NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

OREMUS PRO PONTEFICE NOSTRO

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The Holy Father requests the prayers of all the faithful so that the Lord may illumine the road for the Church. May the commitment of Pastors and the faithful grow, in support of the delicate and weighty mission of the Successor of the Apostle Peter as 'the guardian of unity' in the Church.
- Vatican Note, Feb. 4, 2009

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In reply to a number of messages from new users (as well as a few veteran users but non-members) about the 'difficulty' of navigating within the Forum, I hope this helps:

FOR NEW VISITORS TO THE FORUM: To navigate within the page you are now on, scroll up or down as needed.
To see preceding entries in NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT, Click on 'Previous page', above right.
To get to other topic threads of the English section, click on the 'envelop' above right, tagged 'Fans speaking English' -
it will get you to the board with all the topic threads available in the section.
On that board, to get to the latest page containing the most recent entries on the topic you choose,
click on 'Last' in the parentheses indicating page numbers right after the subject title,
Once you get to that page, proceed as above.





See preceding page for items posted earlier today, Feb. 6.




Meanwhile, Father Z on his blog sends us to this item in the Catholic Herald.


A breath of sanity in the storm

Friday, 6 February


It’s been amazing, at times disheartening, to watch the way the story about the lifted excommunications has been poorly reported, poorly explained and has escalate over the last two weeks. But more on this later.

In Germany in particular, the papers have been going crazy. From the small local newspaper for Regensburg to the biggies like the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and the heavies like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the amount of text that has been generated in the last two weeks has been pretty overwhelming.

Today, the FAZ and the Sueddeutsche were both posting on the subject with a frequency that was unreal. But amid the word-avalanche, I found some solid ground.

For the first time, after tracking through innumerate articles in the mainstream press — yesterday was a particularly depressing day — I came upon a complete anomaly in the FAZ: a report which did not talk about “rehabilitation”, which was informative and actually said what was happening.

Sure, it was pretty dry and didn’t make the sort of entertaining reading that the Sueddeutsche’s article on Bishop Richard Williamson’s loathing for the Sound of Music or the extremely well reported one in today’s Mail gave us, but in its dryness it was paradoxically refreshing.

The meister-reporter was no one other than Heinz Joachim Fischer , who holds a doctorate in religious philosophy, a Licenciate in theology, was studying in Rome during Vatican II and has been the FAZ’s long-time Vatican correspondent.

The measured tone and accurate reporting, even in my awkward translation is just a relief. The voice of sanity, or some of it, follows here:

---

Papal competence acknowledged
by Heinz-Joachim Fischer



The reason for the lifting of the excommunications was a letter of the leader of the Society, Fellay, who proclaimed - also in the name of the three others — the firm will to be Catholic and recognise the Roman Catholic Church with her teachings and the demands of the Pope.
With that, they acknowledged the Papal competency over their consecration as bishops which Lefebvre had gone against.

The repeal of the excommunicataion does not change anything, as the note from the Vatican Secretariat of State last Wednesday re-emphasised, that the bishops and priests of the society still do not have ecclesiastical recognition.

For them counts the “Suspension” “a divinis” the punishment for priests in which they are suspended from office and ministry, which they incurred as members of a brotherhood in an ecclesiastical community not recognised by the Pope”.

The Traditionalists distanced themselves from the Roman Church because they saw in the Second Vatican Council in the years 1962 to 1965, especially the decisions on religious freedom and the effective abolition of the old Tridentine, as deviating from the really Catholic.

At first, the Society of St Pius X was founded by Archbishop Lefebvre 1969/70 with the tolerance of the Catholic Church. Then, with increasing alienation/distancing from Rome, [the Society] worked
half-canonically under suspension, as of 1988 under excommunication.

The “suspension” — against which in the practice the society is broken against — still remains until “full reconciliation and full communion” has been re-established with the Pope and, as Wednesday’s statement demanded, Williamson has recanted.

The withdrawal of the excommunications with the continuing suspension means that the Traditionalists have no rights in the Catholic Church, but are allowed to be considered as penitent sinners willing to be improved. In their society they work in a canonical grey zone, with the obligation to bring their canonical status into order.

Political views cannot, according to Roman Catholic code, present either conditions or barriers for membership in the Catholic Church. Bishop Williamson can hardly therefore be excommunicated by reason of his political or historical views.

These can, however, be determining [factors] for admittance to Church offices and could lead to a suspension of the office if [they are] seen as a nuisance to the faithful, or in the case of bishops, as a sign of inadequate administration.

Williamson was set the condition “to distance himself from his opinions about the Shoah in absolute unequivocal and public manner” for admission to Episcopal functions.

The “good behaviour” — measured by the Vatican’s yardsticks — will also be decisive for the further path to full Communion and for the revocation of the suspension. "

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As I wrote, it's not fun or easily digestible reading, reduced to a sound bite, but then this whole matter is fairly complex.


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


I haven't checked out the original article (I probably won't be able to access it, but I don't doubt Ms. Arco's translation is faithful. She appears to have missed Fischer's first article on this issue, however, which appeared promptly in FAZ (and was posted in translation somewhere in the preceding pages), and it looks like she may not have seen Peter Seewald's article for kath.net either. But I have not yet seen whether and what the usually friendly Paul Badde of Die Welt has written about this.


NB: We are on a new page and we are back to normal line lengths. I hope it stays this way. It's not easy to re-space
each and every line I post to bring it to readable width when something skews the page.

Thanks to Anna Arco's link to Fischer's FAZ article, I was able to navigate to other stories I would otherwise not be able to access, so here's
a bit more info about the Berlin trip - it's from a long daily wrap-up of stories about the Church and religion.


Papal visit falls on 20th anniversary
of German reunification
Translated from

February 6, 2009


According to the president of the German bishops' conference, the Archbishop of Freiburg, Mons. Robert Zollitsch, Pope Benedict XVI will make his third trip to Germany as Pope on the 20th anniversary of German reunifcation next year.

But there was no confirmation Friday from the Federal President's office. On a visit to the Vatican in 2006, President Koehler had invited the Pope to come to Berlin.

Zollitsch said that besides Berlin, visits to Freiburg and Thuringia states are also being considered - particularly Erfurt, Eichsfeld and the Wartburg in Eisenach, where Martin Luther had translated the Bible to German.

Zollitsch told the ZDF program 'Berlin direkt' which will be broadcast Sunday, that by 2010, he thinks everything will be calmer in Germany and that the Pope can be welcomed with 'joy and enthusiasm'.

Benedict XVI has visited Germany twice since he became Pope. He went to Colonge in August 2005 for World Yputh Day, and in September 2006, he visited his Bavarian homeland.

Here is what we posted last July about a possible third German trip from a Reuters blog report:

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Is the Pope planning to visit
tHE cradle of Protestantism?
Posted by Tom Heneghan
FaithWorld blog

July 1, 2008


Is Pope Benedict planning a visit to a cradle of Protestantism? Should a Catholic Pontiff tour the medieval castle where Martin Luther translated the Bible into German at the start of the Reformation?

It’s far too early to get confirmations or denials from the Vatican or the German government, since the visit — still only in the rumor stage — is not due until the spring of 2009.

But a local newspaper in the eastern state of Thuringia, where the Wartburg is located, says security planning has already begun.




According to the Erfurt daily Thüringer Allgemeine, an advance team from the German president’s office in Berlin has already met local police. Dieter Althaus, the state premier who invited Benedict to Thuringia during a visit in Rome in April, has also met mayors from towns in the area “to discuss the emergency case of a papal visit.

Also in Eisenach, the words ‘Pope’ and ‘Wartburg’ are mentioned together more frequently.” An earlier German press report about a possible trip mentioned that Benedict would visit Eichsfeld, a nearby island of Catholicism in an otherwise Lutheran region, so he would be in the neighborhood.

Apart from the security, a visit by any Pope to the Wartburg would need careful preparation to ensure it helps rather than hurts Catholic-Protestant relations.

If that Pope is Joseph Ratzinger, the task becomes even more tricky. Pope Benedict has studied the writings of Martin Luther — he’s probably the only Pontiff who ever has — and impressed Lutherans with his knowledge and appreciation of his fellow German theologian.

At the same time, he has also been blunt in describing Protestant denominations as “not proper churches.” In fact, he doesn’t refer to them as churches at all, but “ecclesial communities.” [These statements are not entirely accurate. It is true the CDF has made the distinction - to clarify statements in the Vatican II documents later retierated in Dominus Iesus - that some Christian denominations which broke off from the Church during the EEformation cannot be considered as 'Churches' in the strict Catholic definition that sees the Roman Catholic Church as the 'only Church of Christ'. But Catholic hierarchy, including Pope Benedict, have continued to use the term 'church' in everyday speech for the Reformed Protestant churches.]

Not surprisingly, Protestant leaders feel offended. [Only the thin-skinned. The more sensible simply considered it as the Roman Catholic Church asserting its conviction.]


I checked the Thuringian newspaper online, and its July 10 issue carried at least 3 articles about the expected papal visit - two of them reporting rumors and indications, but the third one headlined 'Everything points to a visit by the Pope to Eichsfeld', citing the facts marshalled by Heneghan in his blog above.

---

]Here's what AP reported today:


Germany expects
papal visit in 2010
By GEIR MOULSON



BERLIN, Feb. 6 (AP)— Pope Benedict XVI is expected to visit his homeland in 2010, the year Germany marks the 20th anniversary of its reunification, a top German cleric said today.

A trip to Germany by the Bavarian-born Benedict would be his third since the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pontiff in 2005.

"I assume that there will be a visit by the Holy Father to Germany next year, an official state visit here in Berlin and, I hope, to us in Freiburg, too," Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference, said in an interview posted on ZDF television's Web site.

Zollitsch did not say when exactly in 2010 Benedict might visit, but Germany celebrates the 20th anniversary of reunification on Oct. 3.

The Vatican typically does not confirm papal trips until closer to the date, but a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, noted that a trip to Germany next year was "a wish" of Benedict's.

Zollitsch's comments came at the end of what he acknowledged was a "turbulent week."

On Tuesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel made a rare public demand for a clarification from the pope after the Vatican ruled that the excommunication of British Bishop Richard Williamson, an ultraconservative who had denied the Holocaust, should be lifted.

On Wednesday, the Vatican demanded that Williamson recant his denial of the Holocaust before he can be admitted as a bishop into the Roman Catholic Church. Merkel welcomed what she called the "unequivocal" statement.

Looking ahead to the possible papal visit, Zollitsch said he believes that "by then, things will again have become calm enough that we can receive him with joy and enthusiasm."

Zollitsch lamented "misunderstandings" over the Williamson episode. He stressed the church's commitment to dialogue with Jewish representatives.

Earlier today, Germany's Central Council of Jews said its leaders had accepted an invitation to meet with Zollitsch "in the not too distant future."

February 7
St. Colette


OR today.


No papal or religious stories on Page 1. UN secretary general in Kabul
says UN strongly committed to peace in Afghanistan; a study shows increased
military spending by Latin American governments; a Jerusalem study shows
increased Palestinian support for Hamas after recent Israeli operation in Gaza;
a serious drought in east central China; and a brief bulletin on Prime Minister
Berlusconi's decree in an attempt to stop the euthanasia on Eluana Englaro.



THE POPE'S DAY

Th Holy Father met today with

-Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)
- Bishops of Nigeria (Group 3) on ad-limina visit


The Vatican released the Italian text of the Holy Father's message for the 17th World Day
for the Sick observed by the Church annually on Feb. 11, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

WHEN WILL THIS MAN SHUT UP?

The Jesuit who heads the German service of Vatican Radio appears to have developed a celebrity syndrome, speaking freely to any and all outlets in Germany on recent embarrassing events for the Vatican. Of course, they seek him out, and keep coming back for more, now that they have found out he's such a willing blabbermouth.

Apparently, he enjoys being in the spotlight, and is using his 15 minutes of fame venting all his pent-up frustrations about the Vatican bureaucracy and the communications set-up itself, of which he is a ranking official.

Sure, Fr. Gemmingen has freedom of speech, as Fr. Lombardi does, but responsible (and I use the word in all its senses) officials in charge of Vatican communications have no business yakking away to all and sundry to 'reinforce' the negative image already incurred by the Church and the Vatican over this issue. They could better use their time getting down to work to remedy the faults they are now publicly beating their breasts about!

It's also a common-sense rule that if you can't (or won't) say anything good in favor of the institution you serve and have no intention of leaving, better to just shut up.

The problem over Williamson - in effect, questioning the wisdom of the Holy Father's decision related to one of his primary tasks - is not a moral or ethical issue on which any one has a duty to speak out at all costs. In this case, it is the Holy Father's judgment that has been called into question.

'Responsible' officials who work for him have no business joining the outside world disputing this in any way, unless it is to come out in a direct defense on all the issues brought up. Not to join the finger-wagging, tut-tutting chorus. That's pandering, pure and simple.

And in this case, Fr. Gemmingen even leads off by offering, or at least, underscoring negative news!


Holocaust denial row damages Church,
Vatican expert says


February 6, 2009


Father Eberhard von Gemmingen, the head of Radio Vatican's German service, said in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper that a new "wave of exits" had already set in after Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of four leaders of the St. Pius X Society, one of whom denies the Holocaust.

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Catholics have the option of formally quitting the church by registering their exit with local authorities. They are then no longer considered Catholic.

"In other countries this is not possible, as baptism cannot be revoked," Gemmingen said.

The relationship of trust between the German-born Pope and German Catholics has been "shaken", Gemmingen said, but believed Benedict XVI's planned visit to his home country next year could repair some of the damage.

"It hurts if you see that many people do not understand Rome and the Pope any longer," the Vatican expert said and also voiced scepticism whether the head of the Catholic Church would go ahead with his planned visit to Israel this year.

"If it really happens is still very open," he said, while indicating there had been no adverse signals from the Jewish state.

Benedict XVI, former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had lifted the excommunication of Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson and three other bishops of the St. Pius X Society, a move which triggered criticism within the Church and an outcry in his German homeland, including sharp remarks from Chancellor Angela Merkel.

[You know what that 'holier-than-thou' outcry is called? It's 'guilt compensation syndrome'.]

According to an opinion poll by state broadcaster ARD, only 42 percent of Germans approve of his work, down from 63 percent when Ratzinger took office four years ago.

Amid growing pressure, a statement was eventually issued in which the Vatican said that the British-born Williamson would have to recant his Holocaust-denial claims before being allowed to occupy any office within the church. The St. Pius X society broke with the Vatican over Church reformss made in the 1960s.

Gemmingen sharply criticized the Vatican's communication blunders during the affair. [The pot calling himself black, but instead of cleaning up, simply makes it worse by smearing ashes all over the soot!]

"There is not only a communication problem. But also an organization problem. Decisions cannot not be made without involving those responsible for the issues in the Vatican." [So call them and straighten things out - or try at least. The Vatican has no telephones? Gemmingen et al never heard of e-mail? No, the problem is a lack of initiative - kicking the bucket to someone else, instead of trying to lift it, to begin with![

There had to be better information, and decisions made jointly, he argued. "But in the Vatican communication will change only very slowly and very little." [And who says that situation is cast in stone, that no one should and can do anything to change it? Gemmingen is so NEGATIVE! There are better ways to aspire to martyrdom than presenting yourself wide open to the media for no reason other than thoughtless self-indulgence! 'See, I am humble enough to confess that we did wrong!' - as if that gains any points. Especially since, in this case, all this soul-baring and pharisaical breast-beating is done at the expense of the Pope.]

POPE BENEDICT TO MEET
AMERICAN JEWISH LEADERS
NEXT THURSDAY?



I just saw the FoxNews correspondent in Rome reporting from the Vatican - 7:30 p.m. Saturday night, Rome time - to say he has confirmed that

Pope Benedict XVI is meeting next Thursday with the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Associations - including the most outspoken of those criticizing him for perceived anti-Semitic actions like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.


I immediately tried to Google if it has been reported online but so far none....

PLEASE SIGN ON


www.ja-zu-benedikt.net/index.php?action=S
The simple form allows you to choose your country of origin.

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HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI:

We, the undersigned, object to the immoderate attacks in the media against you, our Shepherd. These attacks are unmerited and correspond neither to reality nor to behavior worthy of human beings.

We are committed Catholic laymen, members of religious orders, and priests. Through our signature, we express publicly our solidarity with Your Holiness!

---

I just lost a whole elaborate post seeking to update the FSSPX situation from their side and have had to reconstruct it. IStarting with this editorial posted today on the site of DICI, the information agency of the FSSPX. It is signed by the official spokesman for the FSSPX.


The stakes are doctrinal
Editorial by
Abbe Alain Lorans

Bulletin #189
February 7-21, 2009

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Two weeks have gone which have been full of relevant news. The decree of January 21, 2009, and the media campaign arising from the statements of Mons. Williamson to Swedish TV must be analyzed amply and calmly.

Starting with this special issue, we are presenting some useful documents for this purpose which will be followed through in succeeding issues.

The doctrinal questions that must now be the subject of 'necessary discussions' between the FSSPX and the Holy See, under the terms of teh Jan. 21 decree, are fundamental.

The weekly magazine La Vie, in its issue for the week after the decree was published, contained an article by a Dominican which shows the necessity for such discussions.

Fr. Claude Geffré, who has been very much involved in inter-religious dialog, said bluntly: "It is true that the texts
[of Vatican II) are often ambiguous. Indeed, in order to arrive at a greater voting consensus among the Conciliar Fathers, it has occurred that the point of view of an irreducible [Lorans's note: meaning 'traditional'] minority has been juxtaposed with that of a crushing majority [Lorans's note: meaning "progressivist']".

The juxtaposition of two points of view - one 'irreducible' and the other 'crushing' - cannot have been better said.

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Bulletin #189 under the title
SPECIAL DOSSIER: THE DECREE OF JANUARY 21, 2009
carries the following:
- Transcripts of three interviews with Mons. Fellay given to the Swiss news agency APIC and to the Italian news paper Libero on January 25, and to the French newspaper Present, on Jan. 31 [Translations of all 3 were posted in a timely manner on this thread]
- Information about the interview given by Mons. Williamson to Swedish TV [with some newsbits that have not previously been reported]
- Announcement of a public meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 11, in Paris, at which Mons. Fellay will be available by video feed for questions about the decree, and the superior of the French district of the FSSPX will give a lecture on 'Prospects for the future'

A section on DOCUMENTS presents
- The official French translation of the Jan. 21 decree
- The communique of Mons. Fellay about the decree
- Mons. Fellay's letter to the FSSPX membership about the decree
- Mons. Fellay's press statement on Jan. 27 regarding Mons. Williamson
- Statement of the superior of the district for Great Britain and Scandinavia commenting on a Jan. 27 statement from the Diocese of Stockholm regarding Mons. Williamson
- Mons. Williamson's Jan. 30 letter to Cardinal Castrillon expressing gratitude to the Holy Father for revoking the ecommunication and an apology for having caused 'unnecessary problems'

It also has a round-up of reactions in Switzerland to the recall of the excommunications.


One thing is obvious in the presentations: the great importance that the FSSPX attaches to the January 21 decree. What may seem a canonical formality to most of us looking from the outside appears to have had the effect of taking away the 'great pain' Mons. Fellay told the Pope the bishops and the Fraternity had suffered for more than 20 years.

As a layman, I think the simple fact that they set so much store by this event means they are really sincere about wanting to be within the fold. If they were truly schismatic, they could have chosen to break off completely and tell Rome "We don't need you. We'll set up our own Church". But they know and say "There is only one Church".

And the Holy Father's judgment about them confirms these common-sense considerations. So, just as no one - within the Church or outside it - appears to have minded when the ex-Lefebvrian community Institut du Bon Pasteur was re-integrated and allowed to continue "reflecting and discussing points of difference over Vatican II", then there is no reason why the FSSPX should not receive a similar treatment, especially since they are exponentially far larger. A worldwide network of at least 600 priests all formed in the traditional way, and the 600,000 to a million FSSPX faithful are not insignificant.

*****

Also, the DICI presentation makes it very convenient for the Net viewer to look at the situation fairly comprehensively from the FSSPX point of view. I wish there were a similar presentation on the part of the Holy See.

As we all know, the Vatican site, necessarily, is brimming with information of all kinds, and almost every entity in the Vatican has its own web pages on the site. However, it takes a lot of navigating.

And the Vatican webmaster has yet to take the initiative of opening a webpage or web pages dedicated to current or always actual issues, which should at least contain all the links on the site itself that pertain to the subject of the 'issues' page, and any helpful outside links within the Catholic web-sphere.

I checked out the fairly new website of Ecclesia Dei, and the latest document posted on it about the FSSPX issue is the June 4, 2008, memorandum from Cardinal Castrillon listing the 'pre-conditions' agreed upon with Mons. Fellay for the next step in the process of moving towards 'full communion'.

However, it is worth reviewing at this time to judge how the FSSPX has lived up to it.



In English:

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CONDITIONS RESULTING FROM THE MEETING OF JUNE 4, 2008
BETWEEN CARDINAL CASTRILLON HOYOS AND BISHOP FELLAY

1. Commitment to a response proportionate to the generosity of the Holy Father
2. Commitment to avoid all public statements that do not respect the person of the Holy Father
and that would be lacking in ecclesial charity
3. Commitment to avoid claiming a Magisterium superior to that of the Holy Father and not to set
the Fraternity in contra-position to the Church
4. Commitment to demonstrate the will to act honestly in full ecclesial charity and respect
for the authority of the Vicar of Christ
5. Commitment to respect the date - end of June - to respond positively. This will be a necessary
condition as an immediate preparation for adherence in order to achieve full communion.

---

Although this memorandum was referred to in news reports as an ultimatum, its form suggests that it summarized points that were agreed upon between the cardinal and the bishop during that meeting. The note is called, in diplomatese, an 'aide memoire', literally a reminder, which by being written down also implies a 'word of honor' between the two parties that is just as binding as a formal document.

One must also note how much the conditions are tied to a recognition of the Holy Father's authority and Magisterium (which includes Vatican-II). It perhaps reflects the centrality of Benedict XVI's personality - including his well-articulated views about Vatican-II - as a factor in Mons. Fellay's consIDerations.

Presumably, Ecclesia Dei was satisfied that the FSSPX honored those conditions - it had 6 months to observe whether they would - and so, the Pope ordered the recall. I have seen no one among the FSSPX opponents come forward to present any evidence that the Fraternity failed to live up to the June 4, 2008, conditions.

If the Pope trusts them thus far, the least the rest of us can do is to give them the benefit of the doubt, and pray that the entire community may see their way clearly back into full communion with the Church.

February 8

St. Josephine Bakhita, Nun
(1869-1947)


OR today.

Benedict XVI's Message for
Feb. 11 World Day for the Sick:
'Life is beautiful though wrapped
in the mystery of suffering'
Other Page 1 stories: A commentary on the dignity of death
in the face of the Eluana Englaro drama; and a story on
a redefinition of US foreign policy under President Obama.



THE POPE'S DAY

Angelus today - The Pope spoke of Jesus healing the sick as narrated in today's Gospel and tied it
to the coming World Day for the Sick on Feb. 11, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Afterwards, he asked
the faithful to join the Catholics of Madagascar in a day of prayer for national reconciliation
in that troubled African island nation.

ANGELUS TODAY

The Holy Father spoke of Jesus healing the sick as narrated in today's Gospel and tied it to the coming World Day for the Sick on Feb. 11, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Afterwards, he asked the faithful to join the Catholics of Madagascar in a day of prayer for national reconciliation in that troubled African island nation.



Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words.

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

The Gospel today (cfr Mk 1,29-39) – in close continuity with that of last Sunday - presents us with Jesus who, after having preached on the Sabbath in the synagogue in Capharnaum, heals many sick persons, starting with Simon Peter's mother-in-law.

Entering her home, he finds her in bed with a fever, and immediately, taking her by the hand, heals her and makes her get up. After sunset, he heals a multitude of persons afflicted with all sorts of ailments.

Healing the sick occupied a good part of the public mission of Christ, and we are asked once more to reflect on the sense and the value of sickness in every situation that the human being may find himself.

This opportunity is also given to us by the World Day for the Sick, which we will mark on Wednesday, February 11, on the memorial day of the Blessed Virgin of Lourdes.

Although sickness is part of the human experience, we cannot get used to it, not only because at times, it becomes truly difficult and grave, but essentially because we are made for life, a complete life.

Quite rightly, our 'interior instinct' makes us think of God as the fullness of life, or more correctly, as eternal perfect life. When we are tried by illness and our prayers seem to be in vain, then doubt arises in us, and we ask in anguish: What is God's will?

We find the answer to this question in the Gospel. For example, in today's Gospel, we read that "he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons" (Mk 2,34).

In another passage from St. Matthew, we are told "(Jesus) went around all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people" (Mt 4,23).

Jesus does not leave any doubt: God - whose face he himself has shown us - it the God of life, who liberates us from every evil. The signs of the power of his love are the healings he performed - he demonstrates thereby that the Kingdom of God is near by restoring men and women to full integrity in spirit and body.

These healings are signs: they call attention to the message of Christ. Tthey lead us to God and make us know that the true and most profound illness of man is the absence of God, of the source of truth and love.

Only reconciliation with God can give us true healing, true life, because life without love and without truth would not be life. The Kingdom of God is precisely the presence of truth and love, and healing in the depth of our being.

Thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, the work of Jesus is extended though the mission of the Church. Through the Sacraments, Christ communicates his life to multitudes of brothers and sisters, even as he comforts numberless sick persons through the health care activities that the Christian community promotes with fraternal charity, thus showing the face of God, his love.

It is true: How many Christians - priests, religious and laymen - in every part of the world have lent and continue to lend their hands, their eyes and their hearts to Christ, the true physician of bodies and spirits!

Let us pray for all who are sick, especially those who are in the most serious conditions, who cannot provide for themselves but are totally dependent on the care of others.

May each of them experience, in the solicitude of those around them, the power of God's love and the richness of his saving grace.

Mary, health of the sick, pray for us!


After the Angelus prayers, he said:

In these weeks, strong political tensions have been reported in Madagascar which have led to popular agitations. The bishops of the island have therefore declared today a day of prayer in favor of national reconciliation and social justice.

Strongly concerned for this particularly critical period that the nation is undergoing, I ask you to join the Malagasian Catholics in entrusting to God those who died in the demonstrations and to ask him, through the intercession of the Most Blessed Mary, a return to concord, social tranquillity and civil coexistence.

As I mentioned earlier, the World Day for the Sick will be observed on February 11, memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lourdes. In the afternoon, I will meet sick persons and other pilgrims in St. Peter's Basilica, after Holy Mass presided over by the president of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Health Ministry, Cardinal Lozano Barragan.

Meanwhile, I assure my special blessing to all who are sick, to health care workers, and to volunteers in every part of the world.

---

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN
THE POPE AND ANGELA MERKEL
AT HER REQUEST


The Vatican Press Office today issued a rare Sunday statement:

---

COMMUNIQUE OF THE VATICAN PRESS DIRECTOR
AND THE SPOKESMAN OF THE GERMAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

The Holy Father Benedict XVI and Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a telephone conversation requested by the Chancellor, exchanged views in a climate of great respect.

They referred to the statements made respectively by the Holy Father at the General Audience on Wednesday, Jan. 28, and by the Chancellor last Thursday.

The spokesman of the Federal Government, Mr. Wilhelm, and Fr. Lombardi, director of the Press Office, commented: "It was a cordial and constructive dialog, marked by their common profound adherence to the ever-valid warning of the Shoah for mankind".

---

IN SHORT, SHE APOLOGIZED -
FOR SPEAKING SENTENTIOUSLY
WITHOUT CHECKING THE NEWS FIRST.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

And now, the president
of the German bishops wants
Williamson re-excommunicated,
says 'He has no place in the Church'



BERLIN, Feb. 8 (Translated from Apcom) - The president of the German bishops' conference, Mons. Robert Zollitsch, has asked that Bishop Richard Williamson be re-exommunicated.

"I do not see any place for him in the Catholic Church" Zollitsch told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "He is irresponsible".*

Zollitsch said that on Monday, he will propose to the president of the Central Council for German Jews, Charlotte Knobloch, two possible dates for a meeting. He said he hopes it can take place in the next four weeks.


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Zollitsch just piles outrage upon outrage.

Excuse me, Monsignor, but if 'irresponsibility' - or even holding erroneous historical views, as Williamson does -
were grounds foe excommunication, then few would be left in the Church.

And to take your position, it appears you have just excomnmunicated yourself on the grounds of irresponsibility.

It is irresponsible for a bishop - who is head of a national bishops' conference yet = to lightly make such a suggestion
in public. You know very well the specific grounds for excommunication, and that Williamson's offenses against
common sense and elementary civility are not.

It's more understandable if Chancellor Merkel made her precipitous and ill-considered remarks last week to pander
to the voters in the coming elections.

But it seems you are kowtowing unnecessarily to the German Jews, instead of defending the Church with simple
common sense against the entrenched bigotry of some Jewish leaders towards Catholics.

What do you gain by making such an irresponsible statement? Do you need to win opinion polls on your popularity?
It's certainly not going to win you more attendees in Church, nor gain the loyalty of the truly Christian among
those who do still attend Church.

Why then, other than your ill-concealed hostility to the Pope?
How can you speak with a forked tongue about 'receiving the Pope with joy and enthusiasm' when he visits next year,
all the while censuring him so sanctimoniously about the FSSPX bishops.

I won't even mention a bishop's sworn duty to be loyal to the Pope, because obviously, that's the first rule
that many German bishops threw out of the window long ago.

Your hostility has apparently driven you to become so un-Christian as to believe you can determine who 'has a place
in the Church'.

New positive signs
from the Lefebvrians
Translated from

Feb. 8, 2009

---

The Apostolic Palace has received a joint letter from the four bishops ordained by Mons. Lefebvre thanking the Holy Father for lifting their excommunication.

The letter, written in French, is very affectionate and conciliatory. Let us trust in God that everything may proceed well and that none of the four bishops will spoil the works. Since anything is always possible.

Williamson is no longer director of the seminary in La Reja and it seems he has accepted the situation and is willing to retire in silence to his studies. God grant he keeps to his decision. [Separate reports about this later - he has not resigned as director nor been replaced by the FSSPX, at least not yet - but it was being anticipated.]

His latest statements may be viewed positively even if he has yet retracted what he said about the Shoah. He says he is going to study his facts and will retract if he is convinced he made an error.

Clearly, of course, that the Shoah, indisputable to me,, is not an element of Catholic faith - not a truth necessary for salvation. Even if it is the truth.

If I get authorization, I will disclose the contents of the letter from the bishops. I can tell you in advance it is to be seen positively.

---

Cigona, whose column title means 'The stork in the tower', actually broke the news on his blog about the expected lifting of the excommunications ahead of Tornielli and Rodari in the Italian media.

The most intriguing line in that blog entry of his was "I could say more but I don't want to run afoul of Cardinal Re", which one could interpret to mean his source was Cardinal Re.

from

February 8, 2009


Here's a welcome break from the polemical storm still swirling around our beloved Holy Father.
Bishop Rylko is the President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity. the book is:





Pope Benedict XVI has been following for many years, with the passion of a theologian and a pastor, the phenomenon of the movements and new communities that sprang up in the Church after the Second Vatican Council.

His very first contacts with these ecclesial entities go back to the mid-1960s, when he was still a professor in Tubingen. [1] Then, with the passage of time, these relations became deeper and more intense and were transformed into a true friendship.

In 1998, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he reminisced as follows: "For me personally it was a marvelous event when at the beginning of the seventies I first came into close contact with movements like the Neocatechumens, Comunione e Liberazione, and the Focolarini and thus experienced the enthusiasm and verve with which they lived out their faith and felt bound to share with others, from out of the joy of their faith, what had been vouchsafed to them." [2]

These were the postconciliar years, difficult years for the Church, but these new entities unexpectedly appeared to the eyes of the theologian and pastor as a providential gift.

As he later wrote, "Suddenly here was something nobody had planned on. The Holy Spirit had, so to say, spoken up for himself again. In young people especially, the faith was surging up in its entirety, with no ifs and buts, with no excuses or way out, experienced as a favor and as a precious life-giving gift." [3]

Alongside the Servant of God John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was an authoritative interpreter of the Pope's magisterial teaching on the ecclesial movements and the new communities; and he became for them a sure point of reference.

He saw in the movements, for which he has always been an attentive interlocutor and a generous source of wise counsel, "powerful ways in which faith is present", [4] a salutary challenge (something that the Church always needs), a sort of prophecy that heralded the future.

Years ago he wrote: "Today there are Christians who drop out of this strange consensus of modern existence, who attempt new forms of life. To be sure, they don't receive any public notice, but they are doing something that really points to the future." [5] In other words, they play the role of those "creative minorities" which, according to Arnold Toynbee, are decisive for the future.

The first text presented in this anthology is an invaluable lecture that sets forth articulately and exhaustively the theological vision that Cardinal Ratzinger has of the ecclesial movements and the new communities.

It is the lecture entitled "Church Movements and Their Place in Theology", which he gave at the opening of the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements, held in Rome by the Pontifical Council for the Laity in May of 1998. [6]

The lecture, which combines extraordinary theological depth with considerable pastoral value, was received by the participants in the Congress with warm expressions of gratitude.

In the magisterial and authoritative words of Cardinal Ratzinger, who had opened up new and fascinating theological horizons to their view, they saw a reflection and a confirmation of their experience of faith, their deeper ecclesial identity.

According to Cardinal Ratzainger, in order to frame correctly a theological discussion on the ecclesial movements, it is not enough to set up a dialectic of the principles: institution and charism, Christology and Pneumatology, hierarchy and prophecy, because the Church is not built dialectically but organically. [7]

He therefore proposes another route, the historical approach, identifying in "apostolic succession" and "apostolicity" the true theological place of these movements in the Church. This perspective reveals that the ecclesial movements and the new communities have the same reason for existing: a mission that surpasses the confines of the local Churches and reaches "to the end of the earth".

This, then, is the bond that unites them to the ministry of the Successor of Peter in the universal Church. "The papacy did not bring the movement(s) into being," Cardinal Ratzinger affirms, "but it was [their] essential anchor in the structure of the Church, [their] ecclesial support .... The Pope is dependent on these ministries, and they on him, and, in the existence side by side of the two kinds of mission, the symphony of Church life comes to fulfillment." [8]

The phenomenon of the movements, a constant feature in the life of the Church, is present throughout her history. And the interesting historical review that he provides demonstrates how they have given form to the timely interventions of the Holy Spirit so as to raise up saints and new charisms in response to the challenges the Church has had to face in every age.

The impassioned lecture concludes with some practical criteria for discernment that should be useful for pastors and for the movements themselves.

On the one hand, indeed, Cardinal Ratzinger warns these new entities against the dangers that result from their present stage of development, which is still in some respects "adolescent", such as forms of exuberance that are sometimes excessive, various sorts of one-sidedness, and the tendency to mistake particular customs and practices for absolutes.

And on the other hand, he warns pastors and urges that they "not indulge in any pursuit of uniformity in their pastoral arrangements or planning .... Far better less organization and more Spirit!" [9] Indeed, charisms need room for freedom so as to be able to develop fully. To both parties, therefore, he directs an urgent appeal to allow themselves to be taught and purified by the Spirit." [10]

The second text that is presented here, albeit in abridged form, is of a completely different character from the first, yet surely complements it.

It records the dialogue of Cardinal Ratzinger with a large group of bishops gathered from all five continents to participate in a seminar on the theme of "The Ecclesial Movements in the Pastoral Concern of the Bishops", held in Rome in June of 1999 by the Pontifical Council for the Laity in conjunction with the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [11]

The dialogue format, instead of the usual prepared talk, was very favorably received by the bishops, who were grateful for the opportunity to discuss directly with the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith some of the doctrinal and pastoral questions that are important to them.

The exchange, which starts out from the authoritative speaker's personal experience with the movements, is quite wide-ranging, touching on topics such as the relation between the old and the new charisms, the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension of the Church, the ecclesial movements and the parishes, the movements and the Church's mission in a non-Christian society, the constitutive elements of an ecclesiology of the movements, the future of religious life.

Among so many stimulating reflections, one notion in particular struck me: the idea of the movements as the "place" that helps Christians to "feel at home" in the Church.

"The movements, it seems to me, have this specific feature of helping the faithful to recognize in a worldwide Church, which could appear to be no more than a large international organization, a home where they can find the atmosphere appropriate to the family of God and at the same time remain part of the great universal family of the saints of all times." [12]

Today more than ever, as I reread this dialogue, I am impressed by the seriousness with which Cardinal Ratzinger takes each question and by the breadth and the substance of his answers, which always go into the subject in depth, without omitting any dimension of the questions that are posed.

And the reader is impressed by the pastoral wisdom with which he discusses complex, knotty questions as well as by the hope that radiates from his words.

Since his election to the papacy, Benedict XVI has not stopped demonstrating his affection and his own pastoral concern in dealing with these new entities.

Suffice it to recall these words addressed to the young people gathered in Cologne in August 2005 to celebrate the twentieth World Youth Day: "Form communities based on faith! In recent decades, movements and communities have come to birth in which the power of the Gospel is keenly felt." [13]

And the words that he spoke to the German bishops, again on the subject of the movements: "The Church must make the most of these realities, and at the same time she must guide them with pastoral wisdom, so that with the variety of their different gifts they may contribute in the best possible way to building up the community," adding the incisive observation: "The local Churches and movements are not in opposition to one another, but constitute the living structure of the Church." [14]

Precisely this deep pastoral concern was the source of the Holy Father's decision to call together in Rome on the Vigil of Pentecost of this year [2006] the ecclesial movements and the new communities from all over the world, so as to give witness together once more to their unity within the diversity of their charisms.

Eight years after the historic meeting of May 30, 1998, with Pope John Paul II - an event that signaled for the movements and the communities the beginning of a new stage on the way toward "ecclesial maturity" - the invitation of Benedict XVI was accepted by them with joy, enthusiasm, and profound gratitude.

The meeting of the Holy Father with the ecclesial movements and the new communities is in perfect continuity with the one they had had with John Paul II. And we are sure that, like that one, thanks to the strong and illuminating words of the Successor of Peter, this year's meeting (2008) will become an important milestone in their life and in the life of the Church.

I commend the Italian publisher, Editrice San Paolo, for their felicitous proposal to publish these two important texts as part of the intense work of spiritual preparation that the ecclesial movements and the new communities are doing with a view to their meeting with Benedict XVI.

These pages will serve them as a reliable compass and a valuable guide so that they might look to what is essential and rediscover again and again their own particular reason for being, that is, to serve their mission in the Church.

ENDNOTES:

New Outpourings of the Spirit was translated by Michael J. Miller.

[1] See "The Movements, the Church, the World: Dialogue with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger", in The Ecclesial Movements in the Pastoral Concern of the Bishops (Vatican City: Pontificium Consilium pro Laicis, 2000), p. 226. The revised English translation of that dialogue is printed, pp. 63-117.
[2] J. Ratzinger, "Church Movements and Their Place in Theology", in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), p. 176; reprinted, pp. 17-61.
[3] See p. 20.
[4] J. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), p. 16.
[5] Ibid., p. 128.
[6] See Ratzinger, "Church Movements", pp. 176-208; reprinted with slight revisions, below, pp. 17-61.
[7] See p. 32.
[8] See pp. 43, 52-53.
[9] See p. 59.
[10] See p. 58.
[11] The proceedings of the seminar have been published in Ecclesial Movements (see note 1, above).
[12] See pp. 90-91.
[13] Benedict XVI, "Homily, Holy Mass: Marienfeld Esplanade, 21 August 2005", L'Osservatore Romano, English ed., no. 34 (August 24, 2005), pp. 11-12, citation at 12; reprinted in God's Revolution: World Youth Day and Other Cologne Talks (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), p. 61.
[14] Benedict XVI, "Address during the Meeting with the German Bishops, 21 August 2005", L'Osservatore Romano, English ed., no. 35 (August 31, 2005), pp. 2-3, citation at 3; reprinted in God's Revolution, p. 99.

Back to the FSSPX issue, but this time with an original viewpoint.



Rome and the SSPX:
One heck of an opportunity
by Brother André Marie

St. Benedict Center, New Hampshire
February 05th, 2009


The Holy Father does not think in sound bytes or headlines. That may be the way of most people today — even many world leaders — but it is obviously not his way, for he knows how ephemeral these things are.

He is too much the scholar, too much the student of history, and much too much a man of the Church to be preoccupied with all that. He will doubtless see to it that the crisis is “managed,” as the administrative jargon goes today, but that management will be secondary to the more important dogmatic and ecclesiastical realities at the heart of this matter.

I speak, of course, of the SSPX dialogue consequent on the lifting of the excommunications of the four bishops consecrated by Monsignor Lefebvre.

As the firestorm over Bishop Williamson’s imprudences are being fanned to white heat by progressivists in the Church and anti-Christians outside it, there is talk of a dialogue between Rome and the Society. Both Cardinal Castrillon (speaking for the Holy See) and Bishop Fellay (speaking for the SSPX) have expressed an eagerness for this. The recent note of the Secretariat of State, part of the “management” referred to above, also confirms this.

While many conservative commentators have stated that such a dialogue would essentially terminate in the SSPX’s conforming to the new order of things in the Church, that does not appear to be the attitude of Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, a not insignificant figure in all this business, as he heads Rome’s official “Traddie Department,” the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

The SSPX, whatever one says about them, has some things to bring to the table. If they put their best foot forward, and have intelligent men with the habitus of theology bring forth their objections in the spirit of Christian gentleness that seems to be a mark of Bishop Fellay’s manner in these recent events, some good things could develop.

For one, the Holy See’s representatives (hopefully disciplined theologians like the Thomist, Father Augustine Di Noia, O.P., undersecretary of the CDF) would recognize that, as theologians, the SSPX spokesmen are doing what the CDF has said theologians should do, namely, to assist the Church in “collaborative relations.” This constitutes the service of the theologian:

Service to the ecclesial community brings the theologian and the Magisterium into a reciprocal relationship. The latter authentically teaches the doctrine of the Apostles. And, benefiting from the work of theologians, it refutes objections to and distortions of the faith and promotes, with the authority received from Jesus Christ, new and deeper comprehension, clarification, and application of revealed doctrine. (Donum Veritatis, No. 21)

It should also be recalled that, “a theologian may… raise questions regarding the timeliness, the form, or even the contents" of magisterial interventions.

Here the theologian will need, first of all, to assess accurately the authoritativeness of the interventions which becomes clear from the nature of the documents, the insistence with which a teaching is repeated, and the very way in which it is expressed. (Donum Veritatis, No. 24)

Upon these foundations, there could be real dialogue (in the classical sense; after all, however it has been co-opted, it is a good word), and not one more of the many diplomatic exercises carried out under that name.

Secondly, and more importantly, some shocking revelations about the nature of the conciliar and post-conciliar magisterium and its manner of operating could be disclosed.

I say “shocking,” not as if these would be disclosures of things formerly unknown, but only in the sense that they would be officially stated in the context of a traditionalist critique of the Vatican II documents.

(Before reacting too strongly to that word “critique,” read “Now Allowed: ‘Serious and Constructive Criticism of Vatican II’ ?“) Were this “critique” to take place as an official dialogue with the Holy See, it would prevent Pharisaical liberals or conservatives from uttering specious accusations of traditionalist “dissent.”

For this to go right, the SSPX representatives at the table should be attentive to the Holy See’s own taxonomy in the authoritative gradations of magisterial texts, and then apply them to Vatican II.

Third, that critique itself, in the context of a longer dialogue, could produce some important and much-needed clarifications from the Holy See, such as the document that came out last July 10, clarifying an important and much disputed passage in Lumen Gentium.

Similar clarifications on passages dealing with ecumenism, religious liberty, grace, and the nature of the Church would hopefully be produced as a result of a traditionalist dialogue with the Holy See.

In my opinion, Pope Benedict, an Augustinian at heart, is too in love with the Doctor from Hippo to dismiss the traditionalist critiques as baseless.

What Saint Augustine says of the doctrine of the Mystical Body, of grace, and of the nature of human freedom, resonates in the soul of the German Pontiff.

It also forms the bedrock of the traditionalist critique, or at least it should. And in liturgy, the pPpe of Summorum Pontificum well knows that the reforms have been problematical.

To isolationist trads who think that nothing good can come from this “conciliar Pope,” I say: be careful. To underestimate the state of grace of the Supreme Pontiff is the first step on a short journey towards schism.

I think Pope Benedict wants the SSPX to help him restore doctrine and liturgy, and I’m thrilled as heck that it just might happen. Any maybe, while they are talking, the Holy Father can mention that the “Feeneyites” are OK.


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


'Feeneyites' subscribe to the theological thought of the late Father Leonard Feeney, a Jesuit priest who favored a narrow interpretation of the dogma 'extra Ecclesiam nulla salus' ("Outside the Church there is no salvation") - they insist on the absolute necessity of water baptism - as opposed to the Church's more open understanding of the dogma.

The reference to "Feenyites are OK" has to do witn another recent entry on their website that is quite relevant:

---

'Pope says Feeneyites are OK"
by The Philosopher
February 05th, 2009

One of the fun things about the Internet is that humble folk like me, little Hobbits on the great Middle Earth of life, get to do something formerly reserved only to the great ones of this world: craft sensationalist headlines. Despite its sensationalism, the headline is not far off, as you can see from the following text:

---

With regards to those who hold strictly the absolute necessity of water baptism, it would be quite wrong to charge them with heretical constructs. As they merely assert that which was the near-universal consensus of the Patristic era, such a charge would be proximate to condemning all but a few of the Fathers as heterodox. (Der Glaube das Pimmelkopfgelauben, Communio, April 1997 p 13. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.)

---

“Quite wrong to charge them with heretical constructs… .” There are lots of armchair inquisitors out there who should pay attention to that one.

---

A few weeks ago, I posted a thoughtful and congenial article on Vattican-II by Brother Andre that I picked from a Catholic news round-up. I did not bother to check Brother Andre's background beyond the fact that the article identified him as belonging to St. Benedict Center in New Hampshire.

It turns out that the Center is headquarters for an order called Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, founded by Fr. Feeney,
catholicism.org/category/the-slaves-of-the-immaculate-heart...
with the avowed twofold mission of propagating orthodox Catholic dogma in the United States and converting Americans to Catholicism. They have fraternal relations with the traditionalist Christ the King Institute in the United States.

It's time soneone competent came up with a round-up of existing organized traditionalist groups, how they differ from each other, and their status within the Church.

February 9
St. Apollonia
Virgin and Martyr


No OR today.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- H.E. Luiz Felipe de Seixas Corrêa, Ambassadoir of Brazil, who presented his credentials.
Address in Portuguese.
- Bishops of Nigeria (Group 3) on ad limina visit.

It was annnounced the Holy Father met yesterday, Sunday, with
- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, O.P., Archbishop of Vienna.


Not directly NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT, but FYI -

The FSSPX has relieved Bishop Williamson as seminary director in La Reja, Argentina.
This was announced by the superior of the Latin American district for the Fraternity.
The FSSPX information agency DICI also says, in an article about the background to
Williamson's Hebruary 7 interview with Spiegel magazine, that he had 'accepted'
when Mons. Fellay asked him to step down as director of La Reja on
Jan. 31 .



Pope warns Brazil
against moral poverty





VATICAN CITY, FEB. 9, 2009 (Zenit.org) - Benedict XVI invited Brazil's new envoy to the Holy See to consider moral education as a way to combat a prevailing poverty of values in the country.

The Pope praised today the efforts of Brazil in its struggle for greater social justice upon receiving the letters of credence of Luiz Felipe de Seixas Corrêa, and highlighted some areas of specific concern for the Church.

The Pontiff called for the promotion of "fundamental human values," such as the family and the protection of all life "from the moment of conception to natural end."

He also underlined the "defense of ethical principles that do not damage but protect the existence of the embryo and its right to be born."

"In a climate of solidarity and mutual understanding," the Holy Father continued, "the government seeks to support initiatives that favor the struggle against poverty, and against shortcomings in technological training, both at national and international levels."

Benedict XVI acknowledged that Brazil's "policy of internal redistribution of income has facilitated a greater well-being among the population." He called on the country to "continue to encourage a better distribution of wealth, increasing social justice for the good of the people."

He asserted, "Over and above material poverty, the moral poverty which is spreading throughout the world also has a decisive influence, even where there is no lack of material goods."

The Pope continued: "In fact, the danger of consumerism and hedonism, together with the lack of solid moral principles to guide the lives of ordinary citizens, weakens the structure of Brazilian families and society.

"For this reason we cannot over emphasize the urgent need for solid moral formation at all levels -- including the political sphere -- in order to counter an ongoing threat from persisting materialist ideologies, and in particular the temptation to corruption in managing public and private finances.

"To this end, Christianity can provide a useful contribution […] as a religion of peace and freedom and to serve the true good of humanity."

The Pontiff spoke about the "sincere collaboration that the Church -- while performing her own mission -- wishes to maintain with the Brazilian government" for the "integral development of the person."

He lauded the "convergence of principles, both of the Apostolic See and your government, with respect to threats to world peace, when it is affected by a lack of vision of respect for others in their human dignity."

The Holy Father added, "The objectives of the Church […] and the state, although distinct, intersect on a point of convergence: the good of the human person and the common good of a nation."

In the Holy Land, Benedict will visit
a mosque and the Holocaust Museum
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from

February 9, 2009



The Pope's trip to Israel has not been announced officially and can always be cancelled at the last minute if the Gaza situation has not been pacified, but Vatican and Israeli diplomats have already agreed on details of his program. [Presumably, Jordanian adn Palestinian diplomats, too.]

It includes a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on the day he arrives there. He will also be visiting a mosque in Jordan.

The trip to the Holy Land appeared to be threatened during the most difficult moments of the crisis provoked by the negationist statements of one of four traditionalist bishops whose excommunication the Pope recently revoked. In fact, however, the preparatory activities were never interrupted.

Like John Paul II's historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2000, Benedict XVI's visit will begin in Amman, capital of Jordan, where the Pope will arrive on May 8.

The next day, the Pope will visit the ancient basilica dedicated to Moses on Mount Nebo, the site from which Moses first saw the Promised Land.

A few hours later, the Pope will visit a mosque, his second to a mosque since he visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul in November 2006.

On May 10, he will celebrate Mass for the Catholic community of Jordan in the stadium of Amman, followed by a visit to the site of Jesus's baptism on the river Jordan.

On May 11, the Pontiff will fly to Tel Aviv from Amman. [From Tel Aviv, site of Israel's international airport, he will proceed to Jerusalem.] In the afternoon, after a meeting with the President of Israel in Jerusalem, he will visit the Holocaust memorial, whose museum has a picture of Pius XII with a caption that the Vatican has protested since it came up in 2006.

The Holy See is still expecting that the caption presenting Pius XII as having been insensitive to the plight of Jews persecuted in Nazi Germany will be revised, as several authoritative personalities have also requested, including Holocaust historian Sir Martin Gilbert.

[I still do not understand why in all the reporting about this caption, it is never mentioned that the Pius XII pictures are in the Museum's Hall of Shame, which is the more fundamental outrage. They may change the caption or take it out altogether, but the photo would still be in the wrong place!]

In any case, the caption should not be an obstacle, and the Pope's homage to the victims of the Holocaust will take place, although the Pope is not expected to visit the Museum photo gallery with the Pius XII photographs.

On Tuesday, May 12, Papa Ratzinger will meet the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, visit the Wailing Wall and the Cenacle [site of the Last Supper], and meet with the two Chief Rabbis of Israel.

An open-air Mass will be held in the Josaphat Valley, right below the Mount of Olives.

May 13 will be a day dedicated to the Palestinians. Benedict XVI will arrive by helicopter on Palestine territory where he will meet with President Abu Mazen, and then say Mass at Manger Square in Bethlehem, as John Paul II did. In the afternoon, he will visit a Palestinian refugee camp.

The penultimate day of the visit, Thursday, May 14, will be spent in Galilee. The Pope will arrive in Nazareth by helicopter and say Mass at Precipice Mount(?). [Nazareth has a large Basilica of the Annunciation on the spot where the Angel visited Mary.]

On the morning of May 15, a few hours before he returns to Rome, the Pope will visit the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.

"The presence of Benedict XVI in Israel will be a positive event," Giuseppe Laras, president of the Italian rabbinical assembly, told Il Giornale, "and let us hope that between now and May, the tensions and difficulties arising from the recent crisis will have been overcome".

However, the situation in Gaza will remain an unknown factor. It is highly improbable that the trip will be made if any active military conflict is under way at the time of the scheduled visit.




Jewish group optimistic
about Vatican-Jewish ties



VATICAN CITY, Feb. 9 (AP) -- Representatives of the World Jewish Congress say they are optimistic about Vatican-Jewish ties after meeting with top Vatican officials following a dispute over a Holocaust-denying bishop.

Jewish groups had expressed outrage last month after Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, who had claimed that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.

But last week, they applauded after the Vatican demanded that Williamson recant before being admitted as a bishop into the church. {As usual, the news service has its wrong.

On Monday, the World Jewish Congress' deputy secretary-general, Maram Stern, and Richard Prasquier, president of the French Jewish umbrella group CRIF, met with Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican official responsible for relations with Jews.

P.S.
Meanwhile, has confirmed the news flash I heard yestrday from FoxNews in a one-line item:


VATICAN CITY, Feb. 8 - On Thursday, Feb. 12, Benedict XVI will meet the presidents of the major American Jewish organizations, Vatican sources said.

Pope Benedict XVI joins fight
over Eluana Englaro's right to die
by Richard Owen, Rome

Feb. 9, 2009


Doctors were removing all life support last night from an Italian woman in coma whose “right to die” has triggered a constitutional crisis and provoked an intervention from the Pope.

Pope Benedict asked the faithful yesterday to pray “for those who are gravely ill but cannot in any way provide for themselves and are totally dependent on the care of others”. He did not refer directly to Ms Englaro but reaffirmed “the absolute and supreme dignity of every human being”.

As Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Government was rushing an emergency decree through Parliament ordering the restoration of medical care for Eluana Englaro, the clinic in Udine that is treating her ignored appeals for a delay.

“We are proceeding with the total suspension of artificial nutrition,” Carlo Alberto Defanti, her neurologist, said. At her father’s request, medical staff at the clinic began reducing water and nutrients through feeding tubes on Friday to Ms Englaro, who has been in a vegetative coma for 17 years.

Doctors said that her “path to death” would almost certainly become irreversible by the end of this week and perhaps sooner. She was being given sedatives to calm muscle spasms, they said.

Giuseppe Campeis, a lawyer for Ms Englaro’s father, Beppino, who won a decade-long legal battle last September to let her die, said: “We are continuing with medical procedures aimed at ensuring a gentle death.”

The case has sparked an open power struggle between Mr Berlusconi and President Napolitano. In a last-minute move on Friday Mr Berlusconi sided with the Vatican and drew up an emergency decree to prevent Ms Englaro’s death.

President Napolitano refused to sign it on the ground that the Prime Minister could not arbitrarily overturn a legal ruling and that such a sensitive issue had to be fully debated by Parliament.

The decree was due to reach the Senate tomorrow but was urgently rescheduled for today. It passes to the lower house tomorrow. The decree states that, pending complete legislation on euthanasia, food and water to sustain life or “provide for the physiological goal of easing suffering” cannot be suspended for those unable to take their own decisions.

Beppino Englaro and friends of his daughter have testified that before her accident she declared that if she ever found herself in a coma she would not want to be kept alive artificially.

Ms Englaro has been in a coma since January 1992, when her car slid on ice and smashed into a lamp post as she was driving back from a party at a friend’s house.

She was previously cared for at a church-run hospital in Lecco on Lake Como, near her home but was transferred last week to La Quiete, a private clinic in Udine, which said that it was prepared to help her to die.

Maurizio Sacconi, the Health Minister, said that the clinic was not qualified to help Ms Englaro to die because it was not a hospice for the terminally ill but primarily a rest home for the aged. He said that he had sent a team of health inspectors to the home to investigate “irregularities”.

The Englaro case has become a symbol for the Vatican’s “pro-life” campaign but also for right-to-die campaigners. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Episcopal Conference, said that refusing food and water to Ms Englaro was murder. “A light is going out, the light of a life,” he said.

Mr Englaro was baffled by the latest twists in the controversy. “All I can say is that sometimes reality goes way beyond the wildest imagination,” he told Spain’s El PaÍs newspaper yesterday. “The Church has nothing to do with this issue.”

The tussle over Ms Englaro’s life has revived accusations that the Vatican is dictating Italian policy. Mr Berlusconi, who had previously stayed out of the controversy, reacted after Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, implored him to “stop this crime against humanity”.

Mr Berlusconi said he believed that he represented the feelings of most Italians. Opinion polls, however, suggest that Italians are divided, with 47 per cent in favour of Ms Englaro’s “right to die”, 47 per cent against, and 6 per cent undecided.


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Meanwhile, Italian media reported today that senator for life and former Italian President Francesco Cossiga has criticized L'Osservatore Romano for its 'lukewarm' position on the Englaro case.

In contrast to Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, which has spearheaded an active information campaign about the issue since the Milan court decision last November, the Vatican newspaper has hardly reported on the case, and a front-page editorial commentary on Sunday urged 'equilibrium' in facing the issue.

However, on the same day (even remembering that the newspaper goes to press midday of the previous day for the next day's issue), the Vatican Press Office issued a brief communique - its second extraordinary bulletin for a Sunday yesterday (the first about the Pope's telephone conversation with Angela Merkel) to report that Cardinal Bertone had called Prime Minister Berlusconi 'to stop this crime against humanity", as Owen notes above.

[How could editor Vian have gotten the signals so wrong? But even more difficult to understand why the main protagonists - Bertone and Berlusconi in this case - waited to act until the so-called 'protocol' for Eluanja's death had already started!]

The Williamson case:
A return to media manipulation
Editorial
by Gerard LeClerc
Translated from

February 9, 2009


One should hope that in the absence of any new provocation from Bishop Williamson, the media crisis deliberately orchestrated by the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel is dying down.

Unfortunately, one must admit that it will leave deep scars, and that the intention of its initiators - which was to compromise the Pope in a 'scandal' that is radically alien to his thought - will prolong its bitter effects.

In fact, what's it all about? Der Spiegel headlined it nakedly: It wants to persuade international public opinion that "the German Pope has done harm to the Church" ['Disgraced the Church' is the term they used.]

The protagonists of this manipulation know that they can count on the collective subconscious guilt of the German nation with respect to the Jews.

They also know that they could revive the old old wound of the Reformation, by exploiting Protestant resentment through its violent campaign of LOS VON ROM! (Literally, 'get away from Rome'].

From this perspective, the reaction of Chancellor Angela Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, could only be seen in a bad light by Catholics who share her own political education and who have expressed their displeasure.

No, those responsible would never have launched such an operation without knowing that it would be disastrous for their targets.

This media manipulation was aimed at generating a mimetic international outcry by exploiting one of the most painful events in history, the Shoah, which by its unique character, does not cease to challenge the conscience of mankind.

To attempt to associate the Pope to a negation of the Nazi extermination program against the Jewish people shows a rare spiritual perversity.

Because it knowingly intends to exploit the memory of something insupportable and abominable in an enterprise of sabotage aimed at defaming the Papacy by unleashing the rage of misguided public opinion [based on false premises].

This is not to blunt Bishop Williamson's responsibility in all this infamy. It is who gave the manipulators the objective fact that they have used to harm the Pope and to confuse the issues.

His persistence [in negation] is very grave, not only for its obvious effect, but for what negation implies, which does taint our faith.

One must not forget that Christian faith is based on historical events about the life, the passion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Historical objectivity about the veracity of those events is thus an integral part of our intimate adherence to Christ.

So to lend oneself to a negation of an event as central and decisive as the Shoah is also to cast discredit on the historical rootedness inherent in Christianity. In this way, I say, it (negation of the Shoah) is a sin against our faith.

Through his negationism, Bishop Williamson has not only attacked the truth of an event, thus cruelly offending the Jewish people - he is also helping to destroy the foundations of all historical truth and thus, the credibility of the faith which he claims to profess.

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I must say Leclerc points out a very original argument arising from Christian belief in the historical reality of Jesus as the Gospels present him.

But I don't agree that the negationist ideas of those who deny the Holocaust (or the extent of the killings) are helping to 'destroy the foundations of all historical truth', much less 'the credibility of the faith'.

The Shoah is too well-documented for even the most brilliant negationist mind to discredit. And two millennia of Christian tradition and belief will not start to crumble because a bishop like Williamson has outrageous ideas.

Interesting that the Holy Father met with Cardinal Schoenborn yesterday. I doubt it was to assuage him on the appointment of the new bishop.

I have a feeling that Schoenborn is about to be "promoted" to the Curia, as a reward for the "balloon Mass" he celebrated. I hope he's not put in charge of ecumenism, but at least he'd be easier to control.

He's such a namby-pamby, spineless person when it comes to doctrine or the Holy Liturgy, but when it comes to the SSPX, he's a virtual lion of orthodoxy (at least the John Paul II, "new Springtime" neo-orthodoxy that so many practice).

Cardinal Schoenborn, part 2


I am disappointed in Cardinal Schoenborn too. Since he was one of Papa's students and continues to be involved in the Benedict XVI Foundation and the annual meeting of Papa's students, I thought he supported Papa's views. But when Papa visited Austria and had to wear those tie-dyed vestments at Mass and when the cardinal seemed to condone and defend those disgusting artworks displayed right under his nose and then finally when he seemed to question and criticize Papa publicly over this latest furor, that was it for me.

I suspect that the cardinal requested the meeting yesterday to straighten Papa out. I doubt it was the other way around although it should have been. I think Papa needs to get a bit more imperial with some of his bishops (although it is not his nature) and start summoning them to Rome for a little chat. Right now, they all behave as though they consider themselves free agents with no one to answer to except whatever pressure group is yelling the loudest at the moment.