NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

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
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"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!
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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 -

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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.

Thanks to Gerald Augustinus at http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com for his translation of the following statement from Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn,
Archbishop of Vienna, on the Pope's encyclical:
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The Apostle John, in his old age, had only one thing to say in his letters, only one thing was dear to his heart and he returns to it time and time again: "God is love" (1 John 4,16). Pope Benedict XVI, as his first and most important statement of his pontificate, has only that to say, that which encompasses all and gives meaning to everything: "Deus Caritas Est". My first impression of this Encyclical is: full of strength, clarity and hope.

For 23 years Cardinal Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. All erroneous teachings, moral aberrations, conflicts of teachings and morals of our age landed on his desk, had to be studied, discussed, clarified and sometimes sanctioned by him. He has not become bitter over it. His view of the world and of humans has not been darkened by all those difficulties. His first Encyclical is fresh and brimming with confidence, its realism is devoid of pessimism. For this, there is only one reason for the 78-year-old successor of Peter: With the favorite disciple John, he says. "We have believed love."

This faith in love is radiating from the Encyclical from beginning to end. This faith is contagious, is deeply convincing and entirely rational. It would not be "Papa Ratzinger" wielding the quill, if it were not wisely argued from A to Z. The heart speaks as well as reason and it is not easy to escape the convincing force of his train of thought. The two parts of the Encyclical are like the two lungs of which Pope John Paul II spoke so often. They are like two hands that form a whole only upon cooperation.

How the Bible views love is what the first part talks about - it is about the "love story" between God and His people. The love between humans flows from the original font, the love of God. The seeking of one another of lovers is the image of God seeking man, His creature. As distinctly as rarely before, this Encyclical lays out how Agape, the love of neighbor, has its origin in Eros. In Christ, the Incarnation of God's love, this seeking takes on dramatic form. God follows, in Jesus, the lost sheep, the suffering and lost mankind. The Church can and must not act differently - that is what the second part of the Encyclical is about. It talks about "Caritas", as charity, the active service of love of the Church. A "Charity-Encyclical"? Maybe the first in the history of Encyclicals? Certainly, but also more. Charity belongs inseparably to the Church, as do Sacrament and Word, from the very beginning.

THEY JUST DON'T SEEM TO KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF HIM

Benedict: A Man of His Words

By IAN FISHER
New York Times
January 29, 2006

THE old pope was dead. And a potential new one, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a man who somehow combined scholarly humility and a muscular certainty, gave a speech now famous among many Catholics.

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires," Cardinal Ratzinger said at St. Peter's Basilica, the morning last April before he and his fellow cardinals retreated into the majesty of the Sistine Chapel to decide who among them would become the leader of the world's billion Catholics.

It was, for one priest who knows Cardinal Ratzinger, a "hold your hats" moment — not a campaign speech, but a warning, expressed typically vividly, that, should they choose him, the church would be in for an action-packed ride.

He did become pope, Benedict XVI. But to general surprise, the nine months that have followed have been marked less by action than by words — a flow of clear, rational, often lovely words — no less vivid than his "dictatorship of relativism" speech but usually more gentle.

At the moment, Benedict seems more, in the words of one Vatican watcher, "the teaching pope." Call him, maybe, the "lucid pope."

This perhaps unexpected turn was summed up last week in his first encyclical, the highest form of papal pronouncement. He set out no specific program for his papacy to re-evangelize an increasingly godless Europe, for example, or to denounce homosexuality, abortion or secularism.

He spoke, instead, of love.

And not just love in the abstract, but in the first place of carnal love, between man and woman — if they are married, monogamous and committed to each other for life.

"While the biblical narrative does not speak of punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become 'complete,' " Benedict wrote. (This led the conservative Italian newspaper, Il Foglio, to run a front page scribble of what looked like the pope dancing with a nun over the caption: "The encyclical: Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll!")

For the many keen watchers of Benedict, a number of questions are surfacing: Are words enough in a papacy? Do the words themselves constitute a plan? Is it simply still too early to judge the reign of Benedict?

After his election, supporters spoke of Benedict's "clarity," expressed in decades of writings as a popular theology professor in Germany, then for two decades as Pope John Paul II's defender of the faith. His writing style, as many people have noted, is remarkably clear and down to earth, especially for a German academic handling the most complicated, really unknowable, subjects on earth.

Some of his most often cited words tend toward the harsh: for example, his worries about "filth" in the church expressed last year. But more than one middle-aged priest in Rome can remember as a student reading Joseph Ratzinger's best-regarded book, "Introduction to Christianity," and marveling at his comparison between the problems faced by believer and the atheist.

"Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief, which he must experience as a constant temptation, so for the unbeliever, faith remains a temptation and a threat to his apparently permanently closed world," he wrote. "In short, there is no escape from the dilemma of being a man."

In comparison with John Paul, often referred to here in Rome as sort of mystic, Benedict is unfailingly rational, realistic and clear-eyed about the problems in the church. Last summer, he said that for many people in the world "the church seems to be outdated, our proposals unnecessary."

There are a number of theories about the strategy behind Benedict's so far low-key focus on the word.

The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, a leading voice against abortion, noted that some conservatives in the church would prefer more action, especially in the internal governance. But, he said, Benedict seems to have decided first to state clearly the overall value of the church and its teachings in terms that most Catholics can agree on.

"He has to put in front of people's eyes something positive," he said. "Following from that he can systematically dismantle the cultures of death, cultural decadence and moral relativism."

For John L. Allen Jr., a reporter for National Catholic Reporter, the words fit into Benedict's familiar concerns that the church may shrink, since it is less these days a faith of culture and tradition than a choice of a smaller number of more fervent believers.

It is those people, Mr. Allen said, who will seek out those words, as opposed to simply being inspired by something like John Paul's broader charismatic appeal.

There is another theory: that Benedict has decided on a papacy that falls, in fact, less into the world-event-shaping office of John Paul than on a more traditional one where the pope's is one of many voices in the church.

"Quite deliberately, Benedict has said, 'I am not going to say as much,' " said Nicholas Lash, an eminent British Catholic theologian. "There has been a delicious silence for the most part."

its absolutely brilliant!!! thanks for all the articles about his encyclical!

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has already come out with the English version of the Pope's first encyclical, available at
www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/store.ItemDetails/SKU/544/Cat...



OOPS! SORRY...Just checked the USCCB site itself
www.usccbpublishing.org/productdetails.cfm?sku=5-758
and it says, as you will see, that the product will not be available till February 14 - but you may place your orders now.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/01/2006 23.01]

Papa's media critics painted themselves into a corner from which they are now trying to extricate themselves with as much grace as they can manage. What a different tone Ian Fisher's New York Times weekend review article has from his original
report on the encyclical (which was thoroughly 'fisked' - i.e., refuted or commented on point by point - by a conscientious pro-B16 blogger as we referred to in an earlier post)!

And now here are accounts from the Guardian newspapers of the UK, Guardian and Observer, whose writers and editors cannot hide they are 'pleased" over the encyclical and yet another surprise from Benedict yesterday.
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Pope's olive branch to divorcees
Benedict surprises critics with decision to help fast-track annulments of failed marriages
Barbara McMahon in Rome and David Smith in London
Sunday January 29, 2006
The Observer

Pope Benedict signalled a dramatic break with the past yesterday when he acknowledged the plight of divorcees who are banned from taking communion after remarriage and appealed to a Vatican tribunal to issue 'rapid' rulings on annulment requests.
It was the second time this week that the newly elected Pope has displayed strong liberal leanings, confounding his critics and the world's Catholics and showing another side to his previously stern image, which has been unfavourably compared with his predecessor, John Paul II.

On Wednesday his long-awaited first encyclical - a message to the 1.1 billion members of the Roman Catholic church - was a warm meditation on the power of love and was greeted with astonishment and relief by senior Catholics.

In Rome yesterday he directly addressed a central tenet of Catholic doctrine that has caused distress to many followers of the church, which states that remarried divorcees are regarded as being in a permanent state of sin and cannot receive communion.

The 78-year-old pontiff, in a speech to the Roman Rota - the tribunal that decides annulments - acknowledged that there was 'pastoral concern' about the predicament of these Catholics.

He told the panel that its decisions should come quickly for the sake of the faithful. An annulment means that a marriage was invalid, leaving the faithful free to remarry and receive communion.

In his speech to the tribunal yesterday, the Pope said it was very important that annulment rulings emerge in a reasonable amount of time. Some couples who apply for annulments have to wait four or five years for a decision, meaning their lives as Catholics are essentially on hold.

The Pope said, however, that it was also important that couples were helped to try to work out their problems and 'to find the path of reconciliation'.

The pontiff's comments came after it was revealed in the Italian press this week that Vatican granted nine out of every 10 annulments requested. In 2004, the last year for which figures are available, 46,060 annulments were requested, of which, 42,920 were granted.

Leading British Catholics hailed the comments. Cristina Odone, The Observer columnist and former editor of the Catholic Herald, said: 'This is a huge sea change. Just the fact that he mentions it is important. Only a few days he issued the first encyclical... about something we're all obsessed with, which is love. He acknowledged that sexual love can be the springboard for spiritual happiness, which is a very bold move for any Pope. Here he is saying ... compassion is more important than dogma. It's an incredible change of the mood.'

Odone said the Pope had surprised Catholic commentators, including herself. 'He is more open minded than any of us thought... With these steps, he seems to be liberating Catholics from the guilt that they always bring to sex.'

Monsignor Andrew Faley, assistant general secretary of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said: 'He was portrayed as "German Rottweiler to German shepherd". The media based that assumption on him as Joseph Ratzinger the Cardinal Prefect, when he had to be more 'hardline'. He is now more pastorally focused because he is pontiff. He is showing himself to be a bridge builder, which is what pontiff means.'
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Here is how the Guardian first reported on the encyclical:
Pope surprises Catholics with warm words on power of love
First message to flock warns against word being reduced to a sexual commodity
Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent
Thursday January 26, 2006
The Guardian


Pope Benedict XVI thawed his previously chilly image yesterday by producing as his first message to his worldwide flock a notably warm rumination on the nature of love. Deus Caritas Est - God is Love - marked Benedict's first encyclical or pastoral letter to the 1.1 billion members of the Roman Catholic Church since his election last April and was greeted last night with some astonishment and relief among senior Catholics.

The 71-page document spoke of love between men and women and also of the need for unconditional love towards all mankind. But it also warned against the word becoming reduced to a sexual commodity. "I wish ... to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others ... 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. Love is free; it is not practised as a way of achieving other ends."

Its central message was far from the finger-wagging, "thou shalt not" tone that characterised some of his predecessor's pronouncements and contrasted with Benedict's own stern reputation during his 24 years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's enforcer of doctrinal orthodoxy. Catholic observers suggested that the document, written largely by the Pope himself during the latter half of last year, represented a truer indication of his nature than his image would suggest. Monsignor Andrew Faley, assistant general secretary of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said: "I think it is a wonderful document. It is much more reflective and conversational in tone and less prescriptive than some past encyclicals. He is calling on people to reflect on the central truth of love. We are seeing the substance of the man as a pastor and shepherd of the flock. A cuddly Benedict? Well, well."

Catherine Pepinster, editor of the Catholic weekly The Tablet, said: "I am delighted: it is very direct, idealistic and warm-hearted. We are struggling not to be too gushing in this week's editorial." [Note: We posted the Tablet editorial
earlier]
.......

While the encyclical did not break new ground or revise Church policy on sexual issues - towards gays or on birth control for instance - it was certainly more emollient than many Vatican documents in the recent past and its message is likely to determine the character of Benedict XVI's papacy....

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Of course, the line is still: "Oh, so there's another side to Ratzinger!" Come now, the whole man was there all along, but you guys only wanted to see him as your bete noire, so you deliberately ignored who he is because it doesn't square with how you wished to paint him! Now, let's see how long this new-found goodwill will last.!

Here is the statement released by the Focolare founder Chiara Lubitsch commenting on Deus caritas est.
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‘God is Love’: new hope for the world
By Chiara Lubich


“God is Love.” What great gratitude we felt for Pope Benedict XVI from the moment that the title of his first encyclical was announced! He enkindled in us the flame of hope – the hope that the great announcement, “God is Love,” that the word “love” brought back to its “original splendor,” may overflow to infinity, like a stone that is thrown into the water and causes wider and wider circles. The interest shown by the media, even before its presentation and much more so now, is a prediction of what will come.

“God is Love” is most certainly the Word that Jesus wants to say today in this new millennium.

Yes, love is inscribed in the very nature of the Church, as the Pope writes. To the rich heritage of Church history new charisms have been added, brought about by the Holy Spirit in recent decades. The message - “God is Love! God loves you just as you are!” – has been passed from person to person, on the strength of personal testimonies, transforming the lives of millions of people.

For us, it was a light that shone out in the darkest hour of history, during the Second World War, illuminating the whole Gospel, making us discover that Jesus was not afraid of pronouncing the word “love.” Actually, we understood that it is love itself which is the heart of His message, and, yes, “the primordial creative power that moves the universe,” moving our own little personal histories as well as the great history of the world.

I am certain that the encyclical of the Pope will arouse a spontaneous echo from the entire Church, and even beyond. If living love is not limited to helping our neighbor concretely, but also urges us to “communicate to others the love of God that we ourselves have received,” what will emerge is the great wealth of that love that is often lived heroically, in silence, within the family, in governments and factories, in universities and neighborhoods, in the most depressed areas of the world, among those whose face reflects the very face of the God-Man himself who cries out the abandonment by His Father.

In this way, we will make “visible in some way the living God” and his action in our times, as is the hope of Benedict XVI.

And God, who is rediscovered as Love, will attract the whole world.

It will be the first – and perhaps the only – mega-assembly at St. Peter’s Square with Pope Benedict XVI in 2006.

On Pentecost Saturday, June 3, he will meet representatives of all the church movements from around the world, Apcom reports, citing authoritative Vatican sources. Some 300,000 are expected to attend, including movements ike Communion and Liberation (CL), the Focolari, Catholic Action and the Neo-Catechumenal Way.

The event has been given the name “Surprised by Christ”, and reprises the first such world assembly held on May 30, 1998, with John Paul II. The World Congress of Ecclesiastical Movements was organized by the Pontifical Council for the Laity. On that day, Don Giussani, founder of CL; Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolari; and Kiko Arguello, founder of the Neo-Cathechumenal Way, gave witness in the presence of John Paul II.

“These movements represent one of the most significant fruits of that springtime of the Church anticipated by Vatican II,“ John Paul II said at the time.

On the same day that the Guardian published the story mentioned above on the Pope offering "an olive branch to divorcees", Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian newspaper, and Catholic World News published their own reading of the Pope's prepared remarks to the Roman Rota, the basis for this story.

Comparing the three stories, Corriere hazards the most forward interpretation, while CWN has the most conservative. The Guardian story is halfway between the two extremes.
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First, from Corriere della Sera - in translation :

"Faithless" marriages, new rules
A Papal document to authorize grounds for annulment

Benedict XVI is preparing a document to answer the problem of whether to authorize church tribunals to mullify marriages which were contracted “without faith.”

The pope appesred to indicate this when he addressed priests, officials and advocates of the Holy Rota when receiving them at the start of the judicial year. He said he did not intend to address the problem directly “in the present circumstance”.

If indeed this problem is resolved positively, then it would constitute a true revolution. It would allow many situations to be regularized and allow Catholic couples, now in irregular unions, to receive Communion.

The Synodal fathers rhemselves proposed to the Pope last October a pastoral “re-visitation” of canon law to find “new areas of flexibility” in the matter of marriage annulments. It will not be easy for Papa Ratzinger to find the right formula for the anticipated document.

As he emphasized in July to the parish priests of Val d’Aosta, it has to do with resolving “the situation of those who had a Church wedding no being true believers but merely to follow tradition, and who later find themselves in a new state of matrimony – which is non-valid (having had an earlier ‘valid’ marriage in Church) – but who have since found the faith or convert to Catholicism and feel excluded from the Sacraments. “

“On the one hand, “ the Pope told the Rota yesterday, “it seems that the Synodal fathers have invited the church tribunals to work so that the faithful who are not canoically married
may regularize their matrimonial situation as soon as possible and rejoin the Eucharistic rite.”

“On the other hand, canon law and the recent instruction (Dignitatis Connubii – last document issued by John Paul II) would seem to impose limits to such pastoral initiative, as though the principal concern was simply to follow the prescribed juridical formalities, with the risk of forgetting the pastoral objective of the whole process.”

How to find the middle way? The Pope continued: “Such a formulation places the law and pastoral duty in contraposition…(but) in this first meeting, I prefer to concentrate on that which represents the fundamental point of intersection between law and pastoral duty: love for the truth.”

He then proceeded to urge more speed in processing such cases: “The canonical process of annulling matrimony is an instrument to determine the truth about the conjugal link. Its constitutive purpose is therefore not to unnecessarily complicate the life of those involved, much less to exacerbate litigiousness, but only to do service to the truth.”

The problem on which Benedict XVI will issue what may be a motu proprio is complicated by the possibility that the tribunals, in acting generously, may encourage even non-Christians to use this channel to get a “Catholic divorce.” Therefore, yesterday, he said that “it would be deceptive to think of this service as available, even implicitly, to Catholics and their non-Christian spouses who find their marriage in dificulty, thus strengthening any tendency to forget the principle of indissolubility of marriage.”

Until his document comes out, however, he advised priests to be very attentive that couples who present themselves for marriage truly have the faith: “Pastoral sensitivity should seek to prevent eventual annulments by being exercised at the start, during the process of admitting couples for matrimony.”
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And here's the report from Catholic World News:
www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=42129

Tribunals should work quickly, defend marriage, Pope says

Vatican, Jan. 30 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI underlined the indissolubility of marriage, and rued the fact that "this truth is so often forgotten," as he spoke on January 28 to officials of the Roman Rota.

The Holy Father said that couples seeking annulments of their marriages have a right to a reasonable fast response from Church tribunals. However, he stressed that annulments should be granted only when the evidence indicates that a true marriage never took place. The Pope strongly denied that a "pastoral" approach could overlook the requirements of the Church's legal process.

The work of the Roman Rota is dominated by marital issues, and as he met with the official of the Vatican tribunal in a private audience, at the start of their judicial year, the Pope asked them to adhere carefully to the terms of Dignitatis Connubii, the Vatican document released in 2005 to guide the work of marriage tribunals.

Pope Benedict acknowledged the lively public discussion of the Church's discipline barring Catholics who are divorced and remarried from receiving the Eucharist. He observed that the Synod of Bishops, meeting last October to discuss the Eucharist, had "called on ecclesiastical courts to make every effort to ensure that members of the faithful not canonically married may, as soon as possible, regularize their domestic situations," and thus be admitted to communion.

But the Pope flatly rejected the idea that the canonical process involved in annulment is merely a matter of "legal formalities." That idea, he said, implies "a supposed conflict between law and pastoral care in general." To counter that notion, Pope Benedict reminded the officials of the Roman Rota that the purpose of Church tribunals is to arrive at a "declaration of truth by an impartial third party."

Marriage, the Holy Father continued, is an indissoluble contract, "not something of which the spouses can dispose at will." Thus when a couple brings a petition for annulment, the goal of the tribunal must be to determine whether or not, in fact, a valid marriage occurred.

In assessing each case, the Pope continued, the tribunal should be guided by the search for truth. He cautioned strongly against any tendency to compromise the rigor of that search, in a misguided effort to find serve the needs of individuals. "Such attitudes may seem pastoral," the Pope admitted; "but in reality they do not respond to the good of the individuals, or that of the ecclesial community."

As he concluded his remarks, Pope Benedict said that the Church should also be working "to prevent nullity of marriage," by preparing couples more fully for Christian matrimony and by helping married couples to resolve conflicts and form a deeper mutual commitment.

The Pontiff's talk to the Roman Rota followed the same lines as remarks he had given last July, in an informal address to Italian priests with whom he met during his vacation in the Italian Alps. At that time Pope Benedict had acknowledged the complexity involved in many marriage cases, and the pain felt by couples who are unable to receive Communion because of a divorce and remarriage. But he argued that the Church cannot change her discipline without compromising the integrity of marriage.

The Vatican instruction Dignitatis Connubii, to which the Pope referred in his talk, was prepared as a guide to diocesan tribunals in handling marriage cases. The Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts released the instruction in response to reports of wide discrepancies between the way annulment petitions were handled in different diocesan tribunals.

The tribunal of the Roman Rota acts as an appeals court in marriage cases (and other canonical proceedings), hearing appeals of judgments that have been rendered by any of the 3,000 canonical tribunals around the world. In 2004 (the last year for which full statistics are available) the Roman Rota received 246 appeals regarding marriage annulments. Of these, 163 came from dioceses in Europe, 73 from the Americas, and 10 from Asia; there were no such appeals from Africa, Australia, or Oceania.

With only 20 judges hearing the cases, an appeal to the Roman Rota can be a time-consuming process; the average case lasts nearly two years. These long processes, however, involve only those cases in which an appeal is sent to the Vatican. The vast majority of annulment petitions are resolved by local diocesan tribunals.

First Musings on Benedict XVI's First Encyclical
By Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.


Benedict has done for magisterial documents what J.R.R. Tolkien did for literature: drawn on his immense erudition to express in clear and beautiful language the longings of the human heart.

Who would have thought that the first encyclical of the "Panzerkardinal" would have as a centerpiece the exaltation of the love of eros between a man and a woman? Here is the man who has been portrayed for decades as the great nay-sayer, the enforcer of doctrine, a successor to the Holy Inquisition.

But to those who have read his works, are familiar with his life, or have had the privilege of knowing him, the encyclical is no surprise. He has a penetrating intellect which always goes to the heart of the matter. He has a sense of the poetry of life and of revelation, which gives his writing clarity, depth and beauty. And he is someone who listens both to the living and those whose thoughts come to us through their books and works of art. Then from all that he's seen and heard, he's able to synthesize and organize and present an idea or position in a coherent way that always illuminates.

I see this as a foundational encyclical. And I hope he has a long enough papacy to build on this strong foundation. He has taken the very heart of Christian revelation as a starting point, the central truth of the Christian faith: God is love.

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he would periodically issue statements that were responses to controversial issues. By the very nature of what he was doing, there was less willingness on the part of readers to listen with an open mind when the principles behind a decision were being elaborated. Here, he develops unpolemically the most fundamental of principles: the human love of eros as an image of divine love.

He develops the historical understanding of this love and its transformation in the light of Christian revelation in a way that is, at least on the surface, uncontroversial. However, the consequences of what he says clearly are controversial.

For example, he maintains that Christianity did not destroy eros (#4) but disciplined and purified it, restoring it to its true grandeur (#5). "It is part of love's growth toward higher levels and inward purification that it now seeks to become definitive, and it does so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being 'forever'" (#6).

But this beautiful reflection implies a very controversial consequence: genuine eros leads to an exclusive and permanent relationship between a man and a woman. That is, it excludes homosexual unions, multiple wives, divorce and remarriage, and promiscuity.

Later he shows that in the Biblical vision "eros is...supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to become one with agape" (#10). The Biblical account shows that "eros is somehow rooted in man's very nature...[It] directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive. Corresponding to the image of the monotheistic God is monogamous marriage" (#11).

In this encyclical, Benedict XVI both gets beneath and transcends the controversies. He establishes a genuine "common ground" and shows how its "inner logic" (a phrase which he uses often) leads to the same conclusions that the Catholic Church teaches as authoritative.

I found it interesting to look at his citations. Within the text, he quotes or alludes to Sacred Scripture frequently. But here is the exact sequence of the authors he cites in the endnotes: Nietzsche, Virgil, Descartes, Gregory the Great (two times), Aristotle, Pseudo-Dionysius the Aereopagite, Plato, Sallust, St. Augustine (two times), Justin Martyr, Ignatius of Antioch, Ambrose, Julian the Apostate. Only then does he cite a recent ecclesiastical document: the Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops, issued by the congregation for bishops in 2004.

He is speaking to bishops, priests, religious and the Catholic laity. But he is speaking to all of humanity and he is speaking from the deepest wellsprings of human culture. The document, like the man, is a distillation and expression of a universal wisdom.

The professor has become a Pope. You note in the document many enumerations of aspects or consequences of a particular thought. He will summarize at the end of a section what he considers he has achieved in the foregoing elaboration. He will speak of the "inner logic" of the subject he is treating. And he will show the coherence of all the elements in a higher synthesis (eros/agape; divine/human love; soul/body; love/service). That is to say, it is truly "catholic".

I noted with particular interest that he has definitely taken stand in the debate on the so-called "inclusive" language. The document in its English translation is dominated by ordinary English usage: man, the generic masculine pronoun, mankind, brethren. But he does use "he or she", "men and women", where it is appropriate, though sparingly.

From www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/jfessio_encyclical_j...

Papa wrote a letter about the encyclical for the readers of FAMIGLIA CRISTIANA in the issue that finally has the first encyclical as a handout - and I am working on a translation, which I will post ASAP.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/02/2006 4.28]