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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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See preceding page for earlier entries on 10/7/12.



The 13th Synodal Assembly
is the largest ever so far

by Gianni Cardinale
Translated from

Oct. 7, 2012

Two hundred sixty-two prelates are taking part with the right to vote in the 13th General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod which opened Sunday at the Vatican to discuss the "New Evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith".

It is the largest number of Synodal Fathers in the history of the Bishops' Synod which was instituted after Vatican-II, according to Mons. Nikola Eterovic, secretary-general of the Synod in the briefing he gave on Friday.

All in all, he said, there will be 400 participants in the assembly, Besides the Synod Fathers, there will be 45 experts, 49 auditors (Non-voting guests), fraternal delegates from 16 churches and ecclesial communities, three special guests, 5 communications aides, 32 assistants and 30 translators.

Of the 262 Synod Fathers, 103 are from Europe [the focus of the New Evangelization], 63 from the Americas, 50 from Africa, 39 from Asia and 7 from Oceania. Of these, 182 were elected by the national bishops' conferences around the world, 37 are taking part ex officio, and 40 were named by Benedict XVI. By ecclesiastical ranking, the Fathers include 6 Patriarchs, 49 cardinals, 3 Major Archbishops (one of whom is a cardinal), 71 archbishops, 120 bishops and 14 priests.

The Italian bishops' conference (CEI) voted to send Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa and president of the CEI; Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan; Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence; and Mons. Bruno Forte, Archbishop of Chieti. Two Italians are also among those elected by the Union of Superiors-General - Fr. Mario Aldagani of the Josephine fathers of Murialdo, and Fr. Marco Tasca of the conventual Franciscans.

The Pope named seven more Italians: Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of Cardinals; Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar for Rome; Mons. Francesco Moraglia, Patriarch of Venice; Archbishop Filippo Santoro of Taranto, Bishop Luigi Negri of San Marino-Montefeltro, Mons. Enrico Dal Covolo, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University; and Fr. Renato Salvatore, superior-general fo the Camillians.

Italians heading Curial dicasteries who will be participating ex-officio are Cardinals Tarcisio Bertone, Angelo Amato, Fernando Filoni, Mauro Piacenza, Antonio Maria Veglio, Francesco Coccopalmiero, Gianfranco Ravasi, Domenico Calcagno, Giuseppe Versaldi, and Archbishops Vincenzo Paglia, Claudio Maria Celli and Salvatore Fisichella.

Two other Italian bishops who serve in foreign countries are taking part: Mon. Ignazio Bedin, Archbishop of Isfahan of the Latins in Iran; and Mons. Cristoforo Palmieri, Bishop of Reshen, Albania.

Cardinal Betori has been named president of the Synodal Commission on the message, and Archbishop Celli, president of the Commission for Information.

[I hope an Anglophone journalist will do the same breakdown for the English-speaking prelates taking part in the Synod.

The following, on the other hand, is a somewhat informative but too personal commentary on the Synodal Assemlbies through the decades since Vatican-II, by one of the priests who successfully sought to be laicized when he decided to get married in the 1980s, and has since been writing for Catholic media, including Avvenire.... My problem with the article is its unsubstantiated and frankly quite unlikely accusation that obstructionism by the Roman Curia has resulted in the more 'audacious' conclusions (formally called 'propositions') of all 22 Synodal Synodal Assemblies being filtered from the consideration of the Popes when they prepare their post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortations.
]


The unresolved problems
of Synodal assemblies

by Gianni Gennari
Translated from the Italian service of

Oct. 8, 2012

The 13th General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod has begun at the Vatican. In addition to the general ssemblies, there have also been nine Special Assemblies, so-called because they were dedicated to the problems of the Church in specific geographical areas - two were for Europe (1991 and 1999), 2 for Africa (1994 and 2009), one for the Middle East (2010), one for Asia (1998), one for the Americas (1997), one for Lebanon (1995), and one for Oceania (1988).

But who exactly, among the People of God, remembers what took place at these assemblies? What benefits from these 22 assemblies have been actually perceived in the living body of the Church? Only a pure act of faith could result in any positive answers, and it is a fact that is observable to everyone.

The Synods of the Catholic Church have a long history. The term 'synod' has been used through all 20 centuries of Church history, but the Bishops' Synod as we know it today only dates to after the Second Vatican Council, from an idea of Pope Paul VI himself.

In the summer of 1963, three months after he was elected Pope, he addressed the Roman Curia in September to say that the Council that was under way had been studying the idea of "associating a representation of the episcopate in a certain way and on certain issues with the supreme head of the Church" and that he was sure "the Roman Curia certainly will not oppose this".

Whoever is familiar with the history of thoes times and the personal story of Givoanni Battista Montini would understand what he did not say in those statements. He had only been Pope for three months, but he knew quite well that 'the Roman Curia' was in large part not enthusiastic that he had been elected.

This was the same Roman Curia who had always thought he was someone to guard against and to be carefully watched, and who, 10 years earlier, had caused him to be assigned away from Rome, to be Archbishop of what was certainly the most important diocese in Italy, but out of their way. He was not even made a cardinal.

[It's certainly strange to blame 'the Curia' - and insulting to Pius XII - for Montini's assignment to Milan, considering that he had been one of Pius XII's two closest associates at the Secretariat of State (the other was Mons. Domenico Tardini, who took care of foreign relations, while Montini took care of internal affairs), as important to him as he, Eugenio Pacelli, had been to Pius XI. He offered to make them cardinals in the second of the only two consistories during his 19-year Pontificate, but they both declined, choosing to continue working for him at SecState.] In 1958, as soon as he became Pope, John XXIII made Montini a cardinal.

I can remember a significant episode. When Paul VI was elected on June 21,1963, the chagrin was great in the Roman Curia, and even a most esteemed man of the Church, of vast culture and great spirituality, Mons. Percile Felici, who was the secretary-general of Vatican II - much-loved by John XXIII who named him to the position even during the preparatory phase for the Counncil - commented in front of witnesses, "For us [he meant the Curia], it is all over!"

But I can also report what happened next, from the testimony of eyewitnesses who are still around. A few months after his election, Paul VI received the members of the Roman Curia, and one of the first things he did was to call Mons. Felici to him. The Pope embraced him in front of everyone and asked him to help him in the difficult task of carrying on with the Council, and reconfirmed his as its Secretary-General. Mons. Felici broke into tears.

To get back to the Bishops' Synod. After Paul VI first brought up the idea in public, two years passed during which only desultory discussions were held about it, pro and con. But on Sept. 15, 1865, at the start of the Council's fourth and last session, Paul VI formally instituted the Synod of Catholic Bishops with the explicit purpose of "keeping the Council experience alive".

So the birth of the Bishops' Synod was an event within the greater event of the Council. It was not immediately clear to all what the Synod would be able to do. But I remember that in 1967 and 1969, the first two Synodal assemblies were held, and I had the personal experience of hearing about them from many friendly bishops, including the then Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, Albino Luciani. He liked to take walks after lunch through the gardens of the Minor Seminary in Rome, where I was then a professor, and I happened to be the one who accompanied him most often.

We spoke of everything, and of course, about the first two assemblies and their usefulness. In his always smiling way of posing questions, it was clear that he did not think it would be easy for the bishops of the world to gain the prompt and immediate collaboration of the Roman Curia for whatever was decided at the assemblies.

This was most evident to myself and others who took part in spontaneous conversations with the bishops at the first Special assembly in 1969 when the theme was precisely about the post-Vatican II establishment of national episcopal conferences and the collegiality advocated by Vatican II, which was much discussed in books and articles written by Council theologians, including those like Rahner, Ratzinger, Congar, De Lubac, and others who were somewhat disillusioned by post-Council developments and whose viewpoints were certainly not that of the Roman Curia at the time.

And so we come to today. The issue of 'affective and effective' collegiality of the bishops with the Successor of Peter seems to me most important and actual.

Let us return to the historical fact. When Paul VI first referred to the idea of a Bishops' Synod in public, he said explititly and pre-emptively - from his wise and direct knowledge of how things are in the Vatican and in the Curia - that 'surely the Roman Curia will not oppose... the association of the episcopate, on certain issues, with the Pope himself".

Well, I believe I can state the well-founded opinion that after more than four decades, the true problem of the Bishops' Synod is this: how to make the collaboration of bishops and the Pope 'effective', not just theoretical and promptly consigned to what is very likely a built-in institutional oblivion that kicks in almost autmoatically. [That is quite a breathtaking accusation, that insults not just 'the Roman Curia' - who in the Curia, exactly, since there are 22 dicasteries, each with very distinct tasks, and only a few of whom have anything to do directly at any one time with the Synodal propositions - but more importantly, it insults Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who must certainly know from the Synodal sessions they have attended in person what the important issues were, and would certainly not have drafted their post-Synodal exhortations without consulting a list of the Propositions passed by each General or Special Session, not a purged version from whoever in the Curia. As if such super-intelligent Popes, while in full possession of their faculties, would ever have allowed the Curia to manipulate them. Did Gennari stop to think about this at all?]

Now, we are starting this Synodal assembly on the New Evangelization, which means, in practice, the entire mission of the Church, a theme that is fully 'conciliar' in every sense, covering too vast a territory to cover and an obvious over-reach. [No, New Evangelization is primarily aimed at the de-Christianized countries of Europe and any other Christian country where secularization has won out. This Synodal assembly will be specific in that way, even if whatever it eventually decides in terms of how to carry out the New Evangelization most effectively will also be applicable, obviously, even to the traditional tasks of evangelization.]

Perhaps the difference between a Council and a Synod, in the current understanding of the terms, is the limited objectives of a Synod compared to that of a Council. [As well as the far less numerous participation, obviously.] It is that which is often expressed by cardinals, bishops, episcopal conferences and theologians, in the post-Conciliar years. [But no one is arguing that the two entities are equivalent. They obviously are not. The Synod, as Gennari himself cies earlier, is meant to be an extension and prolongation of Conciliar collegiality, but obviously, without the overriding universal significance of a Council.]

I know that what I will say is definitely disputable, but the core of what ails the Synod was already present in what Paul VI said to the Curia when he first brought up the idea to them - namely, his ironical certainty that the Curia would not place obstacles to a concrete and effective collaboration between the Pope and the bishops called to a Synodal assembly.

In fact, to date, one has seen 22 Synodal assemblies that have produced a series of rather ample and often profound 'propositions' to the Pope, that had been discussed in the assemblies, voted on and finally published. But from many angles, they have remained always, or almost always, simply solemn documents reported in the official acts of the Vatican, whereas in the official documents issued by the Popes and intended to implement these propositions, it is often difficult to find any trace of many of the more important propositions adopted by the bishops. [OK, Mr. ex-Reverend Gennari, enough already of these blanket accusations. You are starting to sound very much like Paolo Gabriele and the MSM who shaped his very suggestible psyche. Please, name just one specific proposition that has been ignored by any of the three Popes who have convoked Synodal Assemblies. Just one, if you can. If you can't, shut up.

No responsible editor would allow a reporter or commentator to make such a sweeping accusation without demanding some substantiation for it.
But obviously, few editors take their duties seriously anymore, or even bother to 'edit' anything. They seem to simply publish indiscriminately anything and everything their writers and contributors submit. Respectable scientific publications will not publish any paper submitted by anyone, even if he is a Nobel Prize winner, if the 'information' presented is not authenticated and substantiated by objective facts. That ought to be a standard for general publications as well.]


On the principle that Synodal propositions must be considered 'consultative' out of respect for the Primacy of Peter, in truth, everything has been placed into the hands of the Curia, one way or the other, and gradually, over the years, all the Synodal propositions have been filtered through the Curia without any recourse for the bishops themselves, and everything has been transformed to documents written by the various Curial offices and then signed by the Pope.

The strongest Propositions, those that had managed to survive the fiercest disputes during the assemblies and were therefore included in the published lists of Propositions, have generally been simply ignored in the final documents published with the authority of the Pope.
[Implying that the Popes themselves really do not write their Post-Synodal exhortations! In practice, they may ask various subordinates to draft the elaboration and implementation measures incumbent on each Proposition, but the Pope still has to tie it all together into something coherent. So to say that the final documents are simply 'published with the authority of the Pope' is demeaning to the Pontiffs involved.]

Just look at the original lists of Propositions and then look for these 'daring' Propositions in the final documents which are usually published months, if not years, after the assembly, in which everything has been decided, without any checks on them, by Curial offices. This explains the lack, if not total absence, of pastoral or doctrinal effectiveness of the post-Synodal exhortations.

[Since I had never read any post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation till the first one written by Benedict XVI - Sacramentum caritatis on the Eucharist - which was quite mind-blowingly beautiful and profound, and could not have been written by anyone else but Joseph Ratzinger, I cannot really say anything about the post-synodal exhortations written by Paul VI and John Paul II. But can anyone really imagine that they, any more than Benedict XVI, would have allowed themselves to be manipulated and dictated to by the Curia in something as sensitive and significant as the Propositions from Synodal Fathers? Besides, the failure of Gennari to name even one example of these supposed 'omissions' by virtue of Curial filtering raises grave and obvious doubts about his accusation.]

How then to neutralize this Curial interference? It is worthwhile recalling that during the Council, precisely on the issue of collegiality and the relationship of bishops to the Pope's Magisterium and his very authority, Paul VI inserted a 'Foreword' to Chapter 3 of Lumen gentium, the Council's dogmatic constitution on the Church itself. [When a substantial minority of Council Fathers - 322 - voted against any mention whatever in the document of a "college" of bishops and proposed 47 amnedments to this chapter on collegiality, Paul VI added the 'Nota previa' to reconcile them with the text, by reaffirming that the college of bishops exercises its authority only with the assent of the Pope, thus safeguarding the primacy and pastoral independence of the Pope. The Pope could do this, as presiding officer of the Council.]

I suggest that the Propositions voted and approved by Synodal assemblies should be considered 'consultative' and therefore non-obligatory, only if in conflict with the authority of the Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter. And therefore, without an explicit Papal 'No', as in the case of Paul VI's 'foreword' to Chapter 3 of Lumen gentium, the bishops's propositions ought to be obligatory for everyone in the Church, with the implementing measures to be spelled out after each Synodal assembly.

A Synodal proposition that has been discussed and approved in assembly must immediately become normative for the Church, unless the Pope explicitly rejects it. In practice, this would fully respect the Pope's authority and avoid what has happened often - in which diverse Curial circles, often cooperating with each other, and even despite internal dissension, have acted as filters for the Pope, thus leaving out the most audacious propositions which would perhaps be the most useful for ever-needed authentic reform in the light of changes in the contemporary world.

[Well, yada, yada, yada! You still have not given us one example of these omissions. You're no better than the treasonous former valet screaming 'evil and corruption everywhere in the Church' without showing one example, certainly not in any of the documents he pilfered and exposed to the public. But you ought to be more responsible than a deluded simpleton!

And yet, really, what all-important key proposition from any of the 22 Synodal assemblies could have been omitted by any of the Popes from their final exhortations without the progressivist bishops raising hell in perpetuity about it in the media?]

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Monday, Oct. 8, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. GIOVANNI LEONARDI (Italy, 1541-1609), Priest and Founder of the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God
He was a pharmacist in the Tuscan city-state of Lucca when working with victims of a plague led him to become a priest. He was ordained in 1572 at the peak of the Counter-Reformation and after the Council of Trent. He founded a Confraternity for Christian Doctrine to teach correct doctrine to the young, and published a compendium of Christian doctrine which was widely used in Italy till the 19th century. He also propagated devotion to the Eucharist, to Eucharistic Adoration and to the Blessed Virgin. He and other priests who were attracted to his work started thinking of a new congregation for diocesan priests. Their ideas were rejected by Lucca authorities who did not favor the new Protestantism, but also thought Leonardi and company were against reforming the Church. Eventually exiled from Lucca, he ended up in Rome where he became friends with the future St. Philip Neri. In 1583, he founded the order of Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, which was approved by Pope Clement VIII in 1595, who also appointed him to reform the Benedictine monks in two Italian monasteries. He died in Rome during an influenza epidemic when he was helping take care of the sick. He was canonized in 1938.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/100812.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The first two General Congregations (meetings) of the XIII General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod to discuss
the New Evangelization. The Holy Father attended the morning session and delivered an extemporaneous opening
reflection. There will be an afternoon session as well.
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I promised myself that unless it was absolutely necessary, I was not going to post any news reports or commentary about Paolo Gabriele or any of the unholy mess he created, during the next three weeks of the Synodal Assembly which will also see the opening of the Year of Faith. Nothing I have seen so far, from my necessarily cursory daily survey of news and commentary about the Vatican, has proven to be 'absolutely necessary' as to break that promise... But I was unprepared for an older Lucifer, Hans Kueng, to surface at this time. Probably because few in the MSM took notice - a measure of how low he has come down in the MSM estimation of his actual 'value' in prosecuting their case against the Church and Benedict XVI.

Anyway, here's the link to a lengthy article with a laugh-out-loud premise in the UK Guardian from this weekend

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/05/catholic-revolution-nazi-dictatorship-pope
as I really do not wish to belabor either Kueng's or the Guardian's preposterous arguments, and certainly do not have the time nor energy to fisk them. But I will post a reaction by Carl Olson, who is the editor both of Ignatius Insight and of Catholic World Report.

Hans Küng likens Catholic bishops to Nazi generals
and urges a grassroots movement to overthrow the Pope

By Carl E. Olson

October 06, 2012

Why stop there, Dr. Hans? You're on a roll! How about calling the Pope a "Bible-thumping, rosary-kissing jihadist"? Or faithful nuns as "Hell Angels in habits"? Or practicing, believing Catholics as "illiterate Fundie drones who worship the Pope, hate women, and shower just once a month"? Here's how the UK Guardian begins an article published Oct. 6:

One of the world's most prominent Catholic theologians has called for a revolution from below to unseat the Pope and force radical reform at the Vatican.

Hans Küng is appealing to priests and churchgoers to confront the Catholic hierarchy, which he says is corrupt, lacking credibility and apathetic to the real concerns of the Church's members. [HK, Gabriele and the MSM are, of course, all reading from the same playbook - squid tactics to obscure their lack of specifics for anything they charge!]

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Küng, who had close contact with the Pope when the two worked together as young theologians, described the church as an "authoritarian system" with parallels to Germany's Nazi dictatorship.

"The unconditional obedience demanded of bishops who swear their allegiance to the Pope when they make their holy oath is almost as extreme as that of the German generals who were forced to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler," he said. [That oath has been in existence for centuries and if the continuing expression of Christ's unequivocal entrusting of the Church to Peter. Did Kueng ever challenge this centuries-old Tradition when he took part in the Second Vatican Council - when, I am sure, he as an official expert, had to take the oath of loyalty himself!]

The Vatican made a point of crushing any form of clerical dissent, he added. "The rules for choosing bishops are so rigid that as soon as candidates emerge who, say, stand up for the pill, or for the ordination of women, they are struck off the list." The result was a Church of "yes men", almost all of whom unquestioningly toed the line. [Very clearly, this is one instance when, as Benedict XVI often does, one must remind Kueng of the obedience exemplified by Mary. Not that the Pope is God, but he is Christ's Vicar on earth, and the Church he instituted has evolved clear rules for the faithful about the Magisterium which derives from Revelation and Tradition.]


Let's try that again, with an imaginative excursion back to the early first century:

The Nazarene upstart, Jesus Christ, has made a point of crushing any form of dissent or disagreement. "The rules for choosing disciples are so rigid that as soon as candidates emerge who, say, trust in money or reject teachings about the Eucharist or deny Jesus's authority, they are struck off the list." The result is a body of "yes men", almost all of whom unquestionably toe the line (though some have doubts about Judas Iscariot, deemed the "most open-minded" and "pragmatic" by some veteran observors).

Küng once possessed serious theological chops, and I've benefited from some of his early works. But he has several maddening qualities — arrogance, immodesty, bloviation, sucking up to the media — that have only been amplified by time and the fairly certain conclusion that he won't be elected Pope any time soon (or ever!). The man is nearly impossible to spoof or satirize. How, for instance, can anyone make up this sort of Küngraziness?

"The Vatican is no different from the Kremlin," Küng said. "Just as Putin as a secret service agent became the head of Russia, so Ratzinger, as head of the Catholic church's secret services, became head of the Vatican. He has never apologised for the fact that many cases of abuse were sealed under the secretum pontificium (papal secrecy), or acknowledged that this is a disaster for the Catholic church." Küng described a process of "Putinisation" that has taken place at the Vatican. ...

Far from putting the brakes on his prolific theological output, Küng has recently distilled the ideas of Weltethos – which seeks to create a global code of behaviour, or a globalisation of ethics – into a capricious musical libretto. Mixing narrative with excerpts from the teachings of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, Küng's writings have been incorporated into a major symphonic work by the British composer Jonathan Harvey that will have its London premiere on Sunday at the Southbank Centre.

Küng says the musical work, like the foundation, is an attempt to emphasise what the religions of the world have in common rather than what divides them.

Ah, the sweet sounds of syncretism! It's music to mushy ears. Anyone familar with, say, Lumen Gentium, or the writings of Blessed John Paul II and Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (see Truth and Tolerance, especially), know that all highlight what religions have in common and what is distinctive and even irreconcilable about them. Why? Because truth and intellectual integrity, not to mention spiritual integrity, demand it.

Christianity is not merely a belief system or a moral code, as Küng apparently believes (or is that "believes"?), but a transformative encounter with the unique person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. If Jesus is not the Incarnate Word, then Christianity becomes just a moral and cultural force, then a pick-and-choose lifestyle, and then, finally, an empty afterthought of no lasting value.

Finally, there is a serious irony, or contradiction, in Küng's perspective:

Weltethos was founded in the early 1990s as an attempt to bring the religions of the world together by emphasising what they have in common rather than what divides them. It has drawn up a code of behavioural rules that it hopes one day will be as universally acceptable as the UN.

(Would that be the same U.N. that is being pushed by its High Commissioner on Human Rights — no, really, stop laughing — to endorse "governments to criminalise organised opposition to abortion by non-governmental groups such as pro-life lobbyists or even family members"?)

The work's aim is arguably high-minded – Harvey described the demanding task of writing a score for the text as an "awe-inspring responsibility". But Küng, who has won the support of leading figures including Henry Kissinger, Kofi Annan, Jacques Rogge, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and Shirin Ebadi, insisted its aims were grounded in basic necessity.

"At a time of paradigm change in the world, we need a common set of principles, most obvious among them the Golden Rule, in which Confucius taught not to impose on others what you do not wish for yourself," he said. [Surely, a far from subtle revision of the Golden Rule, which he might have cited from Jesus rather than from Confucius! The way Kueng states it, Confucius would have found it perfectly right for Kueng and his fellow dissenters to impose on others what they wish for themselves, namely all the so-called reforms they want the Church to make in order to suit them!]

Having spent so much time telling The Guardian how he wants "revolts" and "revolution" and "radical reform" — all predicated on denying and undermining Church authority — Küng appeals to the golden rule (in its negative form, notably).

So, does he also wish for revolt against his beliefs and projects? Does he also desire that those who disagree with him impose their beliefs upon him? He obviously understands the Catholic Church is not a dictatorship — people are not forced to become Catholic (unlike, say, in some religions), and Catholics are free to leave the Church. No, what he clearly despises are the singular claims of the Catholic Church, not the least in the realm of morality, as Küng passionately advocates abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and homosexuality.

What is particularly galling about Küng is that he, like so many dissenters and progressives, cannot or will not distinguish between coercive power and legitimate authority. His approach is not that of a pastor or a bishop or a loyal son of the Church, but of a bureaucrat, technocrat, and politician of the most heavy-handed, even militaristic, sort.

•NB: For an excellent overview and analysis of Küng's beliefs and projects, see Donna Steichen's 2005 Catholic World Report article, "A Religion the New York Times Can Love".

HK has been at this Weltethos project since the 1990s - and two decades later, what progress can he report? I bet even the members of 'We are Church' are not familiar with it. Sure, Kissinger, Desmond Tutu and some other prominent names support it - the idea is not in itself bad, it is in fact, the aim of proper and genuine inter-religious dialog as Benedict XVI has been advocating - but it can hardly be institutionalized. Never mind syncretism - just consider simple human nature, as defined by all the objective elements that make the idea of the UN as a world governing assembly unrealizable!

As you would note when reading the Guardian article, Kueng says a lot of outright lies to ridicule Benedict XVI personally, especially on 'pomposity', which Olson did not see fit to comment on. But for what it is worth, Kueng also says he keeps in contact with the Pope through letters:


Yet despite their differences, the two have remained in contact. Küng visited the Pope at his summer retreat, Castel Gandolfo, in 2005, during which the two held an intensive four-hour discussion.

"It felt like we were on an equal footing – after all, we'd been colleagues for years. We walked through the park and there were times I thought he might turn the corner on certain issues, but it never happened. Since then we've still kept exchanging letters, but we've not met."

And does he tell the Pope in his letters all the rude insulting things he says about him in public?
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First General Congregation
of the XIII General Assembly
featured a meditation
by the Holy Father


Oct. 8, 2012

This morning, Monday October 8, 2012, at 9:10 a.m., in the presence of the Holy Father, in the Synod Hall in Vatican City, the work of the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops began, on the theme: «The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith».

The First General Congregation started with the chant of the Hour of Terce. Here is a summary of the Holy Father's extemporaneous meditation during the liturgical office. We will publish the full text as soon as we can:

SUMMARY: MEDITATION BY THE HOLY FATHER

The Pillars of New Evangelization are the Confessio and the Caritas, beginning with the Evangelium, on a path that leads to making the good fire of the annunciation emerge and be offered to others.

This was explained by the Pope in the reflection during the Hour of Terce this morning, stating that only God is the source of this path, which then needs human commitment. Starting with the Evangelium, precisely, and returning to prayer, upon which cooperation with God is founded.

Because God shows Himself in the figure of Jesus, who is the Word, with a content which asks only to enter in us. The willingness to suffer also belongs to the Christian confession, said the Holy Father: Confessio carries within it the concept of martyrology, in the sense that it expresses the willingness to bear witness even up to the sacrifice of life. And it is this that guarantees our credibility.

The Confessio should remain in heart and mouth. It must necessarily become public, because the faith carried within must be communicated to others, proclaimed, with the courage that derives from intelligence.

Because God, the Pope stated, is not only a spiritual essence. He enters in the life and senses of man. Thus in the Confessio the force of our senses is necessary, which are mutually penetrated in the symphony of God.

All of this presupposes Caritas, which is love that becomes ardor. According to the Pope, it is the flame that kindles others and becomes the fire of charity.

The Christian must not be tepid: this is the greatest danger. Going back to Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, the Pope explained that Fire, Spirit, is light, color, and force. God’s power is the power of transformation. Thus vigor creates the movement of Caritas, which becomes fundamental for Evangelization.

Besides even in the word Evangelium, we find the meaning of a proclamation of a victory, of goodness and of joy, which in the context of Evangelization should become justice, peace and salvation.

Changing the meaning of the word from ancient Roman culture, the Holy Father explained how Evangelium is in itself a message of power, renewal and salvation. A word that is still valid today, when many men ask themselves if behind the clouds of history there is a God, if this is a hypothesis or a reality.

For the Christian, the Pope asserted, God exists and this existence is the source of salvation; but there is more, because God loves us, He spoke and showed Himself.

This, for the Holy Father, is again the basis of the proclamation, it is again the message that the Church must offer. Never forgetting prayer, because if God does not act, the Pope added, men’s actions are insufficient. In other words, only God can begin a path of renewal; men are to deal with the job of cooperating with willingness, putting themselves in play with their whole being, thus making the presence of God visible.


The Assembly's President Delegate on duty, Cardinal John TONG HON, Bishop of Hong Kong (CHINA), then delivered opening remarks, vollowed by a brief report from he Synod's Secretary-General, Mons. Nikola Eterovic.

After the morning break, Cardinal Donald William WUERL, Archbishop of Washington (USA), Gneral Rapporteur for the Assembly, intervened with a pre-discussion report.

The General Congregation concluded at 12:00 with the Prayer Angelus Domini led by the Holy Father.

There were 256 Synodal Fathers present.

GREETING BY THE PRESIDENT-DELEGATE,
CARDINAL JOHN TONG HON, BISHOP OF HONG KONG.
Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples


Dear Holy Father,

On behalf of the Synod Fathers and participants, I would like to extend our heartfelt greetings and deep gratitude to you for inviting us to this Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith is really an urgent topic, because many people in the world still do not know Our Lord Jesus Christ, and many of the baptized have given up the practice of their faith.

Fifty years ago, the Second Vatican Council encouraged us to launch out into the deep (Lk 5:4). Today, in a similar way, we must take the Early Church community (Acts 2:42-47) as our model of evangelization.

The members of that community possessed three qualities which can be expressed in three Greek words: didache, koinonia and diakonia.

Didache means doctrine, which is not just a theory, but rather a personal taking on of the incarnate, crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

Koinonia means communion on different levels: fundamentally with God; and then with all the members of the Church; and further with the people of the whole world, particularly with the poor.

Diakonia means service of which Jesus instructs us not to be served but to serve and even to the total gift of self, leading to the cross. (cf. Mt 20:28) These three qualities have been manifested in Hong Kong, Macao and Mainland China.

In Hong Kong, before the return of the sovereignty of the city to China in 1997, many families faced crises caused by fear of living under the Communist regime.

The term “crisis” in the Chinese language is made up of two characters “danger” and “opportunity.” Thus, facing the crisis of insecurity, even non-practicing Catholics returned to the Church for spiritual support. And many faithful attended catechesis, Bible and theology courses to deepen their own faith and to be evangelizers. Today our diocese has more than a thousand well-trained volunteer-catechists. This year more than 3,000 adults received baptism at the Easter Vigil.

Macao, our neighboring diocese, has made similar efforts and has seen an increase in the number of baptisms in recent years.

In northern China, a parish priest in the countryside shared with me his experience of evangelization. After much prayer, he decided to divide the parishioners into two groups with different missions. He gave the newly baptized the mission to bring their non-Catholic friends and relatives to learn the catechesis, and to the long-time Catholics the mission of teaching the catechism to the catechumens. During the teaching, this priest prayed fervently in the church.

Eventually, the parish witnessed more than a thousand baptisms a year.
Among the characteristics of didache, koinonia and diakonia as exemplified in the Early Church and reflected in the testimonies given above, didache seems to me the most important, because God works through us as His witnesses.

Nowadays, facing a materialistic culture in the world, and the problem of many fallen-away Catholics in the Church, we must be zealous witnesses of our faith. We must also pay attention to the youth, as the Holy Father frequently reminds us: “Let the young people be evangelizers of the youth”. God’s salvific plan is amazing. I am sure that, with faith, hope and love, we will succeed in our mission of evangelization.

Dear Holy Father, the Synod Fathers and participants, thank you for your kind attention. Looking forward to hearing your testimonies.



The reports by Mons. Eterovic and Cardinal Wuerl, which are chock-full of relevant information, may be found on
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/documents/bollettino_25_xiii-ordinaria-2012/02_inglese/b04_02.html

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Marco Tosatti of La Stampa/Vatican Insider picks up some strong words from the Pope's meditation this morning - which I think is a great smackdown of the 'We are Church' conceit - that because the Church is made up of persons, including such as they, her members are therefore free to make of the Church what they wish it to be. The Church does not belong to any one group of constituents, or even to all its constitutents - it is we who belong to the Church, which is the Church of Christ, the Church he instituted and that he specifically placed into the custody of Peter and his Successors.

Benedict XVI to the Synodal Assembly:
'We cannot make the Church ourselves -
God takes the initiative and we follow'

by Marco Tosatti
Translated from

Oct. 8, 2012

"The Apostles did not launch the Church as a constituent assembly that had to draw up a Constitution," Benedict XVI said this morning to the 256 bishops from around the world who attended the first general session of the XIII Ordinary Assembly of the Bishops' Synod, which was convened to discuss how best to carry out the New Evangelization.

The Pope pointed out that "The Church was born only from the initiative of God, and even today, a new start must come from God".

"We cannot make the Church ourselves, but only acknowledge what God has done, because the Church did not begin with what we did - God acted first".

"Therefore", he said, "it is not a formality that we start with a prayer. Only God's preceding action makes our journey possible, and makes our cooperation realizable. Only by imploring his initiative can we become evangelizers. Only he can make a Pentecost".

"God is always the initiator," he reiterated, "but he wants our involvement, which means our very being, all our actions. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit may come into us and with us. Thus, our actions may follow God's initiative to act in the reality of the world today."

"We can know how man must act: the Apostles could act with the presence of the Holy Spirit because the Word of the Gospel is always present and carries intself the present as well as the future".

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50 years since Vatican II:
Pius XII's ground-breaking preparations and
a decades-long movement within the Church
preceded John XXIII's historic decision

by Salvatore Izzo


VATICAN CITY, Oct. 8 (Translated from AGI) - With the 1966 film "E venne un'uomo" (And there came a man), Italian director Ermanno Olmi celebrated the novelty of the Second Vatican Council (whose opening 50 years ago will be marked on Oct. 11) and John XXIII who had convoked the Council to the surprise of everyone in January 1959, just three months after he was elected Pope.

An announcement that the Pope himself said, he made "with some trembling and emotion, but also with humble resolution in this regard".

"That film," says Mondo Voc, the online journal of the protal vocazione.net, "contributed to change the idea of a prophetic as well as sudden intuition by John XXIII, who must certainly be credited with the great merit of such a courageous and important initiative. But, in truth, convoking the Council was a response to an expectation that had been building for quite some time throughout the Church".

That is why, to present the Council as an 'absolute discontinuity' with the past history of the Church - as did the late historian Giuseppe Alberigo, leader of the so-called Bologna school which imposed its ideas of Vatican II simply by beating everyone to publication of a 'history' of the Council - probably contributed a great deal to a series of negative fallouts that have nonetheless failed to obscure the magnitude and importance of the event.

Romano Guardini, the great Italo-German theologian who might be considered one of Joseph Ratzinger's spiritual mentors, said back in 1922: "A process of incalculable significance has started - the reawakening ot the Church in the souls of the faithful".

Indeed, the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), which was necessarily conditioned by the so-called Roman Question arising from the loss of temporal power by the Popes after the unification of Italy (a 'providential' event, Paul VI would say one century later), opened what theologian Yves Congar, a Council Father at Vatican-II, would call 'the century of the Church'.

Starting in the 1920s, the reawakening of the sense of Church [including what was then called 'the new liturgical movement'] referred to by Guardini also called attention to the inadequacy of the teachings of the Church, which seemed so static and closed to sociological and juridical modifications.

New experiences in the world and a new recourse to Biblical sources led to developing the idea that the Church was not a perfect society, obliging theological reflection to come up with new perceptions.

Thus the urgent need for a new ecumenical council was very much felt within the Catholic Church hierarchy in the early part of the 20th century, but two world wars got in the way of its convocation.

The idea was taken up after World War II, when Pius XII carefully and diligently undertook preparations for a Vatican-II, as attested to by the Vatican II final documents, which contain 20 citations to 92 magisterial acts during Pius XII's Pontificate. In itself, the dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, contains 58 citations of Pius XII. [Yet another important aspect for which this great Pope has been greatly ignored or under-estimated].

"If one looks at the indexes and footnotes of Vatican II documents," noted Cardinal Giuseppe Siri at the 1983 Synodal Assembly in the presence of John Paul II, "the most numerous citations after the Bible are from Pius XII".

For his part, John Paul II commented: "We cannot forget how much Pius XII contributed to the theological preparation for Vatican-II, especially with regard to the doctrine on the Church, the first liturgical reforms, the new impulse given to Biblical studies, and his great attention to the problems of the contemporary world". [Joseph Ratzinger must feel enormous kinship with this Pope who shared his primary concerns to this degree, and who was, like him, a superior intellect greatly misrepresented and under-estimated by critics of the Church. I must revise my own mindset to include Pius XII among the 'Conciliar Popes'.]

That extraordinary assembly of bishops from around the world (almost 3000 of them took part), inaugurated by John XXIII on October 11, 1962 (a year before he died), was brought to a close after four annual two-month sessions by Paul VI on December 7, 1965.

Paul VI underscored that the Council had "turned the attention of the Church towards the anthropocentric orientation of modern culture" [I'm confused - I thought that Christian humanism, by definition, was always anthropocentric, i.e., man-centered, with man as the object of God's grace and God's salvation, as well as his fellowman's care and concern.], but without turning away "from the most authentic religious interest, especially because of the link between human and temporal values and those that are properly spiritual, religious and eternal: the Church yields on [the problems facing] man and the earth but raises herself to the Kingdom fo God".

An openness to the contemporary world that was manifested in his itinerant Papacy by John Paul II. And today by Benedict XVI, who, the day after being elected Pope, reaffirmed forcefully 'his determined intention' to continue with the implementation of the Second Vatican Council "in the wake of my predecessors and in faithful continuity with the bimillennial tradition of the Church".

A similarly strong appeal was addressed by him last July 15, addressing the youth of Frascati, and advising them that their journey of faith should bring them to study the documents of Vatican II, which have been mostly consigned to the archives even by those who claim most loudly to be the defenders of the Council and who have accused the Pope of having betrayed Vatican II, for instance, by holding out a hand to the Lefebvrians who oppose the 'openings' of Vatican II.

The Council textx, he said in his homily at the Mass in Frascati, "contain an enormous wealth for the formation of tne new Christian generations, for the formation of Christian conscience".

According to the Pope, studying the Vatican II documents must be seen as an indispensable stage towards a mature commitment, both on the ecclesial and civliian levels, because "they make us rediscover the beauty of being Christian, of being the Church, of living the great 'we' that Jesus has gathered around him, in order to evangelize the world".

"Faithfulness to tradition, openness to the future" - for the theologian Pope, this is the most correct interpreetation of Vatican II, which, according to Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, "remains the Magna Carta of the Church even in the Third Millennium".

Some Council 'survivors'
look back at Vatican II

by Salvatore Izzo


VATICAN CITY, Oct. 8 (Translated from AGI) - Benedict XVI, who decreed a Year of Faith to commemorate, among other things, the 50th year since the Second Vatican Council opened, is also one of the surviving Council participants, having been one of its official theological consultants as a college professor in his early 30s.

"I was a young theologian of no importance who happened to be invited," (he was brought on originally as theological consultant to Cardinal Josef Frings, then Archbishop of Cologne, who then moved to have him appointed by John XXIII as an official consultant to the Council so he could sit in on all the sessions), he recalled when he visited the Servites' center in Nemi, where a bishops' commission had met in 1965 to finalize the Council decree on the Missio ad gentes.

"I found myself in the company of so many great personages," he said, exprssing something that seemed to have been the feeling of the surviving Council Fathers, speaking half a century after the event.

Mondo Voc has ascertained hat of the almost 3000 persons who took part in Vatican II, 96 are still alive. Papa Ratzinger's impression is confirmed by Mons. Salvatore Nicolosi, emeritus Bishop of Noto, who is now 90 and took part in the Council starting with the second session on September 29, 1963.

"I entered the hall with trepidation, aware of the greatness of the gift and the responsibility of being among the Council Fathers," he says.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica, which had been converted into the Council Hall, participants were struck, said Mons. Nicolosi, by the image of a Church seeking to 'reach into the heart of Christian life' while 'undertaking a dialog with the rest of mankind', as well as the climate of openness that was manifest in "the symphony of voices of such a great number of bishops gathered from around the world".

It was an atmosphere, he said, "in which we were able to experience effective and enriching collegiality... the presence of major theologians who largely spurred reflection... and the first ecumenical contacts".

He believes that "the richness of the Council derived from the fact that everyone was listening attentively", and that "we should continue to implement the Council in that way - remaining open to the Holy Spirit through an intelligent and calm study of realities, far-reaching vision and lucid diligence".

Says Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 93, vice-dean of the College of Cardinals, who took part in Vatican II, like Joseph Ratzinger, as a consultant: "What struck me msot was the universal sense of the Church, with the impressive participation of nearly 3000 bishops, but also the presence, for the first time at a Catholic council, of some 20 observers from the separated churches. Even now, the figures from Vatican II remain amazing. The public debates for instance consisted of more than 1,500 hours all registered on audio tape. I was also impressed by the masterly diplomatic ability of the Secretary-General, Mons. Perocle Felici, who kept the Council on track for four years".

The cardinal concluded: "For me, however, the Council represented an extraordinary spiritual experience".

Cardinal George Cottier, now 90, emeritus theologian of teh Pontifical Household, and a Council consultant as a young Dominican priest, was impressed by the inherent greatness of the event and the humility of its participants.

"Of course, I was struck by the amazing diligence of Yves-Marie Congar, but also by his different theological and ecclesiological viewpoint compared to Jean Danielou. And I was greatly impressed by the editing efforts put in by the Belgian priest Gerard Philips in preparing the drafts and schema for Lumen gentium".

"Then, there was the intelligence and volcanic interventions of Karl Rahner, who already had, at the time, I believe, all the criticisms of the Church that he would concretize after the Council. And I have beautiful memories of Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti, in whom I found a very spiritual man who was greatly helped by his experience in the Italian constitutent assembly". [Dossetti was a jurist-politician who was a leading Christian Democrat in post-war Italy, but decided to become a priest afterwards. In Vatican-II, he was the closest adviser to Cardinal Lercaro, one of the influential progressive voices in the Council. Afterwards, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi said of Dossetti that he "contributed to making the Council less conservative and traditional than what was originally planned". Most importantly, porhaps, Dossetti inspired historian-followers like Giuseppe Alberigo in the Bologna school's dratsic interpretation of Vatican II as an 'absolute discontinuity' with the past of the Catholic Church.]

For his part, Jesuit Cardinal Roberto Tucci, also 90, who covered Vatican II as the young editor of La Civilta Cattolica, said, "I do not deny that it was a great help to me that I studied in the University of Louvain (Belgium) where I breathed a theological perspective that was so remote from that which was being taught in the Roman pontifical universities like the Gregorian, the Lateran and the Angelicum at the time. My Francophone formation helped me a great deal as an expert consultant named by John XXIII to be accepted by the French and Belgian bishops who made me feel I was one of them. We were jokingly called the Lovaniense secundum{.

Cardinal Tucci names as one of the great Council figures his fellow Jesuit, Fr. Agostino Bea, Biblicist and former rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute of Rome (and was soon named cardinal by Paul VI), whom he described as "an excellent man who was never ruffled" despite the great resistance to his proposals, which were nonetheless "largely adopted in the declaration on religious freedom, Nostra aetate, and in the decree on ecumenism".

Both documents are still opposed today by traditionalists, but Mons. Luigi Bettazzi, emeritus bishop of Ivrea, who at 88, is one of the youngest Council survivors, says "they remain epochal documents".

He also thinks that an important development was "the re-emergence of the Biblical and Patristic viewpoints which preceded all the theological impostations that subsedquently developed over the centuries".

he believes that the greatest 'intuition' by the Council was "the rediscovery of the centrality of the Word of God as nourishment for a living faith, as the basis for a personal and communitarian face-to-face with God".

He would also undersocre the Council's "view of the Church in its dimension of communion and co-responsibility of all Christians, even if the last word is still that of the hierarchy".

"I arrived at the second session of the Council in 1963," he says, "to discover the Catholic Church, namely, the universal church, in its multiplicity and variety of bishops reporesenting all the peoples and cultures of the world who could finally express themselves in an ecumenical council".

"I believe," he concludes, "that Pope John truly intended a Council that was pastoral rather than dogmatic, which means, to start from the person more than from abstract doctrine".

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Joseph Ratzinger and Vatican-II:
Participant and witness,
and today, its custodian



VATICAN CITY, Oct. 8 (Translated from ANSA) - As a young theologian, Joseph Ratzinger was at the Second Vatican Council initially as a consultant to the Archbishop of Cologne, Josef Frings, who was the arch-enemy of Cardinal Ottaviani, then the Prefect of the Holy Office [which would be renamed Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after Vatican-II] and ex-officio president of the International Commission, who opposed any reform in the Church. [At the request of Cardinal Frings, he was then appointed by John XXIII as an official expert consultant (perito) to the Council, joining other outstanding theologians of the day in this function.]

Now, as Pope, he is preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Council opening, for which he will launch a Year of Faith that will provide a massive launch for the New Evangelization.

As one of the theological consultants for the Council, he was considered among the progressives of the Council. He took part in the meetings of the German-speaking Council fathers and helped shape their strategy and arguments. But returning to his life as a university professor in Germany in 1965, he soon experienced the counterblows of the post-Conciliar years.

The life, the theological research and the spiritual reflections of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI are intertwined in a singular manner with the greatest ecclesial event of the 20th century. He has been participant, witness and now, custodian, of the Second Vatican Council.

In a 1977 interview, then Cardinal Ratzinger described the Council as having been "an earthquake as well as a salutary crisis". But his most exhaustive reflection so far on the legacy of the Council is that which he expressed in his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia after he was elected Pope in 2005.

The category he chose to characterize Vatican II was 'reform' - exactly, he said, as both John XXIII and Paul VI had chosen to present it.

'Hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" and 'hermeneutic of reform' were the two interpretations of the Council which, he said, "came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit".

The first interpretation "has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology" but "risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church".

Benedict XVI has looked into the risks inherent in believing that faithfulness to the Council must first of all be to its 'spirit' rather than to its texts, thus making room 'for every whim".

"The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve. The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord" [Interestingly, this is a thought he expressed again during his meditation before the first general session of the current Synodal Assembly today, Oct. 8.]

The Pope, who spoke then on the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of Vatican II, further observed: "Forty years after the Council, we can show that the positive is far greater and livelier than it appeared to be in the turbulent years around 1968. Today, we see that although the good seed developed slowly, it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the work done by the Council is likewise growing".

For the Pope, "It is in a combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself".

Among such contingent forms he mentions "certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible". Or the idea of considering religious freedom "as an expression of the human inability to discover the truth".

He offered an ample analysis of the relationship between the missionary Church and the concept of truth. He analyzed the concept of 'openness to the modern world' as enunciated by the Council: "Those who expected that with this fundamental Yes to the modern era all tensions would be dispelled and that the 'openness towards the world' accordingly achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch".

"It was certainly the Council's intention," he said, "to overcome erroneous or superfluous contradictions in order to present to our world the requirement of the Gospel in its full greatness and purity.

"The steps the Council took towards the modern era which had rather vaguely been presented as 'openness to the world', belong in short to the perennial problem of the relationship between faith and reason that is re-emerging in ever new forms."

Actually, quoting loosely from that December 2005 address does not do it full justice. What Benedict XVI said then about Vatican II deserves quoting and re-reading in full. Recall that he was reviewing the major Church events of 2005, which included the death of John Paul II, his own election as Pope, World Youth Day in Cologne, and the Special Synodal Assembly on the Eucharist. The address itself is now a major historical event, a defining reference both for Benedict XVI's Pontificate and for Vatican-II:

Benedict XVI's historic redefinition
of Vatican II in 2005 -
40 years after the Council closed


The last event of this year on which I wish to reflect here is the celebration of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council 40 years ago.

This memory prompts the question: What has been the result of the Council? Was it well received? What, in the acceptance of the Council, was good and what was inadequate or mistaken? What still remains to be done?

No one can deny that in vast areas of the Church the implementation of the Council has been somewhat difficult, even without wishing to apply to what occurred in these years the description that St Basil, the great Doctor of the Church, made of the Church's situation after the Council of Nicea: he compares her situation to a naval battle in the darkness of the storm, saying among other things: "The raucous shouting of those who through disagreement rise up against one another, the incomprehensible chatter, the confused din of uninterrupted clamouring, has now filled almost the whole of the Church, falsifying through excess or failure the right doctrine of the faith..."
(De Spiritu Sancto, XXX, 77; PG 32, 213 A; SCh 17 ff., p. 524).

We do not want to apply precisely this dramatic description to the situation of the post-conciliar period, yet something from all that occurred is nevertheless reflected in it. The question arises: Why has the implementation of the Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?

Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application.

The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.

On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call "a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture"; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology.

On the other, there is the "hermeneutic of reform", of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.

These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.

In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spiri t. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.

The nature of a Council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the Constituent Assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve.

The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.

Through the Sacrament they have received, Bishops are stewards of the Lord's gift. They are "stewards of the mysteries of God"
(I Cor 4: 1); as such, they must be found to be "faithful" and "wise" (cf. Lk 12: 41-48). This requires them to administer the Lord's gift in the right way, so that it is not left concealed in some hiding place but bears fruit, and the Lord may end by saying to the administrator: "Since you were dependable in a small matter I will put you in charge of larger affairs" (cf. Mt 25: 14-30; Lk 19: 11-27).

These Gospel parables express the dynamic of fidelity required in the Lord's service; and through them it becomes clear that, as in a Council, the dynamic and fidelity must converge.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform, as it was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his Speech inaugurating the Council on 11 October 1962 and later by Pope Paul VI in his Discourse for the Council's conclusion on 7 December 1965.

Here I shall cite only John XXIII's well-known words, which unequivocally express this hermeneutic when he says that the Council wishes "to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion".


And he continues: "Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us...".

It is necessary that "adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness..." be presented in "faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another...", retaining the same meaning and message
(The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., p. 715).

It is clear that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands new thinking on this truth and a new and vital relationship with it; it is also clear that new words can only develop if they come from an informed understanding of the truth expressed, and on the other hand, that a reflection on faith also requires that this faith be lived. In this regard, the programme that Pope John XXIII proposed was extremely demanding, indeed, just as the synthesis of fidelity and dynamic is demanding.

However, wherever this interpretation guided the implementation of the Council, new life developed and new fruit ripened. Forty years after the Council, we can show that the positive is far greater and livelier than it appeared to be in the turbulent years around 1968. Today, we see that although the good seed developed slowly, it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the work done by the Council is likewise growing.

In his Discourse closing the Council, Paul VI pointed out a further specific reason why a hermeneutic of discontinuity can seem convincing.

In the great dispute about man which marks the modern epoch, the Council had to focus in particular on the theme of anthropology. It had to question the relationship between the Church and her faith on the one hand, and man and the contemporary world on the other
(cf. ibid.).

The question becomes even clearer if, instead of the generic term "contemporary world", we opt for another that is more precise: the Council had to determine in a new way the relationship between the Church and the modern era.

This relationship had a somewhat stormy beginning with the Galileo case. It was then totally interrupted when Kant described "religion within pure reason" and when, in the radical phase of the French Revolution, an image of the State and the human being that practically no longer wanted to allow the Church any room was disseminated.

In the 19th century under Pius IX, the clash between the Church's faith and a radical liberalism and the natural sciences - which also claimed to embrace with their knowledge the whole of reality to its limit, stubbornly proposing to make the "hypothesis of God" superfluous - had elicited from the Church a bitter and radical condemnation of this spirit of the modern age. Thus, it seemed that there was no longer any milieu open to a positive and fruitful understanding, and the rejection by those who felt they were the representatives of the modern era was also drastic.

In the meantime, however, the modern age had also experienced developments. People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.

The natural sciences were beginning to reflect more and more clearly their own limitations imposed by their own method, which, despite achieving great things, was nevertheless unable to grasp the global nature of reality.

So it was that both parties were gradually beginning to open up to each other. In the period between the two World Wars and especially after the Second World War, Catholic statesmen demonstrated that a modern secular State could exist that was not neutral regarding values but alive, drawing from the great ethical sources opened by Christianity.

Catholic social doctrine, as it gradually developed, became an important model between radical liberalism and the Marxist theory of the State. The natural sciences, which without reservation professed a method of their own to which God was barred access, realized ever more clearly that this method did not include the whole of reality. Hence, they once again opened their doors to God, knowing that reality is greater than the naturalistic method and all that it can encompass.

It might be said that three circles of questions had formed which then, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, were expecting an answer.

First of all, the relationship between faith and modern science had to be redefined. Furthermore, this did not only concern the natural sciences but also historical science for, in a certain school, the historical-critical method claimed to have the last word on the interpretation of the Bible and, demanding total exclusivity for its interpretation of Sacred Scripture, was opposed to important points in the interpretation elaborated by the faith of the Church.

Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.

Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, before the recent crimes of the Nazi regime and, in general, with a retrospective look at a long and difficult history, it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.

These are all subjects of great importance - they were the great themes of the second part of the Council - on which it is impossible to reflect more broadly in this context.

It is clear that in all these sectors, which all together form a single problem, some kind of discontinuity might emerge. Indeed, a discontinuity had been revealed but in which, after the various distinctions between concrete historical situations and their requirements had been made, the continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned. It is easy to miss this fact at a first glance.

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church's decisions on contingent matters - for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible - should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself.

It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within.
On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change.

Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.

It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.

The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself
(cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.

The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith - a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God's grace in freedom of conscience.

A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith. She desires to transmit the gift of the truth that exists for one and all.

At the same time, she assures peoples and their Governments that she does not wish to destroy their identity and culture by doing so, but to give them, on the contrary, a response which, in their innermost depths, they are waiting for - a response with which the multiplicity of cultures is not lost but instead unity between men and women increases and thus also peace between peoples.

The Second Vatican Council, with its new definition of the relationship between the faith of the Church and certain essential elements of modern thought, has reviewed or even corrected certain historical decisions, but in this apparent discontinuity it has actually preserved and deepened her inmost nature and true identity.

The Church, both before and after the Council, was and is the same Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, journeying on through time; she continues "her pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God", proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes
(cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 8).

Those who expected that with this fundamental "yes" to the modern era all tensions would be dispelled and that the "openness towards the world" accordingly achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch.

They had underestimated the perilous frailty of human nature which has been a threat to human progress in all the periods of history and in every historical constellation. These dangers, with the new possibilities and new power of man over matter and over himself, did not disappear but instead acquired new dimensions: a look at the history of the present day shows this clearly.

In our time too, the Church remains a "sign that will be opposed"[
(Lk 2: 34) - not without reason did Pope John Paul II, then still a Cardinal, give this title to the theme for the Spiritual Exercises he preached in 1976 to Pope Paul VI and the Roman Curia. The Council could not have intended to abolish the Gospel's opposition to human dangers and errors.

On the contrary, it was certainly the Council's intention to overcome erroneous or superfluous contradictions in order to present to our world the requirement of the Gospel in its full greatness and purity.

The steps the Council took towards the modern era which had rather vaguely been presented as "openness to the world", belong in short to the perennial problem of the relationship between faith and reason that is re-emerging in ever new forms. The situation that the Council had to face can certainly be compared to events of previous epochs.

In his First Letter, St Peter urged Christians always to be ready to give an answer (apo-ogia) to anyone who asked them for the logos, the reason for their faith
(cf. 3: 15).

This meant that biblical faith had to be discussed and come into contact with Greek culture and learn to recognize through interpretation the separating line but also the convergence and the affinity between them in the one reason, given by God.

When, in the 13th century through the Jewish and Arab philosophers, Aristotelian thought came into contact with Medieval Christianity formed in the Platonic tradition, and faith and reason risked entering an irreconcilable contradiction, it was above all St Thomas Aquinas who mediated the new encounter between faith and Aristotelian philosophy, thereby setting faith in a positive relationship with the form of reason prevalent in his time.

There is no doubt that the wearing dispute between modern reason and the Christian faith, which had begun negatively with the Galileo case, went through many phases, but with the Second Vatican Council the time came when broad new thinking was required.

Its content was certainly only roughly traced in the conciliar texts, but this determined its essential direction, so that the dialogue between reason and faith, particularly important today, found its bearings on the basis of the Second Vatican Council.

This dialogue must now be developed with great openmindedness but also with that clear discernment that the world rightly expects of us in this very moment. Thus, today we can look with gratitude at the Second Vatican Council: if we interpret and implement it guided by a right hermeneutic, it can be and can become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church.

Lastly, should I perhaps recall once again that 19 April this year on which, to my great surprise, the College of Cardinals elected me as the Successor of Pope John Paul II, as a Successor of St Peter on the chair of the Bishop of Rome? Such an office was far beyond anything I could ever have imagined as my vocation. It was, therefore, only with a great act of trust in God that I was able to say in obedience my "yes" to this choice. Now as then, I also ask you all for your prayer, on whose power and support I rely.

At the same time, I would like to warmly thank all those who have welcomed me and still welcome me with great trust, goodness and understanding, accompanying me day after day with their prayers.

Christmas is now at hand. The Lord God did not counter the threats of history with external power, as we human beings would expect according to the prospects of our world. His weapon is goodness. He revealed himself as a child, born in a stable. This is precisely how he counters with his power, completely different from the destructive powers of violence. In this very way he saves us. In this very way he shows us what saves.

In these days of Christmas, let us go to meet him full of trust, like the shepherds, like the Wise Men of the East. Let us ask Mary to lead us to the Lord. Let us ask him himself to make his face shine upon us. Let us ask him also to defeat the violence in the world and to make us experience the power of his goodness. With these sentiments, I warmly impart to you all my Apostolic Blessing.


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Tuesday, Oct. 9, 27th Week in Ordinary Time
Most depictions of St. Denis show him carrying his head. Third from left, Last Communion (left panel) and Execution of St. Denis (right panel); and next to it, St. Denis with Rusticus and Eleutherius.
ST. DENIS & COMPANIONS (d Paris ca 250), Martyrs
St. Denis was a bishop sent from Rome to Gaul (Roman France) to re-Christianize Lutetia (ancient Paris) which had fallen back to paganism after the persecutions of Decian. he is generally considered the first Bishop of Paris. According to legend, Denis so alarmed the pagan kings by his conversions that he and his inseparable companions, Rusticus, a priest, and Eleutherius, a deacon, were beheaded on the hill now called Montmartre ('mount of martyrs'). After being beheaded, Denis is said to have picked up his head and walked with it, preaching, until he finally died at the spot where centuries later St. Genevieve would build the basilica in his name - the Church where the Kings of France have been buried since Carolingian times. St. Denis is the patron saint of Paris. He is also one of the fourteen Holy Helpers, a group of saints popular in the Middle Ages as intercessors for various causes. Denis is invoked particularly against diabolical possession and headaches. His feast has been celebrated since the 9th century.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/100912.cfm


BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (England,1801-1890)
[G/]Anglican Priest, Convert to Catholicism, Theologian, Writer, Cardinal
This is the third year that England celebrates the feast day of Blessed John Henry Newman. Oct. 9 was declared as his feast day when Benedict XVI canonized him on Sept. 19, 2010.[/G}

NB: Except for those Blesseds from the past whose feasts have been incorporated into the liturgical year of the universal Church, the feast days of contemporary Blesseds are generally celebrated only in their country of origin.



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for the Holy Father.

The second day of the Synodal Assembly's general congregations (morning and afternoon session).

The Press Office has released the full text of the Holy Father's meditation at the opening of the first
general congregation yesterday morning.
[I will post the translation in the corresponding post box above as soon as I can.]

The Vatican publishing house, LEV, has released the Holy Father's brief Foreword and some excerpts from
Vol. 3 of JESUS OF NAZARETH, "The childhood of Jesus".

Briefing by Mons. Rino Fischella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization,
on the formal opening of the Year of Faith on Oct. 11.

The Holy Father has accepted the resignation of the Bishop of Iquique (Chile), Mons. Marco Antonio Órdenes Fernández,
under can. 401 § 2 of the Code of Canon Law.
[Ordenes Fernandez has been accused of sexual offenses against minors.]


One year ago...
The Holy Father made a pastoral visit to Lamezia Terme, in southwestern Italy, and to nearby
Certosa San Bruno, the Carthusian monastery to which the founder of the order, St. Bruno of Cologne,
retired and eventually died, and where he is buried.

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'JESUS OF NAZARETH', Vol. 3:
Foreword by the Holy Father

Translated from

October 9, 2012

In connection with its participation in the annual Frankfurt Book Fair this month, the Vatican Publishing House LEV, has released the Foreword and some brief excerpts to the third book that completes Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's trilogy on JESUS OF NAZARETH. Here are translations of the Foreword and the excerpts.

FOREWORD

Finally, I can turn over to the reader the small book I promised some time ago on the stories about the childhood of Jesus.

It is not really a third volume, but a kind of small 'entrance room' to the two earlier volumes on the figure and message of Jesus of Nazareth.

Here I have sought to interpret, in a dialog with exegetes of the past and the present, what Matthew and Luke recount at the start of their Gospels, about the childhood of Jesus.

I believe that a correct interpretation requires two steps.

On the one hand, one must ask what the respective authors meant in their respective texts, at the historical moment in which they were written - this is the historical component of exegesis.

But one cannot just leave the text in the past, archiving it among events that happened a long time ago.

The second question for correct exegesis must be: Is what the text says true? Does it concern me? If it does, how does it do so?

In confronting a Biblical text, whose ultimate and most profound author, according to our faith, is God himself, the question about the relationship of the past to the present is an indispensable part of of our interpretation. With it, the seriousness of historical research is not diminished but augmented.

I took it upon myself to enter into a dialog with the texts in this sense.

I am well aware that this colloquium at the intersection of past, present and future can never be completed, and that every interpretation will be deficient compared to the grandeur of the Biblical text.

I hope that this small book, despite its limitations, may help many persons in their journey towards Jesus and with him.


Castel Gandolfo
Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary to Heaven
August 15, 2012


Joseph Ratzinger – BENEDETTO XVI



JON-3: 2 brief excerpts


(…) Jesus was born at a time that can be determined with precision.

At the start of his account of the public ministry of Jesus, Luke offers yet again a detailed and careful dating of that historical moment: It was the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. He also mentions the Roman governor of Palestine that year, and the tetrarchs of Galilee, Iturea, Traconitis and Abliene, as well as the high priests [in Jerusalem] at the time
(cfr Lk 3,1ff).

Jesus was not born and then appeared in public in the imprecise 'once upon a time' of legend. He belongs to a time that is precisely datable and in a geographical setting that is precisely indicated: thus, the universal and the concrete are reciprocally in contact.

In him, the Logos, the creative Reason of all things, entered the world. The eternal Logos became man, of which time and place are part of the context.

Our faith is anchored to this concrete reality, even if later, by virtue of the Resurrection, temporal and geographical space are superseded, and "going before (the Apostles) to Galilee"
(Mt 28.7) on the part of the Lord would bring him to the open vastness of all mankind (cfr. Mt 28,16ss)...

________________________________


(…) Mary wrapped the baby in swaddling cloths. Without any sentimentalism, we can imagine with what love Mary looked forward to her time (to deliver) and how she would have prepared for the birth of her son.

The tradition of icons, based on the theology of the Fathers of the Church, has interpreted the manger and the swaddling cloths theologically.

The baby tightly wrapped in swaddling cloths seems like an anticipation of his death: From the very beginning, he was the Immolation (the Sacrifice), as we can see in even greater detail if we reflect on the words regarding the firstborn. And thus, the manger is seen to represent a kind of altar.

Augustine interpreted the significance of the manger with a thought which initially appears almost inconvenient, but when more closely examined, contains a profound truth: The manger is a container from which animals feed. But now, there lies in the manger he who would describe himself as the True Bread descended from heaven - the true nourishment that man needs for his very being as a human. He is the nourishment that gives man true life, eternal life.

In this way, the manger becomes a reference to the banquet of God to which man has been invited in order to receive the bread of God. The poverty of Jesus's birth delineates in a mysterious way the great reality by which the redemption of man takes place...



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I was so enthralled while translating the Holy Father's extemporaneous reflection for the Third Hour of the Holy Office, before the Synodal Assembly's first general congregation yesterday that the meditation obviously deserves a post all by itself. It is so completely different from the summary provided by the Synod Bulletin, and the fragment picked up by Marco Tosatti was just that - a fragment. I felt like going from one amazement to another throughout the discourse, and have decided I can never be amazed enough about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, that he will forever be amazing in the highest sense of the word!

'Evangelization means to light
the flame of Christ from us to others':
A meditation by Benedict XVI

Translated from


Dear Brothers,

My meditation refers to the word «evangelium», «euangelisasthai» in Greek (cfr Lc 4,18).

In this Synodal assembly, we wish to know more what the Lord is telling us and what we can and should do. The reflection is divided in two: the first, on the significance of these words, and then, I wish to try and interpret the hymn of the Third Hour, «Nunc, Sancte, nobis Spìritus», on Page 5 of the Book of Prayers.

The word «evangelium», «euangelisasthai», has a long history. It appears in Homer as the announcement of victory, therefore, an announcement of something good, of joy, of happiness. Then it appears in the Second Book of Isaiah
(cfr Is 40,3), announcing the joy of God, to say that God has not forgotten his people, that God who had apparently retreated from history is around and present.

God has power, God gives joy, he opens the doors that lead from exile. After the long night of exile, his light appears, the possibility of his return to his people, renewing the story of goodness, the story of his love.

In the context of evangelization, three other words appear most frequently: dikaiosyne, eirene, soteria - justice, peace, salvation. Jesus himself reprised the words of Isaiah when he spoke of this 'Evangelo' in Nazareth, bringing them to those who were excluded, to those in prison, to the suffering and to the poor.

But for the meaning of the word evangelium in the New Testament, beyond Isaiah 2, which opens the door - equally important is the use of the word in the Roman Empire, starting with Emperor Augustus. In which the word evangelium refers to a message coming from the emperor.

Thus, the emperor's message, in itself, meant something good - a renewal of the world, salvation. An imperial message and therefore a message of power and might, as well as a message of salvation, renewal and well-being.

The New Testament accepts this situation. St. Luke explicitly confronts the Emperor Augustus with the Baby born in Bethlehem. Evangelium, he says, is a word from the emperor, the true emperor of the world.

The true emperor of the world has made himself heard - he speaks to us. This word evangelium, as such, is redemption, because man's great suffering - then, as now - is this: behind the silence of the universe, behind the haze of history, does God exist or not? And if there is a God, does he know us, does he have anything to do with us?

This question is as relevant today as it was then. So many people want to know: Is God just a hypothesis? Or is he a reality? Then why doesn't he make himself heard?

'Evangelium' means God has broken his silence, God has spoken, God exists. This in itself is salvation: God knows us, he loves us, he has entered human history.

Jesus is his Word, God-with-us, God who shows us that he loves us, who suffered with us to his death and then resurrected. This is the Gospel itself. God has spoken, he is no longer the great unknown, he has shown himself to us, and this is salvation.

The question for us is this: God has spoken, he has broken the great silence, he has shown himself to us - how can we make this reality reach men of today so that it becomes their salvation? In itself, the fact that he has spoken is salvation, it is redemption. But how can we let contemporary man know this?

This, to me, is both a question as well as a demand, a mandate for us, for which we can find an answer by meditating on the hymn for the Third Hour, «Nunc, Sancte, nobis Spìritus». The first verse says, «Dignàre promptus ingeri nostro refusus, péctori» - namely, let us pray so that the Holy Spirit may come, to be in us and with us.
[The full first verse, in Blessed John Henry Newman's poetic translation: "Come, Holy Ghost, Who ever One/ Art with the Father and the Son;/ Come, Holy Ghost, our souls possess/ With Thy full flood of holiness"]

In other words, we cannot 'make' the Church - we can only make known what God has done. The Church did not begin with our 'doing', but with God's 'doing' and 'speaking'. Thus, the Apostles did not say, after some meetings, "Now let us create a Church", and like a constituent assembly, proceed to elaborate a constitution.

No, they prayed, and in prayer, they waited, because they knew that only God himself could create his Church, that God is the first agent of such action. If God does not act, what we do is just our own, and insufficient. Only God can testify that it is he who speaks and has spoken.

Pentecost was the condition for the birth of the Church. It was only because God acted first that the Apostles could act with him and with his presence, and thus render to others what God does.

God spoke, and this 'he spoke' is the perfect tense of faith, but it is also always a present. The perfect tense of God is not just the past, because it is one that always carries the present and the future within it. 'God has spoken' means 'God speaks'.

And just as in that time, the Church could only be born with the initiative of God, for the Gospel could be made known today, it is the same - only God can begin something, we can only cooperate with him, but the start has to come from God.

That is why it is not just mere formality that we start every day of our meetings at this assembly with prayer: this corresponds to reality itself. Our own journey is only possible with God's precedence, our cooperation, which is always a cooperation, and not purely our own decision.

Therefore it is always important to know that the first word, the true initiative, the true activity, comes from God. Only by placing ourselves within this divine initiative, only by imploring the divine initiative, can we become evangelizers in him and with him.

God is always the beginning, only he can make a Pentecost, can create the Church, can show the reality of his presence to us. On the other hand, this God, who is always the beginning, also wants our involvement, he wants to engage our activity, such that our activity is 'theandric', so to speak, made by God, but with our active involvement, the involvement of our whole being, of all our actions.

And so, when we carry out the New Evangelization, it is always a cooperation with God, it lies in our being with God, founded on prayer and his real presence.

We find a description of what our actions must be, following God's initiative, in the second verse of the hymn: «Os, lingua, mens, sensus, vigor, confessionem personent, flammescat igne caritas, accendat ardor proximos».
[Literal translation: "Let bones, tongue, mind, sense and power resound in confession, and ignite the Flame of love for our neighbors". Poetic translation by Blessed John Henry Newman: "In will and deed, by heart and tongue, With all our powers, Thy praise be sung; And love light up our mortal frame, Till others catch the living flame".]

In these two lines, we find two determinative nouns: confessio in the first line, communio in the second. Confession (avowal) and love as the two ways through which God involves us, acts with us, we act in him and for mankind, for each of his creatures. To which the appropiate verbs are joined - 'resound' with the first; and with love, the verb which means 'inflame', 'enkindle', 'light up', 'burn'.

Let us look at the first phrase, «confessionem personent». Faith has a content: God communicates to us, but God's 'I' is shown as reality in the person of Jesus, and is interpreted in our 'confession' of faith that speaks of his virginal conception, his birth, his Passion, his Cross, his Resurrection.

God shows himself to us as a whole Person: Jesus as the Word, with a very concrete content expressed in the word confessio. So the first step is that we must enter into this 'confession' of faith, make it penetrate us, such that it 'resounds' in us, as the hymn says, and through us.

One must also make a small philologic observation here: 'confessio' in pre-Christian Latin took the form 'professio' (to profess) - which means, presenting a reality positively. Instead, 'confessio' refers to a trial process, in which one opens one's mind and confesses. So 'confession' which has replaced the pre-Christian term 'profession' carries a martyrologic element - that of testifying to the faith in the presence of enemies, and to bear such witness even under suffering or danger of death.

The readiness to suffer is an essential element of Christian confession - I think this is very important. Our 'confession' of faith expressed in the Credo implies this readiness to suffer, and even, to give one's life. This guarantees our credibility.

Confession is not something we can just make lightly. It implies the possibility of giving my life, of accepting suffering, which is also a verification of my confession.

And so, for Christians confession is not just a word - it means more than pain, more than death. For our confession of faith, it is worth suffering, it is worth suffering even unto death. Whoever makes this confession shows that what he confesses is more than life - it is eternal life, the treasure, the precious and infinite pearl.

The truth appears in the martyrologic dimension of the word 'confession': It can be verified through that reality which makes it worthwhile to suffer, which is stronger than death itself, a truth that I hold in my hand, that makes me certain that I hold my own life in my hands because my life is in my confession of faith.

We see from the hymn what this 'confession' must penetrate - bones, tongue, mind, sense and strength. From Chapter 10 of St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, we know that 'confession' is in the heart and on the mouth - it must lie in the depth of us, but it must also be made public.

We must announce the faith we carry in our heart. It is never just a reality for ourselves, but it needs to be communicated, it must truly be confessed before the eyes of the world.

And so, we must learn, on the one hand, to be truly penetrated in our hearts by confession, so that our hearts are formed and we can find, along with the great history of the Church, the Word and the courage of words, the Word that shows us what to do, the confession that is always one and the same.

Mens, the mind: Confession is not just a thing of the heart and the mouth, but also of our intelligence - it must be thought over, and therefore intelligently conceived, so it can touch others. It always presupposes that our thought is truly anchored in our confession.

Sensus, sense: It is not a purely abstract and intellectual thing - confession must also penetrate our vital senses. St. Bernard of Clairvaux says that in the story of salvation, God has given our senses the possibility to see, to touch and to taste his Revelation. God is not only a spiritual thing: he has entered the world of the senses, and our senses must be filled with him, with the beauty of the Word of God, which is the ultimate reality.

Vigor - it is the vital strength of our being, as well as the juridical vigor of reality. With all our vitality and strength, we must be penetrated by the confessio that must truly resound in us - our being in all its totality must intone the melody of God.

«Confessio» is the first pillar, so to speak, of evangelization, and 'caritas' is the second. Confessio is not an abstraction, and caritas is love. Thus, a reflection of divine reality, which, as truth, is also inseparably, love.

The hymn describes this love in strong words: it is ardency, it is a flame that lights others. It is a passion that must grow with our faith, which must transform itself into the fire of love. Jesus has said: "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!"
(Lk 12,49).

Origen has passed on to us a word from the Lord: "Whoever is near me is near fire". A Christian must not be lukewarm. The Apocalypse tells us that this is the greatest danger for a Christian: that he does not say No, but that his Yes is lukewarm.

Such tepidity discredits Christianity. Faith must become in us a flame of love, a flame that truly lights up my whole being, it becomes the great passion of my being, and is thus capable of enkindling others. And this is how evangelization must take place: Accéndat ardor proximos», to enkindle ardor in others, so that truth becomes love in me, and love may light others with its flame.

Only by lighting up others through the flame of our love can evangelization truly prosper, the Gospel as a presence that is not just words but lived reality.


St. Luke tells us that at Pentecost, at that founding of the Church of God, the Holy Spirit was a fire that transformed the world, but fire in the form of tongues of flame, therefore, a flame which was also reasonable, which is spiritual, which is understanding - a fire united to thought, to mens.

It is precisely this intelligent fire, this 'sober inebriation', which is characteristic of Christianity. We know that fire was at the origin of human culture - fire is light, it is warmth, it is the power of transformation. Human culture began from the time man had the power to make a fire. With fire, he could destroy but he could also transform and renew things.

The fire of God is a transforming fire, a fire of passion, certainly, that also destroys so much in us, but above all, a fire that transforms, renews and creates a newness in man, who becomes the light of God.

So, ultimately we can only pray to the Lord that our confessio is profoundly rooted and that it becomes the fire that enkindles others, so that the fire of his presence, the novelty of his being with us, may become truly visible and a force for the present and the future.


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In its own way, the following story deserves a post on this thread - a recognition by the Nobel Prize givers of a scientific breakthrough that is also a sterling example of ethics in science. It is a development that I did post about on this thread at the time it was first announced, and is even more significant in that the Vatican has since invested in the leading adult stem-cell research group in the United States.

Stem cells from skin cells
wins Nobel Prize in medicine

By Wesley J. Smith

October 8, 2012

This is so deserved! When Shinya Yamanaka visited an embryonic stem cell researcher and looked at embryos under a microscope, he thought of his daughters. That insight changed science history.

Yamanaka decided to see if he could create pluripotent stem cells–which can be differentiated into any type of body cell – without destroying human embryos, as it was thought would be required at the time. He succeeded, inventing a process whereby normal skin cells can be turned into pluripotent cells, known as reprogramming.

He has now won the Nobel Prize for that brilliant work, sharing it with a biologist whose insights working with frogs led to the cloning of Dolly the sheep, knowledge that also aided Yamanaka’s work. From the USA Today story:

A British researcher and a Japanese scientist won the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine on Monday for discovering that ordinary cells of the body can be reprogrammed into stem cells, which then can turn into any kind of tissue — a discovery that may lead to new treatments.

Scientists want to build on the work by John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka to create replacement tissues for treating diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes, and for studying the roots of diseases in the laboratory — without the ethical dilemma posed by embryonic stem cells.

It was biological alchemy, like turning lead into gold.

Ironically, before IPSCs, scientists insisted that human cloning would be the best way to further regenerative medicine by making a cloned embryo of a patient, and then destroying it to derive stem cell lines for use in drug testing, disease study, and eventually, treatments.

They mocked President Bush for arguing that scientists were creative and ingenious enough to find an ethical way forward toward that end which did not involve the destruction of human life. Indeed, those who opposed human cloning and supported Bush’s minor funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research were castigated as “anti science,” when in fact, the issue was always an ethics debate, which is not the same thing at all.

Yamanaka proved those prognosticators wrong too. Human cloning has not been accomplished. But we are already reaping many of the benefits promised from that technology–without manufacturing and destroying human life.

IPSCs tailor made from disease-specific patients–are being used to test drug and study diseases. (They can’t be used in treatments, like embryonic stem cells, because they could cause tumors – the downside of pluripotency. But adult stem cells are forging ahead strongly in human trials.)

Even strong proponents of human cloning and embryonic stem cell research get it:

Yamanaka deserves extra credit for overcoming fierce objections to the creation of embryos for research, reviving the field, said Julian Savulescu, director of Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

“Yamanaka has taken people’s ethical concerns seriously about embryo research and modified the trajectory of research into a path that is acceptable for all,” Savulescu said. “He deserves not only a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but a Nobel Prize for Ethics.”

So, bravo Dr. Yamanaka! You proved that good ethics can lead to splendid science.

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Third and Fourth General Congregations


Oct. 9, 2012

The third congregation

At 9:05 today Tuesday October 9 2012, in the presence of the Holy Father, with the Hour of Terce, the Third General Congregation began, to continue the interventions by the Synodal Fathers in the Hall on the Synod’s theme «The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith».

The President Delegate on duty H. Em. Card. Francisco ROBLES ORTEGA, Archbishop of Guadalajara (MEXICO).

At the opening of the Congregation, the Secretary General of the Synod of the Bishops , His Exc. Msgr. Nikola ETEROVIĆ, Titular Archbishop of Cibale (VATICAN CITY), ensured the participation in prayer by the Holy Father, the Synodal Fathers and the other Participants for the drama that the citizens of Syria are living, hoping for a just and peaceful solution to the conflict.

During the Congregation, a Fraternal Delegate and a Special Guest also intervened.

At this General Congregation,which ended at 12.30 am with the prayer Angelus Domini, 259 Fathers were present. 142 of them for the first time in a Synodal Assembly.

Some of the morning interventions follow (The interventions are all rather brief but are much more effective that way. I find the following the most arresting, especially Cardinal Dolan's. The choice of emphasis by each speaker is also very revealing.

By Cardinal Timothy Michael DOLAN, Archbishop of New York, and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

The great American evangelist, The Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, commented, “The first word of Jesus in the Gospel was ‘come’; the last word of Jesus was ‘go’.”

The New Evangelization reminds us that the very agents of evangelization must first be evangelized themselves. Saint Bernard said, “If you want to be a channel, you must first be a reservoir”.

Thus I believe that the primary sacrament of the New Evangelization is the sacrament of penance, and I thank Pope Benedict for reminding us of this.

Yes, the sacraments of initiation· - Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist - charge, challenge, and equip the agents of evangelization.

But, the sacrament of reconciliation evangelizes the evangelizers, as it brings us sacramentally into contact with Jesus, who calls us to conversion of heart, and inspires us to answer His invitation to repentance.

The second Vatican Council called for a renewal of the sacrament of penance, but what we got instead, sadly, in many places, was the disappearance of the sacrament.

So we have busied ourselves calling for the reform of structures, systems, institutions, and people other than ourselves. Yes, this is good.

But the answer to the question “What's wrong with the world?” is not politics. The economy, secularism, pollution, global warming... no.

As Chesterton wrote, “'The answer to the question 'What's wrong with the world?' is two words: I am.” [Mother Teresa modified the response to "You and I".]

I am! Admitting that leads to conversion of heart and repentance, the core of the Gospel invitation.

That happens in the sacrament of Penance. This is the sacrament of Evangelization.


Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence, cited Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his intrervention:

The work of evangelization is never a simple adaptation to culture, but it is always also a purification, that becomes maturation and healing. (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Conference on Communication and Culture: New Models of Evangelization in the Third Millennium, November 9th 2002)


Archbishop Salvatore FISICHELLA, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of New Evangelization:

The New Evangelization presents itself as a pastoral project which will engage the Church for the next generations.

It is urgent that before “doing”, the foundation of our “being” Christian is rediscovered so that the NE is not experienced as an addition in a moment of crisis, but as a continuous mission of the Church.

One must combine the need for unity, to go beyond fragmentation, with the richness of ecclesial and cultural traditions. Unity of a pastoral project, is not equated with uniformity of fulfillment; rather, it indicates the need for a common language and contributing symbols which make evident the journey of the whole Church more than the originality of a particular experience.

We must be motivated because in a time of epochal transition such as ours, marked by a general crisis, we are asked today to live in an extraordinary way our ordinary ecclesial life.

We must present the newness that Jesus Christ and the Church represent in the lives of individuals. Today’s man, instead, no longer perceives the absence of God as a lack in his life.

Ignorance of the fundamental concepts of the faith is united with a kind of unprecedented self-centeredness. How can the news of Jesus Christ be expressed in a world permeated solely with scientific culture, modeled on the superficiality of ephemeral concepts, insensitive to the proposal of the Church?

Proclaiming the Gospel is equated with changing one’s life; but today’s man seems tied to this kind of life of which he is in control because he decides when, how and who should be born and die.

Perhaps our communities no longer show the characteristics which allow us to be recognized as carriers of a good news that transforms. They appear tired, repetitive of obsolete formulas that do not communicate the joy of encountering Christ, uncertain of the path to follow.

We are wrapped up in ourselves, we demonstrate a self-sufficiency that prevents us from drawing near to one another as a living and fruitful community that generates vocations, having so greatly bureaucratized the life of faith and the sacraments.

In a word, we no longer know whether being baptized is equivalent to being evangelizers. Incapable of being proclaimers of the Gospel, unsure of the certainty of the truth that saves, and cautious in speaking because we are oppressed by control of language, we have lost credibility and we risk rendering vain the Pentecost.

In this moment, we do not need nostalgia for times of the past nor utopia for chasing after dreams; rather, what is needed is a clear analysis which does not hide the difficulties or even the great enthusiasm of the many experiences that in these years have allowed for the implementation of the NE.


Mons. Gerhard Ludwig MÜLLER, Archbishop Emeritus of Regensburg, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

We all live in a world nourished by “novelty” on a daily basis. These thousand novelties make us ask what the real novelty is.

Today’s world, bewildered by many changes, is in fact without novelty, as it is a prisoner of weak thought, and is always searching for emotions as it is encumbered by many things that do not truly satisfy it. This leads to an important question: where is the true novelty?

In this respect, the words of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons remain current: Christ “has brought every novelty, bringing Himself” (Adversus haereses, IV, 34, 1). Every novelty is concentrated in Him.

The new evangelization demands that we overcome certain intra-ecclesial debates in which, for many years, the same themes arise again, and to re-propose instead the Christian faith in its fullness and perennial novelty.

In this fullness and novelty the collegiality between Bishops finds consistency and the force of communion, which must never become the pretext for a misunderstood autonomy.

The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Lord, “in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided ... placed Blessed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion” (LG 18).

The new evangelization demands that we draw upon this communion, and will be effective only if it is founded on the unity of the Bishops with Peter’s Successor and among themselves. This unity is the cornerstone on which the Lord builds His Church.

In placing ourselves again before Christ, we draw upon this novelty of life, which is able to change us profoundly. In fact, it means renewing the faith in our hearts, of “reawakening the Church in our souls” (R. Guardini).

Only if renewed may we become new evangelists. From Christ resurrected the Church was born as a sacrament of His presence and the unity with God and between mankind (cf. LG 1).

From Him comes the faith of the Church: a faith which is always new even if it is nourished, in all times, by the same gifts. Rooted in Christ and in the Church, we lean upon the faith of Peter, around whom we find the same solid unity that does not come from us, and is never diminished (cf. UR 4).

We all belong to this unity. We wish to serve this unity “so that the world may believe” (John 17:21).


Other texts of the morning interventions may be found on
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/documents/bollettino_25_xiii-ordinaria-2012/02_inglese/b07_02.html

The fourth congregation

At 4:30 p.m. today, Tuesday October 9 2012, with the recital of the prayer Pro felici Synodi exitu, the Fourth General Congregation began, for the voting on the Commission for the Message and for continuing the interventions by the Synod Fathers in the Hall on the Synodal theme «The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith».

The President Delegate on duty H. Em. Card. Francisco ROBLES ORTEGA, Archbishop of Guadalajara (MEXICO).

During the Congregation the Report on the Implementation of “Verbum Domini” was read. Free interventions by Synodal Fathers followed.

At this General Congregation,which ended at 18.55 p.m. with the prayer Angelus Domini, 253 Fathers were present.

Two interventions from the afternoon session:

Mons. André LÉONARD, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel, President of the Episcopal Conference of BELGIUM:

]One of the things reining in evangelization is the reality of evil. How can we put together the existence of God and that of evil? Even Saint Thomas and the Catechism are pulled between these two tendencies.

One tendency is to see in evil a drama tied to the inevitable finitude of creatures. But how then can one escape evil in eternal life, since we remain finite creatures?

The other sees in the tragedy of this world a state contingent to creation which does not correspond to creative action. These questions, notably linked with science, are a great challenge for Christian wisdom. It should be raised again thanks to the theology of Paul, especially Rom 8:18-23.

It is necessary to consider in depth what he said about the present state of creation, subject as it is to vanity and turned to the servitude of corruption.

Two-thirds of active members of the Church are women. However, many feel discriminated against. It is time to clarify that, if the Church does not ordain female priests, this is not because they are less capable or less worthy! On the contrary!

It is solely because the priest is not only a “minister of the rite”, but a representative of Christ the Groom Who came to wed humanity. Let us give thanks for the quality and the specificity of the massive contribution of women to evangelization.

Some strong gestures should underline this clearly. Without joyous women, recognized in their own being and proud of belonging to the Church, there would be no new evangelization.


Cardinal André VINGT-TROIS, Archbishop of Paris, and President of the Episcopal Conference of FRANCE:

Today, in many Western countries, the new evangelization is, in fact, a first announcement, bearing in mind the general secularization of customs and culture.

More than ignorance, we must deplore the culture formatted by the mediatic language and its recourse to the instantaneous and the affected.

This is why, in this context, new evangelization must unite the witness of the faith and a pedagogy of culture in the same effort.

The witness of faith is more perceivable when it manifests the communion that joins all the members of the Church and expresses ecclesial action at all levels: teaching the Magisterium, public declarations on different subjects, the vitality of the parishes and Christian communities, the manifest reference of each Christian to the life of Christ, through the word in the way of living.

Its credibility rests largely on the witness lived by Christians and on the visibility of their participation in the life of the Church.

The pedagogy of culture is developed through the commitment of Christians in all the educational systems and by their contribution to a true education of intelligence, which is the condition necessary to practice a true freedom.

On the other hand, we must invest all our means in the formation of the clergy and the laity so that they may be able to better show that adhesion to the Christian faith is not a contradiction to human reason.

Finally, we must develop the ethical consequences of a Christian anthropology rooted in Revelation and deployed in a dialogue with other wisdoms. We must be more conscious that we are the guardians of a treasure for the future of humanity and bearers of hope.



Other texts of the afternon interventions may be found on
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/documents/bollettino_25_xiii-ordinaria-2012/02_inglese

REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION
OF 'VERBUM DOMINI'
(published 2010)
(The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation by Benedict XVI
to the XII General Assembly on the Word of God, October 2008)




At the afternoon session, Cardinal Marc OUELLET, P.S.S., Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, presented a Report on the Implementation of “Verbum Domini”. Here is the English translation of his report:

Two years after the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini in 2010, which closed one synodal reflection, developed since 2006 and extended therefore over the four years, the opening of this new Synod leads us to reflect on the reception of this post-synodal document, to sum up what has been done with its orientations that wished to renew the faith of the Church.

If it is too early to make an overall assessment on its reception, we can still see a growing interest of the faithful in the Word of God, many initiatives reveal a progressive consciousness of the central place of the Word of God in pastoral life, and a good number of countries have used the means of social communication to make the Apostolic Exhortation known and its implications in ecclesial life.

As for what pertains to the liturgy, the deep conviction reasserted in Verbum Domini, according to which the liturgy is the privileged place where God speaks to us, has found deep echoes from pastors, liturgists and catechists, especially among those speaking Italian, Spanish and English.

On the other hand, the Synod inspired important publications, which developed the catechetical model of the recital of the Disciples of Emmaus. And the new impulse given to the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the occasion of the Year of the Faith is also a privileged opportunity of the reception of Verbum Domini.

Concerning scientific research, and the fundamental relation between exegesis and theology, one should not expect a rapid change in thinking habits, however the openings exist for a rigorous and constructive dialogue, respecting the difference of charisms and methods.

The university spheres generally react slowly to the interventions of the ecclesial Magisterium, but this slowness does not necessarily mean opposition or indifference. Some scientific congresses were organized in Rome, in Poland and in America on Verbum Domini.

We noted with satisfaction the originality and the novelty of the doctrinal development of Verbum Domini on the Word of God, where the multiple meanings refer to Christ, as the main Analogue. This Christology of the Word gathers the theological intuitions formulated by eminent theologians following Karl Barth, whose Christocentrism had great ecumenical influence.

Another major theme worthy of attention is that of the performance of the Word, in other words its dynamic and effective characteristic which takes on a sacramental dimension in the liturgical context. The native performance of the Word thus reaches the proper sacramental level of a personal communion that demonstrates that the Word of God is much more than just information and teaching.

The ecclesial hermeneutic of Scripture is rooted in the same nature as Scripture as the joint witness of Spirit and Church. This hermeneutic pre-supposes a harmonious integration of faith and reason, just as a communion to the life of the Church and the knowledge of the lives of the saints, who are living canons of interpretation.

On the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict XVI formulates a fervent prayer for new evangelization, hoping that our time will be consecrated more to listening to the Word of God.

New evangelization, just like the first one, must depend on the Holy Spirit, the great protagonist of the mission of the Church ad gentes and of all of today's forms of new evangelization. The evangelization of the world took flight with the kairos of the Pentecost, and can only start there.

Fifty years after the Ecumenical Vatican Council II, the reform undertaken with the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum has been confirmed and even developed. In this sense, Verbum Domini is a great exercise in the reception of Vatican Council II.





Bishops watch documentary
on the Second Vatican Council


The Pontifical Council for Social Communications and Micromegas Comunicazione have produced a documentary film about Vatican Council II, which will be distributed worldwide on October 11th 2012, the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican Council II and the date of the start of the Year of Faith.

This afternoon, at the end of the fourth General Congregation of the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, a 50-minute edited version was shown in the hall as a trailer for the Synodal fathers and the other participants.

The film reconstructs the historical, theological, cultural and emotional climate of that event that marked so deeply the history of the Church, as well as having influenced that of the contemporary world.

The production of the documentary film on Vatican Council II used supplementary material, all shot in full HD, on an ad hoc set at the Micromegas studios in Rome, with footage and images taken in the Vatican Secret Archive, the Apostolic Library, St Peter’s Basilica, the Art Gallery, the Sistine Chapel, the Raphael Rooms, the Collection of Modern Religious Art, the Missionary-Ethnological Museum and the Vatican Grottoes.

The film is enriched by the exclusive historical audio and video material belonging to the Vatican Film Archive, which made available testimonials, documents and unseen footage relating to Vatican Council II and its organization.

Hours of original footage from the Council were tapped to recount the most significant moments, the long preparatory phase and the extraordinary fitting-out of St Peter’s Basilica, transformed, because of the exceptional organizational requirements, into the location for the event.

The production also includes extensive testimonials, as well as 14 exclusive interviews with Cardinals, Patriarchs and Archbishops, carried out to analyze and study the great themes dealt with by the Council, that went into the 16 Vatcan II documents - four Constitutions, nine Decrees and three Declarations.

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The mystery of a little pond
A tale created and illustrated
by Natalia Tsarkova, painter

Foreword by Mons. Georg Gaenswein
Translated from the 10/10/12 issue of


It is not a secret that Benedict XVI loves the Vatican Gardens, but he especially loves the Gardens of the Pontifical Villas in Castel Gandolfo.

Whenever he is in residence at the 'Castello' during the summer months, he takes a walk through the gardens every day, praying the Rosary amidst the beauty of creation: the trees, the plants, the flowers, the birds, tne farm animals, the great orhard, the olives, the centuries-old oaks, the majestic cedars and so many other beauties of nature are an invitation to enjoy and meditate on creation.

They are like a symphony of extraordinary forms and colors, of amazing sounds which do good for the heart and soul. All nature, all creaiton, is a tangible testimonial to the greatness and beauty of teh Creator, who made it all for us.

Among the places most loved by the Holy Father at the Castello is the Giardino della Madonnina, which was made for his predecessor Pius XI in 1933, and since him, four more Pontiffs before Benedict XVI would find it a pleasant place to pray - Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.





Before the image of the Virgin Mary in the garden named for her, there is a little pond with red fish and two large carp. Every time the Pope finishes his prayers before the Madonnina, the fish seem to gather at the edge of the pond, awaiting a generous treat from the Holy Father.

In fact, an anonymous and generous hand daily prepares a small bag with bread crumbs for the Pope to feed the fish. There is great 'joy' and lively activity in the pond when the 'largesse' comes.

This is the routine that gave birth to the story told by the author of this engaging little book, The mystery of the little pond
, which is the story of two goldfish.

Natalia Tsarkova composed a dialog between Father Goldfish and his son, and has enhanced her story with marvelous illustrations and designs. And in the end, she could not do without a cat...

Behind the story is, of course, the Pope's love of creation, of animals, especially the small ones. Thus, to look at all creatures, including the small ones - who often escape an inattentive look - with the eyes of love, is the message of this engaging book.


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Tuesday, October 10, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

Second and third from left: St. Francis contemplating worldly glory, by Alonso Cano, 1624; St. Francis performing an exorcism, Goya, 1788.
ST. FRANCISCO DE BORJA (Francis Borgia) (b Spain 1510, d Rome 1572), Husband/Father/Widower, Jesuit Priest, Third Jesuit Superior-General
Great grandson of Pope Alexander VI, grandson of King Ferdinand of Aragon, and son of the Duke of Gandia, Francisco was raised in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whom he accompanied on two military expeditions. At age 19, he married a noblewoman and they had eight children. Meanwhile, he rose in court to become viceroy of Catalonia. A friend and adviser to his contemporary, Ignacio de Loyola, he joined the Jesuit order in 1548 after his wife died. He was ordained in 1551. He became a notable preacher and was given charge of the Jesuit missions in the Orient and in the West Indies. He became the Jesuit Superior-General in 1565. Under him, the society established missions in Florida, New Spain and Peru, and greatly developed its internal structures. He re-introduced daily meditation to the Jesuit rule when he felt they were being too involved in their work at the expense of their spiritual growth. Because of the changes he made, he has sometimes been called the 'second founder' of the Jesuit order. He worked with St. Pope Pius V and St. Charles Borromeo in the Counter-Reformation. He died in Rome but his remains were brought to Madrid in 1901. He was beatified in 1624 and canonized in 1670.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101012.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - The Holy Father spoke to pilgrims in St. Peter's Square about Vatican-II, as the Church
prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of its opening tomorrow, and recalled his own experience as a participant
and witness of the four-year event.

In the afternoon, the Holy Father attended the fifth general congregation of the Synodal Assembly during
which His Grace Mons. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the Church of England, addressed
the assembly as a Fraternal Dalegate. Afterwards, he had a private audience with the Holy Father.

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Vatican Radio was singularly uninformative this morning about the GA, even if it did post an English translation of the catechesis.

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY



Catechesis on Vatican-II,
Arabic added to languages
used at the GA

by Salvatore Izzo


VATICAN CITY, Oct. 1o (Translated from AGI) - Some 40,000 pilgrims took part in Benedict XVI's General Audience Wednesday morning in St. Peter's square, during which he spoke about the 50th anniversary of the opening of the second Vatican Council, which the Church celebrates tomorrow with the opening of the Year of Faith.

The Pontifical Household had distributed 20,000 tickets for the GA but, as usual in October, twice the number of ticketed pilgrims showed up.

This GA also marked the first time that the Pope's catechesis was synthesized in Arabic, in addition to the other official languages of the Vatican.

The Pope said in his plurilingual greetings, "I pray for all Arabic-speaking people - may God bless you all".

Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the decision to include Arabic among the languages at the General Audiences was taken by the Pope after the trip to Lebanon.



The following is adapted from Vatican Radio's English translation of the catechesis:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It is the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Ecumenical Council Vatican II and the beginning of the Year of Faith.

With this Catechesis I would like to begin to reflect - with some brief thoughts – on the great ecclesial event that was the Council, an event of which I was a direct witness.

It appears to us like a giant fresco, so to speak, painted in a great diversity and variety of elements, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And just like we do before a great work of art, we still continue today to grasp from it that moment of grace, that extraordinary richness, and to rediscover particular passages, fragments, pieces.

Blessed John Paul II, on the threshold of the third millennium, wrote: "I feel more than ever in duty bound to point to the Council as the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century: there we find a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the century now beginning"
(Apostolic Letter. Novo millennio ineunte, 57).

I think this is most indicative. The documents of the Second Vatican Council, to which we must return, liberating them from a mass of published commentary that have often obscured them instead of making them know,publications that often instead of making them known, constitute a compass for our time that allows the ship of the Church to set sail, through storms as well as quiet waters, navigate safely and reach port.

I remember I was a young professor of fundamental theology at the University of Bonn at that time, and it was the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Frings, a human and priestly point of reference for me, who took me with him to be his theological consultant . later I was also appointed a council expert. It was a unique experience for me.

After all the fervor and enthusiasm of preparation, I could see a living Church - almost three thousand Council Fathers from all parts of the world gathered under the guidance of the Successor of the Apostle Peter - at the school of the Holy Spirit, the true driving force of the Council.

Rarely in history have we been able, as then, to almost concretely "touch" the universality of the Church at a time of great accomplishment of its mission to bring the Gospel to all ages and to the ends of the earth.

These days, if you see once again the images of the opening of this great gathering, on television or other media, you too will be able to feel the joy, hope and encouragement of taking part in this event that gave light to all of us, a light which continues to radiate today.

In the history of the Church, as I think you know, various councils preceded the Second Vatican Council. Usually these large ecclesial assemblies were convened to define key elements of the faith, especially to correct errors that put her in danger.

We think of the Council of Nicaea in 325, to counter the Arian heresy and to emphasize the divinity of Jesus, as the only Son of God the Father, or that of Ephesus in 431, which defined Mary as the Mother of God; the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, which affirmed the one person of Christ in two natures, the divine and the human person.

Closer to our time, we have the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, which clarified the essential points of Catholic doctrine i the context of the Protestant Reformation, or Vatican I, which began to reflect on various issues, but had time to produce only two documents, one on knowledge of God, revelation, faith and relationships with reason; and one on the primacy and infallibility of the Pope, because it was interrupted by the occupation of Rome in September 1870.

If we look at the Second Vatican Council, we can see that at that moment in the journey of the Church, there were no particular errors of faith to correct or condemn, nor were there specific issues of doctrine or discipline to be clarified.

Thus we can understand the surprise of the small group of cardinals in the chapter house of the Benedictine monastery of St. Paul Outside the Walls, where, on January 25, 1959, Blessed John XXIII announced a diocesan Synod for Rome and a Council for the Universal Church.

The first question he asked himself in preparing for this great event was how to start it, what specific task to assign to it. Blessed John XXIII, in his opening speech, on October 11, fifty years ago, gave a general indication: Faith had to speak in a "renewed", more incisive way - because the world was rapidly changing – while keeping its perennial contents, without giving in or compromise.

The Pope wanted the Church to reflect on her faith, on the truths that guide her. But this serious, in-depth reflection on faith, had to outline the relationship between the Church and the modern age in a new way, between Christianity and some essential elements of modern thought - not to conform itself to it, but to present to our world, which has tended to move away from God, the need for the Gospel in all its grandeur and in all its purity
(cf. Address to the Roman Curia for Christmas greetings, December 22, 2005).

The Servant of God Paul VI indicated this very well in his homily at the end of the last session of the Council on December 7, 1965 – with words that are still most relevant - when he affirmed that in order to properly assess this event, "it is necessary to remember the time in which it was realized... a time in which, everyone admits man is oriented toward the conquest of the kingdom of earth rather than of that of heaven; a time in which forgetfulness of God has become habitual, quite wrongly prompted by the progress of science; a time in which the fundamental act of the human person, more conscious now of himself and of his liberty, tends to pronounce in favor of his own absolute autonomy, in emancipation from every transcendent law; a time in which secularism seems the legitimate consequence of modern thought and the highest wisdom in the temporal ordering of society;... it was at such a time as this that our council was held to the honor of God, in the name of Christ and under the impulse of the Spirit". Thus said Paul VI.

He concluded by indicating that the question of God was the central focus of the Council, that, I quote again, "He is real, He lives, a personal, provident God, infinitely good; and not only good in Himself, but also immeasurably good to us. He will be recognized as Our Creator, our truth, our happiness; so much so that the effort to look on Him, and to center our heart in Him which we call contemplation, is the highest, the most perfect act of the spirit, the act which even today can and must be at the apex of all human activity"
(AAS 58 [1966], 52-53).

We can see how the time in which we live continues to be marked by forgetfulness of God and deafness towards God. I think, then, that we must learn the simplest and most basic lesson of the Council, namely that Christianity in its essence consists in faith in God, which is love of the Trinity, and in the encounter, both personal and community, with Christ who directs and guides life: from which everything else follows.

The important thing today, just as it was the desire of the Council Fathers, is that we can once again see - clearly - that God is present, He takes care of us, He answers us. And that, instead, when there is no faith in God, what is essential collapses, because man loses his profound dignity and that which makes his humanity great, against all reductionism.

The Council reminds us that the Church, in all its components, has the duty, the mandate, to transmit the Word of God that saves, so that the Divine call, which contains our eternal blessing, can be heard and welcomed.

Looking in this light at the richness contained in the documents of Vatican II, I would like to mention the four constitutions, almost like the four points of a compass that can guide us.

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, which teaches us that in the Church, first there is adoration, there is God, the centrality of the mystery of Christ's presence.

And the Church, the Body of Christ and a pilgrim people in all times, has the fundamental task to glorify God, as expressed by the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium.

The third document which I would like to mention is the Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum: the living Word of God calls the Church and vivifies her along the journey through history.

And the way in which the Church brings the light she has received from God the whole world so He may be glorified, is the underlying theme of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes.

The Second Vatican Council is a strong call for us to rediscover the beauty of our faith every day, to know nourish a deeper understanding of it, a more intense relationship with the Lord, to truly live our Christian vocation.

May the Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ and of the whole Church, help us to realize and to fulfill all that the Council Fathers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, guarded in their heart: the desire that all may know the Gospel and meet the Lord Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life. Thank you.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/10/2012 12:36]
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Year of Faith:
Benedict XVI deploys his 'legions'
to defy the secular spirit of the times

by Antonio Sanfrancesco
Translated from

Oct. 10, 2012

The Year of Faith, which opens tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 11 - in St. Peter's Square, exactly 50 years ago since the start of the Second Vatican Council - is not just another event among many major events in the Pontificate of Benedict XVI but represents, in a certain sense, its heart and its distinctive mark.

In 2009, in his letter to all the bishops of the world over the controversy after he lifted the excommunication of four Lefebvrian bishops [a controversy that seized on the pretext that one of the bishops happens to be a Holocaust-denier to blacken the Pope's entire reconciliatory gesture of canonical mercy], Benedict XVI wrote clearly:

In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God... The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.


Strong words, stark, dramatic and clear. It is simply astounding why they did not resonate at the time as they ought to have done. [The letter was extraordinarily and egregiously historic - nothing similar has been written by a Pope in the modern era, not in centuries perhaps - and it was very Pauline in its mixture of warning, admonition and pastoral concern, without sparing the words necessary to convey Benedict XVI's papal and personal thinking. But MSM completely failed to appreciate it for what it was because media had become too invested in the campaign to denigrate the Vatican completely for 1) 'yet another communications snafu', primarily, and 2) for even thinking of reconciling with the traditionalists, which was equated to Benedict XVI 'turning his back on Vatican II', a theme the Pope's detractors continue to hammer on, even if acceptance of Vatican II has been the sticking point with the Lefebvrians, and even if practically everything Benedict has said and done since he became Pope is almost always referred to Vatican-II !]

The world has rightly been occupied with Vatileaks [wrongly, I would say, because the MSM and commentators have looked at it from the single lens of "Gotcha!" politics, to the point of lionizing. almost canonizing, the traitor Gabriele and his laughing-his-way-to-the-bank accomplice Gianluigi Nuzzi, as well as the not-so-peripheral figure of Mons. Carlo Vigano, completely abdicating their (the media's) responsibility to critically examine their freshly-haloed heroes' words and actions, and the concrete circumstances, to find substantiation of their scattershot and blanket allegations made by these bozos], with treasonous valets, various scandals [NAME ONE!], curial bureaucrats and the Church hierarchy.

But these are all just persons and means - highly imperfect, of course, and always reformable - in the service of the one true objective of the Church and the Vicar of Christ: to announce the Gospel, the Word of God, as something that is not an illusion but a truth upon which it is reasonable and rational to base one's life.

One might say that the objective need not be spelled out for believers and for the clergy. On the contrary. In the chaotic years that followed Vatican II, disputes - often harsh - have persisted over 'reorganizing the Church and the Vatican', the role of the Pope, the role of laymen and women, priestly celibacy, ecumenism, Catholics in politics, and the supposed political activism advocated by the Gospel [that's code for 'liberation theology', or, more unequivocally, 'Marxism masquerading in Christian robes'.].

All proper topics for discussion, certainly, but none of them goes to the essential, which is this: Is it still possible, and how, for post-modern man to believe in the truth of the Gospel, to place your bet - as Pascal said - on that Man who 2000 years ago said he was 'the way, the truth and the life'? [To which, obviously, Vatican-II clearly said Yes, and laid down the guidelines for the what and the how of it!]

For this, the Church needs a new commitment so that Christianity may once again be the yeast that can ferment through all the sectors of today's life - from science to sport, from politics to sical commitment, from culture to the world of volunteerism.

So it is not by chance that just as, at the end of Vatican II, Paul VI had special messages for the People of God, Benedict XVI will do the same at the end of the Mass that will open the Year of Faith tomorrow.

The messages will be handed out to government authorities; to scientists, represented tomorrow by the Italian research physicist Fabiola Giannotti, who was on the Atlas team responsible for detecting the Higgs Boson (the so-called 'God particle') at the European nuclear research center; artists represented by Scottish composer Hames McMillan, Italian sculptor Arnoldo Pomodoro and film director Ermanno Olmi; outstanding women like paralympic athlete Annalisa Minetti and Jocelyne Khoueiry, founder of a Lebanese women's movement for child education; labor representatives like Luis Alberto Urzua Iribairen, one of the Chilean mine workers who were trapped underground for more than two months in 2011, but also Renato Caputol and Flor Ventura who immigrated to Italy from the Philippines 22 years ago; to represent the sick and the suffering, a Red Cross worker and someone from Unitalsi, the Italian association that helps organize pilgrimages to Lourdes for those who have serious illnesses, and even the national president of an Italian association of families whose children have been killed in road accidents.

Just some of the diverse representatives of the Christian faith as lived daily by the faithful with consistency, commitment and enthusiasm. And often, in many countries of Asia and Africa, by Christians who live their faith even at the risk of their own lives.

These are the 'legions' that Benedict XVI counts to carry on the difficult struggle against the secular spirit of the times, and through the New Evangelization, seek to establish Christians not necessarily as the majority once more in Europe, but to be yeast for society, salt of the world, even if they are numerically in the minority.

De-Christianization in the secular West is not necessarily the decline of Christianity nor of that commitment to the Gospel of Christ which mysteriously, continues to renew itself in every generation.

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First Session of Working Groups
and Fifth General Congregation


Oct. 10, 2012

WORKING GROUPS - FIRST SESSION
Wednesday morning


This morning, Wednesday, October 10, 2012, the activities of the Working Groups of the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops began. 250 Synodal Fathers were present for the election of the Moderators and the Relators of the Working Groups and for the beginning of the discussion on the Synodal theme.


FIFTH GENERAL CONGREGATION
Wednesday afternoon


Today, Wednesday, October 10 2012, at 16:30, with the recitation of Psalm 22 (23), the Fifth General Congregation began, with the continuation of the interventions by the Synodal Fathers in the Hall on the theme of the Synod «The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith».

The President Delegate on duty was H. Em. Card. Laurent MONSENGWO PASINYA, Archbishop of Kinshasa (DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO).

At 18:00, in the presence of the Holy Father, the President Delegate gave the floor to H. G. Rowan Douglas WILLIAMS, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and the Anglican Communion (GREAT BRITAIN).

At the end of the Congregation, the Archbishop of Canterbury was received by the Holy Father in an audience in the study of the Synodal Hall.

A time for free interventions followed.

At this General Congregation, which ended at 07:00 p.m. with the prayer of Angelus Domini, 250 Fathers were present.


LIST OF MODERATORS AND RELATORS
OF THE WORKING GROUPS


At the opening of the Fifth General Congregation the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops H. Exc. Mons. Nikola ETEROVIĆ, Tit. Archbishop of Cibale (VATICAN CITY) read the List of Moderators and Relators of the Working Groups, elected in the First Session this morning. (The working groups are divided by language - English, French, Spanish, French, German and Italian.)

Moderators

Anglicus A
- H. Em. Rev. Card. Wilfrid Matthew NAPIER, O.F.M., Archbishop of Durban (SOUTH AFRICA)
Anglicus B
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Diarmuid MARTIN, Archbishop of Dublin (IRELAND)
Anglicus C
- H. Em. Rev. Card. Oswald GRACIAS, Archbishop of Bombay, General Secretary of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) (INDIA)
Anglicus D
- H. Em. Rev. Card. George PELL, Archbishop of Sydney (AUSTRALIA)

Gallicus A
- H. Em. Rev. Card. Jean-Louis TAURAN, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (VATICAN CITY)
Gallicus B
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Yves PATENÔTRE, Archbishop of Sens (FRANCE)

Germanicus
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Ägidius Johann ZSIFKOVICS, Bishop of Eisenstadt (AUSTRIA)

Hispanicus A
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Carlos AGUIAR RETES, Archbishop of Tlalnepantla, President of the Episcopal Conference, President of the Latin American Episcopal Council (C.E.L.AM.) (MEXICO)
Hispanicus B
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Julio César TERÁN DUTARI, S.I., Bishop of Ibarra (ECUADOR)

Italicus A
- H. Em. Rev. Card. Leonardo SANDRI, Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches (VATICAN CITY)
Italicus B
- H. Em. Rev. Card. Angelo BAGNASCO, Archbishop of Genoa, President of the Episcopal Conference (ITALY)
Italicus C
- H. Em. Rev. Card. Fernando FILONI, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (VATICAN CITY)

Relators

Anglicus A
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Joseph Edward KURTZ, Archbishop of Louisville, Vice President of the Episcopal Conference (UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
Anglicus B
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Bernard LONGLEY, Archbishop of Birmingham (GREAT BRITAIN (ENGLAND AND WALES)
Anglicus C
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Philip TARTAGLIA, Archbishop of Glasgow (SCOTLAND)
Anglicus D
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Kieran O'REILLY, S.M.A., Bishop of Killaloe (IRELAND)

Gallicus A
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Dominique REY, Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon (FRANCE)
Gallicus B
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Claude DAGENS, Archbishop of Angoulême (FRANCE)

Germanicus
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Ladislav NEMET, S.V.D., Bishop of Zrenjanin (SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO)

Hispanicus A
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Ricardo BLÁZQUEZ PÉREZ, Archbishop of Valladolid (SPAIN)
Hispanicus B
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Santiago Jaime SILVA RETAMALES, Titular Bishop of Bela, Auxiliary Bishop of Valparaíso, General Secretary of the Latin American Episcopal Council (C.E.L.A.M.) (COLOMBIA)

Italicus A
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Salvatore FISICHELLA, Titular Archbishop of Voghenza, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of New Evangelization (VATICAN CITY)
Italicus B
- H. Exc. Rev. Mons. Bruno FORTE, Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto (ITALY)
Italicus C
- Rev. F. Renato SALVATORE, M.I., Superior General of the Clerks Regular of the Ministers of the Sick (Camillians) (ITALY)


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This is an excellent presentation by the Archbishop of Canterbury with a surprising emphasis on the importance of contemplation not just in spiritual life, but in preparing for the task of evangelization.

INTERVENTION OF HIS GRACE ROWAN DOUGLAS WILLIAMS
Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and the Anglican Communion

October 10, 2012

The Archbishop of Canterbury was introduced by the President Delegate of the Synodal Assembly with the following words:

His Grace, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Doctor Rowan Douglas WILLIAMS, is an Anglican Bishop, theologian, poet and gifted, prolific writer. He is the one-hundred-and-fourth (104th) and current Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and of the Anglican Communion, offices he has held since early 2003.

Archbishop Williams has been a bishop for 20 years, ten as Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales (making him the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England) and ten in his present offices.

He spent much of his earlier career as an academic at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford successively. Ever since his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury he has been passionately involved in evangelization and the credibility of the faith in the contemporary world.

On 16 March 2012, it was announced that he has accepted the position of Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University, beginning in January 2013. He is expected to stand down as Archbishop of Canterbury in December 2012.

We also wish to welcome those who have accompanied His Grace: His Excellency, Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of West minister; His Excellency, the Honourable Nigel Marcus Baker, the Ambassador of Great Britain to the Holy See; Canon David Richardson, Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome; Mrs. Margaret Richardson, his wife; Canon J onathan Goodall, Secretary to Archbishop Williams; and Reverend John O'Leary, Secretary to Archbishop Nichols.

And now, Archbishop Williams.


MONS. WILLIAMS'S INTERVENTION

Your Holiness,
Reverend Fathers,
Brothers and sisters in Christ,
Dear friends,

1. I am deeply honoured by the Holy Father's invitation to speak in this gathering: as the Psalmist says, “Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum(Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.)

The gathering of bishops in Synod for the good of all Christ's people is one of those disciplines that sustain the health of Christ's Church. And today especially we cannot forget that great gathering of “fratres in unum” that was the Second Vatican Council, which did so much for the health of the Church and helped the Church to recover so much of the energy needed to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ effectively in our age.

For so many of my own generation, even beyond the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church, that Council was a sign of great promise, a sign that the Church was strong enough to ask itself some demanding questions about whether its culture and structures were adequate to the task of sharing the Gospel with the complex, often rebellious, always restless mind of the modern world.

2. The Council was, in so many ways, a rediscovery of evangelistic concern and passion, focused not only on the renewal of the Church's own life but on its credibility in the world. Texts such as Lumen gentium and Gaudium et spes laid out a fresh and joyful vision of how the unchanging reality of Christ living in his Body on earth through the gift of the Holy Spirit might speak in new words to the society of our age and even to those of other faiths.

It is not surprising that we are still, fifty years later, struggling with many of the same questions and with the implications of the Council; and I take it that this Synod's concern with the new evangelization is part of that continuing exploration of the Council's legacy.

3. But one of the most important aspects of the theology of the second Vaticanum was a renewal of Christian anthropology. In place of an often strained and artificial neo-scholastic account of how grace and nature were related in the constitution of human beings, the Council built on the greatest insights of a theology that had returned to earlier and richer sources - the theology of spiritual geniuses like Henri de Lubac, who reminded us of what it meant for early and mediaeval Christianity to speak of humanity as made in God's image and of grace as perfecting and transfiguring that image so long overlaid by our habitual 'inhumanity'.

In such a light, to proclaim the Gospel is to proclaim that it is at last possible to be properly human: the Catholic and Christian faith is a 'true humanism', to borrow a phrase from another genius of the last century, Jacques Maritain.

4. Yet de Lubac is clear what this does not mean. We do not replace the evangelistic task by a campaign of 'humanization'. 'Humanize before Christianizing?' he asks - 'If the enterprise succeeds, Christianity will come too late: its place will be taken. And who thinks that Christianity has no humanizing value?' So de Lubac writes in his wonderful collection of aphorisms, Paradoxes of Faith.

It is the faith itself that shapes the work of humanizing and the humanizing enterprise will be empty without the definition of humanity given in the Second Adam.

Evangelization, old or new, must be rooted in a profound confidence that we have a distinctive human destiny to show and share with the world. There are many ways of spelling this out, but in these brief remarks I want to concentrate on one aspect in particular.

5. To be fully human is to be recreated in the image of Christ's humanity; and that humanity is the perfect human 'translation' of the relationship of the eternal Son to the eternal Father, a relationship of loving and adoring self-giving, a pouring out of life towards the Other. Thus the humanity we are growing into in the Spirit, the humanity that we seek to share with the world as the fruit of Christ's redeeming work, is a contemplative humanity.

St Edith Stein observed that we begin to understand theology when we see God as the 'First Theologian', the first to speak out the reality of divine life, because 'all speaking about God presupposes God's own speaking'; in an analogous way we could say that we begin to understand contemplation when we see God as the first contemplative, the eternal paradigm of that selfless attention to the Other that brings not death but life to the self.

All contemplating of God presupposes God's own absorbed and joyful knowing of himself and gazing upon himself in the trinitarian life.

6. To be contemplative as Christ is contemplative is to be open to all the fullness that the Father wishes to pour into our hearts. With our minds made still and ready to receive, with our self-generated fantasies about God and ourselves reduced to silence, we are at last at the point where we may begin to grow.

And the face we need to show to our world is the face of a humanity in endless growth towards love, a humanity so delighted and engaged by the glory of what we look towards that we are prepared to embark on a journey without end to find our way more deeply into it, into the heart of the trinitarian life.

St Paul speaks (in II Cor 3.18) of how 'with our unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord', we are transfigured with a greater and greater radiance. That is the face we seek to show to our fellow-human beings.

7. And we seek this not because we are in search of some private 'religious experience' that will make us feel secure or holy. We seek it because in this self-forgetting gazing towards the light of God in Christ we learn how to look at one another and at the whole of God's creation.

In the early Church, there was a clear understanding that we needed to advance from the self-understanding or self-contemplation that taught us to discipline our greedy instincts and cravings to the 'natural contemplation' that perceived and venerated the wisdom of God in the order of the world and allowed us to see created reality for what it truly was in the sight of God - rather than what it was in terms of how we might use it or dominate it.

And from there grace would lead us forward into true 'theology', the silent gazing upon God that is the goal of all our discipleship.

8. In this perspective, contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom - freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them.

To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.

9. In his autobiography Thomas Merton describes an experience not long after he had entered the monastery where he was to spend the rest of his life (Elected Silence, p.303). He had contracted flu, and was confined to the infirmary for a few days, and, he says, he felt a 'secret joy' at the opportunity this gave him for prayer - and 'to do everything that I want to do, without having to run all over the place answering bells.'

He is forced to recognise that this attitude reveals that 'All my bad habits…had sneaked into the monastery with me and had received the religious vesture along with me: spiritual gluttony, spiritual sensuality, spiritual pride.'

In other words, he is trying to live the Christian life with the emotional equipment of someone still deeply wedded to the search for individual satisfaction.

It is a powerful warning: we have to be every careful in our evangelisation not simply to persuade people to apply to God and the life of the spirit all the longings for drama, excitement and self-congratulation that we so often indulge in our daily lives.

It was expressed even more forcefully some decades ago by the American scholar of religion, Jacob Needleman, in a controversial and challenging book called Lost Christianity: the words of the Gospel, he says, are addressed to human beings who 'do not yet exist'.
That is to say, responding in a life-giving way to what the Gospel requires of us means a transforming of our whole self, our feelings and thoughts and imaginings. To be converted to the faith does not mean simply acquiring a new set of beliefs, but becoming a new person, a person in communion with God and others through Jesus Christ.

10. Contemplation is an intrinsic element in this transforming process. To learn to look to God without regard to my own instant satisfaction, to learn to scrutinise and to relativise the cravings and fantasies that arise in me - this is to allow God to be God, and thus to allow the prayer of Christ, God's own relation to God, to come alive in me.

Invoking the Holy Spirit is a matter of asking the third person of the Trinity to enter my spirit and bring the clarity I need to see where I am in slavery to cravings and fantasies and to give me patience and stillness as God's light and love penetrate my inner life.

Only as this begins to happen will I be delivered from treating the gifts of God as yet another set of things I may acquire to make me happy, or to dominate other people. And as this process unfolds, I become more free - to borrow a phrase of St Augustine (Confessions IV.7) - to 'love human beings in a human way', to love them not for what they may promise me, to love them not as if they were there to provide me with lasting safety and comfort, but as fragile fellow-creatures held in the love of God.

I discover (as we noted earlier) how to see other persons and things for what they are in relation to God, not to me. And it is here that true justice as well as true love has its roots.

11. The human face that Christians want to show to the world is a face marked by such justice and love, and thus a face formed by contemplation, by the disciplines of silence and the detaching of the self from the objects that enslave it and the unexamined instincts that can deceive it.

If evangelisation is a matter of showing the world the 'unveiled' human face that reflects the face of the Son turned towards the Father, it must carry with it a serious commitment to promoting and nurturing such prayer and practice.

It should not need saying that this is not at all to argue that 'internal' transformation is more important than action for justice; rather, it is to insist that the clarity and energy we need for doing justice requires us to make space for the truth, for God's reality to come through. Otherwise our search for justice or for peace becomes another exercise of human will, undermined by human self-deception.

The two callings are inseparable, the calling to 'prayer and righteous action', as the Protestant martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, writing from his prison cell in 1944. True prayer purifies the motive, true justice is the necessary work of sharing and liberating in others the humanity we have discovered in our contemplative encounter.

12. Those who know little and care less about the institutions and hierarchies of the Church these days are often attracted and challenged by lives that exhibit something of this. It is the new and renewed religious communities that most effectively reach out to those who have never known belief or who have abandoned it as empty and stale.

When the Christian history of our age is written especially, though not only, as regards Europe and North America - we shall see how central and vital was the witness of places like Taizé or Bose, but also of more traditional communities that have become focal points for the exploration of a humanity broader and deeper than social habit encourages.

And the great spiritual networks, Sant' Egidio, the Focolare, Comunione e Liberazione, these too show the same phenomenon; they make space for a profounder human vision because in their various ways all of them offer a discipline of personal and common life that is about letting the reality of Jesus come alive in us.

13. And, as these examples show, the attraction and challenge we are talking about can generate commitments and enthusiasms across historic confessional lines. We have become used to talking about the imperative importance of 'spiritual ecumenism' these days; but this must not be a matter of somehow opposing the spiritual and the institutional, nor replacing specific commitments with a general sense of Christian fellow-feeling.

If we have a robust and rich account of what the word 'spiritual' itself means, grounded in scriptural insights like those in the passages from II Corinthians that we noted earlier, we shall understand spiritual ecumenism as the shared search to nourish and sustain disciplines of contemplation in the hope of unveiling the face of the new humanity. And the more we keep apart from each other as Christians of different confessions, the less convincing that face will seem.

I mentioned the Focolare movement a moment ago: you will recall that the basic imperative in the spirituality of Chiara Lubich was 'to make yourself one' - one with the crucified and abandoned Christ, one through him with the Father, one with all those called to this unity and so one with the deepest needs of the world.

'Those who live unity … live by allowing themselves to penetrate always more into God. They grow always closer to God … and the closer they get to him, the closer they get to the hearts of their brothers and sisters' (Chiara Lubich: Essential Writings, p.37).

The contemplative habit strips away an unthinking superiority towards other baptised believers and the assumption that I have nothing to learn from them. Insofar as the habit of contemplation helps us approach all experience as gift, we shall always be asking what it is that the brother or sister has to share with us - even the brother or sister who is in one way or another separated from us or from what we suppose to be the fullness of communion. “Quam bonum et quam jucundum…”.

14. In practice, this might suggest that wherever initiatives are being taken to reach out in new ways to a lapsed Christian or post-Christian public, there should be serious work done on how such outreach can be grounded in some ecumenically shared contemplative practice.

In addition to the striking way in which Taizé has developed an international liturgical 'culture' accessible to a great variety of people, a network like the World Community for Christian Meditation, with its strong Benedictine roots and affiliations, has opened up fresh possibilities here.

What is more, this community has worked hard at making contemplative practice accessible to children and young people, and this needs the strongest possible encouragement.

Having seen at first hand-in Anglican schools in Britain-how warmly young children can respond to the invitation offered by meditation in this tradition, I believe its potential for introducing young people to the depths of our faith to be very great indeed. And for those who have drifted away from the regular practice of sacramental faith, the rhythms and practices of Taizé or the WCCM are often a way back to this sacramental heart and hearth.

15. What people of all ages recognise in these practices is the possibility, quite simply, of living more humanly - living with less frantic acquisitiveness, living with space for stillness, living in the expectation of learning, and most of all, living with an awareness that there is a solid and durable joy to be discovered in the disciplines of self-forgetfulness that is quite different from the gratification of this or that impulse of the moment.

Unless our evangelisation can open the door to all this, it will run the risk of trying to sustain faith on the basis of an un-transformed set of human habits - with the all too familiar result that the Church comes to look unhappily like so many purely human institutions, anxious, busy, competitive and controlling.

In a very important sense, a true enterprise of evangelisation will always be a re-evangelisation of ourselves as Christians also, a rediscovery of why our faith is different, transfiguring - a recovery of our own new humanity.

16. And of course it happens most effectively when we are not planning or struggling for it. To turn to de Lubac once again, 'He who will best answer the needs of his time will be someone who will not have first sought to answer them' (op. cit. pp.111-2); and 'The man who seeks sincerity, instead of seeking truth in self-forgetfulness, is like the man who seeks to be detached instead of laying himself open in love' (p.114).

The enemy of all proclamation of the Gospel is self-consciousness, and, by definition, we cannot overcome this by being more self-conscious. We have to return to St Paul and ask, “Where are we looking?” Do we look anxiously to the problems of our day, the varieties of unfaithfulness or of threat to faith and morals, the weakness of the institution? Or are we seeking to look to Jesus, to the unveiled face of God's image in the light of which we see the image further reflected in ourselves and our neighbours?

17. That simply reminds us that evangelisation is always an overflow of something else - the disciple's journey to maturity in Christ, a journey not organised by the ambitious ego but the result of the prompting and drawing of the Spirit in us.

In our considerations of how we are once again to make the Gospel of Christ compellingly attractive to men and women of our age, I hope we never lose sight of what makes it compelling to ourselves, to each one of us in our diverse ministries.

So I wish you joy in these discussions - not simply clarity or effectiveness in planning, but joy in the promise of the vision of Christ's face, and in the foreshadowings of that fulfilment in the joy of communion with each other here and now.

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On the eve of Vatican-II:
Joseph Ratzinger's (eventually successful)
challenge to the draft document on Revelation

by Gianni Valente
Translated from the Italian service of

Oct. 9, 2012

On October 11, 1962, when John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council with words of exultation ("Gaudet Mater Ecclesiae" - Mother Church rejoices), the Council adventure had already begun earlier for the 35-year-old German theologian Joseph Ratzinger.

The day before the solemn inauguration, Ratzinger, who had just arrived in Rome as the theological consultant to Cardinal Jsef Frings of Cologne, had hardly unpakced his bags.

At the Collegio di Santa Maria dell'Anima, at 5 pm on the dot, he was awaited by all the German-speaking bishops taking part in the Counci, with other Germanophone aliies.

On the eve of the Council opening, Cardinal Frings had asked his consultant to brief the bishops on the schema (draft document proposed by the Council organizers) of a document called De Fontibus Revelationis )On the sources of Revelation), which had been the first of the schemata sent to the Council Fathers for their preliminary consideration.

Joseph Ratzinger's presentation that afternoon amounted to a substantial criticism of the schema which had seen the light under the constant monitoring of the leading experts of the so-called 'Roman school' of theology, from the Jesuit Sebastian Tromp to the then Prefect of the Holy Office, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani.

But Frings's theological consultant thought that the draft was poorly concxeived, starting with its title which evoked the formulas in current use at the time in theology manuals, where Scripture and Tradition were defined as the 'two sources' of divine Revelation.

Ratzinger believed that the definition inverted the ontological succession between Revelation and the historic forms by which it had been transmitted. In reality, Ratzinger said in his presentation to the bishops, "Revelation is not something that comes after Scripture and Tradition. On the contrary, it is God talking and acting which comes before all the historical formulations of his Word, he being the only source that feeds Scripture and Tradition".

For Ratzinger, this was not just an idle academic point. He said that those who drafted the schema were blinded by the 'phantasm of modernism" and conditioned by the obsession of having to refute the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura (in effect, trust Scripture alone), which recognizes only the Bible as the rule of faith and Christian practice.

In the drafters' zeal to mark off a distance from the Protestant view, Ratzinger pointed out, they had almost attributed to Tradition the power to define 'contents of the faith' that are not present even implicitly in Sacred Scripture.

He said that such a 'traditionalist' tendency represented a betrayal of what the Church has always thought. He reminded the bishops that the Fathers of the Church had already rejected as gnostic "every idea of a Tradition understood as a collection of statements communicated outside Scripture".

On this point, Ratzinger's proposed solution was clear: The Council Fathers should purge the document on Revelation of "all the formulations that describe Tradition as a principal autonomous source".

They ought to be replaced, he said, with statements that demonstrate "both the close inter-relation between Scripture, Tradition, and the Church's announcements, as well as the profound obligations of the Church towards the words of Scripture".

The following day, at the inaugural rites of the Council, the young Bavarian theologian was comforted by the opening address of John XXIII. In his subsequent accounts of Vatican II, Ratzinver expressed his relief opon hearing the Pope who "avoided all statements that were only negative" but called on the Church to employ 'the medicine of mercy' in its relationship with the modern world.

He was not as impressed by other aspects of the opening liturgy, which, according to him, had reduced the bishops of the Council and everyone present to 'mute spectators' who had no 'active participation'.


The post-script to Joseph Ratzinger's criticism of the draft document on Revelation was that he played a major role in drafting the eventual Council document adopted, Dei Verbum (The Word of God), which continues to be one of the most praised and least controversial of the Vatican II documents.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/10/2012 00:56]
11/10/2012 12:55
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POPE JOHN XXIII'S OPENING ADDRESS
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council

October 11, 1962



Venerated Brothers,

Mother Church rejoices that, by the singular gift of Divine Providence, the longed-for day has finally dawned when -- under the auspices of the virgin Mother of God, whose maternal dignity is commemorated on this feast -- the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council is being solemnly opened here beside St. Peter's tomb.

THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS OF THE CHURCH

The Councils -- both the twenty ecumenical ones and the numberless others, also important, of a provincial or regional character which have been held down through the years -- all prove clearly the vigor of the Catholic Church and are recorded as shining lights in her annals.

In calling this vast assembly of bishops, the latest and humble successor to the Prince of the Apostles who is addressing you intended to assert once again the Magisterium (teaching authority), which is unfailing and perdures until the end of time, in order that this Magisterium, taking into account the errors, the requirements, and the opportunities of our time, might be presented in exceptional form to all men throughout the world.

It is but natural that in opening this Universal Council we should like to look to the past and to listen to its voices whose echo we like to hear in the memories and the merits of the more recent and ancient Pontiffs, our predecessors. These are solemn and venerable voices, throughout the East and the West, from the fourth century to the Middle Ages, and from there to modern times, which have handed down their witness to those Councils. They are voices which proclaim in perennial fervor the triumph of that divine and human institution, the Church of Christ, which from Jesus takes its name, its grace, and its meaning.

Side by side with these motives for spiritual joy, however, there has also been for more than nineteen centuries a cloud of sorrows and of trials. Not without reason did the ancient Simeon announce to Mary the mother of Jesus, that prophecy which has been and still is true: "Behold this child is set for the fall and the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted" (Lk. 2: 4).

And Jesus Himself, when He grew up, clearly outlined the manner in which the world would treat His person down through the succeeding centuries with the mysterious words: "He who hears you, hears me" (Ibid. 10:16), and with those others that the same Evangelist relates: "He who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me scatters" (Ibid. 11:23).

The great problem confronting the world after almost two thousand years remains unchanged. Christ is ever resplendent as the center of history and of life. Men are either with Him and His Church, and then they enjoy light, goodness, order, and peace. Or else they are without Him, or against Him, and deliberately opposed to His Church, and then they give rise to confusion, to bitterness in human relations, and to the constant danger of fratricidal wars.

Ecumenical Councils, whenever they are assembled, are a solemn celebration of the union of Christ and His Church, and hence lead to the universal radiation of truth, to the proper guidance of individuals in domestic and social life, to the strengthening of spiritual energies for a perennial uplift toward real and everlasting goodness.

The testimony of this extraordinary Magisterium of the Church in the succeeding epochs of these twenty centuries of Christian history stands before us collected in numerous and imposing volumes, which are the sacred patrimony of our ecclesiastical archives, here in Rome and in the more noted libraries of the entire world.

THE ORIGIN AND REASON FOR
THE SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL


As regards the initiative for the great event which gathers us here, it will suffice to repeat as historical documentation our personal account of the first sudden bringing up in our heart and lips of the simple words, "Ecumenical Council."

We uttered those words in the presence of the Sacred College of Cardinals on that memorable January 25, 1959, the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, in the basilica dedicated to him. It was completely unexpected, like a flash of heavenly light, shedding sweetness in eyes and hearts. And at the same time it gave rise to a great fervor throughout the world in expectation of the holding of the Council.

There have elapsed three years of laborious preparation, during which a wide and profound examination was made regarding modern conditions of faith and religious practice, and of Christian and especially Catholic vitality. These years have seemed to us a first sign, an initial gift of celestial grace.

Illuminated by the light of this Council, the Church -- we confidently trust -- will become greater in spiritual riches and gaining the strength of new energies therefrom, she will look to the future without fear. In fact, by bringing herself up to date where required, and by the wise organization of mutual co-operation, the Church will make men, families, and peoples really turn their minds to heavenly things.

And thus the holding of the Council becomes a motive for wholehearted thanksgiving to the Giver of every good gift, in order to celebrate with joyous canticles the glory of Christ our Lord, the glorious and immortal King of ages and of peoples.

The opportuneness of holding the Council is, moreover, venerable brothers, another subject which it is useful to propose for your consideration. Namely, in order to render our Joy more complete, we wish to narrate before this great assembly our assessment of the happy circumstances under which the Ecumenical Council commences.

In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin.

They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty.

We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.

In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which, by men's own efforts and even beyond their very expectations, are directed toward the fulfilment of God's superior and inscrutable designs. And everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the Church.

It is easy to discern this reality if we consider attentively the world of today, which is so busy with politics and controversies in the economic order that it does not find time to attend to the care of spiritual reality, with which the Church's Magisterium is concerned. such a way of acting is certainly not right, and must justly be disapproved. It cannot be denied, however, that these new conditions of modern life have at least the advantage of having eliminated those innumerable obstacles by which, at one time, the sons of this world impeded the free action of the Church.

In fact, it suffices to leaf even cursorily through the pages of ecclesiastical history to note clearly how the Ecumenical Councils themselves, while constituting a series of true glories for the Catholic Church, were often held to the accompaniment of most serious difficulties and sufferings because of the undue interference of civil authorities. The princes of this world, indeed, sometimes in all sincerity, intended thus to protect the Church. But more frequently this occurred not without spiritual damage and danger, since their interest therein was guided by the views of a selfish and perilous policy.

In this regard, we confess to you that we feel most poignant sorrow over the fact that very many bishops, so dear to us are noticeable here today by their absence, because they are imprisoned for their faithfulness to Christ, or impeded by other restraints. The thought of them impels us to raise most fervent prayer to God.

Nevertheless, we see today, not without great hopes and to our immense consolation, that the Church, finally freed from so many obstacles of a profane nature such as trammeled her in the past, can from this Vatican Basilica, as if from a second apostolic cenacle, and through your intermediary, raise her voice resonant with majesty and greatness.

PRINCIPLE DUTY OF THE COUNCIL:
THE DEFENSE AND ADVANCEMENT OF TRUTH


The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more
efficaciously. That doctrine embraces the whole of man, composed as he is of body and soul. And, since he is a pilgrim on this earth, it commands him to tend always toward heaven.

This demonstrates how our mortal life is to be ordered in such a way as to fulfill our duties as citizens of earth and of heaven, and thus to attain the aim of life as established by God. That is, all men, whether taken singly or as united in society, today have the duty of tending ceaselessly during their lifetime toward the attainment of heavenly things and to use. for this purpose only, the earthly goods, the employment of which must not prejudice their eternal happiness.

The Lord has said: "Seek first the kingdom of Cod and his justice" (Mt 6:33). The word "first" expresses the direction in which our thoughts and energies must move. We must not, however, neglect the other words of this exhortation of our Lord, namely: "And all these things shall be given you besides" (Ibid.).

In reality, there always have been in the Church, and there are still today, those who, while seeking the practice of evangelical perfection with all their might, do not fail to make themselves useful to society. Indeed, it from their constant example of life and their charitable undertakings that all that is highest and noblest in human society takes its strength and growth.

In order, however, that this doctrine may influence the numerous fields of human activity, with reference to individuals, to families, and to social life, it is necessary first of all that the Church should never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers. But at the same time she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life introduced into the modern world, which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate.

For this reason, the Church has not watched inertly the marvelous progress of the discoveries of human genius, an has not been backward in evaluating them rightly. But, while following these developments, she does not neglect to admonish men so that, over and above sense -- perceived things -- they may raise their eyes to God, the Source of all wisdom and all beauty. And may they never forget the most serious command: "The Lord thy God shalt thou worship, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Mt 4:10; Lk 4:8), so that it may happen that the fleeting fascination of visible things should impede true progress.

The manner in which sacred doctrine is spread, this having been established, it becomes clear how much is expected from the Council in regard to doctrine.

That is, the Twenty-first Ecumenical Council, which will draw upon the effective and important wealth of juridical, liturgical, apostolic, and administrative experiences, wishes to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty centuries, notwithstanding difficulties and contrasts, has become the common patrimony of men. It is a patrimony not well received by all, but always a rich treasure available to men of good will.

Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us, pursuing thus the path which the Church has followed for twenty centuries.

The salient point of this Council is not, therefore, a discussion of one article or another of the fundamental doctrine of the Church which has repeatedly been taught by the Fathers and by ancient and modern theologians, and which is presumed to be well known and familiar to all.

For this a Council was not necessary. But from the renewed, serene, and tranquil adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness, as it still shines forth in the Acts of the Council of Trent and First Vatican Council, the Christian, Catholic, and apostolic spirit of the whole world expects a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought.

The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration with patience if necessary, everything being measured in the forms and proportions of a Magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character.


HOW TO REPRESS ERRORS

At the outset of the Second Vatican Council, it is evident, as always, that the truth of the Lord will remain forever. We see, in fact, as one age succeeds another, that the opinions of men follow one another and exclude each other. And often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun. The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity.

Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She consider that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations.

Not, certainly, that there is a lack of fallacious teaching, opinions, and dangerous concepts to be guarded against an dissipated. But these are so obviously in contrast with the right norm of honesty, and have produced such lethal fruits that by now it would seem that men of themselves are inclined to condemn them, particularly those ways of life which despise God and His law or place excessive confidence in technical progress and a well-being based exclusively on the comforts of life.

They are ever more deeply convinced of the paramount dignity of the human person and of his perfection as well as of the duties which that implies. Even more important, experience has taught men that violence inflicted on others, the might of arms, and political domination, are of no help at all in finding a happy solution to the grave problems which afflict them.

That being so, the Catholic Church, raising the torch of religious truth by means of this Ecumenical Council, desires to show herself to be the loving mother of all, benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the brethren who are separated from her.

To mankind, oppressed by so many difficulties, the Church says, as Peter said to the poor who begged alms from him: "I have neither gold nor silver, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk" (Acts 3:6).

In other words, the Church does not offer to the men of today riches that pass, nor does she promise them merely earthly happiness. But she distributes to them the goods of divine grace which, raising men to the dignity of sons of God, are the most efficacious safeguards and aids toward a more human life.

She opens the fountain of her life-giving doctrine which allows men, enlightened by the light of Christ, to understand well what they really are, what their lofty dignity and their purpose are, and, finally, through her children, she spreads everywhere the fullness of Christian charity, than which nothing is more effective in eradicating the seeds of discord, nothing more efficacious in promoting concord, just peace, and the brotherly unity of all.

THE UNITY OF THE CHRISTIAN
AND HUMAN FAMILY MUST BE PROMOTED


The Church's solicitude to promote and defend truth derives from the fact that, according to the plan of God, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (l Tim. 2:4), men without the assistance of the whole of revealed doctrine cannot reach a complete and firm unity of minds, with which are associated true peace and eternal salvation.

Unfortunately, the entire Christian family has not yet fully attained this visible unity in truth.

The Catholic Church, therefore, considers it her duty to work actively so that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Jesus Christ invoked with fervent prayer from His heavenly Father on the eve of His sacrifice. She rejoices in peace, knowing well that she is intimately associated with that prayer, and then exults greatly at seeing that invocation extend its efficacy with salutary fruit, even among those who are outside her fold.

Indeed, if one considers well this same unity which Christ implored for His Church, it seems to shine, as it were, with a triple ray of beneficent supernal light: namely, the unity of Catholics among themselves, which must always be kept exemplary and most firm; the unity of prayers and ardent desires with which those Christians separated from this Apostolic See aspire to be united with us; and the unity in esteem and respect for the Catholic Church which animates those who follow non-Christian religions.

In this regard, it is a source of considerable sorrow to see that the greater part of the human race -- although all men who are born were
redeemed by the blood of Christ -- does not yet participate in those sources of divine grace which exist in the Catholic Church. Hence the Church, whose light illumines all, whose strength of supernatural unity redounds to the advantage of all humanity, is rightly described in these beautiful words of St. Cyprian:

"The Church, surrounded by divine light, spreads her rays over the entire earth. This light, however, is one and unique and shines everywhere without causing any separation in the unity of the body. She extends her branches over the whole world. By her fruitfulness she sends ever farther afield he rivulets. Nevertheless, the head is always one, the origin one for she is the one mother, abundantly fruitful. We are born of her, are nourished by her milk, we live of her spirit" (De Catholicae Eccles. Unitate, 5).

Venerable brothers, such is the aim of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which, while bringing together the Church's best energies and striving to have men welcome more favorably the good tidings of salvation, prepares, as it were and consolidates the path toward that unity of mankind which is required as a necessary foundation, in order that the earthly city may be brought to the resemblance of that heavenly city where truth reigns, charity is the law, and whose extent is eternity (Cf. St. Augustine, Epistle 138,3).

Now, "our voice is directed to you" (2 Cor 6:11) venerable brothers in the episcopate. Behold, we are gathered together in this Vatican Basilica, upon which hinges the history of the Church where heaven and earth are closely joined, here near the tomb of Peter and near so many of the tombs of our holy predecessors, whose ashes in this solemn hour seem to thrill in mystic exultation.

The Council now beginning rises in the Church like daybreak, a forerunner of most splendid light. It is now only dawn. And already at this first announcement of the rising day, how much sweetness fills our heart. Everything here breathes sanctity and arouses great joy. Let us contemplate the stars, which with their brightness augment the majesty of this temple. These stars, according to the testimony of the Apostle John (Apoc 1:20), are you, and with you we see shining around the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, the golden candelabra. That is, the Church is confided to you (Ibid.).

We see here with you important personalities, present in an attitude of great respect and cordial expectation, having come together in Rome from the five continents to represent the nations of the world.

We might say that heaven and earth are united in the holding of the Council -- the saints of heaven to protect our work, the faithful of the earth continuing in prayer to the Lord, and you, seconding the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in order that the work of all may correspond to the modern expectations and needs of the various peoples of the world.

This requires of you serenity of mind, brotherly concord moderation in proposals, dignity in discussion, and wisdom of deliberation.

God grant that your labors and your work, toward which the eyes of all peoples and the hopes of the entire world are turned, may abundantly fulfill the aspirations of all.


Almighty God! In Thee we place all our confidence, not trusting in our own strength. Look down benignly upon these pastors of Thy Church. May the light of Thy supernal grace aid us in taking decisions and in making laws. Graciously hear the prayers which we pour forth to Thee in unanimity of faith, of voice, and of mind.

O Mary, Help of Christians, Help of Bishops, of whose love we have recently had particular proof in thy temple of Loreto, where we venerated the mystery of the Incarnation dispose all things for a happy and propitious outcome and, with thy spouse, St. Joseph, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, intercede for us to God.

To Jesus Christ, our most amiable Redeemer, immortal King of peoples and of times, be love, power, and glory forever and ever.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/10/2012 12:57]
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