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

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 26/05/2012 15:48
07/04/2008 15:22
 
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CHARLTON HESTON, 1923-2008:
His epic acting style
defined an era

by Peter Eisler
USA TODAY
April 7, 2008



Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments; right, in 2002, when he as diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Chartlon Heston died at his home in Los Angeles Saturday evening at the age of 84. His wife, Lydia, was by his side at the time of his death.

Heston's political roles were as varied as his screen roles, from union leader and civil rights advocate to outspoken abortion foe and gun rights champion.

He was "an American who devoted himself to civil rights, to correcting injustices and to standing up for what he knew was right," said Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the National Rifle Association, which Heston led from 1998 to 2003.

That position marked Heston as a conservative stalwart, but his political activism began with a more liberal bent. He campaigned for liberal presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and supported John F. Kennedy in 1960. In 1961, he picketed the opening of one of his films at a segregated Oklahoma theater, and he joined Martin Luther King Jr. in his historic 1963 march on Washington.

Heston drifted right in 1964, when he backed Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, but he maintained ties across the political spectrum. From 1966 to 1971, he led the Screen Actors Guild the longest tenure of any SAG president.

Heston backed Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election and stumped for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Friendship with Reagan made him more partisan, Emilie Raymond wrote in a 2006 biography From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics. "As the Democratic Party adopted affirmative action and softened its anti-Communist agenda, Heston concluded that common ground had disappeared."

By the late '80s, Heston was an outspoken abortion foe and, after taking the NRA helm, he was a full-fledged conservative icon.

At the 2000 NRA convention, Heston blasted Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore for his gun-control stance. In his defining political image, Heston raised an antique rifle in the air and said Gore would have to wrest the right to bear arms "from my cold, dead hands."

Some of his final screen appearances cemented his ties to gun rights. In the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, he made a cameo as an old warrior ape who holds a gun as he dies. In the 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, filmmaker Michael Moore grills Heston on his unyielding position on the right to bear arms.

Yet Heston's political legacy goes beyond his pro-gun stance.

When President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003, he cited the actor's World War II service, his union work and his civil rights activism. He "left his mark on our country as an artist and as a citizen and as a patriot," Bush said.

Because movie blockbusters that maintain their popularity are indelible, Charlton Heston probably will endure more for his chariots and quoted Commandments than for his political activism.

But it says something that Heston's political image even comes close to matching Ben-Hur and other classics, cinema equivalents of those gargantuan tail fins on luxurious '50s cars.

The beefcake superstar who became president of the National Rifle Association died Sunday in Beverly Hills at 84, six years after revealing that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's and a little more than half a century after his role as Moses in The Ten Commandments made him one of the top marquee names in the world.

And what a moniker — "Charlton Heston" — to fill a bill chiseled in stone when it came to signifying an epic star whose mere presence could bankroll a widescreen bank-breaker.

But while Elvis Presley inspired parents to name baby boys after him, "Charlton" elicited no such boom. This is fitting because Heston's acting style was not replicated in the post-World War II era.

Think of Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford from a later generation or Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck and Johnny Depp from today's. None is even imaginable doing what to Heston came naturally: holding stone tablets or looking at home in a loincloth.

Like John Wayne, he could dominate a Panavision frame of hundreds, yet no one would have even tried to cast Wayne as a galley slave. And where stars of today look unconvincing and out of place away from the 20th century (such as Cruise in 2003's The Last Samurai), Heston was at his best in biblical or medieval times.

Take 1965's The War Lord, made when historical epics were on the wane. With co-star Richard Boone wasted and little else to look at beyond co-star Rosemary Forsyth's beauty, Heston makes you believe him as an 11th-century Norman authority figure, though it's obvious that even the exteriors he's acting against are on Universal's back lot.

Yet even in his heyday, Heston was tough to size up. Give him a comic or conventional romantic role that any relaxed B-lister could ace, and he could appear stiff and even pompous. But give him a role littered with minefields or even unplayable, and he could give you a movie Moses or El Cid for the ages.

Heston's big-screen career enjoyed uncommonly good fortune from the beginning, which is not to say he lucked out overnight. Born in 1923 as John Charles Carter, he studied acting at hometown Evanston, Ill.'s Northwestern University, where he also met his wife of 64 years, Lydia Clarke, who was at his bedside when he died.

Before World War II service in the Air Force, he appeared at 17 in a 1941 version of Peer Gynt for filmmaker David Bradley — then as Marc Antony in Bradley's postwar Julius Caesar, often shown in '50s and '60s high school English classes. The budget was low (someone's comment about the "roaring Tiber" is followed by a shot of what looks like bath water), but stage experience combined with many late-'40s roles in early TV gave Heston enough of a reputation to land the lead in his first Hollywood feature.

It was in 1950's film-noirish Dark City, whose limited delights today come mostly from watching its young star slap Jack Webb around. But on just his second picture, Heston caught a huge break. He hooked up with Cecil B. DeMille, the one director of the day who, even more than Alfred Hitchcock, had box office clout to equal that of Hollywood's biggest stars.

The result was The Greatest Show on Earth, 1952's biggest hit and an intentionally over-the-top movie often cited as the worst film to ever win the best-picture Oscar. As a circus manager, Heston is appealing and even easygoing, a quality missing from most later endeavors.

But the real advantage to the DeMille connection was putting Heston in line for the lead in the last and biggest film DeMille directed: the gargantuan remake of his own The Ten Commandments. Artfully ludicrous for 31/2 hours, the 1956 Commandments is the most durable year-end blockbuster from a year packed with them: Giant, Around the World in 80 Days and War and Peace.

As both the young and old Moses, Heston keeps his head above water in a sea of entertaining excess (Edward G. Robinson's snarling Dathan, Anne Baxter's next-to-nympho Nefretiri), his confident don't-mess-with-God demeanor an effective contrast to Yul Brynner's Rameses, who always seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Putting aside Orson Welles' black-and-white Touch of Evil (1958), highly placed on critics' lists of the greatest American movies, Commandments is probably Heston's most durable film. Its rival is 1959's Ben-Hur, an all-or-nothing gamble that saved MGM from bankruptcy while taking 11 Oscars (best picture and Heston's own included). Its acclaim is spurred mostly from the famed chariot race sequence, which ironically William Wyler didn't direct.

But Heston had enormous respect for the record 12-time best-director nominee, who the year before had nurtured one of the actor's best performances as a ranch foreman in The Big Country.

The last of Heston's "big three" historical epics was 1961's El Cid, a portrait of Spain's legendary hero that the actor thought was underrated (in terms of Robert Krasker's photography) but not the movie it could have been overall (intimating that director Anthony Mann wasn't Wyler).

Later, but long before Cid got a national theatrical reissue in 1993, Heston became one of the most thoughtful and articulate of actors when discussing the filmmaking craft. Had DVDs been invented earlier, we would have seen him all over the place spinning memories on bonus features.

Eventually, he would publish the journals he had compiled on the sets of his films as The Actor's Life (1977), still one of the most informative reads from a performer's point of view about the grunt work and sweat it takes to make movies — artful ones and bombs.

Yet he also had a sense of humor about a screen image that wouldn't let go. In the early '60s he joined Kirk Douglas for a gag appearance on a Milton Berle TV special: Heston in Ben-Hur duds and Douglas in full Spartacus apparel.

The 1960s marked the first time Heston became overtly political, but in ways that now surprise. Having supported Adlai Stevenson for president and then John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and appeared with other actors on national television after Robert Kennedy's assassination, urging public support for President Lyndon B. Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968.

Something else happened in the '60s: the counterculture forced Heston into premature "emeritus" status. The movies in which he excelled went out of fashion, and you could almost predict that his efforts as Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy would elicit critics' comments pointing out which of the title's nouns ruled the result.

After El Cid, only 1968's Planet of the Apes was a major hit, though in a long litany of critical bombs, good work can be found. (He was always disappointed that in Will Penny, also from '68, went underappreciated in era when the movie Western was enjoying its last hurrah.)

He was a key contributor (as Cardinal Richelieu) in director Richard Lester's marvelous Three and Four Musketeers romps, was well-received as Sir Thomas More in a TV version of A Man for All Seasons and helped get James Cameron's True Lies rolling in a welcome cameo with Arnold Schwarzenegger (a kind of Republican love fest).

But in the public's consciousness, he was increasingly identified with off-camera endeavors: presidency of the Screen Actors Guild, chairmanship of the American Film Institute and finally, in 1998, presidency of the NRA.

Heston's transformation from actor to conservative political symbol was perhaps more dramatic than even Ronald Reagan's. The 40th president, after all, was an affably minor Hollywood lead (no biblical figures here) for whom a midlife career change made sense. And that Heston (like Reagan) started out as a Democrat only made the story more interesting.

Heston, like Reagan, claimed the Democratic Party left him while his values remained the same — a personal sea change that by the Reagan '80s had turned Heston into one of the most prominently public Republicans. He supported gun rights and opposed affirmative action and political correctness.

His pro-gun stance led to director Michael Moore more or less ambushing Heston in his home for the climax of 2002's Oscar-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine— tastelessly, but also powerfully. It would be the last Heston big-screen scene to be seen by a significant number of viewers.

But TV movie stations exist to show and re-show the kind of epics that were his signature, so classic Heston remains, now — and perhaps evermore.

Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has said it best: "Charlton Heston might be said to achieve his apotheosis as Moses — unless one decides that it's Moses who's achieving his apotheosis as Heston."

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

Sorry for the belated post. I had little time for the Forum yesterday, Sunday.[/C]

10/04/2008 08:40
 
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Magdi Cristiano Allam cancels
Madrid appearance for lack
of appropriate security

By Jesús Colina


ROME, APRIL 9, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The Italian embassy in Spain confirmed the cancellation of a public appearance in Madrid by a convert from Islam baptized Holy Saturday by Benedict XVI, citing a lack of security.

Magdi Cristiano Allam, deputy editor of Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s largest and oldest newspapers, has been condemned to death by various fatwas from Islamic extremists.

The Italian embassy in Spain confirmed to ZENIT that due to the security situation, Allam will participate by videoconference in the event organized by the University CEU St. Paul, presenting his first book translated to Spanish, Vencer el Miedo. Mi vida contra el terrorismo islámico y la inconsciencia de Occidente (Overcoming Fear: My Life Against Islamic Terrorism and Western Unawareness).

The embassy sources explained that they "had asked for security measures for Magdi Allam from the Spanish government, particularly from the Ministry of External Affairs. The necessary conditions had not been given. Afterward, there was a change of opinion due to the exceptional nature of the case, but by then it was too late."

Allam is considering the possibility of publicly presenting another book in Spain, the embassy reported.


15/04/2008 07:21
 
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US friend returns to power in Italy
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer





ROME, April 14 (AP) - Media billionaire Silvio Berlusconi won a decisive victory Monday in Italy's parliamentary election, setting the colorful conservative and staunch U.S. ally on course to his third stint as premier.

The victory in voting Sunday and Monday by parties supporting the 71-year-old Berlusconi avenged his loss two years ago to a center-left coalition.

"I'm moved. I feel a great responsibility," he said in a phone call to RAI public television while monitoring election results at his villa outside Milan. Italian news agencies said he had a private dinner with key aides.

Berlusconi capitalized on discontent over Italy's stagnating economy and the unpopularity of Romano Prodi's government.

"I think it was a vote against the performance of the Prodi government in the last two years," said Franco Pavoncello, a political science professor at Rome's John Cabot University. "Berlusconi won because he has a strong coalition and because people feel that on the other side, the government is going to take them nowhere."

This was Berlusconi's fifth consecutive national election campaign since 1994, when he stepped into politics from his media empire, currently estimated to be worth $9.4 billion. He has fended off challenges to his leadership by conservative allies, withstood accusations of conflict of interest and survived criminal trials linked to his business dealings.

During his last time as premier, Berlusconi served a record-setting five years until his 2006 defeat. He made notable international gaffes as well as unpopular decisions at home, such as sending 3,000 soldiers to Iraq despite widespread opposition among Italians.

The Iraq contingent was withdrawn after his 2006 ballot loss, and he has ruled out sending any more troops there. But his friendship with the United States is not in doubt.

Berlusconi once said he agreed with the United States regardless of Washington's position. He calls President Bush a friend, and his return to power is likely to make relations with Washington warmer, no matter who becomes the next American president.

The outgoing government had colder relations with Washington. Prodi never went to the White House, although he did talk with Bush in Rome and at international summits.

Berlusconi has also affirmed himself as one of Israel's closest friends in Europe.

On Monday, he said he would make his first foreign trip as the new premier by visiting Israel to mark the Jewish state's 60th anniversary. He said it would be a show of support for "the only real democracy in the Middle East."

Berlusconi's party and its allies won strong victories in both houses of parliament despite a strong final sprint by his main rival, Walter Veltroni, who ran a campaign that could have come out of Barack Obama's playbook, with calls to "Vote for change" and supporters armed with "We can!" banners.

In the 315-member Senate, Berlusconi was projected to control 167 seats to Veltroni's 137. In the lower house, his conservative bloc led with 46 percent of the votes to 39 percent.

A movement led by comedian-turned-moralizer Beppe Grillo tried to get Italians to boycott the vote. But turnout in the politically polarized nation reached 80 percent, nearly as much as the 84 percent in the last national ballot in 2006, according to data from the Interior Ministry.

Berlusconi got a big boost from the strong showing by the Northern League, a key ally that won about 6 percent of the vote, according to projections. The party has strong regional identification and people in Italy's wealthy north also were angered by Prodi's tax increases and the downgrading of Milan's Malpensa airport from its role as a hub.

A laundry list of problems await Berlusconi, from cleaning piles of trash off the streets of Naples, which he indicated is his top priority, to improving an economy that has underperformed fellow EU nations for years.

The International Monetary Fund predicts the Italian economy, the world's seven largest, will grow 0.3 percent this year, compared with a 1.4 percent average for the whole group of 15 EU nations that use the euro currency.

Economists say Italy needs to make structural reforms, such as streamlining government decision-making and cutting costs.

There is also criticism of the election law, which is widely blamed for political instability by giving disproportionate power to small parties — a problem that brought down Romano Prodi's government and forced elections three years ahead of schedule.

In his post-election comments, Berlusconi said he was open to working with the opposition, and pledged to fight tax evasion, reform the justice system and reduce government debt.



26/04/2008 16:34
 
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MAGDI CRISTIANO ALLAM
GETS MARRIED AT THE LATERAN

Translated from
PETRUS, 4/26/08


VATICAN CITY - As he previously annouced, new Catholic Magdi Cristiano Allam, deputy editor of Corriere della Sera, was married to his companion Valentina in a religious ceremony at St. John Lateran yesterday.

The matrimonial rite was presided by Mons. Rino Fisichella, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University who was Allam's spiritual guide uring his preparation for covnersion.

Allam and Valentina have a 10-month-old son, Davide, who was baptized in the Catholic Church about a month before his father's world-headlined baptism by Pope Benedict XVI at the last Easter Vigil.

The ceremony was held under tight security, in addition to the police escort that Allam has received for the past 5 years whenever he leaves home, because of several death threats agaisnt him by Isalmic extremist groups.

The reception with about 50 guests was held at a hotel in Via della Conciliazione. The hotel, too, was protected by dozens of policemen.



29/04/2008 22:55
 
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WHAT HAS CARDINAL LAW BEEN DOING?


In the light of the Pope's meeting with some victims of sex abuses by priests from the Archdiocese of Boston, the name of Cardinal Bernard Law inevitably comes up. For those of us who are wondering what Cardinal Law has been doing, it turns out that, four months ago, John Allen did for his magazine one of those articles only he has been capable of doing. Despite, the delay, here is the article, which was a cover story for NCReporter last January:

After the fall:
Cardinal Law finds normality
in an unremarkable role in Rome

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

January 25, 2008


Editor’s note: Dec. 13 marked the fifth anniversary of Cardinal Bernard Law’s resignation as archbishop of Boston amid the frenzy of the sexual abuse crisis in his archdiocese and in the U.S. Catholic church -- by any standard, one of the pivotal moments in recent American Catholic history.

Today, Law serves as archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome and a member of eight Vatican dicasteries. In light of the controversy that still surrounds Law, NCR asked senior correspondent John Allen to describe Law’s situation in Rome: What his activities are, how he’s been received, how much influence he holds, and, to the extent possible, what sense Law makes of his circumstances. Allen reported this story from Rome during late November and early December.




Cardinal Law celebrates Mass at Santa Maria Maggiore
on the feast of Our Lady of Snows, August 5, 2008
.



Five years after the most tumultuous fall from grace in the history of American Catholicism, Cardinal Bernard Law seems to have achieved something in Rome few might have thought possible Dec. 13, 2002: a degree of normality.

Gone are the days when Law’s every syllable was scrutinized on the front pages of American newspapers, when scrums of television cameras tracked him morning, noon and night. Some 4,000 miles from the eye of the storm, Law has become an accepted and largely unremarkable figure in the Eternal City, influential in certain ways, but no one’s idea of a power broker.

Gone, too, are the days when he had easy access to the corridors of secular power. Those who watched Law in action still swap stories, for example, about the time Law dropped in unannounced on then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert to harangue him about debt relief for impoverished nations.

A jogging suit-clad Hastert arrived out of breath, but already briefed about a conversation Law had with then-Majority Leader Dick Armey a half-hour before, in which Law said he wouldn’t threaten, “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” since that would be sexist, but “until the thin guy dances.”

Another time, Law interceded with the Bush administration in favor of a multimillion dollar tax credit for the poor. When Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, phoned Law to tell him he’d won, Rove joked it was the “most expensive phone call” he’d ever made.

According to a former aide, Law had the perfect deadpan reply: “C’mon, Karl,” Law reportedly said. “You talk to defense contractors all the time.”

Those days of breathing rarified air ended in January 2002 when Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Constance Sweeney ordered the release of thousands of pages of previously secret diocesan documents, revealing the dimensions of crimes committed and concealed and sparking a revolution in Boston.

Though the enormity of the crisis for which he became the living symbol has hardly been forgotten, recent days in Rome have even brought flashes of the old Law.

On Nov. 27, for example, Law hosted new Cardinal Daniel DiNardo for Mass in the Basilica of St. Mary Major along with hundreds of pilgrims from Houston.

Welcoming the group, Law asked that “We have in our hearts in a special way what’s going on across the ocean today in Annapolis, and pray with the Holy Father for success in this effort for peace in the Middle East.” It was a vintage touch for the man who once served as chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Policy.

On Dec. 1, Law led another rite in St. Mary Major, this one private, in which former Episcopal Bishop Jeffrey Steenson of New Mexico and Texas was received into the Catholic church, a potential turning point in the crisis gripping the worldwide Anglican Communion.

That, too, offers a flashback to Law’s role as head of the office for ecumenism at the U.S. bishops’ conference, and later as an architect of the “Pastoral Provision” allowing married Episcopal ministers to enter the Catholic church and be ordained priests. Steenson, expected to be ordained a priest, came to know Law in those roles and personally requested that Law receive him.

These moments, however, seem largely remembrances of things past, hinting less at rehabilitation than a reminder of the peaks from which Law has fallen.

While Law today remains a voting member of eight Vatican offices -- including all three responsible for the appointment of bishops -- no one numbers him among the most influential princes of the church, such as Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, or American Cardinal William Levada, who replaced Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Rather, he’s part of a larger circle of cardinals who have some voice, but who generally fade into the ecclesiastical woodwork.

Those closest to Law say he’s largely at peace with his reduced circumstances. According to one friend who has known Law since his student days at Harvard in the 1950s, Law has accepted that he will never return to the States.

“He told me that he plans to be buried in the crypt of St. Mary Major,” the friend said.

Whether Law merits peace is, of course, still the subject of fierce debate in the United States, where wounds of the sex abuse crisis, and Law’s role in it, remain raw. Law’s friends spoke only on the condition of anonymity, reluctant to reopen old wounds or to feed what they regard as biased media coverage. Law himself almost never gives interviews, least of all to American reporters.

* * *

Taking stock of the five years since Law’s Dec. 13, 2002, resignation -- coincidentally, the day happened to be Friday the 13th -- he seems to have carved out four roles in Rome:

- Leader of one of the most storied and beautiful basilicas in the Christian world, and a member of a tightly knit community at St. Mary Major.

Law’s bond with the priests who live at the basilica, known as the “chapter,” allows him to live something resembling the Benedictine spirituality he has long admired;

- A point of reference for Americans and other English-speakers visiting Rome, celebrating Masses for various delegations and providing hospitality;

- A valued member of an unusually large number of offices in the Roman Curia, the central bureaucracy of the Catholic church, even if he rarely plays the role of “swing vote” or “kingmaker”;

- An informal voice in ecumenical dialogue. When Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury visited Rome in 2006, for example, he asked for a private session with Law, and afterward told members of his party he was impressed.

Around the same time, Law received a delegation of Methodists and, according to those present, charmed them with appreciative comments about John and Charles Wesley, founders of the Methodist movement.

None of this, to be sure, adds up to the influence Law enjoyed when he was perceived as the most important cardinal in the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. Neither, however, is it banishment.

Whatever Americans may have thought back in 2002, in Rome it was always understood that Law had resigned, not retired, and that the church would find other ways, such as those listed above, to tap his talents.

Though it may be hard for some Americans to hear, the most common term cited in Rome to describe how Law has been received is “sympathy.”

While no one defends the sexual abuse of minors, Catholics from cultures lacking Anglo-Saxon concepts of corporate liability, which includes Italy, sometimes struggle to understand why bishops should be held accountable for the misdeeds of their priests. As a result, they’re sometimes more willing to balance Law’s failures against what they see as a lifetime of loyal service.

In light of that framework, some in Rome have long seen Law’s resignation less as a symbol of disgrace than an act of self-sacrifice.

One former senior Vatican official, now retired, told a story illustrating that view.

Shortly before the resignation, this official said, then-Vatican spokesperson Joaquín Navarro-Valls was invited to lunch with Law in the Vatican residence of Archbishop James Harvey, an American who serves as head of the papal household and one of Law’s closest friends.

The agenda was to discuss whether Law should step down, a choice left in his hands by Pope John Paul II. According to this official, Navarro-Valls, a Spaniard, initially tried to persuade Law to hang on, warning of a “domino effect” that could bring down other bishops facing similar crises. Harvey, perhaps more in touch with American realities, was inclined to believe Law should go.

Throughout the lunch, this official said, Law stressed that he would do whatever was in the best interests of the church, and by the end a consensus emerged that resignation was the right choice.

In light of the conflicting reactions Law still elicits, from those who see him as a villain to those who regard him as a scapegoat for a much larger systemic problem, his current reality will probably leave few fully satisfied.

For those most heartsick about the crisis, especially abuse victims and their advocates, the fact that Law plays any role at all is “Exhibit A” for the case that the church still hasn’t learned its lesson.

Meanwhile, Law sympathizers may be equally frustrated that he seems about as close to rehabilitation as he’s likely to get. While Law has been confirmed informally as St. Mary Major’s archpriest, the honorary title accorded spiritual leaders of Roman basilicas, at least through his 80th birthday in 2011, everyone knows he’s still persona non grata in the United States, and even in Rome he’s sometimes kept at arm’s length -- welcome, but rarely celebrated.

* * *

Given that the details of Law’s handling of notorious abuser-priests such as John Geoghan and Paul Shanley have been endlessly dissected, the first question many Americans ask about him today boils down to this: “Does he get it?”

That is, does Law understand the suffering the sexual abuse crisis caused, and his own role in failing to come to grips with it? Or is he, to use the language of pop psychology, “in denial”?

Only Law could provide the answer, and he’s not talking. What friends do report, however, is that the 76-year-old Law, an only child without close living relatives, has gradually achieved spiritual calm -- though only after considerable struggle, they say, with what one described as “a deep wound.”

“He knows he made some bad decisions that caused harm to other people, and this is the consequence,” one American priest said who is close to Law.

“Yet he struggled with what he saw as a lack of support from his priests, and a failure to recognize his contributions -- his commitment to foreign missions, to the poor, to the unborn, and so on. It’s almost as if the good he did was just cast aside. He had to learn to put himself in God’s hands.”

“He has survived on the basis of his own spiritual life,” another Law confidante said. “He’s in exile, doing penance.”

Law’s base at St. Mary Major, known more for its air of classic Catholic spirituality than as a citadel of ecclesiastical power, may provide an appropriate setting for that penance.

When his appointment as archpriest was announced in May 2004, The New York Times reported that Law would be receiving a monthly salary of $12,000 and a magnificent apartment.

His reality is more prosaic. Law receives the standard Roman cardinal’s stipend of roughly 4,000 Euro a month (about $5,800 at current exchange rates), and lives in a modest two-story apartment in the basilica that also houses his private secretary and a small community of nuns from Mexico who run his household.

As is often the case with Type A personalities, Law seems to have found consolation in work. His role at St. Mary Major is not only to administer the basilica -- overseeing the installation of a new lighting system, for example, raising funds for renovations, and managing a staff of some 65 people -- but also to foster its spiritual life, and sources say he’s thrown himself into it with characteristic drive.

In May 2005, for example, Law gave a rare interview to L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, inviting Romans to a traditional Forty Hours devotion in which the Blessed Sacrament is exposed for round-the-clock veneration. The year before, Law led Lenten reflections on the Eucharist.

Almost every Sunday, Law presides over the main 10 a.m. Mass, delivering a brief homily in Italian. (Born in Torreón, Mexico, Law is fluent in Spanish and has worked to acquire sufficient mastery of Italian to preach comfortably.)

Law has also built a strong bond with the 25 resident clergy at St. Mary Major, known as canons, including Msgr. Paul McInerny, the Boston priest who serves as Law’s private secretary and chief aide. Sources say Law prays the Liturgy of the Hours with the canons and sees the chapter as a sort of spiritual community.

“Bernie has always admired the Benedictines, and he runs St. Mary Major like a Benedictine monastery,” said one American friend.

From St. Mary Major, Law has also become a point of reference for Americans and other English-speakers visiting Rome and its environs. In September, when a group of Americans and Canadians visited Capracotta in south central Italy to erect a statue in honor of ancestors who emigrated to North America, Law came down to say Mass. (Other American prelates in Rome, however, such as Levada and Cardinal John Foley, are generally regarded as more popular hosts for visiting groups, with Law sometimes cast as a “consolation prize.”)

Law also occasionally makes the Roman social scene, such as diplomatic receptions and dinner parties. During the consistory in November, for example, Law attended a reception at the Irish College for new Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh, Northern Ireland.

Most observers say the buzz that once accompanied sightings of Law on such occasions has largely dissipated -- though one American in Rome who makes the same rounds said, “The look on people’s faces is one of politeness, but many act as if there is an elephant in the room they are not supposed to see,” adding that Law usually comes early and leaves early.

* * *

Despite media fascination with Law’s role at St. Mary Major, which burst into public view after the death of Pope John Paul II when Law led one of the funeral Masses, Catholic insiders have long understood the post is mostly ceremonial. For those interested in Law’s continuing influence, the real story is the imposing number of Vatican offices where he still wields a vote and a voice.

As of this writing, Law is a member of the following dicasteries, or departments, of the Roman Curia:

The Congregation for Bishops
The Congregation for Eastern Churches
The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
The Congregation for Clergy
The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life
The Congregation for Catholic Education
The Pontifical Council for the Family.

The first three offices -- Bishops, Eastern Churches and Evangelization (popularly known by its old name, “Propaganda Fidei”) -- share responsibility for appointment of bishops.

[Law was a member of all these dicasteries before he resigned as Archbishop of Boston. He has not received any new Curial appointments since then.]

The Congregation for Bishops prepares nominations for Latin Rite dioceses in Europe, North America and other developed nations; Propaganda Fidei handles mission territories; and Eastern Churches is responsible for Eastern rite churches in communion with Rome.

Although the final word belongs to the Pope, in most cases he relies on the top pick submitted by the relevant Vatican office.

The fact that Law belongs to all three means there’s no appointment of a bishop anywhere in the world in which he’s not involved, at least in theory. Only Bertone, the secretary of state, shares the distinction of sitting on all three bodies.

Prelates who belong to these dicasteries, as well as priests who serve as their staff, are notoriously reluctant to describe their inner workings, but sources contacted by NCR in late November were willing to characterize Law’s contributions in general terms.

Law prepares assiduously for meetings, these sources said, poring over preparatory materials and drawing on his network of international contacts. Since he’s based in Rome, he can participate on a more regular basis. (The normal pattern is for Roman cardinals who belong to a given dicastery to attend its regular business meetings -- twice a month in the case of the Congregation for Bishops -- while cardinals elsewhere sometimes come only for annual plenary assemblies.)

Yet no source could point to a single appointment since Law’s arrival in Rome in 2004, whether to a diocese in the United States or elsewhere, or in the Vatican itself, that seemed unambiguously to bear Law’s fingerprints.

On bishops’ appointments, these sources said, Law has earned a reputation for being “objective,” which, in Vatican argot, means that he does not appear to be angling to get his friends appointed. Rather, they say, he looks at the names recommended by the nuncio, or papal ambassador, and offers a candid assessment.

Law is one of four Americans who sit on the Congregation for Bishops, the others being Levada, Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, and Cardinal Francis Stafford of the Apostolic Penitentiary.

By most accounts, Rigali and Levada exercise greater influence; both Archbishops Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., and Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee, for example, are former auxiliaries of Rigali from St. Louis, while Levada was instrumental in sending his friend and seminary classmate George Niederauer to San Francisco.

Vatican sources say that even absent the sex abuse crisis, Law’s influence would probably be diminished today because his longtime friend, Polish Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, is no longer the private secretary to the Pope.

More broadly, church-watchers say, it’s difficult to find evidence that Law is using his role to shape events in the American church. At least in Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley has said publicly that he does not consult with Law prior to making decisions.

Sources in the Boston chancery who spoke to NCR confirmed that assertion, saying they’ve never seen O’Malley contact Law prior to taking an important step.

Law’s friends insist he doesn’t aspire to wield long-distance control.

“He’s moved on,” one said. “He’s aware of what’s happening [in America], but he’s not trying to manipulate things.”

That, of course, is a friendly perspective. Critics often argue that whatever Law’s actual influence, the fact that he sits on the Congregation for Bishops, the Vatican office responsible not only for appointing bishops but also for correcting their misconduct, is testament to an enormous bit of unfinished business -- the absence of any mechanism for holding bishops accountable for mismanagement in the same firm fashion that priests are now held accountable for abuse.

Be that as it may, the truth is that Law doesn’t even have to try in order to exercise gravitational pull. When plans began to circulate for Pope Benedict XVI’s April 15-20 visit to the United States, for example, two American cardinals, O’Malley and Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, proposed that the Pope visit Boston to meet with victims of sexual abuse.

In the end, that idea was dropped, partly out of fear of reawakening the tumult of the past. Although no one would put it quite like this, organizers did not want the specter of Bernard Law to cloud the trip.

* * *

To some extent, Law’s diminished but still active life in Rome is part of the arc of any major scandal. People who rise to great heights usually get there because they’re aggressive and talented, and even after a fall from grace, they don’t simply disappear.

Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente after Watergate, wrote his memoirs and played the part of elder statesman. After serving two years in prison for securities fraud, financier Michael Milken has gone on to a highly public role as a philanthropist.

Even if Law has not faded away, however, he has shown little appetite for sifting through the ashes of his past, routinely spurning offers to discuss the events that brought him down.

Last year, for example, a major American publisher asked a writer to approach Law about cooperating with a biography, with the lure of a mid-six-figure advance. Through intermediaries, Law sent back word that he wasn’t interested, saying that the story could be told after he’s dead.

So far, the closest Law has come to public reflection was in that May 2005 interview with Avvenire, when veteran Italian journalist Gianni Cardinale asked Law for an impression of Benedict XVI. Law spoke of Benedict’s gentleness, capacity to listen, and respect for others. Cardinale observed that those qualities don’t jibe with the Darth Vader-esque reputation Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger acquired at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“I’m talking about reality, not about image,” Law replied. “One’s image is often a phantasm created by the mass media and by public opinion.” It was hard to escape the impression that Law was, at least unconsciously, also talking about himself.

Whether Bernard Law’s image as the poster boy of the American sexual abuse crisis is more phantasm or reality is, ultimately, a matter for historians to settle. Five years after his resignation, however, it seems that the ghosts of the past trouble Law less than they once did. That may not amount to redemption, but from the outside, it at least looks like relief.

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

John Allen recently pointed out that the Catholic Church does not 'punish' bishops because they are considered 'fatehrs' of their respective flocks, rather than 'officials' in the civilian sense. I will need a dedicated article on the subject by an informed insider and canon law expert to further process that information.

Meanwhile, I have felt that Cardinal Law was appointed to Santa Maria Maggiore - Rome's most important Marian shrine and the only Papal basilica dedicated to Mary - by John Paul II, whose devotion to Mary is legendary. Whatever then Archbishop Dsiwisz had to do with the appointment, it was John Paul who made it, and early enough so that no one could think he was not in full possession of his faculties when he signed the appointment. I trust his judgment, even if I find it difficult to understand. I can only presume he and Cardinal Law had a one-on-one talk and that he was satisfied Cardinal Law was properly penitent for his failings that led to the tragic outcome of the prestly sex abuses in Boston.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine that someone like Cardinal Law could carry on as Archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore without doing privately what he can to make amends for his own failings. No priest could offer the Sacrifice of the Mass every day without having reconciled himself to God as he should.

In the same way, I hope Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles has been carrying out his own private penitence, especially after the declaration he made in THE TIDINGS, official organ of his archdiocese, after the Pope's visit:



Reflection: The Pope's Pastoral Visit
By Cardinal Roger M. Mahony

April 25, 2008


Pope Benedict XVI came as our Pastor and as our Shepherd, and he spoke to us of our most human joys and sorrows, our hopes and our failures. He came in the name of Jesus Christ and he reminded us "to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus" [Hebrews 12:2].

Our Holy Father did not hesitate to lift up for us challenges and difficulties which our Church was facing here in the United States, but he never left us alone with our failures and problems. He stood with us, acknowledged the shame of sinful behavior, and urged us forward in the name of our Risen Lord.

He openly spoke of the scourge of sexual misconduct on the part of clergy over these past decades, he visited with victims of that abuse, he reminded us of our immigrant roots and urged us to be present to today's immigrant peoples and their plight, he spent quiet prayerful time at Ground Zero, he met with those young people suffering with physical disabilities, he spoke of the futility of violence and war, and he did not hesitate to alert us to the conflict between the Gospel of Jesus and our contemporary society.

But he never left us mired in our troubles and our difficulties. Rather, he pointed out time and again that God's presence and grace are far more powerful than the forces of evil in the world. Again and again he led us to focus not on the pain and sufferings of our human failures, but rather, on the redeeming grace of our Risen Lord.

Time and again he led us back to our friendship with Jesus Christ, and urged us to recognize the presence, love, and mercy of Jesus surrounding us.

For me personally, the two most memorable moments of grace with our Holy Father were ones shrouded in quiet prayer, silence and few public words: his meeting with victims of sexual abuse in Washington, D.C., and his visit to Ground Zero in New York.

Both of these events had the dignity of silence, the depth of sadness, and the promise of hope-filled prayer - and both captured deeply the most wounded parts of our Church and of our country.

Yes, the great outdoor Masses were inspiring, the meetings with ecumenical and interfaith leaders were moving, and the gathering with young people and seminarians was memorable. But the power of those times of quiet healing moved me more deeply than all the rest of the Holy Father's many public appearances.

At first, I didn't know why. After all, concelebrating Mass with the Pope and tens of thousands of people was surely uplifting and a source of joy for us all.

Slowly the realization became real: those times of quiet healing grace were exactly what I needed at this time in my own journey of faith. My own mistakes and failures over the years had continued to burden me - a weight that I failed to realize was holding me down.

The gentle and quiet manner of Pope Benedict touched me in the most vulnerable depths of my soul. I felt uplifted by our Shepherd and my heavy burdens somehow seemed lighter.

How did our Holy Father accomplish this? Through his consistent call to faithful discipleship in Jesus Christ, and his reassurance that we are truly saved by hope in our loving God!


His recent Encyclical Letter, Spe Salvi [Saved by Hope], continues to point us forward and upward on our journeys. He does not allow us to remain mired in our sins and faults, but instead, kept repeating the call to "true freedom" in Jesus who has come as "the way, the truth, and the life" for each one of us.

I return to Los Angeles a different disciple of Jesus than when I left a week ago. Thank you, Lord, for sending us not only the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of Peter, but also a brother and friend who knows Jesus personally and gave us six extraordinary days of grace and hope!

The aggrieved victims and their militant advocates are bent on having Law and Mahony, to begin with, 'punished' by the Vatican in a way commensurate to what they perceive as the enormous damage they have indirectly wrought on thousands of victims - such as perhaps, a humiliating revocation of all their privileges and prerequisites as cardinals. But since canon law does not now provide for such punishment of bishops or cardinals for indirect 'crimes' so that is not likely to happen at all.

We can only go on praying for the victims, and for the offending priests and their bishops, that they may find peace in charity and reconciliation.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/04/2008 23:04]
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A possible 'papabile'
All Things Catholic
by John L. Allen, Jr.

Friday, May 2, 2008


The second part of Allen's Friday column today is devoted to Mons. Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture. And it shows Allen has not resisted what he calls the 'fun' of speculating on the papal succession brought up in rather vulgar fashion last week by Herve Yannou of the French newspaper Le Figaro. Allen, is very careful, however, to introduce the subject so as to purge it of any morbidity or affront to sensibilities. (The first part of the column was his interview with US Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, which I posted int he APOSTOLIC VOYAGE... thread).



Whenever the subject of Pope Benedict XVI's health comes up these days in Rome, comparisons to Leo XIII are very much in the air. Elected in 1878 at 68, Leo served until he was 93, marking the third-longest pontificate in church history. Given Benedict's obvious stamina during his recent trip to the United States, this appears a credible parallel indeed.

(Not everyone, it should be noted, drew this seemingly clear conclusion from the Pope's performance in the States: ncrcafe.org/node/1765)

Nonetheless, the fact that the Pope is 81 cannot help but stimulate that corner of the Catholic brain given to pondering the future, even if no one seriously believes that a transition is anywhere on the horizon.

For those looking around to see who might have the "right stuff" to be a future Pope, a Vatican press conference this week regarding next October's Synod of Bishops on the Bible took on a whole new level of significance.



Among the presenters at the press conference was a man who strikes many church-watchers as a rising star: Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Ravasi is a protégé of the emeritus archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. A highly cultured soul passionate about art and music, Ravasi revitalized the storied Ambrosian Library in Milan, turning it into an important center of civic life.

He also became an important popular writer, penning articles for the major Italian secular paper Il Sole delle 24 Ore as well as the Italian bishops' own daily, Avvenire.

Many Italians believe that when Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan turns 75 next March, Ravasi will be an odds-on favorite as his successor. Even in his present position, however, Ravasi is in line to become a cardinal whenever Benedict XVI next decides to hold a consistory. When that happens, Ravasi, 65, will almost certainly figure on most short lists of papabile, meaning possible candidates as a future Pope.

According to Italian vaticanista Sandro Magister, Ravasi was in line to be appointed bishop of Assisi in 2005, but that nomination was blocked due to concerns about an essay he wrote in 2002 on the subject of Easter titled, "He was not raised; he arose."

Some saw Ravasi's thinking as potentially heterodox. Given that background, most insiders saw his appointment at the Council for Culture as a personal decision of Benedict XVI, made outside the normal bureaucratic channels.

(Editor's Note: Ravasi is a subject of a profile in the May 16 issue of NCR.)

Monday's press conference offered another bravura Ravasi performance.

He began with a trademark flash of humor. He noted that a recent international poll sponsored by the Catholic Biblical Federation about familiarity with the Bible originally surveyed nine countries, and is now being expanded to include four more.

He wryly suggested that perhaps one more country ought to be surveyed, bringing the total to what he called the "Biblical number" of 14: the Vatican City-State.

"There might be a surprise or two" in how much occupants of the Vatican actually know about the Bible, he laughed.

Ravasi then offered a five-point overview of the findings of the new study. He was nothing if not erudite: By my count, he managed to quote Paschal, Erasmus and Umberto Eco once, and Nietzsche twice, in the course of a roughly fifteen-minute presentation.

For example, apropos of apparently strong support in many countries for educating the young about the Bible, Ravasi quoted Eco: "Why should our children be expected to know everything about the heroes of Homer, but nothing about Moses?"

On the cultural level, Ravasi argued, the Bible is a touchstone of Western identity, and if it's lost we lose some essential part of ourselves. He noted that even a virulent critic of Christianity such as Nietzsche once remarked that "between the Psalms and the poetry of Petrarch, we experience the same difference as that between our home and a foreign country."

On the spiritual level, Ravasi observed that for centuries, the Bible, especially the Psalter, was the great prayer book of the church. He called for a new commitment to prayer with scripture, including personal, private prayer. He cited Erasmus to the effect that scripture should be part of the "atmosphere" of Christian life.

Such wit and wisdom clearly recommend Ravasi as future church leader. Of course, that doesn't make him a slam-dunk papabile: Some might prefer a Pope from outside Europe, at least outside Italy; some might think two scholar-popes in a row would be pushing the envelope; some conservatives may harbor reservations about Ravasi's doctrine or his politics, especially given his pedigree with Martini.

What the "papal April" of 2005 should have taught us, however, is that matters such as one's stand on the issues, or one's geographical background, generally fade inside a conclave, while perceptions of personal qualities become much more decisive. At that level, it's not difficult to imagine that Ravasi might get a serious look whenever the time comes.


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Fracas over Paraguay's bishop President:
'It's the theology, stupid'

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

May 3, 2008

Since the news of Bishop Lugo's election came during the Papal visit to the US, I was unable to post stories on it with due diligence. John Allen's piece today provides a Church-oriented take on the canonical and theological implications of Lugo's unprecedented situation.



I’ve long said that trying to report on Roman Catholicism through the prism of corporate logic or secular politics is like trying to present a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional space: inevitably only bits and pieces of the reality come into view, and the resulting picture is often badly distorted.

That’s a nice sound-bite so far as it goes, but most people need a concrete example to get the point.



Recent days have given us a doozy, in the form of controversy surrounding the election of Fernando Lugo, a former Verbite priest and the emeritus bishop of the San Fernando diocese in Paraguay, as his country’s new President -- a victory which came despite Vatican insistence that Lugo remains a bishop and thus should stay out of the partisan fray.

On the surface it looks like a typical politics story, but in reality the situation can’t be fully understood without some grasp of Catholic theology and canon law, especially concerning what it means to be a bishop.

Here’s the relevant back-story: Lugo, a left-wing populist, has long been a popular figure on the social scene in Paraguay. Activism runs in his veins; his father was arrested 20 times under the regime of former dictator Alfredo Stroessner, and three of his four brothers were expelled from the country.

In 1996, Lugo hosted a continent-wide gathering of base communities, the small faith groups dedicated to spiritual formation and political action associated with liberation theology. In 2004, Lugo supported peasants protesting unequal land distribution and the inroads of commercial agriculture.

Talk of Lugo as a presidential candidate began more than three years ago, and ever since the question of his status as a Catholic bishop has been a live wire.

Article 235 of Paraguay’s Constitution prohibits a religious minister from holding political office, so in 2006 Lugo wrote to the Vatican to ask for “laicization,” meaning release from the clerical state. He then announced that he had resigned his office as a bishop, which was enough under Paraguayan law to allow his candidacy to proceed.

Nonetheless, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops wrote Lugo on January 4, 2007, to inform him that his request was denied. Obviously Lugo chose not to comply, so inevitably news reports since his election are full of talk about tension between the incoming President and Rome.

To date, the standoff has typically been presented in either disciplinary or political terms. Some suggest that the Vatican turned Lugo down on the general principle that it doesn’t want clergy involved in partisan politics (certainly true as far as it goes), or in order to defend the Pope’s authority.

Others point to Lugo’s left-wing platform to suggest that the Vatican fears the specter of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, or is anxious about a revival of Latin America’s liberation theology movement.

In any case, the suggestion is that saying “no” to Lugo amounts to fussy legalism rooted in ulterior motives. After all, from a purely secular point of view, if a guy is determined to quit, what's the point of refusing to accept – unless, of course, you want to make his life difficult?

What that analysis omits, however, is any distinctively theological dimension to the problem.

Applying that lens, it’s actually not clear that the Vatican could laicize Lugo even if it were so inclined. Canon lawyers can’t point to a single recent example of a bishop being laicized, and although it’s a debated point, there’s a solid argument that it’s simply not possible.

Theologically, sacramental ordination is like a bell that can’t be un-rung. Canon 290 of the Code of Canon Law states clearly: “After it has been validly received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid.” Nonetheless, a priest can be “laicized,” meaning formally returned to the lay state as a matter of law, even though the permanent “mark” of ordination endures.

For priests and deacons, laicization is seen as an extreme step taken only in serious cases. Priests can petition the Vatican for laicization, for instance if they wish to be married. Granting the request is considered a pontifical act, meaning something the Pope has to do personally, and it's considered a favor rather than a right.

Priests can also be forcibly laicized if found guilty of a serious offense, as has happened with several notorious abuser-priests in the recent sex abuse scandals. Canon 290 states that laicization can be done “to deacons only for serious reasons, and to presbyters only for the most serious reasons.”

Tellingly, however, canon 290 never refers to laicization of a bishop, as if that option were almost unthinkable.

Some experts believe that omission is based on a significant theological difference between the priesthood and the episcopacy. Put simply, the argument against the possibility of laicizing a bishop comes down to this: the episcopacy represents the “fullness” of sacramental ordination. That’s why bishops can ordain priests and other bishops, while priests cannot.

Given that difference, some experts believe the imprint produced by ordination to the episcopacy runs so deep as to be indissolvable, not just metaphysically but legally.

Not every theologian or canon lawyer buys that view, but it seems implicit in the way the Vatican has handled recent cases involving dissident bishops.

Bishops can be removed from office, even involuntarily, by an act of the Pope; that happened in 1995, for example, with French Bishop Jacques Gaillot, whom John Paul II removed from the Évreux diocese and assigned to the titular see of Partenia. Gaillot is known as the “red cleric” for liberal views at odds with official Catholic teaching on a wide variety of matters.

In Gaillot’s case, however, he was simply assigned to a non-existent diocese – he was never laicized. Gaillot remains a valid Roman Catholic bishop.

If the Vatican felt free to laicize bishops, it would probably already have happened several times, particularly in cases where renegade bishops have illicitly ordained priests and other bishops, thereby creating the basis for a full-blown schism.

First in line might well be Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian faith-healer and exorcist who has broken with Rome and ordained bishops as part of his “Married Priests Now!” movement.

From Rome’s point of view, however, Milingo remains a bishop and hence his ordinations are technically valid, even if the Vatican has announced that it will never grant legal faculties to the men who have been ordained.

To be sure, there are experts who take the contrary view, that a bishop could be laicized if the Pope really wanted to do so.

Some point to Canon 1405, for example, which gives the Pope authority to judge bishops in penal cases. Given that laicization is provided for as a penalty in canon law, these canonists say, there’s no reason in principle it couldn’t be applied to a bishop, even if prudence and respect for the episcopal office counsel restraint.

Others cite an 1862 rite published by Pope Benedict XIV for the “degradation of a bishop,” which seems to involve the ritual casting out of a bishop from the episcopal state. All the symbols of office, such as the mitre and pallium, are removed, and the bishop’s fingers and head are even ritually scraped with a knife to signify the removal of the anointing imparted in his ordination ceremony.

For now, the relevant point is that there’s an active theological and canonical debate inside Catholicism about the very possibility of laicizing a bishop. Saying “no” to Lugo, therefore, is not just about grinding axes or scoring political points, but also respecting the theological and canonical complexities.

To be crystal clear, none of this is intended to suggest that the Vatican’s recalcitrance is entirely innocent of political motives, or that there aren’t good theological arguments for laicizing bishops. Those questions will be the object of much legitimate discussion for some time to come.

What the current fracas does illustrate, however, is that in trying to understand why the Church does what it does, it’s incumbent upon observers to take seriously its own inner logic. Otherwise, important pieces of the picture will forever remain out of focus. Applied to Lugo’s situation, the bottom line might well be: “It’s the theology, stupid.”


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

A Los Angeles Times story on the new President provides the wider geopolitical context for the story.

Paraguay moves left with
President-elect Fernando Lugo


The 'bishop of the poor' is seen as one of the more moderate
of South America's left-leaning leaders -
independent of the U.S., but not hostile.

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter




Lupo in younger days.

ASUNCION, PARAGUAY, April 22 -- The election of Fernando Lugo as president of Paraguay signals the latest advance of the left in Latin America and the end of more than six decades of rule by a political party best known for a longtime anti-communist dictatorship.

Lugo, a bespectacled former Roman Catholic bishop, appears to be among the more moderate left-leaning leaders of South America, where only two major nations, Colombia and Peru, continue to be run by conservatives.

After sweeping to victory Sunday, he was quickly congratulated by the U.S. ambassador. State Department officials said Lugo has exhibited no outward hostility toward the United States.

"We're ready to work with him," said one State Department official, who declined to be identified because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue.

The now-dominant left in South America has taken many forms -- from the stridently anti-U.S. rhetoric of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales to the generally pro-Washington sentiments of Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chile's Michelle Bachelet. Lugo, 56, dubbed "the bishop of the poor," is seen as independent from the U.S. but not hostile.

"Lugo is a bit of an unknown quantity . . . but the indicators are that he's a relatively moderate type," said Gerald McCulloch, a former U.S. diplomat who heads the Paraguayan-American Chamber of Commerce, a trade group.

It is a measure of the changing times in U.S.-Latin American relations that a president-elect like Lugo hardly raises eyebrows in Washington. A decade ago, a chief of state with Lugo's background probably would have sounded alarm bells. The ex-bishop endorses Liberation Theology, a doctrine criticized by the Vatican for Marxist influence.

Many observers on the continent say Washington's intense focus on the Middle East in recent years has contributed to its diminished influence in Latin America. A region that was once at the center of Cold War politics is now an afterthought, according to many Latin American analysts.

"I don't think this [election] is even on Washington's radar screen, given all the other stuff going on in the world," said Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

Part of the perception that Lugo will govern as a moderate stems from the broad-based representation in Lugo's victorious Patriotic Alliance for Change, whose members range from the far left to the right. The coalition's key institutional anchor is Paraguay's Authentic Liberal Radical Party, a well-established conservative party with broad U.S. contacts.

Lugo's vice president is a Liberal party standard-bearer. And as president, Lugo will have to rely on the bloc of Liberal lawmakers to get anything passed in a divided Congress.

"If you look at Lugo's alliance, there's a lot of mainstream political leaders," noted one Western observer here. "It's not all campesino groups. It's not the coca growers union."

The latter is a reference to Bolivia's Morales, who emerged from that nation's coca growers movement -- long hostile to U.S. anti-drug policies -- before being elected president in December 2005. A cornerstone of Morales' campaign was his alliance with Chavez and antipathy toward "imperialism" from Washington.

Lugo has studiously avoided such rhetoric. In a preelection interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lugo noted Washington's sometimes-contradictory role in Latin America -- and especially in Paraguay.

Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, who ran the country with an iron fist for 35 years, was a U.S. Cold War ally before his government's abysmal human rights record soured ties with Washington and he was ousted in 1989. His Colorado Party held power for more than 60 years before Lugo's victory.

"The United States . . . has sustained the great dictatorships, but afterward lifted the banner of democracy," Lugo noted.

However, he said, Washington must acknowledge a new scenario in which Latin American governments "won't accept any type of intervention from any country, no matter how big it is."

It is a sensitive issue that resounds throughout South and Central America.

U.S. interventions -- coups, invasions, funding of armed groups -- have cast a shadow over relations between the United States and the region. Latin American leaders, including Lugo, are united in demanding noninterference from Washington.

"They don't see themselves as part of the strategic preserve of the United States," said Shifter of the Washington think tank.

Nevertheless, Shifter added: "The good news from the American perspective is that these governments still want to deal with the U.S., though on different terms."

The Bush administration, in turn, has backed off somewhat from unpopular and divisive projects such as an Americas-wide free-trade zone. Brazil and Paraguay were among the nations that balked at the plan, deeming it unfair to South American producers.

Just as Lugo has refrained from attacking Washington, he has also been careful not to assail Venezuela's Chavez or lavish excess praise on him. Lugo -- who won 41% of the vote, compared with 31% for his chief opponent, Colorado Party candidate Blanca Ovelar -- was forced repeatedly to deny links to the Venezuelan leader and insisted he would not be beholden to any side in the ongoing chill in relations between Chavez and the United States.

Asked to define his politics, Lugo has said he would negotiate an "intermediate line," somewhere between the hard left of Chavez and Morales and the more moderate stance of Lula and Bachelet.

"We have to make our own road toward integration and not be an island between progressive governments," Lugo told the Spanish daily El Pais. "Today in Latin America there are no unified, common paradigms."

During the campaign, many of Lugo's foreign policy pronouncements focused on two giant neighbors -- Brazil and Argentina -- rather than on the U.S. The president-elect has vowed to get better deals from both nations on a pair of joint hydroelectric projects.

Lugo's election has raised more public concern in Brazil than in the United States, which has relatively little investment here. Lula has firmly declared that Brazil is unwilling to renegotiate the terms of a major hydroelectric treaty that Lugo says cheats Paraguay out of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

"The treaty will not change," Lula declared after congratulating Lugo on his victory.

Here in Paraguay, a nation of 6.6 million best known for decades of poverty, smuggling and right-wing rule, there is much speculation about what a Lugo administration will bring -- in foreign policy and most everything else.

"We don't know if Lugo will try to take the country closer to Hugo Chavez," said Hugo Estigarribia, a senator-elect from the Colorado Party, which will now be the opposition bloc.

But many Paraguayans were euphoric at the prospect of change of a party apparatus condemned as corrupt and incompetent. Thousands celebrated on the streets.

"I'm 59 years old. I was born with the Colorado Party in power," said Eladio Casanova, a waiter downtown. "But I didn't want to die with the Colorado Party still in power."


03/05/2008 19:05
 
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Turk who shot Pope John Paul II
seeks Polish citizenship

By SUZAN FRASER



Agca, photographed in Jan. 2008.

ANKARA, Turkey, May 2 (AP) - The Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II is applying for Polish citizenship because he wants to live in the country of the late Pontiff, whom he called his "spiritual brother."

But the Polish Foreign Ministry said the chances of Mehmet Ali Agca getting citizenship are "minimal" since he hasn't provided any "good service" to John Paul's mostly Catholic homeland.

Agca also wants to be transferred to a prison in Poland to serve the remainder of his sentence on a different conviction, lawyer Haci Ali Ozhan told The Associated Press.

"He has chosen Poland because it is country of the Pope," Ozhan said. "Because the Pope forgave him and paid close attention to him, we believe that the application will be accepted."

Agca shot and seriously wounded John Paul at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on May 13, 1981. Two years later the pope met with Agca in an Italian prison and forgave him for the shooting.

Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for the attack. He currently is serving a prison term in Turkey for killing prominent journalist Abdi Ipekci in Turkey in 1979 and is due to be released in 2010.

What motivated his crimes remains a mystery, but he belonged to an extreme right-wing Turkish organization, the Grey Wolves, which was involved in political murders in the 1970s.

In a petition addressed to Poland's devout Roman Catholic president, Lech Kaczynski, Agca said: "I shall be proud of becoming a member of the noble Polish nation, if my request to be granted Polish citizenship is accepted."

The petition to the President, who has the power to bestow or revoke Polish citizenship, was made available to the AP.

"I am not a stranger to your country because the national hero of Poland, Pope Karol Wojtyla, is my spiritual brother," Agca said, referring to John Paul by his birth name.

Agca's lawyer said he submitted the application to the Polish Embassy in Ankara on Thursday. It wasn't immediately processed, however, due to some missing paperwork. Ozhan said he would return next week to complete the application.

In Warsaw, Poland, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said officials had known for some time of Agca's plan but that chances of him being accepted were slim.

"The condition for according Polish citizenship is residence in Poland for at least five years, prior to applying," Paszkowski said. "I think that at least from this formal point of view the chances for Ali Agca receiving Polish citizenship are minimal."

Paszkowski said the five-year rule "can be waived if the foreigner seeking Polish citizenship has special merits for the country, has done good service to Poland."

"Agca rather has not."

John Paul is revered as a national hero in Poland. After he was shot, priests throughout the country led prayers for him amid fears he would not survive.

John Paul II died April 2, 2005, after serving as Pope for almost 27 years.



03/05/2008 21:36
 
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Author coached White House
on Catholic issues

By Lawn Griffiths

Phoenix, Arizona
May 2, 2008



If President Bush seems to have gone well out of his way two weeks ago to welcome and host Pope Benedict XVI during the papal visit to Washington, D.C., perhaps Deal Hudson can take some of the credit.

Bush raised eyebrows when he decided to travel to the airport to greet the pope on arrival, then held a gala event with 12,000 guests on the White House lawn for the Pope's 81st birthday, and finally hosted a state dinner for him in the East Room of the White House, although the Pontiff himself did not attend.

"I helped make the president Catholic-friendly," said Hudson, who spent almost six years on Bush's campaign and then time in the White House as the adviser on Roman Catholic issues.

Hudson, 58, a Presbyterian turned Baptist turned Catholic, recently published Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States.

In the book, he shows how the two large factions, Roman Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, despite clear differences and historical issues, converged as political allies because of shared core beliefs, especially those dealing with family.

He discusses scores of influential people in American religion and politics who have helped shape events in the past three decades, such as the campaign to defeat 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a Roman Catholic; the rise of the Moral Majority, and the impact of such faith leaders as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson.

"The basic hub of all issues is the defense of the family," Hudson said in a phone interview from Fairfax, Va. "It is not about abortion or anything - it is about the family, and that is precisely why the movement is not going away."

Hudson burst with pride on April 16 when Pope Benedict was greeted by the huge crowd, larger than one for Queen Elizabeth II's visit. Bush loves Catholics, Hudson said.

"That is why he took this very historical step of going out to Andrews Air Force Base. That was from the heart. He didn't have to do it." It made "perfect sense," he said, because the President has "taken heat for" issues that "Pope John Paul II and Benedict have stood for. They are kind of comrades in arms."

Hudson, who is the former editor of the Catholic monthly Crisis, and now editor of its online version, Insidecatholic.com, said it was former White House adviser Karl Rove who first contacted him in 1998 to invite him to give Texas Gov. George Bush a crash course on Catholic issues.

"I was the guy they asked to run the Catholic outreach for the 2000 campaign" after something he had written about Catholic voters caught their eyes. "So Karl Rove called me out of nowhere and asked me to come meet Governor Bush, and I did, and Karl asked me to run the Catholic effort." He said he held a number of meetings with Bush, some lasting up to an hour and a half.

The U.S. Conference of Bishops objected to Hudson being given Catholic outreach adviser status, he said, "but Karl Rove asked me to do it. They wrote a letter to the president saying that only the Conference of Bishops should be talking to the White House about policy issues," he said.

That work moved from the campaign into the White House, through 2004, when Hudson stepped down after the National Catholic Reporter unearthed and published a story about a 1994 sexual encounter between him and a drunken female student while Hudson was a tenured professor at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution in New York City.

Hudson resigned and paid a $30,000 settlement. Newsweek columnist Dana Milbank details Hudson's missteps in his own new book, Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government.

Asked why seemingly many from the religious conservative movement have fallen from grace because of immoral actions, Hudson said, "You are asking the right guy," albeit 13 years before. "We are susceptible to that, and those of us who publicly espouse positions that we think are morally important, that when we make mistakes and they become public - and we all look like hypocrites."

But he said, "Sometimes it is very lonely in those positions. You get put up so high, and everybody thinks you are so great and happy and enjoying life, when, in fact, you are stretched terribly thin emotionally. You know you are a target, and you feel very vulnerable and lonely."

In his book, Hudson asserts that religious liberals have a strained relationship with voters because of their positions on such issues as abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage.

Democrats will regain favor among Catholics and "get a piece of the religious conservative vote" when they break free from the influence of such groups as Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women and the Catholic reform group Call to Action, Hudson said.

"They seem more concerned about race and gender than about families," he said, adding that Republicans consistently "raise issues about culture, the media, the pop culture and music - and the elites laugh at them, but the moms and dads around the country will be nodding in agreement."

Hudson disputes what David Kuo, a former deputy director of White House faith-based initiatives, asserted in his book Tempting Faith, in which he termed collaboration between the federal government and religious organizations for social services as "political seduction" and a "sad charade to provide political cover to the White House that needed compassion and religion as political tools."

Hudson, in his own book, calls Kuo's charges "on the eve of the 2006 election, a well-timed attempt to drive a wedge between the GOP and evangelicals, but it had no noticeable effect."

In March, Hudson met with the Rev. John Hagee, the Texas Baptist megachurch pastor who has made many critical comments about the Catholic Church.

He has called the Roman Catholic Church "the great whore" and a "false cult system" for not standing up to Adolf Hitler in its persecution of the Jews. Hagee's remarks set off a firestorm among Catholics and it was heightened when Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for president.

Hagee "seemed genuinely perplexed by the label he had acquired," Hudson said in a lengthy recap of the meeting at Insidecatholic.com. He said that meeting, with another planned, "provides a starting point for seeing another side of the man who has become a symbol of anti-Catholicism."

Hudson said he is working with Hagee to fix any rift between evangelicals and Catholics. "I am trying to help him not be seen as anti-Catholic."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/05/2008 01:02]
09/05/2008 01:11
 
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Wow, does this guy think he's a hero or what? I wish I hadn't eaten dinner right before reading this story.


Gay bishop plans civil union despite threats
It’s ‘what God is calling me to do,’ says controversial clergyman


By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 10:25 a.m. CT, Thurs., May. 8, 2008

Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson knows he is inviting death threats by entering into a civil union with his gay partner on the eve of his church’s biggest ecclesiastical conference. And he says it is worth it, because he is doing what God asks of him.

“When your life is at stake, you learn that there are things in life that are much worse than death,” Bishop Robinson told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday in New York. “That’s the great reward of being a Christian. Not living your life — that’s worse than death. And if something were to happen to me, I would know that I am doing what I discern God is calling me to do.”

In 2003, Robinson became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church when he was elected by the congregations of New Hampshire. Dubbed “the most controversial Christian in the world,” he faced death threats then and wore a bulletproof vest during his consecration. Now, he has announced that he will “marry” Mark Andrew, his partner of some 20 years, a move sure to outrage conservatives in his religion.

He said he is entering the civil union because he wants his partner as well as his two daughters from a previous marriage to have the same legal protections afforded heterosexual couples.

“I am simply not going to put my life in jeopardy without putting into place the protections for my beloved partner and my children and my grandchildren that are offered to me in a civil union,” Robinson said. “I think any husband or wife would want to do that.”

Banned from conference
The Episcopal Church is the American branch of the Church of England, or Anglican Church. Once every 10 years, Anglican bishops from around the world gather in England to pray and discuss church policy and doctrine at what is known as the Lambeth Conference. Robinson has been told he cannot attend the conference this July as a full participant because of protests from conservative congregations, mainly in Africa and Latin America. But he is going anyway, to stand outside the meetings and testify for others like him.

“The table that God invites us to includes everyone, and the church is going to get it wrong sometimes,” Robinson said. “I think the Archbishop of Canterbury has gotten this wrong by not inviting everyone. I’m going to go and offer myself and talk with anyone who wants to talk to someone who is unashamedly gay and unashamedly Christian.”

He knows that some people will not accept that.

“My life is under threat again for my attending the Lambeth Conference this summer, but we’re told in Scripture that it will always be costly to follow in God’s way,” Robinson said, his tone full of calm conviction. “When you try to love the world the way God loves the world, you’re going to get in trouble. The prophets of Judaism got in trouble. Jesus got in trouble.”

Conflict within the church
When he became a bishop in June 2003, he had appeared on TODAY and told Lauer that he would consider stepping down if his presence created a rift in the church. Since then, about 100 of the 8,000 Episcopal parishes in the United States have split with the American church and aligned themselves with the conservative Anglicans in Africa. Robinson pointed out that it is a very small number as a percentage of all congregations.

“It’s important to keep that in proportion,” he said. “But conflict is no surprise to the church; it’s been there from the very beginning.”

In any event, he no longer sees that he has a choice in whether to remain as bishop or not. “I’ve come to understand that this is a particular historic role that God is calling me to play at this moment,” Robinson told Lauer. “God has seemed so palpably close in this, there’s no way I could regret this. My job as a bishop of the church is to exhibit God’s love for all of God’s people, especially my enemies.”

He has written a book, “In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God,” published Thursday. In it, he writes, “It's time that progressive Christians rescue the Bible from the Religious Right, which has held it hostage and claimed it as its own private territory for too long.”

Robinson feels that people who use the Bible to condemn homosexuals fail to understand Scripture. It is called an abomination for a man to lie with another man as with a woman, but, he writes, the Bible also says it is an abomination to eat pork or shellfish, to wear clothing made of two different fibers, or to sow two different types of seed in the same field.

“We’ve often misinterpreted Scripture,” Robinson told Lauer. “We’ve used Scripture to justify slavery; the subjugation of women. And now we’re realizing that what the Bible initially seems to say about same-sex relationships is not actually what we’re talking about today — faithful, monogamous, lifelong-intentioned relationships between people of the same sex.”

13/05/2008 03:42
 
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It's all in a day's work
for conservationist
who exhumed Padre Pio's corpse

by Fiona Galea Debono

Malta, May 12, 2008




The man responsible for the recent exhumation of the mystic and stigmatic Padre Pio, one of the Catholic world's most popular saints, told The Times that, as a boy, a dead body would have impressed him and he admits he would have gone to sleep at his mother's if a neighbour died, let alone if it were someone even closer to home.

Of course, that has all changed now, Nazzareno Gabrielli being more hands on with the dead than most of us would like to be... In his lifetime, he has conserved the corpses of no fewer than 50 saints. It's all in a day's work!

Maybe his serenity in the face of death is a result of the serenity he notices around these corpses. "Death is scary because of the detachment it brings from personal effects; because we have to distance ourselves from the things we love. But, ultimately, it is about falling asleep.

"Now, I've exorcised death. It is natural."

A conservationist, or "chemist of art", it is hard to sum up Dott. Gabrielli in one word. But, despite his vast experience, he admits that he could not sleep the night he was called and commissioned to exhume and conserve the body of the venerated Padre Pio, the first stigmatised priest in the history of the Church, who has been credited with over 1,000 miraculous cures.

"Let's face it, he is a particular person... entering into the paranormal..."

Not only does Dott. Gabrielli have constant close contact with corpses but most are also endowed with extraordinary spiritual gifts and charisms, known to leave a unique impact on lives even after their death. Among the bodies he has conserved is that of Pope John XXIII.

In the case of Padre Pio, he had the gift of bilocation, healed the sick and could prophesy the future, has millions of devotees around the world, his tomb in San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy is visited by seven million pilgrims annually and he was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

But for Dott. Gabrielli, a believer, it was, ultimately, a job. "Yes, you can feel a sense of pride, undoubtedly. Why am I doing it and not someone else? But when you are working, you tend to forget the subject.

"Then, every now and again, you remember and that is when the devotion and even a sense of fear set in." To add to the pressure, the deadline for the conservation job was established before the condition of the corpse had even been determined.

Padre Pio's exhumation was authorised by the Vatican in January and was granted so that his body could be prepared for public veneration last month to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death and the 90th of the first appearance of the stigmata.

Having been chosen for the job filled Dott. Gabrielli with a strong emotion. Nevertheless, after the first evening of worrying, he woke up with ideas on how to proceed... And science overcame emotion.

During the process, however, emotion would play its part too. A Church representative often interrupted his work with a prayer and Dott. Gabrielli would get irritated, internally. "But those moments of reflection were important; they were moments of serenity. The religious aspect formed part of the job."

The body of the mystical monk was found to be in a "relatively good state", Dott. Gabrielli said, despite the fact that his tomb was completely flooded, water having seeped in and rendering him susceptible to dismemberment.

The job required 50 days - less, however, than other similar jobs on bodies that were in a better condition, Dott. Gabrielli said.

While opening the grave means the body instantly starts to lose its equilibrium, St Pio's would have totally disintegrated within five years had no intervention occurred. Now, he is destined to last until "the Resurrection", Dott. Gabrielli laughed.

Nothing was done to preserve Padre Pio's body when he died in 1968 but the fact that it remained intact was not extraordinary, Dott. Gabrielli explained. A body normally lasts a mere few months but he insisted that it is not only the Italian Capuchin priest's that resisted 40 years. Environmental conditions have an effect, as does the way the body is positioned in the coffin. "Sometimes, it can be explained..."

As regards the saint's stigmata, which are said to have disappeared on his death, Dott. Gabrielli said: "I saw the mittens. That's it!" In fact, the wounds are said to have disappeared even before his death, he pointed out.

As to whether there is a macabre side to what is known as the "reconnaissance" of a dead body, Dott. Gabrielli said "it depends on the spirit with which you tackle it".

It is a delicate issue but he referred to the amount of pilgrims who stop in front of Pope John in St Peter's Basilica in Rome, crying, and even reviving their faith.

"After all, it is not only about a reasoned faith but also a visible one," he explained. "Once the job is done, I have heard nuns scream like they were fans in front of their favourite rock star," he says of the devotion and the sentiments that are provoked by being able to venerate a saint's corpse.

The exhumation - the first time the tomb had been opened since Padre Pio's death - was approved by the Vatican despite opposition from some of the saint's most ardent followers. In fact, Dott. Gabrielli found himself in the midst of a controversy that erupted but seems to have remained somewhat detached and kept a low key.

However, it is still as though he is treading on eggshells when he broaches the subject and the aim of the exhumation. "I did the job with emotion and considered myself to be privileged. But I did not give it that much thought either. I had the blessing of the highest authority," he justifies.

Until some years ago, Dott. Gabrielli, one of the only authorities in his area, would have maintained that the necessity to conserve the bodies of saints would die. But it has not been the case. His recent high-profile job has attracted even more attention to his services and the demand is strong.

The former director of the Musei Vaticani, Dott. Gabrielli has laid his hands on and preserved several prestigious works of art. The principles of conservation are fundamentally the same - they just need to be adapted, he explained.



14/05/2008 15:52
 
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EMERITUS DEAN OF CARDINALS DIES -
HIS RETIREMENT TO HIS NATIVE AFRICA
PAVED THE WAY FOR CARDINAL RATZINGER
TO BECOME DEAN


With great thanks to Rocco Palmo who had this on his blog yesterday. I have not yet seen another news item about it.





Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, the Benin native who rose to become the most influential African prelate in the church's modern history, died Tuesday afternoon in a Paris hospital.

The dean-emeritus of the College of Cardinals, long a close ally and collaborator of Pope Benedict, was 86. [They became cardinals in the same mini-consistory of 5 in May 1977.]

Ordained a bishop at 35 and promoted to the archbishopric of his native Cotonou in the West African country three years later, Gantin -- the surname means "iron tree" in his ancestral tongue -- was brought to Rome by Pope Paul VI, who named him in 1971 as #2 of the Propaganda Fide, the Vatican dicastery that supervises the activities of the missions.





Six years later, at his final consistory, Papa Montini gave him the red hat and the merged leadership of the Holy See's humanitarian and social-justice arms, the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace, and Cor Unum.

In 1984, John Paul II thrust the railway worker's son into the Curia's top rank by naming him prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, an appointment that put the reserved, stately prelate in the driver's seat as the global episcopate was gradually remade in Wojtyla's image.

Given the traditional coupling of Bishops with the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, his purview included the responsibility of serving as Rome's top point-man for affairs south of the border, an agenda then topped by the Vatican's battle against liberation theology.

In time, each of his deputies at Bishops became cardinals, two of whom would succeed him as prefect: first the Brazilian Dominican Lucas Moreira Neves, then the Italian Giovanni Battista Re, the high-hat shop's current head.

Shortly after arriving at the congregation, Gantin likewise took under his wing a young minutante from Pittsburgh, Daniel Di Nardo, who, late last year, became the first cardinal of the American South.

While the cardinal served as the late Pontiff's lead bishop-maker until his retirement in 1998, Gantin made further history five years earlier by becoming the highest-ranking African in church history on his election as Dean of teh College of Cardinals, "first among equals" of the papal senate -- a post which would have seen him preside over John Paul's funeral and the subsequent conclave, and garnered him wide press as a potential papabile.

The dean's obligation to live in Rome, however, led the cardinal to petition the then-Pope to be released from the task to return to the place he often called "my Africa."

John Paul weighed the request for several months, only acceding after Gantin's 80th birthday in 2002.

To succeed him, the six cardinal-bishops -- the senior curialists who serve as titular heads of the suffragan dioceses surrounding Rome -- elected then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his "classmate" from the "Benelli consistory" of 1977, whose performance as dean during the 2005 interregnum arguably soothed many doubts among the college that wound up electing him to the papacy.

Despite being a conciliatory figure with a powerful, serene presence (which some called "saintly"), the former dean wasn't afraid of the candid quote... or several.

Speaking with 30 GIORNI from his homeland in 2006, he wryly observed that while "at one time the bishops moved little, today they travel too much"; "sitting down, listening, praying with their own believers is more than ever necessary and urgent for them," he added, citing the canons on "the obligation of residence... [that] they can also be an example to their own priests."

During another chat with the journal, the cardinal noted the "collapse of vocations in the churches of Europe and North America," unpacking the effect of said downturn on the African missions.

However, in what became his most-cited intervention, shortly after his retirement from Bishops Gantin lashed out at what he called the "amazing careerism" he saw on the part of some prelates, including those who placed a "definite pressure for advancement" on him as prefect.

The cardinal's call for a marked return to the ancient tradition of a bishop being wedded to his first diocese was subsequently backed up by the then-prefect of the CDF -- who "sadly" admitted that "I myself have not remained faithful in this regard."

In the end, the years since haven't so much seen a reinforcement of policy on the "matrimonial bond" of bishops to their charges as a distinct change of profile among those getting the promotions. In a word, albeit in a more muted form, the fidelity push bore long-term fruit.

Following his return home, Gantin admitted to his favored magazine that "materially I don’t have anything anymore."

"Better that way! This material poverty helps me to live spiritual poverty better."

According to early reports, the cardinal's funeral will take place in Benin.

15/05/2008 02:14
 
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Televangelist John Hagee
apologizes to Catholics

By JIM KUHNHENN



Hagee addressing a group called Christians United for Israel in Jerusalem last April.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (AP) — John Hagee, an influential Texas televangelist who endorsed John McCain, apologized to Catholics Tuesday for his stinging criticism of the Roman Catholic Church and for having "emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews."

Hagee's support for McCain has drawn cries of outrage from some Catholic leaders who have called on McCain to reject Hagee's endorsement. The likely Republican nominee has said he does not agree with some of Hagee's past comments, but did not reject his support.

In a letter to William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, Hagee wrote: "Out of a desire to advance a greater unity among Catholics and evangelicals in promoting the common good, I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful."

Donohue, one of Hagee's sharpest critics, said he accepted the apology and planned to meet with Hagee Thursday in New York.

"I got what I wanted," Donohue said in an interview. "He's seen the light, as they like to say. So for me it's over."

The controversy had threatened to pursue McCain throughout the campaign, potentially hurting his standing with Catholic voters. A narrow majority of Roman Catholics voted for President Bush in 2004 and for Al Gore in 2000, critical votes in close elections.

The letter came after Hagee met Friday for lunch in a French restaurant in downtown Washington with 22 influential religious activists, virtually all of them Catholics.

Hagee has cited the Inquisition and the Crusades as evidence of anti-Semitism within the Catholic church and has suggested that Catholic anti-Semitism shaped Adolf Hitler's views of Jews.

"In my zeal to oppose anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its ugly forms, I have often emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholics and Protestant relations with the Jews," Hagee wrote. "In the process, I may have contributed to the mistaken impression that the anti-Jewish violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition defines the Catholic Church. It most certainly does not."

Hagee has often made references to "the apostate church" and the "great whore," terms that Catholics say are slurs aimed at the Roman Catholic Church. In his letter, Hagee said he now better understood that his use of those descriptions, taken from the Book of Revelations, are "a rhetorical device long employed in anti-Catholic literature and commentary."

He stressed that in his use, "neither of these phrases can be synonymous with the Catholic Church."

The remarkable 2 1/2-page letter was no doubt inspired by the political storm Hagee's endorsement caused. Hagee leads a San Antonio, Texas, megachurch with a congregation in the tens of thousands. He has an even wider television audience.

When he endorsed McCain in late February, Donohue and other Catholic leaders demanded that McCain repudiate him. The Democratic National Committee also weighed in, highlighting Hagee's remarks over the years.

Some commentators even likened Hagee's affect on McCain to the controversy Democrat Barack Obama faced as a result of the views expressed by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

McCain initially embraced Hagee's endorsement, eager to reach out to religious voters by securing the support of a prominent Christian conservative. But he was soon forced to put some distance with Hagee.

"Any comments that he made about the Catholic Church I strongly condemn, of course," he said during an April appearance on ABC's "This Week."

Campaigning in North Bend, Wash., McCain on Tuesday said Hagee's apology was "very helpful."

"Whenever somebody apologizes for something they did wrong, then I think that that's a laudable thing to do," he said.

Asked if he or his campaign played a role in brokering Hagee's letter, McCain simply said: "I certainly wasn't."

During the early primaries, McCain won strong support from Catholic voters. But Hagee threatened to become an issue heading into the general election.

Hagee is no stranger to provocative remarks. On National Public Radio in 2006, he said Hurricane Katrina was God's judgment because "New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God." He has written that the feminist movement represents "a rebellion against God's pattern for the family."

On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee said that considering those and other comments McCain still should renounce Hagee's endorsement.

But Donohue said Hagee, by offering his apology now, may have defused a potential problem from the Arizona senator.

"Had this happened after Labor Day I think it would have been an insurmountable problem for McCain to reach out to Catholics," Donohue said. "Now, with this behind him, I think the raised eyebrows in the Catholic community will begin to normalize."

In a statement posted in the Catholic League's Web site, Donohue added: "What Hagee has done takes courage and quite frankly I never expected him to demonstrate such sensitivity to our concerns."

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

Is my face red! Shortly after the Papal visit to the USA, I posted an article that was very laudatory of the Pope by this man - it was a guest editorial entitled "Thank you, Pope Benedict" written for the Washington Times on April 28 (posted 4/29/08 on page 182 of the NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT thread) - with the note that I had yet to Google him. But at the time, he had already stirred up headlines as McCain's 'Jeremiah Wright' - and shame on me!, I totally failed to make the connection.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/05/2008 02:27]
16/05/2008 22:58
 
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A tenor they call 'the next Pavarotti'
describes the Benedict effect on him

BY JANELLE GELFAND





CINCINATTI, OHIO, May 16 - When Salvatore Licitra was asked to sing for Pope Benedict XVI during the pontiff's U.S. visit last month, the tenor didn't expect the emotion he felt.

"I was thinking I would sing to a normal person, but when I saw the pope coming inside the church (New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral), I have to tell you, he is not a normal person," Licitra says over a Perrier at the downtown Hilton on Monday. "I felt something that changed me. I felt his presence, not as a person, but as one who has a connection to God, a spirituality. It was hugely emotional."

Licitra (Lee-chee-tra) makes his May Festival debut tonight in Music Hall.

He's sincere and humble - hardly the image, as some say, of the second coming of the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti. But even before Licitra stepped in on two hours' notice at the Metropolitan Opera for the ill singer in 2002, opera lovers had christened him "the next Pavarotti."

"It's a huge honor for me. But still I feel that it's not fair, for Pavarotti, for me, or for someone else, just because we are all different," he says. "Pavarotti represented a kind of god. Nobody in this time can be compared to his sound and the longevity of his sound."

The 39-year-old singer looked fresh, despite a daylong rehearsal of Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" (the Force of Destiny), in which he sings the demanding role of Don Alvaro. His dark brown eyes are intense, and he sports a mop of prematurely graying hair.

With a taste for fast cars (he takes his Porsche to a Formula One racetrack), as well as downhill skiing and even the occasional bungee jumping, he's not your typical opera singer. In fact, the former graphic artist for magazines such as Italian Vogue discovered his voice at age 19, when he impulsively sang a pop song in an Italian disco.

Licitra was born in Bern, Switzerland, and moved with his family to Milan, Italy, when he was 2. Even though Milan is home to the famous La Scala, he had never attended the opera - although years later, he would sing his first "La Forza" there. He barely knew what opera was until, after the disco incident, his mother suggested he find a teacher to somehow train that big tenor voice.

When he made his debut at age 29 in "Un Ballo in Maschera" in Parma, Verdi's homeland, the response was overwhelming. Since then, he's made a specialty of Verdi and Puccini. He's also one of the few tenors able to sing in one evening the two demanding leading roles in "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "I Pagliacci," a frequent double bill.

Verdi's 'Forza...' (The Force of Destiny), too, calls for immense stamina. Licitra sees something brave and noble about the character of Don Alvaro, who is an Inca. In the opera, the lover of Leonora has accidentally killed her father, setting the force of destiny in motion. Don Alvaro is not a victim, just terribly unlucky, he says.

"It could happen to everybody, but it's strange that Alvaro has so many problems," Licitra says. "In the end, he says, speaking to God, 'I tried to fight for good things (and) I apologize to everyone.'"

Does the thrill and adrenalin of racing his Porsche carry over into opera? For Licitra, those rare moments away from the stage are more like a relief valve.

"When I sing, I am always under pressure," he says. "You have to have something to make you relaxed, just to switch off the engine."


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/05/2008 22:59]
20/05/2008 13:46
 
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How the Cistercian monks of Heiligenkreuz
are coping with being groomed for music stardom

by Emma Pomfret
(London)
May 17, 2008




Within minutes of arriving at the monastery in the Vienna Forest, I see a clutch of men wearing lederhosen, while an oompah band tunes up for the May Day fair. I’m starting to suspect the record company of doing a deal with the Austrian tourist board.

As first reported in The Times in March, the Stift Heiligenkreuz monastery is the home of Universal Classics’ latest unlikely stars: the Cistercian monks of the Holy Cross.


Already favourites of Pope Benedict, the brothers are braced for wider fame as their CD of Gregorian plainsong, called Chant, appears this week.

Father Karl, “band” spokesman, meets us beside the monastery shop. Clad in a winter jacket over his habit, he is in his fifties with a grin so warm it embraces you. “We shall find a silent place,” he says, without a flicker of irony. We head to the refectory and over strong coffee and mini doughnuts (monastic preconception No 1 shattered; what happened to bread, water and denial?), discuss the extraordinary new chapter in the life of the 875-year-old monastery.

“We do not want to become a boy group,” begins Father Karl, refreshingly off-message. “First it’s only good news, then only bad; but for the record producers, they sell in any case. Look at Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears.” For a man who has lived in holy orders for 26 years, Father Karl has an astute take on fickle fame. He has also listened to PR advisers: “They tell us, ‘You are monks and now everybody will love you. But don’t get proud.’ ”

Humility isn’t a quality associated with the record industry and one wonders if Stift Heiligenkreuz hasn’t made a pact with the Devil. What brought the secular and godly together?

Father Karl credits various “miracles” and the story is incredible. In February, Universal advertised in the Catholic press for a group to record plainchant. On the day before the closing date, Father Karl received an e-mail from a friend in London: “It was three words: ‘Schnell schnell, Karl!’ And a link to the advert.”

Father Karl replied with a YouTube clip of the order singing for the papal visit last year. (What do monks watch on YouTube, by the way? “I like to see the Popes. For instance, a beautiful clip of the last Holy Mass of Paul VI.” No dogs on skateboards, then.)

From hundreds who applied, Universal chose Stift Heiligenkreuz. But the deal has met resistance from some younger brothers who asked not to sing. “They lived a very secular life without God and then had a big conversion,” says Father Karl. “They are afraid this media tum-tum could bring them out of godly life.”

And there is a further temptation, one that most boy bands would consider a perk: groupies. “We have some young monks, 18 or 19, very handsome, and if girls get crazy what shall we do?” asks Father Karl. This is a serious concern. “Priests are normally very sensitive and they are not machos, so this touches the heart of a woman,” he suggests – his own experience of an amorous Italian penpal still troubling.

As it happens, girls with a penchant for a scapular will have to travel to Vienna; the monks have refused to tour. To do so would be a sin, they say, because Benedictine Gregorian chant is a form of prayer, sung before the altar. “We sing to God,” says Father Karl, “not to people.”

But the truth is that people do respond to this rarefied, ancient music again and again. I can recall in the early 1990s, every visit to my Uncle Peter’s in Solihull being met by Gregorian chants wafting through his home. While the Spanish monks of Silos were the classical-chart chanters of choice, Enigma stuck a thumping beat under a plainsong sample and watched their album MCMXC a.D. sell more than 14 million copies.

But why does Universal think the time is ripe for a Gregorian revival? For one thing, plainchant is the soundtrack to Halo, the sci-fi video game phenomenon. Universal also noticed a spike of interest in its existing Gregorian chant back catalogue. “Not overwhelming but enough to think something was going on,” says Tom Lewis, the A&R manager who signed Stift Heiligenkreuz.

Lewis is also hoping that, right now, we are anxious enough to tap into chanting. At the time of the last Gregorian surge, 18 years ago, we teetered on the verge of recession. Here we are again facing economic gloom and environmental doom. “There is a palpable sense of anxiety, and that tends to be associated with seeking sanctuary,” says Lewis. “People turn to soothing music for stress relief.”

What’s interesting, as Fabrice Fitch, early music reviewer for Gramophone magazine, notes, is that we generally like our plainchant plain: straight up, without a twist. “The generic sound associated with Gregorian chant is calming. Ensembles who have a more experimental, more vigorous way of performing – French group Ensemble Organum, for instance – haven’t caught on.”

Certainly, hearing the monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz chant lunchtime prayer is a contemplative experience. As the 40 voices dance around the liturgy, the effect is hypnotic, akin to the repetitive rhythm of rowing. The choirmaster, Father Simeon, explains that the call and response repetition allows the monks to meditate. “It is an objective form of singing but it allows for subjective emotion.”

Father Karl suggests that, whether we understand it or not, plainchant “leads the soul through different stages of feeling; it makes you sad, it gives joy, it raises the soul to Heaven”. Exactly the “primal response” that Universal’s Tom Lewis felt when he heard Stift Heiligenkreuz for the first time.

One “miracle” remains for Father Karl to explain. In two weeks in February three monks died – the first deaths at the monastery in five years and an exciting experience for the younger brothers. “Death is nothing we chase away,” says Father Karl.

“We are living for this; we want to go to Heaven, to paradise. The young brothers all found the funeral liturgy joyful – we think that the monks arrived at their goal – and so we chose those songs for the CD and we called the album Music For Paradise.”

My audience with the monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz is over. Father Karl leads me outside, where teenagers bound up to him – not because he’s a pop star, but because he baptised them. The May Day fair is in full swing; monks stroll about with flagons of frothing beer, while nuns tackle enormous cream cakes.

As Father Karl heads back to the monastery, his mobile goes – a Gregorian chant ringtone. You can’t take the monk out of the monastery and you certainly can’t take the monastery out of the monk.

Chant: Music for Paradise was released commercially yesterday, May 19.

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

From www.stift-heiligenkreuz.org




Chant - Music For Paradise (CD)
Artist: The Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz
2008 Decca | CD 002894766774

CD 1
[1.] Antiphon "In Paradisum" et Psalmus 121 (122) 4:28
[2.] Responsorium "Subvenite" 2:26
[3.] Responsorium "Libera Me" 4:26
[4.] Stift Heiligenkreuz Bells 1:36
[5.] Missa pro defunctis: Introitus "Requiem aeternam" 2:00
[6.] Missa pro defunctis: Kyrie 1:38
[7.] Missa pro defunctis: Graduale "Requiem aeternam" 2:40
[8.] Missa pro defunctis: Tractus "Absolve Domine" 2:10
[9.] Missa pro defunctis: Offertorium "Domine Iesu Christe" 3:40
[10.] Missa pro defunctis: Sanctus 0:46
[11.] Missa pro defunctis: Post Elevationem: "Pie Iesu Domine" 0:50
[12.] Missa pro defunctis: Agnus Dei 0:44
[13.] Missa pro defunctis: Communio "Lux aeterna" 1:01
[14.] Ad Completorium: Deus in adiutorium 0:49
[15.] Ad Completorium: Hymnus "Te lucis ante terminum" 1:24
[16.] Ad Completorium: Psalmus 4 2:33
[17.] Ad Completorium: Psalmus 90 (91) 3:46
[18.] Ad Completorium: Pslamus 133 1:12
[19.] Ad Completorium: Lectio brevis 0:27
[20.] Ad Completorium: Responsorium breve 0:40
[21.] Ad Completorium: Canticum Simeonis "Nunc dimittis" 2:17
[22.] Ad Completorium: Kyrie 0:12
[23.] Ad Completorium: Oratio conclusive 0:47
[24.] Ad Completorium: Antiphona ad Beatam Mariam Virginem "Salve Regina" 2:47
[25.] Ad Completorium: Benedictio 0:19
[26.] Stift Heiligenkreuz Bells 1:00
[27.] Hymnus "Veni Creator Spiritus" 2:30
[28.] Introitus Dominica Pentecostes "Spiritus Domini" 2:35
[29.] Communio Dominica Pentecostes "Factus est repente" 1:12



While CHANT is the monks' first commercial CD, they have recorded their liturgical music before - and these CDs are available from the monastery's online shop, wiht only opened lasst December:
shop.stift-heiligenkreuz.org/catalog/index.php?cPath=13

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/05/2008 14:42]
21/05/2008 14:35
 
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England: Mary's Dowry
I wasn't going to mention this, because it's so insignificant, but it annoyed me enough to warrant a mention. Last Saturday Peter Phillips [son of Princess Anne, also known as the Princess Royal], married a girl called Autumn Kelly. When she was mentioned on Damian Thompson's blog I had to ask Clare who she was! Sounded like a celebrity/model....anyway, it turned out she's been engaged to one of the chinless wonders [royal family!] for several years. The wedding ceremony took place in Saint George's Chapel, Windsor and was so private that no photographs were issued - at least, not to my knowledge, and I couldn't be bothered to search news sites on the internet....yawn!

What I'm really getting at here is that this girl Autumn [Surely Spring would have sounded more hopeful!] is a Catholic who "gave up her Catholic Faith" in order to marry Phillips, so that he could keep his place as eleventh in line to the throne of Britain. Her Catholic Faith could not have meant a jot to her. Apparently she was "received" into the Church of England. Similarly shallow-minded is Mr Phillips: does he really think he would ever be called upon to be king?

Finally, England is "Mary's Dowry" and we still have a prayer for the conversion of England. Many of our lovely churches were dedicated to Our Lady, hence the name.

According to our law as it stands at the moment, no potential monarch may marry a Catholic....well, if they are extending it as far as eleventh in line, what hope is there of our beloved Faith ever being restored in England.

Despite all this, I'm proud to be English!!!!!!

Can anyone find any pics of this wedding? On second thoughts. don't bother! [SM=g27826] [SM=g27826]
[Modificato da maryjos 21/05/2008 14:38]

22/05/2008 15:52
 
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Utente Gold
Retired Sydney bishop doesn't want fight
with U.S. bishops over his book
questioning Church's dpctrinal authority

By Regina Linskey




WASHINGTON, May 22 (CNS) -- A retired Australian bishop who has been asked by several U.S. bishops to cancel his book tour said he stands behind his critique of authoritarian and sexual abuses in the church but does not want a battle.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney and former head of the Australian bishops' panel investigating clergy sexual abuse, told Catholic News Service May 21, "A fight between me and the (U.S.) bishops is really something I'm not interested in."

Noting that he is not sure if any U.S. bishop has read his 2007 book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, Bishop Robinson said, "I've written about what I believe."

In a telephone interview from New Jersey, a stop on his U.S.-Canadian speaking tour, he also commented on a May 6 statement from the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference expressing concern about doctrinal problems in the book.

Bishop Robinson said the Australian bishops "did what they felt they had to do and I have no problem with that."

Before he left Australia, Bishop Robinson sent a letter notifying several U.S. bishops of his speaking engagements in their dioceses. His May 16-June 12 tour was to include stops in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ontario, Ohio, Washington and California.

In response to Bishop Robinson's letter, U.S. Bishop Tod D. Brown of Orange, Calif., asked Bishop Robinson to cancel his June 11 visit to the Orange Diocese.

"Lest your visit be a source of disunity and a cause for confusion among the faithful of our local church of Orange, I want you to know that you do not have my permission to speak in the Diocese of Orange, and I ask you to cancel your speaking engagement here," Bishop Brown said in the May 16 letter.

Bishop Brown said the reason he was unable to accept Bishop Robinson was that Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and 10 other U.S. bishops, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, had asked Bishop Robinson to cancel his tour. Bishop Brown also mentioned the Australian bishops' " notice of concern" about the book.

CNS obtained copies of Bishop Brown's and Cardinal Mahony's letters but was unable to obtain the letter from Cardinal Re.

Cardinal Mahony's letter, as well as the letter from the 10 other bishops, was dated May 9 and reflected concerns similar to those listed in Bishop Brown's letter.

Meanwhile, the Australian bishops' statement lauded Bishop Robinson's "help and healing" for victims of clerical sexual abuse and his work in forging strong protocols of professional standards for the Australian church.

However, the bishops said there were "doctrinal difficulties" that undermined the ability of the Catholic Church to teach the truth "authoritatively," casting doubt on Bishop Robinson's certainty about the "knowledge and authority of Christ himself."

Responding to the Australian bishops, Marist Father Michael Whelan, director of the Aquinas Academy in Sydney, Australia, said: "We have a right to know precisely what is doctrinally unsound with what Bishop Robinson has written and why it is unsound.

"It is a serious book and it demands a serious response," Father Whelan added in his statement posted on the Aquinas Academy Web site May 19.

The "imprecision and vagueness" in the bishops' "bland and defensive" statement, Father Whelan said, is a "sad and discouraging reflection on the leadership of the Catholic Church in Australia, likely to confirm those who are unlikely to read Bishop Robinson's book and alienate those who find it worth reading."

Father Whelan said the Australian bishops' concession in their concluding paragraph that church authority "may at times be poorly exercised ... in shaping policy and practice in complex areas of pastoral and human concern" raised many questions for the "new vision" of church asked for by the Second Vatican Council.

"It seems to trivialize the serious matter of the church's ability to get it wrong. ... Could we claim, for example, that our ecclesiology -- both in theory and practice -- over the centuries has always been utterly in accord with the person and teaching of Jesus Christ?"

Since the release of their statement, the Australian bishops have declined to comment further on its content.

In his May 16 written response to the Australian bishops, Bishop Robinson described the objections as "disappointing."

"My book is about the response to the revelations of sexual abuse within the church. Sexual abuse is all about power and sex, so it is surely reasonable to ask questions about power and sex in the church," he said.

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

But the objection to Robinson's book is not his views about how the Church has dealt with the sex abuse issue - but on the questions he raises with respect to the Magisterium of the Church.

Here are the pertinent parts of the Australian bishops' warning in the story reported by ZENIT from Sydney last May 14 [posted in
NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH]:


"We are deeply indebted to him for his years of effort to bring help and healing to those who have suffered sexual abuse and for what he has done to establish protocols of professional standards for Church personnel in this area," they wrote. "In responding to the issues raised in the book, we do not question his good faith."

"However," the statement continued, "people have a right to know clearly what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, and the bishops have a corresponding duty to set this forth, as we seek to do in this statement."

"After correspondence and conversation with Bishop Robinson, it is clear that doctrinal difficulties remain," the prelates explained. "Central to these is a questioning of the authority of the Catholic Church to teach the truth definitively. In St. John's Gospel, Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to the disciples in order to lead them into the fullness of the truth. It is Catholic teaching that the Church has been endowed with this gift of truth.

"The book's questioning of the authority of the Church is connected to Bishop Robinson's uncertainty about the knowledge and authority of Christ himself."

"Catholics believe that the Church, founded by Christ, is endowed by him with a teaching office which endures through time. This is why the Church's magisterium teaches the truth authoritatively in the name of Christ. The book casts doubt upon these teachings," underlined the Australian bishops.

The prelates continued: "This leads in turn to the questioning of Catholic teaching on, among other things, the nature of Tradition, the inspiration of the Holy Scripture, the infallibility of the Councils and the Pope, the authority of the Creeds, the nature of the ministerial priesthood and central elements of the Church's moral teaching."

"The authority entrusted by Christ to his Church may at times be poorly exercised, especially in shaping policy and practice in complex areas of pastoral and human concern," the statement acknowledged. But, it went on, "This does not, in Catholic belief, invalidate the Church's authority to teach particular truths of faith and morals."

It is interesting that Bishop Robinson's reaction to his colleagues' warning is, at worst, that he found it 'disappointing', whereas this Fr. Whelan takes it upon himself to dismiss the bishops' statement as trivial and not serious!

When a collegial consensus does not suit them, liberal priests become all of a sudden anti-democratic! Yet they are the ones who keep screaming for 'more collegiality', 'more democracy' in Church practices.





[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/05/2008 15:53]
25/05/2008 17:07
 
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Utente Gold
US cardinal aims to silence
rebel Australian bishop

By Rocco Palmo and Mark Brolly

May 24, 2008


Note the tendentious headline as THE TABLET takes aim at Cardinal Roger Mahony, otherwise one of their pet liberals!


The Australian bishop whose "devastating critique" of sex abuse in the Church became a controversial bestseller last year has come under fire from the hierarchy at the start of a month-long US tour.

On the eve of his first overseas trip to promote Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, retired Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson was "denied permission" to speak in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles by Cardinal Roger Mahony after a statement from the Australian bishops cited "doctrinal difficulties" in Bishop Robinson's "questioning of the authority of the Church".

[The report studiously avoids the full statement by the Australian bishops who said that the doctirnal difficulties in Robinson's book "undermined the ability of the Catholic Church to teach the truth authoritatively," casting doubt on Bishop Robinson's certainty about the "knowledge and authority of Christ himself."]

In a private letter to the prelate leaked by an Australian website, Cardinal Mahony urged Bishop Robinson, whose book examined how the Church handled the sex-abuse crisis, to "cancel the entire speaking tour", which began last week in Philadelphia and includes stops in New York, Seattle, San Diego and Boston, where the US Church's sex-abuse crisis came to international attention in 2002.

The cardinal noted that the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, had likewise insisted that Bishop Robinson not appear in America.

While Bishop Robinson is due to appear in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in mid-June, he did not seek permission to speak there. A week after Cardinal Mahony's letter, the author's 12 June engagement at a retreat centre in suburban Encino remained on his calendar.

Critics alleged that the move by Cardinal Mahony - one reportedly echoed by bishops in other locales where the Robinson tour had been scheduled - had less to do with "safeguard[ing] the teachings of the Church" than the Californian prelate's desire to contain the fallout from the abuse scandals, which saw the Los Angeles Church pay $660 million (£334 million) to victims last summer.

The Church-reform group Voice of the Faithful protested over what it saw as an attempt to "silence" a "courageous Catholic".

Meanwhile Bishop Robinson has responded to a critical statement from the Australian bishops (The Tablet, 17 May) by citing "impossible restrictions on any serious and objective study'' of sexual abuse in the Church as the reason for his breach with his colleagues.

The Australian bishops distanced themselves from him over his attacks on compulsory celibacy for priests, the Church's handling of sexual abuse by clergy, its teachings on sexuality and the centralised focus on the Pope and Curia at the expense of the local Church.

In his own brief statement Bishop Robinson said: "The statement of the Australian bishops is not unexpected, but it is disappointing. My book is about the response to the revelations of sexual abuse within the Church. Sexual abuse is all about power and sex, so it is surely reasonable to ask questions about power and sex in the Church.

"In their statement the bishops appear to be saying that in seeking to respond to abuse, we may investigate all other factors contributing to abuse, but not ask questions concerning ways in which teachings, laws and attitudes concerning power and sex within the Church may have contributed. This imposes impossible restrictions on any serious and objective study, and it is where I have broken from the bishops' conference. We must be free to follow the argument wherever it leads."

25/05/2008 19:09
 
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76-year-old Nepalese
now oldest man to
reach Everest summit



KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- A 76-year-old Nepalese man reached the summit of Mount Everest on Sunday and became the oldest person to climb the world's highest mountain, a tourism official said.

Min Bahadur Sherchan reached the 8,848-meter summit early in the morning with his climbing guides, said a Nepal Tourism Ministry official, Ramesh Chetri.

Sherchan was just 25 days away from his 77th birthday, Chetri said.

He beat the record set last year by Japanese climber Katsusuke Yanagisawa, who scaled the peak at age 71. Sherchan was in good health and was descending from the summit, Chetri said.

The former soldier climbed smaller mountains before Everest and has been an active sportsman, Chetri said.

He said about a dozen climbers scaled Everest on Sunday following one of the busiest weeks in the mountain's climbing season.

A veteran Sherpa guide scaled Everest on Thursday for a record 18th time. Appa, who like most Sherpas goes by only one name, reached the summit along with several colleagues.

He was among more than 80 climbers to reach the summit that day -- the largest number ever in a single day from the Nepalese side of the peak.

Mountaineers were able to resume Everest climbs on May 9 after the Nepalese government lifted a temporary ban ordered to prevent protests against China's rule in Tibet during an ascent by Chinese climbers carrying the Olympic torch.

The Chinese torch team scaled the summit on May 8 -- from the Tibetan side of Everest (the northern face) -- and Nepal lifted the ban a day later.


25/05/2008 23:19
 
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Cardinal Martini and God:
The cardinal's testament

By Marco Politi

May 19, 2008


This appeared in La Repubblica as a book review, or a report on a new book, and the byline does not appear at the top as it usually does, but at the bottom, after the last line of the report.

Since the article was written by Marco Politi, Repubblica's chief Vaticanista and arch-critic of Benedict XVI, I decided to put his byline on top. Not surprisingly, he is practically prostrate in adoration of his subject - which is all right, that's his preference - but ends up being totally uncritical!

I started translating this article, not expecting to fisk it in any way, but it soon became clear I could not not do so. I know it seems presumptuous to be disputing a man whom some quarters believed could have been and should have been Pope. But I am not disputing the cardinal's person - only the specific statements he makes here. And I think any Christian with simple common sense would....BTW, just skip the blue print, to read Politi straight.
.




In the final season of his life, Carlo Maria Martini confessed to an Austrian brother priest, and thus was born Colloqui notturni a Gerusalemme [Nocturnal conversations in Jerusalem], recently published by Herder in Germany, which represents his spiritual testament.

He confesses to have been in conflict even with God, he praises Martin Luther, he exhorts the Church to have the courage to reform itself, not to stray from the Second Vatican Council and not to be afraid to confront the youth. [Meaning, this Church has no courage for reform, it is straying from Vatican-II and it is afraid to confront the youth!]

A bishop, he points out, should also know how to dare, as when he went to the prison to speak with militants of the Red Brigade, and "I listened to them, prayed for then, and even baptized twins who had been born to terrorist parents during their trial." [I don't see any particular daring there, as he was carrying out a pastoral duty to minister to people in prison, and doing so in 'peacetime'. I thought he would cite some death-defying feat by a bishop living under the Communists, the Nazis or the Fascists.]

As a bishop, he says he often asked God: "Why don't you give us better ideas? Why don't you make us stronger in love and more courageous in facing our present problems? Why do we have so few priests?" Today, having entered into a twilight state of the spirit, he confides that he only asks God not to leave him by himself.

With Fr. Georg Sporschill, a Jesuit like him, the ex-Archbishop of Milan lets go with total sincerity. [The statement seems gratuitous. How can a man of God be less than 'totally sincere'? Especially, how can any Catholic not be sincere with his confessor?]

Yes, he admits, "I have had difficulties with God" [as even the greatest saints did and do] . I could not understand why he made his Son suffer on the Cross.... Even as a bishop, at times I could not look at the Cross, because the question tormented me".

[What an immense gift it is from God to people of simple faith like me, who received the faith completely on trust and have never had to question what was taught to us - not even in the years of my knowing disobedience - when I stopped practising Mass obligations regularly. Perhaps God tries us according to what we are capable of - and only he knows that.]

"Nor could I accept (the fact of) death. Could God not have saved men from death after Christ died? Then I understood. Without death, we cannot give ourselves totally to God. We would always have a security exit," he continues.

[Why do I sense a 'false candor' in all this? These do not sound at all like questions that would arise in an intelligent man trained by the Jesuits to be a priest! They seem too naive - as if they were formulated instead by someone who has told himself "I will try to express, not my own doubts, but the kind of doubt that simple people have".]

But, he adds, that isn't the case, and we should place our hope in God and believe in him. "I hope to be able to say YES to God at the moment of death."

If he could speak with Jesus Christ, Carlo Maria Martini says he would ask "if he loves me despite my weaknesses and my errors, and when he comes to take me in death, will he welcome me?" [Same comment as in the above! Is that not what Jesus said over and over? Is there any particular reason why the eminent cardinal should doubt it? And "if he could speak with Jesus Christ" - does he not then consider prayer 'speaking with Jesus Christ'?]

The discourses in Jerusalem are like a long nocturnal symposium, without refreshments, nourished only by the flow of reason, reassured by the warm shadows of a night that will go on till dawn. [Come on, Politi! Don't nights normally 'go on till dawn'? Spare us the poetizing; there's enough disingenuousness as it is in the subject you are reporting on.]

"There was a time," the cardinal narrates, "when I dreamed of a poor and humble Church which does not depend on the powers of this world. [If it were literally poor, then it might have to, wouldn't it? It would have no independence at all.] A Church which grants space to people who think farther beyond. A Church which gives courage, especially to those who feel themselves small or sinful. [Is that not what the Church tells us to be, before God?] A young Church. Now, I no longer have these dreams. After I reached 75, I decided to pray for the Church.

["Oggi non ho più di questi sogni. Dopo i settantacinque anni ho deciso di pregare per la Chiesa" - that's what he said! Surely he does not mean that he only started praying for the Church after he reached 75 - and presumably decided there was no hope for his dreams. So maybe he means that prayer was his only recourse, having failed to do anything about his dreams. Either way, the statement is all of a piece with the general 'negative smarminess' of everything Politi has reported so far about this book.

And that is really the characteristic I have found most disturbing in all of the public statements I have read from Cardinal Martini since he failed to become Pope - all right, that's an uncharitable way of putting it - but I mean in the past three years that I have paid close attention to what is printed in the media about him, and which he has never denied or protested.]


And yet even at 81, the cardinal, a great Biblicist, has not given up suggesting to the Church to have courage and to dare to make reforms. [Here it comes: the anti-Benedict agenda.]

It is essential, he says, to have the ability to meet the future. [And the Church under Benedict XVI does not?]

Celibacy, he explains, should be a true vocation, because perhaps not everyone has the charism. [But most priests have had that charism over the past 2000 years. And it is one of the most fundamental decisions they have to make when they decide to become priests. Why should priests today be an exception?] To assign more parishes to one priest or get priests from abroad is not a solution, he says.

"The Church should allow new ideas. The possibility of ordaining viri probati(married men of proven faith) should be discussed."

[Easy to say. But is it practical? Realistically, what is the percentage of married men with families who would choose to go into training - because they have to receive proper priestly formation - to be ordained to serve as a parish priest? Even it turns out to be workable for some, it would not by itself solve the priest shortage overnight! When one is not responsible for having to do anything concrete about a problem, it is easy to criticize and then toss out cavalier suggestions like this. What did the cardinal himself do about it when he was Archbishop of Milan?]

Even women priests do not terrify him.
[The Church is not 'terrified' of women priests. It just does not consider it right - for historical, traditional, theological and - not the least, practical -reasons that are certainly well known to the cardinal.]
He points out that the New Testament recognized deaconesses [but not women priests!]

He admits that the Orthodox world is against women priests. But he also recalls a meeting with the Anglican primate High Carey, at a time when the Anglican Church was wracked with tension over the first ordinations of women priests.

"I told him in encouragement that the daring move could help even us to value women more and to understand how to go forward." [The Church does not value women less because it does not allow them to become priests! It has nothing to do with individual worthiness. It's a question of rightness - which is, of course, disputable by those who disagree.]

About sexuality, the cardinal calls on young people not to waste their relationships and emotions but learn to save the best for matrimony, but he does not hesitate to break taboos crystallized under Paul VI, John Paul II and Ratzinger.
[Ah yes, now Martini is being candidly the anti-Pope!]


"Unfortunately, the encyclical Humanae Vitae also provoked negative developments. [What, he didn't expect that? So insistently disingenuous is our Cardinal.] Paul VI consciously took away the issue from the Council - he wanted to take personal responsibility for deciding against contraception."

[Is there a factual basis for thinking that Vatican-II would have approved artificial contraception? Or that Paul VI deliberately did not allow the Council to tackle the issue? I must check back, but if Vatican-II were of that mind, surely Hans Kueng would have hammered the point to death. He mentioned Humanae Vitae in his recent interview, and he never raised the point Martini makes! And Kueng has no love lost for Paul VI.]

"This decisional solitude has not been a positive premise in the long run for dealing with the issues of sexuality and the family," he continues.

[The 'decisional solitude' is the prerogative of Popes, whose primary function is to defend and promote the faith that the Church has kept through its existence. Martini is discounting the 'anguished and lengthy' process it took Paul VI to come out with Humanae Vitae, as Benedict XVI reminded us recently - and the process did involve consulting others, even those of contrary opinion.

Too bad for Martini he never got the chance to test himself on what he would have done if he were actually Pope. I am sure he wouldn't be as dismissive - neither of Catholic doctrine, nor the honest effort by a Pope to grapple with a distinctly modern-day issue.

Also, it is not as if natural birth control were totally impossible. Ultimately, the issue of birth control and abortion comes down to self-discipline versus self-indulgence. What is wrong with the Church teaching its faithful that discipline is a virtue with positive consequences?]


Forty years since the encyclical, Martini says, the issue deserves a 'fresh look'. [Translation: 'If I were the Pope, I would change the whole thing!']

The Bible, he says, is very moderate about sexual questions - it is only very clear against condemning anyone who would destroy a marriage. "Whoever is leading the church today," he says, "could indicate a way better than Humanae Vitae"/. [There it is! Yet, he can't even bring himself to mention Pope Benedict's name.]

The Pope, he suggests, could write a new encyclical. [Sure - saying what? That it is all right to use artificial methods of contraception? How does the 'great Biblicist' justify that through the Scriptures and theologically?]

What about homosexuality? The cardinal recalls the stern words of the Bible [against the practice] but also the degrading practices of antiquity. Then he adds delicately: "Among my acquaintances are homosexual couples - men who are very well regarded in society. No one has ever asked me to condemn them nor would it have ever occurred to me."
[Precisely! The Church has never condemned homosexuals, but homosexual practices. Of course, many will say it is 'inhuman' or 'unrealistic' to expect Catholic homosexuals not to engage in homosexual practices. But there are Catholic homosexuals who have done so; it is not impossible, even if the self-discipline necessary in this case could be heroic, or better yet, worthy of saints. It is ultimately a very personal responsibility on the part of the person concerned. And God help the priest confessors who must deal with the issue if they get confessions about it.]

Very often, he says, the Church has shown itself insensitive, especially towards young people 'in this condition'.
[Hmmm- how exactly? I don't think any priests these days are thundering out from the pulpits against homosexuality. If there is any pastoral guidance at all, it is probably in one-on-one counselling, or in the confessional.

Sometimes I wish an anonymous question about how to deal with one's homosexuality could be handed to the Holy Father during his meetings with young people or with priests and seminarians. Anonymously, because for the concerned person to raise it directly would be invasive of his/her privacy. It would be instructive for everyone.]


There's a thread connecting the cardinal's musings in the quiet nights of Jerusalem. [Politi seems to imply that 'quiet nights in Jerusalem' are more conducive to clear and positive thinking than quiet nights in, say, the Vatican, or Castel Gandolfo! Naaah, I'm being paranoid.]

Namely this:

Believers do not need anyone to give them a bad conscience [And who does he say is doing that? The Church? The Pope?]

They need to be helped to have a 'sensible conscience'. [Ah-ha! Who decides what is 'sensible'? Aren't Catholics taught to examine their conscience in the light of the commandments of God and of the Church? Do we need to add other criteria now? Whose? Cardinal Martini's?]

They should be continually stimulated to think and to reflect. [And the Church, the Pope, is not doing that at all? What thee cardinal is really advocating is a counter-Magisterium for the faithful to reflect on. Perhaps the Cardinal would want his own personal 'magisterium' to be disseminated to the Catholics of the world. Well, Repubblica is helping to do that. And his book will. How much, we don't know. The genuine Magisterium has trouble enough being disseminated!]

"God is not Catholic," Martini quotes Mother Teresa as having said often. "Nor can we make God a Catholic," he adds.
[What an odd remark! God is God - it is not for anyone to 'make' him anything, or even talk of doing so!]

Of course, he adds, men need rules and limits, but God is beyond all the limits that are set. [Has the Church claimed otherwise?] Rules serve in life, but we should not confuse them with God, whose heart is always much bigger."
[The Church has confused rules with God???? The rules of the faith are rules that are meant to bring man closer to God. Without them, he would do as he pleases, and that often does not necessarily bring him closer to God.]

"God does not allow himself to be tamed."
[Who is addressing here? Since when did the Church 'tame' God? It is Martini and his fellow liberals who are trying to 'tame' the faith by wanting to change its rules to suit their preferences!]


"If that is the prospect, then we can address ourselves with a more open spirit to the non-believer or the follower of another religion."
["Se questa è la prospettiva ci si può rivolgere con spirito più aperto al non credente o al seguace di un' altra religione" - HUH????]

"We can confront the non-believer on the ethical grounds which inspire them."
[Yada, yada, yada! What otherwise is the principle of inter-religious dialog insisted on by Benedict XVI? Of course, he formulates it better by referring to the 'natural law inscribed in the hearts of all men' that everyone has in common and that can and should be the basis for any universal code of conduct to bring about a world of justice, equity and peace.]

"It is beautiful to walk together with someone of a different faith. Allow yourselves to be invited to a prayer together," Martini suggests gently. "Try to take him to one of your own rites. This will not bring you away from Christianity - on the contrary, it will deepen your Christianity. Do not be afraid of what is 'strange'!"

[Fine words! I will resist taking out the drums and beating KUMBAYA! Not that too many ordinary Catholics are often presented with an opportunity to attend someone else's religious worship - or bring some outsider to Mass. But the Church has never said that doing this was something that would 'bring one away from Christianity'! I've attended - out of curiosity or because of opportunity - Orthodox, Anglican, evangelical, Zen Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist, Mahayana Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, non-denominational rites - and none of it ever kept me from praying at them as I pray during a Catholic service. Unfortunately, my social circle does not include non-believers or non-Christians whom I could ask to come to Mass. I will also admit I've never had a chance to enter a mosque other than as a tourist, so I have no first-hand experience of a Muslim service, although in Saudi Arabia, I witnessed, quite impressed in a way, as people whipped out little carpets, laid them down on the pavement, prostrating and offering their prayers in the direction of Mecca, at the appointed prayer times.]

For the cardinal, the great contemporary geopolitical challenge is the clash of civilizations.

"Do Christians really know how Muslims think, and if they don't, how can they come to understand it?," Martini asks. [Is it not enough for now that we know they believe in one God but they do not believe Jesus Christ is God, and that mainstream Muslims can cite the Koran to justify violence against their enemies today? We can accept that they do not believe in Jesus as God, but not the latter.]

There are three ways to do this, he thinks. "(First), beat down prejudice and the image of Islam as an enemy, because terrorists cannot really use the Koran as justification. [But they do, and so do their sponsors in the Muslim governments and religious establishments that they control.]

"Then, study our differences...
[What's to study? They don't believe in Jesus Christ - there's nothing we can do to change that. It is 'the difference that makes all the difference'! Plus, they allow their lives to be completely dictated by sharia, which is the law based on their religion and tradition. Does that mean we have to study sharia in order to appreciate the practical consequences of that constraint?]

"Finally, to come together in the practice of justice, because Islam is ultimately a religion that is the daughter of Christianity in the same way that Christianity derived from Judaism."
[Let's see what Islam has to say about that! Muslims recognize a common ancestor with Christians and Jews in Abraham, but I don't think I've ever read anywhere that they consider Islam a daughter religion of Christianity! How could it be, since they do not recognize the divinity of Christ?]

The Golden Rule of the Christian, Martini reiterates in this book which seems very much like a spiritual testament - is 'Love your neighbor as yourself'. He explains further, with the precision of the Biblical scholar: "Jesus says more, 'Love your neighbor because he is like you'" And the imperative for justice, he says, derives from that. [And no one has ever had this 'insight' before????]

It would be terrible, says Martini, to invoke God in the European Constitution, say, and yet for it not to be consistent with justice.

And here, this cardinal of the Holy Roman Church takes out the Koran and reads the splendid second surah.
[I don't know what the surah actually says - I am translating Politi's report, and what follows is not enclosed in quotation marks, except where indicated.]

One is not just, if one bows to pray towards the East or West. The just person is he who believes in Allah and the Last Judgment. The just person is he who 'full of love, gives his possessions to his parents, to orphans, to the poor and to pilgrims', who gives alms and ransoms those in prison. "These are the persons who are just and who truly fear God."

Then, the cardinal reflects on what is beyond life.

Is there Hell? Yes, "but I hope that in the end, God will save everyone". And if there are persons like Hitler or an assassin who abuses children, he adds, then maybe the image of Purgatory is a sign to tell us, "Even if you have created so much hell (on earth), perhaps after death, there is a place where you may be healed."

These nocturnal conversations in Jerusalem seem endless. One understands this by the quiet flow of questions and answers. Like waves that follow each other.

Martini, meanwhile, has returned to Lombardy, weakened by Parkinson's. To those who would listen to him, he leaves this message: "We can struggle with God as Job did, we can doubt and dispute him like Job, and feel sad like Jesus and his friends Martha and Mary. These, too, are paths that lead to God."

[I confess I do not understand the last allusion to Jesus feeling sad - unless it was about the death of Lazarus, in which case it would refer to the cardinal's statement that at first he could not undertsand the fact of death at all.

I wish Cardinal Martini well, and I pray that he will live out the rest of his days in joy and in relative comfort, and with as little suffering as possible. But I also wish he would put a stop to the persistent efforts by the likes of Politi to set him up as the anti-Pope. The fact is he has never once protested when commentaries and editorials are made to that effect, and he seems to encourage it by making provocative statements from time to time, like the above, that his supporters, who share his views fully, as well as the reader, can only interpret as anti-Magisterium, if not anti-Benedict.]


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/05/2008 00:04]
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