NOTABLES - People who make the news, not necessarily Church-related

Oh, this man is a real pain in the .... well, where one doesn't want it. So, his canonical list of atheists will probably now include Mozart as well. The Pope's favourite composer, also that of so many other great theologians....If Mozart was an atheist, I'm a man from Mars. Does he think musicians will now en masse turn their backs on God?
And why so triumphant about Spinoza, Bertrand Russel and company? Is this news?? All the old hackneyed names in the gallery of atheists? (Yawn)

If Hitchens, Dawkins and co. can just come up with one really convincing argument for atheism, I'll be perhaps more impressed.

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Unfortunately, there are enough people out there buying the books of Hitchen, Dawkins et al - as there were for Dan Brown - to further strengthen them in their arrogance, and so, they will continue to peddle their twaddle: "God? what God? I'm my own God! Can't you all see how great I am? And I owe this to nobody but me, myself, I - the greatest!"

Well, there's them, each believing himself to be supremely, arrogantly self-sufficient, with a self-limiting vision that sees nothing beyond death, on the other side .... and on our side, there's Benedict XVI, who looks to God as Prime Mover and Creator, Alpha and Omega, who speaks to us of the eternal life promised by Jesus, and who certainly does not think, act, speak and write as though his considerable individual merits came spontaneously of themselves and without the grace of God!

TERESA

SARKOZY TO VISIT BENEDICT XVI

French Spokesman Calls Holy See Diplomacy "Influential"

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 19, 2007 (Zenit.org).- French President Nicolas Sarkozy will be received in an official visit to the Vatican on Thursday.

French spokesman David Martinon, during a press conference Dec. 13., said this trip is "extremely important" at this time for "diplomatic reasons" and for reasons of national interest, "since the Holy See's diplomacy is extremely active and influential."

It is the first visit by Sarkozy to the Holy See as the president of the French republic. He made visits when he was the minister of the interior and the minister of religion.

The president should meet the Pope again in 2008, during the papal pilgrimage to Lourdes for the anniversary of Mary's apparitions in that French village.

Honorary canon

Following the example of his predecessors, Sarkozy will receive the title given to the head of France since Henry IV, the Honorary Canon at the Lateran Basilica.

The president will take possession of the stall of the Honorary Canon of St. John Lateran during vespers at the Lateran Basilica.

Then, in the famous Room of Conciliation at the Lateran Palace, where the Lateran Pacts were signed by Benito Mussolini and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri in 1929, the president will give a discourse on the relationship between Church and state.

In the recent past, five French president have visited the Vatican: René Coty (received by Pope Pius XII in 1957), Charles de Gaulle (received by Pope John XXIII in 1959 and by Pope Paul VI in 1967), Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (received in 1975 by Paul VI), François Mitterrand (received by Pope John Paul II in 1982), and Jacques Chirac (received by John Paul II in 1996).

A Tsar Is Born
By ADI IGNATIUS



No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin's. The Russian President's pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved by the suppression of ordinary needs, like blinking. The affect is now seamless, which makes talking to the Russian President not just exhausting but often chilling. It's a gaze that says, I'm in charge.

This may explain why there is so little visible security at Putin's dacha, Novo-Ogarevo, the grand Russian presidential retreat set inside a birch- and fir-forested compound west of Moscow. To get there from the capital requires a 25-minute drive through the soul of modern Russia, past decrepit Soviet-era apartment blocks, the mashed-up French Tudor-villa McMansions of the new oligarchs and a shopping mall that boasts not just the routine spoils of affluence like Prada and Gucci but Lamborghinis and Ferraris too.

When you arrive at the dacha's faux-neoclassical gate, you have to leave your car and hop into one of the Kremlin's vehicles that slowly wind their way through a silent forest of snow-tipped firs. Aides warn you not to stray, lest you tempt the snipers positioned in the shadows around the compound. This is where Putin, 55, works. (He lives with his wife and two twentysomething daughters in another mansion deeper in the woods.) The rooms feel vast, newly redone and mostly empty. As we prepare to enter his spacious but spartan office, out walk some of Russia's most powerful men: Putin's chief of staff, his ideologist, the speaker of parliament—all of them wearing expensive bespoke suits and carrying sleek black briefcases. Putin, who rarely meets with the foreign press, then gives us 3 1/2 hours of his time, first in a formal interview in his office and then upstairs over an elaborate dinner of lobster-and-shiitake-mushroom salad, "crab fingers with hot sauce" and impressive vintages of Puligny-Montrachet and a Chilean Cabernet.

Vladimir Putin gives a first impression of contained power: he is compact and moves stiffly but efficiently. He is fit, thanks to years spent honing his black-belt judo skills and, these days, early-morning swims of an hour or more. And while he is diminutive—5 ft. 6 in. (about 1.7 m) seems a reasonable guess—he projects steely confidence and strength. Putin is unmistakably Russian, with chiseled facial features and those penetrating eyes. Charm is not part of his presentation of self—he makes no effort to be ingratiating. One senses that he pays constant obeisance to a determined inner discipline. The successor to the boozy and ultimately tragic Boris Yeltsin, Putin is temperate, sipping his wine only when the protocol of toasts and greetings requires it; mostly he just twirls the Montrachet in his glass. He eats little, though he twitchily picks the crusts off the bread rolls on his plate.

Putin grudgingly reveals a few personal details between intermittent bites of food: He relaxes, he says, by listening to classical composers like Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. His favorite Beatles song is Yesterday. He has never sent an e-mail in his life. And while he grew up in an officially atheist country, he is a believer and often reads from a Bible that he keeps on his state plane. He is impatient to the point of rudeness with small talk, and he is in complete control of his own message.

He is clear about Russia's role in the world. He is passionate in his belief that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a tragedy, particularly since overnight it stranded 25 million ethnic Russians in "foreign" lands. But he says he has no intention of trying to rebuild the U.S.S.R. or re-establish military or political blocs. And he praises his predecessors Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev for destroying a system that had lost the people's support. "I'm not sure I could have had the guts to do that myself," he tells us. Putin is, above all, a pragmatist, and has cobbled together a system—not unlike China's—that embraces the free market (albeit with a heavy dose of corruption) but relies on a strong state hand to keep order.

Like President George W. Bush, he sees terrorism as one of the most profound threats of the new century, but he is wary of labeling it Islamic. "Radicals," he says, "can be found in any environment." Putin reveals that Russian intelligence recently uncovered a "specific" terrorist threat against both Russia and the U.S. and that he spoke by phone with Bush about it.

What gets Putin agitated—and he was frequently agitated during our talk—is his perception that Americans are out to interfere in Russia's affairs. He says he wants Russia and America to be partners but feels the U.S. treats Russia like the uninvited guest at a party. "We want to be a friend of America," he says. "Sometimes we get the impression that America does not need friends" but only "auxiliary subjects to command." Asked if he'd like to correct any American misconceptions about Russia, Putin leans forward and says, "I don't believe these are misconceptions. I think this is a purposeful attempt by some to create an image of Russia based on which one could influence our internal and foreign policies. This is the reason why everybody is made to believe...[Russians] are a little bit savage still or they just climbed down from the trees, you know, and probably need to have...the dirt washed out of their beards and hair." The veins on his forehead seem ready to pop.


Elected Emperor

Putin has said that next spring, at the end of his second term as President, he will assume the nominally lesser role of Prime Minister. In fact, having nominated his loyal former chief of staff (and current Deputy Prime Minister) Dmitri Medvedev to succeed him as President, Putin will surely remain the supreme leader, master of Russia's destiny, which will allow him to complete the job he started. In his eight years as President, he has guided his nation through a remarkable transformation. He has restored stability and a sense of pride among citizens who, after years of Soviet stagnation, rode the heartbreaking roller coaster of raised and dashed expectations when Gorbachev and then Yeltsin were in charge. A basket case in the 1990s, Russia's economy has grown an average of 7% a year for the past five years. The country has paid off a foreign debt that once neared $200 billion. Russia's rich have gotten richer, often obscenely so. But the poor are doing better too: workers' salaries have more than doubled since 2003. True, this is partly a result of oil at $90 a barrel, and oil is a commodity Russia has in large supply. But Putin has deftly managed the windfall and spread the wealth enough so that people feel hopeful.

Russia's revival is changing the course of the modern world. After decades of slumbering underachievement, the Bear is back. Its billionaires now play on the global stage, buying up property, sports franchises, places at élite schools. Moscow exerts international influence not just with arms but also with a new arsenal of weapons: oil, gas, timber. On global issues, it offers alternatives to America's waning influence, helping broker deals in North Korea, the Middle East, Iran. Russia just made its first shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran—a sign that Russia is taking the lead on that vexsome issue, particularly after the latest U.S. intelligence report suggested that the Bush Administration has been wrong about Iran's nuclear-weapons development. And Putin is far from done. The premiership is a perch that will allow him to become the longest-serving statesman among the great powers, long after such leaders as Bush and Tony Blair have faded from the scene.

But all this has a dark side. To achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. His government has shut down TV stations and newspapers, jailed businessmen whose wealth and influence challenged the Kremlin's hold on power, defanged opposition political parties and arrested those who confront his rule. Yet this grand bargain—of freedom for security—appeals to his Russian subjects, who had grown cynical over earlier regimes' promises of the magical fruits of Western-style democracy. Putin's popularity ratings are routinely around 70%. "He is emerging as an elected emperor, whom many people compare to Peter the Great," says Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center and a well-connected expert on contemporary Russia.

Putin's global ambitions seem straightforward. He certainly wants a seat at the table on the big international issues. But more important, he wants free rein inside Russia, without foreign interference, to run the political system as he sees fit, to use whatever force he needs to quiet seething outlying republics, to exert influence over Russia's former Soviet neighbors. What he's given up is Yeltsin's calculation that Russia's future requires broad acceptance on the West's terms. That means that on big global issues, says Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution and former point man on Russia policy for the Clinton Administration, "sometimes Russia will be helpful to Western interests, and sometimes it will be the spoiler."

Up from the Ruins

How do Russians see Putin? For generations they have defined their leaders through political jokes. It's partly a coping mechanism, partly a glimpse into the Russian soul. In the oft told anecdotes, Leonid Brezhnev was always the dolt, Gorbachev the bumbling reformer, Yeltsin the drunk. Putin, in current punch lines, is the despot. Here's an example: Stalin's ghost appears to Putin in a dream, and Putin asks for his help running the country. Stalin says, "Round up and shoot all the democrats, and then paint the inside of the Kremlin blue." "Why blue?" Putin asks. "Ha!" says Stalin. "I knew you wouldn't ask me about the first part."

Putin himself is sardonic but humorless. In our hours together, he didn't attempt a joke, and he misread several of our attempts at playfulness. As Henry Kissinger, who has met and interacted with Russian leaders since Brezhnev, puts it, "He does not rely on personal charm. It is a combination of aloofness, considerable intelligence, strategic grasp and Russian nationalism" (see Kissinger interview).

To fully understand Putin's accomplishments and his appeal, one has to step back into the tumult of the 1990s. At the end of 1991, just a few months after Yeltsin dramatically stood on a tank outside the parliament in Moscow to denounce—and deflate—a coup attempt by hard-liners, the Soviet Union simply ceased to exist. Yeltsin took the reins in Russia and, amid great hope and pledges of help from around the world, promised to launch an era of democracy and economic freedom. I arrived in Moscow a week later, beginning a three-year stint as a Russia correspondent.

...


Parts 3 through 6 of the article can be found on the link below.

SOURCE: www.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/1,28804,1690753_1690757_1690766...

Archbishop of Canterbury says
many elements of the Christmas story
are nothing but 'a legend'
The Daily Telegraph
By Sophie Borland

NB: The title of the story as it appears in thew newspaper and its online version is ARCHBISHOP SAYS NATIVITY 'A LEGEND' which is, of course, downright misleading when you read the story.


The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a 'legend'.

Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings.

Dr Williams argued that the traditional Christmas story was nothing but a 'legend'. He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew's gospel and the details were very vague.

Dr Williams said: "Matthew's gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that's all we're really told. It works quite well as legend."

The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable.

He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was "very unlikely".

In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: "Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival."

His comments came during an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live with Simon Mayo yesterday. Later on in the show, the Archbishop was challenged by fellow guest Ricky Gervais, the comedian, about the credibility of the Christmas story.

Gervais told Dr Williams he was concerned about "brainwashing" of children who are sent to faith schools at an early age, comparing teaching that God exists to belief in Father Christmas.

Dr Williams said faith schools expose children to the full range of human experience and values and he did not believe they indoctrinated people.


Another of Rowan Williams' own goals
Posted by Damian Thompson on 20 Dec 2007
Holy Smoke! blog
The Daily Telegraph


Does Rowan Williams EVER think before opening his mouth? He waits until the week before Christmas before describing the nativity as a “legend” and condemning the poor wise men, asses and oxen to the realms of fantasy.

If the Archbishop doesn't believe in them, who will?

Yes, it’s true that most biblical scholars agree with him. But really – has the Archbishop of Canterbury got nothing better to do than dismantle the Christmas story on Radio Five Live, for God’s sake? Can you imagine Pope Benedict XVI going on Simon Mayo’s show to chip away at the naïve beliefs of millions of Christians?

Rowan Williams is not like the former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, who really didn’t believe in lots of major Christian doctrines. (“I’m not sure about this eternal life thing,” I once heard him say at a conference.) The Archbishop firmly believes in the Virgin birth, for example; there’s not even a hint of agnosticism in his liberal theology.

But where Dr Jenkins used to drop his publicity-seeking bombshells deliberately, just in time for Christmas or Easter headlines, Dr Williams blunders aimlessly into these controversies. Also just in time for Christmas.

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I don't think Williams 'blundered' into this - he most likely felt it was precisely the right time to make his views known. But why he decided to do so now when he has been top man in the Anglican Church for some time now is questionable.

But here's a sort of 'defense' of Williams's statements, which goes into the 'legend' of the Magi. Think, however, of the effect of Williams's statments on the Diocese of Cologne, where the Three Kingshave been believed to repose in the cathedral of Cologne all these centuries!


We three kings of Orient aren't
By Christipher Howse
The Daily Telegraph
12/21/2007


What's this? Has the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said that the Three Kings didn't exist? Well, not quite.

"St Matthew's Gospel," he remarked in a radio discussion, "says they're astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire. That's all we're really told."

But think how deeply these three men have entered our imagination as part of the Christmas story. "A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in.

The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter."

Those words, in a tremendous sermon by Lancelot Andrewes that King James I heard on Christmas Day 1622, were brilliantly stolen by TS Eliot and incorporated into his poem The Journey of the Magi.

advertisementAnd we can see it all: the camels' breath steaming in the night air as the kings, in their gorgeous robes of silk and cloth-of-gold and clutching their precious gifts, kneel to adore the baby in the manger.

Yet, that is not entirely what the Gospel says. The wise men, as Dr Williams points out, figure only in the Gospel according to St Matthew. That's no surprise, since Mark and John do not give accounts of the infancy of Jesus.

St Matthew tells of them in just 12 verses, beginning: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, 'Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.'"

It doesn't say they were kings, or that there were three of them. We suppose they were three because they brought gold, frankincense and myrrh.

From the earliest times these gifts were accorded mystic significance: gold for kingship, incense for worship, and myrrh for anointing, just as Christ was anointed with precious spices for his tomb.

Of course, our imagination is filled by the images that artists have provided. There's a lovely ancient mosaic in Ravenna, 1,500 years old, showing the kings, sorry, I mean, wise men, in oriental garb of trousers and Phrygian caps, carrying their gifts past palm trees towards the star that they followed.

Their names are picked out in bright tesserae above them: Balthassar, Melchior, Gaspar. Those names are not in the Bible either.

In a funny way, these three wise men, the Magi, are older than Christmas. They come at Epiphany, which we celebrate (or ignore) on January 6. That's what Twelfth Night is all about. This day was in the earliest Christian times the great feast of the coming of Jesus.

At the Epiphany three events were marked: the birth of Jesus (called in prophecy Emmanuel, meaning "God with us"); the manifestation of this saviour to the Gentiles (us), represented by the Magi; and the baptism of Jesus, as an adult, when a voice from heaven was heard saying "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It's with this baptism that St Mark chose to begin his Gospel.

Christmas, as the actual birthday of Jesus, only began to be celebrated as a separate feast on December 25 three centuries or so later by Latin-speaking Christians in north Africa. It was a different world in north Africa then.

There was no Arabic, nor were there mosques (Mohammed was not born for another couple of centuries), and small cities were run by men in togas, writing rather good Latin and debating heatedly just how much God the Father was the same as God the Son. No turkey on Christmas Day, but no snow either.

Yet old Bishop Andrewes spoke of the wise men coming in solstitio brumali, which he expected King James (who prided himself on his learning) to recognise as the winter solstice, when the days are shortest.

A lot of nonsense is talked today about Christmas "really" being the Roman festival of misrule, Saturnalia, or the feast of Natalis Soli Invicti, the birth of the invincible sun. But people then were quite capable of distinguishing one from another.

Christians cheerfully adopted artistic representations of Jesus as Apollo, for example, because he was a bit like the (fictional) sun-god.

The Christians had a prophecy to prove the point, taken from the book of Malachi in the Bible: "Unto you that fear my name," said the Lord, "shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings."

This prophecy, by the way, explains the puzzling line in the carol Hark the Herald Angels by Charles Wesley, where it speaks of Jesus "risen with healing in his wings". The wings are metaphorical, but they're biblically based too.

Equally so, then, is the metaphor of Jesus as the Sun. If customs had developed slightly differently, we might be celebrating Christmas at the summer solstice in June, when the sun is brightest.

Of course, midsummer is precisely the time that Australians do open their Christmas presents. No one had planned for them in the fourth century, because, although educated people knew that the earth was spherical, they thought no one lived in the antipodes, because the burning latitudes at the equator would be too hot to get past.

I mention these details as an indication that people hundreds of years ago had thought about such questions quite as much as we do today, sometimes more. It is just that they assembled their thoughts in a different pattern from us, and we can easily mistake their drift.

So, the first time someone tells you that the ox and the ass are not mentioned in the biblical account of Jesus's nativity, it can come as a shock. One checks the Gospels carefully, and indeed no ox nor ass appears.

But the medieval painters did not just invent them. They were familiar with the verse in Isaiah: "The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's crib." The painters wanted to show the belief of Christians that Jesus Christ, even as a baby in the crib, was the owner, master and indeed creator of men and beasts.

Whether a wandering magus 20 centuries ago was called Gaspar or not matters to no one much but him. It matters a very great deal whether a child born one summer or winter day in those years was really the prophesied Emmanuel. Dr Williams declares that he was, and that this is the good news of Christmas.

IN INTERVIEW ABOUT CHRISTMAS,
WILLIAMS ALSO SAID CHRISTIANS
CAN 'TAKE OR LEAVE THE VIRGIN BIRTH'
From Church Resources
Dec. 21, 2007
www.cathnews.com/





Sydney's Cardinal George Pell has vehemently disagreed with the worldwide Anglican head, who has said Christians don't need to believe Christ was born of a virgin.

The Australian reports that the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams implied in a BBC interview that the story of the three wise men is a legend, as "stars do not behave like that."

Furthermore, Archishop Williams added it was unlikely Jesus was born in December and Christians can "take or leave the virgin birth."

"I believe it (the virgin birth) but that's not a pre-condition for being a Christian," Archbishop Williams said.

"Matthew's Gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that's all we're really told.

"It is unlikely Jesus was born in December at all. Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival," he said.

Opposing the Anglican Archbishop's comments, Cardinal Pell said those who doubt or deny the virgin birth are departing from Christian teaching.

"What is important is that the Christ child was and is the son of God," Pell said. "For this belief and fact, the virgin birth is essential."

South Sydney Anglican Bishop Robert Forsyth sided with the Archbishop of Canterbury saying Jesus' birthday was "probably March as the Holy Land is very cold in December and if there were the shepherds in the field, it is likely to have been another time of year."

"(The virgin birth) is not the first thing you have to believe to become a Christian - the resurrection is that. If you believe God raised Jesus from the dead, you are open to the questions like the virgin birth."

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The Daily Telegraph provides this transcript of Archbishop Williams's interview:


Edited transcript
of the Archbishop of Canterbury's
interview with Simon Mayo
on BBC Radio 5 Live


SM: It comes round every year that we're not being Christian enough or people don't know where Bethlehem is, people have never heard of Mary and so on, so this is a sort of an almost a tradition of Christmas, isn't it really. But I wonder, if people have got a traditional religious Christmas card in front of them, I just want to go through it, Archbishop, to find out how much of it you think is true and crucial to the believing in Christmas. So start with … the baby Jesus in a manger; historically and factually true?
ABC [Archbishop of Canterbury]: I should think so; the Gospel tells us he was born outside the main house, probably because it was overcrowded because it was pilgrimage time or census time; whatever; yes; he's born in poor circumstances, slightly out of the ordinary.


SM: The Virgin Mary next door to him?
ABC: We know his mother's name was Mary, that's one of the things all the gospels agree about, and the two gospels that tell the story have the story of the virgin birth, and that's something I'm committed to as part of what I've inherited.


SM: You were a prominent part of a Spectator survey in the current issue which headlined 'Do you believe in the virgin birth?' . There are some people in this survey who would say they were Christian who don't have a problem if you don't believe in the Virgin birth. How important it is it to believe in that bit?
ABC: I don't want to set it as a kind of hurdle that people have to get over before they, you know, be signed up;, but I think quite a few people that as time goes on, they get a sense, a deeper sense of what the virgin birth is about. I would say that of myself.

About thirty years ago I might have said I wasn't too fussed about it - now I see it much more as dovetailing with the rest of what I believe about the story and yes.


SM: Christopher Hitchens and many others make the point that isn't the translation for young woman rather than virgin? Does it have to be seen as virgin; might it be a mistranslation?
ABC: It is… well, what's happening there one of the gospels quotes a prophecy that a virgin will conceive a child. Now the original Hebrew doesn't have the word virgin, it's just a young woman, but that's the prophecy that's quoted from the Old Testament in support of the story which is, in any case, about a birth without a human father, so it's not that it rests on mis-translation; St Matthew's gone to his Greek version of the bible and said "Oh, 'virgin'; sounds like the story I know," and put it in.


SM: So you've got the Virgin Mary, Jesus. Joseph?
ABC: Joseph, yes, again, the Gospels are pretty consistent that that's his father's name...


SM: So we're panning out now'. Shepherds? They're with their sheep and the oxes and asses?
ABC: Pass on the oxes and asses; they don't figure very strongly in the gospels, so I can live without the ox and asses.


SM: And the wise men with the gold, frankincense, and Myrrh - with one of the wise men normally being black and the other two being white, for some reason?
ABC: Well Matthew's gospel doesn't tell us that there were three of them, doesn't tell us they were kings, doesn't tell us where they came from, it says they're astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire. That's all we're really told so, yes, 'the three kings with the one from Africa' - that's legend; it works quite well as legend.


SM: But would they have been there?
ABC: Not with the shepherds, they wouldn't. So if you've got shepherds on one side and three kings on the other, there's a bit of conflation going on.


SM: And pulling back further - snow on the ground?
ABC: Very unlikely I think; it can be pretty damn [Is the Archbishop of Canterbury allowed to use a colloquialism like this?] in Bethlehem at this time of the year, but we don't know that it was this time of year because again the Gospels don't tell us what time of year it was; Christmas is the time it is because it fitted very well with the winter festival.


SM: Just as a side issue on the kings and the wise bit; do you have a problem with astrologers being seen as wise men; there'd be many people in your church who would think, actually, astrology is bunk and should be exposed as bunk and the idea of saying that they are wise is somewhat farcical?
ABC: Well I 'm inclined to agree that astrology is bunk but you're dealing there with a world in which people watched the stars in order to get a sort of heads up on significant matters and astrologers were quite a growth industry; people who were respected and had a kind of professional technical skill and were respected as such., the thing here if course is what's the skill about?

Well it's all bringing them to Jesus; it's not about fortune telling or telling the future, it's about a skill of watching the universe which leads them inexorably towards this event, so I don't think it's a justification of astrology.


SM: So if we're pulling back even further then, is there a star above the place where the child is?
ABC: Don't know; I mean Matthew talks about the star rising, about the star standing still; we know stars don't behave quite like that, that the wise men should have seen something which triggered a recognition of something significant was going on; some constellation, there are various scientific theories about what it might have been at around that time and they followed that trek; that makes sense to me.

Tony Blair joins Catholic faith
BBC News
Dec. 22, 2007


Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has converted to the Catholic faith.
His wife Cherie is a Catholic and there had been speculation that he would convert to Catholicism from his Anglican faith after leaving office.

Mr Blair's official spokesman confirmed he had converted on Friday night and said it was a private matter.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said he was "very glad" to welcome Mr Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, into the Catholic Church.



One of Mr Blair's final official trips while prime minister was a visit to the Vatican in June where he met Pope Benedict XVI.

Downing Street refused to comment on his conversion, saying it was a family matter.

Earlier this year, the former prime minister told the BBC that he had avoided talking about his religious views while in office for fear of being labelled "a nutter".

His ex-spokesman Alastair Campbell once told reporters "We don't do God," but has since said that his former boss "does do God in quite a big way".

Mr Blair was received into full communion with the Catholic Church by Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor during Mass in the chapel at Archbishop's House in Westminster.

The cardinal said: "I am very glad to welcome Tony Blair into the Catholic Church.

"For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion.

"My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together."

Catherine Pepinster, editor of Catholic magazine, The Tablet, said Mr Blair's conversion was "not a surprise" but was a "momentous step" for him.

She said: "It would have been rather different if he had become a Catholic when he was still prime minister.

"I understand that one of the issues he was concerned with, because he was so closely involved in negotiations over peace in Northern Ireland, that perhaps some people there might have been uncomfortable with the prime minister converting to Catholicism at such a time.

"This situation is different. Although he remains a public figure now, and clearly has a role to play in the Middle East, it isn't perhaps quite the same."

The news comes as a document was revealed showing that Mr Blair had raised "concern" over ongoing business negotiations in a letter about an investigation into a Saudi arms deal days.

Days later the probe was dropped and Mr Blair said the decision to stop the probe into the BAE deal was taken because of national security and was not linked to commercial interests.


Tony Blair converts to Catholicism
By Duncan Hooper
Daily Telegraph
Dec. 22, 2007


Tony Blair has converted to Catholicism.

The former prime minister joined the faith at a service in a chapel in Westminster last night.

Rumours about his impending decision had intensified following his meeting with the Pope during the summer.

Mr Blair's four children were brought up as Catholics and he has attended Mass at Westminster Cathedral with his family and, on occasion for security reasons, in Downing Street.

Three years ago his parish priest at Chequers, Fr Timothy Russ, disclosed that Mr Blair had discussed becoming a Catholic with him.

But Fr Russ added that Mr Blair, whose views on a range of issues from abortion to stem cell research are at odds with traditional Church teaching, had "some way to go" on important moral issues.

In a book, Fr Russ also revealed that Mr Blair even discussed the possibility of becoming a Catholic deacon, a position below that of a priest that can be held by lay people.

In 1996, Cardinal Basil Hume, the late Archbishop of Westminster, wrote to him demanding that he should cease taking Communion at his wife's church in Islington.

Mr Blair made clear that he did not agree, asking in a letter to Cardinal Hume: "I wonder what Jesus would have made of it."



Former British PM Blair
converts to Catholicism

LONDON,Dec. 22 (AFP) - Former British prime minister Tony Blair has converted to Roman Catholicism, his spokesman told AFP Saturday.

[I am omitting the the rest of the first part of the story repeats information contained in the earlier reports.]
....

Vatican spokesman Frederico Lombardi said, "Catholics are glad to welcome into their community someone who has followed a serious and reflective path towards Catholicism."

He added, "It is good news, that we welcome with respect, like every personal decision."

The leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, wished Blair well.

"A great Catholic writer of the last century said that the only reason for moving from one Christian family to another was to deepen one's relationship with God," he said.

"I pray that this will be the result of Tony Blair's decision in his personal life."

The extent of Blair's religious faith and how far it influenced his political decision-making was of regular interest in Britain, although his former spokesman, Alastair Campbell, once told reporters: "We don't do God."

Blair was once asked by an interviewer whether he prayed with US President George W. Bush and appeared to suggest in another interview that he would be judged by a higher power for his controversial backing of the 2003 Iraq war.

He was known to carry a Bible with him wherever he went and attended Sunday church services even on overseas trips.

It had been claimed that Blair wanted to convert sooner, but that could have affected his position in delicate negotiations between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Conversion could also have put Blair at odds with his government's stance on stem-cell research, abortion and gay rights as well as raised questions about the prime minister's role in appointing Church of England bishops.

In a recent three-part BBC television documentary on his premiership, Campbell said Blair "does do God in quite a big way" but both he and his former boss feared overt religiosity would not play well with voters.

Blair told the same programme his faith was a "hugely important" part of his premiership but unlike, for example, the United States, British politicians rarely talked about their religious convictions.

"You talk about it in our own system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter," he said.

Blair is currently the international community's special envoy to the Middle East.

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

NB: In England's last census, 72 percent of people identified themselves as Christian.

Many are Anglicans affiliated with the Church of England, which was created by royal proclamation during the 16th century after King Henry VIII — who married six times — broke ties with the Roman Catholic Church in a dispute over divorce.

However, the Church of England has said that less than 10 percent of its members are regular churchgoers.

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

For the record, here is how the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), official news agency of Iran, reported Blaier's conversion today.

Blair finally converts
to Catholicism

London, Dec 22 (IRNA) - Former British prime minister Tony Blair has joined his wife Cheri and converted to the Catholic faith, it was reported Saturday.

According to local media reports, Blair's official spokesman confirmed the Middle East peace negotiator had converted on Friday night but said it was a private matter.

The former prime minister, who is an Anglican Protestant, is reported to have toyed with the idea of converting since his spiritual awakening that goes back at least 30 years to his undergraduate days at Oxford University.

It has been previously suggested that he was reluctant to convert during his 10-year tenure of prime minister for fear of a potential conflict including his role in appointing Anglican bishops. Britain has never had a Catholic prime minister.

Speculation of joining his wife's religion rose just before Blair left office in June when he held a personal audience with Pope Benedict XVI.

But conversion to Catholicism is a complex procedure and it was expected that the former premier would have to go through a 'path of purifications.'

Several moral issues could prove to be potentially divisive, including Blair's support for abortion, gay civil partnerships and stem-cell research as well as other policies he enacted that were at odds with traditional Church teachings.


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

There's additional background in this article:

Blair's road to Rome
By James Cusick
The Sunday Herald (Scotland)
Dec. 23, 2007


[I have omitted the first part which reports the material already reported in the earlier articles.]


Born and brought up an Anglican, Blair's journey to Catholicism has been extraordinary. Those close to him believe that even as far back as his student days at Oxford, when he first met his Catholic wife, Cherie, the decision to convert was put off to avoid political prejudices Blair came to believe could affect his career.

Although Iain Duncan Smith and Charles Kennedy led the Tories and LibDems as Catholics, Blair kept his religious leanings quiet. While there is nothing in British law preventing a Catholic from being prime minister, many constitutional experts believe the PM's role in appointing Anglican bishops, combined with the duty of advising the sovereign, who is the head of the Church of England, creates a potential conflict for a Catholic, who, as a point of faith, takes guidance from the pope.

Blair's contradiction is that he practised his faith in private, yet preached political boldness in public. As New Labour's leader, he ripped apart the traditions of the party, and maintained Labour were best at their boldest. Yet Blair, who once said he regarded Jesus "as a moderniser", kept his faith quiet.

Blair's biographer, Anthony Seldon, claims "faith has always had a major influence on his politics". Seldon also hints that Blair and the Catholic Church have been close companions for longer than most people believe: "Catholicism has been the religion of his wife. Cherie Blair has been incredibly important to him throughout his political life, encouraging him to go into politics and adopting many of his positions, so I think it was the obvious part of the Christian faith for him to come into."

Since leaving Downing Street, Blair has gone through the formal process of conversion - evangelisation, acceptance, election, the period of purification and enlightenment, then full communion - but the unanswered question remains as to why Blair felt he could not be both prime minister and a Catholic.

Blair was first noticed at mass in Westminster Cathedral, both with his family and alone, in the years between becoming Labour leader in 1994 and winning the 1997 general election, but it is believed he had been attending mass since soon after his marriage in 1980.

He became an MP in 1983, and a frontbench spokesman the following year. If he believed the top job in British politics would some day be his, did he decide open and public Catholicism would have to wait till he left office?

Being a "private" Catholic did, however, have its awkward moments. Before the 1997 election, Blair regularly took communion at his local Catholic church in Islington. Technically, though, he was breaking the rules. Being leader of the opposition did not constitute "a grave and pressing spiritual need" - the exemption that allows non-Catholics to take part in mass. Blair was also doing much the same thing at Westminster Cathedral, and Cardinal Basil Hume even wrote to Blair to ask him to stop attending because he was not a Catholic.

Was Hume telling Blair he should go public with his faith and become Britain's first Catholic prime minister?

Blair, however, found a way to practise his Catholicism in private and regularly attended church when he was at Chequers. Father Michael Seed is said to have been the priest who regularly visited 10 Downing Street - but by the back door - as Blair's spiritual adviser.

In public, and on the advice of Alastair Campbell, his communications chief, Blair "didn't do God". On the eve of the Iraq war, Blair wanted to end a broadcast with "God bless", but Campbell persuaded him to stick to a secular message.

On TV last year, Blair told Michael Parkinson he had prayed before sending British troops to Iraq. More recently, though, Blair said he avoided talking about his religious views while he was in office for fear of being labelled "a nutter".

So after more than two decades of almost secret worship, and of never taking on the one reform that would have ensured him a legacy - becoming the first Catholic prime minister - Blair will shortly return to Jerusalem as Middle East envoy, would-be peacemaker, and Catholic.

Senate confirms Mary Ann Glendon
as U.S. ambassador to Vatican
By Catholic News Service





WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (CNS) -- The U.S. Senate confirmed Mary Ann Glendon, a U.S. law professor and president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, as the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican Dec. 19.

President George W. Bush had announced plans to nominate Glendon Nov. 5. In the flurry of end-of-the-year activity, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the nomination on the morning of Dec. 19 and the full Senate approved dozens of nominations and military promotions in its next-to-last action before adjourning that evening.

Glendon, a Catholic, will succeed Francis Rooney, a Catholic businessman who has held the post since October 2005. A date for Rooney's departure has not been announced.

Glendon is a law professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and has been a member of the social sciences academy since its founding in 1994.

In March 2004 Pope John Paul II named her president of the academy, marking the first time a woman has been named president of one of the major pontifical academies.

The social sciences academy focuses on issues related to the social sciences, economics, politics and law. Although autonomous, the academy works in consultation with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Glendon, 69, also serves as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on International Policy and chaired its task force on Iraq.

She was the first woman named to head a Vatican delegation to a major U.N. conference; in 1995, Pope John Paul named her head of the Vatican delegation to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing.

Glendon's research has focused on bioethics, human rights, the theory of law and comparative constitutional law.

Since 2001, she also has served on the President's Council on Bioethics, which advises the U.S. president.

In addition to teaching at Harvard, where she is the Learned Hand professor of law, she has been a visiting professor at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University and the Legionaries of Christ's Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum, both in Rome.

Before going to Harvard, she was a law professor at Jesuit-run Boston College's law school. Earlier in her career, she was an associate at the law firm of Mayer, Brown and Platt.

She earned her bachelor's degree, law degree and master's degree in comparative law at the University of Chicago.

In 2003 she received the Canterbury Medal from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and in 2005 received the National Humanities Medal. She is the author of "A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

In May of this year, as academy president, Glendon participated in a panel on "Religion in Contemporary Society" at U.N. headquarters in New York.

She said the challenge religious and cultural leaders are facing is "motivating their followers to meet others on the plane of reason and mutual respect, while remaining true to themselves and their own beliefs."

Glendon is known as a strong defender of Catholic teaching while also working to expand the inclusion of women in the church.

Last December at a Rome conference on "Feminism and the Catholic Church," she said church teaching that women and men are equal, but not identical is a healthy corrective to the feminism of the late 20th century, which she said promoted a "unisex society."

But she also said the church "will continue to have difficulty explaining the exclusion of women from the priesthood" unless it demonstrates the seriousness of its belief that women and men are equal, but not identical, by providing examples of lay women and men and priests working together in real partnerships.

A native of Berkshire County, Mass., she lives with her husband, Edward R. Lev, in Chestnut Hill, Mass. They have three daughters.

Sarkozy puts faith in France
Washington Times (DC)
December 22, 2007


Although this article has to do with Sarkozy's visit to the Vatican, I am posting it here because the emphasis in this item is Sarkozy himself.


PARIS (From combined dispatches) — President Nicolas Sarkozy has broken a French taboo by urging a more active role for religion in public life, but stopped well short of the American-style mix of faith and politics his critics say he wants to copy.

A twice-divorced "cultural Catholic," Mr. Sarkozy used a visit to the Vatican on Thursday to declare France was rooted in Christianity and needed Catholics to be more active in public life because faith helped give meaning to life.

Sarkozy's audience with the pope "will give the president an opportunity to reaffirm his respect and commitment, not to religion in particular ... but to spiritual issues in general," his spokesman said ahead of the audience.

His trip to Rome, which included being inducted as honorary canon of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, provoked charges that he was trying to blur the separation of church and state and make religion a political issue, as in the United States.

In its front-page cartoon yesterday, the Paris daily Le Monde showed Mr. Sarkozy dressed as a bishop, with President Bush shouldering a cross and an American flag and confessing to Pope Benedict XVI: "I think this guy is stealing my job."

The communist daily L'Humanite scoffed that Mr. Sarkozy had bowed his head to the pope "like an altar boy" and "abandoned all reserve and placed his status as a Catholic above that of the head of a secular state."

In his speech accepting the canon's title, an honor given to French leaders since the 17th century, Mr. Sarkozy made repeated references to France's Christian roots — a link that Paris refused to have mentioned in Europe's planned constitution.

He also gave Benedict a copy of his 2004 book "The Republic, Religions and Hope" in which he first spelled out his dissenting views about faith and French politics.

But "Sarko the American" — a nickname he earned for his pro-American views — stressed he agreed with the separation of church and state and only wanted to ease some practices that faith leaders, especially Muslims, consider anti-religious.

"We should uphold both sides — accept the Christian roots of France ... while defending secularism," he said. "We don't want to change the law separating church and state. The French don't want that, and the religions don't want it either."

Mr. Sarkozy said France needed "convinced Catholics who are not afraid to say who they are and what they believe." But he made clear he welcomed outspoken believers of all faiths and was not trying to mobilize Christians to support certain policies.

"Of course, those who do not believe should be protected from all forms of intolerance and proselytism," he said. "But a person who believes is a person who hopes. The republic has an interest in having many men and women who hope."

RTL radio commentator Serge July noted the Catholic Church in France has criticized Mr. Sarkozy's crackdown on immigration and plans to drop most restrictions on Sunday shopping. "Catholics may vote for him, but the bishops are wary," he said.

The president stopped short of discussing his own religious views, avoiding a faux pas the French might find even less pardonable than talking about religion and politics in general.

French commentators have expressed amazement that candidates in U.S. primaries discuss the Bible, question others' beliefs, reject evolution or declare that freedom required religion.

"France is very hostile to religion in politics," said Olivier Roy, a leading specialist on secularism and religions, especially Islam. "We have different traditions for dealing with this."

SARKOZY IN SURPRISE VISIT
TO AFGHANISTAN



KABUL, December 22 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a surprise visit to Kabul on Saturday to meet Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and some of the French troops based in Kabul, in a show of support for the insurgency-hit country.

The French leader started his five-hour visit with talks with US General Dan McNeill, head of the NATO-led force that is helping Afghanistan fight a Taliban-led insurgency and stabilise after decades of war and extremism.

Sarkozy and his delegation, which included Defence Minister Herve Morin and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, were due to meet Karzai and visit French troops, including some training Afghan soldiers, officials said.

Sarkozy would use the trip to ''reaffirm France's support and engagement in the process of the stabilization and reconstruction of Afghanistan'', the French presidential palace said.

Sarkozy, on his first visit to Kabul since becoming President in May, was due to leave later in the day.

France has around 1,600 soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) made up of more than 40,000 soldiers from nearly 40 nations.

Most of the French soldiers operate around Kabul, while some are deployed at a base in the southern city of Kandahar, where France has six Mirage jets to provide air cover for ground troops.

French troops are also involved in training the fledgling Afghan security forces.

Sarkozy told the US Congress last month that French soldiers would stay in Afghanistan ''as long as needed''. ''For me, failure is not an option,'' he said.



French, Australian leaders
visit Kabul
By RAHIM FAIEZ


KABUL, Afghanistan, dEC. 22 (ap) - The leaders of France and Australia met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Saturday, each pledging their countries' long-term commitment to Afghanistan.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the first French president to visit Afghanistan, signaled that French troops would not pull out of the country anytime soon. He told Karzai that France has a long-term political and military interest in Afghanistan, Karzai's office said in a statement.

"We did not want to give the signal of a withdrawal, which would have been a detestable signal at a time when we see the ravages that terrorism can do to the world," Sarkozy said on France-Info radio.

France announced its decision a year ago to withdraw 200 elite Special Forces, raising questions about whether the pullout would precede a larger withdrawal.

French television quoted the president as suggesting that more combat instructors could be sent to Afghanistan, creating a "qualitative" but not a "quantitative" increase. There are currently some 1,300 French troops in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan must not become a state that falls into the hands of terrorists," Sarkozy said during his six-hour visit, which was not previously announced. "A war, a war against terrorism, against fanaticism, is being played out here, that we cannot, that we must not lose."

U.S. military leaders have pleaded with NATO countries to contribute more forces to Afghanistan. About 26,000 of the 50,000 international troops in Afghanistan are American.

Sarkozy said that the first contribution of French forces in Afghanistan was to help train the Afghan army and police, and assist in the building of the Afghan state, administration and justice system.

Sarkozy also planned to meet some of the 1,300 French troops who are mostly stationed in the Kabul region as part of NATO's military force. The French president's office said the visit would last a day.

Hours after his meeting with Sarkozy, Karzai met with Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who was visiting some of the 900 Australian troops stationed in Uruzgan province, site of fierce battles this year.

Rudd, whose party won parliamentary elections last month, said he wanted to make an early visit to the troops and confirm Australia's commitment to Afghanistan.

The trip follows a surprise visit to Iraq, where he met with officials to discuss plans to pull his country's 550 combat troops out of the country by mid-2008. But he said Australia will hold firm in Afghanistan.

"We will be, as I said before, in this country, Afghanistan, for the long haul, and it's important for us to be here in partnership with countries from NATO," he said. He said he would be encouraging other countries to continue or expand their commitment to Afghanistan.

Rudd announced an aid package of $95 million for reconstruction, primarily in Uruzgan.

Asked why military forces haven't tried to retake Gizab, a region near Uruzgan province under Taliban control, Karzai said the government could establish control there "at any time" but that he didn't want casualties — civilian or Taliban.

"We don't even want the Taliban to get hurt or die. We want to attract them back to civilian life within the constitution of Afghanistan," Karzai said. "We would like to do that through means other than the military."

Karzai has increasingly been trying to persuade militant fighters and leaders to lay down their arms and pledge their allegiance to the government.

Sarkozy and Karzai discussed what Karzai's office described as the two main challenges in Afghanistan: insecurity and narcotics. Afghanistan this year accounted for 93 percent of the world's production of opium, the main ingredient in heroin.

A remotely controlled bomb killed three Afghan security forces as they were returning from an opium poppy eradication campaign in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province on Saturday, said Ghafor Khan, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.

French Defense Minister Herve Morin has expressed concern over deteriorating security in some regions of Afghanistan; 2007 has been its most violent year since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. More than 6,300 people, mostly militants, have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count.

Morin accompanied Sarkozy, along with Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Human Rights Minister Rama Yade.

..AND A VERY IRREVRENT NOTE TO MARK
THE QUEEN SURPASSING VICTORIA'S RECORD
ON THE THRONE OF ENGLAND

From Alan Taylor's diary
The Herald (Scotland)
Dec. 22, 2007


YOU DO not need me to tell you that we live in the weirdest of times. Take Dr Rowan Williams, a so-called divine. Dr Rowan is the Archbishop of Canterbury, which makes him the heidbummer of the Church of England, which is to religion what the LibDumbs are to politics, ie makeweights.

Quizzed on radio by Ricky Gervais, a sausage supper, Dr Rowan intimated the Christmas story as told in the Bible is largely hokum, from the three wise men to the virgin birth.

Thus he played straight into the grubby hands of infidels such as Richard Dawkins, who makes his living denying the existence of his Maker, and Christopher Hitchens, who recently described in loving detail how he made his testicles bald. No wonder my Taliban chums think the West is full of decadent reprobates.

But back to Dr Rowan, who one might have thought would now be considering his position. Not a bit of it. He may not believe that Jesus was born without any houghmagandie ever having taken place between Mary and Joseph, that there was no room at the Holiday Inn and that He was perforce born in a manger in a stable bare, and that there was no snow in Bethlehem 2007 years ago because a BBC weatherman says so, but he cannot surely stand in the pulpit on Christmas Day and ask his flock to take him seriously.

Even more mystifying, though, is the silence of other so-called divines, who one might have thought were a tad upset at Dr Rowan's witterings. Not for the first time do I bemoan the absence of my dear friend Cardinal Thomas Winning who would have known exactly how to put Dr Rowan in his place with a - metaphorical - Glesca kiss.

*******

LAST week good Queen Tupperware [Elizabeth II] set yet another record, becoming the oldest ever monarch to perch on the British throne, overtaking in the process Queen Vicky, best known as the mournful licensee of a pub in Albert Square.

This auspicious occasion led to a 21-gun salute from monarchists who seem to think that Tuppie is an even more important national figurehead than Sir Terence Wogan.

Among her most loyal subjects is one William Shawcross, who is writing her official biography which, given his recent effusions, promises to be as punchy as the message on a Hallmark card. "Monarchy," twittered Mr Shortcrust, "gives a human face to government. A royal family, far more than a republic, embodies all the rituals of life with which we are most familiar - birth, marriage, death and other anniversaries and milestones. The familial makes familiar and trusted."

Such mush is typical when it comes to the royal family, against whom I have nothing in particular. My beef is personal, stemming from one of Queen Tuppie's garden parties of which I had high hopes. None, alas, was met. And I cannot forgive a woman who thinks it acceptable to serve orange squash to guests over the age of three, which is why I am proposing that the 1603 Union of the Crowns be consigned to history.

If my dear friend Alexei Salmonella can call for the end of the UK, then I would like to do the same for Queen Tuppie and her weans. When she goes, let's crown our own queen, preferably someone who eschews headscarves and doesn't always look as if she's lost at the bingo.

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

I must say I sat up when the TV newsbriefs first mentioned that Elizabeth II has set a new record for longevity on the throne. And as they played recent videoclips of her, I noted admiringly how well she looks at 81 - but then her mother Rose did not at all look 100 when she marked a century - so it must be in their genes.

So I now have two other prominent nicely-aged octogenarians besides our beloved Benedict - Queen Elizebth II, 81, and the first president Bush, 83, who did a parachute jump two weeks ago just to keep himself 'in shape'.


And here's a proper story, as she deserves more than the gossip item above:


Elizabeth II becomes
UK's oldest monarch
By JILL LAWLESS


Left photo: The Queen, photographed in November 2007, with the duke of Edinburgh.


LONDON, Dec. 20 (AP) - Queen Elizabeth II became Britain's oldest-ever monarch Thursday, reaching a new milestone in a job she has held for more than a half century — one that comes with luxurious accommodation, long hours and little chance of retirement.

Elizabeth, 81, passed the mark set by her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria. Her son, Prince Charles, closed in on the title of longest-waiting heir to the throne.

Victoria was born on May 24, 1819, and lived for 81 years and 243 days. Buckingham Palace, calculating longevity down to the hour, said Elizabeth moved past her predecessor at about 5 p.m. (noon EST).


Photo taken Dec. 13, 2007.

Palace officials said there would be no special events to mark the occasion, and the queen had no public appearances scheduled Thursday. She spent the day working quietly at home on royal paperwork.

Royal historian Robert Lacey said the milestone would likely bring the queen "some quiet satisfaction."

"She is a modest person, never one for blowing her own trumpet, and I think that is one of the reasons for her success and longevity," Lacey said.

Elizabeth, who took the throne in 1952, is one of only five kings or queens since the 1066 Norman Conquest to reign for more than half a century. Currently the fourth longest-reigning English monarch, she would overtake King Henry III on March 5, and King George III in 2012.

On Sept. 9, 2015 she would pass Queen Victoria, who ruled for almost 64 years, as the longest-reigning British monarch.

Elizabeth can already claim to have been active longer than Victoria, who retreated from public life for more than a decade after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861.

Lacey said the queen could take credit for steering the monarchy through choppy waters in the late 20th century, when public approval plummeted after the divorces of three of Elizabeth's four children and the death of Charles' ex-wife Princess Diana.

"Ten years ago the monarchy was in a very parlous state," Lacey said. Its survival "is down to the steadiness of the queen."

The queen's landmark means her eldest son is approaching his own record — the longest wait by an heir to the throne. Victoria's son became King Edward VII in 1901, aged just over 59 years and two months. Prince Charles turned 59 five weeks ago on Nov. 14.

Anti-monarchist group Republic urged the queen to mark the milestone by giving up her job. Spokesman Graham Smith said her retirement would allow Britain to debate reforming its constitution to create a new head of state.

"Elizabeth Windsor is now 81, well past the normal age for retirement," Smith said. "Over the next few years question marks are going to be raised about her continuing ability to perform her official duties. It would be in her interests and those of the country if she stepped down and enjoyed a peaceful retirement."

Buckingham Palace has long said that the queen has no intention of abdicating in favor of her son.

She may have many years left in the job. Her mother, the Queen Mother Elizabeth, died in 2002 at the age of 101.

Blair Catholic service 'moving'
BBC News
Dec. 23, 2007



The service to receive former Prime Minister Tony Blair into the Roman Catholic Church was "moving", Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor has said.

The leader of Catholics in England and Wales said Friday's service - attended by Mr Blair's wife and four children - was "very intimate, very prayerful".

The Vatican has welcomed Tony Blair's decision to become a Catholic.

Mr Blair, who had been an Anglican, became a Catholic during a service at Archbishop's House, in Westminster.

He feels at home in the Catholic church in a way that he didn't in any other church, or in the Anglican commune

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who is the Archbishop of Westminster, led the service and told BBC Radio 2's Good Morning Sunday: "It was a very moving occasion.

"I suppose for him [it was] the end of a process, in the sense that he's been thinking about becoming a Catholic for a long time.

"But also, in another sense it's a beginning, because when you become a Catholic, as so many people who have become Catholics have said to me, it's like coming home.

"This was a gift for Tony, a personal journey, a gift for his family."

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said Mr Blair, who was formerly an Anglican, was becoming a Catholic "partly because... the example of his family, his children have been brought up as Catholics.

"I think also it's not just in his travels as prime minister, but even before that, there was something he said to me, that he feels at home in the Catholic Church in a way that he didn't in any other Church, or in the Anglican commune."

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor led Mr Blair's service .

A Vatican spokesman said such an "authoritative personality" choosing to join the Catholic Church "could only give rise to joy and respect".

Last year, Mr Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, said he had prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops into Iraq.

And one of Mr Blair's final official trips while prime minister was a visit to the Vatican in June where he met Pope Benedict XVI.

BBC correspondent David Willey said it had been no secret in Rome that Mr Blair had been taking instruction from a Catholic priest as a prelude to conversion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, leader of the Anglican church, wished the former prime minister well in his spiritual journey.

But ex-Tory minister Ann Widdecombe - herself a Catholic convert - said Mr Blair's voting record as an MP had often "gone against Church teaching" and that his conversion raised some questions.

"If you look at Tony Blair's voting record in the House of Commons, he's gone against Church teaching on more than one occasion. On things, for example, like abortion," she said. "My question would be, 'has he changed his mind on that?'"

There has never been a Roman Catholic prime minister of Britain, although there is no constitutional barrier to such a move.

However, it had in the past been suggested that Mr Blair would wait until after leaving office, to avoid possible clashes such as over his role in appointing Church of England bishops.



Blair, a Regular at Mass,
Is Now Catholic
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
Published: December 23, 2007


LONDON — Six months after stepping down as Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair has completed his long-expected conversion to Roman Catholicism from Britain’s established church, Anglicanism, Catholics officials said in a statement on Saturday.

Mr. Blair, now a Middle East envoy, was received into the Catholic Church during a Mass held on Friday night at a chapel in the residence of the leading Catholic in Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the statement said. It said Mr. Blair had been “received into full communion with the Catholic Church” by the cardinal.

Mr. Blair’s convent-educated wife, Cherie, and four children are Catholics, and Mr. Blair had for many years made a practice of attending Mass with them, saying he did so to keep his family together on Sundays.

Aides have said he delayed his formal conversion until after leaving office to avoid making his religious beliefs a political issue, and because of the risk of stirring controversy over his role, as prime minister, in appointing Anglican bishops.

Mr. Blair also faced concerns within the Catholic hierarchy in London and Rome, centering on policies adopted by his government during his 10 years in power that drew fierce criticism from the conservative hierarchy of the church. Among these were the Blair government’s support for stem cell research, gay adoptions and the legalization of gay civil unions, as well as its resistance to toughening Britain’s abortion laws.

In 1996, the year before Mr. Blair became prime minister, Cardinal Basil Hume, then the head of the Catholic Church in Britain, wrote to Mr. Blair asking him to stop taking communion at a Catholic church in the London district of Islington, near his home.

Mr. Blair accepted the decision, but wrote back to the cardinal, according to the account given by his aides later, saying, “I wonder what Jesus would have made of it.”

The church statement released Saturday made no reference to the tensions within the Catholic Church that have arisen as a result of Mr. Blair’s desire to convert. It said only that he had undergone, as Catholic converts usually do, a period of “spiritual preparation.” His preparatory sessions were under the guidance of a Catholic priest, Mark O’Toole, who is Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s private secretary.

The statement quoted Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor as saying, referring to Mr. Blair: “For a long time, he has been a regular worshiper at Mass with his family, and in recent months he has been following a program of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion. My prayers are with him, his wife and family in this joyful moment in their journey of faith together.”

According to the Catholic custom ordinarily followed in Britain, a convert, before acceptance at communion, is usually required to undergo the Rite of Reception, which includes the declaration, “I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God.”

In June, after meeting Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, Mr. Blair met with the papal secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and accounts by Vatican officials said the cardinal laid out the church’s objections to some of the Blair government’s legislation in uncompromising terms.

Among some Catholics in Britain, there have been questions about how Mr. Blair, who has described himself as an “ecumenical Christian,” could meet the standards normally set for converts.

“St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus would pale into insignificance by comparison,” John Smeaton, director of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said in an interview published earlier this month in The Spectator, a weekly journal popular among conservatives. “We need to hear a full repudiation from him. Without one, having Blair as a Catholic is like having a vegetarian in a meat-eating club. It simply does not make sense”

Mr. Blair has spent much of his time since resigning as prime minister on his work as the envoy of the so-called Middle East diplomatic quartet — comprising the United Nations, the European Union, the Russian Federation and the United States — from a base at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem.

In his private capacity, he has also traveled widely making highly paid speeches, some of them in the United States.

He has also spoken with growing candor about his religious convictions, and what he has described as the “moral” dimension of politics. These were issues he often avoided while in office, when critics in his ruling Labor Party, uneasy with what they regarded as a break with the secular tradition of British politics, often pointed to his faith as a factor in his close relationship with President Bush.

The criticism focused on Mr. Blair’s decision to commit British troops to the toppling of Saddam Hussein, which he often defended, in the face of fierce criticism, as “the right thing to do.”

In an interview recorded for a three-part television documentary broadcast last month on the BBC, “The Blair Years,” Mr. Blair acknowledged the importance of his religious beliefs in guiding his years as prime minister and also the care he had taken not to talk about those beliefs in public.

“You know, if I am honest about it, yes of course it was hugely important,” he said.

But he added that while politicians could speak freely about their faith in the United States, it was hard to do so in Britain because “you talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you’re a nutter.”



Tony Blair converts to Catholicism -
as immigration from Eastern Europe means
Catholics now outnumber Anglicans in Britain
Evening Standard (UK)
Dec. 22, 2007

Tony Blair announced his conversion to Catholicism yesterday after a controversial 25-year spiritual journey.

The former Prime Minister – previously a High Church Anglican – was welcomed into the faith by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, after Communion on Friday.

Blair's conversion comes as new figures show that that immigration from Catholic countries has meant that Britain now has more Catholics than Anglicans.

During his time in office, Mr Blair had consistently denied any plan to convert to his wife Cherie's religion – but his desire to do so was no secret among his friends and advisers.

They say he only held off for political and personal reasons: there has never been a Catholic Prime Minister and many of Labour's most reforming policies, such as those covering gay marriages and stem cell research, were opposed by Catholics.

But at the start of this year, with his exit date from Downing Street set for the summer, he started taking formal instruction classes on conversion from the cardinal's private secretary, Monsignor Mark O'Toole.

Yesterday Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, said he was delighted to welcome Mr Blair, who is now dealing with the complexities of religious conflict as a Middle East peace envoy.

The Cardinal said: "For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at Mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full Communion.

"My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together."

Today a study by the organisation Christian Research has found that the large number of EU nationals from Eastern Europe who have immigrated to the UK in recent years have swelled the numbers attending masses across the country.

Estimates for church attendances in 2006, based on previous years' figures, reveal 861,800 Catholics attended services every Sunday compared with 852,500 Anglican worshippers.

Peter Brierley, former executive director of Christian Research, who helped compile the data due to be published in the new year, said: "Part of the reason for the increase is you have got large numbers of immigrants coming in from Catholic countries especially Poland.

"There's been a substantial number of Poles coming in and 85 per cent of them are Catholic so that's going to boost your numbers."

Mr Blair's interest in religion is said to have been sparked as a young man by the trauma of seeing his father suffer a stroke and his mother die from cancer.

At Oxford University his spiritual mentor was Peter Thompson, a 36-year-old Anglican. But after meeting Cherie he started to fall more under the influence of her faith.

Although the pair married in a Church of England service, Mr Blair was soon joining his wife in Catholic Communion – something he tried to do surreptitiously in case it damaged his political ambitions.

It is understood that Mr Blair's determination to switch faiths hardened a few years ago after he suffered a traumatic disturbance to his family life.

Father Michael Seed, an adviser to the Cardinal, counselled Mr and Mrs Blair throughout the crisis and soon after started conducting private Masses for them at Downing Street.

Last night, Vatican sources said Mr Blair's conversion had been "a matter of time" and pointed out that he had visited Rome four times in four years, more than any previous serving Prime Minister.

When Mr Blair last met Pope Benedict XVI in June, just days after he left Downing Street, he gave the Pontiff an update on his progress towards conversion.

One senior Vatican source said: "The Holy Father and the whole of the Vatican are delighted with the news. It is always a great joy to welcome a convert."

Head of the Anglican church, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, bade farewell to the former Prime Minister with a more ambiguous tribute.

He said: "Tony Blair has my prayers and good wishes as he takes this step in his Christian pilgrimage.

"A great Catholic writer of the last century said that the only reason for moving from one Christian family to another was to deepen one's relationship with God."

He added: "I pray that this will be the result of Tony Blair's decision in his personal life."

Mr Blair was evasive about his spiritual beliefs during his time in office because of the potential political complications. His former Press spokesman Alastair

Campbell once told reporters: "We don't do God," and Mr Blair reacted with irritation when asked by Jeremy Paxman if he and George Bush prayed together.

As recently as 2004, he was still insisting that he had no plans to convert and claimed he only attended Catholic services so that he and his family could worship together.

There was also the further complication of the 1829 Emancipation Act, which says that no Catholic adviser to the monarch can hold civil or military office, and a potential conflict with his role in choosing Church of England bishops.

Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, who converted to Catholicism in 1993, said: "At the point you are received you have to say individually and out loud, 'I believe everything the church teaches to be revealed truth'.

"That means if you previously had any problems with church teaching, as Tony Blair obviously did over abortion, as he did again over Sunday trading, you would have to say you changed your mind.

"And I think people will want to know that he did go through that process, because otherwise it will seem as if the church did make an exception for somebody just because of who he is."

John Smeaton of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said Mr Blair had promoted "abortion, experimentation on unborn embryos, including cloned embryos, and euthanasia by neglect."

He added: "SPUC is writing to Tony Blair to ask him whether he has repented of the anti-life positions he has so openly advocated throughout his political career."



Vatican hails Blair Church switch


Vatican, 12/23 - The Vatican has welcomed Tony Blair`s decision to become a Roman Catholic.

A spokesman said such an "authoritative personality" choosing to join the Catholic Church "could only give rise to joy and respect".

The ex-PM was received into the Church by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O`Connor.

It comes as research by Christian Research suggests Catholic churchgoers now outnumber Anglicans for the first time since the Reformation in the UK.

Ex-Tory minister Ann Widdecombe - herself a Catholic convert - said Mr Blair`s voting record as an MP had often "gone against Church teaching".

Mr Blair`s wife and children are already Catholic and there had been speculation he would convert after leaving office.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O`Connor, who led the service to welcome Mr Blair, said he was "very glad" to do so.

Last year, Mr Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, said he had prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops into Iraq.

And one of Mr Blair`s final official trips while prime minister was a visit to the Vatican in June where he met Pope Benedict XVI.

Mr Blair was received into full communion with the Catholic Church during Mass at Archbishop`s House, Westminster, on Friday.

The choice of joining the Catholic church made by such an authoritative personality can only arouse joy and respect Cardinal Murphy O`Connor, who is the head of Catholics in England and Wales, said he was "very glad" to welcome Mr Blair into the church.

"My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together," he said.

Chief Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Catholic church in Rome shared Cardinal Murphy-O`Connor`s "satisfaction".

"The choice of joining the Catholic church made by such an authoritative personality can only arouse joy and respect," Fr Lombardi added.

The Times of London today carried three articles about Tony Blair's conversion. The first is by William Rees-Mogg, even if it is mainly about Britain's archaic law of succession.

Rees-Mogg was Editor of The Times in 1967, a position he held until 1981. He was made a life peer in 1988. Since 1992 he has been a columnist for The Times, writing on a variety of issues. He has also been chairman of the Broadcast Standards Council and British Arts Council.


A Catholic tremor through Westminster
By William Rees-Mogg
Times of London
December 24, 2007


The position of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain has changed enormously in my lifetime, but one could never have guessed that we should see reported on the same day a recent ex-Prime Minister becoming a convert, and the Catholic weekly attendance numbers overtaking the Anglican.

When I was young, no-popery prejudice still had real influence; it was not as strong in England as in Northern Ireland, nor as strong as English antiSemitism, but it could affect people’s lives in terms of marriages, school places or jobs. In politics, a Roman Catholic Prime Minister was unthinkable, and a Roman Catholic Lord Chancellor was actually illegal.

The announcement of Tony Blair’s conversion is an important personal event for Blair and his family, but it is also an important historic event. When he last saw the Pope, Blair presented him with an autographed photograph of Cardinal Newman, the most significant Catholic convert of the 19th century. Blair has himself become the most significant British convert since Newman.

Religion is not a matter of mere statistics, nor are these statistics simple. Yet the fact that Catholic weekly church attendances in England have overtaken Anglican by 862,000 to 853,000 is significant.

One should nevertheless qualify it. The Catholic figures have been raised by Polish immigration. The Poles bring Polish Catholicism with them; they are a devout nation. If one counts the numbers of people who would regard themselves as Church of England, if not practising, they would still outnumber Roman Catholics, similarly self-described.

So England did not wake up yesterday morning as a Catholic country. Indeed Protestant Churches of England, Pentecostal, Methodist and Baptist, have a combined church attendance of 822,000.

But the Roman Catholics should be seen as one of three large Christian groups, marginally the largest by the measure of church attendance. There are a billion Catholics in the world as a whole; that in itself adds to their influence in Britain.

There are political issues that have lain below the surface, which will now have to be reconsidered. In constitutional terms the most important concerns the monarchy. The Act of Settlement makes the English crown a Protestant monarchy. It provides that no one can be eligible to secure the crown if a Roman Catholic or married to one. This has even been made to extend to minor members of the Royal Family who have to renounce their remote rights of succession on marriage to a Roman Catholic.

Few serious politicians want to amend the Act of Settlement, not because they feel reverence for its Protestant character, which reflects quarrels of 300 years ago, but because they are afraid of opening a can of worms. Mr Blair himself may have hesitated for similar reasons before making his intended conversion public.

If the Westminster Parliament were to amend the Act of Settlement, it would be necessary for the other Commonwealth countries in which the Queen is head of state to amend their constitutions, otherwise they might end up with different monarchs. Any amendment to the Act of Settlement would open the way for Australia, and any of the other Commonwealth countries that have kept the Queen, to become republics.

Amendment would also open the way for the removal of another obvious discrimination, which is that of gender. The English crown passes in the male line, so long as there is a direct male heir. If Prince Charles had predeceased his mother, before having children, the successor to the throne would not have been the Princess Royal, though she is older than her other brothers, but Prince Andrew, followed by his daughters, followed by Prince Edward, followed by his children.

There is a widespread feeling, not only among militant feminists, that this is an unjustifiable discrimination against women, and perhaps unlawful under the Human Rights Act.

Neither the discrimination against Roman Catholics nor that against women would be tolerated if the Act of Settlement had to be drafted in the present age. Both would have to go, if either of them was removed. There is a greater constitutional difficulty in the possible break-up of the United Kingdom and of Canada. Any amendment of the Act of Settlement would give Alex Salmond an opportunity to press the case for Scottish independence.

In Canada, the problem is Quebec. The reason that Canada has remained a monarchy is that Canadian governments have feared any change in the status of Canada would give an opening to the Quebec separatists. Quebec, unlike Scotland, is predominantly Catholic.

This is the tangle that has to be unwound. All the remaining monarchies of the Commonwealth might choose to become republics. Scotland may become independent; Quebec may become independent; women might rank equally with men in the succession to the English crown; Catholics might be able to succeed to the English throne. One can see why prime ministers have been so reluctant to open this constitutional question.

If one could leave these sleeping dogs to lie, personally I would do so. But I suspect the dogs are already awake. We cannot stop Australia becoming a republic, if the Australians want to. Nor can we stop Scotland becoming independent, if it chooses.

We cannot go on discriminating against women and Catholics. Reforming the Act of Settlement may take as long as reforming the House of Lords, but changes will come, better early than late, better late than never.


Ruth Gledhill, religion correspondent of the Times, had two pieces about 'the conversion' in today's issue:


‘Judge not Tony Blair,
for he is like St Paul’
By Ruth Gledhill
Times of London
Dec. 24, 2007

The Roman Catholic priest who was instrumental in guiding Tony Blair on his path to Rome compared the former Prime Minister last night to St Paul.

Canon Timothy Russ, parish priest at Great Missenden, the nearest Catholic church to the prime ministerial country residence at Chequers, called on Catholics who resented Mr Blair because of his voting record on abortion and stem cell research to remember the example of the Christian Church’s greatest Apostle, St Paul, a key figure in spreading the message of Christianity.

St Paul was ruthless in his persecution of early Christians before his dramatic conversion on the Road to Damascus.

“Quite a lot of people will be quite anti-Tony Blair at first,” Canon Russ said. “They will be unhappy that he has become a Catholic so easily. But they have to realise that St Paul had been a frightful antiChristian before he became a convert and did great things for the Church. I would advise people who are critical to wait and see what sort of man this will be, and how he might help our cause.”

On Iraq, Canon Russ – who was in discussion with Mr Blair for several years about his becoming a Catholic and is still in touch with the Blair family – said that there was no case for him to answer in terms of Catholic doctrine, because the former Prime Minister had done what he believed to be his duty.

Catholic leaders were yesterday playing down the significance of Mr Blair’s conversion. Insiders at the office of the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, emphasised that the former Prime Minister is “just one more individual”.

Catholic leaders were also working behind the scenes last night to dispel misunderstandings about the nature of conversion.

In Britain’s increasingly secular society, there is widespread misunderstanding about the doctrine of Christian reconciliation, or repentance, confession and forgiveness.

“What Tony Blair did any time before he became a Catholic, is basically not relevant,” one insider said. “The whole point about the profession of faith is that he is professing to believe it from now.”

The Times reported exclusively this year that the number of Catholics attending Mass was on course to overtake churchgoing Anglicans in Britain for the first time since the Reformation.

Figures to be published by Christian Research next year show that, only three years after an influx of immigrants from largely Catholic states joining the EU, there are now more practising Catholics than Anglicans.

Lord St John of Fawsley, the Catholic peer and constitutional expert, said that there was no constitutional significance to Tony Blair’s conversion. The Act of Settlement of 1701, which forbids the monarch or his or her heirs from marrying a Catholic if they want to retain their right to the throne, does not affect the Prime Minister’s office.

Political sensitivities made it difficult, however, for Mr Blair to contemplate converting while in office.

Lord St John said that one factor that would have inhibited Mr Blair from converting while at Downing Street was the potential destabilising effect on Northern Ireland: “He has done so much more than any other Prime Minister to bring about peace, he did not want to jeopardise that.”

Mr Blair has been criticised for not taking a sufficiently “Catholic” line in votes in Parliament on abortion and stem cell research. But Lord St John said that, apart from Mr Blair not having been Catholic while Prime Minister, the issues were not clear in any case. “I shall vote against stem cell research because I do not like the idea of cloning embryos,” he said.

He added: “On abortion, it is still possible to be a Catholic and to be in favour of abortion. St Thomas Aquinas [the 13th-century Dominican scholar who “proved” the existence of God] believed that abortion was legitimate until 40 days after conception.”

He said the Catholic view today was that abortion was wrong, but that until relatively recently even Catholic MPs were not uniformly against abortion.


Catechism frames life
By Ruth Gledhill
Times of London
Dec. 24, 2007

In his Introduction to Christianity, Professor Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, gave warning against the “secularisation of love” as preached by Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation.

This text is almost certainly among the documents that Tony Blair will have been given to read as part of his “instruction” before becoming a Catholic.

The former Prime Minister will have received an intense programme of spiritual and doctrinal instruction from Father Mark O’Toole, secretary to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. For doctrinal instruction, he will also have been asked to read the Church’s Catechism, which contains all contemporary doctrine as well as other introductions to Christianity.

Chris Gillibrand, a former Anglican who now blogs on Catholic Church conservation from Brussels, said: “However formal or informal the instruction, the Catechism frames the spiritual life of every convert. The existence of the Catechism means there is not a doctrinal continuum between the Catholic Church and other churches, not least the Anglican.”

Speaking of his own conversion, Mr Gillibrand said: “I said goodbye to the Church of England on the steps of Westminster Abbey, went for several beers and a curry in Soho with a good agnostic friend, returning to Oxford that evening by coach which passed by Littlemore, where John Henry, later Cardinal, Newman was received into the Church.

“I was received on the Sunday morning in a frankly ugly church, but I knew, with the hands of the two sponsors on my shoulders, I would be for the rest of my life home."




Blair looks to Rome
as Catholic Sunday worshippers
outstrip Anglicans
By Stephen Bates and Sam Jones
The Guardian (UK)
Monday, December 24, 2007



Senior English Catholics yesterday welcomed the conversion of Tony Blair to Catholicism, as church attendance figures appeared to show that their church is now attracting more Sunday worshippers than the Church of England.

Although some conservative Catholics have claimed that Labour's record in office on issues such as abortion, same sex civil partnerships, embryo research and the Iraq war have undermined the former prime minister's claim to have accepted church doctrine, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who conducted the service at which Mr Blair was accepted into the church on Friday evening, welcomed his conversion.

Murphy-O'Connor said on BBC Radio 2: "It was a very moving occasion ... this was a gift for Tony, a personal journey and a gift for his family. I think also, it is not just in his travels as prime minister but even before that there was something he said to me, that he feels at home in the Catholic church in a way he did not in any other church or in the Anglican communion."

A Vatican spokesman said that the conversion of "such an authoritative personality" could only give rise to joy and respect. The last world leader Mr Blair met shortly before he left office in the summer was Pope Benedict XVI.

The Church of England yesterday disputed the suggestion that Sunday service attendance figures, to be published next year, show more Catholics attending mass than Anglicans attending the established church's services.

The statistics, gathered by the Christian Research organisation, showed both churches' attendances in long-term decline, but Catholicism apparently recording a blip which placed it marginally ahead of the Anglicans on 861,800 in 2006 - 32,000 down from the previous year - compared with a Church of England figure of 852,500, representing only an 18,000 decline.

Both figures are well down from a decade ago. The Catholic congregations have been bolstered by an influx of devoted young Poles and other eastern Europeans in the last two years - though they overwhelmingly attend their own services.

Christian Research has shown Catholic mass attendance outstripping Church of England worshippers consistently over the last 30 years, though about six times as many people in the population as a whole claim nominal allegiance to Anglicanism than Catholicism, even if they rarely attend church.

A Church of England spokesman said: "Even if you accept the gap is narrowing, to get a full picture you have to look at a lot more than Sunday services. For Anglicans it is not just about Sunday attendance. People have family and other commitments. Midweek we have 180,000 worshippers and that reflects today's society."

At Saint Andrew Bobola, perhaps the most famous Polish Catholic church in London, well over 300 people crowded in for the 10.30 mass yesterday morning. News of Mr Blair's conversion had reached some of them through the papers and others through Polish television.

Michael Sobic, a chef who left Warsaw for the UK in 1981, welcomed the highest-profile conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism in many decades.

"It's fantastic about Tony Blair, brilliant," he said. "Polish people always go to church," said another worshipper. "I think it's good for [Blair]."

Others were less stunned. "Obviously Blair was a committed Christian and his wife is a Catholic and he educated his children at a Catholic school, so it didn't come as a huge surprise," said Ewa Butryn, who had gone to church with her husband and children.

"I don't think it will have a big effect on politics, though. Religion and politics don't mix very well these days."

Since Poland joined the EU three years ago attendance at St Andrew Bobola has shot up.

"The church is very much a welcoming place, said Mr Sobic. "It's always a full house. It's a really, really strong community and very committed." The Polish influx had been "a blessing" for the Catholic church in the UK, but he was saddened that not all churches were flourishing. "I feel sorry for you guys because so many Church of England churches are empty now. It's a pity. Here it's always full."

Sarkozy reinvents France
for the 'bling' era
By John Lichfield
The Independent (UK)
For December 25, 2007 issue

I find the tabloid-mentality style of this article most unpleasant, especially since it completely fails to give the right context and appreciation for Sarkozy's redfinition of 'secularity' at the Vatican last week.


PARIS - The republican monarchy invented by Charles de Gaulle - aloof, discreet, solemn, haughty - vanished last week somewhere between Cinderella's castle and Space Mountain.

Nicolas Sarkozy wants to reinvent France for the 21st century.

He has started by reinventing the French presidency for the Age of Celebrity.

The President of the Republic has become the host of a permanent chat show; the only contestant in a "Big Brother" house called the Elysee Palace; the star of a soap opera, which - as Le Monde pointed out - started off as Desperate Housewives and now threatens to become The Bold and the Beautiful.

The centre-left newspaper Liberation describes M. Sarkozy as a "bling-bling president", a non-stop blur of microphones, photo-opportunities, millionaire's yachts, Rolex watches, dark glasses, mobile phones, jogging shorts and, now, trophy girlfriends.

M.Sarkozy, who was divorced two months ago, took the model-turned-singer Carla Bruni to Euro Disney last weekend and made sure that the happy news would appear in newspapers and magazines all over the world.

The home-loving, slipper-wearing Charles de Gaulle would never, in any circumstances, have dated a beautiful Franco-Italian pop star and ex-model.

The elegant, machiavellian Francois Mitterrand might have done so, in secret, but he would never have mingled with the crowds at Euro Disney.

Jacques Chirac doubtless dated scores of Italian pop singers but never encouraged the paparazzi to take their picture.

At the end of the week, the twice-divorced President flew off to visit Pope Benedict XVI.

The President greeted the Pope cheerfully like an old friend, then, as his official delegation was introduced to His Holiness, rudely checked his mobile phone.

The Sarkozy entourage included Jean-Marie Bigard, a devout Catholic and France's most popular, and most foul-mouthed, stand-up comedian.

The presidential party also included Carla Bruni's mother.

M. Sarkozy had apparently wanted to take Carla to Rome as the official "first girlfriend" but the Vatican thought this was going too far. Mme Bruni, 39, is after all divorced.

In a speech after accepting an honorary canonship, M. Sarkozy, who hardly ever attends mass, said: "In this world, obsessed with material comforts, France needs devout Catholics who are not afraid to say what they are and what they believe."

He also insisted that France's roots were "essentially Christian".

At one level, it was a thoughtful and brave speech, which argued that Christian and secular values need not conflict.

On another level, M. Sarkozy shattered the convention that French presidents, as high representatives of a secular French republic, should not defend or promote one religion above others.

The French left was incandescent and the President knew that it would be.

All of this is classical Sarko.

Everything is done with confidence; everything is done rapidly; everything is performed with mirror, or compact video-camera, metaphorically in hand.

Genres are confused; values muddled; conventions trampled.

The French film director and occasional political commentator Claude Chabrol says that he sees nothing wrong, in principle, with a change of presidential style.

The old Mitterrand-Chirac act - I'm all-powerful but not responsible -was wearing thin.

But where, he asks, is Sarkozy going? The much trumpeted, mould-breaking economic reforms have been rather modest so far.

"Perhaps there is a plan but it seems to be all thought up on the hoof," M. Chabrol said.

"[Sarkozy] is an intelligent man but he does not think very deeply."Both Le Monde and Liberation have resorted to using the snobbish "V" word vulgaritE to describe M. Sarkozy's behaviour.

There is something rather vulgar about M. Sarkozy but his vulgarity and his energy are inseparable.

He is not part of the traditional French ruling class: effortlessly superior, under-stated, fundamentally unenterprising, sustained by "old money" or the administrative certainties of the Grandes Ecoles.

He represents a New France of media and advertising and money: brash, self-promoting and full of energy and ideas, not always good ones.

It remains to be seen whether Sarkonomics or the Sarko reform programme amount to much.

The Sarko style presages the emergence - for good or ill - of a France which is rather unFrench: less subtle but less hypocritical; vain but not so arrogant; in-your-face but less bound by tradition.

This is proving to be a brutal culture shock, not just on the left, but for many people in France who would naturally vote on the right and support a centre-right president.

France may never be quite the same again but that is, after all, what Nicolas Sarkozy promised.

A Circle of Faith Grows
in Unexpected Ways
By PETER APPLEBOME
The New York Times
December 23, 2007


Fr. Groeschel at the St. Francis Center in the South Bronx. [Andrea Mohin/The New York Times]


LARCHMONT, N.Y. -Forty-five years ago, the Rev. Benedict J. Groeschel had a small idea.

Then the chaplain at the Children’s Village for troubled youths in Dobbs Ferry in Westchester County, he decided in December 1962 to take Christmas dinner, other food and a smattering of presents to the impoverished families of five children from the South Bronx and Harlem whom he worked with.

Those families mentioned others — nephews, cousins, friends who were also in need. He thought: Why not? So next year the circle widened a bit. Word spread in the neighborhood. A building superintendent or neighbor would mention other names. Each December the list continued to grow.

Before long, he realized he had begun something that couldn’t be stopped, a Christmas tradition with a regular cast of characters, a past as well as a present, one of those reminders that the more noble notions of Christmas can sometimes creep in amid the seasonal clutter of commerce, bustle and noise.

Pick your religion, the essence of the season is the enormous things that can flow from small ones — a birth among the poor in a humble stable, a day’s worth of oil that somehow burns for eight.

And so, when Father Groeschel and his crew of helpers went to the South Bronx for the 45th year on Saturday, this time with around 700 boxes of food and thousands of presents, the message was not just about the importance of service to the poor. It was also about the huge things that can come from tiny ones.

“As a psychologist, I have to say I have a Santa Claus complex,” Father Groeschel said on Friday, the calm day between the loading and delivering of the food and toys and their distribution. “But I never, ever anticipated that this would become anything like this.”

Actually, there’s a second reason why this Christmas is so special. It’s a miracle he has lived to see it. Father Groeschel, an author of religious books and a fixture on the Roman Catholic EWTN television network, was crossing a street in Orlando, Fla., on Jan. 11, 2004, when he was hit by a car.

He was near death three times in the next month, particularly on the night of the accident when he had no blood pressure, heartbeat or pulse for about 20 minutes. A few days later, he almost died from toxins that were overloading his system, then later from heart failure while on a respirator.

The accident left him without much use of his right arm and trouble walking, but he recovered to a degree almost no one expected.

“They said I would never live. I lived,” he said. “They said I would never think. I think. They said I would never walk. I walked. They said I would never dance, but I never danced anyway.”

Father Groeschel, a Franciscan friar who is the director of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York’s office of spiritual development, which assists priests, now presides over an ad-hoc partnership of the faithful for the Christmas operation.

In addition to hundreds of donors, it includes Teresa Catullo, a local woman who spends the entire year buying up hundreds of off-price toys and gifts, which clutter her house until packed and shipped off; Cathy Hickey, who has worked with him since 1986; Jim Hogg, who runs a homeless shelter in Bethlehem, Pa., but comes in every year to help load trucks and deliver the food and toys; and two women, Doris Reeves and Anne Duffy, who for the second year flew in from California to help out as needed.

“If we believe what we say we do, then we should put our words into action,” Mr. Hogg said. “The Bible says, ‘If you do this unto these, the least of my brethren, you have done it for me.’”

Father Groeschel, who is 74, with a long white beard that’s more Merlin than Santa, is considered liberal on social justice issues like poverty and immigration, and extremely orthodox on church issues like abortion and homosexuality.

He figures Christmas has long been in a struggle between the sacred and the temporal, between charity and marketing, tensions that are particularly out of whack now. But then that’s true in our society overall, where the notion of service to the poor that is the focus of the order he helped start seems as quaint as friars in cassocks.

“I’m the only person in Larchmont who wishes he lived in the South Bronx,” Father Groeschel said, in his home and office in what used to be a garage at the archdiocese’s Trinity Retreat House, overlooking a bay off Long Island Sound.

Still, there are consolations. On a frigid Friday, it feels astoundingly peaceful. There’s no television with the overheated cavalcade of daily astonishments in the news and the commercials for luxury cars with bows on top. Priests and fellows and helpers of various stripes pad quietly to and fro. For a moment, in this quiet corner of Westchester all is calm, all is bright.

By SADAQAT JAN and ZARAR KHAN


RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 27 (AP) - Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at the end of a campaign rally, aides said.

"The surgeons confirmed that she has been martyred," Bhutto's lawyer Babar Awan said.

A party security adviser said Bhutto was shot in neck and chest as she got into her vehicle to leave the rally in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad. A gunman then blew himself up.

"At 6:16 p.m. she expired," said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto's party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack.

Her supporters at the hospital began chanting "Dog, Musharraf, dog," referring to Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf.

Some smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears. One man with a flag of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party tied around his head was beating his chest.

In Washington, the State Department said it was seeking confirmation of Bhutto's condition.

"Certainly, we condemn the attack on this rally," deputy spokesman Tom Casey said. "It demonstrates that there are still those in Pakistan who want to subvert reconciliation and efforts to advance democracy."

The United States has for months been encouraging Musharraf to reach an accommodation with the opposition, particularly Bhutto, who was seen as having a wide base of support in Pakistan. Her party had been widely expected to do well in parliamentary elections set for next month.

At least 20 others were killed in the blast that took place as Bhutto left the rally where she addressed thousands of supporters in her campaign for Jan. 8 parliamentary elections.

Bhutto served twice as Pakistan's prime minister between 1988 and 1996. She had returned to Pakistan from an eight-year exile Oct. 18.

On the same day, her homecoming parade in Karachi was also targeted by a suicide attacker, killing more than 140 people. On that occasion she narrowly escaped injury.



Catholic leaders in Pakistan
condemn assassination of Benazir Bhutto
By Anto Akkara
Catholic News Service

THRISSUR, India, Dec. 27 (CNS) -- Catholic leaders in Pakistan have condemned the assassination at an election rally of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party.

"We condemn this dastardly act. It is a terrible tragedy for Pakistan," said Bishop Anthony Lobo of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Pakistan, in a Dec. 27 telephone interview with Catholic News Service from Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was assassinated.

According to reports, Bhutto, 54, and at least 20 others were killed Dec. 27 in a suicide attack.

"Obviously, this is a setback for democracy," he said. "The forces that were opposed to it have succeeded this time."

Describing Bhutto as "an extraordinary, brave woman," Bishop Lobo said that "she was aware of the great danger to her life. Yet, she went around to assert democracy and laid down her life in the process."

Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Pakistani bishops' conference, told CNS, "The people are stunned and angry."

Jacob, who was on his way to Lahore from Multan, said he could see angry people gathering along the streets and setting up road blocks as the news of the assassination spread.

He expressed hope that the government would postpone the elections. The church's commission already has called off all its election advocacy and monitoring work, he noted.

Meanwhile, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the "tragic news" of Bhutto's murder "is a cause of sadness in itself and because it is another sign of continuing violence, which makes it difficult to see how the Pakistani people, already suffering, will be able to find peace."

He told CNS Dec. 27 that Pope Benedict XVI is informed immediately when such tragedies occur in the world.

Bhutto's death came amid recent political turmoil in Pakistan in the run-up to parliamentary elections Jan. 8.

Islamic militant groups had threatened to target Bhutto for declaring that if her party was voted into power, she would not hesitate to allow U.S. forces to enter Pakistan to chase Taliban and al-Qaida cadres if Pakistani forces failed to do so.

Bhutto served as Pakistan's prime minister twice between 1988 and 1996. In mid-October, she returned to Pakistan after an eight-year exile. A suicide attacker killed more than 140 people during her homecoming celebration.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, had declared a national emergency in early November. The emergency was lifted under domestic and international pressure in mid-December. Musharraf said he blamed Islamic extremists for her death and said he would work to fight them, reported The Associated Press.


Pakistan's Bhutto killed in attack
By SADAQAT JAN and ZARAR KHAN


RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 27 (AP) - Enraged crowds rioted across Pakistan and hopes for democracy hung by a thread after Benazir Bhutto was gunned down Thursday as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her armored vehicle.

The death of President Pervez Musharraf's most powerful opponent threw the nation into chaos just 12 days before elections, and threatened its already unsteady role as a key fighter against Islamic terror.

The murder of Bhutto, one of Pakistan's most famous and enduring politicians, sparked violence that killed at least nine people and plunged efforts to restore democracy to this nuclear-armed U.S. ally into turmoil.

Another opposition politician, Nawaz Sharif, announced he was boycotting Jan. 8 parliamentary elections in which Bhutto was hoping to recapture the premiership, and Musharraf reportedly weighed canceling the poll.

Bhutto, 54, was struck down amid scenes of blood and chaos as an unknown gunman opened fire and, according to witnesses and police, blew himself up, killing 20 other people.

Musharraf blamed Islamic terrorists, pledging in a nationally televised speech that "we will not rest until we eliminate these terrorists and root them out."

President Bush, who spoke briefly by phone with Musharraf, looked tense as he spoke to reporters, denouncing the "murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy."

U.S. intelligence officials said they were trying to determine the validity of purported claims of responsibility by al-Qaida, stressing they still couldn't say who was responsible.

Bhutto's death marked yet another grim chapter in Pakistan's bloodstained history, 28 years after her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, another ex-prime minister, was hanged by a military dictatorship in the same northern city where she was killed.

Her death left her Pakistan People's Party leaderless and plunged the Muslim nation of 160 million into violence and recriminations, with Bhutto supporters accusing Musharraf's government of failing to protect her in the wake of death threats and previous attempts on her life.

As the news spread, supporters gathered at the hospital where Bhutto had been taken, smashed glass doors, stoned cars and chanted, "Killer, Killer, Musharraf."

At least nine people were killed in violence across the nation.

Musharraf called senior staff into an emergency meeting to discuss a response to the killing and whether to postpone the election, an Interior Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. Musharraf also announced three days of mourning for Bhutto, with all businesses, schools and banks to close.

The killing appeared to shut off a possible avenue for a credible return to democracy after eight years under Musharraf's increasingly unpopular rule, and left a string of unanswered questions, chiefly whether it could strengthen Musharraf by eliminating a strong rival, or weaken him by sparking uncontrollable riots.

The U.S. was struggling to reformulate its plan to stabilize the country based on a rapprochement between Bhutto and Musharraf. Bhutto had returned in October after nearly a decade in exile hoping for a power-sharing deal with Musharraf, but had become his fierce critic, accusing elements in the ruling party of backing militants to kill her.

Pakistani analysts were plunged into gloom.

"This assassination is the most serious setback for democracy in Pakistan," said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political scientist at Lahore's University of Management Sciences. "It shows extremists are powerful enough to disrupt the democratic process."

Analyst Talat Masood, a retired general, said: "Conditions in the country have reached a point where it is too dangerous for political parties to operate."

Sharif, another former premier who now leads an opposition party, demanded Musharraf resign immediately and announced his party would boycott the elections, seen as vital to restoring democracy. He also called for the resignation of Musharraf, a former army chief who toppled Sharif in a 1999 coup.

"Musharraf is the cause of all the problems. The federation of Pakistan cannot remain intact in the presence of President Musharraf," he said.

Next to Musharraf, Bhutto was the best known political figure in the country, serving two terms as prime minister between 1988 and 1996. An instantly recognizable figure with graceful features under an ever-present head scarf, she bore the legacy of her hanged father and was respected in the West for her liberal outlook and determination to combat Islamic extremism.

It was a theme she had often returned to in recent campaign speeches.

Addressing more than 5,000 supporters Thursday in Rawalpindi, Bhutto dismissed the notion that Pakistan needed foreigners to help quell resurgent militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida in the area bordering Afghanistan.

"Why should foreign troops come in? We can take care of this, I can take care of this, you can take care of this," she said.

As Bhutto left the rally in a white SUV, youths chanted her name and supportive slogans, said Sardar Qamar Hayyat, an official from Bhutto's party who was about 10 yards away.

Despite the danger of physical exposure, a smiling Bhutto stuck her head out of the sunroof and responded, he said.

"Then I saw a thin young man jumping toward her vehicle from the back and opening fire. Moments later, I saw her speeding vehicle going away. That was the time when I heard a blast and fell down," he said.

Bhutto was rushed into surgery. A doctor on the surgical team said a bullet in the back of her neck damaged her spinal cord before exiting from the side of her head. Another bullet pierced the back of her shoulder and came out through her chest, he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. She was given an open-heart massage, but the spinal cord damage was too great, he said.

"At 6:16 p.m. she expired," said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto's party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital.

Hours later, supporters carried Bhutto's body out of the hospital in a plain wooden coffin. Bhutto will be buried near her father's grave in the family's ancestral village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh Friday afternoon, said Nazir Dkhoki, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. He added that Bhutto's husband and three children have arrived from Dubai to attend.

Bhutto had returned to Pakistan from nearly a decade in exile on Oct. 18, and her homecoming parade in Karachi was also targeted by a suicide attacker, who killed more than 140 people. She narrowly escaped injury.

Rawalpindi, a former capital, has a history of political violence. The park where Bhutto made her last speech is the same one where the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot to death in 1951. It is named after him.

Musharraf survived two bombing attacks here in 2003. Earlier that year, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in Rawalpindi. In recent weeks, suicide bombers have repeatedly targeted security forces in the city.

Bhutto's father was hanged in 1979 in Rawalpindi on charges of conspiracy to murder — an execution that led to violent protests across the country similar to those that raged Thursday.

Thursday's rally was Bhutto's first since returning to Pakistan, Musharraf having forced her to scrap a meeting here last month citing security fears. Hundreds of riot police manned security checkpoints at the park.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who met with Bhutto just hours before her death, called her a brave woman with a clear vision "for her own country, for Afghanistan and for the region — a vision of democracy and prosperity and peace."

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., visiting Pakistan with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he was just leaving his hotel room for dinner with Bhutto at her home when he got the news.

"I couldn't believe it," he told The Associated Press by phone. "Her death really dashed the hope of many here in Pakistan and that's why there's so much disillusionment and anger being vented through these protests that are lighting up the sky tonight as people set fires all over the countryside."

U.S. intelligence agencies said it was to soon to say who carried out the attack.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the agency "continues to work with our U.S. intelligence community partners reviewing the al-Qaida claims for responsibility for any intelligence value. The validity of those claims are undetermined."

The statement came after a law enforcement official told the AP that a national FBI and Homeland Security bulletin to law enforcement agencies cited Islamist Web sites as saying al-Qaida had claimed responsibility. The official asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Director of National Intelligence spokesman Ross Feinstein said his agency was "in no position right now to confirm who may have been responsible."

One man was killed in a shootout between police and protesters in Tando Allahyar, a town 120 miles north of Karachi, Pakistan's commercial hub, said Mayor Kanwar Naveed. Four others were killed in Karachi, two were killed elsewhere in southern Sindh province and two in Lahore, police said.

Karachi shopkeepers quickly shuttered their stores as protesters burned vehicles, a gas station and tires on the roads, said Fayyaz Leghri, a local police official. Gunmen shot and wounded two police officers, he said.

Bhutto's supporters in many towns burned banks, shops and state-run grocery stores. Some torched ruling party election offices, according to Pakistani media.

The U.N. Security Council vigorously denounced the killing and urged "all Pakistanis to exercise restraint and maintain stability in the country."


Countries condemn Bhutto killing
By ANDREW O. SELSKY


From Moscow to Washington to New Delhi and points in between, dismay and condemnation poured forth Thursday over the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, along with concern for the stability of the volatile region. World leaders lauded her bravery and commitment to democratic reform.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the killing.

In India, which has fought three wars against Pakistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Bhutto is irreplaceable, and noted she had striven to improve relations between the two nuclear-armed countries.

"I was deeply shocked and horrified to hear of the heinous assassination," Singh said. "In her death, the subcontinent has lost an outstanding leader who worked for democracy and reconciliation in her country."

In Texas, a tense-looking President Bush demanded that those responsible be tracked down and brought to justice.

"The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy," Bush told reporters at his ranch in Crawford. "We stand with the people of Pakistan in their struggle against the forces of terror and extremism."

He later spoke briefly by phone with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf but White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he had no details.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, who met Bhutto earlier on Thursday in Islamabad, said he was "deeply pained" by the assassination of "this brave sister of ours, a brave daughter of the Muslim world."

"She sacrificed her life, for the sake of Pakistan and for the sake of this region," he said. "I found in her this morning a lot of love and desire for peace in Afghanistan, for prosperity in Afghanistan and ... Pakistan."

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani condemned Bhutto's killing and said Pakistan had lost a courageous politician who stood firm against "the forces of darkness and terror."

"We in Iraq know (the impact) of the blind terror that has become a global plague, killing innocents and shaking the foundations of stability" in nations, Talabani said in a statement released by his office.

In a letter to Musharraf, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the attack an "odious act" and said "terrorism and violence have no place in the democratic debate and the combat of ideas and programs."

Sarkozy said Bhutto had paid "with her life her commitment to the service of her fellow citizens and to Pakistan's political life" and urged Pakistan's elections be held as scheduled on Jan. 8.

Bhutto, a former two-time prime minister of Pakistan, was killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi just 10 weeks after she returned to her homeland from eight years in exile. A suicide attack on her homecoming parade killed more than 140 people. The articulate, poised 54-year-old had lashed out at the spread of Islamic extremism as she campaigned for next month's parliamentary elections.

The United States had been at the forefront of foreign powers trying to arrange reconciliation between Bhutto and Musharraf, who under heavy U.S. pressure resigned as army chief and earlier this month lifted a state of emergency, in the hope it would put Pakistan back on the road to democracy.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for "all Pakistanis to work together for peace and national unity."

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Pope Benedict XVI was immediately informed of the "terrible news."

"One cannot see signs of peace in this tormented region," Lombardi said.

In Britain, where Bhutto had attended Oxford University, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said she "risked everything in her attempt to win democracy in Pakistan and she has been assassinated by cowards who are afraid of democracy."

"The terrorists must not be allowed to kill democracy in Pakistan, and this atrocity strengthens our resolve that the terrorists will not win there, here, or anywhere in the world," Brown said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the attack "is clearly aimed at destabilizing the country." He beseeched Pakistanis to refrain from violence.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., was in Pakistan and on his way to dinner with Bhutto when he heard about the attack. Kennedy told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Pakistanis are setting fires in the countryside "that are lighting up the sky tonight."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told reporters in Caracas: "We received the news with great pain, and I hope this is never repeated ever again, anywhere."

Calling for peace, he said, "Whoever loses respect for the life of a human being loses respect for the life of humanity."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the "cowardly terrorist attack ... also targets the stability and democratic process of Pakistan."

The Chinese the Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Qin Gang, said in a statement posted on the ministry's Web site: "We strongly condemn this terrorist act. We are shocked by Benazir Bhutto's assassination and extend our condolences to families of Bhutto and other victims."

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram to Musharraf saying Bhutto's murder is "a challenge thrown down by forces of terrorism not only to Pakistan but also to the entire international community," Russian news reports said.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said Bhutto "feared nothing and served her country with valor."

Mao Tolerated Christmas
Before Takeover
By JOHN RODERICK



Mao Tse-tung, second from right, talks with AP's John Roderick,
left, in Yenan, China, as they await a flight carrying Communist
Chinese negotiator Chou En Lai, Jan. 27, 1946. (AP Photo/FILE)


HONOLULU (AP) — In a long and speckled career overseas, I have witnessed many unusual Christmases. None were more peculiar than the two spent in the exile capital of the godless fathers of Chinese communism, whose heirs are sponsors next August of the originally pagan Olympic games.

The scene was Yanan, the city of 10,000 caves, which I visited for seven months between 1945 and 1947, before Mao Zedong and his armies marched from there to Beijing where the games will be held eight months from now.

I arrived there a Maine boy with hayseed still in his hair. Beside me were three veteran reporters, also sent to cover Mao's side of the ultimately failed American-sponsored talks to create a coalition where Communists and Nationalists would govern together rather than continue their warring ways.

It was a generous gesture on the part of the United States. Mao, ever ready to take advantage of an opening, was grateful. He showed it at Christmas and on New Year's Day by visiting the caves where I and a handful of American soldiers lived.

The military unit was the U.S. Army Observation Group, better known as the "Dixie Mission." The soldiers originally went to Yanan to rescue, with Communist help, American pilots downed by the Japanese during World War II. They stayed on to do what they could to further the coalition talks.

I met Mao, his wife, Jiang Qing, and his followers many times after that. But the atmosphere of friendliness never again reached the peaks of those two holiday periods.

Christmas for me and the American military men included turkey and "fixins" flown in from the U.S. base in Shanghai, about 800 miles to the southeast. The American military always rose to the occasion at Christmas and Thanksgiving.

The rest of the year, the Dixie Mission and I depended on the undoubted skill of our Chinese cook. By the time the second Christmas rolled around, I had permanent indigestion, perhaps because of the American lard that he used in superabundance.

On the second Christmas at Yanan, I hosted a private banquet whose centerpiece was a brace of plump pheasants I had bagged the day before. Murdered in cold blood, I should add. The unsuspecting fowl were so unused to human aggression that they fluttered their wings at the sound of gunfire but otherwise remained motionless, no matter how many times I missed them.

Though our dining hall was gaily decorated and there was a small Christmas tree, the holiday was largely perfunctory. The soldiers had their duties and I had mine, centered on the newsworthy Communists who, along with the 40,000 poor residents of Yanan, largely ignored the Yuletide festivities.

There were no gifts. When I once did send a simple present to Mao it was politely returned. It was not, he said, the custom.

Later, when I quit Yanan, Mao offered to pick up my board bill, a gesture I equally politely declined. I instead paid the stiff-backed American commander, Col. Ivan D. Yeaton. By then, the "who lost China?" campaign in the United States was beginning to raise its head and I recognized that news of Mao footing my tab would be pounced on by anti-Communist crusaders. The bill ended up on my Associated Press expense account.

Other U.S. correspondents in those pro-American days were allowed by the Nationalists to briefly visit the barricaded Red city. Some stayed longer than others, among them the Rev. Patrick O'Connor, war correspondent of the Catholic News Service. The good priest celebrated a simple Mass for a handful of the Americans.

That O'Connor, of the Christianity that Marxism regarded as a snare and a delusion, was in Yanan was big news. His presence was evidence of how far Mao's Communists were willing to go to curry favor with the Americans.

To show that O'Connor was welcome, Mao also permitted the priest to visit the abandoned, old Catholic cathedral. Filled with rice storage bags and covered in dust, O'Connor tried unsuccessfully to have the church restored to its former function. He did succeed, however, in getting an interview with Zhou Enlai, China's future premier.

The Communists of the 1940s and later were unrepenting opportunists. They turned on the faucet of friendliness for their longtime enemies, the Americans, at Christmas and hosted a Catholic priest when it suited their larger purposes. The end to them justified the means.

In the same way, peppery little Deng Xiaoping, Mao's successor, blithely adopted the capitalist free market as his own. The result can be seen today in China's burgeoning economy and its proud sponsorship of one of the ornaments of a free society — the Olympic games.

Al-Qaida behind Bhutto killing
By MUNIR AHMED


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 28 (AP) - Pakistan's government asserted Friday that al-Qaida was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and offered the transcript from a phone tap as proof.

Hundreds of thousands mobbed her funeral as the army tried to quell rioting elsewhere that left 27 dead.

President Pervez Musharraf's government also said Bhutto was not killed by gunshots or shrapnel as originally claimed. Instead, it said her skull was shattered by the force of a suicide bomb blast that slammed her against a lever in her car's sunroof.

The new explanations were part of a rapidly evolving political crisis triggered by the death of Bhutto, Musharraf's most powerful foe in the elections.

The rioting by Bhutto's furious supporters raised concerns that this nuclear-armed nation, plagued by chaos and the growing threat from Islamic militants even before the killing, was in danger of spinning out of control.

[The media also said this repeatedly when Musharraf inmposed the short-lived 'emergency' and after Buhtto first came back to Paskitan in October. What basis do they have to make such sweeping statements from their armchairs about such a huge and pluralist country?...Likewise, I do not understand why Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere always seem to burn things and riot, leading to deaths whenever they protest! And they have been doing this in France too! Surely, one canpassionate about one's beliefs and express it without burning things or killing anyone - even if you can annoy people to death, as famous US dissidents like Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore do.]

Pentagon officials said Friday they have seen nothing to give them any worries about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

While many grieving Pakistanis turned to violence, hundreds of thousands paid their last respects to the popular opposition leader as she was placed beside her father in a marble mausoleum in the Bhutto ancestral village in southern Sindh province.

"I don't know what will happen to the country now," said mourner Nazakat Soomro, 32.

The government said it would hunt down those responsible for her death in the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border where Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders are thought to be hiding.

"They will definitely be brought to justice," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said.

The government released a transcript Friday of a purported conversation between militant leader Baitullah Mehsud and another militant.

"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript. The government did not release an audiotape.

Cheema described Mehsud as an al-Qaida leader who was also behind most other recent terror attacks in Pakistan, including the Karachi bomb blast in October against Bhutto that killed more than 140 people.

Mehsud is thought to be the commander of pro-Taliban forces in the tribal region of South Waziristan, where al-Qaida fighters are also active.

In the transcript, Mehsud gives his location as Makin, a town in South Waziristan.

This fall, he was quoted in a Pakistani newspaper as saying that he would welcome Bhutto's return from exile with suicide bombers. Mehsud later denied that in statements to local television and newspaper reporters.

Cheema announced the formation of two inquiries into Bhutto's death, one to be carried out by a high court judge and another by security forces. Bhutto was assassinated Thursday evening after a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad. Twenty other people also died in the attack.

On Thursday, authorities had said Bhutto died from bullet wounds fired by a young man who then blew himself up. A surgeon who treated her, however, said Friday she died from the impact of shrapnel on her skull.

But later Friday, Cheema said those two accounts were mistaken. He said all three shots missed her as she greeted supporters through the sunroof of her vehicle, which was bulletproof and bombproof.

He also denied that shrapnel caused her death, saying Bhutto was killed when she tried to duck back into the vehicle, and that the shock waves from the blast knocked her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull. The government released a photograph showing blood on the lever.

Denying charges the government failed to give her adequate security protection, Cheema said it was Bhutto who made herself vulnerable and pointed out that the other passengers inside Bhutto's bombproof vehicle were fine.

"I wish she had not come out of the rooftop of her vehicle," he said.

Bhutto's death sparked deadly rioting that killed at least 27 people, according to an Interior Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Rioters in the southern city of Karachi torched 500 vehicles, 13 banks, seven gas stations and two police stations, police chief Azhar Farooqi said. The violence killed 13 people, including five workers in a garment factory that was set ablaze, police said. A shootout between rioters and police wounded three officers, police said.

Another six people died from suffocation in Mirpurkhas, about 200 miles northeast of Karachi, when a bank building was set on fire, said Ghulam Mohammed Mohtaram, the top civilian security official in Sindh province.

About 7,000 people in the central city of Multan ransacked seven banks and a gas station and threw stones at police, who responded with tear gas. Media reports said 200 banks were attacked nationwide.

Vandals also burned 10 railway stations and several trains across Sindh province, forcing the suspension of all train service between Karachi and the eastern Punjab province, said Mir Mohammed Khaskheli, a senior railroad official.

An Associated Press reporter saw nine cars of a train completely burned. Witnesses said all the passengers were pulled out before the train was torched.

Desperate to quell the violence, the government sent troops into the streets of Hyderabad, Karachi and other areas in Sindh. In Hyderabad, the soldiers refused to let people out of their homes, witnesses said.

The army readied 20 battalions of troops for deployment across Sindh if they were needed to stop the violence, according to a military statement.

"We will sternly deal with those who are trying to create disorder," Cheema said.

Paramilitary rangers were also given the authority to use live fire to stop rioters from damaging property in the region, said Maj. Asad Ali, the rangers' spokesman.

"We have orders to shoot on sight," he said.

Many cities were nearly deserted as businesses closed and public transportation came to a halt at the start of three days of national mourning for Bhutto.

Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said the government had no immediate plans to postpone Jan. 8 parliamentary elections, despite the violence and the decision by Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader, to boycott the poll.

"Right now the elections stand where they were," he told a news conference.

The United States, which sees Pakistan as a crucial ally in the war on terror, was counting on Musharraf to proceed with the vote in the hope it will cement steps toward restoring democracy after the six-week state of emergency he declared last month.

Keeping the election on track was the biggest immediate concern in sustaining an American policy of promoting stability, moderation and democracy in Pakistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

Bhutto's death left her populist party without a clear successor. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who was freed in December 2004 after eight years in detention on graft charges, is one contender to head the party although he lacks the cachet of a blood relative from the Bhutto clan's political dynasty.

Throughout the day, hundreds of thousands of mourners arrived in Bhutto's hometown of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in tractors, buses, cars and jeeps for her funeral cortege and burial.

Bhutto's plain wood coffin, draped in the red, green and black flag of her Pakistan People's Party, was carried in a white ambulance toward the marble mausoleum about three miles away, passing a burning passenger train on the way.


Earlier today:

Funeral procession held for Bhutto
By ASHRAF KHAN


GARHI KHUDA BAKSH, Pakistan, Dec. 28 (AP) - Hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered Friday in front of the mausoleum where Benazir Bhutto was to be interred, while the slain opposition leader's supporters rampaged through several cities to protest her assassination less than two weeks before a crucial election.

Thursday's killing of President Pervez Musharraf's most powerful political opponent plunged Pakistan into turmoil and badly damaged plans to restore democracy in this nuclear-armed U.S. ally.

Angry Bhutto supporters ran amok through the streets after her assassination, lighting cars and stores on fire in violence that killed at least 10 people. The attack on Bhutto also killed 20 others.

Bhutto's funeral procession began Friday afternoon at her ancestral residence in the southern town of Naudero. Her plain wood coffin — draped in the red, green and black flag of her Pakistan People's Party — was carried in a white ambulance toward her family's massive white mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh, several miles away.

"She was not just the leader of the PPP, she was a leader of the whole country. I don't know what will happen to the country now," said Nazakat Soomro, 32.

Vatican champion of reform
finds hope in liturgy
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
National Catholic Reporter
Dec. 28, 2007




For most people, Archbishop Piero Marini is a face without a name. He’s routinely stopped at airports, restaurants and on the street, usually running into some variant of the same question: “I know I’ve seen you before. Who are you?”

For the record, Marini is that tall, silver-haired, imperturbable Italian cleric who was always at the side of Pope John Paul II, and later Benedict XVI, on Christmas, Easter and any other time the pope celebrated a liturgy in public.

He served as the papal master of ceremonies for 20 years, from 1987 to 2007. In that capacity, the Italian state television service RAI estimates that Marini has been seen by more people around the world than virtually any other living figure - even if the vast majority of them have no idea who he is.

For Catholic insiders, on the other hand, Marini is anything but anonymous. From his position as the pope’s top liturgist, Marini served as the great champion of the reforming spirit in Catholic liturgy associated with the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), making him a darling of church progressives and a bane of the traditional wing.

After Joseph Ratzinger himself, though for decidedly different reasons, Marini may have been the most talked-about and dissected figure in the upper echelon of John Paul’s aides.

While Marini’s papal liturgies were always precise and deeply rooted in tradition, he would occasionally push the envelope. It was Marini, for example, who allowed an indigenous Mexican shaman to exorcise John Paul II during the canonization Mass for Juan Diego in Mexico City in 2002, and who permitted scantily clad Pacific islanders to dance for the pope during the opening liturgy of the Synod for Oceania in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1998 -- both under the rubric of “inculturation,” adapting the rites of the church to speak to the experience of local cultures.

He also favors local decision-making over centralized Roman control. In fact, both of the envelope-pushing instances cited above originated with requests from local bishops.

For fans and critics alike, therefore, Marini’s Oct. 1 departure as master of ceremonies marked the end of an era. (Today Marini serves as president of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses.)

This change in role has not signaled Marini’s disappearance as a force in liturgical debates, as witnessed by his new book, A Challenging Reform: Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal (Liturgical Press). Edited by three American liturgists, the book tells the story of the Consilium, the unique body created during Vatican II (and suppressed just a few years later) to oversee the implementation of the council’s decree on liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.

The Consilium was always an anomaly: it had no juridical authority of its own, yet at the peak of its influence it enjoyed virtually unchallenged sway over liturgical policy; it was led by a wide international assortment of bishops and liturgical experts, most of them not part of the Roman curia; and it consulted widely with bishops’ conferences, national liturgical organizations and publishers of liturgical texts, usually backing their views over opposition from the Vatican.

Its crowning result was the Novus Ordo, the new Mass, issued by Pope Paul VI in 1969 to replace the Tridentine rite codified five centuries earlier.

A Challenging Reform was formally launched on Dec. 14 with a presentation in the throne room of the residence of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster, England. Plans call for presentations in Boston, Chicago, Notre Dame and New York in February.

NCR sat down for an extended interview with Marini on Dec. 15 in London. The following are excerpts from that interview; the full text can be found in the Special Documents section of NCRonline.org.


You’ve called on the church to “take up with enthusiasm the liturgical path traced by the council.”
First of all, it’s important that I spoke about a path, one that I believe is irreversible. I often think about the journey of the ancient Israelites in the Old Testament. It was a difficult journey, and sometimes the people became nostalgic for the past, for the onions and the melons of Egypt and so on.

In other words, sometimes they wanted to go back. But the historical journey of the church is one which, by necessity, has to move forward. We’re in the liturgical season of Advent right now, which tells us that the Lord is in front of us, not behind us.

If you want a lesson about the dangers of going back, I’ll limit myself to the woman from the Old Testament who turned around and became a pillar of salt.

[Excuse me, but what an inappropriate analogy! First of all, the episode was not about 'going back' but about 'looking back'. The angel of the Lord told the woman not to look back and she did. The episode was much more about disobedience to the Lord - which was the besetting sin altogether of Sodom and Gomorrah - than about 'looking back' in the literal or symoblic senses. Besides, who said anything about 'going back' in the sense that Marini means, which is going backwards?]


What’s the essential content of this path?
We have to keep in mind two fundamental principles. First is the relationship with scripture, because in the liturgy we celebrate what’s contained in the Bible. That’s why the liturgical reform gave so much space to scripture. Second, we have to always be grounded in the church of the Fathers. ... I’m talking about the era of Augustine, Ambrose, the early period of the church.

Then, of course, there are the other elements emphasized by Vatican II. First of all, the priesthood of the faithful is something that we can’t afford to forget. Of course, we know that the Protestants thought they had “discovered” the priesthood of the faithful, because they saw that in the Bible the word “priest” referred only to Christ and to the holy people of God, not to the apostles.

For that reason, the church of the Reformation rejected the idea of an institutional priesthood. The Catholic church naturally defended it, and created a liturgy, the Tridentine liturgy, which made a sharp distinction between the priest and the people of God. The liturgy became something priests do. [What a tendentious, incorrect and ideological summation of what the Council of Trent set out to do with liturgy! Liturgy is also order, and defining the Mass celebrant's role and the role of the faithful imposes the right order - not in the sense of precedence - without detracting from the fact that everyone together is offering sacrifice and worship to the Lord.]

Vatican II helped us to rediscover the idea of the priesthood as something universal. The faithful don’t receive permission from priests to participate in the Mass. They are members of a priestly people, which means they have the right to participate in offering the sacrifice of the Mass. This was a great discovery, a great emphasis, of the council. [As I commented in NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT: This is a most outrageous statement! As though all the Masses before Vatican-II had denied the faithful 'the right to participate in offering the sacrifice of the Mass'.]

We have to keep this in mind, because otherwise we run the risk of confusion about the nature of the liturgy, and for that matter, the church itself.


Your book creates the impression that you’re concerned about the current liturgical direction of the church, warning of a return to a “pre-conciliar mindset.”
I see a certain nostalgia for the past. What concerns me in particular is that this nostalgia seems especially strong among some young priests. How is it possible to be nostalgic for an era they didn’t experience? [But this happens all the time! Any habitual reader of literature and history - or anyone who has watched movies and TV documentaries that recreate the past with verisimilitude - experiences such nostalgia when presented with things that are positive about the past!]

I remember this period. From the age of 6 until I was 23, in other words for 18 years, I lived with the Mass of Pius V. I grew up in this rite, and I was formed by it. I saw the necessity of the changes of Vatican II, and personally I don’t have any nostalgia for this older rite, because it was the same rite that had to be adapted to changing times. I don’t see any step backward, any loss.


Would you see Benedict XVI’s motu proprio of July 7, granting wider permission to celebrate the old Mass, as part of this nostalgia?
Look, I don’t really want to get into this subject. I’ll just make two points.

First, the pope said that he was motivated to issue the motu proprio out of a concern for unity. [Note: The reference is to the split following Vatican II involving followers of French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected the new Mass and other reforms.] In that sense, the basis of the motu proprio has a positive aspect.

One has to respect the pope, who certainly has to keep this concern for unity close to his heart. Obviously I’m not in his position, and while I might have different ideas, as Catholics we must respect the role he plays.

Second, the pope himself wrote in the letter that accompanied the motu proprio that it takes nothing away from the authority of the Second Vatican Council. In the same way, the pope said that this is no way detracts from the validity of the liturgical reform. From my point of view, therefore, the motu proprio does not change the need to keep moving forward with renewal of the liturgy.


You’re probably aware that an English journalist has interpreted your book as an “attack” on the liturgical philosophy of Benedict XVI. Is he wrong?
As far as I’m concerned, he’s wrong. Obviously people are free to say what they want and to publish their opinions. Sometimes those opinions have a solid foundation, and sometimes they’re just gratuitous. In reality, this book was written well before the pope issued his motu proprio.

[The book is obviously not against the MP itself - but against its spirit, as Marini himself implicitly admits in his answer to the preceding question, and in everything he has said during his promotion of the book.]


Your book tells the story of the Consilium, the organism created during the council for carrying forward the liturgical reform. You seem to suggest that the Consilium has an importance that transcends the liturgy, in that it offers a model of a different way for the Vatican to operate -- in your view, more collegial, more international, more open. Am I reading you correctly?
I’m in perfect agreement. What you’re talking about is the problem of the reform of the curia, which is the curia created after the Council of Trent. That council didn’t publish a document on the liturgy like Vatican II, but it left the pope the task of reforming the liturgy and reforming the church. In order to carry out this reform, the pope constituted the Roman congregations. Before the Council of Trent, the congregations didn’t exist. The church lived for more than 1,000 years without Roman congregations. How was it possible?

The congregations, such as the Congregation for Rites, were instituted by the pope in 1588 in order to deal with the various problems of the church -- but to do so in the spirit of Trent. Therefore, they had all the limitations of that era.

Today, after Vatican II, we now have, for example, national bishops’ conferences, which didn’t exist at the time of the Council of Trent. In my view, there’s a problem of adjusting the operation of the congregations to the new situation after the council. [I am posting my comment on these statements below.]

While big changes may not be possible right now, personally I believe that eventually it will be necessary to return to the Consilium as an example of how to streamline the congregations, so that they’re not just organisms bound by certain rigid norms, but more flexible bodies for resolving the problems of the world of today.

Among other things, the bishops should be more involved in the decisions that concern the church, including those that concern the liturgy. Precisely because the liturgy belongs to the whole church, before taking decisions it’s important to involve the bishops and the bishops’ conferences.

The same is true of the Synod of Bishops. As presently structured, it’s an office for creating documents and for giving the pope advice, but this was perhaps not the intention that Paul VI had when he created the Synod of Bishops. It’s a problem that remains open.

[What exactly did Paul VI intend with the Bishops' Synods? What did he do in this respect that was more decisive or more ample than what John Paul II and Benedict XVI have done with their respective Synods? Has there been a post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation since Paul VI that laid down concrete guidelines to summarize the bishops' consensus - arrived at by democratic vote - as Benedict XVI's Sacramentum caritatis? An exhortation so concrete and so relevant to the faithful that for the first time, an Apostolic Exhortation became an instant best-seller?]


For those, such as yourself, most committed to liturgical reform, these can be difficult times, as you indicated a moment ago with respect to a growing nostalgia for the past. Where do you find hope?
Before anything else, hope lies in the past.
[So now, 'hope lies in the past'? Did Marini not say earlier that 'turning back' would make us into 'a pillar of salt'? Apparently, what he means by 'past', as his succeeding statements show, is Vatican-II and nothing before that! And yet, he paid lip service to the 'Fathers of the Church' in one of his earlier answers.]

We had an ecumenical council that, together with the pope, approved this document, Sacrosanctum Concilium, on the liturgy. They launched a movement which is irreversible, because the principles expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium are perennial. They aren’t principles bound to a certain historical period. The priesthood of the faithful, the primacy of scripture, the return to the church of the fathers, the possibility of adaptation in language and the other elements of the rites are permanently valid.

[Well and good. Except that the most obvious liturgical abuses of the Novus Ordo have been those aspects that clearly violate what Sacrosanctum Concilium actually says.]

The other basis of hope is the liturgy itself, because celebrating the liturgy is itself the primordial source of renewal in the church. The more we succeed at celebrating the liturgy, the more we’ll live the Christian life fully and the more we’ll succeed in transforming the church.

The great ideals of the church are in crisis today in part because there’s a crisis in the liturgy.

[Isn't that what Cardinal Ratzinger always said - but he was referring to the abuses that were being done in the name of the Novus Ordo. Funny that Marini should now quote it word for word! But what crisis in liturgy does Marini mean then? A crisis because what is still a minority of Catholics now choose to attend the traditional Mass instead of the Novus Ordo? No one except hardliners - egoistical progressives who cannot bear the thought of something other than their most ideologically-treasured symbol - feels at all threatened by the new freedom to attend a traditional Mass if one wishes to!]

The great ideals of ecumenism, of internal reform of the church, of dialogue with the world, are all connected. The council wanted to confront these challenges beginning with the liturgy. If the liturgy is the source and summit of our life, then we foster in the liturgy the kind of life we need to meet these great goals.


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

Here's the comment I wanted to set apart because it is too long to be a parenthetical:


Marini makes an interesting statement about the origin of the Roman Curia, but he frames it in the context of an opposition to the authority of local bishops, particularly in terms of liturgy.

Cardinal Ratzinger often cited the fact that the Council of Trent drew up a useful criterion for determining which of the current local liturgies would continue to be valid even after the Tridentine reform - namely, any liturgy that had been practised locally for more than 200 years. In other words, the Council was well aware of the facile temptation that local bishops may have to innovate their own liturgies, even if the Council was making the Tridentine rite the canon for the Church.

The post-Vatican II experience has amply shown that priests themselves have been taking their own liberties with the Novus Ordo, wrongly citing Vatican-II as their authority. And that local bishops have a) not cared enough about the sacredness of liturgy to check any abuses by their local priests, or b) in many cases, agree with laissez-faire, do-it-yourself liturgy - otherwise, all the obvious abuses would not have gone on unchecked. (And why did Allen not ask Marini at all about these abuses? It surely is one of the most legitimate questions that can be raised about the liturgy today.)

As for the bishops, Marini says that they should be "more involved in the decisions that concern the church, including those that concern the liturgy". Benedict XVI did just that - spent months consulting bishops about what he intended to do and his reasons for doing so.

After which, he proceeded to do what he believed to be the right thing, having heard and answered the objections (more founded on selfishness and arrogance than on reason and charity).

The right attitude for the dissident bishops and priests should have been Marini's - "One has to respect the Pope". Respect, in this case, also means obedience, which bishops owe to the Successor of Peter, and which they pledge when they are ordained as bishops or cardinals. The Apostolic Succession begins with the Petrine primacy, and bishops - who are in the apostolic succession - should not forget that.

And while I'm at it, can there be a more ironical title than what NCR gave to Allen's article? - Vatican champion of reform finds hope in liturgy !!!

YOU WERE A HEROINE
AND MARTYR FOR DEMOCRACY,
BUT DOES YOUR COUNTRY REALLY
PREFER AL-QAEDA AND UBL?


As a female and a firm advocate of democracy, I can only despair over the pitiless murder of Benazir Bhutto. But listening to American TV commentators, I can only regret their naive and sterotypical over-simplications of the situation in Pakistan.

This is a country of 160 milllion that has been more pluralist in practice than any other Muslim country because, although it came into being specifically to create an independent state for Muslim India, it did so under the auspices, one might say, of the British Raj, which for all its colonial sins, did hand on a system of parliamentary democracy that lives on in India, and on and off in Pakistan.

But let us not forget that in both India and Pakistan, the great, if not overwhelming, majority of the citizens are poorly educated, if not illiterate, and therefore less likely to have inbibed the values of democracy. For most of these less fortunate people in Pakistan, their only 'education' is what the imams in their local mosques tell them, because they may read the Koran - even memorize it - but they depend on their imams to interpret it for them.

So when we talk of 'the people' in most Third World countries, especially the most populous ones, we have to remember that many do not even have a chance at being educated, in the way the West understands basic education.

This is something commentators in the West hardly ever take into account when casting judgment on 'democracy' as practised in the Third World. By holding up the Third World to Western standards, ignoring each country's particular history and culture, they are comparing apples and oranges. And thereby arriving at all the wrong conclusions.

Yesterday, I came upon two 'instant' reactions to the Bhutto assassination in National Review Online, which had more perspective than the almost nauseating pap-and-phony-pathos one had to bear up with on TV.



Benazir Bhutto:
Killed by the real Pakistan
By Andrew C. McCarthy


A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden. [That percentage is much greater in other polls.]

Aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that country’s current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38 percent. [Which, compared to the pro-UBL number, actually shows that despite the recent crisis over the Mushrarraf declared 'emergency', his popularity is not as abysmal as the US commentators make it out to be. It measn that, at least according to this poll, everybody else split up the remaining 22%.]

President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy — or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy — to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine! [
Where's the surprise? Realistically, does anyone expect the U.S. President to have better numbers in an overwhelmingly Muslim country?]

If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that.

There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta.

In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.

Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West.

The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman — indeed, a product of feudal Pakistani privilege and secular Western breeding whose father, President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, had been branded as an enemy of Islam by influential Muslim clerics in the early 1970s.

The real Pakistan is a place where the intelligence services are salted with Islamic fundamentalists: jihadist sympathizers who, during the 1980s, steered hundreds of millions in U.S. aid for the anti-Soviet mujahideen to the most anti-Western Afghan fighters — warlords like Gilbuddin Hekmatyar whose Arab allies included bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the stalwarts of today’s global jihad against America.

The real Pakistan is a place where the military, ineffective and half-hearted though it is in combating Islamic terror, is the thin line between today’s boiling pot and what tomorrow is more likely to be a jihadist nuclear power than a Western-style democracy.

In that real Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto’s murder is not shocking. There, it was a matter of when, not if.

It is the new way of warfare to proclaim that our quarrel is never with the heroic, struggling people of fill-in-the-blank country. No, we, of course, fight only the regime that oppresses them and frustrates their unquestionable desire for freedom and equality.

Pakistan just won’t cooperate with this noble narrative.

Whether we get round to admitting it or not, in Pakistan, our quarrel is with the people. Their struggle, literally, is jihad. For them, freedom would mean institutionalizing the tyranny of Islamic fundamentalism.

They are the same people who, only a few weeks ago, tried to kill Benazir Bhutto on what was to be her triumphant return to prominence — the symbol, however dubious, of democracy’s promise. They are the same people who managed to kill her today.

Today, no surfeit of Western media depicting angry lawyers railing about Musharraf — as if he were the problem — can camouflage that fact.

In Pakistan, it is the regime that propounds Western values, such as last year’s reform of oppressive, Sharia-based Hudood laws, which made rape virtually impossible to prosecute — a reform enacted despite furious fundamentalist rioting that was, shall we say, less well covered in the Western press.

The regime, unreliable and at times infuriating, is our only friend. It is the only segment of Pakistani society capable of confronting militant Islam — though its vigor for doing so is too often sapped by its own share of jihadist sympathizers.

Yet, we’ve spent two months pining about its suppression of democracy — its instinct not further to empower the millions who hate us.

For the United States, the question is whether we learn nothing from repeated, inescapable lessons that placing democratization at the top of our foreign policy priorities is high-order folly.

The transformation from Islamic society to true democracy is a long-term project. It would take decades if it can happen at all.

Meanwhile, our obsessive insistence on popular referenda is naturally strengthening — and legitimizing — the people who are popular: the jihadists. Popular elections have not reformed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither will they reform a place where Osama bin Laden wins popular opinion polls and where the would-be reformers are bombed and shot at until they die.

We don’t have the political will to fight the war on terror every place where jihadists work feverishly to kill Americans. And, given the refusal of the richest, most spendthrift government in American history to grow our military to an appropriate war footing, we may not have the resources to do it.

But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.

Andrew C. McCarthy directs the Center for Law & Counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.


And this one, a column by the ever-sensible Mark Steyn:

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Benazir Bhutto
By Mark Steyn


Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan had a mad recklessness about it which give today's events a horrible inevitability.

As I always say when I'm asked about her, she was my next-door neighbor for a while - which affects a kind of intimacy, though in fact I knew her only for sidewalk pleasantries.

She was beautiful and charming and sophisticated and smart and modern, and everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be - though in practice, as Pakistan's Prime Minister, she was just another grubby wardheeler from one of the world's most corrupt political classes. [I would have preferred a less offensive way of saying this!]

Since her last spell in power, Pakistan has changed, profoundly. Its sovereignty is meaningless in increasingly significant chunks of its territory, and, within the portions Musharraf is just about holding together, to an ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation.

"Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything," I wrote last month. "It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate." [And oh, how right he is!]

The State Department geniuses thought they had it all figured out. They'd arranged a shotgun marriage between the Bhutto and Sharif factions as a "united" "democratic" "movement" and were pushing Musharraf to reach a deal with them.

That's what diplomats do: They find guys in suits and get 'em round a table. But none of those representatives represents the rapidly evolving reality of Pakistan.

Miss Bhutto could never have been a viable leader of a post-Musharraf settlement, and the delusion that she could have been sent her to her death.

Earlier this year, I had an argument with an old (infidel) boyfriend of Benazir's, who swatted my concerns aside with the sweeping claim that "the whole of the western world" was behind her. On the streets of Islamabad, that and a dime'll get you a cup of coffee.

As I said, she was everything we in the west would like a Muslim leader to be. We should be modest enough to acknowledge when reality conflicts with our illusions.

Rest in peace, Benazir.


Also yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reprinted an article Ms. Bhutto had written for them recently. It is only right to let her have the last word here.


Campaigning in the Face of Terror:
Reflections on October's
unsuccessful assassination attempt
BY BENAZIR BHUTTO


(Editor's note: This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 23. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.)

I survived an assassination attempt last week, but 140 of my supporters and security didn't.

This mass murder was particularly sinister, since it targeted not just me and my party leadership, but the hundreds of thousands (some estimate up to three million) of our citizens who came out to welcome me and demonstrate their support for democracy and the democratic process. Their deaths weigh heavily on my heart.

Oct. 18 underscores the critical situation we confront in Pakistan today - trying to campaign for free, fair and transparent elections under the threat of terrorism. It demonstrates the logistical, strategic and moral challenge before us. How do we bring the election campaign to the people under the very real threat of assassination and mass casualties of the innocent?

The attack on me was not totally unexpected. I had received credible information that I was being targeted by elements that wanted to disrupt the democratic process - specifically that Baitul Masood (an Afghan who leads the Taliban forces in North Waziristan), Hamza bin Laden (an Arab), and a Red Mosque militant had been sent to kill me.

I also feared that they were being used by their sympathizers, who have infiltrated the security and administration of my country, and who now fear that the return of democracy will thwart their plans.

We had tried to take precautions. We requested permission to import a bulletproof vehicle. We asked to be provided technology that would detect and disarm IEDs. We had demanded that I receive the level of security to which I'm entitled as a former prime minister.

Now, after the carnage, the fact that the street lights around the assassination site - Shahra e Faisal - had been turned off, allowing the suicide bombers to gain access near to my truck, is very suspicious.

I am so discomfited that the bomb investigation has been assigned to Deputy Inspector General Manzoor Mughal, who was present when my husband was almost murdered under torture some years back.

Obviously I knew the risks. I had been targeted twice before by al Qaeda assassins, including the infamous Ramzi Yousef. Knowing the modus operandi of these terrorists, coming back to the same target again (i.e. the World Trade Center), certainly underscored the danger.

Some in the Pakistani government criticized my return to Pakistan, and my plan to visit the mausoleum of the tomb of the founder of my country, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

But here was my dilemma. I had been in exile for eight painful years. Pakistan is a country of mass, grassroots, people-to-people politics. It is not California or New York, where candidates can campaign through paid media and targeted direct mail. That technology is not only logistically impossible, but it is inconsistent with our political culture.

The people of Pakistan - whatever political party they may belong to -want and expect to see and hear their party leaders, and be directly part of the political process. They expect mass rallies and caravans, and to hear directly from their leaders through bullhorns and loud speakers.

Under normal conditions it is challenging. Under the terrorist threat, it is extraordinarily difficult. My task is to make sure that it is not impossible.

We are consulting with top political strategists on the problem. We want to be sensitive to the political culture of our nation, give people the opportunity to participate in the democratic process after eight long years of dictatorship, and educate the 100 million voters of Pakistan on the issues of the day.

But we do not want to be reckless. We do not want to endanger our leadership unnecessarily, and we certainly don't want to risk potential mass murder of my supporters. If we don't campaign, the terrorists have won and democracy is set back further. If we do campaign, we risk violence. It is an extraordinary dilemma.

We are now focusing on hybrid techniques that combine individual and mass voter contact with sharp security constraints. Where people have telephones, we can experiment with taped voice messages from me describing my issue positions and urging them to vote.

In rural areas we are contemplating taped messages from me played regularly on boom boxes set up in village centers. Instead of the traditional mass caravans of Pakistani politics, we are discussing the feasibility of "virtual caravans" and "virtual mass rallies" where I would deliver important campaign addresses to large audiences all over the four provinces of Pakistan.

We are thinking of new voter education and get-out-the-vote techniques that minimize my vulnerability, and minimize the opportunity for successful terrorist attacks over the next critical weeks leading to our parliamentary elections.

The sanctity of the political process must not be allowed to be destroyed by the terrorists. Democracy and moderation must be restored to Pakistan, and the way to do that is through free and fair elections establishing a legitimate government with a popular mandate - leaders supported by the people. Intimidation by murdering cowards will not be allowed to derail Pakistan's transition to democracy.

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

If only 'the people of Pakistan' did not also include the 40% who admire Bin Laden and subscribe to jihad!

Relieved not to be Pope
By Rob Blackhurst
Financial Times (UK)
Published: December 22 2007


I was led to look for this article by a piece in korazym. org today saying the British cardinal was the third-ranking Catholic prelate to openly support the cause of married priests in a 'long interview wit the Financial Times' (after Cardinal Hummes last year, who said right after he was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, that the Church should consider accepting married priests, though he later amended his statement; and Cardinal Etchegaray, who told a French newspaper last month that the question should be considered by the church, seeing that the Orthodox Church allows married priests, although he added that he does not think this is going to be a solution for the worlwide priest shortage). I had to look through this whole interview before finding the few words Murphy-O'Connor actually said about the possibility of married priests in the Church.

I think the media always make too much of orinarily unremarkable and isolated statements made by any ranking Catholic about anything as controversial a subject as married priests. Isolated opinions, especially if casually made rather than formally proposed in some article or elaborated seriously in an interview, are just personal opinions. It doesn't mean they will soon be on the agenda of the Pope and the Roman Curia!





The gloomy redbrick residence of the Archbishop of Westminster is decidedly lacking in festive cheer. On the wide ceremonial staircase, flanked by dark portraits of 10 English cardinals, two priests are complaining in mock-lugubrious Father Ted-fashion about the spindly collection of pine branches that has been arranged around a nativity scene. "We could have done with a better Christmas tree," says one, "It's pretty mangy."

The Edwardian dwelling, on a backstreet adjoining Westminster Cathedral, is full of hushed whispers, sudden draughts, and echoing corridors. I'm ushered into the archbishop's oversized sitting room with its flamingo pink armchairs and standard-issue oil paintings of Rome and saints.

The forbidding mood evaporates when Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, 10th Archbishop of Westminster, arrives from his flat upstairs - tall and lumbering in a black cardigan and clerical shirt - all ruddy cheeks and bonhomie. At 75 and 6ft 4in, he retains the solidity of the young priest who played centre for his seminary's first XV.

Professional priestly demeanour aside, there are reasons why he might be looking particularly content as the year-end approaches. After eight years in the job, 2008 is likely to be his last full year as archbishop before a long-delayed retirement.

He could be forgiven for feeling some professional pride too. Following a shaky start to his tenure, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales could lay claim to being Britain's most visible spiritual leader over the past 12 months - almost as likely to be seen on the GMTV sofa or in the Today programme studio as the pulpit of Westminster Cathedral.

While Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican communion, has been forced into an agonised silence by the need to keep warring factions together, the cardinal has cheerily filled the vacuum to lead the charge against what he has described to the Spectator magazine as "Christophobic" policies. Murphy-O'Connor presents the Catholic Church not as some omnipotent "magisterium" but as a beleaguered institution under siege from an aggressive secularism.

He has lobbied for a reduction in the abortion limit from 24 weeks to 20, united with the Anglican bishops in the House of Lords to defeat a euthanasia bill and led a drive against embryonic stem cell research. His high-profile campaign against equality legislation that would oblige Catholic adoption agencies to consider gay couples as potential adoptive parents has even earned him the approval of the Daily Mail.

But were the archbishop prey to anything so sinful as pride, it would undoubtedly be tempered by the fact that this campaign was comprehensively defeated when it came to the vote. Despite his threat to close down the agencies, the law came into force in April with no opt-outs.

"I was surprised, really," he says. "I thought that the legislation wasn't necessary. Already it was quite possible for homosexual couples to adopt. This particular act went very far along the road as saying, in law, a homosexual union of a couple was equivalent to a marriage between a man and a woman. [Our opposition to the proposed legislation] was really our convictions about the primacy of the family."

So far, the agencies haven't been closed and the Church has until the end of 2008 to comply with the new law but it's clear the cardinal found it an unpleasant encounter.

Not long after his elevation, he spoke bleakly of a secular Britain where Christianity has been "almost vanquished". And, for all the apparent ease of his manner, this austere tone is also in evidence when I ask him if he has a Christmas message for readers of the Financial Times. He offers not an easy moral injunction about giving to charity or repenting your sins but a grand historical sweep: "You'll have to condense it," he warns.

"The Enlightenment - the age of reason - brought about a situation where it was thought that religion and religious values could be put to the periphery - and that economic, technological and scientific progress would solve the problems of mankind. Readers of the FT will realise that this economic success is not enough. Focus on the dignity of the human person, focus on the family, and focus on the transcendent." [Considering some reports I have read about the Cardinal before, I am really surprised that he is repeating almost word for word what the Pope has been saying!]

The cardinal speaks in long sentences, sidestepping potential pitfalls, and it can be difficult to penetrate the clouds of sermonising generalities and goodwill-to-all-men sentiments. The diplomatic skills that have taken the son of an Irish immigrant doctor to the diocese of Westminster have been honed from an early age.

His sensitivity to the media was undoubtedly heightened by bruising encounters with journalists in his first year as Archbishop of Westminster when allegations about the Church and sex abuse were at their peak.

In the early 1980s, when Murphy-O'Connor was Bishop of Brighton and Arundel, it was brought to his attention that one of his priests, Michael Hill, was a paedophile. Instead of reporting Hill to the police, the bishop followed the then prevailing practice of the Catholic Church and arranged for him to be transferred, to an industrial chaplaincy at Gatwick airport, where Murphy-O'Connor believed he would be away from children. Hill, however, abused again and was jailed in 1997 for a series of sexual assaults.

When the case became more widely known, Murphy-O'Connor appeared otherworldly and bumbling - and initially did little to calm the media hue and cry. Did he ever come close to resigning?

"I didn't, really, because I thought [while] the onslaught was against me, it was also against the Church as a whole," he says in a comforting burr at odds with the subject matter. "It was a difficult period because, like everyone in the Catholic Church, one felt a certain shame that priests had committed these crimes. They were terrible things to do."

But if his media-handling skills seemed clumsy, the steps he took to tackle the scandal were much more sure-footed: he profusely apologised, appointed a commission of the great-and-good and implemented its recommendations for a national office of child protection and police checks on all church workers.

Murphy-O'Connor was born and raised in 1930s Reading, Berkshire, one of six children of a doctor from Cork. Three uncles and two of his four elder brothers became priests. He describes the family as "very devout" and "disciplined" - though a family wine business and a brother, James, who played rugby for Ireland suggests a conviviality in the genes that seems to have survived.

In this milieu, the calling to the priesthood was less a sudden epiphany than a well-trodden career path. "I'd thought of following my father and becoming a doctor, or of becoming a teacher or a concert pianist. But underneath it all, I had been thinking about the priesthood. I still remember being out in the car with my father - he was doing his patient calls. I was, I think, 15. He asked me what did I want to be? And I immediately said, 'A priest.' "

He remembers his boyhood as a time when, "We felt that we were a bit different. We clung together. There was still a lot of suspicion of Catholics among the establishment. You wouldn't have found too many Catholic judges."

Aged 18, Murphy-O'Connor followed two of his brothers to the English College in Rome where, for six years, he studied philosophy and theology. He was ordained in 1956 and appointed to a parish in Portsmouth.

At 40, after a decade or so as parish priest and chaplain to the then Bishop of Portsmouth, the Right Reverend Derek Worlock, he was asked to return to Rome as rector of the English College. In December 1977, he was ordained Bishop of Arundel and Brighton where he stayed for 22 years.

The cardinal says he "just likes to be a good shepherd" and would have been content to remain as a humble parish priest. If he does have a steely ambition, it is well hidden: "When I was ordained, my ambition was to look after people in the parish - but it didn't quite turn out like that. At quite a young age I was made a bishop. My ambition has been curtailed by other events so I've had to accept them." He starts half-speaking, half-singing a fatalistic hymn: "You know, Newman's 'Lead, kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom/ lead thou me on.' "

Murphy-O'Connor was approaching 70 and winding down for retirement when, in 2000, he was the surprise choice to follow the lionised Basil Hume as Archbishop of Westminster.

Though he does little to dispel the impression of many religious observers that he would have been happy to retire to practise his golf swing and Chopin's piano works, personal desires count for little when the call from Rome comes. A year after appointment to Westminster, he was made a cardinal.

"It was a daunting task - but you take what you're given and you do what you can. When you are cardinal, you come into a new world - whereby you are very close to the Pope - you go to commissions in Rome that help him in his task. Sometimes it's very pressurised."

This summer, as he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75, the cardinal submitted his resignation to Pope Benedict but was asked to stay on for a "year or so".

What does he plan to do with his retirement? "If I live, I'll be the only Archbishop of Westminster who retires. All the rest have died in office," he says cheerfully: "I'll still be a cardinal - so I'll still be part of commissions in Rome. I'll certainly have more time for golf but I'll be less distracted by the things of the world and more attracted by things like reading, writing, reflecting. I will do a little pastoral work helping out in parishes."

But, for now, the cardinal is preparing for a Christmas season that will take in a visit to Holloway prison to preach ("the most important thing I'll be doing this Christmas. They are at the bottom of the pile - nobody really cares"), celebrating midnight Mass in Westminster Cathedral for broadcast on Radio 4, and, if he has time, "reading Jeremy Paxman's book about the Royal Family. That's my light reading alongside the latest Encyclical."

This weekend, he'll visit one of his two surviving brothers and his wife and celebrate Mass with their 20 grandchildren. But he'll share his meal on Christmas day with just his immediate spiritual family: the priests of the cathedral and the nuns who cook and clean in his household.

I ask, finally, for a progress report on Pope Benedict XVI - whose theology is reputed to be rather more hard-line than Murphy-O'Connor's selectively liberal instincts.

"People now go to Rome not so much to see the Pope but to listen to what he says. Pope John Paul in his gestures and openness captured the imagination of everyone. This pope captures the imagination of the mind and the heart by what he teaches and preaches."][Not bad, but sterotyped.]

In spite of this endorsement, Murphy-O'Connor is gently subversive in making a case for the ordination of married men: "We have a number of married men in this diocese who are former Anglicans who are already married. If you say to me, 'Do you think the church could change and ordain many married men?' the answer is, 'Yes, it could.' "

As we finish the interview, I ask the cardinal for his memories of the papal conclave in 2005, when he was one of 115 cardinals enclosed in the Sistine Chapel for two days to elect John Paul's successor.

For the first time, he seems to bounce from his chair. He gives what, if it didn't come from the lips of a cardinal, might sound like a Vatican conspiracy theory: "Nobody could reach us. Some had mobiles but, if you tried to phone, it didn't work. They blocked the mobile phones. I don't know how they did it but they did. Each day we looked at each other and thought, 'Gosh, some poor man is going to come out of here Pope.' "

And were you relieved it wasn't you? I ask. His eyes twinkle and he throws back his head, turns the colour of his cardinal's galero, and roars with laughter. "Very relieved."