BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Caught unaware again by the page change. For convenience, I will re-post the last post on the preceding page - which is the full text of Pope John XXIII's address at the opening of the Second Vatican Council.







Oct. 11, 1962 in St. Peter's Square: Pope John XXIII, borne aloft on the pre-Conciliar 'sedia gestatoria' attended by courtiers bearing ostrich-plume fans, brings up the rear of the impressive entry procession of the Council Fathers into St. Peter's Basilica for the opening session of Vatican II. Photo from L'Osservatore Romano.

POPE JOHN XXIII'S OPENING ADDRESS
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council
October 11, 1962

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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.

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Thursday, Oct. 11, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

BLESSED MARYA ANGELA TRUSZKOWSKA (Poland, 1825-1899), Franciscan Tertiary, Founder of the Felician Sisters
Born Sophia Camille Truszkowska to noble parents near Cracow, she was always sickly, but this inclined her to reflection
and prayer. At age 23, she experienced a conversion moment that led her to the religious life. With a Capuchin father as
her spiritual director, she joined the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Warsaw to help the poor, aged and homeless, taking
homeless children into her own home. She and her cousin expanded this into an institute with a school for the children and
religious instruction. Other women joined Sophia and her cousin, who became Franciscan tertiaries in 1855, at which Sophia
took the name Angela. Within two years they formed a new congregation, which came to be known as the Felician Sisters,
since they prayed at the nearby shrine of St. Felix of Cantalice. Though poor health forced her to resign as Mother Superior
at age 44, Mary Angela saw her order grow to the point where it sent missionaries to the United States to work with Polish
immigrant communities. John Paul II beatified her in Cracow in 1993. Her remains are venerated in a church in that city.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101112.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Opening Mass in St. Peter's Square of the Year of Faith commemorating 50 years since
the Second Vatican Council opened. Homily by the Holy Father.

Fourth business day of the XIII General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod
on the New Evangelization.

At 7:30 pm, the Holy Father was to appear at his study window to bless the participants of
a candlelight procession organized by Italian Catholic Action, from Castel Sant'Angelo to
St. Peter's Square to commemorate Pope John XIII's memorable 'moonlight address' from
the same study window on the evening of OCt. 11, 1962.

Benedict XVI formally
opens the Year of Faith


Libretto cover: The Most Holy Trinity and the Twelve Disciples, Fresco, School of Perugino, Raphael Rooms, Vatican Apostolic Palace.




Once again, the English service of Vatican Radio has not seen fit to post an online report of the Opening Mass for the Year of Faith. For this purpose, I have used the AP report (as defective as it is) posted after the Pope's homily, which obviously should have pride of place.

THE HOLY FATHER'S HOMILY

Here is the Vatican's English translation of the Pope's homily:

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Dear Brother Bishops,
Dear brothers and sisters!

Today, fifty years from the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, we begin with great joy the Year of Faith.

I am delighted to greet all of you, particularly His Holiness Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, and His Grace Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

A special greeting goes to the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Eastern Catholic Churches, and to the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences.

In order to evoke the Council, which some present had the grace to experience for themselves - and I greet them with particular affection - this celebration has been enriched by several special signs: the opening procession, intended to recall the memorable one of the Council Fathers when they entered this Basilica; the enthronement of a copy of the Book of the Gospels used at the Council; the consignment of the seven final Messages of the Council, and of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I will do before the final blessing.

These signs help us not only to remember, they also offer us the possibility of going beyond commemorating. They invite us to enter more deeply into the spiritual movement which characterized Vatican II, to make it ours and to develop it according to its true meaning.

And its true meaning was and remains faith in Christ, the apostolic faith, animated by the inner desire to communicate Christ to individuals and all people, in the Church’s pilgrimage along the pathways of history.

The Year of Faith which we launch today is linked harmoniously with the Church’s whole path over the last fifty years: from the Council, through the Magisterium of the Servant of God Paul VI, who proclaimed a Year of Faith in 1967, up to the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, with which Blessed John Paul II re-proposed to all humanity Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, yesterday, today and forever.

Between these two Popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, there was a deep and profound convergence, precisely upon Christ as the centre of the cosmos and of history, and upon the apostolic eagerness to announce him to the world. Jesus is the centre of the Christian faith.

The Christian believes in God whose face was revealed by Jesus Christ. He is the fulfilment of the Scriptures and their definitive interpreter. Jesus Christ is not only the object of the faith but, as it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, he is “the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith” (12:2).

Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus Christ, consecrated by the Father in the Holy Spirit, is the true and perennial subject of evangelization. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor” (Lk 4:18).

This mission of Christ, this movement of his continues in space and time, over centuries and continents. It is a movement which starts with the Father and, in the power of the Spirit, goes forth to bring the good news to the poor, in both a material and a spiritual sense.

The Church is the first and necessary instrument of this work of Christ because it is united to him as a body to its head. “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20:21), says the Risen One to his disciples, and breathing upon them, adds, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v.22).

Through Christ, God is the principal subject of evangelization in the world; but Christ himself wished to pass on his own mission to the Church; he did so, and continues to do so, until the end of time pouring out his Spirit upon the disciples, the same Spirit who came upon him and remained in him during all his earthly life, giving him the strength “to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” and “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Lk 4:18-19).

The Second Vatican Council did not wish to deal with the theme of faith in one specific document. It was, however, animated by a desire, as it were, to immerse itself anew in the Christian mystery so as to re-propose it fruitfully to contemporary man.

The Servant of God Paul VI, two years after the end of the Council sessions, expressed it in this way: “Even if the Council does not deal expressly with the faith, it talks about it on every page, it recognizes its vital and supernatural character, it assumes it to be whole and strong, and it builds upon its teachings. We need only recall some of the Council’s statements in order to realize the essential importance that the Council, consistent with the doctrinal tradition of the Church, attributes to the faith, the true faith, which has Christ for its source and the Church’s Magisterium for its channel” (General Audience, 8 March 1967). Thus said Paul VI.

We now turn to the one who convoked the Second Vatican Council and inaugurated it: Blessed John XXIII. In his opening speech, he presented the principal purpose of the Council in this way: “What above all concerns the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be safeguarded and taught more effectively […] Therefore, the principal purpose of this Council is not the discussion of this or that doctrinal theme… a Council is not required for that… [but] this certain and immutable doctrine, which is to be faithfully respected, needs to be explored and presented in a way which responds to the needs of our time” (AAS 54 [1962], 790,791-792).

In the light of these words, we can understand what I myself felt at the time: During the Council there was an emotional tension as we faced the common task of making the truth and beauty of the faith shine out in our time, without sacrificing it to the demands of the present or leaving it tied to the past: the eternal presence of God resounds in the faith, transcending time, yet it can only be welcomed by us in our own unrepeatable today.

Therefore I believe that the most important thing, especially on such a significant occasion as this, is to revive in the whole Church that positive tension, that yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man.

But, so that this interior thrust towards the new evangelization neither remain just an idea nor be lost in confusion, it needs to be built on a concrete and precise basis, and this basis is the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the place where it found expression.

This is why I have often insisted on the need to return, as it were, to the “letter” of the Council – that is to its texts – to draw from them its authentic spirit, and why I have repeated that the true legacy of Vatican II is to be found in them.

Reference to the documents saves us from extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and running too far ahead, and allows what is new to be welcomed in a context of continuity. The Council did not formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient. Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change.

If we place ourselves in harmony with the authentic approach which Blessed John XXIII wished to give to Vatican II, we will be able to realize it during this Year of Faith, following the same path of the Church as she continuously endeavours to deepen the deposit of faith entrusted to her by Christ.

The Council Fathers wished to present the faith in a meaningful way; and if they opened themselves trustingly to dialogue with the modern world it is because they were certain of their faith, of the solid rock on which they stood.

In the years following, however, many embraced uncritically the dominant mentality, placing in doubt the very foundations of the deposit of faith, which they sadly no longer felt able to accept as truths.

If today the Church proposes a new Year of Faith and a new evangelization, it is not to honour an anniversary, but because there is more need of it, even more than there was fifty years ago!

And the reply to be given to this need is the one desired by the Popes, by the Council Fathers and contained in its documents. Even the initiative to create a Pontifical Council for the promotion of the new evangelization, which I thank for its special effort for the Year of Faith, is to be understood in this context.

Recent decades have seen the advance of a spiritual “desertification”. In the Council’s time it was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us. This void has spread.

But it is in starting from the experience of this desert, from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital importance for us, men and women. In the desert we rediscover the value of what is essential for living; thus in today’s world there are innumerable signs, often expressed implicitly or negatively, of the thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life.

And in the desert people of faith are needed who, with their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep hope alive. Living faith opens the heart to the grace of God which frees us from pessimism. Today, more than ever, evangelizing means witnessing to the new life, transformed by God, and thus showing the path.

The first reading spoke to us of the wisdom of the wayfarer (cf. Sir 34:9-13): the journey is a metaphor for life, and the wise wayfarer is one who has learned the art of living, and can share it with his brethren – as happens to pilgrims along the Way of Saint James or similar routes which, not by chance, have again become popular in recent years.

How come so many people today feel the need to make these journeys? Is it not because they find there, or at least intuit, the meaning of our existence in the world?

This, then, is how we can picture the Year of Faith: a pilgrimage in the deserts of today’s world, taking with us only what is necessary: neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, nor two tunics – as the Lord said to those he was sending out on mission (cf. Lk 9:3), but the Gospel and the faith of the Church, of which the Council documents are a luminous expression, as is the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published twenty years ago.

Venerable and dear Brothers, 11 October 1962 was the Feast of Mary Most Holy, Mother of God* Let us entrust to her the Year of Faith, as I did last week when I went on pilgrimage to Loreto. [*After the Council, the date for this Solemnity was transferred to January 1.]

May the Virgin Mary always shine out as a star along the way of the new evangelization. May she help us to put into practice the Apostle Paul’s exhortation, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom […] And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him”(Col 3:16-17). Amen.

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NB: The construction wall and scaffolding in the background are due to the ongoing restoration of the Bernini colonnades as they were when erected in the 17th century.

Pope Benedict XVI marks
50th anniversary of Vatican II


Vatican City, Oct. 11 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council; -the church meetings he attended as a young priest that brought the Catholic Church into the modern world but whose true meaning is still hotly debated.

Pope Benedict celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Square, attended by patriarchs, cardinals, bishops and a dozen elderly churchmen who participated in the council, and later will greet the faithful re-enacting the great procession into St. Peter's that launched the council in 1962.

In his homily, Pope Benedict urged the faithful to return to the "letter" and "authentic spirit" of the council found in the Vatican II documents themselves, rather than rely on the distorted spirit promoted by those who saw in Vatican II a radical reform away from the Church's tradition. [The AP might at least have done the basic research of quoting what John XXIII said precisely about this in his opening address to the Council, which is really the primary context for looking at Vatican II.]

"The Council did not formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient," the Pope said from the steps of St. Peter's. "Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change."

The anniversary comes as the Church is fighting what it sees as a wave of secularism erasing the Christian heritage of the West and competition for souls from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa.

Clerical sex abuse scandals, debates over celibacy for priests, open dissent among some priests in Europe, and a recent Vatican crackdown on liberal nuns in the United States have also contributed to erode the Church's place in the world.

The Pope has spent much of his pontificate seeking to correct what he considers the misinterpretation of Vatican II, insisting that it wasn't a revolutionary break from the past, as liberal Catholics paint it, but rather a renewal and reawakening of the best traditions of the ancient church. [As the Conciliar Popes John XXIII and Paul VI and the post-Conciliar John Paul II and Benedict XVI have always said!]

In that vein, he decided to mark the 50th anniversary of the Council with the launch of a "Year of Faith," precisely to remind Christians of what the Council truly taught and seek to "re-evangelize" those Catholics who have fallen away from their faith in the decades since.

He lamented on Thursday that a "spiritual desertification" had advanced where people think they can live without God.

"In the Council's time it was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us," he said, referring to the totalitarian, atheistic regimes of the 20th century.

"But it is in starting from the experience of this desert, from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital importance for us, men and women."

Pope Benedict was the Rev. Joseph Ratzinger, a young priest and theological consultant to German Cardinal Joseph Frings when Vatican II began, and he has recently reminisced about what the council sought to accomplish, where it succeeded and where it erred.

"It was a splendid day on 11 October, 1962," Pope Benedict wrote in a forward to a commemorative book about the anniversary published this week by the Vatican newspaper. "It was a moment of extraordinary expectation. Great things were about to happen."

Indeed, by its conclusion in 1965, the Council had approved documents allowing for the celebration of Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin, and revolutionizing the Church's relations with Jews, Muslims and people of other faiths. {Shows you the AP writer's absolute lack of historic sense and appreciation of Church history in reducing the achievements of Vatican II to two peripheral issues!.]

Yet as great as that document on relations with other faiths was, Pope Benedict wrote, a "weakness" has emerged in the ensuing years in that "it speaks of religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted forms of religion" that have become all too apparent.

Even worse, the AP devotes half of its article on the Council Golden Jubilee and the Year of Faith to Hans Kueng - equiparating him, in effect, in significance to those major Church events!

Mr Ratzinger was joined at Vatican II by another young theologian, Hans Kueng, who subsequently brought him to Tuebingen University in southern Germany as professor of dogmatic theology, helping promote an academic career that resulted in a papacy. {Excuse me, the academic career was already well under way at the time, and Prof. Ratzinger had already taught at the universities in Munich, Bonn and Muenster before going to Tuebingen.]

In the years since, Mr Kueng has become one of Benedict's greatest critics, complaining that there has been no progress in reforming the Church since Vatican II and calling for a grassroots revolt against the Church hierarchy to carry it out.

"The Council was unable to guarantee that the reforms would be implemented," primarily because the Vatican bureaucracy was and still is opposed, he said in an interview with German news website ntv-de this week.

Mr Kueng, who lost his official license to teach Catholic theology in 1969 but continues to teach, has opposed Pope Benedict's outreach to traditionalist Catholics and his reintroduction of the old, pre-Vatican II Latin Mass.

"Mr Ratzinger and his peers spiritually live in the Middle Ages," Mr Kueng told n-tv.

A similar complaint was made recently by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of the last liberals in the College of Cardinals, who died on August 31. Mr Martini was quoted as saying in his final interview that the church was in need of radical reform and was "200 years behind the times."

'It was a splendid day...'
Foreword by BENEDICT XVI
'On the Teachings of the Second Vatican Council'
from the Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger
Translated from the 10/11/12 issue of


On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Germany's Herder publishing house will publish in November the conciliar writings of Joseph Ratzinger as part of his 16-volume Collected Writings, under the title Zur Lehre des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils (On the teachings of the Second Vatican Council), in two volumes edited by Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, now Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who had established the Institut Paspt Benedikt XVI, publishers of the Collected Writings, when he was Bishop of Regensburg.

We publish herewith (in German and Italian) the Foreword to the volumes written by Benedict XVI recalling that time of widespread expectation and great hope, and in which he advocates a reading of the Council that may help in its effective reception into the life of the Church.

---

It was a splendid day when, on October 11, 1962, with the solemn entrance of more than 2,000 Conciliar Fathers into St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council opened.

In 1931, Pius XI had dedicated this day to the Feast of the Divine Motherhood of Mary, commemorating the fact that 1500 years earlier, in 431, the Council of Ephesus had solemnly acknowledged Mary as The Mother of God to express the indissoluble union of God and man in Jesus Christ.

Pope John XXIII chose the day for the beginning of the Council in order to entrust the great conciliar assembly he had called to the maternal goodness of Mary, and to firmly anchor the work of the Council in the mystery of Jesus Christ.

It was most impressive to see the entrance of bishops from all over the world, of all peoples and races - an image of the Church of Jesus Christ that embraces the whole world, in which the peoples of gthe earth know they are united in his peace.

It was a moment of extraordinary expectation. Great things were to happen. Previous Councils had almost always been called to discuss a concrete question to which they had to respond. This time, there was no particular problem to resolve.

But precisely because of that, there was a sense of general expectation in teh=he air: Christianity which had cuilt and shaped the Western world seemed to be increasingly losing its effective strength. It appeared to have become exhausted to the point that the future would be determined by other spiritual powers.

The perception of this loss of the present by Christianity and the task which followed from it was well summed up in teh word aggiornamento, bringing it up to date.

Christianity must be in the present so it can shape the future. In order that it could once more be a force that can shape tomorrow, John XXIII called Vatican II without indicating any concrete problems nor programs. This was both the greatness and the difficulty of the task that was presented to the ecclesial assembly.

The various episcopates doubtless came to the great event with diverse ideas. Some arrived looking forward to the program that ought to be developed.

It was the central European bishops - from Belgium, France and Germany - who had the most decisive ideas. In the details, the emphasis was necessarily on different aspects, but nonetheless, there were certain priorities in common.

A fundamental theme was ecclesiology, which had to be examined in depth form the point of view of the history of salvation, as trinitarian and sacramental. To this was added the need to complete the doctrine on the primacy of the First Vatican Council through a revaluation of the episcopal ministry.

An important issue for the central European bishops was liturgical renewal, which Pius XII had already started to carry out.

Another central emphasis, especially for the German bishops, was ecumenism: The experience of having to suffer together the persecution of Nazism had brought together many German Catholics and Protestants. Now this had to be understood and carried forward at the level of the universal Church. Then there was the subject of Revelation-Scripture-Tradition-Magisterium.

The French bishops gave priority to the relationship of the Church with the modern world, in practice, work on the so-called Schema XIII that would later give birth to the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the contemporary world (Gaudium et spes[Joy and hope]).

This dealt with the true focus of expectations from the Council. The Church which, even as late as the Baroque era, had shaped the world laterally, had since entered into an increasingly negative relation with the modern era, which began in the 19th century. Should things remain that way? Could the Church not take a positive step forward in these new times?

Behind the vague expression "the world today' was really the question of relating to the modern age. In order to clarify what the relationship should be, it would be necessary to better define what was essential and constitutive of modern times. This was not achieved by Schema XIII.

And even if the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes expressed many important points in order to understand 'the world' and gave relevant contributions on the subject of Christian ethics, it was also unable to offer the substantial clarification required.

Unexpectedly, the encounter with the great themes of the modern age did not take place in the major document of the Pastoral Constitution, but in two minor documents of Vatican-II, whose importance only emerged little by little with the reception of the Council.

First of all, the Declaration on Religious Freedom, which was requested and prepared with great attentiveness most especially by the American bishops.

The doctrine of religious tolerance as it had been elaborated on by Pius XII no longer seemed adequate in the face of the evolution of philosophical thought and the modern concept of the State.

Religious freedom has to do with the freedom to choose and practice a religion, but also the freedom to change it, as a fundamental human right. In its most intimate motivations, the concept of religious freedom could not be alien to the Christian faith which had entered the world claiming that the State cannot determine truth and cannot demand any kind of worship.

Christian faith claimed the freedom of religious belief and its practice in worship, without violating the law of the State in its own domain: Christians prayed for the Roman emperor but did not worship him.

From this point of view, it can be stated that with its birth, Christianity brought the world the principle of religious freedom. Nonetheless, the interpretation of this right to religious freedom in teh context of modern thought was still difficult, because it would seem that the modern version of religious freedom presupposed the inaccessibility of truth to man, thus displacing the religion to the realm of the subjective.

It was certainly providential that 13 years after the Council ended, Pope John Paul II came on the scene from a nation in which religious freedom was contested by Marxism, namely, from a specific form of a modern philosophy of the State.

The Pope came from a situation that was almost like that of the ancient Church, since the intimate place of faith in the issue of freedom, especially feedom of religion and of worship, was once more newly visible.

The second document that would show itself to be increasingly important for the encounter of the Church with modern times was born almost by chance and developed at various levels. I refer to the declaration Nostra aetate on the relationship between the Church and the non-Christian religions.

Initially, the intention was to prepare a declaration on the relationship between the Church and Judaism, a text that had become intrinsically necessary after the horrors of the Shoah. The Conciliar Fathers of the Arab nations did not oppose such a text, but they pointed out that if the Council were to deal with Judaism, it also had to say something about Islam. How right they were would be understood in the West only little by little.

Finally, the intuition grew that it would be correct to speak of the two other great non-Christian religions, Hinduism and Buddhis, notg to mention, the theme of religion in general.

To all this was spontaneously added a brief instruction regarding dialog and collaboration with other religions whose spiritual, moral and socio-cultural values must be acknowledged, conserved and promoted (cfr No. 2).

Thus, a precise and extraordinarily dense document initiated a theme whose importance at the time of the Council was not foreseeable. The magnitude of the task implied, how much effort was necessary to clarify and understand it, have since been increasingly evident.

During the process of its active reception, a weakness of this text also emerged that is in itself extraordinary: It speaks of religion only in a positive way and ignores the pathological and disturbed forms of religion which have a great impact from the historical and theological viewpoints. Because of this [improper use of religion], the Christian faith itself has been widely criticized both within the Church and outside it.

While the central European bishops and their theologians may have had a dominant influence at the start of the Council, the radius of work and common responsibilities increasingly widened during the Council.

The bishops recognized they were apprentices in the school fo the Holy Spirit and in the school of reciprocal collaboration, but precisely in this way, recognized that they were all servants of the Word of God who live and work in the faith.

The Conciliar Fathers could not and did not want to create a new and different Church. They had neither the mandate nor the authority to do so. They were Conciliar Fathers with a voice and the right to decide only as bishops, that is to say, by sacramental virtue in the sacramental Church.

And so they could not and did not want to create anew faith or a new Church, but rather to understand both the faith and the Church more profoundly in order to truly 'renew' them. That is why a hermeneutic of rupture is absurd and contrary to the spirit and to the will of the Conciliar Fathers.

In Cardinal Frings, I had a spiritual father who lived this spirit of the Council in an exemplary way. He was a man of strong openness but he knew that only faith can guide us towards the open, to that wide horizon that remains pre-emptively closed to the positivistic spirit.

It is that faith that he wished to serve with the mandate he received upon his episcopal ordination. I cannot but be forever grateful that he had asked me - at the time, the youngest theology professor in the University of Bonn - to be his theological consultant at that great ecclesial assembly, allowing me to be present at the school of the Council and follow its course from within.

This volume assembles the various writings with which, in that school, I asked to be heard. They are requests that are fragmentary, which also show the process of learning that the Council and its reception meant and still mean to me.

I hope that these contributions, with all their limitations, can altogether help to understand the Council better and to translate it into the right ecclesial life.

With all my heart, I thank Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller and his co-workers at the Institut Papst Benedikt XVI for the extraordinary effort that they took on in order to publish this book.

Castel Gandolfo
Feast of St. Eusebius of Vercelli
August 2, 2012

---

There is obviously much more to the Joseph Ratzinger of Vatican II that the world has not been privy to, and these new volumes should be an amazing mine of new discoveries. The Foreword in itself already uncovers quite a few facets previously not seen.

One can imagine the ferment these two volumes will cause in the world of Church historians - not to mention the commentariat and the chatterati. Writings which not a few will seek to mine not so much for the contemporaneous insights that the younger Joseph Ratzinger had about the Council and its issues, but for anything they might be able to point to as contrary to his statements and actions as Pope (a chop-licking, lip-smacking exercise voraciously indulged in by the Mellonis and Komonchaks out there.



Joseph Ratzinger with the Vatican-II commission on missions which drew up the final decree Ad gentes in 1965 at the Servites' retreat house in Nemi near Castel Gandolfo. In the right photo, the Venerable Fulton Sheen is the man in front, left, of Ratzinger.

That incisive and engaging
young theologian brought to
Vatican-II by Cardinal Frings
by Elio Guerriero
Translated from

Oct. 11, 2012

Elio Guerriero (born 1948) is an Italian theologian who is the editor of the Italian edition of the works of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, as well as the editor of the Italian edition of Communio, the international theological journal founded after Vatican-II by Von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and Joseph Ratzinger, among others.

At the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church was represented for the first time in an ecumenical council by bishops coming from all the continents.

Then there were rhe observers from other Christian communities and almost 500 experts on various Church disciplines who were called to provide the Council Fathers with a scientific basis for their interventions.

The texts that were to be the basis for Council discussions had been prepared by various committees in Rome and sent on to the Council Fathers in advance. for their study. Not all the episcopates prepared adequately.

A book with the suggestive title, The Rhine flows into the Tiber, highlights the role played by the nearly 60 German-speaking bishops at the Council, among whom a leading protagonist was Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne.

By his side was a young theologian from Bavaria, Joseph Ratzinger, who had been teaching fundamental theology at the University of Bonn since 1959. There, he had developed a close friendship with Hubert Jedin, the great historian of the Council of Trent, a circumstance that led Prof. Ratzinger to seriously 'prepare' for the Second Vatican Council announced by John XXIII in January 1959.

Invited to give a lecture about the coming Council at the Catholic Academy of Bamberg near Cologne, the young professor caught the admiring attention of Cardinal Frings, who then started consulting him on the advance schema or draft documents sent from the Vatican, and asked him to be his tehological consultant at the Council.

Ratzinger arrived in Rome on October 9, 1962, and the following day, he made a presentation to the German-speaking bishops criticizing the schema on "the sources of Revelation", which had been prepared by the Theological Commission in Rome.

His critique was severe. Making full use of his prevous studies on St. Bonaventure, he questioned the assumption that 'Scripture and Tradition' were the 'sources of Revelation', as well as the concept of 'inerrancy', and postulates about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.

By the middle of November 1962, Cardinal Frings brought up his consultant's critique formally in the Council discussions. Subsequent voting on the draft document showed that many of the Fathers objected to a the text which they considered "alien from the language and ideas of the Fathers of the Church and of the Council".

Pope John XXIII had to intervene personally to salvage the situation. He ordered the disputed shema withdrawn to be re-elaborated by a mixed commission that would not simply be drawn from the Roman Curia and academia.

It was not until the fourth and last session of the Council in 1965 that the commission was able to present the definitive text of the Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei verbum, which is considered by many to be the most original and innovative of the Vatican II documents.

Ratzinger also carried out similar work for the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium. In this case, he started out from his study on the People and the House of God in St. Augustine - which had been the subject of his doctoral thesis in theology.

He pointed out that in Scripture, the expression 'people of God' did not have a sociological significance but a theologico-sacramental one. In the Old Testament, it was God who gathered the chosen people, and in the New Covenant, it is Jesus who unites the Church around the Eucharistic table.

This brief recollection intends to show that when Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the place of Vatican-II within the living Tradition of the Church, he does not at all mean to diminish the novelty of the great ecclesial event in which he had personally taken part.

When he convoked Vatican II and specified that its principal characteristic would be pastoral, John XXIII was following the impulse of the Holy Spirit, seeking to illuminate and lead the faithful and all men of good will to accept and bear witness in our time to Christian Revelation.

Fifty years since Vatican-II begun, the Year of Faith is an invitation to communion with God, to announce the Word that warms the heart and takes us through the door of faith.

Remembering John XXIII's
'moonlight discourse'

One of the most famous speeches of Pope John XXIII has come to be known as the 'moonlight discourse', and took place on the evening of October 11, 1962, several hours after he had inaugurated the Second Vatican Council.



A candlelight procession made its way towards St. Peter's Square, and in response, the 'good Pope John' appeared at his study window and proceeded to say the following words spontaneously:

---

Dear children, I hear your voices. Mine is just one voice, but it stands for all the voices in the world. In fact, the world is represented here today.

One might say that even the moon has rushed to be here tonight - look at it above us - in order to watch this spectacle at the Vatican. We are closing a great day of peace. Yes, peace, as in 'Glory to God and peace to men of good will".

If I could ask each one of you now - What brings you here? Then the sons and daughters of Rome, who are specially represented here tonight, would answer: "We are the children who are closest to you. You are our bishop".

Well, sons and daughters of Rome, you rightly feel that that you represent Roma caput mundi - Rome as the capital of the world - as it has been called by providential design through the centuries.

My person counts for nothing. But I am a brother who speaks to you, a brother who has become a father by the will of Our Lord. So let us continue to love each other, just as we do at this moment, face to face. Let us grasp that which unites us, and leave aside, if any, the things that can bring us some difficulty.

When you return to your homes and see your children, give them a caress and say, "This is the Pope's caress".

You may perhaps find there are tears to be dried. Have a word of comfort for those who suffer. Let the afflicted know that the Pope is with his children especially in their time of sadness and distress.

And all together, let us animate each other - singing, sighing, crying, but always full of confidence in Christ who helps us and listens to us, let us continue with our journey in life.

Farewell, my children. To my blessing, I add my wishes for a good night.

---

Italian Catholic Action in the diocese of Rome recreated that candellight procession fifty years ago tonight from Castel Sant'Angelo to St. Peter's Square.







'A humble joy after 50 years'
Translated from

Oct. 11, 2012

It was a special evening, with so many persons of every nation, race and age, who had all gathered in St. Peter's Square after recreating the candlelight procession that had illuminated it fifty years ago tonight after the Second Vatican Council had opened.

Another night, another Pope. This time, Pope Benedict XVI appeared at his study window at 8 p.m. and greeted the faithfui with his own spontaneous remarks.

Here is a translation of Korazym's transcription:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

Good evening to all of you, and thank you for coming here. Thank you to Catholic Action for organizing this candlelight procession.

Fifty years ago, on this day, I too was in St. Peter's Square, looking towards the window where the 'good Pope' had appeared and spoke to us with unforgettable words, full of poetry and and of goodness, words from the heart. We were all happy and, I would say, full of enthusiasm.

The great Ecumenical Council had been inaugurated and we were sure that a new springtime for the Church would come, a new Pentecost, a new strong presence of the liberating power of the Gospel.

Even today we are happy, we carry joy in our heart, but I would say it is a more moderate joy, a humble joy. In these fifty years, we have learned and experienced that original sin does exist and is always translated anew into personal sins that can grow into structures of sin.

We have seen that in the field of the Lord, there are always weeds. We have seen that Peter's net also includes bad fish. We have seen how human frailty is present even in the Church, but that the ship of the Church continues to navigate through contrary winds, despite tempests that threaten the ship. Sometimes we may have thought - Where is the Lord? Has he forgotten us? But this is just one part of the experiences we have had in the past 50 years.

We have also had a new experience of the presence of the Lord, of his goodness, of his strength. The fire of the Holy Spirit, the flame of Christ, is not a devouring and destructive fire - it is a silent fire, a flame of goodness and of truth that transforms, of light and warmth.

So we have seen that the Lord has not forgotten us. Even today, in his humble way, the Lord is present among us and warms our hearts, our lives - he creates charisms of goodness and charity that illuminate the world. and are, for us, a guarantee of the goodness of God.

Christ lives, and is with us, so we can be happy today because his goodness can never be extinguished and will always be powerful.

Finally, I dare to make mine the unforgettable words of Pope John: Go home and kiss the children, and say it is a kiss from the Pope. And with all my heart, I impart to you my blessing.

---

Friday, Oct. 12, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. SERAFINO DA MONTEGRANARO (Italy, 1540-1604), Capuchin friar
He was born to a poor pious family in east central Italy. As a shepherd he had much time for prayer and other pious exercises. He joined the Franciscan Capuchins at age 16 and was always distinguished by his obedience and humility, and by his charity to the poor, He was particularly devoted to the Blessed Sacrament, spending three hours a day in Adoration. Although unlettered, his advice came to be sought by secular and church dignitaries. He was said to have the gift of reading hearts as well as prophecy. Miracles were attributed to him in his lifetime. He was canonized in 1767.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101212.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- His Holiness Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and his delegation

- Bishops who participated in the Second Vatican Council; Patriarchs and Archbishops of the Catholic Oriental Churches,
and presidents of national bishops' conferences. He later had lunch with them.


It's Friday - I will be gone till later tonight.

Pope Benedict XVI meets
surviving Vatican-II bishops:
'Christianity is always new'
Translated from

October 12, 2012


Sorry for the poor photo quality - it comes from a 1.2-inch photo in today's OR (see inset) - but I think it captures a rather endearing moment.

At 12:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 12, the Holy Father held an audience at the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic palace for some of the bishops who had been Council Fathers at Vatican-II, along with the Patriarchs and Archbishops of the Eastern Catholic Churches and the presidents of national bishops' conferences who are attending the current Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization.

After a tribute from Cardinal Francis Arinze, who took part in Vatican II as a young bishop from Nigeria, the Holy Father delivered the following address (translated from the Italian):

---

Venerated and beloved brothers.

We find ourselves together again today after the solemn celebration yesterday which saw us assembled in St. Peter's Square.

The heartfelt and fraternal greeting I extend to you is born from that profound communion that only the Eucharistic celebration can create. In it, the bonds that link us as members of the episcopal college, gathered around and with the Successor of Peter, are made visible, almost tangible,

In your faces, dear Patriarchs and Archbishops of the Eastern Catholic Churches, dear presidents of the bishops' conferences from around the world, I also see the hundreds of bishops in all regions of the earth who are dedicated to announcing the Gospel and serving the Church and men, obedient to the mandate received from Jesus Christ.

But I would like to extend a special greeting today to you, dear friends who had the grace to take part as Council fathers at the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. I thank Cardinal Arinze who spoke in your behalf.

At this time, the entire group - almost seventy - of bishops who took part in the work of the Council and are still alive are very much in my prayers and affection.

In responding to the invitation for this commemoration, many of those who could not come because of advanced age or for reasons of health recalled those days with moving words, assuring us of their spiritual union at this time, as well as the offering of their suffering.

So many memories come to mind and are impressed in the hearts of everyone who was there of a time that was so lively, rich and fruitful that the Council represented. I will not dwell on such memories, but I would like to reprise some elements from my homily yesterday.

I wish to recall one word, which was first used by Blessed John XXIII, almost in a programmatic way and which would recur frequently during the work of the Council: the word 'aggiornamento'.

Fifty years since the opening of that solemn Church Assembly, some may ask whether that term was not, perhaps from the beginning, not quite felicitous. I think one can dispute the choice of words for hours and always find discordant opinions, but I am convinced that the intuition that Blessed John XXIII summed up in that word was and still is precise.

Christianity should not be considered as 'a thing of the past', nor must it be experienced looking perennially 'backward', because Christ is yesterday, today, and for always (cfr Heb 13,8).

Christianity is distinguished by the presence of the eternal God who entered time and is present in all times, because all time proceeds from his creative power, from his eternal 'today'.

That is Christianity is always new. We should never see it as a tree that has fully developed from the evangelical mustard seed, that has grown and borne fruit, but will inevitably age and see the decline of its vital energy.

Christianity is a tree that is, so to speak, in a perennial 'dawn' - it is always young. Its continuous actuality, its aggiornamento (being up to date), does not mean a rupture with tradition, but expresses the continued vitality of that tradition.

It does not mean reducing the faith to the level of he times, according to what one wishes or what is pleasing to public opinion, but the opposite: Exactly as the Council Fathers did, we must elevate the 'today' that we live to the measure of the Christian event - we must bring the 'today' of our time to the 'today' of God.

The Council was a time of grace during which the Holy Spirit taught us that the Church, in its journey through history, must always speak to contemporary man, but this can take place only by the power of those who are profoundly rooted in God, who allow themselves to be guided by him and who live their faith with purity. It does not come from those who adapt themselves to the fleeting moment, from those hose who choose the easiest and most convenient way.

The Council was very clear in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, that everyone in the Church is called to holiness, as the Apostle Paul said, "This is the will of God - your holiness"[/G[ (1 Ts 4,3).

Holiness shows the true face of the Church, it allows God's eternal 'today' to enter our life, into the 'today' of the men of our time.

Dear Brothers in the episcopate, the memory of the past is precious, but it is never an end in itself. The Year of Faith that we began yesterday suggests to us the best way of remembering and commemorating the Council: by focusing on its message, which is none other than the message of faith in Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world, who must be announced to the men of our time.

Even today, what is important and essential is to bring the heart and life of every man and woman into the radius of God's love, to bring men and women in every place and time to God.

I sincerely hope that all the local Churches may find, in celebrating the Year of Faith, the opportunity for the always necessary return to the living source of the Gospel, to the transforming encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. Thank you.

---

Afterwards, the Holy Father hosted a lunch in the Aula Paolo VI for those who took part in the audience, as well as for the other participants of the Synodal Assembly.

They were joined by the Ecumenical Patriarch f Constantinople, His Holiness Bartholomew I, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Rowan Williams.

At the end of the lunch, the Holy Father addressed the participants with the following words:

---

Your Holiness,
Your Grace,
Dear Brothers,

First of all I would like to announce a little mercy for you, that is, this evening, we will not be starting [the afternoon general congregation of the Synodal assembly] at 4.30 - which seems like an unholy hour to me - but at 5.45.

It is a lovely tradition started by Pope John Paul II to mark the Synod with a shared meal. For me it is a great joy to find on my right, His Holiness, the Patriarch Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and on my other side, Archbishop Rowan Williams from the Anglican Communion.

For me, this communion is a sign that we are walking towards unity and that in our hearts we are making progress. The Lord will help us to advance, in an external way as well.

This joy of communion, it seems to me, might also give us strength in the mandate of evangelization. Synodus means “shared walk”, “walking together”, and so the word synodus makes me think of the famous walk of the Lord with the two disciples who were going to Emmaus, who are to an extent an image of the agnostic world of today.

Jesus, their hope, had died: the world was empty; it seemed that either God did not exist or had no interest in us. With this despair in their hearts, but still with a little flame of faith, they walk on. The Lord walks mysteriously beside them and helps them to better understand the mystery of God, His presence in history, His silent walking with us.

In the end, at supper, when the words of the [unrecognized] Lord and their listening to him have already lit up their hearts and illuminated their minds, they recognize Him at the meal and finally their hearts start to see.

Thus in the Synod we are walking together with our contemporaries. We pray to the Lord that He may illuminate us, that He may light up our hearts so they may become prophetic, that He may illuminate our minds; and we pray that at supper, in the Eucharistic communion, we can really be open, see Him, and thus also light up the world and give His light to this world of ours.

In this sense, the supper - as the Lord often used the word for meal as a symbol for the Kingdom of God - might also be for us a symbol of our walking together and an opportunity to pray to the Lord that He might accompany us and help us. In this sense, let us now say the prayer of thanksgiving...

[He leads a prayer in Latin.]

Have a good rest and I’ll see you in the Synod Hall! Thank you!

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Well, Hallelujah! I managed to trick the Forum's server by creating a totally unnecessary new thread, which was the only other way I could try to post something into a system that kept telling me 'There are no posts' and 'There are no threads' after even worst setbacks as I recounted in the URGENT NOTICE thread and will reiterate here now...

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Something odd is happening with the Forum's server. I have been unable to log on since last night, being told by the system that neither my user name nor password are valid, even after attempting password recovery. So I tried to register under a new username, but I kept getting the message "There are no threads' and "There are no posts" when trying to enter the English section.

Attempting to post a message nonetheless under tne user name TERESA-BENEDICTA, i see the post registering on the post box, but when I click 'Reply', the screen goes back to the "There are no posts' message.... I sent an SOS to Gloria on her regular e-mail address, but meanwhile, I have kept trying to log on as TERESA BENEDETTA (about a year and a half ago, the same thing happened - I could not log in through either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, so Gloria suggested I do it through GoogleChrome, and it worked, but not this time. And after a few weeks, I could log in again through both Explorer and Mozilla).

All this is, of course, very annoying, the more so because I discovered the snafu when posting my translation of the Holy Father's address to the surviving Council bishops, etc. at the Sala Clementina yesterday - which also means I lost the post, since the first message I got upon clicking 'Reply' was to Log in, only to find out I was inexistent to the server, and therefore could not go back to the post box I was working on...

Now, all of a sudden, the system has recognized me again. But I have to do over my post, and I will not know now until I click 'Reply' if this is going to work.

Nope - the system went back to telling me "There are no posts' and "There are no threads"...

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Anyway, please bear with me, and I will try to catch up. I will post the 'lost' translation in the place where it ought to have been...(P.S. I have now done so, along with the translation of the Pope's remarks after the luncheon he hosted for the participants at the audience and all the Synodal Fathersin the earlier post box.]

Saturday, Oct. 13, 27th Week in Ordinary Time

SAINT MARGUERITE-MARIE ALACOQUE (France, 1647-1690), Virgin, Visitation nun, Mystic, Apostle of the Sacred Heart
Growing up a sickly child, she was always very devout and practised mortifications. she was healed from a crippling disorder by a vision the Virgin Mary. She also had visions of Jesus, including seeing him fresh from the scourging. This led her to join the Visitation nuns in Paray-le-Monial when she was 24. Visitation nuns were taught to be 'extraordinary by being ordinary' which suited Marguerite's temperament. In 1974, she received the first of several visions of Jesus during which he told her he wanted his love for mankind to be made evident through devotion to his heart, symbol of his love. He recommended frequent Holy Communion especially on the first Friday of each month, an hour's prayer vigil on Thursdays in memory of his agony in Gethsemane, and a feast of the Sacred Heart. Marguerite met hostility from her fellow sisters, theologians and the community who thought she was delusional. Then a Jesuit confessor, Claude de la Colombiere, recognized her genuineness and supported her. She went on to serve as novice mistress and assistant superior but she died at an early age. After her death, the Jesuits promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart, which continued to be controversial, but 75 years after her death, the devotion was officially recognized. She was beatified in 1864, at which time her body was found to be incorrupt. Buried at what is now the Sanctuaries at Paray-le-Monial, many miracles have since been attributed to her. She was canonized in 1920, and in a 1928 encyclical, Pius XI officially reaffirmed Church approval of the Sacred Heart devotions.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101312.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father attended the morning session of the Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization.

Two announcements:

Benedict XVI has appointed Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, emeritus Archbishop of Manila (Philippines), to be his personal representative at the X Plenary Assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) to be held In Xuan Loc, Vietnam, from Nov. 19-25, with a concluding ceremony at the Catehdral of Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon).

- An agreement was signed between the Holy See and the Republic fo Equatorial Guinea on relations between Church and State, in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conceptiopn in the capital city of Mongomo. In the presence of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the agreement was signed by the country's Foreign Minister Agapito Mba Mokuy, and the Apostolic Nuncio to Equatorial Guinea, Archbishop Piero Poppo.


May I just add a news item from yesterday that at any other time than at the start of the Year of Faith to commemorate 50 years since Vatican-II opened, and a major Synodal Assembly, would have been the headline-maker.


Legion of Christ superior
and top Maciel aide steps down
by Nicole Winfield


VATICAN CITY, Oct. 12 (AP) -- The superior general of the troubled Legion of Christ religious order has stepped aside unexpectedly, saying he simply doesn't have the energy to oversee the radical reform of the congregation ordered by the Vatican.

The Rev. Alvaro Corcuera said in a letter obtained Thursday that his vicar general, the Rev. Sylvester Heereman, 38, will govern the order until a general assembly in 2013 or 2014 to elect a new superior.

The group has been in turmoil since it acknowledged in 2009 that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, sexually abused his seminarians and fathered three children.

The Vatican took it over in 2010 after a yearlong investigation determined that the order's very culture had been infected by Maciel's influence and needed to be "purified."

Corcuera worked with Maciel after being named superior in 2005 but has insisted that he didn't know of Maciel's crimes;

[No one believes that improbable claim, of course, considering that accusations had been openly levelled against Maciel since the 1950s, but he somehow always managed to slither through, until Joseph Ratzinger's CDF finally nailed him in 2006. I haven't checked, but Sandro Magister must rejoice because he has always held that the Vatican's 'reform' of the LC was meaningless until and unless the top men associated with Maciel were taken out of their leadership positions.

Let me share an interesting sidebar to the story of the newlky-minted Doctor of the Church, St. Hildegarde von Binge, from the pastor of the church I attend in Manhattan (for its Sunday Tradiitonal Mass), in his weekly column for the coming week.

A tale of two Hildegardes
by Fr. George W. Rutler, Pastor

October 14, 2012

On October 7, Pope Benedict XVI declared the 34th and 35th official Doctors of the Church — Hildegard von Bingen and Juan de Avila. The latter was a crucial figure in the sixteenth century reform of the Church. Hildegard, born in 1098 to a noble family in what is now Germany, is more remote, but extraordinarily compelling for her unique genius.

She became abbess of a Benedictine monastery in Disibodenberg which, as it grew, was moved to Bingen. There she graced the Church as a philosopher, theologian, botanist, medical scientist, and musician. She charted the orthodox way through some of the more fantastic heresies and enthusiasms afflicting the twelfth century, most notoriously the Cathars.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux commended her writing to Pope Eugenius III, who had been trained by him, and after that she became well known beyond Germany. Her musical compositions have become popular in our own day, a vivid glimpse of liturgical chant at the cusp of a golden age. She is the first composer whose biography is known, and she may have written the first opera — Ordo Virtutum. In it, the Virtues sing angelic melodies while Satan only speaks, for he cannot sing.

On the day she became a Doctor of the Church, I recalled another musical Hildegarde of our own day. Hildegarde Sell, born in 1906 to a German-American family in Wisconsin, started the fashion for some entertainers to use only one name, and she became the most famous cabaret singer of her time as “The Incomparable Hildegarde.”

She first appeared in films in 1933 and was the first person to sing on the new medium of television in 1936. King Gustav VI of Sweden and the Duke of Windsor were devoted to her, and she was enshrined in song by George and Ira Gershwin. She appeared on the covers of Time and Life magazines, advertised as the most expensively dressed celebrity of her day. Like her patron saint, she wrote about herbal remedies, though she was more interested in their cosmetic properties than was the Doctor of the Church.

While The Incomparable Hildegarde's signature song “Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup” will not be confused with St. Hildegarde's Ordo Virtutum, she was a Third Order Carmelite and a daily communicant. She made a point of having the best silks and satins of her wardrobe tailored into vestments for the missions.

St. Hildegarde died at 82, a great age in the Middle Ages, and our Hildegarde was 99, a great age in any age. I visited her as she was dying in a nursing home, where her one room was considerably smaller than her ten-room suite at the Plaza. And instead of her favorite Renoir, there was a small lithograph of the Sacred Heart. She wore none of her famous line of cosmetics as she said the Rosary, and she never looked lovelier.

She would have understood what her patroness and Doctor of the Church said: “I am a feather on the breath of God.”

Earlier this week, Beatrice on her invaluable site published an excerpt taken from Pages 412-422 of the French edition of Joseph Ratzinger's 1982 Principles of Catholic Theology that I have not previously seen before, as I have not seen the book. Because I have not seen an English translation online, and because of the unique timeliness of the excerpt today, I am posting the excerpt in my translation from the French.

The excerpt seems to be in the nature of an appendix looking back at Vatican-II in the context of Catholic theology. The analysis is acute, direct and unsparing, which is characteristic of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict II - as is his consistency of thought over decades (and the continuing relevance of his analysis). It would represent what was probably his first published comments on Vatican II as a member of the Roman Curia.

It antedates by two years The Ratzinger Report, published in 1984 as the cardinal's first book-length interview, done with Vittorio Messori. It not only set a trend for book-length interviews with major Church personalities - including Messori's with John Paul II a few years later, inspired in the late Pope by The Ratzinger Report . It also set the stage - at least, in George Weigel's account of the Polish Pope's Pontificate - for the 1985 Special Synodal Assembly he called to discuss the reception of Vatican-II in the Church herself 20 years after it concluded.

Where do we find ourselves
20 years since Vatican-II began?
by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Translated from the French edition of
from Principles of Catholic Theology (published 1982)
with thanks to


To explain the events [developments since Vatican-II), I will try to give some indications - just some of them.

First of all, one must note that the post-conciliar crisis of the Catholic Church coincides with a global spiritual crisis for mankind, at least in the Western world. No one has the right to present everything that has upset the Church in these years as a result of the Council!

Human consciousness is marked not only by the individual's voluntary decisions - it is also formed in large measure by exterior conditions resulting from economic and political factors. The word of Jesus, who said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, is a reference to this kind of situation, and it is impossible not to understand it. I shall give a single example taken from our own history.

The disaggregation of old Europe after the First World War also immediately modified the spiritual panorama from top to bottom, especially that of theology. Liberalism which had reigned till then, the product of a world that was surfeited and sure of itself, suddenly lost all meaning, although its great advocates were still alive and continued to teach.

Young people no longer followed Harnack but Karl Barth: a theology inspired strictly by revealed faith, but consciously wishing to be of the Church, took shape amidst the troubles of a changed world.

The return of past prosperity during the 1960s was accompanied by a seeming reversal of thought. The new wealth and the guilt that seemed attached to it provoked the astonishing melange of liberalism and Marxist dogmatism that we are all familiar with.

That is why no one has the right to exaggerate the part of Vatican-II in the most recent developments. The Protestant world, too, without a Council, underwent a similar crisis, and even political parties have been compelled to confront phenomena with the same origin.

And yet, in an inverse sense, the Council has been one of the factors contributing to the evolution of contemporary world history. When a phenomenon is so profoundly rooted in the spirit that the Catholic Church has been shaken to its foundations, the trembling of the earth affects all of mankind.

What then are the factors of the crisis provoked by the Council? It seems to me that two dispositions play a role which acquired a growing importance in the consciousness of the Conciliar Fathers, their advisers and the rapporteurs of the Council.

The Council must be understood as something like a great examination of conscience by the Catholic Church. It was ultimately intended to be an act of penance, of conversion. This is manifest in the avowals of culpability, in the passionate nature of the self-accusation, which was not limited to the major neuralgia points, such as the Reformation and the trial of Jesus [Cby the Jewish Sanhderin], but was amplified in the concept of the Church as sinner even at the level of common and fundamental values. The Council came to reject as triumphalism everything that seemed like complacency within the Church, in its past acquisitions, in those that it has kept to our day.

To this torturous pruning which is characteristic of the Church, one must add the almost anguished desire to systematically consider seriously all the accusations laid against the Church and not to ignore any of it. This carried with it the uneasy preoccupation to no longer be culpable with regard to the other, to learn from him in every way possible, and not to find or see in him anything but good.

Such radicalization of the fundamental Biblical demand of conversion and of love for one's neighbor led to an uncertainty about our own identity which is still in question, and most especially, to an attitude of rupture with respect to our own history, which has appeared polluted in every way, such that a radical re-start seemed to be an urgent obligation.

It is at this point that the second issue towards which I wish to call attention comes in. The Council inhaled something from the Kennedy era, something of its naive optimism for a so-called great society: It is possible for us to do everything if only we could use the appropriate means.

The rupture of historical consciousness, the masochistic renunciation of the past, introduced the idea of a Zero Hour at which everything would recommence from scratch, when finally, everything would be done well that up to now had been done badly.

The dream of liberation, the dream of something completely new which would soon become increasingly a characteristic of the student revolts, had already reigned in a certain way at the Council. It is such dreams that first carry men along and then disappoint them, just as an examination of conscience is first comforting, and then inspires repugnance.

For a psychologist, this 'processing' of the Conciliar spirit would constitute a good example of the way in which virtues, when exaggerated, turn into their opposite. Penitence is a necessity for both the individual and society. But Christian penitence does not mean negation of self, but a discovery of self.

The ancient records about Christian martyrs insist that they never had one word of insult against creation. In this, they differed from the gnostics, in whom Christian penitence was transformed to hatred of man, of personal life, hatred of reality itself.

But the interior pre-condition to penitence is precisely the acquiescence to what is really us, the acquiescence to reality such as it is. Its modern inversion is expressed by a statement made by the great painter Max Beckmann: "My religion is pride before God, a revolt against him. Revolt because he created us, who cannot love ourselves. In my paintings, I cast against God as a reproach everything that he has done badly".

One sees something quite fundamental here: the radical quarrel with oneself, where one gets into a rage against oneself, when one can no longer tolerate Creation, not in himself or in others - this is no longer penitence but pride. Whenever the fundamental Yes to being, to life, to oneself, ceases, then there is no longer penitence because ti has turned to pride.

Penitence presuppose that man can acquiesce to himself. It is by nature a discovery of Yes, by eliminating everything that obscures this Yes. And that is why authentic penitence leads to the Gospel, which is to say, to joy - including the joy that one finds in oneself.

The form of self-accusation that one reached at the Council with respect to our own history, did not sufficiently understand this, and has led to neurotic manifestations.

That the Council abandoned the false forms of self-glorification by the Church herself on this earth, that it suppressed the tendency to defend everything in the Church's past, which is an erroneous form of self-defense - this has all been good and necessary.

But it is also absolutely necessary to arouse again the joy of possessing intact the society of faith that comes from Jesus Christ. It is necessary to rediscover the way of light which is the story of the saints, the story of this magnificent reality by which, through the centuries, the joy of the Gospel has been victoriously expressed.

If anyone, when the Middle Ages are evoked, can find nothing in his memory but the Inquisition, one must ask him if he has eyes. Would its cathedrals, these images of the eternal, full of light and tranquil dignity, have emerged, if faith had meant nothing but torture for the people of that time?

In a word: one must remember clearly that penitence demands not the disintegration of personal identity, but its rediscovery. And when one starts to affirm a positive attitude towards history, then the very utopia disappears in which one imagines that things have simply been done badly to date, and that from here on, everything will be well done.

The limits of what is realizable were clearly placed before our eyes by the way in which the Kennedy era ended. The spiritual pacification that we may have seemed to note today has come necessarily, in part, from the fact that people have found a better equilibrium between realization and receiving, between calculation and meditation.

What must be done?

It is less easy to give an exhaustive response to this than it was for the first question. It would mean debating the entire problem of pastoral work today.

In this respect, I would simply like to describe two viewpoints which I believe to be important: First of all, the question of the true importance of councils, and then, as a function of the two fundamental tendencies of Vatican II, the question of its correct reception.

a) The importance and limitations of councils

What is the exact situation of a Council in the Church? We are led to a point of departure for these reflections: Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great, both of whom spoke from experience, were right in that a council, which means the assembly and necessary entanglements among a great number of persons, is always accompanied by unpleasant accessory circumstances, like ambition, polemics and the wounds that result therefrom.

From time to time, in order to uproot a deeply anchored evil, one has to deal with these inconvenient accessories, just as one accepts medication, despite possible side effects, in order to fight a much greater evil.

Councils are necessary from time to time, but they always represent an extraordinary situation in the Church and cannot be considered as a model of Church life in general, nor even as the ideal content of her existence.

They are remedies, not nourishment. One must assimilate remedies, and the body must conserve their immunizing virtue, but they prove their effect precisely by becoming superfluous and remaining an exceptional recourse.

Speaking plainly, a council is an organ of consultation and decision. As such, it is not an end in itself but an instrument in the service of the life of the Church.

The proper nature of Christian reality is not the discussion of the contents of Christian faith or on the tactics to realize them: The content of Christianity is that it is a community of the Word, of sacrament, and of love of one's neighbor, of which justice and truth are fundamentally a part.

The idea of making all of life a topic of discussion, an idea which has sometimes led universities to the point of paralysis, has become somewhat too installed in the Church under the label of 'the spirit of the Council'.

If the Council were to become the model of Christian life in general, the continual discussion of Christian topics would seem to become the content of Christianity itself. But that is precisely to misunderstand the sense of Christianity.

b) The problem of the correct reception of Vatican II

An analysis of the ulterior history of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in relation to the world today (Gaudium et spes), led me in 1975 to the diagnosis that the correct reception of the Council has not even begun.

I will try to give examples starting off, as I said earlier, from the two fundamental themes of the Council. And this will also show at the same time, up to a certain point, that the Council formulates its teachings, with the authority that is proper to it, but also that its historical importance is determined first and foremost by the process of decantation and elimination which takes place later in the life of the Church. In this way, the entire Church takes part in the Council - which absolutely cannot be led to its realization by the assembly of bishops alone.

One of the key words of Vatican II was collegiality. The immediate meaning that one gives to it is that the episcopal ministry is one that is exercised by bishops in communion with one another. That it is not a particular bishop succeeding a particular apostle, but that it is the college of bishops which is the continuation of the college of Apostles. That is why one is never just a bishop by himself, but a bishop with all the others.

That is also true for priests. One is never a priest by himself, but to become a priest means entering into the presbyteral community united with the bishop.

And finally, collegiality also highlights a fundamental principle of Christianity in general: It is always within the community of all brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ that one is Christian, not otherwise.

The Council sought to put these fundamental concepts into practical reality by creating organisms in which the insertion of the individual within an ensemble becomes the fundamental rule for all activity in the Church.

That is why, in place of bishops' assemblies which until then had been informal, the Council created the bishops' conferences, with a solid juridical organization and a bureaucratic substructure that has carefully been tailored to it.

And the Council also created as a union of all the national episcopal conferences the Synod of Bishops, a sort of substitute Council that is able to meet regularly.

National Synods have met and have announced their intention to evolve as a kind of permanent Church organization in their respective countries. The dioceses have formed priestly and pastoral councils, and parochial councils in the parishes.

No one will dispute that the fundamental idea is valid and that the communitarian realization of the mission of the Church is necessary. Nor will anyone dispute that much has been achieved because of these organisms. But neither can anyone doubt that the uncoordinated multiplication of these organisms has led to an excess of redundancy, to a senseless piling up of documents and of useless efforts, in which much effort is lost in endless discussions which no one really wants but which have become inevitable because of the existence itself of the new structures.

The limitations of this 'documentary' Christianity and Church reforms 'on paper' have since become obvious. It has become clear that collegiality is one thing, but personal responsibility is something else that cannot be replaced and which no one has the right to escape.

Collegiality is one of the principles of Christian reality, of Church reality. Individual responsibility is the other principle, and so, one of the lessons of the past decade is that only an equilibrium between the two can achieve freedom and fruitfulness.

Let us turn to another fundamental theme of the Council: One of its principles was simplicity, one of the fundamental words in the Constitution of the liturgy, in which it is always understood as transparency and openness to being understood by men.

That is why one can say that a well-understood rationality is one of the guiding principles of the Council. Today, one can increasingly note that the Council was well within the line of European Aufklärung(enlightenment). But the Council Fathers were inspired by the theology of the Fathers of the Church, for example by Augustine, where Christian simplicity is insistently opposed to the empty pomp of pagan liturgies.

One can also say that even here, there is a spiritual openness to the modern spirit, after the major setback, during the struggles of the 19th century, to the first attempts at such an encounter.

In this area, too, we can better perceive today the gains and the losses. As history unfolds, one must always prune back whatever is ceaselessly proliferating and always try to get to the central kernel at its simplest. The effort to be understood is indispensable to a missionary religion.

But one has forgotten somehow that man does not just understood through reasoning, but also through his senses and his heart, and we start, little by little, to understand that one must distinguish, when one is pruning back, between abnormal excrescences and that which result from normal growth, to be led by the law of normal life.

And now we come to the question of the process of reception - which tries the documents out in real life, to find out whether, especially in a difficult struggle, it can confer the clarity of meaning that it must have, not just in words. This process of discernment is fully under way, with all the suffering and the pain of labor, in which it is always man himself who is at stake.

On the one hand, there are, before and after, some phenomena of rupture that one must not treat as trivial. Sometimes, it has to do with an exclusive and therefore blind rationality which extenuates Christian mystery and voids it. Sometimes, it is social and political passion which reduces faith to a catalyst of revolutionary action.

Far be it from me to contest the noble instincts present here. Christian faith which seriously considers the Sermon on the Mount cannot calmly accept the opposition between rich and poor as economic necessity. It cannot, by simply shrugging them off, validate wars and oppressions as by-products of progress that are statistically inevitable.

But when faith moves with earthly messianism which justifies the folly of destruction and amputates the hope of man in dragging him down to the level of temporal realizations, then one is betraying Christianity and betraying man.

On the other hand, we are seeing a new fundamentalism emerging today that does not protect, except in appearance, strictly Catholic positions, but which really denatures them profoundly. In which there is a passion for suspicion that is far removed, through its hateful character, from the spirit of the Gospel.

There is a fixation on the letter that declares the present liturgy of the Church invalid and by that fact alone places itself outside the Church. These fundamentalists forget that the validity of liturgy depends first of all, not on certain words, but on the community of the Church, and therefore, under the pretext of Catholicism, they would deny its very principle, largely establishing habit in the place of truth. [An early criticism that is obviously directed at teh FSSPX before the Lefebvrians went into virual schism with the Church in 1988.]

Within an intermediate space which is full of uncertainties, but at the same time of noble struggles and of hope, there are, first, movements in which the indefectible need of authentic religion is expressed, the nearness of the divine. Movements of meditation, Pentecostal movements, one and the other marked by ambiguities and dangers, but also full of possibilities for good.

But there are also some movements that are specifically of the Church and promise new possibilities - the Focolari, cursillos, Communion and Liberation, catechumenal movements, new types of communities. In them, there is a quest that points to the center, and belies the diagnosis of the end of religion, tracing the paths to a new life in faith, which proves once again the inexhaustible fruitfulness of the faith of the Church.

Let us attempt a global balance sheet.

Karl Rahner, at the end of the Council, used this comparison: it requires an immense quantity of pitchblende to obtain a small amount of radium, which is the goal of the purification process. Thus, he thought, the formidable means placed in motion by the Council are ultimately useful, for the increase which they would encourage, as small as it is so far, in faith, hope and charity.

Thus we probably cannot appreciate yet, in all its amplitude, the frightening gravity of the Conciliar proposals. Between radium and pitchblende, there is, in any case, a necessary relation. Where there is pitchblende, there is uranium [ultimately turning to radium],even if the relationship of mass is discouraging. But there is no such necessary relationship between the pitchblende of words and paper. on the one hand, and living Christian reality, on the other.

Whether the Council becomes a positive force in the history of the Church depends only indirectly on texts and organisms. What is decisive is that there are men - saints - who, by the involvement of their whole being that no one can impose on them, can create something living and new.

The definitive decision on the historic value of Vatican II depends on the existence of men who succeed in themselves to separate the grain from the chaff, and are able to give to the community a clarity of meaning that cannot be drawn from the texts alone.

What we can say for now is that, on the one hand, the Council has opened ways which, despite all kinds of bifurcations and dead ends, can truly lead to the heart of Christianity. But on the other hand, we need to be self-critical enough to understand that the naive optimism of the Council and the over-estimation of themselves by many of its supporters and propagandists, justify in a disquieting way the dire diagnoses that personalities in the early Church made about the danger of councils.

In the same way, all the recognized councils of the Church have not always been fruitful from the point of view of Church history. For some of them, there remains nothing ultimately but a record of great uselessness.

As for the historic place of Vatican II, the last word has not been said, despite all the good that is found in its texts. Whether, in the last analysis, it will be counted among the bright points in the history of the Church will depend on men who can bring its words to life.

Benedict XVI's 'humble joy'

October 13, 2012

The figure of the elderly Pontiff stands out on the evening of October 11, framed by the world’s best-known window, in a deep and moving moment.

He knows well that the eyes and hearts of everyone are expecting a word about one of the most famous improvised papal remarks of all times - the 'moonlight discourse' of his unforgettable predecessor John XXIII.

The appearance and style of the two are very different, but the message is no less intense and profound.

Fifty years ago the young Joseph Ratzinger, with pure priestly heart and passionate intelligence, was also looking up from St. Peter's Square to that window, full of idealistic ardour.

Now as Pope, his gaze seems to be aimed upwards more than towards the crowd because while he speaks he is probing the mystery of God - the first priority of his Pontificate, as well as the primary reference of that Council that he invites us to make our own in its most profound truth and intention.

God and our history, God and the history of the Church. “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of … men … are [those] of the followers of Christ” This is how the last council document opens.

A history to be read in the light of the Gospel parables, like that of the weeds and the wheat. A history of insidious and terrible sin, crystallised in its “structures”, of personal sin that wounds and demeans the experience of every one of us. But also a history of grace that works silently and appears in “small flames of goodness, love, and truth”, like those countless flames which dotted and lit up the Square on this moonless night.

So a simple joy, a humble joy; but a true joy, aware that the presence and of the work of the Spirit of the Lord is with us – despite everything – and is strong and loyal.

Humble joy, small flames of goodness and truth, that transform and give warmth. Those who think the Year of Faith had to be seen in a series of triumphal events do not get it right.

Pope Benedict is aiming in an entirely different direction. Looking at the faithful in the Squarelast night, he ends by echoing Pope John: “Go home, give your children a kiss, and tell them that it comes from the Pope”. A simple kiss full of the love of God.

Thus, the Year of Faith begins.

The historical view of Vatican-II so far:
The who, what, where, when, and why of the Council
by Michael J. Miller

Oct. 12, 2012

Michael J. Miller headed a team of translators who prepared the English edition of The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story by Roberto de Mattei.



The famous black-and-white photograph of the Second Vatican Council in session, taken from a high balcony at the back of Saint Peter’s Basilica, shows more than 2,000 Council Fathers standing at their places in slanted stalls that line the nave, with more than a dozen rows on either side.

It resembles nothing so much as a gargantuan monastic choir — unless it puts you in mind of the British Parliament with the dimensions quadrupled.

Contemporary perceptions of the Council varied widely, partly because of the extensive media coverage. Although it promulgated a dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, Vatican II was not a “constitutional convention.”

An ecumenical council can teach about the Church but cannot modify a divine institution, any more than a Pope can invent a new doctrine or change one of the Ten Commandments.

In his latest book, The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story (Loreto Publications, 2012), Roberto de Mattei, a historian in Rome, writes: “[Ecumenical] Councils exercise, under and with the Pope, a solemn teaching authority in matters of faith and morals, and set themselves up as supreme judges and legislators, insofar as Church law is concerned. The Second Vatican Council did not issue laws, and it did not even deliberate definitively on questions of faith and morals. The lack of dogmatic definitions inevitably started a discussion about the nature of its documents and about how to apply them in the so-called ‘postconciliar period.’”

Professor de Mattei outlines the two main schools of thought in that discussion. The first and more theological approach presupposes an “uninterrupted ecclesial Tradition” and therefore expects the documents of Vatican II to be interpreted in a way consistent with authoritative Church teaching in the past. This is the “hermeneutic of continuity” emphasized by Pope Benedict XVI.

A second, more historical approach advocated by Professor Giuseppe Alberigo and the “School of Bologna” maintains that the Council “was in the first place an historical ‘event’ which, as such, meant an undeniable discontinuity with the past: it raised hopes, started polemics and debates, and in the final analysis inaugurated a new era.”

The “event-dimension” of the Council is Exhibit A in making the case for the elusive “spirit of Vatican II” that looks beyond the actual words of the conciliar documents to the momentum that they supposedly generated. [But Benedict XVI's hermeneutic does not at all deny or minimize the 'event-dimension' of Vatican II. The Holy Father almost always underscores it as 'that great ecclesial event'. The question has never been whether Vatican-II was a historic event - the dispute has been about what it said and intended to say to the Church and to the world, through the 16 documents that formally constitute its teachings, which must be the objective basis of reference. In this regad, it does appear from even the most cursory reading of the articles that the documents tend far more to be in continuity with Tradition, as the two Council Popes reiterated appropriately, and certainly do not even mention the radical changes to the Church that the progressivist 'spiritists' claim the Council advocated and intended! The egregious, continuing and damaging error of the latter is not just misinterpreting Vatican-II but misrepresenting it deliebrately in order to support their misguided progressivism.]

Professor de Mattei counters such tendentiousness by making a clear distinction: “The theologian reads and discusses the documents in their doctrinal import. The historian reconstructs the events…understands occurrences in their cultural and ideological roots and consequences... so as to arrive at an ‘integral’ understanding of the events.” [Which is not to say that the historian, any historian, necessarily arrives at an 'integral understanding of the event'. A purely secular historical interpretation without reference to the Tradition and theology of the Church cannot, by definition, be integral.]

Drawing on the work of two Catholic historians and the director of a Catholic news service, this article highlights features in the historical background to the Second Vatican Council by asking the basic questions of journalism: who, what, where, when and why.

Who: John XXIII

Although several were soon to become world famous, none of the 2,381 prelates in the stalls at St. Peter’s on October 11, 1962, and no combination of them, could have initiated an ecumenical council; that was the sole prerogative of the Supreme Pontiff. At that moment the bishop of Rome was the former Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who when elected pope in 1958 had taken the name John XXIII.

The media image of “Good Pope John,” the unpretentious, grandfatherly Pontiff, had its basis in fact. Roncalli was gracious and optimistic by nature, and studiously avoided taking sides in the theological disputes that increasingly divided the Catholic Church. Yet a full portrait is more complex, as we read in Pope John and His Revolution, by the Catholic British historian E. E. Y. Hales.

Roncalli did have “peasant roots” — his parents were sharecroppers —but he was also descended from the impoverished branch of a noble family. His diary shows that he had pursued sanctity since his seminary days, yet he excelled in history rather than theology. His priestly ministry was spent almost entirely in chancery, seminary, and diplomatic positions (with the exception of a few years as an army chaplain during World War I) - it is ironic that the ecumenical council he convened as pope should proclaim itself to be “pastoral”.

Hales’s specialty is 19th-century Church history, a politically tumultuous era when Catholic social doctrine began to be formulated officially. “John was as anxious as any previous pope to reaffirm some continuity in papal teaching; but in fact, in his brief reign, he changed both its spirit and its content.… The novelty of Pope John consisted in his embracing, with enthusiasm, novel ideas about world unity, colonialism, aid to underdeveloped countries, social security, and the rest, which belonged mainly to such recent times as the period since the Second World War; it consisted in his accepting these new ideas, saying they were good, and urging the world to pursue them.”

The 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra, “On Christianity and Social Progress,” brings Catholic social teaching “right into the world of the Welfare State,” according to Hales. “The Pope…is embracing what many would call socialism, and he is acknowledging that a new concept of the duties of the State is involved.”

Another characteristic of the Roncalli papacy identified by Hales is its “universal quality.” “Addressing himself to ‘all men of good will,’ he went out of his way to make friendly contact not only with the separated brethren but also with those who professed a philosophy hostile to Christianity.”

The 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris, “On Establishing Universal Peace,” transcends the interests of the Church, or even of Christendom, and “looks steadily at the world as a whole.” Pope John XXIII took his role as Universal Pastor literally: “He was not directly trying to get the world ‘back in’ [to the Church]. He was going out into the world, to help the world. … [H]e was thinking of all men as sons of God and therefore of himself as their spiritual father on earth.”

Pope John’s contribution to the writing of the Vatican II documents may have been minimal, yet his view of his own pastoral ministry and of the Church’s role in the modern world had a momentous effect during the Council and in the years that followed.

What: Theological Currents

The question, “What was Vatican II about?” is objectively answered by reading the titles of the documents that the Council approved. From a broader perspective, it is often noted that in some respects the Council completed the work of Vatican I , which had defined precisely the powers of the papacy but had been adjourned before it could discuss episcopal authority in the Church.

Roberto de Mattei sees the remote causes of Vatican II in the early 20th-century Modernist crisis. Although Pope Pius X peremptorily clamped down on a wide range of philosophical and theological errors, many of them “went underground” in the academic world and in certain provinces of religious orders. The real need for reform in the Church continued, but it was not being addressed by erudite and antiquarian studies or fantastic speculation. (Recall that Teilhard de Chardin, SJ had many enthusiasts in the Council hall.)

Besides Modernism, de Mattei examines various 20th-century movements within the Church: biblical, philosophical, liturgical, ecumenical. He depicts a fruitful theological pluralism which in places was bursting the seams of the neo-Thomistic system that was still prevalent, especially in the Roman Curia.

Through the participation of theological experts at Vatican II, the best of that scholarship contributed significantly to the conciliar documents. But the journals of several “periti” — scholarly experts —that have been published in recent years confirm that neo-Modernism was a real force and that some advisors arrived with scores to settle and strategies for refighting old battles.

Where: Spotlight on the “European Alliance”

An ecumenical council by definition is a gathering of prelates representing the Universal Church, and since Vatican I, the Catholic hierarchy had become thoroughly international. During the preparatory phase of Vatican II every effort was made to consult the bishops worldwide and to distill from their input outlines on topics to be addressed during the council sessions. Professor de Mattei writes:

"During the summer of 1959…the “vota” or recommendations from the bishops, the superiors of religious orders, and the Catholic universities arrived [in Rome]. The compilation of this enormous quantity of material began in September and concluded in late January of 1960. The approximately three thousand letters that were sent in fill eight volumes…"

When the Council first met on October 13, 1962, “the day’s agenda provided that the assembly would elect its representatives (sixteen out of twenty-four) on each of the ten Commissions that were delegated to examine the schemas drawn up by the Preparatory Commission.”

All Council Fathers were eligible, unless they already had been appointed to the commissions. Ballots were distributed with a separate page listing the names of those who already had expertise in certain areas because of their work on the related preparatory commissions.

In a planned preemptive strike, Cardinal Achille Liénart of Lille, France, grabbed the microphone out of turn, complained that “it is really impossible to vote this way, without knowing anything about the most qualified candidates,” and recommended that the Council Fathers defer the vote until they could consult with their national bishops’ conferences. His illegal “motion” was seconded by Cardinal Frings of Cologne, and Cardinal Tisserant moved to adjourn.

De Mattei points out that “one immediate consequence” of Cardinal Liénart’s unsettling “solution” was “the introduction of a new organizational form…the episcopal conferences... into the conciliar dynamics.”

“The Central-European conferences were the first to play the new role assigned to them,” according to de Mattei. The bishops’ conferences of the Rhineland nations — France, Germany, and the Low Countries —had a disproportionate share of the Church’s wealth, universities, publishing houses, and news services, so it was no surprise that most of the candidates whom they proposed were elected to the Conciliar Commissions.

The “European Alliance,” as it was nicknamed, then used its position of dominance to discard many of the schemas that had been drawn up by the preparatory commissions, and to start over with texts drafted by the progressive periti.

These two shifts had momentous consequences during the four sessions of the Council and in the postconciliar period: (1) authority was displaced from individual bishops and Curial officials (who held authority delegated directly by the Pope) to ad hoc geographical gatherings of prelates that were usually run by a few movers and shakers, and to theologians who were simple priests; (2) the Council strangely became less “ecumenical” and more Eurocentric — an ominous trend, in hindsight.

This influx of Central European and “democratic” ideas into the workings of the Roman Church was captured by Father Ralph M. Wilgten, SVD, editor of the Divine Word News Service, in the title of his classic book, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber.

When: Cold War politics

Political unrest interrupted Vatican I: King Victor Emmanuel of Italy captured and annexed the city of Rome, and French armies could no longer vouch for the Council Fathers’ safety. Less than 100 years later, Vatican II conducted its sessions during the Cold War, with Europe divided, the Soviet sphere of influence expanding, and an uneasy peace maintained by a policy of mutual assured destruction.

Father Wiltgen, in his week-by-week eyewitness account of Vatican II, notes that a significant percentage of the vota from the world’s bishops had recommended that the ecumenical council explicitly condemn Marxist socialism. During the third session, on October 23, 1964, Archbishop Paul Yu Pin of Nanking, China, speaking on behalf of 70 Council Fathers, asked that a new chapter on atheistic communism be added to the schema on “The Church in the Modern World.”

“It had to be discussed in order to satisfy the expectations of our peoples…especially those who groan under the yoke of communism and are forced to endure indescribable sorrows unjustly.”

Despite this intervention and others like it, when the fourth session of the Council opened, the revised schema still made no explicit reference to Communism. A petition asking for a reiteration of the Church’s teaching against Communism was drawn up by the International Group of Fathers, headed by Archbishop Sigaud of Diamantina, Brazil, and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and signed by 450 Council Fathers.

Although it was submitted in due form and in a timely fashion, a French prelate in the Curia shelved it, so that the intervention never reached the commission to which it was submitted.

Some Council Fathers had warned that the Council’s silence about the errors of Communism would be viewed by history as cowardice and a dereliction of duty. The progressives at the Council argued that a condemnation would jeopardize negotiations with Communist governments. Was a crucial teaching moment missed?

[Interesting paradox, but I had been led to believe by various statements made by credible sources that the Church, even under such a passionate anti-Communist as Pius XII (or John Paul II, for that matter) had opted for what would come to be known later as Ostpolitik, to refrain from open provocation of the Communist regimes in order to facilitate dealing with them behind the scenes to minimize the persecution of Catholics, especially of leading members of the hierarchy. That, in fact, this policy was carried on by John XXIII and eventually by Paul VI and John Paul II - who, despite the major role he played in bringing about the collapse of Communism in Europe - appeared to have limited his 'activism' to promoting the interests of Polish Catholics, primarily, rather than of all persecuted Catholics throughout Europe (or China, for that matter).]

Why: Light to the Nations

Those who wonder why the Church held its 21st ecumenical council at all might have to wait until the next life to learn the full answer. Still, the stated purposes of Vatican II should be our starting point.

Professor de Mattei notes that in October 1962 the Council Fathers informally issued a “Message to the World.” In it they proclaimed: “In conducting our work, we will give major consideration to all that pertains to the dignity of man and contributes to true brotherhood among peoples.”

Good Pope John was apparently persuaded that a war-torn world was finally ready to listen again to the age-old wisdom of Holy Mother Church — a truly international society — and that the institutional Church had to gear itself up for this new dialogue with contemporary man.

This rapid, journalistic survey of Vatican II focused not on what it taught in its documents but rather on several important circumstances of the “event,” some of the opportunities and obstacles that helped shape the Council.

As the Church observes the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, the conciliar teachings should be understood against the contrasting background of historical facts, without being reduced to an “epi-phenomenon” determined by those facts.


On the other hand, there are Catholics who believe, as the Lefebvrians do, that the Pope should merely expunge the documents of Vatican II from the Church Magisterium! As if any Pope had the authority to nullify the Magisterium of the largest and most truly international ecumenical Church Council ever held, legitimately constituted by the Pope (two Popes, in this case, one succeeding the other) and all the bishops of the world! Of course, Vatican-II was not 'perfect', as which Council is? I am sure that if the traditionalists examined every word that emanated from the sacrosanct Council of Trent, they would find as many documentary 'errors' - if not more, by the very fact that the Council spanned 25 years and three Popes - to quibble with. This article by one of the one of the mainstays of the traditionalist publication The Remnant (which often seems to be more intransigent than the FSSPX), grows more execrable as the writer exposes his 'arguments', freely dispensing openly fallacious statements. Wolfe is

Vatican II at 50
By Kenneth J. Wolfe

Oct. 11, 2012

Fifty years ago today, the Second Vatican Council began with a clear indication of who had gained control of the Catholic Church’s direction. From the Latin Mass to meatless Fridays to the concept of salvation, numerous components of the faith were set to be reformed, led mostly by clerical academics who had served on preparatory commissions.

So powerful were they that Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, a conservative who headed what is now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which the future Pope Benedict XVI would later lead), was vocally heckled and silenced by his participating colleagues.

[The very way Wolfe asserts this is deliebrately misleading. The documents from the preparatory commissions in Rome, of which Cardinal Ottaviani was the very powerful and emblematic leader, were not 'reform-minded' but conservative, and that is the reason they were opposed so effectively by most of the Council participants, who had come to Rome expecting to take part in 'reforms' that would renew the Church and update it to the contemporary world, which the more orthodox bishops believed could be done without sacrificing Christian principles and hallowed Tradition.]

As described to journalist Robert Moynihan by Monsignor Brunero Gherardini, who attended the council and lives at the Vatican, Cardinal Ottaviani was addressing the 2,000 assembled bishops in October 1962: “As he speaks, pleading for the bishops to consider the texts the Curia has spent three years preparing, suddenly his microphone was shut off. He kept speaking, but no one could hear a word. Then, puzzled and flustered, he stopped speaking, in confusion. And the assembled fathers began to laugh, and then to cheer...” This was on day three.

It turns out, according to Monsignor Gherardini, that it was Cardinal Achille Lienart, a leading liberal from France serving on Vatican II’s board of presidency, who cut Cardinal Ottaviani’s microphone. Ottaviani would later author a major critique of the vernacular Mass that came out of the council, a plea to Pope Paul VI that fell on deaf ears. [So Leinart did not play fair - nor would his fellow progressivists play fair in the post-Conciliar chaos. That still does not change the fact that Ottaviani and the preparatory commissions were 'conservative' in the strictest sense and apparently totally unprepared for the climate of change that characterized Vatican II.]

Some of the reformist-oriented clergy participating in the Second Vatican Council would eventually rise through the ranks of the Catholic Church.

Karol Wojtyla (the future John Paul II), who was a young archbishop in Cracow, was seen as the liberal counterweight to Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, who was the conservative, yet popular, primate of Poland. [Really? Wasn't Wojtyla Wyszynki's favorite spiritual son?]

Father Joseph Ratzinger (the future Benedict XVI), was the peritus (theological expert) for Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne, writing the cardinal’s speeches for the council, including one calling Cardinal Ottaviani’s Vatican office too traditional and authoritative. Even though Ratzinger had been ordained a priest over a decade ago, his attire throughout the Second Vatican Council was a secular business suit and necktie. [This attempt to diss Joseph Ratzinger is typical of the flat-out, deliberately erroneous and petty generalizations made by traditionalists to demean the Conciliar and post-Conciliar Popes. The few photographs we have seen of Fr. Ratzinger at Vatican-II show him in cassock, if only because wearing 'clergyman' suits did not become a practice till after Vatican[II, as Mr. Wolfe ought to know!... As for describing both Wojtyla and Ratzinger as 'reform-minded clergy', Wolfe makes it sound as if they were afflicted with leprosy!]

The results of holding a council during prosperity in order to modernize the institution quickly became disastrous. While countless priests, brothers and nuns quit, most Catholics stopped attending Mass and the remaining Catholics largely embraced dissent. [After the Council! The problem was not in holding the Council, but in the obviously wrong way these dissenting Catholics chose to interpret it afterwards!]

Even Pope Paul VI, who led most of Vatican II, reflected 10 years after the council’s opening with an infamous observation that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” [Yes, indeed, the phantasmal 'spirit of Vatican II' being that 'smoke of Satan'!]

Fast-forwarding, the Latin Mass has made a comeback, in part because of the rightward-drifting Pope Benedict.[Somehow, the description feels insulting!]

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, head of the church in the U.S., writes about restoring meatless Fridays and fasting. And the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a traditionalist order of priests, has forced the Vatican to address the substance of the Second Vatican Council.

[That statement is also deliberately misleading. The Vatican, under Benedict VXI, agreed to discuss with the Lefebvrians their four specific objections to Vatican II - even if, as the months went on, the FSSPX gradually expanded their objection to all of Vatican-II, going much farther than even their founder had stood for]. Benedict XVI obviously was relying on the fact that most rational open-minded Catholics would see reason in what Vatican-II says about religious freedom, ecumenism, inter-religious dialog and episcopal collegiality. The traditionalist do-or-die objection to the first three principles indicates they have decided they will be hermetically sealed forever in a mythical 'fortress Church', ignoring that Jesus told his discples to "go forth and preach to all nations"; and their objection to collegiality ignores the fact that Vatican II always coupled the principle inseparably with the principle of being simultaneously "in communion with the Successor of Peter". apparently, they have no faith in the Lord's assertion that 'the gates opf Hell shall not prevail" over his Church.]

Religious liberty and the Mass are at the heart of the talks, including whether the SSPX is permitted to simply ignore these pastoral (as compared to dogmatic) writings. Ecumenism, which was called “the enemy of the Immaculata” by Saint Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest killed in a Nazi concentration camp, [With all due respect, being a saint and martyr does not mean the person was infallible and free of error!] is being weighed and discussed after 40 years of visits to mosques, temples and other non-Catholic houses of worship with little conversions as a result. [Dear Lord, I cannot believe such pettiness and irrationality! If Popes have visited mosques and synagogues, it was not because they thought that would gain instant converts - they are not stupid! - but to symbolize their recognition that there are other ways of honoring God, which does not mean they cease to believe that Christianity is the right way!]

To contrast, when Pope Pius XII negotiated with the chief rabbi of Rome, the rabbi converted to Catholicism and chose Pius’s name of Eugenio as he was christened. {Great! Cite the one obviously exceptional occurrence as the standard for inter-religious dialog!]

Defenders of the Second Vatican Council from a center-right perspective have insisted that nearly all negative indicators of the Catholic Church have stemmed from the “spirit of the Council.”

As seminaries continue to close (all but one remains in Ireland), parishes continue to merge and convents are redeveloped, a key question ought to be what tangible, positive results have occurred in those five decades. [The reassertion of Catholic identity in Lumen gentium, and the new and more informed attitude towards Scripture in Dei verbum, to begin with. And certainly, the declarations on religious freedom, the non-Christian religions and ecumenism, which were the core modernizing principles introdcued by Vatican-II without contradicting core Christian doctrine!]

No one has been able to point to an actual statistical benefit of Vatican II and its 16 documents. [If statistics were to be the yardstick by which one measures a Council, what 'statistics' were there to show that the Council of Trent, wbich lasted from 1545-1563, managed at all to stem the tsunami of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, which continued widening since Luther's 96 Theses in 1517 to overwhelm almost all of Europe except the southern countries through the 16th-18th centuries? More than anything, the Council of Trent - and this was obviously its main intention - reinforced the faith of orthodox Catholics and produced an exceptional crop of saints, but did little to be able to retain the disaffected Catholics who turned Protestant in droves because Catholicism had become too cumbersome and inconvenient for lifestyles that allowed more and more people more and more freedom.

In an increasingly populous world, ecumenical councils cannot have an immediately measurable effect for what they set out to do. Unfortunately, in the case of Vatican-II, the simultaneous rise of the dictatorship of the media over public opinion - including the most suggestible and weakest priests and bishops - due to quantum leaps in communications technology, also meant that the counterweight to the intentions of the Council was for the first time, real, overwhelming, and simultaneous to the Council as well as continuing long afterwards.]

Ironically, the only current growth in vocations is in religious orders such as the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter that reject the new Mass and most of the liberalizations of Vatican II. [That is also false, if one goes by the recent statistics of the Church in the United States!]

Fifty years later, the greatest accomplishment that can be said for the Second Vatican Council is Pope John XXIII’s stated goal to “throw open the windows of the Church.” [And how can that be an 'accomplishment' if Wolfe and his fellow intransigent traditionalists refuse to look out those windows, much less wave a friendly hand to others outside the edifice of the Church?]

Yet from conversions to Mass attendance, it has produced nothing measurable in the upward direction. [Wolfe is deliberately ignoring the dramatic figures from the Church in Africa over the past 50 years, as if the African churches were not worthy of consideration at all in the panorama of the universal Church!]

Perhaps traditionalist Catholics, led by the FSSPX, are onto something when they call into question the Council itself. [A fine time to call it into question 50 years after the fact! When their own founder was a Council Father who signed all 16 Council documents, even if he later claimed that he was tricked into signing the document on religious freedom - he did not say anything about the other 15 documents!]

Their solution is for the Pope to simply erase all 16 Vatican II documents and restore the liturgy, teachings and discipline in place before the collapse of all that was considered good and holy in 1962. [How dastardly and cowardly of Wolfe to simply attribute these last two ideas to the FSSPX instead of coming out directly to say he shares these ideas fully!]

Translation of the title: BERNADETTE DID NOT DECEIVE US: A historical inquiry into the truth of Lourdes

Lourdes: The inexplicable truth
A review of Vittorio Messori's new book
by Mario Iannaccone
Translated from

October 9, 2012

A support for one's faith, a 'handlebar', as it were, is how Vittorio Messori describes the Marian apparitions at Lourdes in his intense and well thought-out book Bernadette non ci ha ingannati. Un’indagine storica sulla verità di Lourdes, published today by Mondadori (340 pp).

It is a distillation of in-depth analyses and a reading experience that is instantly captivating for its typically efficient interweaving of personal recollections, history, news reports and theology.

What took place in 1858 in a remote village of the French Pyrenees, that would become the site of one of the most visited shrines in the world, was a 'private revelation' that adds nothing to the public Revelation that ended with the last Apostle, but which is nonetheless acknowledged as a supernatural event and a gift of grace due to the miraculous healings that followed.

Like all acknowledged private revelations, even the apparitions at Lourdes do not become part of the depositum fidei, because the believer is free not to believe them.

"Private and also public", says Messori, since he points out that "every year, 20% of the world's bishops come to Lourdes as pilgrims, leading other pilgrims".

In Lourdes, the Mother of God entrusted messages to the humble and unlettered peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous - a call to penitence, an invitation to conversion, and in a specific way, "tell the priests to construct a chapel here and to come in procession". And at the end, the Apparition identified herself as 'the Immaculate Conception', a dogma that had been proclaimed in 1854 but a concept that was certainly not even imaginable to the teenage visionary.

Bernadette underwent the suffering of being considered crazy, a liar, someone who was manipulated, who was evil, even. She was visited as an insane subject, looked in the eye and evaluated by famous intellectuals of the time like the writer Emile Zola who promised to reveal the existence of secret documents showing evidence of the girl's manipulation though there were no such documents.

She entered the convent not to flee all the attention, but to embrace the Mystery she had seen and to whom she had spoken. Meanwhile, despite the hostile climate of anti-clerical France, a great shrine did arise on the site where today Masses and processions are held daily - and millions of faithful come to pray.

Then the healings started. The mystery of Lourdes is an encouragement, above all, to those who are sick in body and spirit, recalling the healing of the paralytic, to whom Jesus, who likened sin to illness, said, "Courage, my son, your sins have been forgiven".

The Virgin of Lourdes, in one of her messages, told Bernadette: "Go and drink from the spring and wash yourself", which presaged the healing of the sick and the faithless.

Compared to the millions of pilgrims who have been to Lourdes, the 67 acknowledged healing miracles at Lourdes are quite rare, and human reason cannot understand the 'criteria' for why the miracles happened and to whom. Rich people have been healed, or some were healed of life-threatening illness only to die in a commonplace incident afterwards.

It appears to signify that the miracles are merely a sign indicating the true healing 'offered at Lourdes not to a few but to everyone". Because one reads in the Bible how Jesus said: "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe" (Jn 4,48).

The spring that flowed from that cave once used by peasants to rest in is a sign, as in one of the most beautiful poems of St. John of the Cross, of Eucharistic abundance.

Around such facts, great and small, revolving around the life of St. Bernadette, Messori evokes the many actors in the drama: those who opposed her out of sheer obstinacy, the incredulous, the enraged, and those who repented and were truly converted.

The girl never yielded, calmly swearing on oath that she had only spoken the truth, only the truth. Thus does Messori's book unfold, chapter after chapter, reconstructing the events in detail.

Like other texts by this author, the book conveys strong tension - one feels and is aware that there is much more. Some of it may have been written, much more is implied in weighing upon the best-known episodes in the story of Bernadette.

In researching the book, Messori was in contact with the most outstanding living scholars on Lourdes like Rene Laurentin. He notes significant coincidences that almost seem to defy probability, mysterious symmetries that are difficult to contain in just one book.

In part, all this material will converge into a second volume already announced by Messori who is convinced that Bernadette has not deceived us, that she told the truth. What she saw, what she did and what she left us, all carry the sign of divine grace.

I was hoping for a more substantial book review, not a series of apparently random impressions. I am sure a better one will come out soon.

Indulge me today as I call attention to a centuries-old Marian tradition in my country, the Philippines, which celebrates today a feast that commemorates the patronage and protection of Our Lady of the Rosary.



Manila's Feast of La Naval,
'Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario'


The Battle of Lepanto, Paolo Veronese, c. 1572, oil on canvas, 169 x 137 cm, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice. The painting depicts the battle as a vicotry of divine intervention.

In the sixteenth century, along with the arrival of the Dominican friars in the Philippines, came the devotion to the Holy Rosary.

The famous naval Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where Catholic forces through the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary decisively defeated the Muslim Turks threatening Christian Europe, was a testimonial of faith carried by Spanish missionaries sent to the colonies of America and Spain's far-flung colony in the Far East, the Philippines (named after Philip II, in whose reign Ferdinand Magellan reached the islands and planted the Cross alongside the flag of empire).

With the victory at Lepanto and Our Lady’s protection in mind, the friars hastened to propagate the devotion to the rosary in the Philippines. Along with the rosary was her image, the most popular of which was that of Nuestra Señora del Santisimo Rosario (Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary), La Naval de Manila. [The Spaniards occupied what is now Manila in 1565, so the Battle of Lepanto which took place in 1571 was almost immediately incorporated into the Catholic tradition begun by Spain in the Philippines.]

Since then, the Second Sunday of October has been dedicated to the Feast of 'La Naval', by which the image and the feast are popularly klnown. The image was canonically crowned on October 1907 with a mandate from Pope Pius X, the first Marian canonical coronation in Asia. On her feast day in October 1973, La Naval was declared Patroness of the Philippines.

Carved in 1593 by a Chinese artisan who later on became a convert to Catholicism, the venerated image now enshrined (since 1954) at Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City (metropolitan Manila) is considered the oldest ivory carving in the Philippines.

For centuries before that, it was venerated at the Dominican mother church in Intramuros, the medieval walled city built by the Spaniards at the site of the village occupied by the pre-Hispanic rulers of Manila. Intramuros - which was the only late medieval walled city existing in Asia - was reduced to rubble by American bombs in the final weeks of their effort to flush out the Japanese occupiers in World War II. {An unnecessary military decision which wiped out almost 400 years of history, and an unspeakable cultural crime for which I, as a Filipino, who was unable to see that cultural legacy, will never be able to forgive the United States.

In 1646, when Dutch invaders tried to gain possession of the Philippines, the protection of La Naval de Manila was believed to have helped and guided the Spanish fleet. Before each of the battles, the intercession of Our Lady was fervently sought. Crew members – Spanish soldiers, religious, and Filipinos – vowed special homage to Our Lady for a victorious battle.

With five battles to face against the Dutch, the Filipino and Spanish forces won despite being shorthanded with only two merchant galleons to fight eighteen Dutch warships. They vowed that if they emerged triumphant, they would make a pilgrimage to the church – barefoot.

On April 9, 1662, sixteen years after the successful defence of Manila, these five battles were proclaimed miraculous by the Cathedral Chapter of the Archdiocese of Manila. The Council consisted of theologians, canonists, and prominent religious. After studying all the written and oral testimonies of the participants and eyewitnesses, the Council declared that the victories, “granted by the Sovereign Lord through the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin and devotion to her Rosary, that the miracles be celebrated, preached and held in festivities and to be recounted among the miracles wrought by the Lady of the Rosary for the greater devotion of the faithful to Our Most Blessed Virgin Mary and Her Holy Rosary”

In gratitude since then, processions and novena masses in honor of the Blessed Mother have become a tradition.

The image suffered damage during the 1762 pillage of Manila by British troops. In 1942, during the Second World War, the image was transferred from the Santo Domingo Church in Intramuros to the chapel of the Dominicans' Pontifical University of Santo Tomas which had a new campus away from Intramuros.


From left: The image; old Santo Domingo church; the ruin after World War II; the new Santo Domingo church. Below, the image in the old church, and at its new shrine.


The old Santo Domingo Church in Intramuros was completely destroyed as were all the mother churches of the Spanish orders that had come to the Philippines in the 16th century. The image of La Naval remained at the Santo Tomas chapel until 1954 when the Dominicans were finally able to complete the new church of Santo Domingo in Quezon City, a large and prosperous suburb adjoining Manila itself.


'La Naval' in procession.

I am sorry I cannot find photos online of the great pre-war La Naval processions in Intramuros, much celebrated in Philippine literature by one of our greatest writers in English.

Oct. 14, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

ST. POPE CALLIXTUS I (Italy, 155-222), Slave, Ex-Convict, Pope and Martyr
The only information that has been available about Callistus was written by his most bitter enemy, the first anti-Pope, Hippolytus, who also
ended up being a martyr and saint. Someone has noted that Callistus could not have been any worse than Hippolytus described, because surely,
the latter would not have failed to mention anything more grievous than he already catalogs. Callistus was a slave in the imperial Roman household.
Put in charge of the bank by his master, he lost the money deposited, fled and was caught. After serving time for a while, he was released to make
some attempt to recover the money. Apparently he carried his zeal too far, being arrested for brawling in a Jewish synagogue. This time he was
condemned to work in the mines of Sardinia. He was released through the influence of the emperor's mistress and lived at Anzio. He was made
superintendent of the public Christian burial ground in Rome (still called the cemetery of St. Callistus), probably the first land owned by the Church.
Pope Zephyrinus ordained him a deacon and made him his friend and adviser. He was subsequently elected Pope by a majority vote of the clergy
and laity of Rome, thereafter bitterly attacked by the losing candidate, Hippolytus, who let himself be set up as the first anti-Pope in the history
of the Church. The schism lasted about 18 years. Hippolytus is venerated as a saint. He was banished to Sardinia during the persecution
of 235 and was reconciled to the Church. He died from his sufferings in Sardinia. He attacked Callistus on two fronts — doctrine and discipline.
Hippolytus seems to have exaggerated the distinction between Father and Son (almost making two gods). He also accused Callistus of being
too lenient, for reasons we may find surprising: (1) Callistus admitted to Holy Communion those who had already done public penance for murder,
adultery, fornication; (2) he held marriages between free women and slaves to be valid—contrary to Roman law; (3) he authorized the ordination
of men who had been married two or three times; (4) he held that mortal sin was not a sufficient reason to depose a bishop; (5) he held to a policy
of leniency toward those who had temporarily denied their faith during persecution. Callistus was martyred during a local disturbance in Trastevere,
Rome, and is the first Pope after Peter to be commemorated as a martyr in the earliest martyrology of the Church.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/101412.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Sunday Angelus - The Holy Father reflected on the rich man of whom Jesus said "It is far easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven", saying that heaven
cannot be bought, and that the wealthy have an obligation to use their wealth to help the needy. He said
the faithful in general must pay attention to the needy and suffering, especially during this Year of Faith.
He called attention to the beatification in Prague today of Frederic Bachstein and thirteen companions of
the Order of Friars Minor (Capuchins), who were killed in hatred of the faith in 1611.

I spent the afternoon going through this ample reportage which is unabashedly tendentious in favor of the progressivist view of Vatican II and deploys its prose and its arguments accordingly. It covers all the bases of the progressivist world view. Imagine if the writer had chosen to be objective, 'fair and balanced', but he is not! I daresay this article is quite typical of the rubbish under which we shall all be inundated in this jubilee year of Vatican II, against which we can count on Benedict XVI's consistent views and steadfast teaching to shield us from their pestilential fallout....

I am retaining the article's a-historical title which erroneously assumes that the teachings of a Church Council will necessarily be carried out instantaneously and simultaneously. There is a reason that the Church uses the word 'reception' in describing and measuring the effects of Vatican II - because there is a whole spectrum of the kind of reception there can be, within the Church herself, her hierarchy, her priests and bishops, and among the faithful, in a Church that now numbers more than 1.2 billion members.

It has become infinitely more difficult because of the erosive and attritive damage wrought by the progressivists and their deliberate misinterpretation of Vatican II, compounding the more basic problem that much of the Catholic world today is fairly unfamiliar with the ABCs of the faith. The primary and most urgent reform, as the Year of Faith implies, has to be to make sure that Catholics know the ABCs of their faith, because in knowing this, then they will realize that we are on earth 'to know, love and serve God', as the Catechism teaches, and that in Jesus Christ, God is always among us and with us.

Roman Catholic Church still deeply divided
50 years after historic reforms
by Sandro Contenta


DUBLIN, IRELAND, Oct. 5 — Rev. Seamus Ryan, a gentle Catholic priest on the verge of retirement, lives in a cluttered home next to St. Matthew’s Parish, where he ministers to a precipitously decreasing flock from the working-class neighbourhood of Ballyfermot.

On a September day that threatened rain, he sat with a cup of tea in a comfortable armchair, relaxing after having married a young couple. Baptisms, marriages and funerals still keep priests busy in Ireland. But Ryan takes little solace from a church reduced to what some call a “hatch, match and dispatch” service.

“People have lost contact with the Church,” he says. “At the wedding today, they were no longer familiar with the responses. They’ve lost the language, even. There’s just a silence.”

It was all very different when Ryan became a priest in the early 1960s. The pews were packed. The Irish Catholic Church was arbiter of all things spiritual and most things temporal. It ran schools, towered over governments and dictated sexual mores with the menace of fire and brimstone and the whack of classroom rulers. At the most venerated sporting event in the land, the All-Ireland Gaelic football final, a bishop would toss out the game-opening ceremonial ball after team captains kissed his ring.

At 75, Ryan isn’t nostalgic for the Church that was. He misses the Church that could have been.

Five decades ago, Pope John XXIII challenged Roman Catholics to “throw open the windows of the church.” On Oct. 11, 1962, he inaugurated the Second Vatican Council, an extraordinary gathering of some 2,600 theologians, priests, bishops and cardinals. Its historic reforms redefined the church and its role in modern life.

They energized clerics and laity, unleashed an army of militants for social justice and helped make Roman Catholicism a global religion of more than 1 billion members.

“It was an extraordinary experience,” says British Columbia Bishop Remi De Roo, 88, who participated in Vatican II as a voting council father. “It was a great invitation to get out there and get our hands dirty and really get into the fray of history and work for transformation.”

The seeds of renewal, however, also developed into sources of deep discord. Fifty years later, the Council’s reforms are the cause of a bitter clash between the Vatican and its conservative supporters on one side, and a growing rebellion from reform-minded priests and parishioners on the other.

“The major crisis in the Church right now is we’re not talking to one another,” says theologian Margaret Lavin of Toronto’s Regis College. “We’re screaming and shouting at each other and naming and blaming one another.” [The extremists on both sides are. Certainly, not Pope Benedict XVI and the great majority of Catholics who are in the center.]

“It’s quite shameful and sinful that we have got ourselves into this,” she adds. “Why is my fellow believer calling me names because I have a specific interpretation of Vatican II? What credibility do we have if we can’t talk amongst ourselves?” [DIM89pt][The problem with extremists like Lavin is that they can't see beyond their nose and therefore they interpret everything according to this self-inflicted ultra-myopic tunnel vision.]

This summer, Oxford professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, a leading historian of Christianity, described the Church on the verge of schism “over the Vatican’s failure to listen to European Catholics” about Vatican II. [WHAT??? Which 'European Catholics' have anything helpful to tell the Church? The dissidents and 'We are Church' types?] Few repeat that warning, and rebels insist they want to work within the Church.

“I’m insulted when people call me a dissident,” says Rev. Brendan Hoban, a founder of the Irish reform group, the Association of Catholic Priests. “I’ve been at the heart of the Church for 40 years.” [That does not mean you are not a dissident, Father, Sir! You can be the worst kind of dissident even, because you are a worm in the very heart of the Church! The ACP is among those dissident groups that openly claim Vatican-II favored the kind of 'extreme make-over' that they want to impose on the Church!]

Still, many warn of a Roman Catholic Church reduced to a sect, or worse. [Joseph Ratzinger was far ahead of them, at least two decades - but more original and positive - when he said that the Church could conceivably be reduced to 'a creative minority' in the foreseeable future, in the de-Christianized countries, but that it would not be such a tragedy because bigger is not better, and much rather good Catholics rather than many Catholics.]

“The Church has to listen to its people,” Hoban says. “The stakes are huge. This is about the implosion of a Church. This is about something disappearing.” [Hoban 1) obviously ignores the entire history of the Church (how many times in the past had it been predicted to collapse and perish?) and 2) really has no faith in the Church that Christ instituted and against whom he said the gates of hell wouldf not prevail. Typical attitude by those who would remake the Church of Christ into 'my personal Church - as I want it to be'.]

In many ways, the Church is being torn by a classic power struggle. Reformers say Vatican II calls for a more decentralized and democratic church; the Vatican has instead centralized control while cracking down on doctrinal opposition for the past 30 years. [Both statements are flat-out partisan opinions not backed up by fact!]

A Church in tune with modernity was a central theme of Vatican II, and reformers believe a more grassroots institution is the way to achieve that. In the process, doctrines preventing women from being ordained, priests from being married, contraceptives from being used and divorced Catholics from receiving communion must at least be reviewed, if not changed. [If the Vatican II fathers had wanted all that, they would have said so unequivocally. Well, they did not - and no one has a right to distort what the Vatican II documents actually say, in an attempt to provide false backing for their extremist positions.]

The backdrop to the battle is a Roman Catholic Church in crisis in Europe and North America. Vocations to the priesthood are drying up and sex abuse scandals reveal a hierarchy [that was] often more interested in protecting the institution than protecting children.

“The Church is 200 years behind the times,” Cardinal Carlo Martini told an Italian journalist in comments he approved before his death in late August. “Why doesn’t it stir? Are we afraid?”

“Our culture has become old,” the highly respected cardinal added in his missive from the grave, “our churches and our religious houses are big and empty, the bureaucratic apparatus of the church grows, our rites and our dress are pompous.” [Yada, yada, yada! Surely, for someone who from all accounts remained lucid before he went into terminal coma, Cardinal Martini would have been well aware that the 50th anniversary of Vatican II and the Year of Faith were both imminent when he made those statements, which he also must have known would provide perennial ammunition for the enemies of the Church.]

In this atmosphere of crisis, rebellious reform groups are multiplying. Hoban’s association began two years ago and already represents 1,000 of Ireland’s 4,500 priests. In Austria, a group called Preachers’ Initiative, which says it represents 10 per cent of the country’s Catholic priests, has issued a “Call to Disobedience” manifesto that demands the ordination of women and an end to priestly celibacy. Groups in Germany and the United States are making similar noises.

[What can one say against the uninformed and sanctimonious malice implied in the following section which, I suppose, is meant to represent the 'typical' Roman Catholic parishioner, at least in Ireland? I won't even try!]

Parishioners are making themselves heard, too. In Ireland, where the Church faces its most dire survival challenge, lay Catholics are in the throes of forming an umbrella group that brings together existing reform organizations, such as We Are Church, and parishioners active for the first time.

“For too long we’ve had no say in the church,” says Noel McCann, 61, a member of the fledging organization’s steering committee. “It’s time that the rights and roles of the baptized be recognized and given an appropriate place.”

McCann has been a churchgoer in Howth, near Dublin, for much of his life. For years he helped celebrate Sunday mass with bible readings. If a church event needed organizing, McCann was there. Then the sex abuse scandals shook Ireland, the faithful left in droves, and McCann witnessed a Church “very slow to apologize.”

The final straw for McCann came when the Vatican introduced a new translation of the Mass late last year without consultations. Some priests have described the new wording as sexist and awkward, and are refusing to use it.

“People won’t come back to a Church that is totally clerically based and hierarchical, that marginalizes women or divorced people or gays,” says McCann, a retired commandant in the Irish military. “I don’t think Jesus would have marginalized these people. That wasn’t his message.”

“We’re not arguing for women priests or married priests, but we want those issues addressed,” he adds. “This is our last chance. If we don’t do something about this, in 20 or 25 years there won’t be anything left of the church.”

Pope Benedict XVI, whose pontificate has been marked by missteps, scandal and jostling to succeed him, has responded with a characteristic No. He has silenced dissident priests, and in his Holy Thursday homily this spring, told rebels to practice a “radicalism of obedience.” [The CDF has disciplined a couple of Irish dissident priests for writing heterodox doctrine, but their association is going strong, as are all other dissident priests who have been careful to not to cross the thin line that separates defiant disobedience and heresy.]

In April, the Vatican cracked down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which focuses on issues of social justice and represents 80 per cent of U.S. nuns. The Vatican department that once led the Inquisition accused the nuns of espousing “radical feminist” views, of violating Church teachings on homosexuality and the ordination of women, and of staying silent about abortion. It appointed a team of bishops to straighten out the nuns’ “doctrinal confusion.” [DIM=8pt][All of which is amply documented in news reports, the chronicles of the dissident nuns themselves, and their arrogant statements over the decades. sometimes referring to themselves as the 'alternative Magisterium'.! And yet they deny any culpability at all for their willful doctrinal defiance of the Church! They do not seem to realize that lying is just as much a sin as their arrant disobedience in violation of their religious vows. Not to mention pride in the worst Biblical sense of the word. ]

The nuns responded with respectful ['arrogant' is more like it, since arrogance is the hallmark of their dissidence] defiance. Their work for alternatives to patriarchy and unbridled competition, they insisted, is “heeding the call of Vatican II.” In August, the group’s outgoing president said the Vatican’s move triggered a “groundswell of support” for the nuns from priests and laity.

“Clearly, they share our concern at the intolerance of dissent,” Pat Farrell told the group’s general assembly in St. Louis, “(and) the continued curtailing of the role of women.”

Increasing the anxiety of reformers is the Pope’s push to bring the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X — cast out because it rejects Vatican II — back into the fold. Benedict lifted the excommunication of its four bishops, including one who denies the Holocaust, as part of unity negotiations. [The whole paragraph is an obvious mis-representation but that's the way MSM always plays it.]


Rev. Seamus Ryan, 75, had Pope Benedict (in portrait) as an academic mentor in the 1960s.

To Ryan, the Pope’s reaction is a bit of a mystery. He knew Benedict in the early 1960s, when the future Pope was a professor of theology name Joseph Ratzinger. A large black-and-white photograph of a younger Ratzinger — handsome, with thick hair combed back — hangs framed on Ryan’s living room wall.

In 1963, a freshly ordained Ryan won a scholarship to the University of Munster in Germany. Ratzinger, who was 36 at the time, became his academic mentor.

Ratzinger was directly involved in Vatican II, working as theological adviser to Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, Germany. Ryan recalls him flying from council sessions to lectures at Munster, where he would update students on the talks in Rome. For the young graduate of the Maynooth national seminary near Dublin, Ratzinger was a revelation.

“At Maynooth the textbooks were 40 years old,” Ryan says. “We were studying the creation one day and the teacher, the head of theology, proudly told us he got two paragraphs further in the text than he did three years before. Can you imagine?

“Then I go to Germany and here’s Ratzinger quoting poetry. It was a joy listening to him. He was brilliant,” Ryan adds, his eyes brightening.

“The Irish bishops were coming home and saying, ‘People ought not to be disturbed by the council, we’re spending our time in prayer.’ But Ratzinger brought Vatican II alive. . . I really felt that this was the liberation of my kind of priesthood.”

For Ryan, Vatican II pointed the way to “a Church that’s closer to the people; a church with a more human face.” It was a time full of hope and possibilities. [No, Fr. Ryan, the face of the Church is not supposed to be 'more human' - it is supposed to be the face of Christ!]

In 2005, Ratzinger was elected Pope after 24 years as the Vatican’s doctrinal enforcer, heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he attracted names such as “Cardinal No” and “God’s Rottweiler.” He called himself Benedict XVI.

Ryan used the occasion to write in an Irish newspaper about his days with his illustrious mentor. Next thing Ryan knew, he was invited to Benedict’s exclusive annual gathering of some 40 theologians, most of them former doctoral students of Ratzinger’s.

Ratzinger has been holding the week-long gatherings for years. He chooses topics of discussion such as Islam and ecumenism. During his pontificate, they’ve been held at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence.

“In one of the sessions,” Ryans says, “the sex abuse scandals had just erupted in Ireland and I was saying that the Church that got us here will not be the Church to take us where we now want to go. I feel very strongly about that.” [How condescending of Ryan to think Benedict XVI could not possibly think the same way - after his singlehanded efforts to have the Church respond as fully and as Christianly as it can to the problem of pedophile priests and their victims.]

Ryan made clear that rigid hierarchy preventing lay people from playing the role Vatican II expects of them was one aspect that needed changing.

“And (Benedict) kind of corrected me. He said, ‘There are certain things in the Church that cannot change!’ Now, I knew that, but I think he thought I was too radical in saying that,” Ryan says. [Obviously, the Pope was referring to the fact that the hierarchy of the Church is necessarily male because priests can only be male, and in this context, laymen cannot hope to be part of the hierarchy. There is more than enough for lay faithful to do at the parish and diocesan levels without aspiring to run the Church, as if the Church were just another human institution in which men can wield power, and not the Church instituted by Christ.]

Asked if he detects a change in Ratzinger’s interpretation of Vatican II from his days as a Munster theologian, Ryan looked at the portrait of his one-time mentor: “What happens to a man when he gets imprisoned in that Vatican? It must do something to him.” [Actually, yes, Father Ryan - even if the Pope is hardly 'imprisoned' in the Vatican, with all his public events and travels - but it does do something to a man to be elected Pope. The Holy Spirit transfigures him from a mere priest to becoming Vicar of Christ on earth, and one would expect a priest like Fr. Ryan to know that.]

Pope John XXIII announced his plans for the Second Vatican Council on Jan. 25, 1959, three months after being elected. Bishops and cardinals were shocked.

Seventy-five-old Angelo Roncalli, the son of a sharecropper, succeeded Pius XII, whose pontificate had lasted 19 years. Cardinals largely assumed they were electing a transitional Pope who would restrict himself to some tidying up.

Besides, Vatican I had decided in 1870 that Popes are infallible. So what was the point of talking? [And this sneering lack of understanding whatsoever - and the complete lack of interest in learning what it really is - of the concept of 'papal infallibility' is emblematic of the ignorant journalistic claptrap that masquerades as news reporting!]

The Church Pope John inherited was described in a 1906 papal encyclical as an “unequal society” where “the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.” [I must check out exactly what that encyclical said. I don't trust the reporter to have quoted it right and in context.]

Roncalli understood the world had changed. There had been two world wars and the horror of the Holocaust. The Cold War threatened nuclear annihilation, modern science and philosophy challenged church teachings, the sexual revolution dawned and decolonization opened spiritual markets beyond the church’s Western base. The Church seemed terribly out of sync.

Pope John wanted the council “to address the whole world and not just the Catholic faithful,” theologian Lavin writes in her new book, Vatican II: Fifty Years of Evolution and Revolution in the Catholic Church. One of its main goals, she adds, was to “work for a better world and not simply a better Church.” [Excuse me, Madame, but the aim of Christianity has always been to work for a better world by making men better men who live according to the Christian ideal.]

It was the Church’s 21st ecumenical council. Previous ones had been convened to debate and resolve matters of doctrine. Vatican II would instead be “pastoral,” focused on renewing how the Church proclaimed the Gospel — the way Mass was celebrated, for example, and how sacraments like baptism were conducted. [The object of liturgical reform was never merely 'stylistic', as the Novus Ordo fanatics have made it out to be - it was to return to a 'sanctifying' Mass in which contemporary man could participate in a sanctifying ritual, not done by rote, that sanctifies because every time it is celebrated, it re-creates the supreme sacrifice Christ made for mankind.]

It lasted three [FOUR!] years. Sessions were held each fall in St. Peter’s Basilica, fitted with bleachers to accommodate participants. Pope John died eight months after it began and his successor, Pope Paul VI, completed what would eventually redefine the Roman Catholic Church.

Two words described the ambitious exercise: the Italian aggiornamento — updating — was used by Pope John when he announced the council. It largely meant adapting the Church to modern times. [No, it means keeping the Church abreast with the times without necessarily 'adopting' its values, nor 'adapting' the Church to conform with those values.]

The other, the French ressourcement, meant a return to the Church’s sources - the Gospel and the traditions of the early Church. In other words, council fathers looked forward and back at the same time.

“This was the genius of the Second Vatican Council,” Lavin writes. “It moved the Church into the modern world by going back and reminding itself of what the Church was in the first place. . . In this sense, it changed not by presenting new doctrinal teaching, but by modifying its practice and mentality.” [Well, bravo, Madame Lavin. It is almost the first time I can recall such a presentation of Vatican II by any layman!]

The paradox would eventually develop into today’s deep divisions. During the council, however, extraordinary consensus emerged around the 16 documents voted. Dissent was restricted to a small group of arch-conservatives, including French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who established the Society of St. Pius X in 1970 and was excommunicated in 1988 along with four bishops he ordained. [WRONG AGAIN! In fact, Lefebvre signed all 16 Council documents. His dissent came after the Council, when the Novus Ordo was imposed on the universal Church overnight, and proceeded from there to other criticisms of Vatican II, which however, he never advocated to be expunged from history as his successors now do.]

“Fortunately, there is no crisis in the Church,” Pope Paul told the Corriere della Sera newspaper as the council ended in December 1965. “Even the formation of two parties — the so-called progressives and non-progressives — is not a sign of disloyalty to the Church. The discussions have all been for the good of the Church. There have been no signs of defections or internal dissension.” [The statements may seem naive, but they are a consequence of the timing. A Council had just ended, over which he had presided three out of four years. What was he to say - that it had produced a division in the Church? Seven years later, in 1972, he would admit to the chaos resulting from the dissent and describe it as 'the smoke of Satan' having entered the Church.]

The council changed the language of the Mass from Latin to the vernacular. It defined the Church as the whole “people of God,” rather than an institutional hierarchy. It described lay people, for the first time, as part of the Church’s structure and crucial to its survival. It enshrined the principle of “collegiality,” which suggested a decentralization of power.

The council also paved the way for historic talks with other religions by implying that salvation can be found outside of the Roman Catholic Church. [All of the above is a misleading shorthand of half-truths that has been used by the media for decades to tell the world what they - the media - think that Vatican-II did!]

It lifted the charge of deicide against the Jews and firmly deplored “displays of anti-Semitism.” [The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church makes clear that the 16th-century Council of Trent already did that!]

Finally, it set the stage for a Church more engaged in social justice. It denounced war and called for the change of economic systems that benefit the few and leave many in squalor.

“The task of the Church is to help to transform these structures so that all people can live in dignity,” Lavin writes, summarizing reforms noted in the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes. “Some reforms that could help in eliminating the roots of economic disparity are land reform, co-management, the right of workers to unionize and a just wage for all.”

[It is not as if Vatican II 'pioneered' this social doctrine appropriate to the post-industrial world, which had been first expressed by Leo XIII towards the end of the 19th century. It's just that it was the first time the world's media took note that the Church has had a 'progressive' social doctrine, based on core Christian principles, even if she has never volunteered herself to be a principal agent for this social doctrine because social (and inevitably political) action is not its primary mission.

It’s a stretch to see the Council’s reforms as radical. But much was done in the name of “the spirit of Vatican II” — a notion fueled by progressive social winds of the time. [Probably the first statement of the article's writer that I can agree with!]

Rev. Richard Delahunty, parish priest of Dublin’s Our Lady of the Assumption, experienced its impact. From 1968 to 2002, he was a Redemptorist missionary in Brazil, first in the midwest and later in the northeastern part of the country.

He arrived the year of the Medellin conference in Columbia, called by Latin American bishops to discuss Vatican II. Spearheaded by Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara, a key figure at the council, the conference spoke of a Church “listening to the cry of the poor and becoming the interpreter of their anguish.” [I have always resented this persistent Pharisaic sanctimony among progressivists when speaking about their concern for 'the poor' - as if the Church had never in its entire history been concerned about the poor, as if the Church had never preached the Beatitudes at all. But Christ's teaching did not mean the Church has to solve the material problems of man. Its primary mission is to prepare man spiritually for the Kingdom of God, because when a man sincerely tries to live the Christian life, then everything else becomes easier for him - easier to bear the inevitable trials of life because Christ too suffered, easier to persist in finding solutions to his material problems because he trusts in God, easier to deal with the world in general because of the attitude of Christian charity.]

It gave birth to liberation theology, a Marxist-inspired movement that cast Jesus Christ in the role of revolutionary. It focused on social justice and resulted in some priests backing revolutionary struggles.

Delahunty describes the movement as “linking day-to-day life with the word of God.” He and his colleagues helped fight land grabs, organized youth groups and unions, and trained people to be community leaders.

“Awakening of consciousness used to be a big phrase at the time,” says Delahunty, a tall, robust 71-year-old with glasses. “It was about getting people to believe in themselves.” [DIM=98t][Christianity makes people believe in themselves - Marxism does not, it makes them dependent on the State for everything!]

Brazil’s military dictatorship made that dangerous work. “I would hear of refrigerated trucks bringing bodies north,” says Delahunty, who became superior of 40 Redemptorists in Brazil in 1979. A rural guerrilla war was under way and Redemptorists would at times hide wanted men. Some priests were accused of being communists, jailed and tortured.

“Sometimes I would have be aware of what our men were doing and other times I told them I didn’t want to be aware,” Delahunty says.

In 1972, Pope Paul VI expressed concerned about the Church Vatican II had unleashed, prompted, Church historians believe, by a curia fearful of losing power.

[The amorphous, made-to-seem-monolithic 'Roman Curia' has become the MSM/secularist villain for everything that's wrong in the Church. Even knowing that there are ambitious careerist men in the Curia - vide Mons. Vigano, and to some extent, Cardinal Bertone, no matter how well-meaning - their existence cannot be ruled out, and must be taken for granted in fact, because the Curia, like any other human institution, is a bureaucracy, where anonymous middle-level men are able to promote schemes that are counter-productive if not directly subversive to the institution they are supposed to serve (the Church). But this does not mean that their schemes necessarily prevail over the Pope, who remains the supreme head of the Church, primus inter pares among the bishops of the world, and the only Vicar of Christ.

No one has claimed, with any substantiating facts, that Paul VI was paralyzed or checkmated by his Curia. Those at fault for the post-Conciliar chaos were not the men of the Curia, but the progressivist bishops and priests who proceeded to carry out their self-willed interpretation of Vatican II, actively promoted the indiscipline that characterized that chaos, and perpetrated their ideology in parishes, dioceses, seminaries, Catholic shcchls and universities throughout the world, with the active help of the secular media.]

He described the Church as wracked with doubt, dissatisfaction and confrontation.“Satan’s smoke has made its way into the temple of God through some crack,” he said in a homily.

By then, reformers who had found common cause during Vatican II had split into factions.

“After the council, the ressourcement people were fearful that the aggiornamento people were selling out the traditions of the church,” says American theologian, Charles Curran, adding that Ratzinger was squarely in the traditionalist camp. [The article writer does not inform the reader that Curran is a 'hostile witness', having been one of the few theologians disciplined by the CDF for teaching and writing doctrine at odds with the orthodox teachings of the Church. Hardly a non-partisan source to quote!]

The election of John Paul II in 1978, the most charismatic Pope in modern times, began a steady and firm clampdown on progressives.

On one hand, John Paul II gave full breath to the Second Vatican Council’s ecumenical thrust, becoming the first Pope, for example, to visit a synagogue. [Relations with the Jews are not 'ecumenical', a term that refers only to inter-Christian relations.]

On the other, he centralized power in Rome and imposed a more conservative church, particularly in matters of doctrine. Ratzinger was his point man. [Another ill-considered generalization. John Paul II was no more 'conservative' than was Paul VI, nor did he 'centralize' power at the Vatican any more than Paul VI did. In fact, one of the criticisms against him was that he was not even interested in the workings of the Curia.

But he must be credited for choosing as his official custodian of the faith the one man in the Church to whom he knew he could safely and surely delegate all doctrinal matters - in practice, the Pope is the ultimate defender of the faith - while he attended to evangelizing the world. With a doctrine that was kept intact by the vigilance of his Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith. You cannot evangelize with a doctrine that is wishy-washy or that bends with the ideological winds.]

Key theologians were disciplined, including Rev. Hans Kung, a high-profile reformer and Vatican II participant. He rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility and was banned from teaching Catholic theology. {Again, it is dishonest of the writer not to mention that this happened in 1979, three years before Joseph Ratzinger came to the Roman Curia!]

In 1984, Ratzinger imposed a year of silence on leading liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, a Franciscan priest who was also suspended from religious duties. Faced with further punishment in 1992, Boff left the priesthood. [Not true! 1) His 'suspension' from religious duties was for a year, simultaneous with his 'year of silence'. 2) He left the priesthood for his own personal reasons, getting married afterwards. It is almost as if he had used his priesthood only as an opportunity to play the revolutionary hero, and when that did not turn out to be possible, he had no more use for it.]

In 1986, Ratzinger banned Curran from teaching at Catholic universities because of his contrary views on sexuality, including his rejection of the ban on contraceptives.

[In none of these instances was Cardinal Ratzinger acting out of bounds. He was carrying out his duty conscientiously but without animus. He took less than a dozen disciplinary actions against dissident theologians in his 23 years at CDF, the most serious of which was excommunication. Consider how few were disciplined, compared to the many thousands of theologians there are who might have been easily deserving of disciplinary action but have escaped it because unlike those who were disciplined, they have been careful not to put down their questionable teachings in writing!]

The Vatican mainly reasserted control through the appointment of conservative-minded bishops, who, as Curran puts it, “never once challenged any Church teaching.” [But why would they, if, as Catholics and as bishops who have taken an oath to serve the Church, they had no reason to challenge it? You'd think that 'conservative' bishops are necessarily mindless puppets. In fact, the most brilliant of contemporary bishops have been orthodox, not heterodox.]

Delahunty saw its effect in Brazil. “What surprised me was how a group in Rome could be so negative at times toward a very serious group of bishops in Latin America in general and in Brazil in particular,” Delahunty says. “John Paul II, with all his charisma, (had) a kind of suspicion of what was happening, that it was ‘merely’ social action.” [And he was right! In fact, it was not so much social action as social activism, and a self-serving reading of Jesus's words to justify themselves. They chose to see Jesus as a political revolutionary when Jesus himself said otherwise - he rejected the adulation of the people who thought he would liberate them from Rome, and he told the authorities bluntly that his kingdom was not of this world. He did not run around Galilee organizing guerilla groups against the Roman Empire nor incite the Jews to blame Rome for all their problems. He ceertainly never told them "I will fight for you against the oppression and injustice of your rulers". God certainly did not send him to earth to correct the material problems of mankind, much less to end human suffering. Liberation theology as it was practised in Latin America and preached by the social activisis from Louvain was a contradiction of everything Jesus stood for, even if the LT beat their breasts oh-so-ostentatiously abour their 'preferential option for the poor'.]

The activist bishops were not anti-Vatican. Yet, one by one, they were replaced by people “chosen with obedience to Rome being a big hallmark,” Delahunty says.

The most striking example came in 1985, when, as required by canon law, Camara resigned as archbishop of Recife at the age of 75. He was replaced by Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, an ultra-conservative accused of eventually dismantling what had become known as Camara’s “church of the poor.” Some of the activist work priests were doing stopped.

[The question here is what did Camara's 'church of the poor' truly accomplish outside of gaining him great publicity? The writer of the article would have better served Camara and his cause - I do not doubt he was sincere about helping the poor, but misguided in how to do it - by stating some concrete facts for the neutral observer, instead of merely implying that just because someone proclaims 'a church for the poor', it necessarily led to better material conditions for the poor while not neglecting their spiritual condition. In fact, one would welcome an objective impartial article on what liberation theology accomplished concretely with respect to improving the lives of poor in Latin America.]

“The appointment of (Camara’s) successor was a disgrace,” Delahunty says flatly. In 2009, Sobrinho was widely criticized for excommunicating a 9-year-old girl who got a legal abortion. She had been raped by her stepfather. Her mother, who helped the girl, was also excommunicated. Sobrinho described abortion as “a silent Holocaust.” [The excommunications, while canonically correct, and well within Sobrinho's authority, can certainly be disputed on common-sense and charitable grounds. But he is right about abortions being 'a silent Holocaust', even if the observation is not germane to this particular case.]

As Pope, Ratzinger reinforced the conservative momentum. He eased restrictions against celebrating Mass in Latin, ushering in the return of a Good Friday prayer that calls for the conversion of Jews. [Another instance of deliberate misinformation. Benedict XVI, in fact, modified the pre-Conciliar Good Friday prayer in a way consistent with St. Paul's theology in his Letter to the Romans, a theology that rational Jews have always accepted, knowing full well that they have a prayer recited thrice a day which is more condescending to Christians than the original Good Friday prayer was to Jews.]

In 2009, he lifted the excommunication of the four bishops of the FSSPX, which continues to hold Jews responsible for the killing of Christ. [They most certainly do not. They swear by the Council of Trent, which already recognized that the popular deicidic belief of Christians was wrong! What they oppose, irrationally, is any inter-religious friendship with the Jews. ]

Days later, one of them, the Briton Richard Williamson, publicly denied the existence of the gas chambers used in the Holocaust. [It was not days later! How can the writer be so wrong about something fairly recent? In fact, Williamson had made negationist remarks on a couple of earlier occasions, about which the Congregation for Bishops, which vets all matters relating to bishops for the Pope, ought to have known. It was this inexplicable 'ignorance' of Williamson's record that caused the embarassment for the Pope.

Not that it had anything to do at all with Williamson's excommunication, which would have been lifted anyway, but at least, it would have come with a pre-emptive statement from the Vatican that his personal views, though historically erroneous and morally objectionable, have no bearing on why he was excommunicated, and do not constitute a canonical reason to prevent the Pope from lifting the excommunication.]

The outrage that followed forced Benedict to admit that progressives in the Church were now in open revolt. [Really! All his warnings and concerns expressed in countless articles and interviews going back a quarter century counted for nothing, and this writer would claim he just woke up to the fact????]

“Some groups,” he lamented in a letter to bishops, “openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the (Second Vatican) Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment.”

The Pope added that the Society of St. Pius X must accept Vatican II if it hoped to return to the Church. But he rejected any interpretation of the council as a break with the past.

“Some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church,” the Pope wrote. “Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life.”[/COLORE} [Obviously, the historic nature of the unprecedented letter was completely lost on the writer of the article! Pearls before swine, indeed!

Rev. Gilles Routhier, a theologian at Laval University and an expert on Vatican II, argues that behind the Pope’s effort to avoid a schism with the society is this Vatican calculation [Who is 'calculating/ here, but this so-called expert himself, projecting his own view of events to the Vatican? Being an 'expert' on Vatican II does not necessarily mean you have the right views about it. In fact, most 'experts' on Vatican II cited by the MSM just happen to be those who favor the hermeneutic of rupture.]

“Liberal Catholicism is in any event a lost cause. It’s a Catholicism that no longer attracts vocations; it’s a Catholicism that’s losing speed, that no longer has people practicing. . . Vocations are found in a more demanding Catholicism, a fundamentalist one. Therefore, we don’t sacrifice much by sacrificing these progressive eccentrics.” [It's a cynical view that Routhier projects onto the Church -but at least, he admits, in effect, that 'liberalism' is 'a lost cause'.]

It’s a calculation Routhier rejects, insisting it’s opposed to a central theme of Vatican II — adapting the Church to modern times.

“When confronted with changing times, the temptation of all religions is to retrench and reconstitute themselves as groups opposing that culture,” Routhier argues. “The danger for the Catholic Church is that it marginalizes itself and simply becomes sectarian.” [Marginalize, shmarginalize! Read the statistics for the Church worldwide, and she continues to grow, despite all her shortocmings and errors. In its evangelization, old and new, the Church simply transmits the message of Christ in its essence. The progressivists have lost sight of that message, in their preoccupation with power and the institutions that create and perpetrate earthly power.]

What’s clear is that Benedict believes a good dose of doctrinal discipline is required.

When the sex abuse scandals erupted in Ireland, he wrote an open letter to Irish Catholics that partly blamed pedophile priests on council reforms being “misinterpreted.” He said penalties under canon law were avoided and priests adopted “ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the gospel.” [And what is factually wrong with that analysis? If there were, the writer ought to have pointed it out.]

That, too, scandalized reformers. [But pray tell, where were all these reformers in the two decades that preceded the eruption of the 'scandal'? Did they raise a single protest against abusive priests? No. They were among those who justified the pedophile abuses as the consequence of priestly celibacy. And did anyone of them ever raise a voice to expose a bishop who had the full authority to deal with the problem but failed to carry it out? No. It had to come from John Paul II to centralize the authority for dealing with these abuses in the CDF, because too many bishops had chosen not to carry out their moral and canonical duty. Their dereliction was certainly no argument for episcopal autonomy!]

Nowhere is the battle and crisis more apparent than in Ireland. Nowhere has the Church fallen so much, so fast.

“The Church has lost the confidence of its own members,” says Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, who compares the scale of change to Quebecois turning away en masse from the church during the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s.

In the 2011 census, 84 per cent of Ireland’s 4.5 million people described themselves as Catholic. In the 1960s, almost all Catholics went to Mass. In June, a survey found 34 per cent of Catholics say they attend mass once a week. In Dublin, the archdiocese says 14 per cent attend a service on the weekend. In some parishes it’s 2 per cent, and most are elderly. Collections are at a trickle and church maintenance costs are rising.

In different studies, Dublin sociologists Betty Hilliard and Tom Inglis have argued that the change began with women regaining control of their sexuality. [Gee! How original! And what claptrap!] During the 1970s, mothers began urging daughters to choose education over uncontrolled fertility. And they stopped pushing children toward religious vocations.

Globalization and economic growth further changed attitudes. Then came the most devastating blow: since 2005, four government inquiries have revealed extensive sex abuse of children by priests over a 60-year period, and shocking cases of indifference or coverup by Church authorities.

In the Dublin archdiocese, 98 priests have been accused of sexual abuse. Ten of them have been convicted in court. So far, 199 civil suits have been launched. They cost the diocese 10.3 million euros in settlements and 4.9 million euros in legal fees.

The 2011 Cloyne report revealed a secret letter from the Vatican[Not 'secret', as in 'secretive', but as in 'private', not made public at the time because it was the business alone of the Irish bishops to which it was addressed] which, the report said, “effectively gave Irish bishops the freedom to ignore” sex abuse guidelines drafted in 1996. The letter sternly warned that the obligation to report abuse to civil authorities might violate canon law. [Total misrepresentation of the letter, which obviously, the article writer never even bothered to read, or he would have seen its context! Besides, the Irish bishops conference has stated that the letter did not change their plan of action at all, if only, because at the time of the letter, Irish law did not require mandatory reporting of sexual abuses by anyone!]

Shortly after the report’s release, Prime Minister Enda Kenny rose in the Irish Parliament to denounce a Vatican culture dominated by “disconnection, elitism (and) narcissism.” {And the writer is totally a-critical of the hysterical unfairness of Kenny's wild charges.]
The state itself, however, is not blameless.

Colm O’Gorman was sexually abused by a priest for 2-1/2 years, beginning when he was 14. “It made me feel that everything I was told about the world was a lie,” he says. He left home and slept on the streets before picking himself up and founding One in Four, an agency that supports victims of sexual abuse.

In 1995, he went to police with accusations against his abuser, Rev. Sean Fortune. Other victims came forward, and the priest committed suicide in the first week of his trial. The case resulted in the first government inquiry into clerical sex abuse. O’Gorman sued the pope and won a 300,000-euro settlement.

Today, O’Gorman heads the Irish branch of Amnesty International. Last year it issued a 430-page report, In Plain Sight, detailing not only the Church’s responsibility, but also how the state failed to investigate and prosecute allegations of sex abuse against children.

“We weren’t a country that questioned power,” O’Gorman says. “The authority the Church had in Ireland was an authority granted by us, and those who came before us. We handed that over and we need to reclaim that.”

A notorious serial abuser was Rev. Tony Walsh, a popular Elvis impersonator dubbed “the singing priest.” Allegations against him began when he was in the seminary. In 1978, the year he was ordained, he was posted at Our Lady of the Assumption, which Delahunty now runs in Ballyfermot, a Dublin neighbourhood where people struggle with unemployment and crime.

The church was built with cement blocks along a traffic circle in 1953. It’s rafters are exposed and it would feel a bit like a hangar were it not for a ceiling painted a warm blue and walls a warm red.

Walsh would abuse children next to the altar, where there now hangs a long banner with words of Jesus: “Love one another just as I have loved you.” Within months of his arrival, a complaint that he sexually abused a child reached the archbishop’s office.

By 1985, seven priests, as well as an archbishop and bishop, knew of sex abuse allegations against Walsh. When church authorities investigated, Walsh admitted to abusing three children. Yet he was transferred to another parish “to avoid further scandal,” a government reports says. He left with an archbishop’s letter: “I take this opportunity to thank you for your dedicated work in Ballyfermot.”

His housekeeper at the new parish told church authorities of boys sleeping overnight in his room, of condoms and syringes found there, and of Walsh “using” her underwear.

He was sent to counselling in 1988 and was finally thrown out of the priesthood in 1996. A government inquiry said it knew of 40 people who had complained of child sexual abuse by Walsh. “He has admitted to using children for sexual gratification once a fortnight over an eight-year period,” it concluded. In 2010, Walsh was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison for sexually abusing three boys.

Not surprisingly, attendance at Our Lady of the Assumption has suffered. Before the sex abuse became widely known, its 1,600 seats were packed. On a recent Sunday, about 150 were at the 11 a.m. service, most of them with grey or white hair.

Hoban, the co-founder of the reform group of priests, insists the sex abuse would have been sharply reduced, if not eliminated, if Vatican II had been implemented. [HAR-DE-HAR-HAR! One must ask, again, where were Hoban et al when all the abuses such as O'Gorman complained of, were happening? The progressivists did not suddenly drop in on planet earth after these sexual abuses peaked in the 1970s-1980s, did they, coinciding with the peak of priestly indiscipline in all aspects because of their mistaken interpretation of Vatican II as a license to do whatever they wanted to do!]

“A key part of Vatican II was that the church of the future was a people’s church,” he says. “The people are the church and the structures should give life to that theory.

“Decisions should not be made by a group of celibate men in Rome but by people representative of the church right across the board, including lay people.”

If mothers and fathers were included in decisions about clerical sex abuse, Hoban adds, you can bet those priests would not have been transferred to other parishes, where they preyed on more children.

[Yada, yada, yada. Why weren't Hoban and company fighting for mothers and fathers to be included in such decisions? Because they themselves either did not have any awareness that such sex abuses were being committed, or if they were, they rationalized the abuses by blaming it on priestly celibacy! Did anyone of them ever identify a single abusive priest at the time, much less seek out their victims to help them? No.

Irish society and its excessive deference to the Church to the point of inaction certainly bears part of the blame - not just the bishops and priests whom they, in effect, allowed to keep them as spiritual serfs. But the same inertia that afflicted the Irish in general also afflicted progressivists like Hoban who, like the rest of Ireland, found their voice about sexual abuses by priests only after the issuance of government reports that merely substantiated a state of affairs everyone knew about for decades but did not dare question. And might one add that the Irish government investigations were prompted by the Church in Ireland herself, 4-5 years after the Vatican took the sexual-abuse matter into its own hands.]

Archbishop Martin is widely credited with bringing a different tone to the church hierarchy. He handed over 60,000 documents from the diocese to a government inquiry and held a service of atonement, where he washed the feet of sex abuse victims.

[Continued in next box]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/10/2012 20:23]

I had to split the article because the postbox would not accommondate all of it...

Part 2
Roman Catholic Church still deeply divided
50 years after historic reforms
by Sandro Contenta


I'll let the following section pass without comment, because the exposition is more atmospherics than fact. And the atmosphere is decidedly 'the Church cnanot do anything right, nor can it be expected to". Which is the tone of this entire article.

Still, all priests are paying a price. Wearing a Roman collar in public has become a test of courage, if not a test of faith. Even an elderly priest like Seamus Ryan isn’t spared. One day, he hurried out of his Dublin parish, also in Ballyfermot, to reach the post office before it closed.

“You see, I had my collar on because I just rushed out with my letter,” he says. “These three fellas come up against me on the street and one of them says, at the top of his voice, ‘Oh, another effing pedophile.’

“My instinct was to say, ‘Do you really know me?’ But it was a bit fearsome because these big fellows could just whack you. So I didn’t say anything.”

Another day, Ryan found himself in the lobby of a hotel.

“I was going to the toilet and this boy was going to the toilet, too,” he says. “And his mother saw me and she raced after her son and pulled him back. Oh God — you feel so terrible. Honest to God that was awful. I’ll never forget that.”

Jane Mellett, a pastoral worker at Our Lady of the Assumption parish, hesitates to even admit she’s connected to the church.

“I’m out at a pub chatting with someone and I’m thinking, ‘Please don’t ask me what I do,’” says Mellett, 33, who says she cherishes the church’s social work with the poor and would have happily become a priest years ago if the church allowed it.

“A lot of my friends think I’m half-cracked,” she says, referring to her work and strong Catholic belief. “I’ve got a friend who wears a T-shirt that says, ‘So many Christians, so few lions.’ It really annoys me. When he wears it I’m like, ‘You wouldn’t wear it if it said Jews or Muslims.’”

Hoban puts it bluntly: “Priests have become almost demonized in Ireland.”

Hoban’s parish of St. Cormac’s is in Moygownagh, a rural community of 150 homes in western Ireland. The name in Gaelic means “the plain of the cows.”

The only pub, grocery store and post office are all in the same building, outside of which are two gas pumps. There were splashes of excitement in September, with red and green flags noting County Mayo’s first appearance in 60 years in the All-Ireland Gaelic football final. But young people are moving to the city and the place is slowly dying. One primary school is set to close; the remaining one has 55 children.

Hoban lives in a comfortable church-owned Victorian home on three hectares of land. He thought at one point it could have been sold to pay for the 300,000 euros needed to restore his parish. Hoban is 64 and won’t likely be replaced when he retires. Parishioners know it. They admire his passion for reform, and if it breathes new life in the parish, all the better.

The average age of Ireland’s 4,400 priests is 64. Retirement age for priests is 75. Last year, six men were ordained. This year, 12 seminarians began their studies at Ireland’s national seminary, St. Patrick’s College Maynooth. It has a total of 64 seminarians.

In Hoban’s diocese of Killala, 30 priests work in 22 parishes. In 20 years it’s expected there will be eight. At what stage, Hoban wonders, will there be no priests left in Ireland to celebrate mass?

Is it sensible, then, that in one western parish seven priests have been banned from practicing because they’re married, Hoban asks. Particularly since the Vatican allows married Anglican priests to become Catholic priests.

Likewise, the ordination of women and the dumping of celibacy becomes a matter of church survival, Hoban argues. Still, those reforms are not included in the Association of Catholic Priest’s manifesto, which simply calls for a “re-evaluation of Catholic sexual teaching” in ways that reflect the experience of ordinary people.

“We’re not going to give people sticks to beat us up with,” says Hoban, sitting in his sunny living room.

Five priests in the association have already been silenced by the Vatican or told to submit all writings to Rome for approval. The Vatican ordered the association’s co-founder, Rev. Tony Flannery, to stop writing a monthly magazine column, apparently because of his views on contraception, celibacy and women’s ordination. It advised him to go to a monastery for prayer and reflection.

At what Dubliners call the archbishop’s “palace,” Archbishop Martin says the Irish church is in the middle of a “culture war.” The Association of Catholic Priests, he says, is a voice among others on the battlefield.

“I celebrated a Mass on Sunday for the Latin rite traditionalists — it’s another world. But they have more people coming to Mass; they have 500 every Sunday,” he says. [And three cheers for them, whose faith has apparently not been dented by considering the sins of some bishops and priests to be the sins of the Church of Christ, which should therefore be discarded, disdained and demeaned!]

“We need areas of dialogue, but it would still be difficult,” he adds. “The people I was with on Sunday — put them together with the Association of Catholic Priests (and) I don’t know who would win the battle but there would be a battle.”

He agrees that a more decentralized church would have made it more difficult for child abusers to continue operating. [How can he say that when he himself has criticized on other occasions the failure of some bishops to do what they had the authority to do - which is to effectively discipline priests found to be sex offenders? It was obviously an area where bishops squandered their local autonomy by failing to exercise it when they ought to have. For all the facile talk about 'centralization' of power in Rome, it is just not borne out by facts. What multinational corporation would control a membership of 1.2 billion with only 2,000 personnel in its central office? From the very beginning, the universal Church has been composed of all the local Churches, each of whom has full administrative autonomy and liturgical leeway. But they cannot each have their own version of Catholic doctrine - that remains central to the Magisterium of the Church as eapressed by the Popes, who are dutybound to conserve and defend the deposit of the faith.

But talk of different power structures isn’t enough. He says the question to ask is, “What sort of Church is compatible with the change in Irish society?” And the answer must have limits.

“In the Catholic Church, it isn’t that everything goes,” he says. “You can’t just make up your own Church. We don’t own the faith; I don’t as a bishop, nor does the Pope. Faith is a gift, and we receive the gift. But I don’t receive it just for my own interpretation.”

The key is to reach out to young people, Martin says, and confront the fact the Church is no longer transmitting the faith. “Young people come out of Catholic schools and they don’t know the Our Father,” he complains. [And is that the fault of 'the Vatican' or 'the Church'? It is ultimately the fault of the local catechists, the local priests, and the local Catholic schools if they are unable to transmit the essentials of the faith, for whatever reason.]

“What I want to see is a faith formation that treats people as adults, that helps them live their faith in the adult world,” Martin adds, describing a Catholicism that inspires in the home and at the office. “Your faith isn’t about what you do on Sunday.”

Hoban believes that kind of Catholicism must respond to what Pope John XXIII, citing Jesus, called the “signs of the times.” [A most fallacious and unfair citation of John XXIII, who certainly did not mean that the Church must follow the 'signs of the times' in order to be aware of them but continue to preach the Gospel -and live the Christian life - against all contradictions.]

A survey earlier this year commissioned by his association found that 87 per cent of Irish Catholics disagreed with the church’s ban on married priests, 77 per cent thought women should be ordained, and 60 per cent disagreed with Church teachings that gay relationships are immoral. [The mortal remains of St. Patrick have been spinning in his grave for decades at what has happened to his island!]

“My predecessors used to tell people how to vote,” Hoban says. “Now people are much more educated than priests.” [So the new marker for being 'educated' is to oppose whatever the Church teaches! That's a new low in Philistinism. But then, the progressivists are generally quite Philistine, culturally and spiritually, for all the intellectual credentials they might vaunt!]

“The Second Vatican Council was not the reason I went to Maynooth,” he adds, referring to the Dublin-area seminary, “but it is the reason I stayed.

“My generation feels betrayed,” Hoban says. “I feel we have been sold a dummy. We were told, ‘This is what the Church would be,’ and then it was blocked.”

['Your generation was told...' By whom? You believed what the progressivists told you without having the common sense to read the Vatican-II documents yourself? No, you and all the rest who were taken in by the progressivists' false view of Vatican II were mindless puppets actually glad to be manipulated because it was the easiest thing to do - to take that seemingly rose-strewn path of false premises that the progressivist clergy and secular media had laid down for you. Did Christ promise that following him would be easy, that it meant doing exactly as you please without a modicum of discipline? Christ did not institute his Church for willful and arrogant persons later to debase it into a do-it-yourself Church with everyone free to remake it as they please, because then it is no longer Christ's Church.]

SUNDAY ANGELUS
Oct. 14, 2012



Here is a translation of the Holy Father's reflections today:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

The Gospel this Sunday (Mk 10,17-20) has wealth as its principal theme. Jesus teaches that for a rich man, it would be very difficult to enter the Kingdom of God, but not impossible.

In fact, God can conquer the heart of a person who possesses many goods and impel him to solidarity and sharing with those who are needy, with the poor, to enter, therefore, into the logic of giving. In this way, the rich man puts himself along the path of Jesus Christ, who, as St. Paul wrote, "for your sake (he) became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (2Cor 8,9).

As it often happens in the Gospel, it arises from a meeting: that of Jesus with someone who" had many possessions" (Mk 10,22). He was a man who, from his youth, faithfully observed all the commandments of God's Law, but had not yet found true happiness. That is why he asks Jesus what he must do "to inherit eternal life" (v 17).

On the one hand, he is attracted, like everyone, to the fullness of life; on the other hand, having been accustomed to counting on his wealth, he thinks that eternal life can somehow also be 'acquired', perhaps by observing a special commandment.

Jesus grasps the profound desire in this person, and. the evangelist notes, looks at the man with much love - God's look (v 21). But Jesus also understood what was the man's weak point, which was his attachment to his worldly goods. And so, he proposes that he give al1 of it to the poor, so that his treasure - and therefore his heart - is no longer on earth, but in heaven. He adds, "Come, follow me" (v 32).

But the man, instead of welcoming Jesus's invitation joyfully, "went away sad" (cfr v 23), because he could not detach himself from his wealth which would never give him happiness and eternal life.

At this point, Jesus gives his teaching to his disciples, and to us: "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (v 23). At these words, the disciples were disconcerted, and even more so when Jesus added, "It is easier for a camel to pass through [the] eye of [a] needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (cfr vv 24-27).

But seeing their astonishment, he says, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God” (cfr vv 23-27).

St. Clement of Alexandria comments: "The parable teaches the rich that they should not ignore their salvation as if they were already condemned, nor should they throw their riches into the sea, nor condemn wealth as insidious and hostile to life, but they should learn in what way they can use their wealth to gain life" (Who among the rich will be saved?, 27,1-2).

The history of the Church is full of examples of rich persons who used their wealth in an evangelical way, and who have even attained sainthood. Just think of St. Francis, or St. Elizabeth of Hungary, or San Carlo Borromeo.

May the Virgin Mary, Seat of Wisdom, help us to welcome Jesus's invitation with joy, in order to enter into the fullness of life.

After the prayers, he said:

Yesterday, Frederick Bachstein and 13 of his bothers in the Order of Friars Minor [Franciscan Capuchins) were beatified in Prague. They were killed in 1611 because of their faith. They are the first Blesseds in this Year of Faith, and they are martyrs: They remind us that to believe in Christ also means being ready to suffer with him and for him.

In English, he said:

During this Year of Faith may we, like the man in today’s Gospel, have the courage to ask the Lord what more can we do, especially for the poor, the lonely, the sick and the suffering, so as to be witnesses and heirs to the eternal life God promises. Upon all of you, I invoke God’s abundant blessings of peace.

To the Polish pilgrims, he said:

Today in Poland, and in all the Polish parishes around the world, you are celebrating Pope's Day with the theme, 'John Paul II - the Pope of the Family". I thank you for this sign of unity with the Holy See, for your prayers, and for your support of the young scholars of the Foundation "Works of the Third Millennium" which is in charge of preparing Pope's Day.

I hope that in every Polish mily, the living flame of faith, of goodness and of evangelical love may shine. I bless you from the heart.

---

The Year of Faith begins -
and Benedict impresses yet again!
Translated from

October 14, 2012

It is more necessary today than 50 years ago because the desert has extended, the void has grown. But what is necessary? The same impulse that passionately moved the Conciliar Fathers to communicate the faith to contemnporary man with his doubts, his straying, his prejudices and darknesses, but above all, who continues to thirst for the living and true God, for the meaning and destiny of his human adventure.

The week just past has simply been impressivee. One has to ask from where the Pope draws his energy, the light he sheds that is at once gentle and cutting, joyful without triumphalism, humble and sure of himself at the same time.

His way of narrating the Second Vatican Council wipes out so much commonplace incrustations, so much fog, so much empty verbiage: There has never been a rupture with the Church of the past in these fifty years since the Council began. Christianity is branded in fire by the presence of the eternal God who entered into time, but it is always new, "like a tree in a perennial dawn, that is always young".

This continuing actuality of the faith is the profound sense of the word aggiornamento, launched by John XXIII, and which Benedict XVI does not disdain - it expresses the continuing vitality of the Church.

It is not about reducing the faith and adapting it to the opinion of the times, as some would have it, but on the contrary, "to introduce God's today to the 'today' of our time".

So it was at the Council, so it is today even in new historical coordinates. It is true that the Council Fathers confidently opened up a dialog with the modern world, but they could do it only to the degree to which they were profoundly rooted in apostolic faith.

Without that rootedness, we have seen so clearly, dialog dissolves into simply assuming the mentality of the times. And if the salt turns tasteless, who will season the faith?

That is why the Pope reiterated it so often during this unforgettable week that we must go to the 'letter' of the Council = its 16 documents - which expresses the true conscience of the Church, stripped of ideological hypotheses and readings.

That is why it is urgent that the Catechism of the Catholic Church be the master tool to educate the Christian people in the today in which we live.

Once more this week, we have seen the sheer joy of being Christian. But as Benedict XVI told the 40,000 Romans assembled by Catholic Action for the candlelight procession last Thursday, "today, our joy is perhaps more moderate and humble" because we are conscious of the difficulties and obstacles along the way, of contrary winds that threaten to sink the ship of the Church. of the weeds that gtow in the field of the Church. At times, the pressure has been such that, the Pope observed, "the Lord seemed to have retired and forgotten us".

But all this is just part of history and not its principal part. The important thing is that despite our fears, the Lord has not been asleep. The power of the Spirit has not stopped working, but in his own way, not according to our expectations.

In a most beautiful way, the Pope said that the flame of the Holy Spirit is "not a devouring fire - it is a flame of goodness and truth, which gives light and warmth".

And that is why we have seen the Christian novelty grow in various ways: the new charisms, the protagonism of today's Catholic youth, the new responsibility of laymen in the Church, the passionate leadership of John Paul II who gave the Church a new historical profile, the immense capacity of Benedict XVI to announce the faith and point to its human results in the forums of the post-modern world.

"The memory of the past is precious but it is not an end in itself." the Pope said to the bishops of the world who had come to Rome for this week. Today as yesterday the love of Christ urges us, the thirsting heart of man compels us. And so the Church cannot recreate itself in nostalgia - it is irrevocably launched towards the future.

The deserts of today - just turn on the TV - has made the thirst of men and women in our time even more ardent, even if at times they express this thirst in frightening ways. We must understand this Year of Faith as a pilgrimage through these deserts, said the Pope, "taking with us only what is necessary: neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, nor two tunics - but the Gospel and the faith of the Church".

But only those who are shaped by the faith and rooted in the Church can dare enter those deserts to offer the testimony of new life, transformed by God, of their full and joyful humanity even in the midst of storms.

Only they - saints, in effect - can introduce "God's eternal today into the 'today' of men in our time".

Once again, we have seen Peter teaching the people. And what a great display it was.