continuous effort to achieve a difficult synthesis, always precarious but therefore productive (feconda), a tension towards completeness, a search for the center, where extremes unite.

No “or-or”, then, but a continuous “this as well as that”, where particular attention is given to the need to unite justice and charity. To the illusion (“which has vanished since then”, the Pope observes) of the Marxists and their followers that man must do battle for social justice while fighting at the same time the “alienation” (caused by) charity, Benedict XVI has words that seem to me among the most moving and true (in this encyclical). These are the only words that space permits us to report this time but which give an idea of the wisdom, not disjoined from emotion, which pervades the text:

“Love — caritas — will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness…. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support.”

Going by certain current obsessions, many commentators will be exercised most over the paragraphs which the Pope devotes to politics: but even politics can be an expression of love, if well understood and practised, and, Benedict XVI says decisively, the Church is not contesting politics as such. Even here, a fundamental “and-and” stands out: God and Caesar. Society needs both, there is no contraposition between the two, rather a distinction in roles and in calling.

There is no trace here of nostalgia for that christianitas in which the sacred and the profane were interwoven – only a humble, discreet but convinced re-statement of Catholic social doctrine which has demonstrated its wisdom in the face of the disasters resulting from political ideologies. But the Pope takes care to repeat that the Church proffers this doctrine based “on reason and natural right”, on elements, therefore, that “conform to the nature of every human being”, whatever his belief or disbelief. This is an encyclical marked by equilibrium, by being centered, by wisdom and experience, in the search for what is truly the source of peace and joy, goodness and hope.

If I may be allowed to say objectively and without any trace of apologetics: we have in this encyclical an organic vision of man and society, which may convince or not, but a vision one has not seen elsewhere, (certainly not) among the orphans of crumbled ideologies or the devotees of radicalized religions.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/01/2006 9.33]

From the blog of French writer Patrice de Plunkett, author of "Benedict XVI: God's Plan" - here in translation :
-------------------------------------------------------------

One is not surprised at the clarity, the precision, the density and simplicity of this text.

Dynamism and intellectual richness, spiritual depth, concrete illuminations for daily life, a very nuanced experience of society today, a sensitivity to the problems of the individual –all the characteristics of Joseph Ratzinger’s thought are present in Deus caritas est. And most notably, his pedagogic talent…

Benedict knows the art of presenting given facts as they relate to each other. Speaking to the Catholics, he knows how to make himself understood by non-Christians as well. The agnostic who reads this encyclical – easily and accessibly – will discover how the Christian faithful think and what moves them.

This is how Papa Ratzinger wants to bridge the gap that separates public opinion and the Christian faith today.

As Benedict XVI explained in his own discourse a few days ago, the encyclical has two parts, with the following outline [numbers within brackets refer to the sections] :

Part I
The unity of love in creation and in history
- A question of language [2]
- « Eros » and « Agapè » - difference and unity [3-8]
- The novelty of Biblical faith [9-11]
- Jésus-Christ: the incarnate love of God [12-15]
- Love of God and love of neighbor [16-18]

Part II
Caritas: The exercise of love by the Church as a community of love
- Ecclesial charity as a manifestation of trinitary love [19]
- Charity as a mission for the Church [20-25]
- Justice and charity [26-29]
- The many structures of chartiable services in the presdent social context [30]
- The specific profile of the Church’s charitable acivity [31]
- Those responsible for the charitable actions of the Church [32-39]

Conclusion [40-42].

The importance of this encyclical is so immense that we will be revisiting it often. This blog is open to debate on all the crucial points raised by the Pope.

For now, I wish to share my first impressions with you :

The encyclical deals with two vital questions, vital in the literal sense of being "fundamental for life," that is - being at
a) the heart of everyone (love in the life of men), and
b) the heart of the Christian faith (divine love, which encompasses everything).

The genius of this document is in making us discover that « all the forms of love unite finally » - love looks to the eternal. “Love is indeed ‘ecstasy’, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.”

“The message of love proclaimed to us by the Bible and the Church's Tradition” is not opposed to the common human experience of love. On the contrary: “..’love’ is a single reality, but with different dimensions; at different times, one or other dimension may emerge more clearly. Yet when the two dimensions are totally cut off from one another, the result is a caricature or at least an impoverished form of love. And we have also seen, synthetically, that biblical faith does not set up a parallel universe, or one opposed to that primordial human phenomenon which is love, but rather accepts the whole man; it intervenes in his search for love in order to purify it and to reveal new dimensions of it.”

Throwing light onto the core of the faith, the encyclical (without going into the matter of morals) makes us discover the art of Christian life and its implications : for example, in the love between man and woman. It shows that « love is not only a sentiment » and that its maturation involves our will and our intellect, especially in our encounter with « the living God. » It explains how love of neighbor is indissolubly linked to the love of God, « consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ."

In the second part, the encyclical exposes the indissoluble link between the Church and love of neigbor, in the most concrete domains :
- Especially the problem of a « just order in society » and the role of the Church in his domain. That which concerns, among others, its relation to politics and to the State :

Catholic social doctrine, the Pope underscores, « has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just. The Church's social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being. It recognizes that it is not the Church's responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly, even when this might involve conflict with situations of personal interest...”

"The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. ..”

Benedict insists on the planetary dimension of love of neighbor: « the means of mass communication have made our planet smaller, rapidly narrowing the distance between different peoples and cultures. This 'togetherness' at times gives rise to misunderstandings and tensions, yet our ability to know almost instantly about the needs of others challenges us to share their situation and their difficulties. Despite the great advances made in science and technology, each day we see how much suffering there is in the world on account of different kinds of poverty, both material and spiritual. Our times call for a new readiness to assist our neighbours in need.”

The Pope also underscores that « the power of Christianity has spread well beyond the frontiers of the Christian faith. For this reason, it is very important that the Church's charitable activity maintains all of its splendour and does not become just another form of social assistance.”

- The encyclical stresses that the charitable activity of the Church is not a « means » - neither a means to help secular ideologies to change the world, nor a means to spread Christianity : « Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends. But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ aside. For it is always concerned with the whole man. Often the deepest cause of suffering is the very absence of God. Those who practise charity in the Church's name will never seek to impose the Church's faith upon others. They realize that a pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are driven to love. A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak. He knows that God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) and that God's presence is felt at the very time when the only thing we do is to love. He knows — to return to the questions raised earlier — that disdain for love is disdain for God and man alike; it is an attempt to do without God. Consequently, the best defence of God and man consists precisely in love. It is the responsibility of the Church's charitable organizations to reinforce this awareness in their members, so that by their activity — as well as their words, their silence, their example — they may be credible witnesses to Christ. «

These brief excerpts are just samplers. They do not show the force of the philosophical development which constitutes the start of the document and which everyone will discover. The depth and breadth of this encyclical should incite Catholics all over the world to rflect: What do we have to change, in our mind and in our behavior, to respond to its appeal? It is up to us !

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/01/2006 8.39]

From belief.net, an analytical piece by Rocco Palmo:
beliefnet.com/story/184/story_18403.html
---------------------------------------------------------------

The Surprising Message Behind 'God Is Love'
Benedict XVI's first encyclical sets the tone for his pontificate--and may raise eyebrows among liberal and conservatives alike
By Rocco Palmo

Joseph Ratzinger was never going to be the pope of conventional wisdom.

His April election as Pope Benedict XVI was greeted with shock, suspicion, and (occasionally) downright revulsion among both Catholics and non-Catholics. Many observers were puzzled at the choice of Ratzinger, who for years was Catholicism’s "bad cop" in defending controversial church teachings. Critics doubted that a fractious global flock could hold under the leadership of a man who had been widely known as "Cardinal ‘No’" and compared to the Panzer, the ruthless German army tank.
But the reserved successor to John Paul II is a man of many surprises. The former doctrinal enforcer has just released his first major papal document--and instead of being a harsh condemnation, the encyclical is an uplifting treatise on love's place at the center of Christian--and Catholic--life.

Encyclicals are the most important form of communication a pope has at his disposal. Over the last century, the first encyclical of a new pontificate has set the tone for everything that follows, explaining how a pope views his office and its role in the life of his billion-member flock.

Deus caritas est (God is love), a 42-paragraph message that ambitiously tackles topics from the "boldly erotic images" used in the Old Testament to describe "God’s passion for his people" to the "essential task" of "building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due," poses a challenge to both sides of the Catholic divide. While conservative Catholics will agree that the concept of human love, eros "reduced to pure 'sex,' has become a commodity, a mere 'thing' to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity," the absence of the divisive doctrinal questions of sexuality, contraception, and abortion from the document might further add to the suspicion, already aired in some quarters, that their man has "gone soft." It is not what they would have expected--or, perhaps, wished. At the same time, the encyclical has already earned the resounding praise of the controversial Swiss theologian Fr. Hans Kung, Benedict’s onetime academic mentor.

What the pope says about sex

When word crept out from the Vatican in mid-November that Benedict's first letter would skip policy and instead tackle a basic concept of Christianity, Roman gossip opined that the message would not be the road map that John Paul’s 1979 Redemptor hominis (The Redeemer of Man)-- which articulated the late pontiff's belief in Christianity as real liberation, particularly against the scourge of Communism-- was for his 27-year reign. That the new pope was seemingly overturning a tradition held dear by popes past, in creating a document which was not so much grand plan as pastoral reflection, caused more than a little puzzlement in Vatican circles.

Score another setback for conventional wisdom.

By using his pulpit to proclaim the simple necessity of love "in a world where," as Benedict put it in the document's introduction, "the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence," the pope is speaking to a world in which war is too often the defining characteristic of relations between peoples of faith.

But even more powerfully, Benedict is re-emphasizing the virtue often lacking in the life, work, and daily conversation of the Catholic church. While it covers the necessity of love at all levels of the wider world, Deus caritas est also expresses the pope's thinly-veiled wish for the unity of his divided flock.

In its passages about sex, love and marriage, the encyclical takes to task the liberalized mores of the West. The mutually self-giving love between man and woman is described as "the one in particular [that] stands out [from all other love]... where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness." "Monogamous marriage" is placed on a par with "the image of a monotheistic God." The pope notes that "marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa."

But this encyclical's call to love, even when it is inconvenient or uneasy, should give pause to the church's lay activists at the extremes. Particularly in the United States, the fringes of the Catholic community have viewed those who disagree with them as virtually excommunicated.

The church isn't an ideological battlefield

Writing about sacramental communion, when Catholics receive what the church teaches is Jesus’ flesh and blood, Benedict rejects the notion of the church as an ideological battlefield: "Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself," the Pope writes.

Speaking in the first person but stressing the collective, he continues that "I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. ...Love of God and love of neighbor are now truly united."

While the first half of the letter deals with Benedict’s emphasis on love’s "dimensions"-- eros, or "worldly" love, and agape, or "love grounded in and shaped by faith"--its second half focuses on the church’s charitable mission, both wide and small.

In the United States and much of the world, the church’s institutional resources invested in relief, humanitarian and social service efforts are often the most comprehensive of their kind. But the pope challenged Catholics to extend charity beyond the tangible. "Seeing with the eyes of Christ," he writes, "[we] can give to others much more than their outward necessities; [we] can give them the look of love which they crave."

The pope reaffirms that church charities must be a witness for Christ in the world. He cites the story of the Byzantine emperor Julian, whose father was murdered when he was six. "..rightly or wrongly," Benedict wrote, "he blamed this brutal act on the Emperor Constantius, who passed himself off as an outstanding Christian. The Christian faith was thus definitively discredited in his eyes. Upon becoming emperor, Julian decided to restore paganism... [H]e wrote that the sole aspect of Christianity which had impressed him was the Church's charitable activity... In this way, then, the Emperor confirmed that charity was a decisive feature of the Christian community, the Church." Elsewhere, the encyclical praises St. Lawrence, the early Christian martyr who was, according to legend, roasted to death for his charity.

So why has the man who is, arguably, the most intellectually gifted pontiff in memory begun his pontificate on a counter-intuitive note? Perhaps because he knows the intellect is not the source of Christian life. "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea," the new pope writes, "but the encounter with an event, a person" -- Jesus --"which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."

In highlighting his church’s commitment to become ever more a "community of love," Benedict has put those who would prefer to boast of their own superiority or cast others away on notice. The Vatican isn't always seen as a place which exudes kindness. But the message of Deus caritas est rings clear: to give voice to the "lofty idea" of faith without giving heart to Christianity’s essential "encounter" with God's love isn't just futile--it’s to miss the whole point.


Rocco Palmo writes for the Tablet and lives in Philadelphia.

In www.firstthings.com/ [FIRST THINGS describes itself as "the journal of religion, culture and public life"] - Richard John Neuhaus writes:
---------------------------------------------------------------

And so, nine months into the pontificate, Benedict XVI has issued his first encyclical. (It is dated December 25, Christmas, although released on January 25, the Conversion of St. Paul.) The title is Deus Caritas Est–”God is Love”–and it is an extended commentary on that affirmation found in I John 4.

There will be a more thorough examination of the document in FIRST THINGS, but upon first reading, several things stand out. The style is that of the Ratzinger whom we have known over the years: precise, almost crisp, and relentlessly Christocentric. This in sharp contrast to the encyclicals of John Paul the Great, which were personalistic and discursive (described by his critics as eccentric and wandering).

“Are all forms of love basically one?” Benedict’s answer is in the affirmative. Although Anders Nygren is not mentioned, the argument is clearly counter to his pitting of eros against agape, which had an enormous influence in the twentieth century. Nor is C.S. Lewis mentioned, but Benedict’s argument is at important points at odds with Lewis’ famous description of the “four loves.” All love is one because the Trinitarian God is one, and God is love.

As one would expect from Ratzinger-Benedict, the entire discussion is firmly rooted in the history of human reflection on the nature of love, with the accent on what is distinctive in the Christian intellectual tradition. He is especially eager to rebut Nietzsche’s insistence that the Christian view of eros drained the blood out of human passion and the quest for transcendence.

The last half of the relatively short encyclical is devoted to making the connections between love as expressed in kerygma (witness), leitourgia (worship), and diakonia (service)–the three dimensions of the Church’s life and mission. Here Benedict is at pains to challenge the separation, common also among many Christians, of charity and justice. The idea proposed by Marxists and others that justice must replace charity is fundamentally false, Benedict insists, and leads to the defeat of both charity and justice. The contention here is familiar from Ratzinger’s longstanding critique of Marxist-oriented liberation theology.

Then there is a very suggestive discussion of the relationship between Church and state in the pursuit of justice. This is extremely subtle and I will want to be giving it careful thought. An abiding concern of Benedict, one which he has addressed a number of times during these last months, is to establish a clear understanding of the authentically secular character of the state, leaving the Church free to do what she does in diakonia that is intimately related to her kerygma and leitourgia.

In striking distinction from John Paul’s fourteen encyclicals, there are few references to past papal pronouncements, and only passing reference to John Paul. It is an emphatically biblical reflection, with very judicious invocations of the early church fathers.

I write this before seeing any of the media reports. I expect they will find little that is “newsworthy.” “Pope Says God is Love” is not a zinger of a headline. But Deus Caritas Est is a weighty teaching document indeed and I look forward to giving it the careful study that it invites and deserves.
----------------------------------------------------------------
And while we are on the subject of FIRST THINGS, it will be worth our while to get the Febriary issue which contains, among others- “From Ratzinger to Benedict”, Avery Cardinal Dulles’ critical evaluation of the pope’s critical evaluation of Vatican Council II.

This piece from AsiaNews, published 1/5/06, is probably the most perceptive I have read of the first reactions to the encyclical.
---------------------------------------------------------------

“Deus caritas est”: God’s eros and agape, medicine for the world
by Bernardo Cervellera


Benedict XVI’s first encyclical is not only the program of his pontificate. It is also the Church’s program for the third millennium. Facing a globalization of the economy that creates enormous masses of impoverished people, states that seem like “bunches of thieves” for their disregard for justice, the “vanished illusion” of Marxism and a prevailing materialism that has turned man into a “thing”, the Pope invites Christians to be “fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world” (n. 41).

In reading these pages teeming with culture, social analysis, faith and prayer, one has the sense of being at the start of a new era, of a new and determined way of looking at the problems of the world and at possible solutions. Here and there, the Pope refers various times to the question of a “new humanism”, of a “true humanism”, of a new “image of man.”

The encyclical is really addressed to man, men and women, seen in their lively reaching out, their eros, their search for happiness and justice. The Pope calls upon this man not to disparage him or to judge him from above with the eye of a puritanical Pharisee, but to appreciate him with tenderness. In eros itself, it his richness and poverty, in his leaps and falls, beyond consumeristic manipulations, the Pope finds all the elements to show that God’s eros and agape – united – fulfill the very expectation of human eros toward fullness and eternity. From now on, thanks to this Pope, it will be possible to once again say “I love you forever,” “I love you fully” with no need for a smile of irony or conceit. And it will be possible to think of marriage and even of indissolubility not as an “order” or an external law, but as the fulfillment of a need found in eros itself.

The Pope quotes Nietzsche who accuses the Church of having “poisoned” eros. Instead it is the sickly and worn-out eros of today, tempted by contempt for oneself and others, that is poisoned. And the encyclical, speaking of the person God, impassioned like a lover and merciful to the point of dying for the other, the Pope says that He is in fact the needed medicine.

This medicine is, first of all, the patient work of putting together, unifying, reconciling elements that, in society and in the Church, risk opposing and dividing from each other: eros and agape, sentiment and will, justice and charity, love of God and love of one’s neighbour, evangelization and human promotion, prayer and efficiency.

The medicine of God’s love, witnessed by the Church, is the world’s most urgent need. The Pope writes off Marxism as a “vanished illusion” and, what’s more, as “inhumane ideology” and asks states to leave the Church free to work in charity to create more justice in society and to let themselves be influenced by a vision of man that leaves room for religion, to its relation with the divine, or otherwise risk becoming a “bunch of thieves,” suffocated by interest and power, by being ethically blinded.

The universality of charity, this precious gift of Christianity to the world, is necessary more than ever given the current state of globalization, which is able to unite continents and economies, but also to forget entire populations in poverty and injustice. With Jesus’ realism (“you will always have the poor with you”) the Pope states that no society can ever do without the gratuitous and personal gesture of love for one’s neighbour.

The universality of charity and its concreteness in history are also important for extracting the face of God and man from the temptation of “the teaching of fanaticism and terrorism” (as in fundamentalist Islam) and from the cancellation of oneself as preached in oriental doctrines (man’s divinization is not “a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine”, no. 10). But it is above all the route by which charity can grow beyond the confines of the Church itself.

Already today, from our vantage point on Asia, we see Japanese Buddhist movements that take their inspiration from Christians in their help to the poor and the elderly: Hindus that, moved by the example of the Church, open hospitals and schools. All this is the foreshadowing of a new era of a “true humanism”, of the strength of Christianity beyond confessional borders.

John Paul II, in “Novo Millennio Ineunte”, had indicated to Christians of the third millennium the task of expressing “creativity in charity,” the inventiveness of tackling problems and expressing solidarity. This Pope confirms that task and asks the Church to embrace the service of charity as an essential element of faith. He asks it of bishops, often tempted to be administrators of their diocese, so that they put charity and pronouncement on the same level, and he asks it of the laity, tempted by efficiency-based activism, that risks becoming solidarity without identity.

The reference to Mother Teresa (named 3 times in the Encyclical!) drives these elements home. John Paul II beatified the mother of the poor as a “missionary for the third millennium”; with her example, this wisp of woman succeeded in stirring governments and worldwide organizations; with her charity, she met and worked with Muslims, Hindus, atheists. All this, basing herself on Jesus’ love, asked for in prayer, contemplated in the Eucharist, visited in the poor.

For a really good read, go to -
insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2006/01/did_i_read_the_.html
in which Carl Olson who blogs for Ignatius Press 'fisks' the New York Times 1/25/06 report on the encyclical.

Thank you, Theresa, for all splendid articles you post here about Deus Caritatis Est.

When do you sleep?

Film director Liliana Cavani was one of two lay persons invited to speak at the two-day conference on the Pope's encyclical sponsored by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum earlier this week. The other was Bruce Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank. ZENIT reports on Cavani's remarks to the conference.
www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=83478
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Without Love There Is No Life"

ROME, JAN. 26, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The strength of Benedict XVI's encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" lies "in having placed the accent on human love, in having exalted it," says a film director.

Liliana Cavani commented on the papal document before an audience that comprised cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people attending an international conference on charity, organized by the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum."

The Italian director made her name in 1989 with the production of "Francis," a biographical film on the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

The genius of the papal text, said Cavani, is that it shows people that "the only possible point of encounter between man and God is love."

Regarding the thesis that "eros," love of attraction, has been rejected throughout history by the Church, Cavani explained that "Christianity has not destroyed 'eros'; rather, it has enriched and completed it."

If "eros" is "love as attraction, the search for contact and response," she observed, "religion means to contact, to make contact with, and contact takes place only in love; it is a mutual falling in love between creatures and God."

The film and television director described the encyclical as "attractive," the "work of a great intellectual." Cavani stated that, as the Pope revealed, the word "love" is somewhat depreciated today, "to give love, to receive love, to desire love -- is art's motor."

"I think that the most beautiful and timely thing of the Gospel is precisely the proclamation of love," she said.

According to Cavani, "faith is an element that produces in the believer effects of love toward nonbelievers or those of weak faith," with amazing results.

"I have known people of great faith, able to love their neighbor with the passion of lovers," she said. "These people are convinced that God makes himself, truly, person in others. Their dedication to others is dedication to God who makes himself person."

However, "in today's culture, the idea of love is very wanting and base; because of this, the Pope's encyclical goes against the current, it is amazing because of its originality," Cavani added.

Speaking of the materialism that has invaded our civilization, Cavani affirmed that "to speak of love at this time might seem almost an extravagance."

But "it must be remembered that man does not live by bread alone, whether he is a migrant or has made a fortune; without love there is no life," she said.

Cavani criticized materialist ideologies, which "have impoverished imagination, vetoed self-reflection and ontological knowledge of the existence of each one as individual."

She recalled that in the second half of the 1960s, during her trips to Bulgaria, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Russia, she felt sad "because there was fear, there was no joy."

"The encyclical sends out a very strong message," the director said. "It proclaims love as the fundamental project of life; it places it at the center of everything, of the economy, of technology and of history. The object of everything is love -- or everything is vain."

Speaking of the corporal element of "eros," Cavani added that "the resurrection of bodies is fundamental."

"The body is the only measure we have and it is the result of the love of God, who has created us in his image and likeness," she said. "The good news is the Resurrection; Jesus died for our life, to announce to us the resurrection.

"If there were no such end, all this affair would mean nothing. The Gospel is like a film; if this end did not exist it would not interest me, it would be reduced to 'Let's love one another.' The Resurrection is the extraordinary end, which represents the true love of the Catholic Church and of Christians who believe in this film of the Gospel."

These words sparked applause among those present.

Archbishop Paul Cordes, president of "Cor Unum," concluded affirming: "I am extremely happy to hear these words on the Resurrection. We in the Church have often forgotten this word and this reality; instead, it is very important to go out to the world with this idea, to try to take to it the real love of the Church."

You may download Page 1 of this special issue - with a color photograph of the Pope signing the encyclical -
from www.vatican.va/news_services/or/or_ita/004r01.pdf

Can this be 'The Tablet'??? It is, indeed. Benedict conquers!
---------------------------------------------------------------
www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-01138

28/01/2006
The true face of Catholicism
Editorial


Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical confirms him as a man of humour, warmth, humility and compassion, eager to share the love that God “lavishes” on humanity and display it as the answer to the world’s deepest needs. On his election last spring, the former Cardinal Ratzinger was widely assumed to have as his papal agenda the hammering of heretics and a war on secularist relativism, subjects with which he was associated as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Instead he has produced a profound, lucid, poignant and at times witty discussion of the relationship between sexual love and the love of God, the fruit no doubt of a lifetime’s meditation. This is a document that presents the most attractive face of the Catholic faith and could be put without hesitation into the hands of any inquirer.

Unlike his predecessor, Benedict is not instantly comfortable as the focus of a huge crowd. But John Paul II, so charismatic in the flesh, was often hard to follow when he turned to the word. His encyclicals were wonderful intellectual journeys that repaid the great effort needed to understand them. Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est is by comparison an easy read, full of well-turned arresting sentences. “The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: ‘O, Soul!’ And Descartes would reply: ‘O, Flesh!’,” the Pope remarks. “Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature.”

About the only flaw in the English text, indeed, is its non-use of inclusive language: for “man” read “man and woman”. But he makes no other sexist point; there is no attempt to distinguish female sexual love from the male version, no flirting with the madonna-whore dichotomy, no judgemental talk of what sexual love is ordained for, nor even of exploitation and sexual sin. Men and women who leave eros in the domain of their animal natures, without regard to the spiritual, are simply told that they are missing the true greatness that God intended for them; a lost opportunity rather than the road to perdition.

The second part of the encyclical, which is said to owe something to an unfinished project of the previous Pope, ties up a loose end in Catholic social teaching by addressing the question how, in a world seeking social justice, there is still room for charity. The answer is a compelling one. But this is still Ratzinger rather than Wojtyla, with his warning that it is not for the Church to take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. “She cannot and must not replace the State,” he insists. Yet at the same time she must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. Thus is a careful line drawn with regard to efforts by Catholic prelates, most notably in the United States in the last presidential election, to tell politicians which laws they may or may not pass.

This is a remarkable, enjoyable and even endearing product of Pope Benedict’s first few months. If first encyclicals set the tone for a new papacy, then this one has begun quite brilliantly.

Hmmm, it is too soon to see a change of heart in the Tablet (Maryjos calls it the 'bitter pill'). Their whining about 'inclusive' language (which seeks to impose an artificiality on normal linguistic use to satisfy the whims of a small group of ideologues) is typical of the humourless and agenda-driven mentality of the church liberals. As a woman, I have no feelings of being excluded by normal English use of the word 'man' and 'mankind', and suggest that anyone who feels offended by this has not enough to worry about.

Also, I am struck by their implicit criticism of the American bishops. In what way have they tried to influence law-making in the States? I am not up to speed with this, but could it be to do with Terry Schiavo and the on-going abortion debate? If so, does the Tablet think it is not within the Church's remit to pass comment?

I am glad that the Tablet deigns to praise the Pope, it is a positive sign, as Teresa says. We will watch, and see.

Dear Wulfrune - I would not, of course, characterize the Tablet's editorial "a change of heart" - I think it is a specific reaction to the encyclical, and probably the first time they have had nice things to say about the person of Joseph Ratzinger - for which I can only be appreciative - and I do not doubt that the next time the Pope says anything that rubs against the Tablet's liberal biases, they will be back to sniping at him!

Netzeitung.de , a German online newspaper, compiled excerpts from some European editorials about the encyclical. The excerpts are remarkable for being, on the whole, largely superficial, and perhaps for poor excerpting! Still, it indicates a spectrum of reactions to differing aspects of the encyclical, as each one picks and chooses the aspect they want to highlight….

These are my translations from netzeitung's German translations from other languages -

---------------------------------------------------------------

El Mundo (Spain) – From Rottweiler to Prophet
The election of Joseph Ratzinger as successor to John Paul II was greeted with great disappointment by liberal circles in the Catholic Church. A British newspaper called him “God’s Rottweiler”. Since then, the new Pope has constantly brought on new surprises. As in his first encyclical, in which Benedict XVI shows himself to be a prophet of love.

The Pope reproaches those who have linked God’s name to vengeance, hate and violence. These words are not only directed to the prophets of hate in Islam, but also to important leaders in the western World. [Who, for instance?]

La Stampa (Italian) – What is unique in Christianity
Benedict XVI began his Pontificate at a venerable age and he has intended his first encyclical to recall to Christians – to whom this document is addressed - what is most important in Christianity, what makes Christianity unqiue among all religions, even among the monotheistic ones….

Perhaps some readers will feel somewhat dissatisfied at a document that is, by a superficial reading, hardly pragmatic and may even seem too abstract…
[This is definitely poor excerpting!]

Liberation (France) – Disappointing encyclical
When he was still the “Grand Inquisitor” as Prefect of the Congregation for the of the Faith, he was called the Panzercardinal. Pope since last April, Joseph Ratzinger has seemed to be more an advocate of snail’s pace strategy. His much-awaited first encyclical was supposed to set the tone for his Pontificate.

But he has disappointed even knowledgeable Vatican insiders. After nine months on Peter’s Chair, more waiting appears iindicated according to Vatican expert Marco Politi, (who commented) “The text is not a program at all.”
[Consider the vehicle – a Communist paper - and the ‘expert’ quoted!]

La Repubblica (Italy): No longer the Panzercardinal
Whoever has held on to the stereotype of Joseph Ratzinger as Panzercardinal must now feel proven wrong. The German Pope has served notice that today’s world, spiritually shattered and disoriented, is in need of clear words. And love is the clearest and brightest word of all.

… In this encyclical, the Pope also discloses the axes on which the Ratzinger Papacy will turn: to concentrate on the most important matters (of faith) and to defend the fundamentals of the faith in the world today.
[Disjointed excerpting]

Times (UK): The encyclical is a text for our times
For his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI could have written about one of the typical dilemmas of modern times like bioethics. Instead he has chosen to use an assessment of the Church’s charitable mission – a document that was already in the works during John Paul II’s time – to write a lyrical and passionate discourse on the different forms of love, erotic as well as godly, and over the power of love to heal and inspire. This encyclical is mystical in style and content, and it is expressly a text for our times.
[This is consistent with the newspaper’s generally approving news reports on the encyclical.]

Trouw (Netherlands): Now the Pope must satisfy expectations
With this encyclical the Pope has made an encouraging start. But it also raises questions precisely because of his earlier snarling, biting image. How do these words full of love relate to that image? How should we grasp (the concept of) love in relation to controversial things like gay marriage, the pill, women priests and (priestly)celibacy?

With his hymn to love, the Pope is raising expectations that he must fulfill. Such a high-toned encyclical must not go down unrealized.
[This is a Dutch newspaper. The polemical liberal bias is expected.]

ABC (Spain): Brilliant lesson from an intelligent Pope
Benedict XVI values conceptual precision. The text reflects the highly developed intellectual qualities of the Pope and the didactic facility of a good teacher. Even the Church must love, he says in the enycclical. Thereby the Pope elevates the ecumenical side of his Papacy, which has shown the openness of the Catholic Church towards the Protestant and Orthodox worlds.

Benedict XVI imparts a brilliant lecture in theology and antropology. The encyclical si the work of a Pope who has placed his high intellect in the service of the Church and today’s society.

And this is puzzling as well as offensive:
Tages-Anzeiger (Germany) : A Hymn to Love
“A hymn to love! From Joseph Ratzinger of all people! From him who was once defender of the fairh in his calling as the Grand Inquisitor! One has the impression that Benedict XVI wanted to correct that image with his first encyclical. Thus he treats the subject of love in the churchly-dogmatic sense exhaustively. But even Pope Benedict has little new to say.

Joseph Ratzinger obviously needs love.[liebe-beduerftig] Just as he had previously offended the world with his documents on ecumenism, sexuality or liberation theology, he avoids any hardness or sharpness in this encyclical...”
[Maybe one of our German sisters can enlighten us about this newspaper. Could it be the Tages-Anzeiger of Cologne? If so, how odd!]

John Allen on the Encylical in his 1/27/06 "Word from Rome":
www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/


By now, the heart of Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, is already familiar - that all love, including erotic love, is a gift from God, but it must be "purified" into agape, or self-giving love. Agape flows into service of one's neighbor, especially the poor and vulnerable, which is the basis for Catholic charitable work.

Noted Italian Vatican analyst Orazio Petrosillo said that the encyclical revealed the man once known as il Grande Inquisitore, "the grand inquisitor," as instead il Grande Innamorato, "the grand lover."

After a brief overview of the encyclical's contents, Allen continues -

Even apart from policy questions, there's much to learn about Benedict XVI's papacy from Deus Caritas Est.

First, he will not, as some feared, lead the Catholic church to collapse in on itself and become preoccupied with its own internal business. One can hardly imagine a theme of more universal human concern than love.

Second, while he possesses vast erudition (in the first 20 pages of Deus Caritas Est, he manages to cite Nietzsche, Descartes, and Plato), Benedict expresses himself as a pastor. He treats a core theme of Christian faith, and for the most part uses terms that don't require a license in systematic theology to grasp. While history will remember John Paul II as a great evangelist, Benedict XVI may go down as the most classic example of a "teaching pope" in modern times.

Third, for all the talk about Benedict as an Augustinian pessimist, he actually believes there are still people in the world who can be influenced by unadorned argument, shorn of theatricality or grand symbolism. In its own way, it's a remarkably optimistic stance.

Fourth, Benedict grasps the old bit of wisdom about governing the Catholic church expressed by John XXIII, who once said, "I have to be pope both of those with their foot on the gas, and those with their foot on the brake." Deus Caritas Est reflects an obvious concern for balance. He warns Catholic charitable groups they must not forget about Christ, yet understands there are times when this faith must go unspoken, so charity workers don't give the appearance of "proselytism"; he stresses the "vertical dimension" of prayer and worship, yet also writes that "a Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented."

Finally, the encyclical shows that Benedict's determination not to impose his personality upon the papacy will sometimes mean we don't get what some consider the "real" Ratzinger. One senior Vatican official, for example, told me that he felt Deus Caritas Est could have been a courageous encyclical on sexual morality, but the pope's collegial willingness to pick up the threads of a pre-existing document on charity prevented that. The reaction is analogous to frustrations that the pope is not moving fast enough to "shake up" the Curia, to reverse "business-as-usual" in the appointment of bishops, or to bring dissenting forces into line. For good or ill, his approach seems to be patient, gradual, and articulated in a "still, small voice" rather than bellowed from the rooftops.

For example, prior to the release of Deus Caritas Est, Benedict submitted his text to examination by Vatican doctrinal consultors, an act of humility that even Archbishop William Levada, the pope's successor at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, admitted Jan. 25 that he found "a little bit surprising."

In an age when public figures normally distinguish themselves by shouting and showboating, it is a fascinating management style to watch.

From the Vatican site-
On February 2, 10th World Day on the Consecrated Life, Benedict XVI will preside at
a Mass for the Istituti di Vita Consacrata at St. Peter’s Basilica. The mass
starts at 17:30 and will be preceded by blessing of candles and a procession.

Papa Ratzinger follows a tradition set by John Paul II who observed the Feast of
the Candles every year, while his health allowed it, with a special Mass.

All those who wish to offer a special candle may leave these at the main altar of
St. Peter’s by 5 p.m. on February 2.

And from ANSA –
Authoritative Vatican sources said the date for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey
later this year has been agreed on with the government of Turkey. It will coincide
with the Feast of St. Andrew, patron saint of the Patriarchate of Constantinople,
celebrated on November 30.

Benedict will meet with Patriarch Bartholomew, a meeting which was originally planned
for last St. Andrew’s Day but the Turkish government did not issue an official
invitation in time.

From DIE WELT(German newspaper) -
In addition to bookstores, over 4000 other shops in Italy – supermarkets as well as
airport and train station magazine kiosks - will be selling copies of Benedict’s first
encyclical, ‘Deus caritas est’, in its Italian version. This is in addition to the
1 million copies distributed with this week’s issue of Famiglia Cristiana, Italy’s most-
circulated magazine.

Despite the stunning news from the Middle East [the terrorist group Hamas winning
the Palestinian parliamentary elections by a landslide], the Papal encyclical made
the front pages of the world’s newspapers on Thursday, January 26, the day after
it was officially released.

Avvenire, daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, called the
“Manifesto of Love”. La Repubblica, a center-left paper, used the headline
“The church stands outside politics”, although in the recent past, it has run headlines
opposing Cardinal Camillo Ruini’s open appeal to Italian Catholics against voting
to liberalize the country’s law on assisted reproduction.

The liberal La Stampa cited from the Pope’s encyclical a quotation from St. Augustine,
who said that a state that is not defined through justice is nothing but “a big band
of thieves.” The same sentence was also picked up by Manifesto, the Communist
newspaper, but used in a different way, namely, as a balloon over the head of
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in a political cartoon.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/01/2006 23.45]

I KNOW, I KNOW. THIS SHOULD GO UNDER "BOOKS ABOUT BENEDICT" BUT IT'S ALSO NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT SO...

From America Magazine, which is usually pretty darn liberal.
Vol. 194 No. 4, February 6, 2006

A Papacy of Dialogue?

By John Jay Hughes

Visiting Rome in early 1959, while still an Anglican priest, I asked a learned Benedictine from Belgium who was prior of the monastery where I was staying, whether he had attended the funeral of Pope Pius XII six months earlier. His reply, an apt comment on the style of papal liturgies of that era: “I never attend such ceremonies. It is time wasted, and not edifying.” What a change we have witnessed since then in the institution once proud to boast that “the church never changes.” The hundreds of thousands who attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in April of last year and the millions more who witnessed it on television found it deeply edifying—and time well spent. In their new books, both Hans-Joachim Fischer and George Weigel give full accounts of the funeral, including Cardinal Ratzinger’s homily. Weigel gives the text in full—fittingly so, for it was this above all that got Cardinal Ratzinger his present job.

That is an oversimplification, of course. Fischer and Weigel, as well as Laurence Paul Hemming, show that during Ratzinger’s 23 years as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while he was acquiring the media image of “the Panzer Cardinal” and “God’s Rottweiler,” he was steadily building a reputation among the world episcopate as a bishop of deep faith and personal modesty, a man of warmth, gentleness and unaffected charm—and above all, a good listener. At John Paul’s death no other cardinal was so well known by his peers, or knew them so well, as Joseph Ratzinger. Over the years they had all visited him in his office at the C.D.F.

The only one of the four authors reviewed here to accept the media caricature of Ratzinger is Michael S. Rose. He is the author of previous books alleging a homosexual takeover of American seminaries, and castigating “reformists of the Catholic Left” for their iconoclastic assaults on the mostly second- and third-rate neogothic piles erected by the sacrifices of poor believers in the heyday of the immigrant church. In Benedict XVI: The Man Who Was Ratzinger, Rose not only accepts the media caricature of his subject, he glories in it. He is confident that Pope Benedict will put to flight once and for all those pesky “reformists” who, as the shadows of John Paul II’s papacy lengthened, called with increasing urgency for a new pope who would reverse John Paul’s controversial moral stands; abolish priestly celibacy; permit the ordination of women, gays and lesbians; accept abortion and euthanasia; and promote New Age spirituality.

The rot set in, he tells us, under Pope Paul VI, who “revolutionized the hierarchy through the elevation of out-and-out renegades to the episcopacy.” It continued, sad to say, under John Paul II, because of his neglect of administration. Rose’s indictment may contain elements of truth. But the overall effect is that of a distorted reflection in a fun-house mirror. Sections of the book read like an extended rant, well calculated to quicken the pulse of readers who have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the postconciliar church.

Hemming, dean of research at Heythrop College in the University of London and a transitional deacon for the Archdiocese of Westminster, shares many of Rose’s tastes, in particular his regret over the loss of the Latin liturgy. His account of Joseph Ratzinger’s personality and thought, however, is a model of fairness and balance. In Benedict XVI: Fellow Worker for the Truth, he points out, correctly, that with regard to Vatican II Ratzinger is not the conservative people like Rose take him to be, but a radical. Benedict XVI views the council as a return to the church’s roots in Scripture and tradition in its 2,000-year fullness. Those who rejoiced at Ratzinger’s election because they had accepted the media caricature, Hemming writes, are bound for disappointment. Pope Benedict sees the church’s role not as that of a policeman, but of a doctor dispensing medicine for sin and its effects. He is not afraid to dispute issues of the most serious kind, and is unafraid too of disagreement. “Above all this will be a papacy of dialogue,” Hemming concludes.

Weigel and Fischer agree. The latter, a resigned priest who remains devoted to the church, studied philosophy and theology at Rome’s Gregorian University. He first met Joseph Ratzinger in 1976, when the latter was teaching in Regensburg. Fischer, a longtime journalist for Germany’s leading newspaper, preceded Ratzinger to Rome. His friendship with the man who is now pope speaks highly for both men. Fischer’s Pope Benedict XVI: A Personal Portrait emphasizes Benedict’s joy in life and in a religious faith in which, from childhood, he has always felt completely at home. Thanks to his early years, Fischer writes, the new pope is a “positive” man. He can remain tranquil in the face of critics, because he sees more strongly than they do “the small and happy beauties of life.” No populist, Benedict will be more engaged than was John Paul II in church governance (having experienced at first hand the consequences of his predecessor’s neglect of this area). But the curial cardinals know he will not interfere in their offices or areas of competence.

Immediately after the conclave, Fischer writes, the cardinals’ tongues were loosened—not about the balloting, but about the reasons for their choice. While they admired John Paul’s firmness, many acknowledged that it could seem like “excessive rigidity, even an old man’s obstinacy.” The cardinals wanted a successor equally firm in doctrine, but able to communicate with charm and friendliness (qualities the cardinals had personally experienced both during their visits to the C.D.F. over the years, and in the fortnight before the conclave): “not someone like John Paul who, as Vatican insiders liked to put it, used his naked fists to punch holes in any walls in front of him.” A cardinal from the South told Fischer that they had been looking for “ a pope who would hand back to God the responsibility for the world, and to Jesus, the founder of Christianity, the responsibility for the Church.”

The rightness of the cardinals’ choice was confirmed by Benedict’s obvious comfort with a role he had never sought and clearly dreaded. Already by the conclusion of his inaugural Mass five days after his election, Benedict “seemed to have been pope forever.” Fischer’s book is an engaging read. Unfortunately the translation is sometimes awkward (papal cassocks that do not fit are “unfittingly made”), sometimes simply wrong (“libertine” where what Fischer means is “libertarian”).

George Weigel devotes the first 74 pages of God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church to a review of the pontificate just ended, a task for which he is eminently qualified as author of his magisterial if somewhat hagiographical biography of John Paul II. The real question in the cardinals’ minds prior to the conclave, Weigel writes, was not Ratzinger’s media image (which he rightly dismisses), but his capacity for governance. Trying to dampen his chances of election, Ratzinger himself told people during the interregnum that he was no administrator. Cardinals concerned on this score took comfort, however, in the belief that a man so well aware of his limitations would, as pope, “get himself the help he needed.”

Both Weigel and Hemming emphasize Benedict’s affinity for Augustine rather than Aquinas. He is the first non-Thomist for centuries to have headed the church’s central doctrinal office. It is not only that Augustine was the topic of Joseph Ratzinger’s doctoral dissertation (“Augustine’s Doctrine of the Church as People and House of God”). Augustine lived in a world in which the glue that had held society together for centuries was coming apart, and the shape of what was to come was not discernible—a world very much like our own. If there is a strong element of pessimism in Augustine’s thought (as in that of his papal disciple today), it is relieved by soaring optimism rooted in unshakable faith in the God who (as we read in the last book of the Bible) “makes all things new.”

The most enjoyable part of Weigel’s book is his diary of the preconclave period. For those who were not there, he brings alive the excitement of swirling rumors, hopes and fears—and the humor. The Latin American cardinals, he hears, do not want a return to Italian “normality” in the Vatican, in which some curial cardinals treat Latin Americans as colonials and cardinals from the developing world with contempt. Cardinals Renato Martino and Angelo Sodano have e-mailed lengthy curricula vitae to journalists, the latter prior to John Paul’s funeral. Luigi Accattoli, the leading Italian Vaticanologist, “has some kind of mole inside the General Congregation of cardinals.” (Was Weigel envious?) Two days before the conclave London’s Sunday Times “disgraces itself with a heavy-breathing front-page story about Joseph Ratzinger, Hitler Youth.” Freed by the prospect of comfortable digs and a good kitchen in the Domus Sanctae Marthae from their predecessors’ dread of bunk beds and chamber pots, none of the cardinals were running out at the last minute for a final decent meal.

Two details remain to be considered: the new style of pallium worn by Pope Benedict, and his choice of a name. Fischer gives the dimensions of the pallium, of a size and shape not seen for a millennium, without mentioning its symbolism. It is a visible reminder of something Ratzinger has been saying for years: reunion between Constantinople and Rome would not require acceptance of anything beyond the common faith of East and West in the first millennium. An even clearer symbol is the replacement of the tiara by a bishop’s miter in Benedict’s coat of arms.

Fischer discloses that on a walk with Ratzinger before the conclave, the cardinal said he hoped the next pope would call himself Benedict. This would signal a desire “to go behind the Johns and Pauls and Piuses of recent decades to take up the tradition of the past and continue it into the future.”

It was this reasoning that caused me to start predicting several years ago that John Paul’s successor would call himself Benedict. Never for a moment, however, did I dream he would be my old teacher, Joseph Ratzinger. George Weigel discloses that this honor—and an honor it is, for few dared to predict Ratzinger before John Paul’s death—belongs to a Philadelphia priest and former staff member of the C.D.F. who died in May 2004, Msgr. Thomas Herron. He started telling friends in 2002 that his old boss at the C.D.F. would be the next pope.

Finally, a revealing anecdote reported by an eyewitness deserves to be recorded. The day after Benedict’s election, NBC television broadcast interviews with two men in Rome with contrasting views of the new pope. The Rev. Andrew Greeley, who made no secret that Ratzinger was not his candidate, spoke generously about Benedict. As he descended from the rooftop from which the interview was broadcast, he encountered George Weigel, about to go up to give his own views. Congratulating Greeley for his warm remarks, Weigel received the reply: “I’m trying to be a good loser.” To which Weigel responded: “I’m trying to be a good winner.”

Is it going too far to see in this brief exchange an echo of the graciousness of the new pope himself?

Pope Benedict XVI:
The Man Who Was Ratzinger
By Michael S. Rose
Spence. 183p $22.95
ISBN 1890626635
Benedict XVI

Fellow Worker for the Truth
An Introduction to His Life and Thought
By Laurence Paul Hemming
Burns & Oates/Continuum. 183p $16.95
ISBN 0860124096
Pope Benedict XVI

A Personal Portrait
By Hans-Joachim Fischer
Crossroad. 213p $19.95
ISBN 0824523725!
God's Choice

Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church
By George Weigel
HarperCollins. 296p $26.95
ISBN 0066213312

The Rev. John Jay Hughes is a priest of the St. Louis Archdiocese and a church historian.

AND MORE

Also from America Magazine
Vol. 194 No. 4, February 6, 2006

Of Many Things

By Drew Christiansen

Until the appearance on Jan. 25 of Pope Benedict’s XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Est Caritas, observers had been searching with little success for hints of the new pope’s mind. Some conservatives have felt particularly stymied by the lack of red-meat decrees and denunciations. Wary progressives feared what might still come. In defiance of these expectations, Pope Benedict’s style has been calm, even serene, and sometimes comfortably pastoral. A book whose English translation is to be announced this week, written with the non-doctrinaire secularist president of the Italian senate, Professor Marcello Pera, will, I think, confirm the interpretation of Benedict’s pontificate as one of spiritual sensitivity, learning and openness. Doubtless, culture-warriors will try to spin the book as a blow against a corrupt European culture, but the text shows Benedict to be a subtle critic of post-Enlightenment Western society and a deft strategist of spiritual renewal in public life.

Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity and Islam (Basic Books) has been assembled from two lectures, one by each of the authors, and two formal letters between them, written in 2004, when the Vatican was embroiled in the debate over the inclusion of Europe’s Christian heritage in the European constitution. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s lecture traces the shifting boundaries of European civilization from Herodotus’s account of the Persian Wars to the recent debates over multiculturalism. His intellectual antagonists are clearly the doctrinaire secularists or laicists, who would exclude any religious influence in public affairs. (The uncorrected proofs—in line with a strange Italian usage—erroneously terms them “lay people.”) His fundamental conviction is that the coherence of Western civilization depends on an ethic of human dignity and human rights founded on belief in God.

As pessimistic as Benedict may be about Europe, he seems optimistic about the United States. Here, as he sees it, a fruitful separation of church and state arose that allows the church to be church. In the United States, he writes, religion “emerges as a pre-political and supra-political force with the potential to have a decisive impact on political life.” He acknowledges the contribution the U.S. bishops made to the Second Vatican Council’s historic affirmation of religious liberty. “They brought to the issue,” he writes, “and to the Catholic tradition the experience of the non-state church (which had proven to be the condition for protecting the public value of fundamental Christian principles) as a Christian form that emerged from the nature of the Church.”

Another feature of Without Roots is Pope Benedict’s openness to religious developments both within and without the Catholic Church. Employing the metaphor of the tree sprung from the mustard seed (Matt 13:32), he observes, “Perhaps the church has forgotten that the tree of the Kingdom of God reaches beyond the branches of the visible church, but that is precisely why it must be a hospitable place in whose branches many guests find a place.” He concludes that both secularists “and Catholics, seekers and believers, in the dense thicket of branches filled with many birds, must reach each other with new openness.”

Another side of this receptivity is seen in Pope Benedict’s approach to public philosophy. While he adheres to belief in unique Christian insight into the moral order, he affirms the possibility of a common ethics. “The rationality of the arguments,” he writes, “should close the gap between secular ethics and religious ethics and found an ethics of reason that goes beyond such distinction.” Given the lack of consensus, particularly on life issues, however, he concedes that “politics is the art of compromise.” Christians should, at the very least, he argues, have the right of conscientious objection. “[T]he Church does not wish to impose on others,” he writes, “that which they do not understand, but it expects that others will at least respect those who allow their reason to be guided by their Christian faith.”

Without Roots is a set of occasional, unofficial documents, much of the text written in very broad strokes. Some things are stated with greater clarity than others. I was puzzled by its failure to mention the influence of Renaissance Scholasticism on European constitutionalism and theories of human rights, and I wondered about its silence over the church’s alliance with the ancien régime as a contributing factor in the rise of aggressive secularism. All in all, though, these brief essays give evidence of the open mind possessed by a spiritual reformer in search of ways by which reason and spirit can come together in the service of humanity.

Drew Christiansen, S.J., is editor in chief of America.