NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

Alexy II's Overtures Raise Hopes

See earlier story about this in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH posted 1/8/08.

MOSCOW, JAN. 9, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow sent Benedict XVI New Year greetings by way of the representative of the Catholic Church in Russia - a gesture the Holy See official said points to a tendency toward collaboration.

At the end of the celebration of the Jan. 7 vigil of Orthodox Christmas in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, the patriarch talked with the apostolic nuncio to the Russian Federation, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, and with recently appointed Archbishop Paolo Pezzi of the Mother of God Archdiocese.

Archbishop Mennini told Vatican Radio that Alexy II offered his congratulations to Benedict XVI, expressing as well his closeness and fraternity.

"The patriarch beckoned the new archbishop of the Archdiocese of the Mother of God and me to approach. Together, we kissed the cross with which the faithful had been blessed," Archbishop Mennini said. "After I'd introduced the new archbishop, the patriarch told him he was open to meeting with him soon, not only to get to know him better, but also to study together common pastoral projects benefiting the faithful of the region of Moscow.

"He said that the faithful who live in the region of Moscow are entrusted as much to my pastoral care as to yours and because of this we have to work and collaborate together."

Alexy II then asked them again to offer the Pope his fervent best wishes for the New Year just begun. The patriarch added that "his sentiments and those of the Russian Orthodox Church are inspired by motives of great respect and great fraternity," Archbishop Mennini continued.

The papal representative in Russia said he thinks this gesture "confirms a tendency toward collaboration that can be seen not only on a theoretical level, but also on a practical level."

He mentioned a Dec. 28 meeting of a Catholic-Orthodox commission, planned some time ago, as proof of the common desire for collaboration.

Archbishop Mennini added, "It seems to me that there are no longer problems that the two sides cannot address openly and freely, without running the risk of breaking off relations, above all without running the risk of destroying the climate of trust and dialogue, based on reciprocal respect."



Pope promises to consider
visit to Azerbaijan

From Trend, an English news service in Azerbaijan, one of the former Soviet Republics:

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan. 9 - The Pope is planning to visit Azerbaijan as soon as he has an opportunity. Benedict XVI spoke to Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to the Vatican, Elchin Amirbeyov, at the Pope's New year reception for the Vatican dipomatic corps.

“The exact date of the visit has not yet been confirmed because currently the Pope has a very busy working schedule. However, as soon as he finds an opportunity, he will make this visit,” the Ambassador reported to Trend by telephone from the Vatican.

Amirbeyov also met with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who is planning to visit Azerbaijan in the first half of March, for the inauguration of a new Ctholic Church in Baku.


Spanish Socialist leader asks Pope
to give explanation of the family


Madrid, Jan 9, 2008 (CNA).- A heated debate is taking place in Spain over the meaning of the family.

In the wake of a massive pro-family march on December 30 in Madrid, the secretary of the Socialist Party (PSOE), Jose Blanco, has raised the debate’s temperature by asking Pope Benedict XVI to explain to him “just what exactly is the Christian family” and by recommending that “some members” of the Catholic Church “re-read the gospel.”

“As a Christian, I would like the Pope to explain to me just exactly what is the Christian family; maybe by traditional family he means that the woman just stays at home and does housework,” he told Antena 3 TV.

Blanco also called on “some members” of the Church hierarchy to “re-read the gospel,” since in his judgment one cannot “nourish inequality and injustice in the morning, and resolve them by the praying the rosary in the afternoon.”

Some Spanish bishops need to “evolve” in the same way that “Spanish and world society has evolved” in the recognition of rights for greater equality.

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Blanco is singularly dense, obnoxiously hostile, and condescending, to say the least. Why does he not read what his Prime Minister Zapatero, has written about the traditional family?

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This was reported briefly two days ago in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH.


Vatican to beatify Cardinal Newman
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
Daily Telegraph
Jan. 10, 2008


Cardinal John Henry Newman, the most famous British convert to Catholicism, could be beatified this year, the Vatican has said, setting him on a path to become the first British saint for 40 years.

"Cardinal Newman was a relevant intellectual, an emblematic figure of conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism and personally I wish his beatification to happen very soon," said Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Cause of the Saints.

Asked to clarify, the cardinal told The Daily Telegraph he hoped the beatification would happen this year.

The Vatican has been assessing claims that a 69-year-old American was inexplicably cured of a crippling spinal condition after praying to Cardinal Newman, the controversial theologian who converted in 1845 and died in 1890.

If the recovery is approved as a miracle, cardinal Newman would be declared "Blessed" and would then be one step from canonisation, for which a second miracle would be needed.

Shortly before he converted to Catholicism last year, Tony Blair presented Pope Benedict XVI with a portrait of Cardinal Newman.

The announcement, made by the cardinal in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, came as the Pope prepared to crack down on the numbers of new saints created by the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Martins said a 20-page rulebook would shortly be circulated to all bishops to "reflect the new spirit introduced by Pope Benedict in the sainthood process" with "more sobriety, more rigour, more accuracy and maximum caution" to be used.

The new rules aim to tighten up a process that has seen unprecedented numbers of saints emerging in recent years. Pope John Paul II recognised 483 saints and beatified a further 1,345 people.

In under three years, Benedict has recognised 14 saints and beatified 559. The high numbers have led to criticism that the Catholic Church is acting as a "saint factory", churning out new figures for the public to revere.

The sudden spike in the number of new saints is partly because of John Paul II's decision in 1983 to abolish the office of the Promotor Fidei, or "Devil's Advocate" - a canon lawyer appointed to take a sceptical view of the candidate's character.

If Cardinal Newman is canonised he would become the first British saint since a group known as the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales were canonised together in 1970.

The Italian journalist Antonio Socci, author of many religious books, has coined a very appropriate tagline for Pope Benedict XVI. While he usually writes articles himself, in this piece, translated here, he is interviewed by La Stampa in the 1/4/08 issue. It's one of several articles in my translation backlog. The interviewer identifies Socci as a 'ciellini' (member of Comunione e Liberazione).



The Pope wants freedom of liturgical choice;
the progressives want to impose just one rite


Mr. Socci, why do you think there is so much talk about liturgy today?
Because in the Catholic tradition, 'Lex orandi, lex credendi' - you pray as you believe. The liturgy embodies all the doctrine of the Church, its faith - therefore, it is a true and inestimable treasure of the Church.

The orthodoxy of the faith is the one thing that is fundamentally 'non-negotiable'. Not even the Popes can change it because it is revealed truth sanctified by the blood of Christ, truth which the Popes are dutybound not only to protect and guard, but to keep intact, not to be changed.

Thus the battle between those who want to 'revolutionize' Catholicism and those who insist that the depositum fidei [the deposit of faith] be preserved, respecting the mandate of Jesus, inevitably focuses on liturgy. This has always been the case. Just think of Luther and the Protestant Reformation.


Why is there opposition to Ratzinger's Curia in the name of Vatican II?
Any opposition is not so much against the Curia but against Pope Benedict XVI himself, particularly because of his motu proprio which restores the freedom to celebrate the traditional Mass.

His opponents claim they are doing so in the name of a so-called 'spirit of Vatican II', of which some intellectuals and innovative bishops claim to the sole repositories.

What 'spirit of the Council' anyway? No one ever used the term in almost 2000 years. The Church knows and adores the Holy Spirit, third Person of the Trinity, who assists the Holy Father in a special way in guiding the boat of Peter. There is no fourth person of the Trinity called the 'spirit of the Council'.

How and when did this strange invention come about? After Vatican -II, in order to make the Council say things it never said. In the liturgy, for instance, no Council document ever banned the traditional Mass. But using the 'spirit of the Council' as a pretext, the so-called reformers somehow managed to almost deprive the Church of this treasure, introducing an grave and unprecedented rupture in the history of the liturgy, which by its nature, as Cardinal Ratzinger often wrote, cannot have any breaks.


What are the opposing parties in this case?
There is the Pope, therefore the Church, which wants to give the faithful the right to choose which Mass rite to attend and which wants to put an end to liturgical abuses. And there are the 'revolutionaries', including some bishops, who do not want this freedom of choice.

It is paradoxical. The Pope is for freedom and pluralism (because in the Church, there has always been rich liturgical pluralism - just think of the Ambrosian and Dominican rites, and the Oriental rites, which have co-existed with the Roman rite for centuries).

And it's the 'progressivists' who would deny freedom of choice to the faithful, wanting to impose the post-conciliar Mass on everyone, and never ever acknowledging the tremendous liturgical abuses that have been committed in the name of the 'spirit of the Council'.

Their obscurantism and intolerance are opposing this Pope of Christian enlightenment and of freedom.

La Stampa, 4 gennaio 2008

Top 10 neglected
Vatican stories of 2007
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

Allen expands material from a column he wrote last week into an article for the Jan. 11 issue of his magazine, National Catholic Reporter, to include other neglected top news at the Vatican in 2007.

Every society has its shorthand ways of signaling what it considers important. At the level of pop culture, Americans know something registers when David Letterman or Jon Stewart pokes fun at it; more seriously, however, we grasp that something matters if it lands on the front page of The New York Times.

By that standard, one can only conclude that for the United States in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI was no big deal.

As incredible as it seems for a figure regarded as a major global newsmaker, the pope appeared on the front page of the Times only twice this year (discounting any mention after mid-December, when this article was written): on Jan. 8, in a piece about the resignation of his nominee as archbishop of Warsaw, Poland, amid charges of collaboration with the communist-era secret police; and a May 7 look ahead to his trip to Brazil, focusing on the continuing strength of liberation theology in Latin America.

Otherwise, the major papal events of 2007 all finished well inside. (Benedict was, however, the subject of a lengthy profile in the Times magazine on April 8.)

This year was basically Benedict’s third as pope. By comparison, in the third year of John Paul II’s papacy, he finished on A1 of the Times on 25 occasions, roughly twice a month. Granted, John Paul was shot in 1981, and 13 of those front-page stories were related to the assassination attempt.

Nonetheless, 12 concerned other matters - John Paul’s comments on nuclear disarmament, his interventions in Poland, his encyclical on work (Laborem Exercens), and four straight days about his trip to the Philippines.

At a comparable stage of his papacy, in other words, John Paul was roughly six times the newsmaker that Benedict is today. The contrast seems to capture an essential difference between the two popes.

John Paul was interested in wielding the social capital of Catholicism to change the history of his day; Benedict is more an “insider’s pope,” looking to solidify the spiritual foundations of Catholicism to weather what he considers the long-term storm of secularism and a “dictatorship of relativism.” Such an approach is not well-suited to capturing headlines.

Traditionally in mid-December, I compile a list of the year’s “Top 10 neglected Vatican stories.” In 2007, however, such an exercise feels a bit silly, given that almost every Vatican story was covered with benign neglect. Instead, I’ll offer capsule summaries of the year’s Top 10 stories, briefly suggesting dimensions that perhaps didn’t get the attention they deserve.


10) Benedict in Austria: When the pope visits a country that was once the capital of Christendom, which still claims a Catholic population of some 5 million in a small geographic area, and the biggest crowd he draws is roughly 30,000, that alone says something. The Sept. 7-9 Austria trip offered a snapshot of Catholicism as what Benedict calls a “creative minority” in today’s highly secularized Western European milieu.

9) The Pope is coming: Benedict’s April 15-20, 2008, trip to the United States was announced in November. Two bits of drama to watch: First, how will he address the sexual abuse crisis, and will he meet with victims? (No pope has yet done so.) Second, how will organizers prevent political exploitation of the trip in view of looming elections? That could be tricky if, as in 2004, one presidential candidate is pro-life and the other pro-choice.

8) Scandal in Poland: Polish Catholicism was rocked by charges that several important clergy, including Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, Benedict’s pick to succeed Cardinal Jozef Glemp in Warsaw, had collaborated with the communist secret police. Among other things, the scandal reinforced questions about decision-making in the church. Lay Catholic researchers in Poland had unearthed files concerning Wielgus and other clergy years ago, but apparently were not consulted in making appointments.

7) New cardinals: By appointing new cardinals, popes influence the choice of their own successor. The consensus on Benedict’s Oct. 24 consistory, in which he created 23 cardinals, including 18 eligible to vote (among them, two Americans), is that it offered no slam-dunk new papabile, or papal candidate, nor did Benedict appear to stack the deck politically. It did, however, reinforce European and North American dominance, as two-thirds of the cardinals are from the Global North, while two-thirds of the Catholic population is in the Global South.

6) A Catholic shade of green: Benedict sharpened his environmental message in 2007, calling in September for greater ecological responsibility “before it’s too late,” and OK’ing the installation of solar panels atop his audience hall and planting trees in a Hungarian forest to offset the Vatican’s carbon output. Yet Benedict isn’t quite ready to join Earth First; for him, the environmental movement is more about a broad recovery of natural law, meaning the idea that creation itself carries moral laws written by the Creator.

5) CELAM: On May 14 in Brazil, Benedict presided over the opening of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM), rapping both Marxism and capitalism as failed attempts to construct society without God. Over the next month, the Latin American bishops hashed out a pastoral strategy for the continent. One aspect they looked at: massive Catholic losses to Pentecostals and evangelicals.

The bishops endorsed both a moderate form of liberation theology and a return to old-fashioned evangelization in what they called a “great continental mission.” The outcome suggests the ideological polarization of the Latin American past may be fading.

4) A Pope of hope: Despite his erstwhile reputation as an Augustinian pessimist, Benedict XVI struck two major blows for hope in 2007. In April, the International Theological Commission, acting on his recommendation, suggested that limbo (a destination for unbaptized babies in the afterlife) could be set aside in favor of hope for their salvation.

In December, Benedict issued his encyclical Spe Salvi (“Saved by Hope”), offering a positive spin on eschatology. The Last Judgment, for example, is not a threat of damnation, but a promise that justice will eventually prevail in a world in which evil too often goes unchecked.

3) Redefining dialogue with Islam: In October, 138 Muslim scholars, jurists and clerics, representing all major Islamic traditions, wrote to Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders, suggesting that love of God and of neighbor represent a common theological ground.

While Benedict appreciated the gesture (in mid-November, he proposed a meeting with the signatories to be organized by Jordan’s Prince Ghazi), he and his top lieutenants have signaled that they’re less interested in theological exchange than in working with Muslims on practical diplomatic, social and cultural matters -- beginning with religious freedom, and especially the status of Christians in majority Muslim states.

2) A double play for Catholic identity: In July, Benedict XVI authorized wider celebration of the old Latin Mass, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith asserted that Catholicism remains the lone “true church.” Both were victories for efforts to buttress traditional Catholic identity.

On the ground, however, Benedict’s Latin Mass motu proprio has not yet been the revolution some anticipated. A November New York Times survey found that while some younger Catholics appear drawn to the old rite, new interest has surfaced in just one or two parishes in each of the 25 largest archdioceses in America.

1) Christ at the core: For Benedict XVI, 2007 was clearly a Christological year. In his book Jesus of Nazareth, in his speeches in Brazil, in the Vatican’s notice on Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino, in Spe Salvi, and in countless other venues, Benedict hammered home his core message to the modern world: A just society cannot be built without reference to God, and only in Christ is the full reality of God made clear. Preaching Christ is thus not a distraction from building a better world; it is building a better world.

Perhaps that’s why Benedict was often invisible to global newspapers; a Pope talking about Christ may seem the ultimate in “dog bites man” stories, but it was nonetheless Benedict’s clear idée fixe.

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Every year would be a Christological year for any Pope. Christ as God-made-man, the human face of God, is at the center of Christianity and Catholicism.

by GIANNI BAGET BOZZO




This is translated from La Stampa of 1/9/08:


Benedict XVI sees Vatican II as Tradition which is renewed in continuity. This is not far from the 'aggiornamento' - bringing up to date - for which John XXIII convoked the Council.

For the Church, the past is not simply past and dead: in the Church's time, its message continues uninterrupted and never fragmented. Everything that the Church has ever affirmed lives in the continuous reading of the truth which it embodies.

John Paul II was an evangelical preacher who advocated a new evangelization. With him, the papacy became an itinerant cathedral in search of nations, peoples, churches, religions, to evangelize.

It was a great opening to the external space of the Church, which made the Pope once again the leader of all Christians, uniting in himself faith and theology, academe and public square.

Benedict XVI does not think in terms of masses of people, of great popular assemblies. His audience is Catholics themselves, first of all. And besides his words, he addresses them in liturgical key, showing how worship and the sacraments should be the center of Christian life.

The sacred aura of the Christian mystery once again envelops the Pope for whom every public appearance is a liturgical celebration. Hence, the perceptible change in actions, gestures, vestments at these liturgies.

Benedict XVI addresses the whole world always, but he does so by speaking to Catholics, reinforcing their sense of identity and universality. Is this somewhat like a return to Pius XII? Only because it was Papa Pacelli who always spoke of the Church as the mystical Body of Christ, bringing to the language of the Church the sense of the Christian mystery.

But Benedict XVI also intends to re-establish the 'divinization' of man, taught by the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, to the center of Church life. That is why he has a natural affinity with Greek, Slavic and Oriental Orthodoxy, which have conserved the ecclesiastical liturgy as the setting for Christian living, during which the person and the community allow themselves to be permeated by the Holy Spirit.

In this sense, Benedict XVI is a new Pope for a new era - after revolutionary gnosticism has ceased to be the 'affabulatotre' of language, even that of Catholics.

He is a new Pope with respect to the time before and after Vatican II. He became Pope when modernity ended and post-modernity proved to be an infinite void.

The old vestments he uses to indicate continuity with his predecessors do not signify a return to the past, because Tradition is never just the past, and vestments can be a symbol of continuity.

Benedict XVI gives full sense to the great moral questions already expressed by the post-Conciliar Popes, but he confronts the issues of homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, eugenics, stem cells and the relation between science and humanity.

It is Creation itself as well ass the inherent goodness of human nature that he wishes to defend from the total individualism which has tended to become the dominant culture in Europe.

Benedict XVI wants to commit the Church on these issues, and it was probably his idea to let a non-believer like Giuliano Ferrara undertake a symbolic defense of creation and human life - not as a legislative proposal, but as a universal idea that expresses the determination of Christian civilization not to die out, and of Christian communities not to be destroyed by total individualism.

This necessity of protection and survival concerns not only biological life, but Christian civilization itself which was largely responsible for the Western world as it used to be.

Benedict XVI has systematically taken on the positions of Tradition: The missionaries sent by the Church to non-evangelized lands are not sent as economic organizers or social reformers; they may well be that as well, but their primary mission is to establish the Church in the lands to which they are sent.

Thus, neither ecumenism nor recognition of Israel as the original People of God do not dilute the fact that a Catholic may wish to promote a way of conversion for non-Catholics.

He has challenged the whole Church to act so that Christians may live the divine mystery in their interior lives and manifest this in their social life.

There is something so much more in Pope Benedict than to see him as the Pope of a pre-conciliar restoration.

La Stampa, 9 gennaio 2008

Pope Benedict XVI today turned his attention to local problems of Rome and its suburbs at his annual New Year meeting with the administrators of the city and province of Rome and Lazio region.

An immediate flap in the Italian MSM, because initial reports led off with "Pope attacks the mayor of Rome..." when he did no such thing, obviously. Only Vatican Radio reported the Pope's address without distortion.

Before meeting with all the local officials, the Pope met separately with their leaders adn a couple of other private audiences:
- Walter Veltroni, Mayor of Rome
- Pietro Marrazzo, President of Lazio region
- Enrico Gasbarra, President of the Province of Rome
- Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, President of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City.
- Francis Rooney, US ambassador, on farewell visit



MEETING WITH MAYOR VELTRONI







POPE EXPRESSES CONCERN OVER
SERIOUS SOCIAL PROBLEMS
IN ROME AND LAZIO

Translated from
the Italian service of





In his meeting with the local administrators of Rome and Lazio today, Pope Benedict XVI expressed great concern for the problems of people, from the high cost of living to increasing criminality, from new forms of poverty to deficient education for young people.

He told the officials that a common wide-ranging effort was necessary to resolve the problems in the city of Rome and the Lazio region.
Alessandro Gisotti reports:

The Pope called on the officials to respect the 'centrality of the human person' in all their efforts to carry out their tasks as administrators - from protecting the family to educating children, from the fight against poverty to care of the sick.

He also assured them of his continuing concern and affection for the people of the city and the region: "The times and the situations may change, but the love and solicitude of the Pope will never weaken for those who live in this land that is profoundly marked with the great and living legacy of Christianity."

In his detailed speech, the Pope underscored "the decisive importance of education and personal formation" throughout life, as he spoke of the 'educational emergency' which makes it more difficult, he said, "to convincingly propose solid certainties and criteria for building their lives to the new generations."

"Parents as well as teachers know well that even they are often tempted to abdicate their educative responsibilities, because they themselves - in the present social and cultural context which is impregnated with relativism and even nihilism - find it difficult to have sure points of reference which can sustain and guide them as educators and in the overall conduct of their lives."

Neither the church nor your administrators can be indifferent to these social emergencies, he said. "The very bases of coexistence and the future of society', he said, depend on the right formation of the new generations.

In this context, the Pope expressed gratitude to the Lazio administrators for the support they have given to oratories and children's centers promoted by parishes and church associations, as well as contributions to the construction of new parochial complexes in the places which need them.

He called for strengthening the family because he said that even for the educational emergency, 'respect and support for the family founded on matrimony' was a priority.

"Every day we see, unfortunately, how insistent and threatening are the attacks and the misunderstandings about this fundamental human and social reality. It is thus very important that local administrators do not support or encourage such negative tendencies, but rather, offer families concrete support, because doing so will be for the common good."

He then spoke of "another emergency which is growing more serious" - poverty, especially in the large working-class suburbs, but it is also starting to be evident in other contexts and situations which previously seemed to be not at risk."

"The Church takes part wholeheartedly in the efforts to relieve them, collaborating gladly with civil institutions, but the rising cost of living, particularly rents, the persistent pockets of unemployment, and inadequate salaries and pensions, make life truly difficult for so many individuals and families."

He then cited a tragic event like the murder of a Roman woman [by immigrant suspects] which "abruptly made our citizens face up to problems not only of security and safety, but even the serious deterioration of some areas in Rome."

"What is especially needed here," he said, "well beyond the emotion of the moment, is constant concrete work to guarantee both the security of the citizens and the indispensable minimum that will enable new immigrants to lead an honest and dignified life."

He pointed out that the Church, through Caritas and other volunteer agencies, is doing its best even in this highly problematic area in which, he underscored, "the responsibility and possible intervention of public authorities cannot be substituted."

The Pontiff concluded by talking about adequate care for the sick. "We know how serious are the difficulties that Lazio region faces in the field of health care."

But he noted that "it is not uncommon that many Catholic health facilities, even those that have national prestige" have serious maintenance problems, and asked that these institutions not be penalized by lack of support, "in order not to compromise the indispensable service" that they render.



Benedict XVI: Goverment must address
'educational emergency' by supporting the family




Vatican City, Jan 10, 2008 (CNA).- At the beginning of every New Year, the Pope meets with government officials from Rome and its surrounding area to exchange greetings and discuss issues affecting the region. This year the focus of the Pontiff’s concern was on the education of youth, poverty and care for the sick.

Referring to the “educational emergency” he had highlighted last June during the ecclesial congress of the diocese of Rome, Benedict XVI noted how “it seems ever more difficult to convincingly present new generations with firm certainties and criteria upon which to build their lives.” Nonetheless, he told his audience, such an emergency “cannot leave the Church or your administrations indifferent.”

“What is clearly at stake in the formation of individuals”, the Pope added, “is the very basis of co-existence and the future of society. For its part, the diocese of Rome is dedicating its special attention to this difficult task” with initiatives that touch “the various educational fields, from families and schools to parishes, associations and movements”. He singled out the Region of Lazio for the support it has given to oratories and children's centers run by parishes and ecclesial communities.

Pope Benedict provided the officials with a path for civil institutions to form people in a way in accord with their dignity. These institutions must “increase their efforts at various levels in order to tackle the educational emergency, drawing constant inspiration from the guide-criterion of the centrality of the human person,” he said.

Above all, the Pope sees the family as standing at the center of this formation. "It is clear that respect and support for the family based on marriage have primary importance", he emphasized.

"Unfortunately, we daily see how unrelenting and threatening are the attacks and misunderstandings suffered by this fundamental human and social institution. It is, then, more necessary than ever that public administrations do not support such negative tendencies but, on the contrary, give the family their convinced and concrete support, in the certainty that in this way they are working for the common good".

The Holy Father identified poverty as "another worsening emergency situation, ... especially on the outskirts of major cities. ... The increased cost of living, and especially the price of accommodation, a persistent lack of work, and often inadequate salaries and pensions, make living conditions truly difficulty for many individuals and families", he observed.

Lastly, the Pope highlighted needs of the sick. “We are well aware”, he said, “of the serious difficulties the Region of Lazio has to face in the field of healthcare, but we must also note how the situation of Catholic healthcare structures is also often a dramatic one.”

Referring to attempts aimed at removing the Catholic institutions’ tax exempt status, The Holy Father said, “I must ask, then, that in the distribution of resources [Catholic structures] not be penalized, not for any interest of the Church, but in order to avoid prejudicing a service so indispensable to our people”.



The UPI story picks up how some Italian politicians and media interpreted the Pope's statements as an attack against Veltroni.


Pope warns of 'urban decay'


VATICAN CITY, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI, meeting with local officials from Rome in his role as the city's bishop, warned Thursday of rising poverty and "urban decay."

The pope cited the killing of a naval officer's wife, saying that immigrants need the means for "an honest and dignified life," the news agency Ansa reported. She was allegedly robbed and killed by a Romanian immigrant living in a shantytown.

''A tragic event like the killing of Giovanna Reggiani suddenly brought the city's residents face to face with not only the problem of security but also the serious urban decay in certain areas of Rome,'' he said.

He said there is an "education emergency" and said young people are not given a firm moral grounding.

Benedict had lived in Rome for more than 20 years when he became pope. A cardinal serves as vicar for most of his duties as bishop.

Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni and Lazio regional President Piero Marazzo did not comment on the pope's remarks after the meeting. Some conservative politicians and publications seized on them.

''More than a condemnation, it sounds like an excommunication for Veltroni,'' Northern League Sen. Roberto Calderoli said.

Chances of Pope-Patriarch meeting gain


Just for the record. AP reports something we posted earlier on this thread from an Italian news agency report, and overstates in its headline what the story really says.


BERLIN, Jan. 10 (AP) - Chances of a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Russian Patriarch Alexy II at a neutral location are improving, a top official in the Russian Orthodox Church was quoted as telling a German magazine this week.

In an interview with the weekly Der Spiegel, Metropolitan Kirill, the top foreign relations official in the Russian church, said relations between the two churches have become warmer since Benedict was elected pope in 2005; and that after his own meeting with the pontiff last month, it is evident that "relations have improved."

Asked whether he could imagine the pope and patriarch meeting in a third country, away from Russia and the Vatican, Kirill replied that "it's certainly possible," Der Spiegel reported.

He was quoted as saying that "the entire development in bilateral relations is moving in the direction of such meeting coming about."

Relations between Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholics have at times been tense.

The Russian Orthodox Church has accused Roman Catholics of improperly seeking converts in traditionally Orthodox areas. The Vatican has rejected the claim, saying it only ministers to the country's Catholics, mostly of Eastern European and German origin, and who number about 600,000 in a country of 142 million.

The tensions prevented Pope John Paul II from realizing his dream of visiting Moscow in his quest to bring Orthodox and Catholics closer together.

Benedict has also made efforts toward Orthodox-Catholic unity a priority of his pontificate.

Kirill told Der Spiegel that Benedict had "removed the issue of a visit to Moscow from the agenda."

"This sort of visit would not have solved any problems, but it would have provoked new ones," he was quoted as saying. "Many of the faithful in Russia mistrust Catholics. This is a legacy of the wars and of proselytization efforts in the 17th and 18th centuries."

___

POPE SENDS MESSAGE
TO IRAQI CHRISTIANS

From the 1/11/08 issue of



Pope Benedict XVI has expressed his spiritual solidarity with the Christian communities of Iraq after the recent terrorist attacks on Christian churches in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk, in a telegram sent by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, to Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans.

Here is the text (sent in English):

---

Deeply concerned to learn of the attacks on Christian targets in Baghdad, Mosul, and Kirkuk which took place last sunday and yesterday, the Holy Father expresses his spiritual closeness to the injured and their families.

To Your Eminent Beatitude, as President of the Assembly of catholic Bishops of Iraq, and to the Archbishops of the cities concerned, he offers fraternal assurances of prayer as you seek to offer hope and strength to your people.

He asks you, moreover, to convey his heartfelt solidarity to the superiors of the religious communities affected by these attacks, and to renew his sentiments of sincere solidarity with all members of the christian communities in Iraq, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

Mindful that such attacks are also directed against the whole people of Iraq, His Holiness appeals to the perpetrators to renounce the ways of violence, which have caused so much suffering to the civilian population, and he encourages all those in authority to renew efforts towards peaceful negotiation aimed at a just resolution of the country's difficulties, respectful of the rights of all.

Praying for a return to the peaceful coexistence of the diverse groups that make up the population of this beloved country, the Holy Father commends all the people of Iraq to the heavenly protection of our almighty and merciful Father.

Cardinal TARCISIO BERTONE
Secretary of State

---

Translated from PETRUS today, which, as usual, fails to cite its source:

PAPAL VISIT TO HOLY LAND
LIKELY IN 2009?


VATICAN CITY - Benedict XVI may visit the Holy Land in 2009, according to the outgoing Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, Oded Ben-Hur.

"The visit will not take place this year," he told the media during a conference on religious freedom at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce, "but there are developments which could assure that it will take place next year. We are confident that we are making progress."

Ben-Hur said that the last meeting of the bilateral commission discussing the juridical and fiscal status of the Catholic Church in Israel "did not produce tangible results but it clarified many important matters, and that is why we are confident that the Pope may visit us next year."

=====================================================================




Racetrack deal done
for Papal Mass in Sydney


Sydney, Jan. 11 (DPA) - It's taken a year, but Australian officials have finally agreed to terms with organizers of the Catholic Church's World Youth Day for the use of a Sydney racecourse for the event, which would bring Pope Benedict XVI to Australia for the first time.

The Australian Jockey Club is to vacate the Royal Randwick Racecourse for 10 weeks, leaving enough time to ready the venue for the July 15-20 event and to repair the track when it's all over.

More than 700 horses would have to be moved to temporary stables.

"They have signed off, they have agreed, and we'll now get on in a very cooperative fashion to ensure this event goes really well," New South Wales state government spokesman John Watkins said Friday.

"World Youth Day coordinating officials and the racing people at Randwick, the Australian Jockey Club, are happy with the deal," he said.

The cost to taxpayers of hosting Australia's biggest public event since the 2000 Olympic Games is now close to 100 million Australian dollars (87 million US dollars).

The highlight of Benedict's visit is to be an overnight vigil Mass for up to 500,000 people.

World Youth Day is held every three years, the most recent host being Cologne, Germany, in 2005.

=====================================================================


From an Armenian news site online:

Cardinal Bertone to visit Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net, Jan. 10 - At a meeting with Ambassadors accredited to Vatican on Jan. 7, Pope Benedict XVI requested Armenian Ambassador Edward Nalbandian to convey his warm greetings and wishes for a Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to Armenian people, Armenian President and Catholicos of All Armenians, the RA MFA press office reported.

On January 8, Amb. Nalbandian met with Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to discuss the details of his forthcoming visit to Armenia.

[NB: Yesteday, an Azerbaijan news source reported a coming visit to Azerbaijan by Cardinal Bertone. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet republics.]

---

The Holy Father met today with
- Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's Vicar-General in Rome
- Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy
- Cardinal Agostino Vallini, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal
of the Apostolic Segnatura, and Mons. Velasio De Paolis,
Secretary of the Tribunal
- Mons. Aldo Cavalli, Apostolic Nuncio in Colombia
- Officers and personnel of the Vatican security office. Address in Italian.
And this afternoon:
- Cardinal William Joseph Levada, Prefect of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith (weekly meeting)

---

POPE RECEIVES INSPECTORATE
FOR PUBLIC SECURITY IN VATICAN

VATICAN CITY, Jan. 11 (VIS) - Benedict XVI today received members of the General Inspectorate for Public Security at the Vatican, in their traditional January meeting to exchange New Year greetings.

He expressed his best wishes for 2008, which he also extended to the members of their families, and he recalled how his Message for World Peace Day this year had as its theme: "The Human Family, a Community of Peace".

Quoting from the text of the Message, the Pope indicated that "the natural family, as an intimate communion of life and love based on marriage between a man and a woman, constitutes 'the primary place of humanisation for the person and society', ... the prototype of every social order".

"In your daily role of vigilance", he told his listeners, "you meet no small number of families. They arrive here from all over the world to pay homage to the Apostles, and in particular to St. Peter upon whose faith Christ founded the Church. They come to renew together their profession of this faith, ... to participate in audiences and celebrations presided by the Apostle Peter's Successor".

The Holy Father thanked the officers of the General Inspectorate for Public Security for their "constant interest in people and in the motives that animate them", as well as for their "willingness, patience and spirit of sacrifice", and he invited them to seek in each pilgrim "the face of a brother or a sister whom God has put in your path, a friend yet unknown, ... in the knowledge that we are all part of the one great human family".

"This is why", he continued, "it is essential for each of us to commit ourselves to living with an attitude of responsibility towards God, recognising in Him the ultimate source of our own life and the lives of others. By returning to this supreme Principle it is possible to perceive the unconditional worth of each human being, and it is thanks to such awareness that we can lay the foundations for constructing a pacified humanity".

The Pope went on: "Without this transcendent foundation, which is God, society risks becoming a mere aggregation of neighbours, and it ceases to be a community of brothers and sisters called to form one great family".

"May the Lord help you to carry out your profession", Benedict XVI concluded, "remaining ever faithful to the ideals which must constantly inspire it. Society needs people who do their duty and are aware that all work, all service conscientiously undertaken, contributes to building a more just and a truly free society".



The picture is not from today, but taken last October when the Holy Father met with Italian
religious confraternities at St. Peter's Square, and cropped from a photo Caterina posted today.
Too good not to use just because!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2008 20:55]

HOLY SEE COMMUNIQUE

VATICAN CITY, Jan. 11 (VIS) - The Holy See Press Office released the following communique at midday today:

---

The political manipulation that has followed the words addressed by the Holy Father yesterday to representatives from the Region of Lazio, and the Province and City of Rome cannot but provoke amazement.

It was certainly not the Pope's intention to undervalue the social work being carried out with praiseworthy dedication by the leaders of the City of Rome and of the Region.

In fact, as Bishop of Rome, he has in various circumstances, even recently, highlighted the achievements made in the service of citizens, achievements he was also careful to underline in yesterday's address.

At the same time, however, he could not but mention - giving a voice to the many people who turn to him - certain particularly pressing human problems, which must be faced with everyone's contribution. The Church, as His Holiness has assured, will not fail in her own involvement and collaboration.

---

When reporting about the Italian media or what they report, one quickly notes how often the word 'strumentalizzare' and its various derivatives are frequently used. The cognate translation to English of course is 'to instrumentalize', but the proper dictionary translation is 'to exploit for self-serving ends'.

Which is what the MSM tend to do when reporting about the Church, the Vatican and the Pope. And the deliberate mis-reporting of the Pope's words to the administrators of Rome and Lazio yesterday is a glaring example. Though it does not explain how they thought they could get away with it, because simply looking at the words the Pope actually said immediagtely belies their deliberately twisted 'interpretation'!

So, the reaction of the supposed 'target' of the attack is even more significant. Here is the translation of an AGI news agency report posted just now on Lella's blog:


MAYOR VELTRONI DENOUNCES
EXPLOITATION OF POPE'S WORDS


ROME, Jan. 11 (AGI) - "Exploitation (la strumentalizzazione), like all exploitation, may give satisfaction for a while, but risk being transformed into a boomerang the next day, as it has in this case."

This was the comment from the mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, who is also the leader of the new Partido Democrata, after the Vatican issued a statement earlier against exploitative practices in the media.

"Yesterday I wanted to underscore this exploitation," Veltroni said. "It is a way of playing politics that I don't approve of and I consider it rather barbaric that they even thought to exploit the words of the Pope."

The mayor went on to comment about what the city of Rome has been doing in terms of social policy: "It has been our priority - for which we have increased resources and services, and no one better than the Catholic world, from the parishes to communities like Sant'Egidio, to Caritas, know the efforts we have been carrying out together."

Veltroni said he appreciated the Pope's words which "seem to be an acknowledgment of the efforts by the whole city, not just its administrators, are doing" and as a stimulus for everyone to do their best.

"And now, we can close the polemics caused by this odious and explotative ploiticalr eactions to the Pope's words."

====================================================================

Avvenire ran this editorial about the matter today.


POPE'S WORDS TWISTED AGAIN!
Translated from
today's issue of



But how can Pope Benedict's reasoned and objective reflections on the undeniable problems of Rome be interpreted a an 'attack against Rome' or an attack against its mayor?

Either one is not listening to him seriously, or does not find what he really said in the listener's interest or to his advantage.

The Pope yesterday was doing what he does, being Pope, speaking to the administrative officials of the capital city, the province of Rome and the region of Lazio, who paid him their traditional New Year visit.

But media reporting has concentrated on the polemical echoes which the Pope's words immediately drew, artfully and deliberately fed by self-serving interests to obscure the facts and to divert attention.

But the Pope's attention yesterday was focused on the normal life of a very specal city. On the ordinary and extraordinary needs and demands - concrete ones - of the people who live in it: problems they meet in school, in the family, on the street, in hospitals, in chapels, in charity centers, and in the neglected suburbs where the crisis is most acute.

The Pope's words expressed - with pastoral concern and paternal affection - the disquiet, the fears, the difficulties and the expectations of the men and women of Rome.

If any 'attack' must be seen in all this, then all it takes is to open one's eyes clearly and objectively to see that indeed, it is a new, impassioned and lucid 'attack of love' from a Pope for the city of which he is the Bishop.

Avvenire, 11 gennaio 2008

====================================================================

The amazing thing is that the initial reaction online by Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica was to say that the Vatican statement today was an effort "to distance itself from the polemics caused by the Pope's address yesterday" and to 'correct' the impression that had been given about it!

Who gave that impression to begin with? Sure, Veltroni's political opponents all tried to blow it up to hit at Veltroni, but they did so after all the initial media reports about the Pope's address led off by saying "Pope attacks Veltroni" (for the problems of Rome)!

SOME DON'T WANT THE POPE
COMING TO ROME'S OLDEST UNIVERSITY



Translated from Il Foglio of 1/11/08:

ROME - On Thursday, Jan. 17, Benedict XVI will speak at Rome's La Sapienza University, and it may well be not a tranquil occasion.

The Pope will deliver an address at the inauguration of the university's 705th academic year (the university was founded in April 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII) which will be an unusual program.

First, the actual inauguration, with addresses by the rector Renato Guarini, a representative of the student body, a representative of the administrative and technical staff, the minister for Universities Fabio Mussi, Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni, and a lectio magistralis on the death penalty by Mario Caravale.

Then Mussi and Veltroni will leave, and the second part will start. The Pope will come in, he will be greeted by the rector and by a student representative, then he will speak.

Quite an unusual protocol. The Pope is, after all, still a head of state visiting the largest Italian (and European) university. But it is the result of a compromise arrived at last December when one of the faculty members, physicist Marcello Cini, protested the Pope's visit (originally scheduled in mid-December), since joined by some 50 other professors (out of 5,000) at La Sapienza.

The rector had actually invited the Pope to deliver a lectio magistralis for the occasion shortly after the Conclave in 2005. The event was announced last November to take place Dec. 13, but shortly afterward, a postponement was announced.

Cini's protest letter was published in Manifesto, the Communist newspaper (which yesterday also published a protest by students belonging to leftist organizations), giving rise to turbulent sessions of the academic senate, at which the postponement and compromise program were eventually reached.

The theme was chosen several months ago at the height of a campaign for a moratorium on the death penalty.

But there is real concern for what could happen next Thursday. The protesting students have said, "We will not allow him (the Pope to enter!" And are preparing to carry out that threat.

At the faculty of Physics, they have started an 'anti-clerical week' which includes a sarcastic and blasphemously intended Via Crucis within the campus, with students dressed as priests manifesting homophobia and misogyny.



It is supposed to culminate on the morning of the 17th with a demonstration beneath the university's emblematic statue of Minerva (goddess of wisdom) to defend her, they claim, from the "Pope Inquisitor". [The nerve and blindly prejudiced ignorance of these poor students 'looking down' on the greatest, most modern mind of any world leader today! - They are the ones who defile what Minerva stands for: it isn't just that the university has apparently not taught them elementary knowledge, but not even what wisdom means, let alone wisdom itself!]

The students' slogans substantially echoes the arguments of Cini, who writes in his letter that "in his new role, the ex-head of the Holy Office has not forgotten the function he had by tradition - which has always been and continues to be the expropriation of the sacred sphere immanent in the profundity of sentiments and emotions of every human being on the part of an institution which claims exclusivity in mediating between the human and the divine...But he has changed strategy. No longer able to use burning at the stake or corporal punishment, he has learned from Ulysses. He has used the effigy of the Enlightenment's goddess Reason as a Trojan horse to invade the citadel of science and then denounce it." [And this man calls himself a scientist! What a disgrace to scientists!]

The reference is to the Regensburg lecture in which the Pope delivered a lectio magistralis at the University of Regensburg without incident - only to have a firestorm of protest break out two days later and for the next two weeks.

It may not be the same at La Sapienza Thursday, especially during the Pope's passage from the university atrium to the rector's office, and from there to the university chapel.

The last papal visit to La Sapienza was by John Paul II on April 19 1991, who spoke from the stairway of the rector's office to some 5,000 students gathered beneath the Minerva statue.

He, too, was greeted by a demonstration who tried to drown his words by a chorus of whistles, but Papa Wojtyla made an ironic comment about this 'warm welcome', raised his voice and made himself heard.

Il Foglio, 11 gennaio 2008

NB: Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of L'Osservatore Romano, is a professor of philology at La Sapienza. Famous alumni include Gabriele D'Annunzio, Enrico Fermi, Maria Montessori, Bernardo Bertolucci, and two who are on the public scene today, Cardinal Sepe and Luca di Montezemolo, CEO of Fiat, as well as the current president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Nicholas Cabibbo.

======================================================================


One can only feel pity for the products of a secular culture in which professors of science and university students can discard all traces of openmindedness and tolerance, not to mention reason itself.

A culture that generates, promotes and nourishes blind prejudice cannot be said to be educative in the usual positive sense of the word.

The events at La Sapienza are a shameful example of that culture as well as a terrible reproach to it. But that is what the Church and all right-thinking people have to deal with constantly in our time.

Having been founded by a Pope, La Sapienza should have chosen the Holy Spirit as its symbol rather than a pagan goddess. In any case, let us invoke the Holy Spirit for all the victims of misguided secular culture.

---

The Holy Father met with
- H.E. Boni Yayi, President of the Republic of Benin, with his wife and entourage
- Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples
- Mons. Beniamino Stella, President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy
And this afternoon with
- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)


The Holy Father also named Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec, as Moderator
of the 12th General Assembly of the Bishops Synod which will take place on Oct. 5-26
at the Vatican on the theme "The Word of God in the life and mission of the Church", along
with Mons. Wilhelm Emil Egger, Bishop of Bolzano-Bressanone, as special secretary.

---

MEETING THE PRESIDENT OF BENIN





The Vatican released this communique on the meeting:

---

This morning, the Holy Fahther Benedict XVI met the President of the Republic of Benin, H.e. Thomas Yayi Boni. Afterwards, the distinguished guest met with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertonoe, Secretary of state; also present was Mons. Dominique Mamberti, secretary for relations with states.

During the cordial conversations, they discussed the difficult socio-economic situation which Benin is experiencing, aggravated by severe floods in October.

Both sides were pleased at the good relations between the Church and the State, and the President expressed his gratitude - as he did earlier in meeting with the Pontifical Council Cor Unum - for the significant contribution that Catholics have made for the development of the country, in the fields of education, health, and human promotion.

---

Thanks to Amy Welborn who led me today through her blog
amywelborn.wordpress.com/ to a site I never thought to check -
augnet.org/ - the site of the Augustinian order, which has a section dedicated to the Pope's visit to Pavia in April last year.

It's a good review piece, now that the Holy Father has started his catecheses on Augustine.




There are numerous associations in the life of Pope Benedict XVI with Saint Augustine. His doctoral thesis at the University of Munich in Germany was centred on a topic from Saint Augustine.

There in 1953 he received a doctorate in theology under Professor Gottlieb Sohngen by completing a dissertation on "The People of God and the House of God in the Teaching of Augustine about the Church."

About Augustine, the Pope wrote, "Saint Augustine was in dialogue with Roman ideology, especially after the occupation of Rome by the Goths in 410, and so it was very fascinating for me to see how in these different dialogues and cultures he defines the essence of the Christian religion. He saw Christian faith, not in continuity with earlier religions, but rather in continuity with philosophy as a victory of reason over superstition. So, to understand the original idea of Augustine and many other Fathers about the position of Christianity in this period of the history of the world was very interesting and, if God gives me time, I hope to develop this idea further."

In a letter to all members of the Order of Saint Augustine on April 26, 2005, Robert Prevost O.S.A., the Augustinian Prior General, referred to the new Pope's love of Saint Augustine.

When the new Pope was first made a bishop but did not yet have a diocese to administer, he was appointed the titular bishop of the Augustinian Church of Sant' Aurea at Ostia Antica. (This place is just outside of Rome, where Monica, the mother of Augustine died. This church site is possibly where Monica's remains were kept before being transferred to Rome in the year 1430.)

In recent years while a Curial official in Rome, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger visited the Augustinianum - the official institution in the Church for the study of the early Fathers of the Church, which is conducted by the Augustinians.

The Pope has also quoted Saint Augustine in his sermons, and in his first universal Pastoral Letter, Deus caritas est ("God is Love").

His recognition of Augustine is evident in his new papal coat of arms. A third of its shield is taken up by a shell, with primary significance to a legend about Augustine.

The legend, which comes to us from the Middle Ages in a variety of versions, is that Augustine was walking along the seashore, meditating about the unfathomable mystery of the Holy Trinity. There he met a boy who was using a shell to pour sea water into a hole he had made in the sand.

When asked what he was doing, the boy explained, "I am emptying the sea into this hole." Augustine said that the task was impossible, to which the boy replied that for Augustine to explain the Blessed Trinity was equally impossible.

Thus the shell on the coat of arms of the Pope is a symbol for plunging into the unfathomable sea of the Blessed Trinity.

In the course of his visit to the Major Seminary of Rome on 17th February 2007, the Pope said that he was fascinated by the great humanity of St Augustine, who was not able initially simply to identify himself with the Church, because he was a catechumen, but had to struggle spiritually to find, little by little, the way to God's word, to life with God, right up to the great "yes" to his Church.

A number of contemporary scholars have written books and articles about the obvious influence on the thought and theology of Pope Benedict XVI by the writings and world view of St Augustine of Hippo.

For example, for the National Post (Canada) of April 19, 2007, Fr. Raymond J. de Souza, chaplain to Newman House at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, wrote:

---

St. Augustine is more than the principal intellectual influence on Pope Benedict XVI; the greatest of the first millennium’s Christian scholars is the Pope’s constant intellectual companion. His preaching and teaching are unfailingly leavened with Augustinian quotations.

---

If Pope John Paul II was a great philosopher pope, teaching the wisdom of Saint Thomas Aquinas to the late 20th century, Benedict is doing the same for Augustine in the 21st century.

Fr. De Souza wrote further:

---

“Augustine defines the essence of the Christian religion,” then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger once said. “He saw Christian faith, not in continuity with earlier religions, but rather in continuity with philosophy as a victory of reason over superstition.”

It is a favourite theme of Pope Benedict, one that provided the high point of his papacy thus far, the world-shaking address at Regensburg last year, when he argued that to act contrary to right reason was to act contrary to God — a critical message in an age of religiously-motivated violence.

Pope Benedict XVI follows St Augustine in seeing the Christian logos, the divine Word that rationally orders all things, an entirely different conception of God.

Here is a God who is rational, whose creation reflects the order and goodness of right reason, and who can be known by human beings, made in His image and able to reason themselves. And even more extraordinary than that, this God revealed Himself as one who was love — a love that creates, redeems and calls His creation to Himself.

The logos of philosophy becomes the God who is love, as Benedict put it in his first encyclical.

The God of Judeo-Christian revelation is not merely the god of the philosophers, acting as a remote first cause or principle of motion. Rather this God is a rational person, the principle of rationality and truth. This God can be approached by human creatures in truth — both the natural truths of science, and the revealed truths of faith.

The ancient gods of the Nile or Mount Olympus, with their need for power and domination, had no standing in the world of philosophy. They belonged to a world of superstition. Saint Augustine demonstrated how the God of Abraham belonged the world of philosophy, but pointed beyond it to the world of salvific love.

---

Benedict argued at Regensburg that the meeting of Biblical faith with Greek philosophy constitutes an essential part of Christian revelation. It was St Augustine in whom that encounter was lived most deeply in the early Church.

Augustine is also a saint — one who not only knows about the things of God, but loves God and follows Him.

This too, Pope Benedict argues, is consistent with reason, for what other reason could there be for an omnipotent and self-sufficient God to create angels and human beings and animals and lakes and mountains except out of love?

The ancient philosophers sought after the cause of being. Biblical faith responds that the reason for being is nothing other than divine love.

And the reasonable response to love is to love in return.

Observers have wondered why Pope Benedict’s first two years have not been focused on contemporary controversies, but on preaching the love of God, and looking repeatedly to the first centuries of the Church for wisdom and teaching.

Perhaps it’s because Benedict knows that the world today lacks confidence in the possibility of reason to know the truth, and in the possibility of true love. The man buried in Pavia is one of the great witnesses that in God this world’s restless heart can indeed find both.

[The article then goes on to quote further from Carl Olson's April 21, 2007, blog on Benedict and Augustine, as follows:]

---

Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., in his excellent book, The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (T&T Clark, 1988; republished in 2005 as The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger [Burns & Oates]), has an entire chapter on "Augustine and the Church." It is dedicated entirely to examining the influence of the great Augustine on the thought and theology of Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), especially his approach to ecclesiology:

---

Believing with Romano Guardini that the twentieth century was proving, theologically, the "century of the Church", when the idea of the Church was re-awakening in all its depth and breadth, Ratzinger chose to scour the Augustinian corpus for insight into the nature of the Christian community of faith. ... For Augustine, the Church is at once the "people and the house of God". (p. 29)
....
None the less, the culture which Augustine brought to the exploration of the Christian faith in his early writings was largely philosophical, and so it is, naturally, from a philosophical perspective that Augustine first considered the mystery of the Church.

Here Ratzinger identifies two main elements that form the Ansätze, "starting-points" of Augustinian ecclesiology. Augustine's reflections on the concept of faith will be vital for his understanding of the Church as people of God. By contrast, his concept of love is more important for his portrait of the Church as the house of God ... (p. 33).

---

Ecclesiology was a primary focus in many of Joseph Ratzinger's writings, while a central theme of his pontificate, of course, has been love. As both Frs. de Souza and Nichols indicate, the effect of Augustine's thought on Pope Benedict has been profound.

And while there are many obvious differences between two bishops who lived so many centuries apart, there are, I think, several intriguing parallels, or commonalities: the theological and philosophical erudition, the deep knowledge of both Christian and non-Christian beliefs and philosophies, the interaction with non-Christian philosophies, an ability to both be open to such systems while at the same time defending Catholic doctrine, the ability to be both theologian and pastor, a theological focus on ecclesiology, and so forth.

Someday, I trust, someone will further explore much further, at book length, this fascinating relationship.

---

The Augustinian site contains a few more photos of the Pope's visit to Augustine's tomb in Pavia, as well as a report on it, which I will post later in PASTORAL VISITS IN ITALY, for the record.

And speaking of reviews, John Allen's weekly column does that for the Pope's recent texts, although I wonder he did not wait until the end of the Christmas season as far as the Vatican and the liturgy are concerned, the feast of the Baptism of Jesus on the Sunday after Epiphany, tomorrow.


Highlights from Papal homilies and addresses
during the 2007 Christmas season
All Things Catholic
by John L. Allen, Jr.
Friday, January 11, 2008


College football fans probably felt a bit deflated this Tuesday, since the Bowl Championship Series, always their favorite time of year, came to a close Monday night.

For Vatican devotees, Tuesday likewise brought a twinge of melancholy, and for much the same reason: the annual "bowl championship series" of papal teaching, which begins in mid-December with a message for the World Day of Peace, ended Monday with the Pope's address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.



Between those rhetorical bookends fell three important homilies (Christmas, the Feast of Mary the Mother of God on New Year's, and Epiphany), as well as a major speech to the Roman Curia, the year-end Urbi et Orbi message, a vespers service on New Year's Eve, and four Angelus addresses. All told, Benedict XVI offered more than 17,500 words of teaching, a veritable buffet of verbiage.

Since the pope's BCS is now over, it's a good time to roll the highlight reel. Doing so may offer hints of Benedict's priorities for 2008, a year that will feature his April 15-20 visit to the United States.

(1) Around the World
At the geopolitical level, Benedict underscored the Vatican's "preferential option" for the Middle East and Africa. Those were the only two zones specifically cited in Benedict's message for the World Day of Peace, marked by the Vatican on Jan. 1.

In his Jan. 7 address to diplomats, Benedict wielded his most dramatic language to date about the crisis in Darfur, warning that "hope seems almost vanquished by the menacing sequence of hunger and death." Speaking in French, Benedict also expressed concern for Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

On the Middle East, the Pope called anew for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He said the Lebanese people should be able to "decide freely on their future," an indirect reference to outside interference, above all from Syria. The Pope also voiced alarm over "terrorist attacks, threats and violence" in Iraq, "especially against the Christian community."

Turning to Asia, the Pope mentioned Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. On Europe, Benedict praised progress towards peace in the Balkans and called for resolution of the long-running drama in Cyprus. He said unity in Europe will endure "if it does not deny its Christian roots."

Benedict also called for stronger antipoverty efforts and for disarmament, specifically urging a negotiated resolution to disputes over Iran's nuclear program.


(2) The Family
The theme of the World Peace Day message was "The Human Family, A Community of Peace." The pope argued that the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, is the natural building block of society and a "school of peace."

In that regard, the pope argued that "family values" and social justice, often opposed in secular politics, are a package deal: trying to have one without the other, he warned, is a prescription for heartache.

"Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman," he said, "everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace."


(3) The Environment
Benedict XVI returned repeatedly to what has become a leitmotif of his social and political concerns: the environment, especially energy scarcity. In his Christmas homily, for example, the pope lamented "the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation," saying that we witness today "a polluted world whose future is at risk."

Benedict distinguished his purchase on ecology from secular environmentalism, insisting in his World Day of Peace message that human beings possess transcendent worth vis-à-vis nature, and that environmental policy must be crafted free from "ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions."

At the same time, Benedict insisted that "the problems looming on the horizon are complex, and the time is short."

With the diplomats, the pope quoted Paul VI's well-known adage that "development is the new name of peace." He added ecology to the mix, saying: "Peace is a commitment and a manner of life which demands that the legitimate aspirations of all should be satisfied, such as access to food, water and energy, to medicine and technology, or indeed the monitoring of climate change."

In his homily for Epiphany, Benedict stressed the need for sustainable patterns of consumption, especially in developed nations. He argued that such moderation today is not merely "an ascetic rule, but a path of salvation for humanity."


(4) Islam
Benedict twice cited a letter addressed to him in October by 138 Muslim jurists, clerics and scholars, suggesting theological common ground between Muslims and Christians.

"I responded with joy, expressing my deep agreement with those noble sentiments, and at the same time underlining the urgency of a common effort to defend the values of reciprocal respect, dialogue and collaboration," he told the Roman Curia.

"Our shared recognition of the existence of a single God, a benevolent Creator and universal Judge of everyone's conduct, constitutes the basis for common action in defense of the dignity of every human person, and for the creation of a more just and fraternal society."

While the comments expressed Benedict's desire for dialogue, observers also noted his deliberate use of the term "reciprocal" -- a signal that he will not abandon his core challenge of "reciprocity," meaning respect for religious freedom, especially the rights of Christian minorities.

In early January, the Pope's top official for inter-religious dialogue, French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, told L'Osservatore Romano that a delegation of Muslim leaders will come to Rome in February or March to plan a historic session between Benedict XVI and a delegation of signatories to the letter for later in 2008.

Storm clouds, however, already have begun to gather over that session. On Jan. 9, Jesuit Fr. Khalil Samir, one of the Vatican's most influential advisors on Islam, published an essay with the AsiaNews service warning that Muslim organizers may be seeking "escape in theological dialogue" as a way of avoiding tough questions about human rights and religious freedom.


(5) Natural Law
Benedict XVI repeatedly insisted that social values such as peace, justice and human rights have to be anchored in natural law, meaning a universal moral truth that cuts across cultures and time.

"Law can be an effective force for peace only if its foundations remain solidly anchored in natural law, given by the Creator," Benedict told the diplomats on Monday.

In that speech, Benedict argued that the concept of natural law is implicit in many international declarations and agreements on human rights -- including the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which marks its 60th anniversary in 2008.

In his message for World Peace Day, Benedict argued that grasping natural law does not require specifically religious convictions.

"Knowledge of the natural moral norm is not inaccessible to those who, in reflecting on themselves and their destiny, strive to understand the inner logic of the deepest inclinations present in their being," the pope said. "Albeit not without hesitation and doubt, they are capable of discovering, at least in its essential lines, this common moral law."

Natural law is likely to be a key theme in Benedict's April 18 address to the United Nations. The Catholic University of America is sponsoring a major conference on "A Common Morality" March 27-30, organized at the pope's request.


(6) Christ and Justice
Perhaps the signature touch in Benedict's social teaching is his insistence that efforts to build a just society are doomed to failure -- at times, monstrous failure -- without God, who is revealed in Christ.

"To the thirst for meaning and value so characteristic of today's world, to the search for prosperity and peace that marks the lives of all mankind, to the hopes of the poor: Christ -- true God and true Man -- responds with his Nativity," the pope said in his Urbi et Orbi address.

In his speech to the Curia, Benedict laid out his social vision.

"By coming to know Christ, we come to know God, and only beginning from God can we understand the human person and the world, a world that otherwise remains a question without an answer," he said.

"It's so important that in the 'balance sheet' of humanity, facing the sentiments and realities of violence and injustice that threaten us, opposing forces be aroused and reinvigorated," Benedict said. "Through the encounter with Jesus Christ and his saints, through the encounter with God, the balance sheet of humanity is reinforced by those forces of good without which all our efforts in the social order never become reality, but -- facing extraordinary pressures from other interests opposed to peace and justice --remain abstract theories."


(7) "Affirmative Orthodoxy"
Finally, the holidays offered illustrations of what I've come to call Benedict XVI's "affirmative orthodoxy," meaning a defense of classic Catholic doctrine phrased in positive fashion.

The pope devoted his 3,000-word World Peace Day message, for example, to extolling the family based on marriage between a man and a woman, open to the gift of life, without once mentioning hot-button "family values" issues such as abortion and homosexuality. They were part of the subtext, but he allowed them to remain there, preferring to articulate a positive vision.

Another example came in Benedict's address to the Roman Curia, on evangelization.

Benedict argued that the motive for mission is not that people will otherwise be damned, but rather so that the Kingdom of God, with its promise of reconciliation and true happiness, may reach all humanity.

"St. Paul actually felt himself under a sort of 'obligation' to announce the Gospel, not so much out of concern for the salvation of individual non-baptized people who have not yet heard the Gospel, but rather because he was aware that history in its totality could not reach its fulfillment until all people were reached by the Gospel," Benedict said.

In his homily for the Dec. 31 vespers service, Benedict described an approach which could serve as a summary of affirmative orthodoxy: the key is proceeding, he said, "without making a lot of noise, and in patient confidence."

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

From Sandro Magister's blog yesterday, 1/11/08:


THE CHURCH AND ISLAM:
Fr. Samir warns against
'false and empty' dialog
Translated from



After having commented earlier on the response of Benedict XVI - through Cardinal Bertone - to A COMMON WORD, the 'letter of the 138', the Jesuit Islamologist Samir Khalil Samir returned to the subject, commenting ont he reply then sent by Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, who is coordinating the COMMON WORD campaign.

The 138 now number 216, mostly with the recent adherence of some 80 new signatories, mostly from Morocco, who signed on on December 25.

Fr. Samir had written his first commentary for the magazine Mondo e Missione of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME, from its Italian acronym)), and was made available by our service www.chiesa [English translation posted on this thread] .

His second commentary, much more ample, was written for AsiaNews, which is the news agency of PIME, posted online under the title "Benedict XVI's improbable dialog with 138 Mulsim scholars" [Also posted on this thread previously].

Why 'improbable'? Because, Fr. Samir explains, if the Pope's Muslim interlocutors are bent on discussing only love of God and neighbor, rather than concrete questions like respect for human rights, religious freedom, equality between man and woman, etc., "one risks falseness and emptiness".

The hard core of the 138 consider Fr. Samir as an 'impudent' contender, someone who is anything but accommodating. And they are right, if we read him.

But he is one of the Islamologists most listened to by Benedict XVI, along with Samir's fellow Jesuit, the german Christian Troll. they all share the same positions [about inter-religious dialog].

This beginning Christian-Muslim dialog was the outcome of Benedict's Regensburg lecture - which achieved this 'miracle' precisely because it indicated the critical points in inter-religious dialog with extreme clarity and without reticences.

And according to Fr. Samir, the dialog must proceed in the same manner - not going around but frontally facing the capital questions.

January 13
FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

Holy Mass and Baptisms
Sistine Chapel, 10:00
During the Mass, the Holy Father will administer Baptism
to some babies.


INNOVATION IN TOMORROW'S MASS:
The Pope will use the altar of
the Sistine Chapel to say Mass


VATICAN CITY, Jan. 12 (Apcom) - An unusual and original innovation tomorrow: the Pope will celebrate the Mass of Baptism in the Sistine Chapel with 'his back turned to the faithful and facing the Cross' on the Chapel's built-in altar.

A note from the Office of Liturgical Celebrations says, "This year, the wooden platform for a provisional altar intended for Mass [according to the Novus Ordo] will not be used; instead, the altar itself of the Sistine Chapel will be used."

The note continues: "It was decided to do this in order not to alter the beauty and harmony of this architectural jewel, preserving its structure according to the ritual point of view while using a possibility allowed by current liturgical norms. This means that at certain parts of the Mass, the Pope will be facing away from the faithful but towards the Cross, thus orienting the attitude and the disposition of the faithful assembled."

The note makes clear, nevertheless, that otherwise "the celebration of the Mass will take place as usual, using the ordinary rite", meaning the Mass of Paul VI.

"Benedict XVI will wear some vestments worn by John Paul II, and during the Baptismal rites (for 13 children), he will use a bronze font fashioned several years ago by the he sculptor Lello Scorzelli, who designed the Pastoral staff used by John Paul II [the same design now used for the Pastoral staff of Benedict XVI] ."

By tradition, the Pope will use a golden shell to pour water on the heads of the children. The shell is a symbol of pilgrimage and therefore, of the new way that all baptized human beings begin once they become part of the community of believers."

The children to be baptized are those of Vatican employees. Their siblings will present the Offertory gifts.

Assisting the Pope tomorrow will be two bishops, the Vice Chamberlain Mons. Paolo Sardi, and the Papal Almoner, Mons. Felix del Blanco Prieto.

"Et tu mi fili, Brute!"
What would the city of Rome be like without the Church and without the Papacy?

Il Foglio adds more detail today to its story yesterday about the leftist protest at La Sapienza.



Protestors broaden their tarbrush
to include University Minister
and Mayor of Rome



"Mussi has ruined the right to study, Veltroni rubs the people of their houses, and the Pope is the modern edition of medieval obscurantism. Now, all in one blow, they are descending on us".

So it reads in a flyer being circulated by the leftist student groups of Rome's La Sapienza University, who are preparing a virulent reception for Pope Benedict XVI when he visits their campus in Jan. 17 to open the Academic Year.

The invitation to the Pope, issued by the rector to Benedict shortly after the 2005 Conclave, was protested last November when a December 13 visit by the Pope was publicly announced.

Physics professor Marcello Cini wrote the rector on Nov. 14 that the Pope's visit would be "thoughtless and harmful to the image of La Sapienza in the world". [Gosh! This man is even more delusional and far out than I thought! Even if La Sapienza was founded by a Pope, how on earth can it compare as a public institution in the mind of the world today compared to the Pope, any Pope, and as far as intellectual prestige goes, to Benedict XVI?]

Of course, many of the university's own students note that in fact, the image of La Sapienza in the world - "it does not even rank among the first 150 universities in the world" - could be difficult to debase even more!

On November 23, 56 Marxist-inspired professors, describing themselves as 'faithful to reason', declared themselves behind Cini and asked that the visit be cancelled. [After turbulent meetings of the academic senate, it was decided to postpone the visit to January, not to cancel it. NB: The university has more than 5000 professors and instructors.]

But the virulence has been passed on to some student organizations. On January 8, a joint meeting of leftist student organizations was held at the Faculty of Jurisprudence which launched a campaign largely on the Internet - with active 'chain e-mails'.

On Tuesday, an assembly to be joined by the anti-Ratzinger professors will plan the logistical details of the protest they intend to mount on Thursday.

"What a magnificent occasion!", one of the students said. "In one blow we shall be able to shout down Minister Mussi, Mayor Veltroni and
the Pope!"

Vatican security and Rome policemen will be posted discreetly inside the university and around it for the occasion. In addition to the plainclothes forces, there will be anti-riot units.

The Police prefecture says these are 'routine measures', that there may be slogans chanted, perhaps even eggs thrown, "but we don't expect any serious threats from the students".

But the leftist students threaten something more than just whistles and boos. "There are enough of us, and the anti-abortion Pope shall not pass through!"

Right now, they plan to have students dressed as women who will demonstrate against the Pope as he goes through the university's main 'square' with the statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, to reach the administrative building where the ceremonies will be held.

"We will also try to peacefully invade the rector's office," they said, "and if they hold us back, we will stage a sit-in right outside it.

A spokesperson for Minister Mussi said, "We have become used to such protests. Whoever goes there ends up being tarred!"

But the protests against the Pope could create greater embarrassment for the Rector, whose office has so far limited itself to telling the media "No comment!"

However, it has been learned, that there has been busy telephone traffic between the Rector's Office, the police Prefecture and the Apostolic Palace.

"It's always better to prevent something rather than to cure it," an official said. Which means that police will be very much present and that there will be 'no occasion to see the Pope outside the administration building'.

There is also a discreet presence of Catholic student organizations at La Sapienza, who have been distributing their own flyers, saying the Pope's visit is an occasion of hearing the 'testimony' of a man "who is capable of challenging and leading us in the search for reason."

On Wednesday, the day before the visit, while the lefties will be busy with their last-minute plans, there will be a prayer vigil at the university chapel, which will be visited by the Pope and which had been established by the Jesuits when they first took over spiritual functions at La Sapienza 60 years ago.

Il Foglio, 12 gennaio 2008

by RENATO FARINA

More on the scandalous developments at La Sapienza, translated today from Libero:



Ignorance reigns among the so-called scientists of La Sapienza University in Rome. Altogether, 67 professors (out of more than 5,000) wish to prevent the Pope from speaking there, to keep him from even entering the university on Thursday to inaugurate the academic year.

Those who have signed the appeal are almost all physicists who claim that he is an alien, an obscurantist, who has spoken badly of Galileo, and continues to defend a condemnation he made 17 years ago. This last one is an obvious lie, as we shall see.

It was the university rector who had wanted the Pope to speak at La Sapienza. His original idea was that the Holy Father would give the opening lectio magistralis that would set the tone for the academic year.

But with the objections, it appeared that would be giving too much honor to just someone called Ratzinger. And the rector, though still insisting on inviting the Pope, gave in to pressures and has given him fourth place among the the speakers for the day. Preceded by that illustrious graduate of the Normal School at Pisa, Fabio Mussi, now Minister of Research and Universities, by Mayor Walter Veltroni, [and by a professor who will deliver the lectio magistralis on the death penalty].

The Pope, a humble man, has not objected. He has debated men like Habermas, he has been a professor in the best German universities, but he has agreed to follow in the heels of lesser people. Ah, but Mussi and Veltroni, these two 'scienziatoni' [presumed scientists] have all the approval of the protesting professors. [I disagree, however, that Mussi and Veltroni be criticized in this way for something that is not their fault at all!]

Still, the latter have not been content with winning this round. They have also summoned troops to bolster their protest.

Not just leftist students who share their agenda, but also veterans of anti-globalization protests who have been beating all their drums on the Internet to round up more forces to create an anti-Papal show on Thursday. The forces of public order are on alert.

The Pope has not backed down. Cardinal Ruini has assured him of a proper welcome: there will be thousands of professors and students happy to welcome him. Papa Ratzinger will be there. And he won't be in armor.

He is thinking, perhaps, that once again, this is like the early centuries of the church. Saul of Tarsus, whio had become the Apostle Paul, spoke at the Areopagus of Athens, provoking the scorn of supposedly learned men. The Pope sees himself in the same position. The early centuries were a prophecy of the latest ones.

But first, a few observations. Above all, about La Repubblica, the newspaper which has promoted and echoed this desire to cleanse the universities - and therefore, the cultural space - of the presence of the Pope.

Yesterday, it published without opposition unbelievable anti-Papal texts reminiscent of racial purging frenzy. The 'moral' was expressed by one Carlo Cosmelli, who wrote: "The anti-science accusations which this Pope made while he was a cardinal have been repeated in his last encyclical. He is convinced that when scientific truth opposes that which is 'revealed', then the first should give in. This cannot be accepted in a scientific community".

The big lie is evident. This Pope has asked tor the 'widening' of reason (Regensburg, Sept. 12, 2006) and he challenges the questionable uses of science, not the need for it.

But from their earlier statements, these scientists are accusing the Pope on the basis of a speech he made in 1990, when he quoted Feyerabend, who had said, "The proceedings of the Church against Galileo were reasonable and just". [Austrian Paul Feyerabend, 1924-1994, was one of the most famous philosophers of science of the 20th century, who was controversial because he claimed that there is no single methodological rule for scientists, that scientific progress could come only if scientists used the method that best suited their purpose.]

It appears the protestors simply drew the quotation from the Internet without looking at the entire speech in which it was used, nor the entire statement made by Feyerabend. Ratzinger was explaining how even Ernst Bloch and many other modern philosophers had been re-evaluating the attitude of the Church towards Galileo.

[NB: The speech entitled "Crisis of Faith in Science' was delivered by Cardinal Ratzinger at the University of Parma in March 1990 and appears in the book Svolta per l'Europa? Chiesa e modernità nell'Europa dei rivolgimenti (A critical turn for Europe? The Church and modernity in a fast-changing Europe), published in Rome in 1992. Thanks to Lella, who posts the entire speech on her blog (I will translate it later).

Obviously, the protesting scientists should had have the common sense to look up the entire speech and not to base their entire ridiculous protest on an isolated and partial quote picked up from the Internet. And they call themselves scientists!

The entire quotation from Feyerabend cited by the Pope reads in translation: "The Church in the time of Galileo held to reason more than Galileo himself, and took into consideration even the ethical and social consequences of the Galilean doctrine. Its sentence against Galileo was rational and just, and only reasons of political opportunism would legitimize a review of it."

Feyerabend was one of many modern intellectuals the cardinal cited in arguing the need for a serious consideration of science and its implications in today's society.]

But it's not worth the trouble to argue with those who are simply looking for a pretext for their intolerance. It would be enough for us if they just applied the par condicio [Latin term for 'equal status' used to call an Italian law which requires TV stations to grant 'equal time' to political parties during a campaign period].

There is a subset of Christophobia that is dominant in some Italian intellectual circles: it is an almost Neronian hate which is also expressed in a concerned and solicitous love for Muslims, including the extremists.

In June 2006, La Sapienza was one of five Italian universities which signed an agreement to create an Italian-Egyptian academic committee "of comparative studies on the progress of humanistic sciences in the Mediterranean" with the Islamic University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, which is like the Vatican for the world of Sunni Islam.

The agreement was signed in the presence of the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Mohammed Sayed al Tantawi, considered the supreme theological authority of Sunni Islam. Tantawi has written fatwas to justify Palestinian suicide bombers and to 'sanctify' the death penalty for Muslims who convert to Christianity, and boasts of these openly.

Obviously, for the professors of La Sapienza, it does not matter. Oh no, not even a peep of protest. Al Tantawi, yes. Ratzinger, no!

This is what we have come to in Italian universities. If there had to be a criterion for selecting university professors, they should all be suspended from teaching.

Just imagine! They have already half succeeded in their project - having 'reduced' the Pope to the level of Mussi and Veltroni. Yet they are not content, even with having Ezio Mauro (editor in chief) of La Repubblica on their side. They want to silence him from public discourse altogether.

This was SOP during the Nazi era with persons who thought differently from the regime. Now it is happening in Rome, Italy.

Libero, 13 gennaio 2008

=====================================================================

Today, at least, a news item in Repubblica did give 'equal time' on the issue, quoting politicians on both sides of the fence, even if the headline was still malicious:

The Pope splits the coalition
By GIOVANNA VITALE


ROME - Benedict XVI will inaugurate the academic year at La Sapienza University, a group of professors has signed an appeal to revoke that invitation to someone "who still considers the Church proceedings against Galileo justified", and the coalition [constituting the government of Prime Minister Prodi] is split.

"I am horrified," says Senator Giorgio Tonini of the new Partido Democrata [headed by Mayor Walter Veltroni].

"We are speaking here of Joseph Ratzinger, an illustrious academic who is also the Pope, one of the most respected minds in Europe. For which I am awaiting his speech with great intellectual curiosity, because it will certainly be of the highest level.

"But that there could be professors who want to boycott him, expressing hostility and a refusal to confront him at his level is one of the signs of the tragic crisis in Italian universities."

But the secularist Enrico Boselli says "The decision of the academic Senate [to make the Pope the last of four speakers for the occasion]was correct": but so is the "freedom to optpose i".

"Ratzinger's positions on the limits to be placed on science and research are clear and controversial. So no one should be surprised if unpleasant things are said about the Pope."

That's a euphemism, considering the reception that some student organizations are planning for Thursday: a assault of sound at the Aula Magna [where the Pope will speak], 'magisterial lectures' to be held by comedians like Andrea Rivera and the Osiris Band, and even a 'frocessione' [a play of words, from 'froccio', the Italian term for gay].

Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, a devout Catholic, said: "Stupidity has no horizons nor age. But those who hold different opinions should respect others. Culture is confrontation. Knowledge is not the permanent possession of anyone, but a continuous challenge. Among other things, Joseph Ratzinger is not only Pope and Bishop of Rome, he is also a most distinguished academic."

But the head of a Green Party-Communist coalition in the Senate, Manuela Palermi, said. "I think Benedict XVI should should reflect on this: If a place of culture like La Sapienza objects in this way to his visit, it means that something is wrong somewhere." [Something definitely is wrong with her, because first, the protest comes only from the leftists, and second, because the entire episode itself casts great doubt on whether La Sapienza is indeed 'a place of culture'!]

Senator Paola Binetti, a Catholic, of the Margherita party, said: "It was the Church, many centuries ago, that founded La Sapienza. Reasons of tradition and culture alone justify the Pope's presence there. But even those who do not share his views can certainly use the occasion to listen to some elevated thinking."

An opposition senator, Massimiliano Smeriglio, answered: "The university is the realm of science and secularism. To invite Ratzinger, who is the promoter of an obscurantist politico-cultural offensive, was a mistake."

Repubblica, 13 gennaio 2008

======================================================================

And a situationer from ANSA today, translated here:


Uproar over the Pope's
university visit


ROME, Jan. 13 (ANSA)- The atmosphere at La Sapienza University is heating up in expectation of a visit by Pope Benedict XVI, who has been invited to attend the inaugural ceremonies for the academic year on Thursday.

An anti-Ratzinger front has been set up by some student organizations and a small group of professors who have said they "dislike the Pope because he is too reactionary" and have signed an appeal asking that the university's 'disconcerting' invitation to the Pope be recalled.

But other student groups and politicians who oppose them have started to make themselves heard. [Gee, I wonder why none of the other 4,937 professors who didn't sign the petition have not been heard from!]]

Parliamentary deputy Francesco Giro, who is also regional coordinator for Lazio of Forza Italia [former Prime Minister Berlusconi's party], has said the anti-Pope initiative "had been set into motion by a small squad of professors from the science faculties" inspired by "the climate of absolute intolerance and ideological fury which has been evident for several years in Rome" for which 'thhose who administer and lead us are responsible".

Student members of Azione Universitaria have made known that "they will welcome Pope Benedict XVI with enthusiasm and warmth at the inauguration of the academic year."

Through their national president Giovanni Donzelli, they also stated: "The doors of the University will always be open for him. But these doors should be closed instead for those professors who, instigating hate and conflict, would transform Italian universities into places of anti-Catholic extremism that would be the envy of Iranian universities."

But some of Papa Ratzinger's critics are animated by other motives. Like the Physics Collective which is among the organizers of the 'anti-clerical week' - four days of protests at La Sapienza which starts tomorrow, Monday, with the showing of the film 'Life of Galileo' at the Department of Physics, and will culminate in the 'assault of sound' which they plan Thursday morning to 'greet' 'Ratzinger, Mussi and Veltroni' at the University's Piazzale Aldo Moro.

"To all those who want a public participatory university and a secular society," says a statement from the group called Facciamo Breccia ("Let us make a breach"), "we propose to make January 17 a day of counter-inauguration...to greet a Pope who is the author of strong cultural retrogression...affirms anachronistic dogmas...attacks free scientific though and proposes obligatory heterosexuality."

The Holy Father this morning celebrated mass to commemorate the Baptism of our Lord, at the Sistine Chapel, during which he also baptized 13 babies from the families of Vatican employees.

A full translation of his homily has been posted in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.









Exceprts from the Pope's homily:

---

...In Baptism, the tiny human being receives new life, the life of grace, which makes it capable of entering into a personal relationship with the Creator, for always, for eternity.

Unfortunately, man is also capable of extinguishing this new life by sinning, reducing himself to a situation which Sacred Scripture calls a 'second death'.

While in other creatures who are not meant for eternity, death only means the end of their earthly existence, sin creates in us an abyss which risks swallowing us for always if our Father who is in heaven does not hold out a hand to us.

And this, dear brothers and sisters, is the mystery of Baptism. God wants to save us, having gone himself to that abyss of death, so that every man - even he who has fallen so low as to lose sight of heaven altogether - may find the hand of God to grasp ,and come out of the darkness to see the light for which he was made. ...

In order to grow healthy and strong, these babies will, of course, need material care and much attention, but what they will need most, indispensably, is to know, love and serve God faithfully in order to have eternal life. Dear parents, be for them the first witnesses to authentic faith in God.

The sacrament of Baptism has an eloquent ritual which expresses precisely this transmission of the faith. It is the offering, for each of the baptized, of a candle lit from the Easter candle. It is the light of the resurrected Christ which you are committed to transmit to your children.

Thus, from generation to generation, we Christians pass on the light of Christ so that when he returns, he may find us with this flame burning in our hands.

---

A full translation of the Pope's words at Angelus today has been posted in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.

What the Holy Father said in English at the Angelus today:

---

To all the English-speaking visitors and pilgrims here today, I extend affectionate greetings.

On this feast of the Lord’s Baptism, Jesus descends into the waters of the Jordan, taking upon himself the weight of our sins; then he rises from the water, as the Spirit comes down upon him and the Father’s voice declares: "This is my beloved Son".

Let us rejoice that the Son of God came to share our human condition, so that we might rise with him to everlasting life.

Upon all who are here today, and upon your families and loved ones at home, I invoke God’s abundant blessings.

---

The Pope's special message today:

---

Today, we celebrate the World Day for Migrants and Refugees, which this year focuses on young migrants.

Indeed, there are numerous young people who are impelled by various reasons to live far from their families and countries. Children and minors are particularly at risk. Some children and adolescents have grown up in refugee camps, and even they have a right to a future.

I express my appreciation for all those who are committed to work for the benefit of these young persons, their families and for their integration into schools and work.

I invite church communities to welcome these young people and their parents, seeking to understand their stories and to help them find their place.

Dear young people who are 'displaced', be involved in constructing with your contemporaries a more just and fraternal society, by complying with your duties, respecting the law and not allowing yourself to be carried away by violence.

---