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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI




Please see preceding page for earlier posts today, 2/25/15.



On this day, one year ago... Andrea Tornielli turned his attention for one moment away from Pope Francis to come up with the following story...



Not that anyone in his right mind needs to be told by Benedict XVI himself that his resignation was valid and that speculations to the contrary are simply absurd. And conspiracy theorists like the otherwise rational Antonio Socci deserve to be swatted down for doing disservice to Benedict XVI, casting doubt on his very honesty and integrity, by speculations, cited without any factual ground whatsoever but supposedly based on 'reliable sources' who are, of course, never mentioned. Nor do the purveyors of this conspiracy ever give a hint as to who these mysterious 'forces' might be who could both push one Pope into resigning and manage to elect the Pope they want - somewhat like those phantom Twelve Men or something who are supposed to be running everything in the United States from the government to business and industry to media since after World War II.

But one must admire Andrea Tornielli for having the journalistic common sense (which apparently no one else thought to do) to write emeritus Pope Benedict XVI and ask him questions that have arisen anew - gratuitously and without apparent basis in fact - about his renunciation of the Papacy one year ago. And for thus providing Benedict XVI with an opportunity to dispel all such speculation...

I have bolded the parts of the news story that have to do directly with Benedict XVI's answer, since Tornielli chooses to tell it by interposing much background information and commentary in between reporting what the emeritus Pope actually wrote. I hope that on his blog, he will post the entire text of the letter, which must have been necessarily brief and concise... This story was, of course, promptly reported in the Anglophone media, including Vatican Radio's English service, but I have chosen to translate Tornielli's own news report
:


Benedict XVI:
'My resignation is valid, and
it is absurd to think otherwise'

by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

February 26, 2014

"There is not the slightest doubt of the validity of my renunciation of the Petrine ministry and the speculations thereof are simply absurd".

Joseph Ratzinger was not forced to resign, he did not do so as a consequence of pressures and plots: his resignation is valid, and in the Church today, there is no 'diarchy'. No double governance - there is a reigning Pope with the fullness of his powers, and an emeritus Pope who considers it "the last and only task" of his days is to pray for his successor.

From the Mater Ecclesiae retirement home inside the Vatican, Benedict XVI took up pen and paper to rip apart the interpretations on his historic resignation a year ago, which have been raised anew in various media and on the Internet on the first anniversary of the event.

And he did so by a personal response to a letter with some questions that we had sent to him in recent days, after having read some comments in the Italian and international media regarding his resignation.

In brief but very precise terms, Ratzinger replied by belying all the alleged secret behind-the-scenes maneuverings behind his resignation, and requesting that no improper meanings be attached to his subsequent decisions. such as that of choosing to continue to wear a white cassock after the resignation,


As we all know, in a sensational and wholly unexpected announcement on February 11, 2013, Benedict XVI informed the cardinals who had come to the Apostolic Palace [to attend a consistory at which he announced the canonization date for the 800 15th-century martyrs of Otranto and two religious Bleaseds] if his decision, made in full freedom, to renounce the Pontificate because of advancing age, ingravescente aetate.

"I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry."

And he announced that the Apostolic See of Rome would be vacant starting from 8:00 p.m. of February 28, after which the cardinals would meet to elect his successor.

In the following days, he would make it known that he would keep the name Benedict XVI, and would be known as the 'emeritus Pope' after he left office (he signs the letter to me 'Benedict XVI' on stationery that bears the letterhead 'Emeritus Pope')

[I have seen Benedict XVI's handwritten dedication on a book he sent in gratitude to someone in November 2013 that is signed 'BENEDICTUS XVI', not Benedictus PP XVI' as he signed himself when he was Pope - and I think Tornielli should have made that important distinction. Which may not mean anything to him, because, in one of the earliest of his perplexing self-asserting decisions, Pope Francis chose not to write PP after his signature. But it is important, because PF does not issue official documents as 'FRANCISCUS'(the person, Jorge Mario Bergoglio using the papal name Francis) but as 'FRANCISCUS PP' (the Pope) as every Pope before him has done. This is a point I would like to return to later.]

Also that he would continue to wear the white cassock but in a way distinct from the Pope - without the capelet and without the papal sash.

At his last General Audience on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, in a sun-drenched St. Peter's Square that was teeming with the faithful, Benedict XVI said:

In these last months I have felt my energies declining, and I have asked God insistently in prayer to grant me his light and to help me make the right decision, not for my own good, but for the good of the Church. I have taken this step with full awareness of its gravity and even its novelty, but with profound interior serenity. Loving the Church means also having the courage to make difficult, painful decisions, always looking to the good of the Church and not of oneself.

He added that his retirement, to be 'hidden from the world', did not mean 'returning to privacy':

I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences, and so on. I am not abandoning the cross, but remaining in a new way at the side of the crucified Lord. I no longer bear the power of office for the governance of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, in the enclosure of Saint Peter.

Saint Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, will be a great example for me in this. He showed us the way for a life which, whether active or passive, is completely given over to the work of God."

Precisely these words about wishing to remain 'in the enclosure of St. Peter' has led to the hypothesis that his resignation was not truly a decision freely taken and therefore not valid - almost as though Ratzinger had wanted to delineate for himself the role of a 'shadow Pope' - but this is the farthest thing from his temperament and sensibility that anyone could possibly imagine.

After the election of Pope Francis, the novelty of his Pontificate, the shake-up he is giving the Church with his words and his personal witness, it was 'physiological; that he would be compared to his predecessor - and this happens with every new Pontificate.

But it is a comparison that Benedict himself has always rejected. [We know from simple common sense and 'knowing' who he has been all his life, that would and does reject any comparisons with Pope Francis, but to my knowledge, he has not said so, simply because he has not given any interviews or made gratuitous statements reported by visitors who have spoken to him since the resignation. But it is a question I wish Tornielli had asked him, so he could have given a definitive answer, the way he answered Seewald about all the unfavorable comparsions made betwee him and John paul II.]

In the last few weeks, as the first anniversary of his resignation was approaching, there are those who have gone even farther. to hypothesize that Benedict XVI's resignation was invalid and that therefore he still had an active and institutional role alongside the reigning Pope.

On February 16, I sent the emeritus Pope a letter with some specific questions regarding these hypotheses. His answer came two days later.

He wrote: "There is not the slightest doubt about the validity of my renunciation of the Petrine ministry. The only condition for validity is the full freedom with which the decision is made. Speculations about the validity of my resignation are simply absurd"


Besides, it was well-known to those closes to him that he had been considering the possibility of resignation, as he himself confirmed in the interview book with German journalist Peter Seewald (Light of the World, 2010), "If a Pope clearly realizes that he is no longer able - physically, psychologically and spiritually - to carry out the duties of his office, then he has the right, and in some cases, the duty, t0 resign:".

[That was not interpreted at the time to mean he was actually considering resignation, only that he expressed the conditions under which he thought a Pope ought to resign. and it showed that he had thought much about this possibility, surely since the final months of John Paul II's agony. In fact, he goes on to say - this was in July 2010, midpoint of the annus horribilis of his Papacy, when the most powerful media forces in the world sought to force him to resign by a merciless and unabating campaign seeking to link him personally to various specific sex-abuse cases from the 1980s and earlier that were mishandled or covered up - that a Pope, however, cannot flee during a crisis. Indeed, he would remain Pope for another two years and seven months, resisting even the 2012 media campaign centered around Vatileaks, also intended to hound him out of office because of supposed 'evil and corruption' in his Curia.]

It was inevitable one year ago, after his announcement - because never had a Pope in the Church's 2000-year history ever resigned because of old age - to link his decision to the poisonous atmosphere created by Vatileaks and by conspiracies witin the Roman Curia [What conspiracies, Mr. Tornielli? Were we ever told of anything outside the silly thirdhand story of a cardinal telling Chinese officials in 2011 that Benedict XVI would be gone within a year (he would be poisoned, or he would die of cancer) because there were some in the Vatican actively plotting to dictate who would succeed him as Pope?]

Benedict XVI's entire Pontificate was a Via Crucis, especially the last years. First, because of the 'pedophile priest scandals' - which he courageously confronted without blaming any lobbies or 'the exertnal enemies' of the Church, but rather the evil within the Church herself. And afterwards, because of the documents leaked to a journalist by his own valet who had copied various documents he was able to lay hands on in the Pope's study [covering the period from 2009-2011]

Therefore, his resignation was seen in this context. But Benedict XVI had said, in the same interview with Peter Seewald, that one does not abandon ship during a storm at sea.

And that is why before announcing his decision - one that he had taken months earlier and confided to his closest associates so that appropriate preparations could be made - he waited until the Vatileaks episode was concluded, with the trial of Paolo Gabriele and the confidential investigation he had asked three cardinals to make into the circumstances within the Vatican that had led to Vatileaks. He resigned only after these pending matters had been concluded.

[A dossier that he consigned only to his successor, at their first meeting on March 21, 2013, obviously for his guidance and information. From PF's lack of any references to it, it probably did not reveal anything 'actionable' in terms of serious culpability on the part of anyone in the Curia. He did tell the bishops of Puglia in May - two months after he received the dossier from Benedict XVI - that "there is a gay lobby in the Vatican - it does exist", which he would also tell the newsmen at his July 2013 inflight news conference from Rio, but without any statement to show that it was a serious concern for him, nor any details to support the statement (nor was he asked for it). In fact, it was the occasion and context for his celebrated "Who am I to judge" declaration.

If the three cardinals did discover anything more serious than the usual and expected human failings and misdemeanors of some officials and staff in the Curia, are we to interpret certain personnel decisions of PF exclusively in that light? For instance, if I were Tornielli, I would nonetheless look into the demotion of Cardinal Mauro Piacenza from Prefect of the Clergy to Apostolic Penitentiary, and the provisional nature of the confirmation of Cardinal Angelo Amato at the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood. Not, God forbid, that I am implying either cardinal may have been found to be culpable of something not quite right, but that it is a journalistic duty anyway, to look into these two egregious cases. if only because both cardinals have never been linked publicly to anything shadowy, so could there be compelling reasons other than just PF's personal preferences, for him to single them out for 'punishment'?

Moreover, this media insistence on considering Vatileaks a factor at all - let alone a serious factor - in Benedict XVI's decision to give up the Pontificate is a nefarious consequence of the fact that they had inflated it to an 'issue' far out of proportion to its actual significance.

1) Other than the Vigano letters, the thirdhand scuttlebutt about a plot to kill Benedict XVI (or at any rate, get him out of the way somehow by 2012), and Mons. Gaenswein's meeting with a former secretary of Fr. Maciel who said that the people around John Paul II had refused to let him speak to the Pope about Maciel, none of the 200-plus documents pilfered by Gabriele revealed anything new that had not been reported before. Not even Cardinal Bertone's less-than-glorious attempts to reinforce his personal power base in moves that were promptly vetoed by Benedict XVI - all that had been amply reported by Tornielli et al.

2) More importantly, not a single document revealed any specific case of 'evil and corruption' such as Mons Vigano and later, Paolo Gabriele, would claim. And yet, the media simply took their word for it and did not even launch any investigation to find out if there were any such specific cases. I always said that the fact they did not do this at all simply means they knew there was nothing substantial to investigate. Otherwise, why waste the opportunity to make an even bigger name for themselves than Gabriele or Nuzzi if they did come up with something truly scandalous, especially anything that would implicate Benedict XVI himself - who remained untainted by any of the Vatileaks documents but became the ultimate media victim of the entire disgusting episode.

Media simply used Vigano and Gabriele's words to 'confirm' what they have always written about the Curia, anyway - though previously without the venom that characterized their generic blanket denunciations during and after Vatileaks, A venom apparently ingested and assimilated. completely without critical judgment, into the bloodstream of the cardinal electors in the 2013 Conclave, because it obviously poisoned the atmosphere of their pre-Conclave congregations, whose theme appeared to be a wholesale rejection and dismissal of the Ratzinger Pontificate on the basis alone of his supposedly 'evil and corrupt' Curia.


In the letter answering our questions, the emeritus Pope also comments on the significance of his white habit and retaining his popal name.

"Maintaining the white habit and the name Benedict were simply practical matters. When I resigned, I had no other garments, But I wear the white cassock in a clearly distinct manner from the Pope. Even in this, the speculations are comnpletely unfounded".


[The question about the papal name is completely uncalled for. No Pope ever 'loses' his papal name, by which he will always be known in history! And no one ever says ex-Pope John Paul II or ex-Pope-whatever after a Pope dies! Except for St. Peter, all former Popes are always referred to as 'Pope..."

Before Benedict XVI announced his decisions on these 'practical matters' last year, many opinions were written on what he should be called after he was no longer Pope.

Some supposedly 'authoritative' opinions claimed that the most he could be called was 'emeritus Bishop of Rome'. An illogical proposition, to begin with, because he did not only resign as Bishop of Rome, but as Pope, which goes with being Bishop of Rome and is the more inclusive and 'higher' title. So his own decision - he could make it because no resigned Pope before him had to face a similar situation - that the right title for him would be 'emeritus Pope' makes sense: being 'emeritus' covers any and all other titles that he may have had as Pope and Bishop of Rome. Deciding that he would henceforth be called "His Holiness Benedict XVI, emeritus Pope" was not an act of vain self-assertion (as no one has dared to claim) but of respect for the office of the Pope, so that it cannot be demeaned even in referring to one who was no longer Pope but who had held the office of Pope ... But this is all water under the bridge now, because the media - and the world with it - certainly had no problem immediately referring to him as the emeritus Pope.]


And Benedict XVI gave clear and far more significant proof of his statement last Saturday, when he attended the consistory at the invitation of Pope Francis. He did not wish a special place of honor, but sat off to a corner, in the row of the cardinal-bishops, on a chair like theirs.

And when Pope Francis came up to greet him and embrace him, before and after the ceremony, Benedict XVI took of his zucchetto to indicate his reverence, and to make it clear publicly that there is only one Pope.

Last month, Swiss theologian Hans Kueng cited some statements written to him by Benedict XVI with reference to Pope Francis, in a letter dated January 24, 2014. The words were unequivocal: "I am grateful to be linked to Pope Francis by a great identity of views and by a friendship of the heart. Today I see it as my last and only task to support his Pontificate in prayer".

On the Internet, some have tried to cast doubt on the authenticity of the statement which has been instrumentalized for various uses. So we also asked the emeritus Pope about this. He answered definitively:
"Prof. Kueng has cited literally and correctly the words from my letter to him".

He concluded by expressing the hope that he had answered our questions "clearly and adequately".


P.S. Beatrice on her site expresses outrage that Tornielli should have written Benedict XVI with his questions, and thinks it shows a lack of respect.

I, of course, as an ex-journalist, respectfully disagree and think otherwise. Anyone is free to write Benedict XVI, and it is up to him to respond or not. He did respond to Tornielli, whom he has known far longer than the friendship between Tornielli and Pope Francis, and who, before the advent of Pope Francis, was always one of Benedict XVI's staunchest admirers.

(The fact that Tornielli has since found 'a newer, better model' as it were in Pope Francis does not invalidate the good things he wrote about Benedict XVI earlier, even if he chooses now to ignore all of that, as if everything good that Pope Francis says and does were the very first time ever that any Pope had said or done them. It can also mean. however, that Tornielli is simply the ultimate fair-weather friend, in which case, should we then consider his current eulogies of PF merely provisional untl a newer, better model comes along?)

I had occasion to remark with Tornielli's article about Benedict XVI's attendance at the consistory, that I do find it very disrespectful of Tornielli and any other writer to refer to a Pope, any Pope, baldly by just his surname, but it has lamentably become a bad journalistic custom.

However. I certainly do not think that writing the letter that he did to Benedict XVI was disrespectful. On the contrary, I thought at once that it was a commendable journalistic initiative.

Beatrice also believes that, given Tornielli's intimacy with Pope Francis, to the point of being his unofficial spokesman, he must have written the letter with the Pope's knowledge and permission. I personally do not think Tornielli would have even thought that necessary, when he was merely doing what a journalist with common sense would do! [Peter Seewald would not have thought to ask him, because he is working with him on a new biography that will include his Pontificate and its aftermath so far. Vittorio Messori would not, because he said in a recent interview that he respects Benedict XVI's desire for privacy, and expressed his outright 'amusement' outright at all the conspiracy theorists speculating about the resignation.

But Tornielli, unlike the other two, covers the Vatican as a daily beat, so he has a legitimate journalistic urgency to ask - and the perfect freedom to do so. I cannot speculate why no one else among the active Vaticanistas thought of simply writing Benedict XVI about this controversy, manufactured as it is, other than that they found it so far out, and so out of touch with reality that they couldn't be bothered.

On the other hand, if one ascribes ulterior motives to Tornielli for asking the questions directly of Benedict XVI, what was he hoping to gain? Certainly not added certitude or 'confirmation' that Pope Francis is tne one and only Pope today, and the satisfaction. perhaps even the Schadenfreude, of getting Benedict to say that. Which he didn't, not in those words, but by underscoring that his resignation was valid - from which everything else follows. But why would someone like Tornielli need any such explicit certitude from anyone when, apart from the lunatic fringe, which always exists on any issue, no one could possibly be in doubt that Francis is the Pope and Benedict XVI cannot be other than the 'ex-Pope' now!]

But even if Tornielli did clear his letter with Pope Francis, it does not annul the validity of his writing the letter at all. Much less, the importance of Benedict XVI being able to express himself, without taking the initiative, regarding all the wild-eyed, harebrained speculation being peddled by Socci and a prominent papal blogger, Antonio Mastino, about the invalidity of his resignation. (In which they painstakingly parse words that Benedict XVI himself had said, in order to find 'hints' of the pressures he supposedly underwent, or worse, which I object to the most, words that supposedly show he had no intention of giving up the Papacy entirely! They are really nuts! One is either still the Pope or not a Pope at all - there is no halfway measure.) Who would have thought that such an obviously transparent decision by the most transparent of all individuals would occasion these uncharitable and irresponsible speculations!

Benedict XVI's answer will certainly not discourage them at all from pursuing their speculations - conspiracy theorists never lay anything to rest - and they will now subject Benedict XVI's new words to even more exploitative parsing to 'prove' their demented arguments. But at least, he has an answer on the record directly addressing them. And an answer given rather promptly too. The rule in the media is that if you let unfounded speculation - i.e., lies - go unanswered, it is tantamount to 'confirming' it.

[It was different when the media big guns went after Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI on the sex abuse issue, because they tried to link him directly to specific cases, but their arguments fortunately were not borne out by actual facts documented and publicly known about those cases. Therefore, an explicit answer from the Pope himself was not called for and would have been superfluous and unseemly, given the publicly known facts. Of course, that does not exonerate the Vatican Press Office and all the other Church hierarchy, except Cardinal William Levada, who did not lift a finger to underscore the facts contradicting the media's own accusations.


The most notorious of this, of course, was the massive document dump placed online by the New York Times itself in its its 'scoop' about Cardinal Ratzinger's failure to defrock a Milwaukee priest who had been accused of abusing hundreds of children in the 1960s in a school for the deaf. The documents make it clear that the accusations were investigated by the Milwaukee police in 1972 and they found nothing actionable against the priest. Nonetheless, the diocese forced the priest to go into retir=ement because of the accusations. [Indeed, no one in the media has even thought to credit that diocese for having the good sense to do this, way back in 1972]. The case was brought to the CDF by a new Milwaukee bishop 20 years after the priest's retirement, during which there were no new accusations against him. By then, the priest was dying of a terminal cancer, and in fact, died four months after the diocese decided to reopen the case.

I recreate the facts of the Murphy case for those who may have forgotten the witch hunt aspect of the media crusade against Benedict XVI in 2010. Such was the tenuous and absurd nature of the accusations with which the big guns of MSM sought to pressure Benedict XVI to resign at that time.

Given Socci's track record for pursuing an 'idee fixe' (e.g, the 'fourth secret of Fatima') and the fact that Joseph Ratzinger knows from experience that Socci has always been otherwise an insightful reporter and commentator of Church affairs, it is important that Benedict XVI made the statement he did.

Nor do I think that Benedict XVI would have asked Pope Francis's permission to answer Tornielli. Since when does he need anyone's pormission to answer questions placed to him directly, and which could not possibly reflect negatively in any way on the faith, the Church, Pope Francis and his Pontificate? I am sure he did not ask PF's permission to write the lengthy letter he did to Piergiorgio Odifredddi! Or to Hans Kueng or anybody else, for that matter!

His answers to Tornielli make it unequivocal - all over, if anyone needed to be reassured - that he is not encroaching in any way on any of the reigning Pope's prerogatives, that he gives him the respect and obedience he promised before he even knew who his successor was going to be, and which he pledged in person during that first telephone call that the new Pope made to him from the Sistine Chapel after he was elected.

We have to live with reality. Media will always find a reason to stir up dead embers whenever they can, especially if the embers are from a conflagration entirely of their own doing. And have to do with a person whom they love to hate and who provides them with a convenient focus for all their hostilities and objections against the Church

Today, Benedict XVI has become more than ever a fresh target because the caricature of him that they have presented to the world provides them with the perfect foil to extol the excellencies of the person they consider to be the more-than-perfect Pope.

The media's constant misrepresentstion of him is really the main Cross that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has had to carry over the past 40 years of his life. Who more than he can realize that this is the specific suffering assigned to him by the Lord as his participation in the Lord's continuing Passion for the sins of mankind? In that sense, I believe he welcomes the suffering God has seen fit to give him. John Paul's affliction was physical, a concrete affliction willed by the Lord. Benedict's is s burden of false bstractions imposed on him by others, not something he has generated himself.

My attitude has always been that as terrible as all this seems to us who love him, God also gave him the spiritual resources and grace to help him carry his part of Christ's Cross. And therefore, as human as he is, he is far better equipped than we lesser mortals are to cope with his lot. If in the final stage of his life, God cannot spare him of the media scourge, may He continue to bless him with all the graces He has endowed on him so generously!




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/02/2015 02:54]
27/02/2015 05:36
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As the second anniversary of the end of Benedict XVI's Pontificate is almost on us, a couple of not especially exceptional commentaries is all I have seen so far.

In the first one, I don't know that I would call it an 'experiment' since certainly, Benedict XVI did not intend his retirement to be an 'experiment'. Perhaps 'experience' is the better word. And as to the second part of the title, did anyone really seriously think that Jospeh Ratzinger would obtrude into the affairs of the Church after he had voluntarily given up the Papacy?


The Pope Emeritus experiment is working
by Fr Mark Drew
February 26, 2015

Two years ago Benedict XVI became the first Pope Emeritus in the Catholic Church’s history. Thanks to his wisdom and restraint the historic innovation hasn’t led to disaster. [That's an equivocal and therefore objectionable statement. Why would one have assumed that it would lead to disaster, to begin with?]

Two years ago this month shock waves ran through the world’s media as Benedict XVI announced his resignation. There was much speculation concerning the reasons for his unexpected decision and the identity of his successor, while many commentators wondered about the consequences for the Church of having “two popes”.

Within hours further details emerged: the outgoing pontiff would not revert officially to being Joseph Ratzinger or even to the appellation of Cardinal Ratzinger. He would retain the name of Benedict XVI, which he had assumed upon election to the See of Peter, and would continue to wear the white cassock worn by successive popes. His official title, from the moment on which he renounced office, on February 28, would be that of Pope Emeritus.

The title was without precedent. Popes had resigned before, of course. The most recent – the holy but ineffectual hermit Celestine V – was pope for a few months in 1294. Far from assuming a position of honourable retirement, he was imprisoned in a papal fortress where he quickly succumbed to old age. One hopes that mistreatment did not contribute to his demise, but his successor had good reason to fear the consequences of leaving him at liberty. A former pope might have become the tool of a faction unfriendly to the new incumbent.

The College of Cardinals was notoriously prone to factional intrigue. Political leaders, aware that the stakes were high in terms of political and economic power, were only too willing to exploit divisions among churchmen. So medieval popes could not afford to be sentimental when the unity of Western Christendom was at stake.

Though he was to be canonised not long after his death, Celestine V was a danger while he lived. A gentle sequestration was seen as a necessity, rather than an affront to the dignity of the unfortunate ex-pope, who in any case was a renowned ascetic unlikely to protest vigorously against the rigours of his isolation.

The monastery of Mater Ecclesiae, within the walls of the Vatican City State but secluded from the workings of the curial machine, might seem not dissimilar to a form of incarceration. But Benedict XVI’s seclusion there has been totally voluntary and he appears only too grateful to have been relieved of the burdens of office.

This has not stopped commentators both within and outside the Church voicing concern that the newly invented status of Pope Emeritus might prove problematic. Anybody who has had a superannuated predecessor hanging round the office – or the parish – will understand this fear.

Days after Benedict’s resignation, I was asked by a taxi driver – a non-Catholic presumably little acquainted with ecclesiastical power play – if there was not a risk of Benedict cramping the style of his successor.

Many then shared his anticipation that the presence of “two popes” in the Vatican might undermine the authority and freedom of action of his successor. Some even thought – including some of those with a direct stake in the outcome – that the conclave was going to be difficult with the former pope still around behind the scenes. But
Benedict announced quickly that he would play no part in the conclave (he was already past voting age even if he was deemed still a cardinal).

But this was not enough to reassure the doubters. They feared (and some hoped) that the cardinals might feel unable to choose someone uncongenial to the former pope as long as he was felt to be hovering in the background. Then, once the new pope took over, would Benedict be able to refrain from trying to influence his decisions? Might he not become a focus of dissent, if the successor attempted to pursue a different path?

I told the taxi driver that what I knew of Benedict XVI’s character made me sure that these apprehensions would not be realised. He is a humble man, a shy academic more at home in the tutorial than in the eye of the media and having little interest in the machinery of power.

He truly believes that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, through (and sometimes in spite of) the decisions and actions of the men who govern her, even at the highest level. I was sure he would respect the liberty of his successor, remaining silent even if he had his private misgivings.

Moreover, Benedict is a theologian whose ecclesiology is probably more balanced than that of anyone else in his generation. He knows that, simply put, there cannot be “two popes”. Once a canonical election has taken place, and as soon as he consents to his election, the new pope is Bishop of Rome, successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ.

In the two years since I gave this answer to my cabbie’s question, nothing has led me to revise it. It is clear to all that the new Pope is markedly different from his predecessor in style, and there are certainly differences of substance with regard to questions like the relation of pastoral activity to doctrine and missionary strategy. [][What 'missionary strategy'? Other than paying lip service to 'mission' and the much-abused 'peripheries', whatever they really are, what missionary initiative has Bergoglio undertaken? De-christianization continues apace in Eruppe and Catholics continue to leave the church by the millions in Bergoglio's native Latin America.]

But it is not yet clear how far-reaching the differences are. Many Catholics, including influential members of the hierarchy, are alarmed and perhaps inclined to look towards the Pope Emeritus for guidance. His choice has been to remain silent.

There was a direct and unambiguous confirmation of this during the family synod last October. It was reported then that a group of cardinals thought that Pope Francis was overturning the clear and repeated teaching of his predecessors. Supposedly, several of them formed a delegation and went to Mater Ecclesiae to see Benedict, asking him to intervene. His response, they said, was simply to state that, since he was no longer pope, he had no authority in the matter, and that they should address their concerns to Pope Francis.

According to some versions of the report, he himself informed his successor of the visit. If the report is true, the cardinals would certainly have been disappointed.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s faithful assistant, has insisted the story is false. But we all know that denials concerning politically charged matters in the Church are to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Archbishop Gänswein is not to be suspected of untruthfulness, but he will be quite familiar with the principle of mental reservation – the more so now that he works for a Jesuit pope. A version of events containing even relatively minor inaccuracies can be denied without prejudice to honesty, especially when the subject matter is itself confidential.

Even if the story were totally invented, it still would serve to illustrate what I am convinced Benedict would do in such circumstances – and, indeed, what he must do, both as a matter of professional ethics and in Catholic ecclesiology.

So those who wish for direct intervention by the Pope Emeritus will remain unsatisfied. There is one respect only in which he will continue to exercise a role in the debates, and that is by the force and cogency of his writings both before and after his election.

It is true that he chose to revise his writings on the question of the re-admission to Communion of the divorced and remarried, renouncing his former advocacy of this pastoral accommodation at the very time it was the burning issue of the day. But even this is at most only an indirect intervention, and Archbishop Gänswein has assured us that it was long since planned and that its timing was purely coincidental.

The archbishop is, in fact, the channel through which the world gets most of the information about Benedict that the Pope Emeritus wishes to transmit. From him, we have learnt that he enjoys good relations with his successor, whom he likes and respects, and that he does not regret his decision to resign, and judges still that it was necessary for the good of the Church.

But it is less easy to explain away two further gestures by Benedict, relating to reforms that defined his pontificate: the liberation of the traditional Latin Mass and the creation of the ordinariate. On October 10 last year he sent a letter to traditionalists saying he was glad that the Extraordinary Form “now lives in full peace within the Church, also among the young, supported and celebrated by great cardinals”. On the very same day, he wrote to the Friends of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, welcoming the growth of the body for ex-Anglicans in England. [What's to explain away'? In both cases, he was asked to give a message, understandably, and he obliged.]

Such actions intensify the speculation, especially among those ill at ease with the orientations of Pope Francis. There are persistent rumours that Benedict’s resignation was not entirely free, and these are potentially damaging to the unity of the Church, because if this were the case then both his resignation and the election of his successor would be canonically invalid. In a rare, direct interview with a German journalist with whom he has close contacts, Benedict categorically denied that he was forced to step down.

Yet there were some genuinely puzzling details. For example, asked why he continued to wear papal white, Benedict explained that there were no other clothes available Surely, no one could have taken that answer seriously. It was clearly tongue-in-cheek, a touch of Joseph Ratzinger's characteristic German irony in response to an absurd question of why he continues to wear white!]a claim impossible to take seriously given that a trusted employee could easily have made a quick trip to one of the numerous clerical outfitters across the piazza from the Apostolic Palace in the days between the announcement of the resignation and its taking effect. Perhaps he was simply joking. [There's a world of difference between irony and joking!]

Then there is the ambiguity about what exactly a “free” decision to resign is. It is not clear exactly what sort of pressures constitute a lack of freedom as Canon Law would understand it, and it is certainly true that Benedict was under pressures from inside and outside the Church that would have crushed lesser men. In spite of this, all the evidence suggests that the decision was taken by Benedict himself, that he truly considered it necessary for the good of the Church, and that he still does.

Everyone seems to forget that for most of 2010, the pressure was intense from the most powerful media giants on earth to get him to resign, over recycled and rewarmed stories somehow blaming him in large part for the sexual abuse scandals caused by priests and for covering it up, though he was the first and for a long time the only ranking Church official to have done anything about it. But in 2010, AP, the New York Times and Der Spiegel threw all their considerable power and resources into trying to link Joseph Ratzinger directly or indirectly to sexual abuse or the cover-up thereof, openly seeking to drive him to resign. In July that year, he gave a book-length interview to Peter Seewald in which he spoke of the circumstances that he thought should compel a Pope to resign, but he added that no one should resign to run away from a crisis. He held firm, as the media's putative 'smoking guns' against him self-destructed for lack of substance. Later that year, he would begin using a rolling platform in St. Peter's Basilica, but he soldiered on, to be beset by Vatileaks in 2012. That turned out to be almost certainly the singlehanded work of a monomaniacal valet though the media insisted it must have had some ranking Vatican prelates behind it.

Meanwhile, he made significant historic trips to Mexico and Cuba and then to Lebanon. He also asked three veteran cardinals to conduct an internal investigation for him, not just of what happene exactly, but the circumstances surrounding the affair. Paolo Gabriele was convicted, he served half of his prison term and then was pardoned by Benedict himself. The three cardinals finished their report in December, Benedict XVI made Georg Gaenswein an Archbishop and Prefect of the Pontifical Household, and two months later, announced that he was stepping down as Pope. He had made sure he had cleared the decks before doing so. This was a man who did not wish to inflict the advancing infirmities of age on his exercise of the Papacy and therefore on the Church, for practical as well as for symbolic reasons. What the world admired in the obvious agony of the final years of John Paul II, it would mock and vilify in Benedict XVI, in whom every sign of infirmity would be turned into a metaphor for the Church - a consequence far worse than the physical suffering and inconvenience to him of advancing age.]


Attempts to undermine Pope Francis’s papacy by alleging that his election was invalid for other reasons have gained little traction. The best known is that of Antonio Socci, an Italian journalist of no little standing and a fervent Catholic, though certainly no fan of the current Pontiff. Socci’s book Non è Francesco (“He’s not Francis”) alleges that the election was invalid due to procedural irregularities whose complexities will go above the head of all but the most expert canon lawyers. So far it has failed to convince anybody whose opinion would count and has been all but ignored by other Vaticanologists.

Another opinion publicised by Socci, and this time quoted approvingly by others, is that Benedict has willingly renounced the government of the Church but preserves for himself some spiritual aspect of papal authority. According to this theory, Francis refers to himself as “Bishop of Rome” rather than “Pope” precisely to accommodate this mysterious division of labour. [What crap, which Drew didn't have to purvey! From the moment he presented himself to the world as Pope, Jorge Bergoglio chose to style himself 'Bishop of Rome', ostensibly manifesting his humility by not calling himself Pope, as if anyone would ever not call him Pope! It is also a pedantic and gratuitous insistence on the fact that the first title of the Successor of Peter is Bishop of Rome, by virtue of which he is Pope - a fact that means nothing to the rest of the world, or even to the majority of Catholics, who would never think of the Pope as 'Bishop of Rome', much less refer to him as such.]

But this distinction holds no water theologically. It is the Roman Church which holds the primacy over the Universal Church; it is the Bishop of Rome who exercises all and every authority involved in that primacy. [In short, the reigning Pope has all the powers and prerogatives of the Papacy. As an ex-Pope, Benedict XVI retains none of it, even though he continues to exercise his Petrine ministry in prayer, for which no needs authorization of any kind.]

What is plausible is that Benedict, in renouncing papal authority, did not mean to renounce the burden which comes with it – what St Paul calls “solicitude for all the churches”. He now carries the Church only in his prayers and by his example. Part of this spiritual responsibility involves support for his successor, for whom he prays, as we should. It is not insignificant that Benedict only appears in public alongside Francis and, indeed, at his invitation.

It cannot be easy for Benedict to witness everything that is happening in Rome today, even if the contrasts between him and Francis are not the hard and fast oppositions some take them for.

It must cause him some chagrin to see some of his orientations for the Church neglected or even reversed, and some of his most trusted lieutenants marginalised while former adversaries are promoted. [I would think that what he feels is sorrow rather than chagrin that his orientations are neglected or reversed; and as to his successor's personnel decisions, I am sure he is realistic enough to expect that a pope so diametrically different from him in orientation (Vatican-II progressivist) and personal style would have little use or tolerance for persons incompatible with that orientation and style.]

But he remains serene because he has an unshakeable faith in the Church and in God, who guides her with a steady hand while human leaders come and go. In this respect, as in so many others, we should heed him and seek to imitate him.


[The following is a nasty and thoroughly unsubtle putdown of Benedict XVI which is wholly gratuitous and unnecessary - the journalist didn't need to write it, but he did anyway. Out of spite, as if to say 'NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH'!.

It's the journalistic equivalent of a school bully showing off to the new principal (Bergoglio) by grinding the former principal's face into the ground. The usual media trick since March 13, 2013, of making Jorge Bergoglio look so far above his predecessor by pointing out how 'worthless' the latter is compared with the man elected by the cardinals to succeed him. I am only posting this for the record - since it comes from the current Vaticanista of AFP, one of the world's top three leading news agencies (with AP and Reuters)....


Two years on: Forgotten pope
sees out days in the shadows

By Jean-Louis De La Vaissiere


Vatican City, February 25 (AFP) - It was feared he would become a sort of shadow pope. Instead he has opted to see out what remains of his life in the shadows. [He has not opted for anything other than what any sincere person means to do when he voluntarily gives up a high-profile job - to withdraw into relative obscurity, which is not synonymous to "life in the shadows" In fact, Benedict XVI inhabits, as he has always done, a world of light, natural as well as spiritual, that owes nothing, then and now, to media razzle-dazzle and the glare of publicity. And just in case, the writer may have been translated unidiomatically and he meant 'lives in the shadow' (of Pope Francis) rather than 'shadows', then that too is false.

Except for geographical proximity, Benedict is completely out of the Bergoglian orbit, even if his private secretary is perforce part of the Curia. The Bergoglian world needs nothing from him except to 'stay in his place' and not obtrude in any way into their reality, even if the Pope apparently can tolerate his presence on the few occasions he has invited him to attend.

I am uncharitable enough to think that JMB means these occasions to underscore to Benedict XVI, "See? I am Pope now, and you are nothing but a has-been whom everyone would forget if I did not deign invite you to surface now and then!" It may well say more about me that I perceive JMB's attitude towards Benedict XVI as one of triumphal condescension, a kind of taunting payback for those eight years that he, who emerged the only challenger to Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 Conclave, was relegated by the world to virtual obscurity until he became Pope.]


Two years after becoming the first leader of the Catholic church to resign in seven centuries, Benedict XVI has melted away from public view, [And isn't that what he meant to do? Isn't that what the media and all his detractors wanted for him - total oblivion, if possible, and in utter disgrace, as they think of him?] even if he remains a benchmark for those in the Vatican who are unhappy with the less traditionalist, more unpredictable regime that succeeded his. [He remains a benchmark for all Catholics who are orthodox and therefore respect the deposit of faith that he left intact and burnished to the brilliance it deserves.][/dim

Anyone seeking a gauge of the relative popularity of Benct and his successor, Francis need look no further than the souvenir stalls in the streets around St Peter's: the new pope's beaming face is everywhere while postcards featuring the austere features of the erstwhile Joseph Ratzinger are rapidly becoming collector's items. [First, only the determinedly anti-Ratzingerite would ever call his features 'austere'; 2) Benedict XVI - and those who love and admire him - would be the last to question the phenomenal popularity of the current Pope: Joseph Ratzinger has always stood and shone on his own merits, without needing to be compared to anyone. If, as Pope, he not only survived but overcame the inevitably invidious comparisons to John Paul II in the first two years of his Pontificate, as the pope who voluntarily stepped down, he has nothing to overcome. Besides, is it more impressive and meaningful to be a souvenir best-seller than it is to be a book best-seller, which I don't think anyone even in the Francis fanworld would claim for their idol.]

Benedict formally retired on February 28, 2013, leaving the Vatican in a white Italian airforce helicopter for the papal retreat of Castel Gandolfo, where he spent a few months recuperating before returning to the confines of the Vatican and taking up residence in a former convent.

Two weeks after the helicopter ride, Francis was elected. Two years later, the first Latin American pope is a global superstar, a natural and decisive leader who has been credited with shaking up the Vatican, breathing new life into Catholic teaching and bringing the faithful flooding back into the arms of the Church.. [ 1) Which is to imply that Benedict XVI was not a natural or decisive leader; 2) What kind of 'new life' is being breathed into Catholic teaching, anyway?: and 3) there are no statistics so far to back up these anecdotal impression of 'faithful flooding back into the arms of the Catholic Church' - indeed, the Church continues to lose members by the tens of thousands in Europe and in the millions in Latin America.]

Whether being eclipsed so comprehensively rankles to any extent with Benedict is anyone's guess. But there has been no hint of that in the handful of public or reported statements to emanate from him over the last two years. [De La Vaissiere obviously does not appreciate how Benedict XVI constantly effaced himself (i.e., 'self-eclipsed') himself during his years as Pope in order to 'put nothing ahead of Christ', as St. Benedict exhorted. Benedict's Pontificate was never about himself or about being the star - if he had been self-centered or worldly in any way, he never would have given it up.]

A year ago he was quoted as saying that his decision to step down had been the product of a mystical experience and that Francis's confident leadership had helped him understand why God had willed him to step aside. [That apocryphal account was immediately denied at the time by Georg Gaenswein.]

He wrote to Italian newspaper La Stampa to dismiss a claim that he had been forced out against his will: which, were it true, would invalidate Francis's status as the leader of the Church.

There has also been much speculation that Benedict quit because he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, unable to cope with the pressure of the top job in an institution beset by a series of problems ranging from paedophile clerics to financial scandals surrounding the Vatican bank.

The leaking of his personal correspondence by his butler Paolo Gabriele was said to have left Benedict deeply dismayed, the resulting court case having lifted the lid on a Vatican hierarchy beset by corruption, nepotism and fierce internal rivalries.
[There! He finally brought it in - the MSM boilerplate crafted out of bald-faced exaggeration if not sheer fiction about Vatileaks. But what nepotism? That's one charge never brought up. What 'fierce rivalries'? No cardinals tried to trump any other [the way Cardinal Coccopalmeiro is now trying to upstage Cardinal Pell], and nothing in the Vatileaks documents even indicated that other staple fiction of the era - of cardinals seeking to outmaneuver each other for the post-Benedict succession! Certainly no one in the Curia, considering that far and away the only Italian papabile in view at the time was Cardinal Scola, off in Venice and then Milan and not implicated at all in any of the leaked documents.]

On all those questions however, the now Emeritus Pope has maintained a discreet silence, as he promised he would at the time of his departure. [And why would he do otherwise? The problem with journalists is that they keep judging Benedict XVI as if he were an 'average' man like they are. He decided to resign as Pope - that's it! No one needs to tell him about the inexorable abyss that forever deprives him of any of the powers and prerogatives of a Pope. 'Average' thinking cannot imagine a Pope ever giving up being Pope, just as it cannot imagine an ex-Pope retreating as far into the background as he can in order to serve the Church in a new way - in prayer and contemplation as the contemplative orders do.

Whether he genuinely approves of Francis in terms of style and/or substance remains unknown. [What does it matter what he thinks of his successor? On the day he stepped down as Pope, he promised 'respect and obedience' to whoever would succeed him. Though I wonder if he will feel dutybound to speak out if and when his successor enacts 'communion for everyone' in the universal Church!]

But what does seem clear is that the 87-year-old seems to be in better health now than he was when he made his shock announcement to cardinals that he no longer had the strength of mind or body to carry on.

His private secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, recently revealed that Benedict regularly plays Mozart on the piano from memory.

He is a little unsteady on his legs at times but not alarmingly so for a man approaching his 88th birthday.

And intellectually, according to Ganswein, he is as sharp as ever, having recently produced a theological text on questions of truth for the benefit of Vatican scholars. [??? That bit of information has completely escaped me, mea culpa! Must check it out.][colore]

Francis has insisted there is no friction between the two popes. "The last time there were two or three popes, they didn't talk among themselves and they fought over who was the true pope," he joked in July 2013.

And there was a flash of affection when the new pope said of the unusual situation of having two popes living so close to each other: "It is like having a grandfather – a wise grandfather – living at home." [Which I did not at all read as 'a flash of affection' but rather as a condescending remark. Especially since Benedict is only ten years older than Bergoglio.]

But Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli says no one should be in any doubt as to who is the boss. "Benedict is very discreet. If he appears in public it is at Francis's request." [Another totally gratuitous comment, especially from Tornielli. Who, in his right mind, would doubt who is the Pope, but to use the word 'boss' is to underscore - unnecessarily - that Benedict 'takes orders' from Francis, as if the Pope's invitations were commands rather than invitations.]
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In his independent account of what some are now calling Synodgate, Edward Pentin at the National Catholic Register adds details to the story first broken to the public by kath.net's Vaticanista...

Isn't this just as bad?
Baldisseri says '5 cardinal' books not 'stolen'
but ordered 'intercepted' at Vatican Post Office

by Edward Pentin
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER
February 25, 2015

...Reliable and high level sources allege the head of secretariat of the synod of bishops, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, ordered they be intercepted because they would “interfere with the synod.”

A source told me that Baldisseri was “furious” the book had been mailed to the participants and ordered staff at the Vatican post office to ensure they did not reach the Paul VI Hall. Reports of the book’s interception have also appeared on German news sites in recent days.

Those responsible for mailing the books meticulously tried to avoid interception, ensuring the copies were sent through the proper channels within the Italian and Vatican postal systems. The synod secretariat nevertheless claims they were mailed “irregularly,” without going through the Vatican post office, and so had a right to intercept them.

The book’s mailers strongly refute this, saying they were legitimately mailed. Some copies were successfully delivered.

Sources say it’s not clear where the intercepted copies of the book ended up, but believe they may have been destroyed. Asked in December about the claims, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said he “knew nothing” about the allegations and said the sources did not seem to him to be “serious and objective." [So Lombardi already dismissed this story before! I believe he used exactly the same words to dismiss Sandro Magister's investigative reporting about papal pet Mons. Ricca back in July 2013. The terrible thing about Lombardi's denials is 1) they do not confront the actual charges made at all, simply fismisses them offhand; and 2) given the apparent evidence that the facts alleged either have documented proof (Ricca) or widespread but heretofore only whispered knowledge in the Vatican (Baldisseri), how can we say that Lombardi himself is 'serious and objective' in his denials? Is this not a form of lying?]

Since then the allegations have become more widely known and have been corroborated at the highest levels of the church.

All the implications
of Baldisseri's 'interception'

by Carl E. Olson
CWR BLOG
February 25, 2015

Both Kath.net and Edward Pentin are reporting that Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, head of secretariat of the synod of bishops, ordered the interception of over a hundred copies of the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ, which had been mailed to participants in last October’s Extraordinary Synod.

The book, which consists of essays by five Cardinals—including Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller — and four other scholars, was written in response to Cardinal Walter Kasper’s book The Gospel of the Family, and defends the Church’s teaching that Catholics who have been divorced and civilly remarried cannot receive Holy Communion. It was edited by Fr. Robert Dodaro, OSA, who was interviewed about it by CWR last September.

Pentin reports:

Reliable and high level sources allege the head of secretariat of the synod of bishops, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, ordered they be intercepted because they would “interfere with the synod.”

A source told me that Baldisseri was “furious” the book had been mailed to the participants and ordered staff at the Vatican post office to ensure they did not reach the Paul VI Hall.


Kath.net reports that around 200 copies of the book were mailed, but only a few apparently made it into the hands of the proper recipients, a report that has also been confirmed by Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, of Ignatius Press.

Pentin states that the books were mailed through "the proper channels within the Italian and Vatican postal systems", but that Baldisseri claimed they were mailed "irregularly," and so the interception of the books was legitimate.

In other words, Baldisseri has apparently admitted that the books were taken; the dispute is over why they were taken. Pentin further reports that the books were apparently destroyed after being taken.

Three months ago, Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said he knew nothing about allegations regarding the stolen/intercepted/confiscated books, and dismissed the sources for the allegations as not being “serious and objective."

Pentin, a veteran and respected Vatican reporter who recorded a controversial interview with Kasper during the Synod, concludes his report by stating that since December, "the allegations have become more widely known and have been corroborated at the highest levels of the church."

What to make of this? First, as Fr. Z notes, these allegations involve a serious crime:

When the organizers of the Synod realized what had been sent to the members of the Synod, someone removed all the envelopes from the members’ mail boxes!

That’s called theft. That’s called illegal. They stole people’s mail. Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t that a crime in, I think, every country? The Vatican City State… that’s a country… isn’t it.

Secondly, it adds to the already much-debated and controversial nature of the Synod, which was marked by discord, accusations of manipulation, and a mid-Synod report that sparked anger and accusations that there was a concerted effort being made to push through statements that were pro-homosexual and contrary to established Church teaching.

Third, it raises serious questions about the motives and leadership of Cardinal Baldisseri, who has already gone on record with some contentious statements apparently aimed at those defending Church teaching on marriage, divorce, remarriage, and Communion. A month ago, he made the following remarks to Aleteia:

Therefore, there’s no reason to be scandalized that there is a cardinal or a theologian saying something that’s different than the so-called ‘common doctrine.’ This doesn’t imply a going against. It means reflecting. Because dogma has its own evolution; that is a development, not a change.


The cardinal added that it is “right that there is a reaction” and that

this is exactly what we want today. We want to discuss things, but not in order to call things into doubt, but rather to view it in a new context, and with a new awareness. Otherwise, what’s theology doing but repeating what was said in the last century, or 20 centuries ago?


Baldisseri said "discussions are welcome," although one has to wonder how such a welcoming approach can be squared with the decision to intercept and perhaps destroy copies of a book that is a part of those discussions.

Fourth, it raises questions about the transparency and openness that supposedly mark the current pontificate. If these allegations are true, will they be properly addressed? If not, it may well raise further questions about the reforms that Francis is pursuing in the Curia.

Put simply, are these the sort of actions that a pope wishes to be taking place, especially after having renounced "the sickness of rivalry and vainglory" during his Christmas address to the Curia?

Finally, what does this indicate about the motives and judgment of those who are apparently intent on not only shutting down real discussion and open debate — at both last year's Synod and the approaching Synod of Bishops — but who will engage in such heavy-handed tactics in order to get their way?

Remaining in the Truth of Christ is both a work of scholarship and of pastoral engagement; it is not an angry, polemical screed or the result of a bullying strategy. It takes seriously Pope Francis' call for open discussion, a call that some, apparently, at least in this instance, seem uninterested in following.

Does anyone really believe that Baldisseri could say and do the things he says and does if he did not know that JMB has his back? He may not have been ordered to say and do the egregious and outrageously unabashed things he says and does, but surely, not without the Pope's knowledge.

Or, FOFs might seek to insulate the master from his minions' misjudgments and misdeeds by saying he's really giving everyone free rein in the spirit of parrhesia (I am beginning to loath the term as much as I do 'spirit of Vatican II') - though it seems JMB only meant one-sided parrhesia. Kasper, Baldisseri and their ilk can say anything they want, no matter how near-heretical, but opponents of the Pope's true agenda which he has conveniently piggybacked on 'the family' must not be allowed to practise parrhesia at all!

Anyway, what an exemplary (and growing?) rogues gallery we now have among 'the Pope's men'! - Ricca, Volpi, Rosica, Baldisseri...


I frankly don't understand the title of the following commentary by canon lawyer Ed Peters. How can a blunder be worse than a crime? In this case, we have a blunder that is also a crime and, of course, a sin (multiple sins, in fact)!

It was worse than a crime -
it was a blunder

by Edward Peters
IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAW
February 26, 2015

There are credible reports that Lorenzo Cardinal Baldisseri, head of the secretariat for the Synod of Bishops, ordered the confiscation of
pro-marriage materials legally mailed to synod participants last October.

In addition to whatever international and/or Vatican City State laws might have been violated thereby, and besides the possibility of the violation of Canon 1389 (abuse of ecclesiastical office), this action, if indeed it was taken by ranking prelate, offends at a level that will, I suggest, haunt Church staffers for years to come.

I cannot count the number of times over the decades that I have heard good Catholics, concerned for this problem or that in the Church, despair of having their voice heard as follows: “Why should I bother writing to the bishop? Someone on his staff will not like my letter and will make sure it never gets to him.”

I have many, many times, assured Catholics that such “mail-filtering” was a myth and that, in my experience, bishops see every letter addressed to them. They don’t always answer, I admit, but they do see it. Who knows, perhaps a few Catholics decided to write to their bishops after all, upon my comments.

Now, the myth of ecclesiastics filtering mail that they don’t want others to see has been given a new lease on life. We will be decades living the story down. Put another way, this stunt, assuming it happened as it seems to have happened, was worse than a crime—it was a blunder.

The truth of this matter needs to come out, and, if the story is false, it needs to be contradicted if only for the common good; if it’s true, consequences need to come. Quickly.

Ummm, you think something clarificatory will come of Synodgate? Outright denial and dismissal or conscientiously ignoring anything that might seem to blot the copybook of the pluperfect Pope and his Pontificate seems to be SOP at the Vatican these days. With little or no reaction from media and the liberal chatterati. Who never allowed the slightest incident they could call a 'gaffe' to escape their collective sententiousness during Benedict XVI's Pontificate - of which, fortunately, even by the most avid 'gaffe-watchers' like Marco Politi and John Allen, never exceeded seven incidents in eight years, if I recall right.

But no one in the mainstream of anything says anything about the gaffe-nearly-everyday and chronic eyebrow-raising heterodoxies of the beloved idolized reigning Pope! I really ought to start keeping a blunder-and-error diary of the pluperfect Pontificate. I only have 23 months to review to make it 'comprehensive.


NB: In the past few days, two other developments that deserve attention:
1) Internal discord over Cardinal Pell's Secretariat of the Economy and its powers (one year since the Pope created a Council for the Economy, the Secretariat for the Economy and a new office for Vatican Auditor-General, minus supporting statutes for any of these offices - neither the Council nor the Secretariat has a charter yet, nor has an Auditor-General been named), and some itnernal efforts to discredit Pell personally.

2)A serious if not unprecedented declaration of autonomy from the Roman Catholic Church, at least in modern times, by the bishops of Germany led by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who sits on the Pope's nine-man advisory Crown Council. As I have pointed out before, Marx has turned out to be the most flagrant subversive in the Church hierarchy today (probably next only to Jorge Bergoglio himself, who however, has taken great jesuitical care to hedge himself from outright declarations on doctrine that critics could use as GOTCHA! exclamation points to underscore his obvious heterodox thinking on some important doctrinal issues, though he has been far more open and explicit about his 'pastoral' intentions, i.e., his idea of how to apply Catholic doctrine to allow pastoral leniency in many 'No-No' situations.

Meanwhile, Pell seems to be under siege by a fellow cardinal, Francesco Coccopalmiero, who heads the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts (and must therefore approve any proposed statutes for new Vatican structures created under the Bergoglian reform of the Curia).

Yet Coccopalmiero is a card-carrying FOF, being one of the charter members and movers behind the formal 'Friends of Francis' association that started meeting after the October 2014 family synod to articulate full support for any and all Bergoglian initiatves. What does it say that he has felt it is OK for him to come out openly against Cardinal Pell, effectively become the #2 man at the Vatican?

Cardinal Pell - who has made no secret of his opposition to the 'Kasper proposal' (which is really the Bergoglio-Kasper proposal) - has now written an unequivocal article for THE CATHOLIC THING restating his adherence to Catholic orthodoxy in this matter. (Perhaps the editors of the Five Cardinals Book ought to have solicited an article from him last summer when preparing to pbulish the book.) I shall post the Pell article in a different box.

I need to pick out articles to best present the Covvopalmiero anti-Pell initiative and Cardinal Marx's defiant mew articulation of a much earlier 'Kasper proposal' dating to the 1990s - that local churches take precedence over the universal Church, and not the other way around. Both St. John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI have bluntly shot down that argument, but that has not shut the issue.

Which, in some way, Jorge Bergoglio endorses in his concept of giving doctrinal authority to national bishops' conferences, which seems to be an abdication, or power-shraing at the very least, of the Supreme Pontiff's function to define doctrine for the universal Church, but always on the basis of the deposit of faith that was handed down to him, when he was elected Pope, for him to continue to uphold, safeguard and defend.
[dim]
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It turns out that Cardinal Pell's piece is a minor succinct masterpiece of tactful indirect criticism that could well be addressed against Cardinals Kasper, Baldisseri and their fellow advocates of Bergoglio style pastoral mercy, and not necessarily against Jorge Mario Bergoglio. But Pell tackles both the marriage-and-adultery preaching of Jesus to his lesson on forgiveness that ends with the injunction "Go and sin no more". Despite a deniability, in the impersonal way the statement is worded, of who precisely is being targeted, it's hard not to see that it refers to the much-vaunted Bergoglian preaching on mercy... Do you suppose the likes of Cardinal Wuerl will go against Pell next for 'dissenting'? It's one thing to diss Cardinal Burke who is, after all, poersona non grata at the Vatican, but Pell is still the second most powerful man there now. So how do you diss the Pope's 'right hand'?

What about Henry VIII?
By Cardinal George Pell

Thursday, February 262015

Interestingly, Jesus’s hard teaching that “what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Mt 19:6) follows not long after his insistence to Peter on the necessity of forgiveness (see Mt 18:21–35).

It is true that Jesus did not condemn the adulterous woman who was threatened with death by stoning, but he did not tell her to keep up her good work, to continue unchanged in her ways. He told her to sin no more (see Jn 8:1–11).

[If writing articles is Cardinal Pell's only way to make known his dissenting views to Pope Francis, then maybe parrhesia is not the rule at the meetings of the Crown Cuncil of Cardinals, of which Pell is a member, nor of any one-on-one meeting between the 'top two men' at the Vatican.

In the sentence above, Pell articulates the obvious objection of any right-minded Catholic to the consistent omission from the Bergoglian preaching on 'mercy' of the final dispositive part of Jesus's forgiveness of the adulterous woman. For a Pope who not infrequently talks about the importance of confession, JMB has been remarkably 'tacit' about the 'penitence' part of the Sacrament of Reconciliation (which is why I liked it better that it was taught to us more than six decades ago as the Sacrament of Penance, which tells us more bluntly and unequivocally what confession is all about).

But I don't suppose Pell or anyone other than Mons. Victor Fernandez could tell JMB, "Er, Your Holiness, why not talk about genuine repentance and penitence as necessary corollaries to seeking God's forgiveness? That we sinners are supposed to 'make amends' for our sins? You think that will scare off those you are hoping to attract?"]


One insurmountable barrier for those advocating a new doctrinal and pastoral discipline for the reception of Holy Communion is the almost complete unanimity of two thousand years of Catholic history on this point. [Since this article is an 'impersonal' statement, there is, of course, no reference to how, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, circumvented this 'complete' unanimity with his 'communion for everyone' practice.]

It is true that the Orthodox have a long-standing but different tradition, forced on them originally by their Byzantine emperors, but this has never been the Catholic practice.

One might claim that the penitential disciplines in the early centuries before the Council of Nicaea were too fierce as they argued whether those guilty of murder, adultery, or apostasy could be reconciled by the Church to their local communities only once—or not at all.

They always acknowledged that God could forgive, even when the Church’s ability to readmit sinners to the community was limited. Such severity was the norm at a time when the Church was expanding in numbers, despite persecution.

It can no more be ignored than the teachings of the Council of Trent or those of Saint John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI on marriage can be ignored.


Were the decisions that followed Henry VIII’s divorce totally unnecessary? [A point brought up by opponents of the Kasper proposal from the very beginning, because what he proposes (as does JMB over and above him, though tacitly so far as Pope) would render meaningless the martyrdom of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher for refusing to give their blessings to Henry VIII's divorce/adultery record (he turned out to be a serial offender in this) and had their heads cut off for that.]

Are the new stories targeting Pell and his personal integrity perhaps a consequence of his speaking against the Bergoglio-endorsed problematic statements in the midterm Relatio and leading the floor protest against the (Bergoglio)/Baldisseri announcement not to publish the reports of the 'smaller circles', at the October 2014 synodal assembly? Will Pope Francis appoint him again to the October 2015 Synod? The PR problem could be even worse by not appointing him than by appointing him again and risking that he will speak out his mind just as fearlessly. But October is several months away, and who knows what may happen to Pell meanwhile in the Vatican cauldron of cross-purposes, arriviste ambitions and sycophantic one-upmanship?

What no one has referred to since the big brouhaha over an environmental encyclical from our 'trust-me-I-know-about-anything-better-than-anybody' Pope is my original question: Has JMB ever thought of asking Cardinal Pell to enlighten him on the reasons for Pell's skepticism over 'manmade climate change' and the scientific evidence for any such climate change that has been fluctuating in the past several decades that it has become a favorite liberal ideology? And would Cardinal Pell ever have had a chance to discuss this with the Pope at all? Is JMB even aware of Pell's more-than-informed interest in this topic?

BTW, call me petty but Pell's rightness on doctrine and on climate change still won't make me overlook the gratuitous and truly unkind and unwarranted remarks he made about Benedict XVI the day he stepped down from office, all the more shocking because he had always been among those considered to be true-blue 'Ratzingerian'.


PewSitter headlines - 2/27/15:


AP's account of the new attack on Pell is objectionable because it uses the accusation against Pell as an occasion to recall Vatileaks with all the malicious defamatory baggage that media loaded onto it...

Pope Francis's finance czar Cardinal Pell
comes under intense scrutiny over spending



VATICAN CITY, February 27, 2015 (AP) - Pope Francis's finance czar is coming under intense scrutiny after ruffling feathers at the Vatican as he seeks to impose order on its unruly finances.

Italian weekly L'Espresso reported in its Friday editions that Cardinal George Pell's economy secretariat had run up a half-million euros (dollars) in expenses in the first six months of its existence. The total includes seemingly legitimate expenses, including computers and printers, but also a 2,508 euro bill from the famed Gamarelli clergy tailor. [So a clothes bill is the worst they can pin on Pell? But he cannot have spent far more at Gamarelli than the Vatican would have spent on Pope Francis's wardrobe in the same time period, considering that papal whites must necessarily be more plentiful on hand than lesser prelates' black garments. Just imagine the number of fresh papal whites a Pope has to have when he travels, as surely a papal trip is hardly the occasion for his valets and aides to worry about laundry!

The expenditures are notable given that Pell has instituted a spending review across the Vatican to ensure any excess money is spent on the poor, L'Espresso noted. [Maybe Pell should have paid his tailor bills on his own rather than charging them to his official budget. At least, all the alleged high spending attributed to Cardinal Bertone in recent months - for his new apartment, for his 80th birthday celebration, etc - wee on his own personal account, not the Vatican's.]

Resistance to the Australian Pell from the largely Italian Vatican bureaucracy has been growing steadily but spiked in December after he boasted that he had "discovered" hundreds of millions of euros that had been "tucked away" in sectional accounts off the Vatican balance sheet. [The AP reporter does not mention it but the major 'opposition' to Pell at the moment comes from Cardinal Coccopalmiero at Legislative Texts, who may well have the authority to clip Pell's wings by editing the still-pending charter of the Secretariat for the Economy in order to limit its powers. But would JMB go along with that, or can he override the recommendations of the Vatican's own internal review body for new canonical and civil law, rules and regulations?]

In fact, the money was well-known and was purposefully kept off the books, much of it set aside for use as reserves for funding shortfalls. [Oh yes! There was that fairly recent disclosure made in the name of financial transparency but which raised more questions for lack of a simple, clear explanation as the one AP provides above. As though somehow all those 'hundreds of millions of euros' had been 'tucked away' for sinister if not criminal reasons. Yes, I think Pell over-reached unnecessarily on that - though if he had explained it right away, his 'disclosure' would not have left such a bad taste in the mouth!]

The leak of Pell's receipts to L'Espresso — as well as other documents detailing cardinals' complaints about his efforts — was clearly aimed at discrediting him and harked back to the Vatileaks affair that badly tarnished the final year of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI's papacy.

In that scandal, which some say prompted Benedict's resignation, the pope's butler leaked reams of documents [random, mostly worthless or picayune, except for a few that had already been reported contemporaneously about Cardinal Bertone's attempts to consolidate a power base of his own separate from the establishment-dominated Secretariat of State] [dim] to an Italian journalist that were aimed at discrediting Benedict's No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone [whose rather inept but open power-grabbing attempts, as reported by the media at the time of the different episodes, were all blocked by Benedict XVI before they could be executed.]

The documents also laid bare the dysfunctions and political intrigue that afflict the Vatican bureaucracy — problems that were central to Francis's election as pope with a mandate for reform. [This is the central fallacy of largely unfounded or maliciously inflated assumptions by the media that colored not just public perception and opinion about the whole Vatileaks affair, but worse, that of the cardinal electors who should have known better but showed themselves to be just as gullible and malleable to media manipulations as the man-on-the-street. A tribute to the powerful influence of the media, when even Princes of the Church who are generally men of exceptional intelligence, consider media reporting and commentary a necessarily reliable source of information.]

The Vatican spokesman declined to comment late Thursday.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/03/2015 15:23]
28/02/2015 03:53
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To February 27, 2013...



Thank you to Vatican Radio for not spoiling their initial reports of this farewell with superfluous effusions...



An Italian sign that says 'BENEDICT XVI - Pope again!' is a counterpart to the 'RE-ELECT RATZINGER' stickers -
and for all their whimsy, I find these the most touching signs of affection and attachment for the Pope.


ALWAYS AND EVER - THE POPE OF JOY AND LOVE

Benedict XVI's
farewell to the world


February 27, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI held the final General Audience of his pontificate on Wednesday in St Peter's Square.

Here is Vatican Radio's English translation of the Holy Father's remarks:

Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood!
Distinguished Authorities!
Dear brothers and sisters!

Thank you for coming in such large numbers to this last General Audience of my pontificate.

Like the Apostle Paul in the biblical text that we have heard, I feel in my heart the paramount duty to thank God, who guides the Church and makes her grow, who sows His Word and thus nourishes the faith in His people.

At this moment my spirit reaches out to embrace the whole Church throughout the world, and I thank God for the “news” that in these years of Petrine ministry I have been able to receive regarding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity that circulates in the body of the Church – charity that makes the Church to live in love – and of the hope that opens for us the way towards the fullness of life, and directs us towards the heavenly homeland.

I feel I ought to carry everyone in prayer, in a present that is God’s, where I recall every meeting, every voyage, every pastoral visit. I gather everyone and everything in prayerful recollection, in order to entrust them to the Lord: in order that we might have full knowledge of His will, with every wisdom and spiritual understanding, and in order that we might comport ourselves in a manner that is worthy of Him, of His, bearing fruit in every good work
(cf. Col 1:9-10).

At this time, I have within myself great trust [in God], because I know – all of us know – that the Gospel’s word of truth is the strength of the Church: it is her life. The Gospel purifies and renews: it bears fruit wherever the community of believers hears and welcomes the grace of God in truth and lives in charity. This is my faith, this is my joy.

When, almost eight years ago, on April 19th, [2005], I agreed to take on the Petrine ministry, I held steadfast in this certainty, which has always accompanied me.

At that moment, as I have already stated several times, the words that resounded in my heart were: “Lord, what do you ask of me? It is a great weight that You place on my shoulders, but, if You ask me, at your word I will throw out the nets, sure that you will guide me” – and the Lord really has guided me. He has been close to me: daily I could feel His presence.

[These years] have been a stretch of the Church’s pilgrim way, which has seen moments joy and light, but also difficult moments. I have felt like St. Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of ​​Galilee: the Lord has given us many days of sunshine and gentle breeze, days in which the catch has been abundant; [then] there have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the Church it has ever been - and the Lord seemed to be asleep.

Nevertheless, I always knew that the Lord is in the barque, that the barque of the Church is not mine, not ours, but His - and He shall not let her sink. It is He, who steers her: to be sure, he does so also through men of His choosing, for He desired that it be so. This was and is a certainty that nothing can tarnish. It is for this reason, that today my heart is filled with gratitude to God, for never did He leave me or the Church without His consolation, His light, His love.

We are in the Year of Faith, which I desired in order to strengthen our own faith in God in a context that seems to push faith more and more toward the margins of life.

I would like to invite everyone to renew their firm trust in the Lord. I would like that we all entrust ourselves as children to the arms of God, and rest assured that those arms support us, even in times of struggle.

I would like everyone to feel loved by the God who gave His Son for us and showed us His boundless love. I want everyone to feel the joy of being Christian.

A beautiful prayer to be recited daily in the morning says, “I adore you, my God, I love you with all my heart. I thank You for having created me, for having made me a Christian.”

Yes, we are happy for the gift of faith: it is the most precious good that no one can take from us! Let us thank God for this every day, with prayer and with a consistent Christian life. God loves us, but He also expects that we love Him!

At this time, however, it is not only God, whom I desire to thank. A Pope is not alone in guiding St. Peter’s barque, even if it is his first responsibility – and I have not ever felt myself alone in bearing either the joys or the weight of the Petrine ministry. The Lord has placed next to me many people, who, with generosity and love for God and the Church, have helped me and been close to me.

First of all you, dear Brother Cardinals: your wisdom, your counsel, your friendship, were all precious to me. My collaborators, starting with my Secretary of State, who accompanied me faithfully over the years, the Secretariat of State and the whole Roman Curia, as well as all those who, in various areas, give their service to the Holy See: the many faces which never emerge, but remain in the background, in silence, in their daily commitment, with a spirit of faith and humility. They have been for me a sure and reliable support.

A special thought [goes] to the Church of Rome, my diocese!

I cannot forget my Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
the consecrated persons and the entire People of God: in pastoral visits, in public encounters, at Audiences, in traveling, I have always received great care and deep affection.

I have loved each and every one, without exception, with that pastoral charity which is the heart of every shepherd, especially the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of the Apostle Peter. Every day I carried each of you in my prayers, with a father's heart. I wish my greetings and my thanks to reach everyone: the heart of a Pope expands to [embrace] the whole world.

I would like to express my gratitude to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, which makes present the great family of nations.

Here I also think of all those who work for good communications, whom I thank for their important service.

At this point I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all the many people throughout the whole world who in recent weeks have sent me moving tokens of concern, friendship and prayer.

Yes, the Pope is never alone: now I experience this [truth] again in a way so great as to touch my very heart. The Pope belongs to everyone, and so many people feel very close to him.

It’s true that I receive letters from the world's greatest figures - from Heads of State, religious leaders, representatives of the world of culture and so on. I also receive many letters from ordinary people who write to me simply from their heart and let me feel their affection, which is born of our being together in Christ Jesus, in the Church.

These people do not write me as one might write, for example, to a prince or a great figure one does not know. They write as brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, with the sense of very affectionate family ties.

Here, one can touch what the Church is – not an organization, not an association for religious or humanitarian purposes, but a living body, a community of brothers and sisters in the Body of Jesus Christ, who unites us all.

To experience the Church in this way and almost be able to touch with one’s hands the power of His truth and His love, is a source of joy, in a time in which many speak of its decline.

In recent months, I felt that my strength had decreased, and I asked God with insistence in prayer to enlighten me with His light to make me take the right decision – not for my sake, but for the good of the Church.

I have taken this step in full awareness of its severity and also its novelty, but with a deep peace of mind. Loving the Church also means having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before oneself the good of the Church and not one’s own.

Here allow me to return once again to April 19, 2005. The gravity of the decision was precisely in the fact that from that moment on I was committed always and forever by the Lord. Always!

He who assumes the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and totally to everyone, to the whole Church. His life is, so to speak, totally deprived of the private sphere.

I have felt, and I feel even in this very moment, that one receives one’s life precisely when he offers it as a gift. I said before that many people who love the Lord also love the Successor of Saint Peter and are fond of him, that the Pope truly has brothers and sisters, sons and daughters all over the world, and that he feels safe in the embrace of their communion, because he no longer belongs to himself, but he belongs to all and all are truly his own.

The “always” is also a “forever” - there is no returning to private life. My decision to forgo the exercise of active ministry does not revoke this. I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences and so on.

I do not abandon the cross, but remain in a new way near to the Crucified Lord. I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter’s bounds.

St. Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God.

I thank each and every one of you for the respect and understanding with which you have welcomed this important decision. I continue to accompany the Church on her way through prayer and reflection, with the dedication to the Lord and to His Bride, which I have hitherto tried to live daily and that I would live forever.

I ask you to remember me before God, and above all to pray for the Cardinals, who are called to so important a task, and for the new Successor of Peter, that the Lord might accompany him with the light and the power of His Spirit.

Let us invoke the maternal intercession of Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, that she might accompany each of us and the whole ecclesial community: to her we entrust ourselves, with deep trust.

Dear friends! God guides His Church, maintains her always, and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the way of the Church and the world.

In our heart, in the heart of each of you, let there be always the joyous certainty that the Lord is near, that He does not abandon us, that He is near to us and that He surrounds us with His love. Thank you!


Rereading this today was almost unbearably poignant. Doubly so. because this was the first and only time a Pope has been able to express his gratitude and love for everyone after serving his 'term' as the Successor of Peter. The Popes who die in office do not have a chance to do so, and the few Popes who left their office alive before Benedict XVI were either sent to exile or deprived of the office in terrible circumstances.

One cannot ever take for granted the unique historicity of Benedict XVI's self-abnegation. After the Passion and Death of Christ, the God-man, it is probably the greatest Lenten sacrifice a human being could make.

Benedict XVI was a true revolutionary and hero of humility, but also modern martyr and saint, and most likely, a future Doctor of the Church. How can we not be thankful, even after all the heartache of his renunciation, and the scourge we must bear because of how he is still misrepresented and even calumniated! God grant him more years of joy and healthful repose at the foot of the Cross where he has chosen to spend the last stage of his earthly pilgrimage.


Pope recalls joy and difficulties
at his final general audience

By NICOLE WINFIELD


VATICAN CITY, February 27, 2013 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI basked in an emotional send-off Wednesday from an estimated 150,000 people at his final general audience in St. Peter's Square, recalling moments of "joy and light" during his papacy and also times of difficulty when "it seemed like the Lord was sleeping."

The crowd, many toting banners saying "Grazie!" ("Thank you!"), jammed the piazza to bid Benedict farewell and hear his final speech as Pontiff. In this appointment, which he has kept each week for eight years to teach the world about the Catholic faith, Benedict thanked his flock for respecting his retirement, which takes effect Thursday.

Benedict clearly enjoyed the occasion, taking a long victory lap around the square in an open-sided car and stopping to kiss and bless half a dozen children handed to him by his secretary. Seventy cardinals, some tearful, sat in solemn attendance — then gave him a standing ovation at the end of his speech.

Benedict made a quick exit, foregoing the typical meet-and-greet session that follows the audience as if to not prolong the goodbye.

Given the historic moment, Benedict also changed course and didn't produce his typical professorial Wednesday catechism lesson. Rather, he made his final public appearance in St. Peter's a personal one, explaining once again why he was becoming the first Pope in 600 years to resign and urging the faithful to pray for his successor.

"To love the church means also to have the courage to take difficult, painful decisions, always keeping the good of the Church in mind, not oneself," Benedict said to thundering applause.

He noted that a Pope has no privacy: "He belongs always and forever to everyone, to the whole church." But he promised that in retirement he would not be returning to private life — instead taking on a new experience of service to the church through prayer.

He recalled that when he was elected Pope on April 19, 2005, he questioned if God truly wanted it.

"'It's a great burden that you've placed on my shoulders,'" he recalled telling God.

During his eight years as Pope, Benedict said he had had "moments of joy and light, but also moments that haven't been easy ... moments of turbulent seas and rough winds, as has occurred in the history of the church when it seemed like the Lord was sleeping."

But he said he never felt alone, that God always guided him, and he thanked his cardinals and colleagues for their support and for "understanding and respecting this important decision."

The Pope's eight-year tenure has been beset by the clerical sex abuse scandal, discord over everything from priestly celibacy to women's ordination, and most recently, the betrayal by his own butler who stole his private papers and leaked them to a journalist.

Under a bright sun and blue skies, the square was overflowing with pilgrims and curiosity-seekers. Those who couldn't get in picked spots along the main boulevard leading to the square to watch the event on giant TV screens. About 50,000 tickets were requested for Benedict's final master class. In the end, the Vatican estimated that 150,000 people flocked to the farewell.

"It's difficult — the emotion is so big," said Jan Marie, a 53-year-old Roman in his first years as a seminarian. "We came to support the Pope's decision."

With chants of "Benedetto!" erupting often, the mood was far more buoyant than during the Pope's final Sunday blessing. It recalled the jubilant turnouts that often accompanied him at World Youth Days and events involving his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Benedict has said he decided to retire after realizing that, at 85, he simply didn't have the "strength of mind or body" to carry on.

"I have taken this step with the full understanding of the seriousness and also novelty of the decision, but with a profound serenity in my soul," Benedict told the crowd.

Benedict will meet Thursday morning with cardinals for a final time, then fly by helicopter to the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome.

There, at 8 p.m., the doors of the palazzo will close and the Swiss Guards in attendance will go off duty, their service protecting the head of the Catholic Church over — for now.

Many of the cardinals who will choose Benedict's successor were in St. Peter's Square for his final audience. Those included retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, the object of a grass-roots campaign in the U.S. to persuade him to recuse himself for having covered up for sexually abusive priests. Mahony has said he will be among the 115 cardinals voting on who the next Pope should be.

"God bless you," Mahony said when asked by television crews about the campaign.

Also in attendance Wednesday were cardinals over 80, who can't participate in the conclave but will participate in meetings next week to discuss the problems facing the Church and the qualities needed in a new Pope.

"I am joining the entire Church in praying that the cardinal electors will have the help of the Holy Spirit," Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, 82, said.

Herranz has been authorized by the Pope to brief voting-age cardinals on his investigation into the leaks of papal documents that exposed corruption in the Vatican administration.

Vatican officials say cardinals will begin meeting Monday to decide when to set the date for the conclave.

But the rank-and-file faithful in the crowd weren't so concerned with the future; they wanted to savor the final moments with the Pope they have known for years.

"I came to thank him for the testimony that he has given the Church,"
said Maria Cristina Chiarini, a 52-year-old homemaker who traveled by train from Lugo in central Italy with about 60 members of her parish. "There's nostalgia, human nostalgia, but also comfort, because as a Christian we have hope. The Lord won't leave us without a guide."

Pope speaks of 'rough seas'
[but also of joy and light]
of papacy at emotional farewell

By Philip Pullella


VATICAN CITY, February 27 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict bid an emotional farewell at his last general audience on Wednesday, acknowledging the "rough seas" that marked his papacy "when it seemed that the Lord was sleeping."

In an unusually public outpouring for such a private man, he alluded to some of the most difficult times of his papacy, which was dogged by sex abuse scandals, leaks of his private papers and reports of infighting among his closest aides. [The only issue that 'dogged' this Pontificate was the problem of perverted priests and the bishops who covered for them - with almost 100 percent of the cases reported having taken place before Benedict XVI became Pope. An issue media gloatingly revived at the slightest pretext, hardly reporting at all on what this Pope has done about fighting this evil and seeking to purify the Church of it. Vatileaks was a yearlong media itch at its worst, dating from the last days of January 2012 to some time in September when the confessed thief of the Pope's papers was sentenced. JOSEPH RATZINGER/BENEDICT XVI WAS NOT PERSONALLY TO BLAME OR EVEN RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ONE OF THE THREE ITEMS PULELLA LISTS= and that is what media and the public opinion they shape have almost completely ignored. ]

"Thank you, I am very moved," Benedict told a cheering crowd of more than 150,000 people in St Peter's Square a day before he becomes the first pope to step down in some six centuries.

He said he had great trust in the Church's future, that his abdication was for the good of the Church and asked for prayers for cardinals choosing his successor at a time of crisis.

The Vatican said the address, repeatedly interrupted by applause and cries of "Benedict, Benedict" - was the last by the Pope, who as of Thursday evening will have the title "pope emeritus."

"There were moments of joy and light but also moments that were not easy ... there were moments, as there were throughout the history of the Church, when the seas were rough and the wind blew against us and it seemed that the Lord was sleeping," he said.

When he finished the crowd, which spilled over into surrounding streets and included many of the red-hatted cardinals who will elect his successor in a closed doors conclave next month, stood to applaud.

"I took this step in the full knowledge of its gravity and rarity but with a profound serenity of spirit," he said, as people in the crowd wave supportive banners and national flags.

Loving the Church meant, "having the courage to take difficult and anguished choices, always having in mind the good of the church and not oneself," he said.

The Pope says he is too old and weak to continue leading a Church beset by crises over child abuse by priests and a leak of confidential Vatican documents showing corruption and rivalry among Vatican officials [THAT HAS EXISTED SEMPITERNALLY IN THE VATICAN, NOT JUST UNDER BENEDICT XVI.]

He said he was not "coming down from the cross" but would serve the Church through prayer.

Some of those who have faulted Benedict for resigning have pointed to the late Pope John Paul, who said he would "not come down from the cross" despite his bad health because he believed his suffering could inspire others. [And it has. Enough to be a lasting reminder that the world does not need to see re-created over and over.]

Many Catholics and even some close papal aides were stunned by his decision on February 11 and concerned about the impact it will have on a Church torn by divisions. [What 'impact'? Popes come and go because they are mortal, and the Church has gone on. Even as a committed and unregenerate Bennadict, I refuse to turn this development into unwarranted melodrama. He did the right thing for the right reasons. PUNTO E BASTA! My reasons for grieving this development are entirely selfish = I want it to be as it has been for me since April 19, 2005, but God has decided otherwise. Fiat voluntas sua!]

Most in the square were supportive of Benedict, an increasingly frail figure in the last months of his papacy.

"He did what he had to do in his conscience before God," said Sister Carmel, from a city north of Rome, who came to the capital with her fellow nuns and members of her parish.

"This is a day in which we are called to trust in the Lord, a day of hope," she said. "There is no room for sadness here today. We have to pray, there are many problems in the Church but we have to trust in the Lord."

Not everyone agreed.

"He was a disaster. It's good for everyone that he resigned," said Peter McNamara, 61, an Australian of Irish descent who said he had come to the square "to witness history".


The Pope, a theologian and professor, never felt truly comfortable with the weight of the papacy and many Catholics feel that, although he was a towering Church figure, perhaps the cardinals should have chosen someone else in 2005.

"It was clear from the start that he was more at home in a library," [What a meaningless statement! As though anyone of us has ever seen him in a library, and after almost eight years of seeing him 'be Pope' in the most endearing ways possible!] , said Carla Manton, 65. "A very good man but he realized in his heart that this was the right thing to do for himself and the Church and now he will pray, he will pray for all of us."

Benedict will move to the papal summer residence south of Rome on Thursday night and later to a convent in the Vatican.

He will lay aside the red "shoes of the fisherman" that have been part of his papal attire and wear brown loafers given to him by shoemakers during a trip to Leon, Mexico last year. He will wear a "simple white cassock", the Vatican said. [What's this thing about the loafers - you'd think he was going to wear nothing but that the rest of his life!]

His lead seal and his ring of office, known as the "ring of the fisherman", will be destroyed according to Church rules, just as if he had died.

The Vatican said on Tuesday that the Pope was sifting through documents to see which will remain in the Vatican and go into the archives of his papacy and which "are of a personal nature and he will take to his new residence".

Among the documents left for the next Pope will be a confidential report by three cardinals into the "Vatileaks" affair last year when Benedict's former butler revealed private papers showing corruption and in-fighting inside the Vatican. [Yeah, right! It was the first time in 200 years of Church history that anyone had ever heard of 'corruption and infighting in the Vatican'! This odious obsession to pin everything bad about the Church and the Vatican on Benedict XVI - as if all the Popes before him had been flawless and had led perfect Pontificates - is truly pathologic. And all because they are unable to pin anything specifically grave, much less criminal, on Benedict XVI.]

The new Pope will inherit a Church marked by Vatileaks and child abuse scandals involving priests in Europe and the United States, both of which may have weighed on Benedict's decision. {He will also inherit everything Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI did to cleanse the Church of the essential faults and errors embodied in those 'headline' cases that MSM have equated to be the miserable sum total of a literally luminous Pontificate.]

On Thursday, he will greet cardinals in Rome. That afternoon he will fly by helicopter to the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo, a 15-minute journey. In his last appearance as Pope, he will greet residents and well-wishers in a small square.

At 8 p.m. the Swiss Guards who stand as sentries at the residence will march off in a sign that the papacy is vacant.

Benedict changed Church rules so that cardinals who start pre-conclave meetings on Friday could begin the conclave earlier than the 15 days after the papacy becomes vacant prescribed by the previous law.

The Vatican appears to be aiming to have a new Pope elected by mid-March and installed before Palm Sunday on March 24 so he can preside at Holy Week services leading to Easter.

Cardinals have begun informal consultations by phone and email in the past two weeks since Benedict said he was quitting.

A loving hymn to Benedict XVI from Paul Badde... I originally translated the quotation he used - "Too pure, too innocent, too holy" - from an Italian carabinieri who exclaimed it as Benedict XVI passed by in his Popemobile, as Badde had translated it in German, with the adverb 'too' (zu) for the Italian troppo, which can mean 'too' or 'very' or 'so' (to imply measure), but in the context in which it was used, I think the right adverb is "so'...

Benedict XVI's last General Audience:
'So pure, so innocent, so holy'

by Paul Badde
Translated from

February 27, 2013



The 348th General Audience of Benedict XVI was his last, and not everything was as before. More than five million people have come to these General Audiences in the past eight years in St. Peter's Square or in the Aula Paolo VI.

Today, it seemed as if another million had travelled here to stand head to head at his last public event to bid farewell to him. Only at his funeral [God keep him many more years!] will we see him once more in public... But at this General Audience, death was quite remote.

The Piazza vibrated with life. People crowded forward from all the side streets. Flags and banners from all the continents fluttered over the crowd. The universal Church was taking leave of her Pope although he had not died. A helicopter whirred overhead in a cloudless sky. Low-flying gulls cast shadows on the marble facades in St. Peter's Square.

It was a popular feast of faith on this bright and early spring day in February. It did not need much imagination to evoke the voice of Cardinal Ratzinger saying in this same square, at the funeral Mass for his predecessor on April 8, 2005: "Now John Paul II is standing at the window of the Father's house looking down and blessing us".

Eleven days later, on April 19, 2005, Joseph Ratzinger himself became Pope, and once more, five days later, he said in this Square at the Mass that began his Petrine ministry: "Yes, the Church is alive - that is the wonderful experience of these days. The Church is alive. And she is young. She carries the future of the world in her and shows every person the way to the future".

Now, as that ministry ends, he takes up the same theme spontaneously and proclaims to the crowd that had come to bid farewell to him, "See how the Church is alive!"

Rome seemed full as at the canonization of Padre Pio. Beyond St. Peter's Square, the faithful filled the width of the Via della Conciliazione to the Tiber, as overhead TV cameras showed on the giant TV screens, which magnified for them the serene face of their little Pope.

The Italians in particularly paid homage one last time to this man who had become for many of them their 'Papa angelicus'. He is the 'Pope of love', said a fisherman from Ladispoli, and a few meters away, a greying commandant of the Carabinieri wiped tears from his eyes, as he watched the slightly stooped old man in white pass through the passages among the crowd - his left hand firmly gripping a support rail, his right hand raised to bless them.

"Troppo puro, troppo innocente, troppo santo" (Too pure, too innocent, too holy), the old policeman cried out.

Anticipating the passage of the Popemobile, people in the sectors stood on their chairs - men and women, young and old, priests and laymen, the faithful from all continents. It was an overwhelming jubilation that they had reserved for the Pope.

A young Italian woman told me, "I learned to love the Germans because of the Pope".

The trip around the Square and back to the steps of St. Peter's took almost half an hour until Pope Benedict XVI began the audience by intoning the Sign of the Cross in Latin.

On this day, his spirit reaches out to embrace the whole Church, he said. Once more he had chosen a Gospel passage - from the letter of St. Paul to the Colossians - to set the theme of the day, and one last time, he was Peter, his predecessor from Galilee.

He knew, he said, that the boat which he had steered, was not his but the Lord's. And so it is with the Church, which does not belong to the Pope or to the people but to God alone. "The Church is his boat" and Christ is always on board.

Today he uses the Gospel text to lead into a singular expression of gratitude to God, to his co-workers, to the cardinals, to the ambassadors who represented here the peoples of the earth, and finally, to the whole Church, whose strength is "the word of Truth in the Gospel".

And he thanks everyone once more for accepting and respecting his difficult decision, and assured them that just as eight years ago, he had given up his private life totally for his last service to the Church as the Successor of Peter, so now, he was not returning to private life as he now dedicates himself to prayer for the Church.

And one last time, he delivers greetings in various languages, even in Arabic, and of course, in Polish (that he had learned in his old age in order to be able to speak directly to his predecessor's countrymen). He thanked a brass band from Traunstein for playing a Bavarian hymn.

"It is beautiful to be Christian!" he said.

Then, he arose and led the 'Our Father' in Latin as he always does at the end of the audiences. A small man in white, with folded hands and a quiver in his voice. The image will live on.



Fr. Lombardi gave a news briefing that I have not seen reported in the Anglophone reports I've gone through. Not even on the English service of Vatican Radio itself. Yet it's part of the penultimate day of a Pontificate that is already historic in many more ways than just the first voluntary renunciation of the Papacy.

'A wonderful day - Benedict serene,
having made his decision before God'

Translated from the Italian service of

February 27, 2013

"An atmosphere of great emotion and serenity - and the Pope had the most beautiful look," Fr. Federico Lombardi said during a briefing in early afternoon at the Vatican Press Room.

After the General Audience in St. Peter's Square, he said, Benedict XVI met at the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace with a few dignitaries who had come to bid him farewell.

They included the President of Slovakia, Ivan Gasparovic; the minister president of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer; the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno; and the captains regent of the Republic of San Marino, Teodoro Lonferini and Denis Brunzetti.

Fr. Lombardi said it had been 'a wonderful day', and he called the sunny day 'a great gift' to mark Benedict XVI's last general audience.

"I do not know if you noticed, through the TV monitors, the final shots of the audience by CTV which showed the Pope with a most beautiful look on his face, extremely serene and smiling".

He said the same serenity marked the small reception (baciamano) that followed at the Sala Clementina: "The serenity of having done the good work and of having taken his decision before God and in total agreement with God's will for him".

Fr. Lombardi also wanted to highlight certain passages of the Pope's farewell catechesis, especially that about faith as "the only true vision for the way of the Church and the world", and his words on the work of God, in a reference to St. Benedict's 'ora et lavora' principle (pray and work).

"The work of God - opus Dei - is that which (Benedict XVI) has sought to do and will continue to do. A life which, whether active or passive, is devoted totally to the work of God. And so his work is to serve the work of God".

Tomorrow morning, cardinals already in Rome will meet the Pope at the Sala Clementina after a greeting by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals.

At 5 p.m., Benedict XVI leaves the Vatican for the last time as Pope to go to Castel Gandolfo where he will spend the next two months until he can return to the Vatican monastery where he will live "hidden from the world".

In Castel Gandolfo, he will greet the townspeople a last time as Pope from the balcony of the Apostolic Palace that overlooks the city square. [Also the last words the public will hear from him as Pope.] Less than three hours later, he will no longer be Pope, and the sede vacante begins.

Fr. Lombardi, answering assorted questions, said the chimney for the stove on which the Conclave ballots will be burned has not yet been installed in the Sistine Chapel.

About the date for the Conclave, he said: "On March 1 (Friday), the Dean of Cardinals will convoke the general congregations of the cardinals. Very likely then, this first meeting itself will take place on Monday, March 4. The cardinals will set the date for when the Conclave begins. So we will not know until some time next week."





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Scenron at La Vigna del Signore (blogsite and Facebook) has posted two additional photographs of the Ukrainian Catholic bishops' visit to Benedict XVI at Mater Ecclesiae last week. With my usual thanks to Beatrice for the find. (I have to find out how Scenron manages to get photographs like this. Perhaps the Ukrainian bishops hired a photogrpaher from Felici of Rome to document their visit.)



The picture we previously saw takes pride of place. I consider it iconic.


Then there's B16 blessing the first stone for a planned Benedictine monastery in Lvov, with Archbishop Miecieslaw Mocrzyski of Lvov, 'don Mietek' when he was second private secretary to John Paul II and then to Benedict XVI.


The obligatory group picture. B16 looks quite fit and youthful!
It's too bad the Greek Catholic Ukrainian bishops led by patriarch Cardinal Shevchuk did not join their Roman Catholic colleagues for this visit.

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To February 28, 2013...



At 11:00 a.m., the Holy Father Benedict XVI met with cardinals present in Rome, and pledged unconditional reverence
and obedience to his successor whom they will elect in the next two weeks.

At 5 p.m., Benedict XVI left the Vatican for the last time as Pope, flying by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo.
Upon his arrival, he addressed the residents of Castel Gandolfo and other pilgrims from the balcony of the
Apostolic Palace that overlooks the town square - the last time we would hear him speak as Pope, and very likely, we thought then,
the last image we would see of him in a long time.
[Greg Burke indicated that if Benedict XVI meets with the next Pope, it will be unannounced, and
he is not sure if photos will be released
.]


I came back to this post to record this - after I had torn myself away from watching the video replays of the unforgettable, never-to-be-repeated long farewell to a living Pope:

2:13 P.M. in New York City
8:13 P.M. in Castel Gandolfo

Our beloved Benedict ceased to be Pope 13 minutes ago.




The end of a Pontificate
that was joyful and luminous,
sorrowful, too, but glorious





WITH OVERFLOWING GRATITUDE FOR

SEVEN YEARS, TEN MONTHS AND NINE DAYS

OF A GREAT, HISTORIC AND BLESSED PONTIFICATE...

AD MULTOS ANNOS, SANCTE PATER/JOSEPH RATZINGER -

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI.

Our love and prayers will always be with you.






Shortly after the announcement of his renunciation, the Vatican released the program for all of Benedict XVI's final events as Pope. He was scheduled to officially begin his last day as Pope meeting with the members of the College of Cardinals to greet each one personally for a mutual farewell. (He would have begun the day like all other days - offering Mass at the private chapel of the Pope's apartment, the last time he would do so.)

But, once again, he caught everyone by surprise when he proceeded first to deliver this message. It means he took time the night before to compose it. His library would have been packed up long before then for the move to Mater Ecclesiae, so one imagines he quotes Guardini from memory, and probably had someone doublecheck the citations early Thursday morning for accuracy.

One remembers fondly that the day he was elected Pope, he must have sat up for at least a couple of hours after the celebratory dinner at Santa Marta that night to write out his first homily as Pope that he would deliver early the following morning in the Sistine Chapel, at the first Mass he would preside at as Pope, concelebrating with the entire College of Cardinals, not just the electors. And he wrote it out and delivered it in Latin - it is msgnificent in the English translation we know; it must have been doubly so in Latin. To think this came just two days after the now celebrated 'dictatorship of relativism' homily at the Missa pro eligendo Pontefice that opened the Conclave!







Venerable and Dear Brothers,
I welcome you with great joy and I offer each one of you my most cordial greeting. I thank Cardinal Angelo Sodano who, as always, interpreted the sentiments of the entire College: Cor ad cor loquitur [heart speaks to heart]

I warmly thank you, Your Eminence. And I would like to say — taking up your reference to the disciples of Emmaus — that for me too. it has been a joy to walk with you in these years, in the light of the presence of the Risen Lord.

As I said yesterday to the thousands of faithful who filled St Peter's Square, your closeness and your advice have been of great help to me in my ministry.

In these eight years we have lived with faith very beautiful moments of radiant light on the Church’s journey, as well as moments when several clouds gathered in the sky.

We sought to serve Christ and his Church with profound and total love, which is the heart and soul of our ministry.

We gave hope, the hope that comes to us from Christ, which alone can give light to us on our journey.

Together we may thank the Lord who has enabled us to grow in communion and, together, pray him to help us to grow even more in this profound unity, so that the College of Cardinals may be like an orchestra where differences — an expression of the universal Church — contribute to a superior and harmonious concord.

I would like to leave you a simple thought, which is deep in my heart: a thought about the Church, about her mystery, that constitutes for us all — we can say — the reason and passion for life.

I will allow a sentence of Romano Guardini to help me. It was written in the very same year that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approved the Constitution Lumen Gentium, in his last book, which also has a personal dedication to me — which makes the words of this book particularly dear to me.

Guardini says the Church “is not an institution conceived and built in theory... but a living reality.... She lives through the course of time, in becoming, like every living being, in undergoing change.... And yet in her nature she remains ever the same and her heart is Christ”.

It seems to me that this was our experience yesterday in the Square: seeing that the Church is a living body, enlivened by the Holy Spirit and which is really brought to life by God’s power.

She is in the world but not of the world: she is of God, of Christ, of the Spirit.
We saw this yesterday. That is why Guardini's other famous saying is both true and eloquent: “The Church is reawakened in souls”.



The Church is alive, she grows, and is reawakened in souls who — like the Virgin Mary — welcome the Word of God and conceive it through the action of the Holy Spirit; they offer to God their own flesh. It is precisely in their poverty and humility that they become capable of begetting Christ in the world today. Through the Church, the Mystery of the Incarnation lives on for ever. Christ continues to walk through the epochs and in all places.

Let us stay united, dear Brothers, in this Mystery: in prayer, especially in the daily Eucharist, and in this way we shall serve the Church and the whole of humanity. This is our joy that no one can take from us.

Before I say goodbye to each one of you personally, I would like to tell you that I shall continue to be close to you with my prayers, especially in these coming days, that you may be completely docile to the action of the Holy Spirit in the election of the new pope.

May the Lord show you the one whom he wants. And among you, in the College of Cardinals, there is also the future pope to whom today I promise my unconditional reverence and obedience.

For this reason, with affection and gratitude, I cordially impart to you the Apostolic Blessing.




So now once again, he wrote out a message for his beloved cardinals (though one doubts very much how much that affection was reciprocated. if we go by their disgraceful conduct towards him the moment he was no longer Pope). They certainly were not expecting him to address them formally, but besides his insistent reminders about the Church - summarizing in a way everything he sought to do for the Church during his all too-brief Pontificzte - I think he wanted an opportunity to say what he did to the future Pope, whoever he would be. That was without a doubt the most moving part of the brief address - and a declaration no other Pope ever had a chance to say, given the unique circumstances of this end of a Pontificate. {In the CTV video of this address. one shot taken of the cardinals shows Cardinal Bergoglio in one of the front rows to the right of the screen but the shot is rather fleeting and I did not get a chance to observe his expression; and I have often wondered why the Vatican has not released any photo of the two at the time the future Pope came up to say his farewell to Benedict XVI, ANd of course, I haven't had the time nor the opportunity to do a search...]

On this day in 2013, I was glued to the TV set so as not to miss a single moment of the coverage of this last day of the Pontificate and was therefore unable to 'document' the events of the day on the Forum in real time. as I had tried to do with important events of B16's Pontificate (to me, of course, every event was important).

But Father Z had the equanimity not only to capture still images from CTV's coverage of the day and to share them with his blog followers, but also to post his spontaneous reactions to Benedict XVI's last address to the College of Cardinals. Father Z's running commentary is both insightful and informative...


Benedict XVI's final address
to the College of Cardinals


February 28, 2013

...This morning the Roman Pontiff Benedict XVI addressed the Cardinals gathered for a final audience in the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace.

There are references in this speech – classic Ratzinger (*sigh* … this is it, friends!) – to what has driven this good and prayerful across the arc of his life. My emphases and comments:

Venerable and dear brethren!

With great joy I accept and extend to each one of you my most cordial greeting. I thank Angelo Cardinal Sodano who, as always, has known how to act as the interpreter of the feelings of the whole College: Cor ad cor loquitur.

['Heart speaks to heart': The motto of Bl. John Henry Newman, who he beatified when he went on the State Visit (not Pastoral) to England. Newman was important to Ratzinger the seminarian and student. His trip to England was a "Benedict goes to England" moment, in the sense of "only Nixon could go to China". Thus, in the first few lines, Benedict underscores what he considers something important in his pontificate.]

Heartfelt thanks, Your Eminence. I would like to say – picking up on the reference to the experience of the disciples at Emmaus – that it was also a joy for me to walk with you in these years, in the light of the presence of the Risen Lord.

[For Ratzinger, the Emmaus event also has liturgical implications. There is the breaking open of the Word and the breaking of the bread wherein the disciples encounter the Lord in a new way, a nearly blinding and mysterious moment of recognition. For Ratzinger, the walk on the path, the liturgy, which is an Easter-like experience, is to set our hearts aflame within us. We move from being down-hearted to being exalted in His presence and Communion.]

As I said yesterday, before the thousands of the faithful who filled St. Peter’s Square, your nearness and your counsel have been a great help in my ministry.

["Ministry" is an important word and concept for Ratzinger. He even put together a book, for seminarians and clerics, Ministers of Your Joy )of which_I have an autographed, actually inscribed, copy.]

In these eight years, we lived with faith very beautiful moments of radiant light in the Church’s path, together with moments in which some clouds grew thick in the sky.

[He often has recourse to images of sky and water, paths and boats. He spoke yesterday about feeling sometimes like Peter in the boat on the water when the Lord was asleep in the storm. Before he was elected, in his Stations of the Cross on Good Friday 2005, he spoke of the water the boat was taking on.]

We sought to serve Christ and His Church with deep and total love, which is the soul of our ministry. We gave hope, the hope that comes from Christ, that alone can illuminate the path. [Hope was the topic of his second encyclical.]

Together we can give thanks to the Lord that He made us grow in communion, and together to beg Him to help you still to grow in this deep unity, as if the College of Cardinals were like an orchestra, [he writes as a music lover...] where differences – expressions of the Universal Church – contribute (concorrano) [Subtle.. in Italian this can also mean "to compete"] always to the higher and concordant harmony.

[What else can this be but a subtle plea for them to put aside differences and come together to find the right solution to the problem of the next Pope?]

I would like to leave with you a simple thought, which has been close to my heart: a thought about the Church, about her mystery, which constitutes for all of us – we can say – the reason of and the passion of life. I am aided by an expression by Romano Guardini,[A great mentor. Ratzinger dedicated one of his most important pre-election books to him, even giving it the same name as Guardini's book: The Spirit of the Liturgy, written in the course of the early 20th century) Liturgical Movement. Ratzinger wanted to spark a new Liturgical Movement. I think he did.] written in the year in which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approved the Constitution Lumen gentium, his final book, with a personal dedication for me, too - thus, the words of this book are particularly dear to me.

Guardini says: The Church “is not a thought-up institution, constructed on a table…,
[This, too, is a reference to his view on liturgical worship. This is how he described at one point the Novus Ordo. This, therefore, has to be a quiet reference to another of this Pope's most important contributions: Summorum Pontificumas well as what he laid down about discontinuity and continuity - against the school of Rahner! - in 2005, a pivotal moment in his pontificate.]

"She lives through the course of time, in becoming, as every living being, being transformed… even if in her nature she remains always the same, and her heart is Christ.” [Continuity! And think of Newman, at the top, and his thought on continuity.]

That was our experience, yesterday, it seems to me, in St. Peter's Square [at the last GA]: to see that the Church is a living body, animated by the Holy Spirit and living truly from the force of God. She is in the world, but she is not of the world: she is of God, of Christ, of the Spirit. We saw this yesterday.

For this reason another famous expression of Guardini
[Coming back to Guardini twice in his precious last official words is important!] is true and eloquent: “The Church awakens in souls.” [He moves from worship to identity.]

The Church is alive, she grows. and she awakens in those souls, which, like the Virgin Mary, welcome the Word of God and conceive it through the work of the Holy Spirit. They offer to God their own flesh, indeed in their own poverty and humbleness, becoming capable of giving birth to Christ in the world today. Through the Church, the Mystery of the Incarnation remains forever present. Christ continues to walk the path through the ages and all places.

Let us remain united, dear brethren, in this Mystery: in prayer, especially in the daily Eucharist, and thus let us serve the Church and all of humanity. This is our joy, which no one can take from us.
[Though some have tried and will continue to try to do.]

Before greeting you each personally, I desire to tell you that I will continue to be near to you in prayer, especially in the upcoming days, so that you may be entirely docile to the action of the Holy Spirit in the election of a new Pope. May the Lord show you what He wants you to do.

And among you, in the College of Cardinals, there is the future Pope, to whom I, already promise my unconditioned reverence and obedience..


[The fact that he says this here and now means that he is not going to appear later to do it in public. He really will just disappear and cast no shadow near the new Pope.]*

For this, with affection and thanksgiving, I impart to you from my heart the Apostolic Blessing.


(It's) a summary of some points that are at the core of the now concluded pontificate and which are dear to the heart of this good old man.

*[REJOINDER 2014 Except as we now know, the 'new Pope' did seek him out and has sought him out, almost pro-actively, though Georg Gaenswein says we must not take B16's attendance at the Consistory as a harbinger of more such public appearances. Andrea Tornielli et al have reported that appearance at St. Peter's last Saturday as the emeritus Pope's 'return to normality', as if I can hear Georg Ratzinger in the background shaking his head and muttering, "Nothing is 'normal' in old age" and the old Latin saying, "Old age itself is a disease!"....

Of all the nails on the Cross that Joseph Ratzinger must continue to bear, I had not thought that one of them would be the rank indifference, to say the least, that the cardinals would have towards him and his Pontificate - as if it had nothing to teach them and nothing that needed to be carried 0n (everything must start anew!).

I have not heard a single cardinal say when asked about what he expects of the next Pope, "Someone like Benedict XVI, only younger and physically capable of meeting the Papacy's enormous demands for a long time to come". Which would seem to me the most obvious answer. But, of course, in their apparent obsession with the 'sins' of the Roman Curia - you would think they were simonpure in running their own diocesan bureaucracies, and that an efficient Curia was the primordial duty of the Vicar of Christ - each one invariably says, "Someone who can govern and reform the Curia", a direct reproach to Benedict XVI.

When the Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Boutroj Ras arrived in Rome yesterday for the Conclave, the first thing he did was to distribute to all the cardinals a memorandum on the situation of the Church in the Middle East today "so that they will not forget to consider us". Would it not be wise for each of the heads of the Roman Curia to have done the same thing - they can still do so (I had brought up the thought earlier) to describe what they do, how many persons they employ, what their achievements have been in the past eight years, and what their major problems have been.

Their accounts may not all be comprehensive, and some may well be self-serving, but it's a starting point for all the skeptical cardinals (especially the outspoken US cardinals) who claim to 'know absolutely nothing' about what's happening in the Curia, though surely each of them ahs had to have dealt with one or more of the Curial dicasteries, and if they have had major problems, then they should say so now.

Such memoranda, provided to each cardinal, would help to clear the dicasteries who truly have nothing to apologize for, much less be ashamed of, but who have been uniformly besmirched with the presumed wholesale but unsubstantiated 'evil and corruption' denounced by Vigano and Gabriele whose bare statements alone the media have used to 'confirm' their favorite hypothesis and sempiternal prejudice about the Church and the Vatican.
[Oh well, another one of my quixotic ideas knocked down and out by the windmills of reality! Not that quixotic, though, considering that Cardinal Boutroj Raz did something similar to call the cardinals' attention to the Mid-East quagmire.]




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Leaving the Vatican Apostolic Palace for the last time

Mons. Gaenswein's emotions may have best approached our own at this poignant end to the pontificate of Benedict XVI. {And yet, he will continue to be the closest person to our Papa Bene - and long may he continue to care for him so lovingly.}

Many italian newspapers took the time to capture these images from the brief video that showed Benedict XVI getting out of the elevator from the papal apartment to the nattow hallway that leads to the San Damaso entrance of the Apostolic Palace yesterday afternoon. This series came from Corriere della Sera which entitled it 'Padre Georg si e commosso' (Padre Georg is moved to tears)...



Mons. Georg
is moved to tears














At Castel Gandolfo




His last event as Pope












His last words to the faithful
as the Successor of Peter


Thank you. Thank you all.

Dear f riends, I am happy to be with you, surrounded by the beauty of Creation and your kindness, which does me so much good. Thank you for your friendship and your affection.

You know that this day is different for me from the preceding ones. I am no longer the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, or I will be until 8:00 this evening and then no longer. I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth.

But I would still... thank you... I would still — with my heart, with my love, with my prayers, with my reflection, and with all my inner strength — would like to work for the common good and the good of the Church and of humanity. I feel greatly supported by your kindness.

Let us go forward with the Lord for the good of the Church and the world. Thank you. I now wholeheartedly impart my blessing.

May Almighty God bless us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Good night! Thank you all!









Our last glimpse of him, till who knows when?

At 8:00 PM, the bells ring the hour, the Swiss Guard lay down their arms and go off duty, and the doors of Castel Gandolfo are closed. The Pontificate of Benedict XVI is over after seven years, ten months, nine days, and two hours...



Formalities at the Vatican



Cardinal Bertone, as Papal Chamberlain (Camerlengo), convenes his Apostolic Commission for the first time and proceeds to lock and seal the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace.


LIGHTS OUT
The See of Peter is vacant





A brief but moving video from RAI sums up the poignancy of the last day:
www.rainews24.rai.it/it/video.php?id=32725


On his last day as Pope,
Benedict’s character shone through

by EDWARD PENTIN


VATICAN CITY, March 1, 2013 — Benedict XVI’s final moments as Pope yesterday were in keeping with his simple, understated character.

There was no drama, no long speeches or self-indulgence — simply an acceptance of a reality and a prevailing sense of trust that Christ is at the heart of the Church, sentiments Benedict expressed to cardinals earlier in the day.

As dusk fell at the end of a second day of unseasonably beautiful weather in Rome, a medium-sized crowd had gathered in St. Peter’s Square to follow the Pope’s departure on large video monitors. Almost no voices could be heard, and, apart from the whirring of a police helicopter overhead, the square was unusually silent, even somber.

But shortly before 5pm, cheers erupted as the screens on the square began showing the Pope walking slowly through the corridors of the Apostolic Palace with the aid of a cane. He was accompanied by his closest aides.

On emerging into the San Damaso courtyard, he greeted staff from the Secretariat of State, saying farewell to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, and a number of other senior officials.

The bells of St. Peter’s Basilica and other churches began to peal as the Holy Father was driven the short distance to the Vatican helipad, where he said a final farewell to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, president emeritus of the governorate of the Vatican city state, and heads of the Vatican police. One more final wave, and the Pope boarded the Italian military helicopter for the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo.

[Was I imagining it or did those Roman bells peal for at least 15 minutes, during the entire length of the helicopter flight to Castel Gandolfo? Bells speak - they either peal for joy or toll for grief. I heard them yesterday as a celebration of this exceptional man, a living saint and future Doctor of the Church, and his brief but great Pontificate. I think they pealedlonger yesterday than they did when he was elected Pope.]

Accompanying Benedict on his final journey as Pope were his personal secretaries Archbishop Georg Gänswein and Msgr. Alfred Xuereb; along with Msgr. Leonardo Sapienza, the deputy prefect of the papal household; Dr. Patrizio Polisca, the pope’s personal physician; and Sandro Mariotti, Benedict’s butler. [VALET! Will you guys never learn???]

As the chopper gently lifted off, it then quickly gained altitude and took a circuitous route around Rome to give as many people as possible a chance to say their own farewells. As it flew over St. Peter’s Square, several thousand well-wishers cheered and waved one last time.

Among those present in the square was Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston.

“It’s very moving to see how much this man is loved and will be missed,” he said. “It’s a beautiful gesture these people have shown to come here and personally bid him farewell.”

Followed by a second helicopter, operated by a Vatican television crew, everyone, including those in the square watching on large screens, was able to follow the Pope’s entire journey as it flew low into the hazy, yellow-ochre sunset, over the Colosseum and the many other ancient landmarks of Rome.

Many praised the footage of the event, managed by the new director of Vatican television, filmmaker Msgr. Edoardo Vigano. The coverage was “tremendous,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, said today, “because they involved us and the whole world in the beautiful story that unfolded yesterday. … We’re very grateful to them for what they did.”

On arrival in Castel Gandolfo, the Pope was driven the short distance from the helipad to the Apostolic Palace, where a crowd of 7,000 people were waiting to greet him. Minutes later, he appeared on the balcony and thanked the throng.

“I am happy to be with you, surrounded by the beauty of creation and your sympathy that does so much good for me. Thank you for your friendship and love,” the Pope said at around 5:30pm from the balcony of his villa.

“You know that today is different than previous ones. I’m no longer the pope. Until 8pm I am, but then, afterwards, I am no longer Pope of the Catholic Church,” he said.

Benedict then offered a window into how he sees this stage of his life.

“I’m simply a pilgrim who is starting the last stage of his pilgrimage on earth,” he remarked, “but I would still like with my heart, with my love, with my prayer, with my reflection, with all my inner strength to work for the common good of the Church and of humanity, and I feel very supported by your sympathy."

“Let’s go ahead together with the Lord for the good of the Church and of the world,” he said as he finished his brief greeting.

Pope Benedict XVI then gave his last papal blessing to the crowd.

“Thank you. And now I impart to you the Lord’s blessing with my whole heart. May God bless you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thank you and good night. Thanks to all of you.”


The last tweets.

Michael Severance, a resident who watched the events unfold, said the mood in the Bernini-designed town square of the papal summer residence “was anything but sullen.”

“The vibe was actually electric: A few thousand of us rushed over from the nearby town of Albano after 5pm and chanted in rhythm Be-ne-det-to! one last time as the helicopter swirled above our heads,” he recalled. “Other locals sounded loud musical instruments, waved flags and hoisted banners of affection. And we all brought rosaries and other religious objects for one last blessing.”

“It was an arrivederci fit for a king,” he said.

At 8pm Rome time, a loud bell then rang eight times. The crowd shouted Viva il Papa! (“Long live the Pope!”). The Swiss Guards entered Castel Gandolfo and hung up their ceremonial halberds on the inner walls, as there is no longer a sitting pope for them to protect.

They then closed the two large doors and bolted them shut, symbolizing the definitive end of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

The Swiss Guards departed, and three Vatican gendarmes dressed in black uniforms marched to the inside of the gates, stood guard and saluted.

Witnessing such an historic and momentous moment will be unforgettable for many of those present.

“Even the small children, including three of my own, were aware of the historic moment,” said Severance, who works at the Acton Institute in Rome. “Many of our families would see him several times from July to October in the intimacy of his courtyard on Sundays and have their bambini blessed by Benedict.”

“We will all dearly miss him as our summer neighbor for the last eight years,” he added. “This was the only pain we felt, while happy and confident in his decision to retire to prayer and study.”

Reflecting on how he thought Benedict XVI will be remembered, Cardinal O’Malley told the Register, “As Benedict the teacher, the man who was able to break open the word of God for all of us in such a wonderful way and touch our hearts with the message of the Gospel.”



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For want of new material from anybody to mark the second anniversary since the end of Benedict XVI's blesed Pontificate - - maybe I just have not searched enough but there cannot be too many out there - here are some re-posts from 2014 and 2013.



[In 2014, I counted only five posts in a two-day peripd (Feb. 28-March 1) in the Anglophone media and blogosphere who remembered that February 28 was the first anniversary of the end of Benedict XVI's Pontificate.

Rocco Palmo recalled it with some videoclips and the text of Benedict XVI's last address as Pope (in Castel Gandolfo). Father Z reposted his real-time blogging as the final events of that day unfolded, with great videocaps from CTV's coverage of Benedict XVI's final public words as Pope, delivered in Castel Gandolfo.

And Fr. Dwight Longenecker, whose blogs this year one might describe as consistently along the lines of "What a miracle of God we have in Pope Francis!", suddenly remembers Benedict XVI long enough to tell us why he misses him. And Peter Kranieswski in the New Liturgical Movement website offers a rather offbeat but beautiful tribute to Benedict XVI that fills up some of the resounding silence from everyone else.

(We know, of course, that 'everyone else' is really counting down impatiently to the March 13th anniversary of Pope Francis's election and the explosion of panegyrics and pyrotechnics that it will occasion such as has never been seen before in recorded history for anyone's first anniversary of anything...)

Vatican Radio's English service decided to take note of the February 28t anniversary by interviewing an official at the CDF to ask him what he was doing on February 28, 2013.


CDF official recalls 'that historic day'
when Pope Benedict stepped down


February 28, 2014

One year ago (on February 28th 2013) Pope Benedict left the Vatican for the last time as Pope and was flown by helicopter to the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.

Benedict was the first Pope to step down in more than 600 years and for many people within the Vatican those final moments of his papacy are indelible images stamped in their memories.

One of those who was an eyewitness on that historic day was Monsignor John Kennedy, a senior official at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Monsignor Kennedy worked with Pope Benedict for several years when as Cardinal Josef Ratzinger he was the Prefect of that Congregation. He shared with Susy Hodges his memories and emotions of that day that was like no other.

Mons. Kennedy recalls that February 28th last year when Pope Benedict formally stepped down was “a typically bright early spring day but it was so surreal.”

As a result, he said, it was really hard for him and his colleagues to concentrate on their work. “Our minds were on our desks but our hearts were with Pope Benedict.”

He describes how the people working at the Congregation that day “all felt magnetically drawn” to go up onto the roof terrace of their office building to witness with their own eyes the final scenes of Benedict’s departure from the Vatican.

Asked about his own emotions on that historic day, Monsignor Kennedy said: “I felt lost, I felt sad and I felt kind of empty.” He took pictures of Pope Benedict’s helicopter which after taking off turned back and came and circled right over the roof of their office building. and described how they “all waved” in a cheerful yet “heart-sinking” sort of way as it flew over their heads.

Later on that day, Monsignor Kennedy went down to St. Peter’s Square just before 8pm, the exact time when Benedict’s papacy formally came to an end and described what he saw and his own feelings.

“At eight o’clock the bells chimed … and then everybody in the square began to clap and I thought this was a nice way of saying (to Benedict) ‘Well done, thank you for everything you’ve done for us and we wish you well in the future.” [Thank you, Mons. Kennedy - that is one detail I had not read about before.]

Missing Papa Benedict
By Fr. Dwight Longenecker

February 28, 2014

Today is the anniversary with incredible memories of a frail Pope Benedict waving farewell, climbing into the helicopter and flying across the rooftops of Rome into retirement.

I miss him, and here’s why.

First of all, I think Pope Benedict shared my love of England and Anglicanism. He made a historic trip to England, giving an amazing speech in Parliament the very place where St Thomas More was tried.

During the visit he went out of his way to beatify a saintly man so close to his own heart and character: the gentle scholar John Henry Newman. Newman is the mentor and guide to countless Anglicans on their way to Rome, and Pope Benedict understood him not only with the head, but with the heart.

Benedict also took the amazingly historic step of establis'hing the Anglican Ordinariate [which CardinalBergoglio thought was a mistake' and 'totally unnecessary'].

Instead of simply continuing endless detente-style ecumenical discussions with the Anglicans he actually DID something. He took a great risk in establishing the ordinariate, and showed tremendous faith and leadership–trusting the Anglicans who were knocking at Rome’s door and offering them a way to full communion.

This step of his, so momentous for us former Anglicans, and so overlooked by the rest of the world, may be one of those seeds that Archbishop Ganswein in a recent interview, believes Benedict has planted.

What do I love about Pope Benedict? His scholar’s mind and artist’s heart.

Here is a world class theologian and Bible scholar who is able to write with clarity, humility and grace.

Here is a musician–a quiet man who likes cats and wanted no more than to retire to his study and be with his musician brother, and yet at the point of possible retirement took up the mantle of the papacy declaring to the world in his first appearance just exactly who he was – a simple laborer in the Lord’s vineyard.

His eventual resignation from the papacy was another mark of his remarkable courage, complete humility and amazing faith. He did it, he said, out of obedience to the Lord–just as he took up the white cassock as an act of obedience to the Lord.

I love Pope Benedict because I am a Benedictine oblate. I have spent many happy hours and days visiting Benedictine monasteries on retreat, writing books about Benedict and his rule and sharing the Benedictine way with others.

That Joseph Ratzinger took the name of Benedict was music to my ears because St Benedict is one of the greatest, and yet quietest and most stable and seemingly unremarkable of saints. It was a perfect papal name for a man who has a monastic, scholarly mind and a cultured prayerful heart.

As St Benedict and his monks are cut off from the world and not understood by the world and even mocked and persecuted by the world, so this introvert was willing to take up the most terrible of tasks in the papacy and open his tender heart to the mockery and scorn of the world.

Do people think he was not hurt by comparisons to the Dark Sith Lord Palpatine? Do they think he was not hurt by being referred to as a Nazi and God’s Rottweiler?

Do they think he was not hurt at being mocked for wearing red shoes and fine vestments when he wore all those things not because he liked dressing up but because he really believed in a principle called “the hermeneutic of continuity”–in which the traditions of the past are treasured because they keep us linked and rooted in the past so we can live positively in the present and move confidently into the future.

Do they think this gentle scholar and shy musician was not hurt by the mockery of the world, the infighting in the Vatican, the scandals and the conflict? And yet he bore it all with a grace, a dignity and a gentle forbearance.

Finally, I love Pope Benedict for the personal reason that in 2006 he was the one who approved the paperwork for a dispensation from the vow of celibacy which opened the door for my ordination to the Catholic priesthood.

He’s the one I have to thank for the speedy delivery of the decision and the agreement that I might go forward to serve the church despite having a wife and children.

History will show Pope Benedict XVI to have been one of the great popes of this modern age. A gentleman, a scholar, a true man of faith and the Holy Spirit–a man full of grace and blessing:

Long Live Pope Emeritus Benedict.

Homage to Pope Emeritus
Benedict XVI, one year later

by PETER KWASNIEWSKI

February 28,, 2014

On Thursday, February 28, 2013, at eight o’clock in the evening, Rome time, the See of Peter became vacant. Through his own unappealable decision and at a time appointed by himself, Pope Benedict XVI had ceased to be the Vicar of Christ on earth.

The past year has been, to say the least, a dramatic and tempestuous one, in which I have often wondered exactly what providential role the nearly eight-year pontificate of Benedict XVI was meant to have in the life of the Church—and what role it is meant to continue to have, through the rich teaching and inspiring example this pontificate left us, and through the enormous energies for reform it has unleashed throughout the Church.

(After all, we can truthfully say that the pontificates of St. Gregory the Great, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, and other popes of massive spiritual stature have continued and will continue to send out ripples, as it were, across the ocean of time, until the return of the Lord.)

In company with Pope Benedict, we observed the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council—a Council in which he vigorously took part, a Council whose legacy he later witnessed being manipulated or forgotten as the “virtual” or “media” Council and its antinomian “spirit” took the upper hand, and finally, a Council that he rightly demanded must be read in a “hermeneutic of continuity” with everything that had come before or had been clarified since.

All of this suggests that Pope Benedict was passionately concerned with rectifying something, or many things, that had gone desperately wrong in the past five decades. [A passion and rational motivations he explained so well in THE RATZINGER REPORT twenty years after Vatican-II had closed, arousing so much hostility among the rovressivist 'sppiritists' especially in the Catholic hierarchy that he was accused of being a 'restoratonist' seeking to return theChurch to the Dark Ages.]

One way of understanding what has happened over this half-century is to think about the delicate balance between ad intra and ad extra concerns, which are two sides of the same coin.


The Church has her own life, one could say—a liturgical, sacramental, spiritual, intellectual life, defined by the confluence of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium—and this life must be tended, nurtured, guarded, deepened.

But simultaneously the Church always has a calling to go outwards into the world of unbelief, to preach to it, convert it, sanctify it, confront its errors and wrestle with its problems.

It seems to me that the noble intention of Blessed John XXIII, a very traditional Pope in many ways, was to bring the treasures of the Church’s inner life to bear on modernity and the modern world. To this end he convened the Roman Synod and, more fatefully, the Second Vatican Council. He wanted the Catholic Church to send forth God’s light and truth, to intensify an apostolic activity that, under Pius XII, was already flourishing.

What actually transpired in the years of the Council and immediately afterwards is well known, tragic, even apocalyptic. The Church went through a period of ad intra amnesia and lost herself in an ad extra intoxication.

It was forgotten that if one’s own house, one’s own soul, is not in order, one has nothing worthwhile to share with the world; that preaching the Good News to unbelievers is effective only to the extent that there is something profoundly and transcendently good awaiting them when they arrive at church.

Instead of recalling the People of God to a sane repentance and inaugurating massive repair work ad intra, however, Paul VI and countless churchmen pushed the ad extra agenda further and further, with greater and greater incoherence as the result. The promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae sealed this trajectory and stifled, for a time, the cultivation of institutional memory and identity.

In short, the history of the Church from the Council to the present is a history of unremitting ad extra efforts without the requisite interior resources.

As many have pointed out, it has often seemed in the past half-century or so as if the institutional Church cared more for atheists, modernists, and every type of non-Catholic than for her own faithful children who are simply striving to believe what has always been believed and to live as Catholics have always striven to live, “in the world but not of it.” [Sounds familiar and quite recent! But certainly not under Benedict XVI, for whom 'charity begins at home' was always a self-evident guideline. How can we think of evangelizing others who are not already Christian or have lapsed away from the Church, if our own faithful are almost illiterate om the essentials of the faith? Because Catholic parents are no longer capable of being their childrne's first teachers and exemplars of the faith, and priests are not formed properly in order to be ministers of Christ, in persona Christi, who serve the faithful as they should, inculcating the catechism and encouraging the pursuit of sacramental grace.

One thinks of the words of Saint Paul: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10); and again, “If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim 5:8).

The Church is the family of God, and the pastors serve in loco parentis.—so why are they absent? Are they truly taking care of their children, and of their children’s primary needs?

Ecumenism, inter-religious dialogue, efforts for social justice, even evangelization efforts are worthless if the faithful themselves are not first being well clothed, nourished, and taught—clothed by sacraments frequently and worthily received, nourished by a sacred liturgy offered with beauty and reverence, taught sound doctrine in catechesis, preaching, and schools.

Hence, after forty years of wandering in the desert [OK, that rectifies the 'error' I protested above], the pontificate of Benedict XVI seemed, and truly was, a watershed moment, a breath of fresh air — a realization that it was time to attend to the state of our soul, to put our own house in order, to renew our liturgy from its deepest sources, and to learn once again what exactly is the Good News we are supposed to be sharing in the New Evangelization.

This pontificate began to undo, in a systematic way, the amnesia and the intoxication. In addition to its burgeoning fruits in the daily life of the Church, Summorum Pontificum stands forever as a symbol of the effort to bring about meaningful change by recalling the faithful to a tradition, spirituality, and way of life that are not in flux, as, indeed, its symbolic date—the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the new millennium—plainly announced.

In God’s Providence, it was a short pontificate, but the teaching and legislation of those eight years will, as the new century moves on, prove to be either the mustard-seed of an authentic renewal or the prophetic condemnation of a failed one.

In any case, it is our privilege, through no merits of our own, to embrace with gratitude, humility, and zeal the traditional Catholic identity, the fragrant living memory of God's gifts, that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has done so much to protect and promote, and to let these seeds bear fruit in our own lives.

There is no more any one of us can do, and yet this is enough. For God can take the few loaves and fishes we have, and multiply them endlessly.

When one thinks of the greatness of the task Pope Benedict entrusted to us — the task of authentic renewal from the very sources of faith and in continuity with tradition — and when we contemplate how much work and suffering faces us as we strive to put into practice the profound teaching on the sacred liturgy Our Lord has given us through this great Pope, we might be tempted to grow weary of the fight and fall away from it, especially in a time when so many in the Church seem to be running away from the dawning light back into the stygian darkness of the seventies.

Let us take heart from the many noble men and women, clergy, religious, and laity, who have fought the good fight, from the time of the Council even to our day; but let us also take heart from the unchanging spirituality that sustains the Benedictine monastic ideal that so inspired His Holiness.

As expressed by the Right Reverend Dom Paul Delatte, O.S.B.:

Patience hath a perfect work, and its work is to maintain in us, despite all, the order of reason and faith. Let us take our courage in both hands; let us grasp this blessed patience so tightly and so strongly that nothing in the world shall be able to separate us from it: patientiam amplectatur.

This is not the time for groaning, for self-justification, for dispute. We should not have been saved if Our Lord had declined to suffer. It is the time for bending our shoulders and carrying the cross, for carrying all that God wills and so long as He wishes, without growing weary or lagging on the road. …

There is no spiritual future for any but those who can thus hold their ground. When we promise ourselves to stand firm and to wait till the storm is past, then we develop great powers of resistance.




From 2013, thanks to Beatrice who has shared this letter sent to her by one of the followers of her website... This reflection by a priest says a lot of what we may have wanted to say ourselves....

This is simply 'au revoir'
Translated from

March 2, 2013


He left as he wanted to, in simplicity and in beauty, having decided, after long reflection, a long interior meditation ['after having examined my conscience again and again before God, coram Deo'] of which he has deemed us worthy to confide. He had chosen to respond to the will of God as it was revealed to his conscience.

How beautiful it was, the light of a peaceful Roman spring day, as if suspended between heaven and earth, as a pure white helicopter flew over the roofs of the Eternal City. How breathtakingly splendid were the gilded domes of the Roman churches, of the hilltowns called the 'castelli romani', and Lake Albano in its frame of greenery.

How beautiful it was, the goodwill of Romans watching from their roofs or windows, the joy of the parish priest of Castel Gandolfo welcoming a familiar 'parishioner', the faces of numerous religious in tears, images of the Church's universality. The wide-eyed little girl in her father's arms unsure if she should laugh or cry.

Even the amplitude of the material means placed at the disposition of an old man heading to retirement, the ballet of the troops, of vehicles and TV crews, was itself a homage from the world to the ministry of Peter.

There was more than just the emotion we heard from the TV commentators who themselves were seeking to understand what was happening.

A departure which reflected the retiring Pontiff in every way. Familial and intimate, recollected and spiritual.

Some world leaders leave in shame, amid general indifference, or in the violence of hatred that had accumulated against them. He left in God's time. In peace and serenity.

Perhaps we will see him again. Perhaps one day, we shall pass near him, in the Vatican Gardens, knowing he is there - praying, working, dedicating his remaining strength to the service of Christ and his Church.

His silence will comfort us. He will continue to be a living predication and an appeal for us to always turn with confidence to Christ.

Au revoir, most holy Father, and good night...


Abbé Hervé BENOÎT
Catholic Priest



Fr. Lombardi offered a more abstract look at Benedict XVI's departure from public life..

A hopeful farewell

March 2, 2013

The final days of the pontificate of Benedict XVI will certainly remain ingrained in the memory of innumerable people and will mark an important stage, new and unprecedented, in the history of a pilgrim Church.

For many it was almost a discovery of the Pope’s humanity and spirituality; for others, a confirmation of his humility, along with his deep life in faith.

If Pope Wojtyla had given, with admirable courage before the eyes of the world, his courageous witness of faith in the suffering of sickness, Pope Ratzinger, without lesser courage, gave us the witness of acceptance before God of the limits of old age and of the discernment on the exercise of responsibility that God had entrusted to him.

Both taught us, not only with their Magisterium, but also and perhaps even more effectively with their lives, what it means to seek and to find everyday the will of God for us and for our service, even in the most crucial situations of human existence.

As Benedict XVI told us effectively himself, the resignation of a Pope is not in any way abandonment, neither of the mission received or much less of the faithful. It is the continuation of entrusting to God his Church, in the secure hope that he continues to guide it.

With humility and serenity, Benedict XVI says he “tried to do” everything possible to serve the good of the Church, a Church that is not his, but God’s, and which, by the continued working of the Spirit, “lives, grows and awakens souls”.

In this sense, the legacy of Pope Benedict is today an invitation to all to prayer and responsibility. First, naturally, for the cardinals to whom falls the task of the election of a successor, but also and no less for the entire Church, who needs to accompany in prayer the discernment of the electors and the new Pope in the task of effectively proclaiming the Gospel “for the good of the Church and of humanity” and to guide the community to an always greater faithfulness to the same Gospel of Christ.

Because no Pope can do this alone. We will do it therefore also with him, and the Pope Emeritus will continue to accompany us, “working” for this – these were his final words spoken publicly –“with his heart, with his love, with his prayer, with his reflection”.

Thank you, Pope Benedict.

Benedict XVI has shown the world by an example that, for those who have no blinders, is dazzling in its luminosity, a simple obvious fact of human existence that is often ignored: No one is indispensable. No human being.

The Italian saying so often cited these days - 'Morto un Papa, se ne fa un'altro'(If a Pope dies, another becomes Pope) is true for any position however exalted. Earthly existence means that humans come and go. Men die or leave office, but life goes on in the world, in society, and living people take their place.

Everyone must come to terms with human mortality and the inexorable stages of life that come with it. Benedict XVI has had the wisdom and the humility to accept that, and to courage to say, "No, I will not inflict my own afflictions and limitations on the Church, because she deserves someone to lead her who is in the fullness of his powers. I have done my part, and beyond this, I can no longer effectively continue the Petrine ministry".

He did this with great certainty and total confidence, because, as he often says, the Church is God's not ours, and he will take care it does not sink, despite all the evil elements caught up in its net along with the truly good and saintly.

]St. Ambrose said, 'Ibi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia' - where Peter is, there the Church is - but if Peter is afflicted and ineffective in any way, then so is the Church afflicted and ineffective.

As someone who loves Benedict XVI and has followed him as closely as I could these past eight years, I did not want to publicly acknowledge my deep concerns about his well-being and the rapid signs of aging which seemed to have overtaken him in the past year and a half, at least. I refused to believe that the 'eternally youthful' Joseph Ratzinger was now succumbing to the ravages of age - though we had the example of his brother to remind us of that eventuality.

It was not so much any impaired ability to move that first caught my attention but his manner of speaking on some occasions. Times when he seemed to hurry through reading a message or a homily, without his usual enunciation of meaning by careful phrasing and pacing of the text, and with a voice that was distinctly flat as with exhaustion. The occasional bouts of coughing that he had, which made me wonder if he had any throat condition at all that should worry us. The contrast was obvious because much of the time, he spoke in fine form.

My first thought was that if he lost the faculty of speech or his speech became impaired in any way, then it would be a serious setback for him, not just as a person who all his life was called Goldmund (Chrysostomos, golden mouth)) but as the universal Pastor whose Magisterium must be authoritative not just in content but in delivery.

And then, his eyesight. His older brother has been virtually blind for five years now. What if the same gene worked in him! Sure, he would be able to say the prayers by memory, but how would a blind Pope say Mass on Mondovision and fumble around - because he can be helped to move around the altar, but celebrating the Mass involves gestures done by the celebrant alone that cannot be done for him.

Because of impaired speech and impaired mobility, John Paul II delegated papal Masses to his cardinals in the final months of his life, and had his homilies and speeches read by someone else.

Joseph Ratzinger had time enough during the final years of John Paul II's increasing physical disability to think about the implications of physical affliction on a Pope in this very public age and its inhuman demands on the time and resources of a Pope.

John Paul II was exceptional in that he chose to live his private suffering in public. And his public Calvary was accepted by all in the spirit that he offered it. But as an ordinary human being, I believe very deeply that suffering must be done in private, not made into a public spectacle (which it became, inevitably, with someone as prominent on the world stage as John Paul II was).

I would have preferred to be spared John Paul II's public agony - I did not need to see it to be convinced he was a holy man, or to appreciate that suffering is part of existence which we must live with Christian fortitude. Christ set the example on the Cross. One cannot possibly forget that!

A Pope cannot delegate his Petrine powers and authority - that is why there is no deputy Pope or anything equivalent. But he can renounce those powers and authority completely if he is no longer able to carry them out as they should be carried out. (Even at the Conclave that elected him, Benedict XVI said he had urged his supporters, "Choose someone younger and more able", to no avail.)

Complete renunciation of the Papacy is the simple and humble choice Benedict XVI made. In the full knowledge that he would be faulted yet again, as he has been so clamorously, for failing to 'follow the example of his predecessor'.

To the very end of his public life - and perhaps for some time to come in the transient chronicles of our time - he continues to be compared unfavorably to John Paul II. Who would never have been so uncharitable to Joseph Ratzinger as many Catholics are proving to be.

May God continue to clothe his faithful servant Joseph Ratzinger in his protection and grace, even now that he is no longer formally his Vicar on earth. But he will be in persona Christi for as long as he lives. (And a piano=playing one at that!)


What has most motivated me to set down my thoughts today about the 'gran rifiuto' by our beloved Benedict were Cardinal George Pell's strong words clearly and deliberately made to Australian TV [on the day Benedict XVI stepped down] openly criticizing Benedict XVI's decision as "wrong and destabilizing for the Church".

My first reaction was shock that he chose to say these things so openly at this time when it can serve no positive purpose at all but can only be counter-productive, especially since he was always considered one of Benedict XVI's staunchest allies - I thought that meant he was also a friend. Absolutely nothing and no one is served by the statements he made.

And the second was how can it be destabilizing to the Church when the purpose is precisely to place her on more secure footing under new leadership, with someone in the fullness of his powers who can meet the harrowing demands on a Pope in our time... I cannot even try to rationalize Cardinal Pell's appalling judgment lapse, let alone forgive him what I can only call disloyalty to Benedict XVI - because surely, the cardinal does not lack sensibility or common sense. He has every right to think what he does, but what was the urgency of saying it now?
[P.S. 2014 Of course, as it turned out, and oh-so-quickly, Pell's 'treachery' - more charitably, let me call it 'lack of Christian charity' towards Benedict XVI - just happened to be the first of such insults to Benedict XVI from those in the Church hierarchy who chose to speak to the media (and everyone did, it seemed) from Feb. 28 onwards. It was a crescendo of indirect but never-subtle Benedict-bashing that reached peak fortissimo after his successor had been elected - a fortissimo sostenuto that has become the incessant. clamorous and inevitable accompaniment to every report and commentary made about the Church today.]



P.S. 2015 - Little has changed in the situation today, as we saw from the AFP Vaticanista's report 'report' on the two-year anniversary of the renunciation. Even as media contihnues to make Benedict XVI a covnenient scapegoat for anythign wrong with the Church today, media and 'the world' continue to be enthralled with Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his papal veneer, despite increasing indications that 1) the imagined positive 'Francis effects' on the Church herself are mostly anecdotal and do not stand up to any factual analysis, and, 2) judging from the activity on the blogosphere and the comboxes of 'conservative' bloggers and commentators, as more and more orthodox Catholics are increasinly vocal about their 'doubts and perplexities' regarding this Pope and his intentions for the Church.

I always thought I should give him the benefit of teh doubt and jot 'judge' him prematurely, but I have thrown in the towel, after the overt manipulation of the so-called 'family synods by his men, apparent misdeeds by the likes of Rosica, Volpi and Baldisseri, and most importantly, that carefully crafted homily to the new cardinals on February 15 in which JMB articulated his principal heterodoxies.

It was easy to be 'indulgent' with the almost-daily outrage of his off-the-cuff morning pontifications from Casa Santa Marta, otherwise known as Padre Jorge's bully pulpit against all the 'categories' of Catholics he dislikes.

But to have him compare, in a prepared homily delivered in St. Peter's Basilica to his new cardinals (most of whom have happily echoed his heterodoxies to the media since they were named) his favored categories of Catholics living in a chronic state of sin {whom he would virtually exonerate of sin) to lepers who are despised and cast off by society (the Church, in this case) because they have a terrible illness they cannot help (even if their problem is a consequnce of a choice they consciously made, and therefore, self-inflicted), and say that it is Catholself-inclictedics who insist on the purity of doctrine and sacramental discipline who are wicked for doing this - it is all beyond belief from a Pope.

That few have taken issue with that dreadful and frightening homily is a measure of how a-critical most observers, swamped by the insant golden legend of the pluperfect Pope and his phenomenal celebrity, have tended to be about Jorge Bergoglio. Truly, one can say of him as John Lennon once said of the Beatles, he is far more popular than Jesus himself, because his celebrity has spread far beyond the Christian world. With every new interview he gives, and every attention-calling gesture he makes, it is not Christ he calls attention to but himself. Yet everyone calls him the humblest Pope there ever was.

Of course, he 'preaches Jesus'. He is the Pope, after all. But it is a false Jesus he preaches about - a Jesus who came to earth only for the poor, whose Gospel is only abotu the poor and for the poor (and he clearly means the materially poor). But in his syllogism, being poor is equivalent to being virtuous, so if the poor are already virtuous just by being poor, therefore it is not them whom Jesus came to save, right? It is all the non-poor whose sinfulness, this Pope says in so many ways, are causing all the material miseries of the poor.

In the same way, in his false ecclesiology, he only preaches about going to the peripheries, without saying anything about what happens to those who are already within the enclosure of the shepherd - who
presumably abandons them to go tend to those 'outside the flock'.

Pastors must go to the peripheries, he says, to take on 'the odor of their sheep', he says, as if that 'odor' only came from stray sheep and not from the regular flock.

Yet these pet theories have been widely acclaimed and disseminated, without even being given a superficial analysis that suffices to immediately demonstrate their fallacy. JMB's words are literal pablum (baby food), comfort food meant to provide an immediate sense of virtuousness that is perceived as virtue - without need of all the hard work one must put into being virtuous and remaining virtuous.

So, 'communion for everyone', even those living in chronic state of sin, or who may never have bothered to go to confession regularly - because 'communion is a medicine that heals' (as if it were a panacea that would cure anything and everything, no matter how habitually unhygienic you are).

Oh, yes, you should go to confession, if you can - it is good for your soul, you will say three Hail Marys and that's penance enough, not bothering to recall Christ's injunction to the adulterous woman, "Go and sin no more". (If he doesn't say that to his favored 'chronic sinners', he has less reason to nag the regular faithful about it.)

Is it improper for me to carry on about the dissatisfactions I have with JMB/PF in a post that is meant to be an unadutlerated tribute to Benedict XVI? I excuse myself in that the faults I criticize in his successor are faults that he certainly could never be accused of, nor for that matter, the previous Popes in the past 150 years.




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Utente Gold



More 'appreciations' of Benedict XVI -
on the seventh year of his Pontificate,
before anyone thought he would ever resign


At this time in 2012, I ran these posts - both of them an appreciation of the first seven years of Benedict XVI's Pontificate six weeks before the actual anniversary came around. On 2013, the timing seemed eerie, as does the discussion on resignation in the second article....

It is not given to many - much less to a Pope - to preview the verdict of his contemporaries about his life, achievements and legacy. The kind of verdict usually rendered first in obituaries. For Benedict XVI, it has been a mixed bag, of course. But nothing could surprise him about what his detractors say - he's had decades to get used to them. What counts is the testimony of qualified objective observers of Church affairs who do acknowledge his extraordinjary gifts and how he has put them in the service of God and his Church, and who end up being admirers if they did not originally start off being such. The kind of testimony that would have a lesser man say to himself, "I must have done something good', but which, to a man like Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, corresponds to the joyous peace with God of someone with an unburdened conscience.
!




For an economist, Dr. Gregg always makes a compelling commonsense 'theological' analysis when he writes about Catholic subjects. He 'gets it' spot on. This is one great introduction to an appreciation of Benedict XVI's first seven years as Pope (of which I hope we will get many excellent ones. Articles, I mean, but in a different sense, many more wonderful years with B16 as our Pope... [Mmmm, little I wot we would have less than a year left of his Pontificate!]

Benedict XVI and
the irrelevance of 'relevance'

by Samuel Gregg

March 8, 2012

Over the soon-to-be seven years of Benedict XVI’s papacy, it’s been instructive to watch the shifting critiques of this pontificate.

Leaving aside the usual suspects convinced that Catholicism should become what amounts to yet another liberal-Christian sect fixated with transitory politically-correct causes, the latest appraisal is that “the world” is losing interest in the Catholic Church.

A variant of this is the claim that the Irish government’s 2011 decision to closing its embassy to the Holy See reflects a general decline in the Church’s geopolitical 'relevance'.

[And you'd think a veteran Vatican observer like John Allen - who is also a sort of self-appointed expert on world Catholic affairs, since no one else is doing what he does, taking snapshots of the state of the Church worldwide bu visiting some key capitals to talk to the locals - would be one of those who would not respond with this knee-jerk banal commonplace, but that was exactly what he led off with last year, commenting on the Irish government's decision! Not one of the Italian Vaticanistas made that almost non-sequitur leap of logic! Clearly, Irish PM Kenny's government wanted to twist into its backstab on the Church to make it hurt more, and that's the only reason one should give. No other country has followed Ireland's example in the months since, even if the financial crisis drags on, so where does that put the 'irrelevance' claim?]

Whenever one encounters such assertions, it’s never quite clear what’s meant by 'relevance'. On one reading, it involves comparisons with Benedict’s heroic predecessor, who played an indispensable role in demolishing the Communist thug-ocracies that once brutalized much of Europe. [And those who argue this completely ignore that the global picture is radically different today from what it was when the free world was still fighting the 'evil empire', and terrorism as a daily political instrument was just in its beginnings, only becoming 'routine' after 9/11/2001. Islam was not the active threat for global hegemony that it is today via its surrogates who rule the Muslim countries.]

But it’s also a fair bet that 'relevance' is understood here in terms of the Church’s capacity to shape immediate policy-debates or exert political influence in various spheres.

Such things have their own importance. Indeed, many of Benedict’s writings are charged with content which shatters the post-Enlightenment half-truths about the nature of freedom, equality, and progress that sharply constrict modern Western political thinking.

But Benedict’s entire life as a priest, theologian, bishop, senior curial official and Pope also reflects his core conviction that the Church’s primary focus is not first-and-foremost “the world,” let alone politics.

Rather, Benedict’s view has always been that the Church’s main responsibility is to come to know better — and then make known — the Person of Jesus Christ. Why? Because like any orthodox Christian, he believes that herein is found the summit and fullness of Truth and meaning for every human being.

Moreover, Benedict insists the only way we can fully comprehend Christ is through His Church – the ecclesia of the saints, living and dead.


These certainties explain the nature of Benedict’s long-standing criticisms of various forms of political and liberation theology. His primary concern was not whether such movements reflected some Catholics’ alignment with the left, or the liberationists’ shaky grasp of basic economics.

Instead, Benedict’s charge was always that such theologies obscured and even distorted basic truths about the nature of Christ and His Church. [And those who claim otherwise simply parrot the totally unfounded media stereotype of Joseph Ratzinger as the pedantic, dogmatic and robotic enforcer of orthodox Catholic teaching - without once reading what he has actually written and said about liberation theology.]-

There is, of course, a 'relevance' dimension to all this. Unless Catholics are clear in their own minds about these truths, then their efforts to transform the world around them will surely run aground or degenerate into the activism of just another lobby-group amidst the thousands of other lobby-groups clamoring to be considered 'relevant'.

Which brings us to another great 'relevance' of Benedict’s pontificate: his desire to ensure that more Catholics understand the actual content of what they profess to believe.

It’s no great secret that Catholic catechesis went into freefall after Vatican II. It’s true that much pre-Vatican II catechesis was characterized by rote-learning rather than substantive engagement with the truths of the Faith.

But as early as 1983, Joseph Ratzinger signaled his awareness of the lamentable post-Vatican II catechetical state of affairs in two speeches he gave in Paris and Lyons.

Much to the professional catechists’ displeasure — but to the delight of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger and every young priest present — Ratzinger zeroed in on the huge gaps in the catechetical text-books then in vogue.

Two years later, the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops suggested that a new universal catechism be published. [Every time this is brought up, I cannot resist adding that in George Weigel's account of that Synod in his biography of John Paul II, it was the later much-maligned Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston who put forth the suggestion for the Catechism during that 1985 Synod. It doesn't make up, of course, for his terrible judgment lapses in almost coddling abusive priests in his diocese, but he does earn a positive footnote in history for this.]

This bore fruit in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church produced under Ratzinger’s supervision. Significantly, it followed precisely the fundamental structures he had identified in his 1983 addresses as indispensable for sound catechesis.

Fast-forward to 2012. Now Benedict is launching what’s called “a Year of Faith” in his apostolic letter Porta Fidei to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Vatican II’s opening.

Reading this text, one is struck by how many times Benedict underlines the importance of Catholics being able to profess the Faith. Of course you can’t really profess — let alone live out — the truths of the Catholic Faith unless you know what they are. Nor can you enter into conversation with others about that Faith unless you understand its content.

Hence, as one French commentator recently observed, at least one sub-text of Benedict’s Year of Faith is that the “doctrinal break-time” for the Church is over.

This point was underscored by the recent Note issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Along the other practical suggestions it gives for furthering the Year of Faith, the Note emphasizes “a profound bond between the lived faith and its contents” (i.e., true ortho-praxis can only be based on ortho-doxy). P.S. 2015 The polar opposite of the Bergoglian-progressivist push to divorce pracis from doctrine, on the fallacious assumption that the Church can change some of its practices without affecting doctrine in any way.]

It also stresses that Catholics need to know the content of the Catechism and the actual documents of Vatican II (rather than, sotto voce, the ever-nebulous [and rather noxious] spirit of Vatican II” that seems indistinguishable from whatever is preoccupying secular liberals at any given moment in time.

[Documents which, it would seem, the liberal progressivist spiritists have not really read, or bothered to read, judging by the untruths and half-truths they have been spewing abundantly in the past four decades, passing off their own ideas of what they would like the Church to be, as the 'spirit of Vatican II'. Until Benedict XVI became Pope, few contested them at all - in fact, this unfettered do-as-you-please abuse of the liturgy came to be taken for granted - the Mass as performance art!!

Just start with all the inventions they stuck on the Mass, many of them never mentioned in Sacrosanctum concilium(SC), the Vatican II constitution on the Liturgy (e.g., sidelining the tabernacle and tearing out the old altars to give way to bare tables -with the corollary of celebrating the Mass ad populum; receiving Communion in the hand), and some directly contradicting SC (e.g., eliminating Latin completely from the Mass, allowing all sorts of profane music - instruments and lyrics - instead of SC's encouragement of Gregorian chant, religious texts (preferably Scriptural) for lyrics, and organ music; and worst of all, using Vatican II as an excuse for any priest to say and do as he pleases when saying Mass, instead of sticking to the ritual and the words that make a Mass a Mass. None of everything that has made a Novus Ordo Mass objectionable as commonly practised since 1970 is to be found in SC!]


The predictable retort is that this proves that, under Benedict, the Church is turning in upon itself. Such rejoinders, however, are very short-sighted. To paraphrase Vatican II, Benedict understands the Church can only have a profound ad-extra effect upon the world if it lives its ad-intra life more intensely and faithfully.

Far from being a retreat into a ghetto, it’s about helping Catholics to, as the first Pope said, “be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15).

And therein lies the Church’s true contemporary significance, as understood by Peter’s present-day successor. It’s not to be found in turning the Catholic Church into something akin to the Episcopal church of America (otherwise known as the preferential option for self-immolation).

It’s about bringing the Logos of the Lord of History into a world that lurches between irrationality and rationalism, utopianism and despair, so that when we die, we might see the face of the One who once called upon Peter to have faith in Him and walk on water.

And what, after all, could be more relevant than that?




The following is a positive evaluation of Benedict XVI from another angle, although it begins, unfortunately, by buying into all the 'public opinion' commonplaces that most commentators have used to interpret and thereby further promote the wildly disproportionate hype over the leaked documents from the Vatican. None of those documents objectively constituted or indicated any high crimes or genuine scandal. To any objective view, they represent, at best, the interplay of conflicting interests inherent and normal in any human institution, especially bureaucracies (the Vatican bureaucracy is obviously no exception).

NB: Il Regno is a twice-monthly publication out of the Bologna-based Centro Editoriale Dehoniano run by the Congregation of Priests of the Sacred Heart founded by the late French priest Leon Dehon, whose cause for beatification has been stalled because of accusations that he was anti-Semitic.]


Benedict XVI:
Spiritual renewal in the face
of worldliness in the Church

by Gianfranco Brunelli
Translated from

March 8, 2012

The kindness of his gaze, the elegance of his manners, the calmness of tone that distinguish Benedict XVI did not veil the firmness of his words.

In his series of interventions during his fourth consistory to name new cardinals, he assembled a collection of unequivocal spiritual and doctrinal references following a recent spate of poison allegations aimed at the Vatican.

It could not be otherwise. The media clamor had been generated first around the confidential letters written by the ex-secretary-general of the Vatican City Governatorate, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, now Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, to the Pope and to Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone regarding questionable financial transactions at the Governatorate. Then a couple of internal memoranda on the new anti-money-laundering laws to be enforced at the Vatican 'bank' IOR: and finally the 'delirious' anonymous memorandum inferring a supposed assassination plot against the Pope within this year - all had created great perplexity in the Church and in international public opinion.

The fact that some parties had resorted to leaking confidential documents, of various levels of importance, in order to feed any existing conflicts within the Roman Curia but most of all, calling to question the role and the ability of the Secretary of State, offered the image of a moral and institutional crisis within the Church's principal organ of governance. [DIM=89t][2013 P.S. It would be three more months before we would find out that it was all largely the work of one 'party' - the Pope's treacherous, devious and magalomaniacal valet.]


[The general impression that the leakers intended to create was precisely for public opinion to think the worst - that unimaginable crimes have been happening inside the Vatican, even if the incidents reported did not include any really major 'scandal' and merely reflected normal internal rivalries within any bureaucracy. But for an informed 'analyst' to simply echo that intended impression as the actual outcome of the leaks is lazy and almost irresponsible.]

In a consistory February 2012] in which a number of Curial officials were made cardinals, the Curia was therefore under scrutiny both in terms of image and of substance.

[I beg to disagree. In fairness to the media, practically no one projected the negatives created by the leaks to the Curial officials who became cardinals - perhaps because, even if most reports kept referring to the 'revelations' as affecting 'the Curia' - the targets, as well as the leakers, were clearly all within the Secretariat of State, which is by no means the entire Curia.

The running beef was that, yes, the Pope had elevated more curial officials than metropolitan bishops to cardinal in this consistory .but that's an argument that has been discussed several times on this thread. But it must also be noted that no one, not even the Italian media, faulted any of the new Curial officials for lack of qualification or competency for the jobs that Benedict XVI named them to. Even if some of them may be proteges or friends of Cardinal Bertone, that does not make them less competent or qualified; surely, no one could say Benedict XVI named some cardinals to their positions of responsibility if he did not think they were the best men for mostly administrative and technical responsibilities.]


But whoever wanted Cardinal Bertone replaced has failed at least for now, but he is expected to set everything straight in his own department. In fact, this kind of crisis affects the Pope by implying a crisis of authority in the Church. [Again, that was the kneejerk conclusion drawn by run-of-the-mill commentary, echoing the main criticism by the Pope's detractors who claim that he takes no part and no interest at all in the actual government of the Church. Detractors like Marco Politi deliberately ignore that the Pope holds weekly meetings with his chief Curial collaborators - the heads of CDF, of Bishops and of the Evangelization of Peoples, who head the curial offices with the greatest direct impact on churches around the world; and that every afternoon, he sits down with Bertone and/or his two deputies to discuss administrative issues. But gullible members of the public will simply take their cue from what the commentators say and do not question any of their (very faulty) premises.]

It is not accidental that the latter stages of the controversy also brought forth the hypothesis that the Pope may resign. [It really is a non sequitur, because the resignation hypothesis has been floated since last year, not however because of any controversies or administrative issues, but because of alleged health problems! And it is bound to be brought up more often, as the Pope gets older, since in Light of the World, Benedict XVI said clearly that he felt a Pope should resign if he was no longer physically, psychologically and mentally capable of carrying out the Petrine ministry.] [P.S.2013 How could we know the resignation would come less than a year after this article was published?]

In the three days associated with the consistory, the Pope touched all the necessary themes. Starting with what he considers decisive for the Church in this historical moment.

He reads this last critical development as a confirmation and an acceleration of what he called 'a crisis of faith' in his address to the Roman Curia last December. A crisis that cuts across all Christianity. But especially European Christianity.

And alongside the sex abuses by priests, supposed financial scandals, and rivalries for power, there is the more significant testimony of Christians in places where the Church is now the target of persecution for what she believes. It is this reality that concerns the Pope most.

In his allocution to the cardinals before the rites that actually made them cardinals, the Pope spoke the 'mundanization' of the Church, and to the logic of power pursued by some of her members. A logic that is directly anti-evangelical.

Thus he told the new cardinals that, following the example of Christ, they are called on "to serve the Church with love and vigor, with the limpidity and wisdom of teachers, with the energy and firmness of pastors, with the fidelity and courage of martyrs".

Then, commenting on the account of St. Mark regarding the request made to Jesus by the sons of Zebedee, James and John, about sitting next to him in his glory, to the right and left of him, dBenedict XVI quoted the words of Jesus: "You do not know what you are asking".

"James and John, with their request, showed that they did not yet understand the logic of life that ought to characterize the disciple, in his spirit and in his actions". But he pointed out that such erroneous logic did not just dwell in James and John, but "according to the Evangelist, it contaminated even 'the other ten' apostles, who "started to be indignant with James and John. They were indignant because it is not easy to enter into the logic of the Gospel, and to leave that of power and glory".

The episode narrated by St. Mark (cf Mk 16,37-45) ends with the admonition to all his disciples that "they may be servants" and 'slave to all'. An unequivocal admonition on the day of the consistory. To stigmatize an evil that has once again taken grip of the Church.

"Dominion and service, egoism and altruism, possession and gift, self-interest and gratuitousness - these profoundly contrasting approaches have confronted each other in every age and place", the Pope concluded.

"There is no doubt about the path chosen by Jesus. He does not merely indicate it with words to the disciples of then and today, but he lives it in his own flesh. He explains, in fact, 'For the Son of man also came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many
' (Mk 10,45).

"These words shed light on today's public Consistory with a particular intensity. They resound in the depths of the soul and represent an invitation and a reminder, a commission and an encouragement, especially for you".

The Pope calls on the Curia in general and to the various internal factions to stop their infighting. One doubts that his message will be heard at all.

Extending this admonition to pastors to the entire Church, on his homily of February 19, feats of the Chair of St. Peter, the Pope recalled:

Everything in the Church rests upon faith: the sacraments, the liturgy, evangelization, charity. Likewise the law and the Church's authority rest upon faith. The Church is not self-regulating, she does not determine her own structure but receives it from the Word of God, to which she listens in faith as she seeks to understand it and to live it.

The Fathers of the Church fulfill the function of guaranteeing fidelity to Sacred Scripture. They ensure that the Church receives reliable and solid exegesis, capable of forming within the Chair of Peter a stable and consistent whole.

The Sacred Scriptures, authoritatively interpreted in the Magisterium in the light of the Fathers, shed light upon the Church's journey through time, providing her with a stable foundation amid the vicissitudes of history.



Summarizing symbolically the various elements of the Chair of Peter, and looking at the ensemble of the Bernini Altar of the Chair, the Pope underscored the simultaneous presence of a twofold = ascending and descending.

This is the reciprocity between faith and love. The Chair is placed in a prominent position in this place, because this is where Saint Peter’s tomb is located, but this too tends towards the love of God. Indeed, faith is oriented towards love. A selfish faith would be an unreal faith.

Whoever believes in Jesus Christ and enters into the dynamic of love that finds its source in the Eucharist, discovers true joy and becomes capable in turn of living according to the logic this gift. T

True faith is illumined by love and leads towards love, leads on high, just as the altar of the Chair points upwards towards the luminous window, the glory of the Holy Spirit, which constitutes the true focus for the pilgrim’s gaze as he crosses the threshold of the Vatican Basilica.
[How I agree so passionately! From the first time I ever entered St. Peter's Basilica, I always thought that that alabaster window was its most compelling feature.]

"Pray that I may be able to keep my hand on the tiller with gentle firmness". This was Benedict XVI's response to the speculation about his possible resignation.

He knows how this debate over the resignation of a Pope, occasionally aired by the media, can in fact weaken the exercise of the Papal role, since he had experienced this as an involuntary protagonist alongside John Paul II.

For now, resignation is out of the question. His health allows him to govern the Church fully even if he is about to turn 85. But his response was not - as John Paul II's was in 2003 - inherent to his state of health, but rather to the route and handling of the ship of the Church. That 'gentle firmness' says everything about his will to exercise pastoral direction and governance of the Church.


[2013 P.S. In 2012, I did not find the paragraphs above ominous or even cautionary in any way. I lived in the blissful cocoon I had built that Benedict would live as long as Leo XIII, if not longer, and would look older and obviously, less physically fit, but I never imagined how fast physical deterioration can take place in persons over 80.]

And here, the writer builds up to a wonderful conclusion that synthesizes the vision of Benedict XVI:

It is not accidental that he has placed before himself and the universal Church a demanding biennial on the symbolic and doctrinal levels: the Year of Faith which will open in October on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and will conclude towards the end of 2013.

It will be, in fact, a new Great Jubilee [marked by the Church in 2000 to celebrate the first 2000 years of Christianity]. This Conciliar Jubilee configures itself symbolically as a landing stage in his Pontificate.

All the points of reform in his Pontificate coalesce around the Year of Faith: a new season of evangelization, reinforced by a spiritual renewal to clean out all behavior that constitutes a continual counter-testimony to the message of the Gospel.


Nor was it accidental that at the pre-consistory assembly of the College of Cardinals on February 17, the Pope asked incoming Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and president of the US bishops' conference, to introduce the subject of New Evangelization, and on Mons. Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, to present the initiatives programmed at various levels of the Church during the Year of Faith.

In this, the Pope calls on the universal Church to make an examination of conscience on the reception thus far of the teachings from the Second Vatican Council according to that hermeneutic of continuity that he has so often cited.

Along this line, Benedict XVI hopes to bring the Church out of the ruts of scandal and internal power conflicts.

Along this line, he hopes to lead the Church to a new season of faithful witness. It is a plan strongly characterized by the personal vision of the theologian Pope but which remains, at the same time, quite open.
[Open to what? To tactical adjustments, perhaps, but not to strategic or substantial change!]

In 2013, two days before the 2013 Conclave opened, I wroe this to consolidate in my own mind the literally gruesome nature of the media cross that Joseph Ratzinger Benedict XVI has had to bear since he came to Rome in 1982 and became the lightning rod for all the grudges of the world against the Catholic Church.

I am re-posting it, not out of self-indulgence, but because the it continues to be resoundingly valid about the overall media attitude towards him, and because it contrasts so glaringly with the glowing superlatives that have been heaped on his successor almost from the first moment that he faced the world as Pope.

The operative dynamic for this was obvious: 1) Compared to Joseph Ratzinger whom they had freely demonized for almost a quarter-century before he became Pope, they knew virtually nothing about the new Pope, so he was a tabula rasa on which they were free to write anything they pleased, especially because 2) it was the platinum opportunity for them to be able to finally 'show up' Benedict XVI as the polar opposite, in their minds, to all the virtues and excellencies of a new Pope who was instantly the paragon of all virtues and excellences.
]/DIM]


All the criticism by media
of Benedict XVI's Pontificate
is manufactured or false

March 11, 2013

Some eight years ago, most media commentators contemplated with utter chagrin the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope. For decades their favorite whipping boy for everything they dislike about the Catholic Church, he was now her spiritual leader.

To salvage their devastated spirits, they struck back right away by saying he would be a transitional Pope at best (i.e., they didn’t expect him to live long), and that, in any case, he would never be able to ‘fill the shoes’ of the great John Paul II. As if he were nothing but a midget compared to a giant.

He did not need to fill anyone’s shoes because his own shoes were uniquely exceptional. He had a pre-papal biography that is arguably unparalleled in the history of the Papacy.

He was no transitional Pope because even if he ‘reigned’ less than a third of the time that his predecessor did, he accomplished quite a lot in less than eight years. As a head-to-head comparison with the first eight years of his predecessors in modern times would show. He may not have called an ecumenical council as John XXIII did, or helped bring about the collapse of Communism, as John Paul II did, but those are unique events that cannot be created spontaneously.

Meanwhile, he quickly stamped his own gentle and joyful style on his Pontificate, amplified in untold ways by the clarity of his teaching and the power of his quiet personal witness to which he did not call attention at all or need to.

After he announced his renunciation of the Pontificate, not one of those detractors has dared go back to dismissing him as a transitional Pope. Not one now says he was unworthy at all to have followed the great John Paul II. And even those who called him a reactionary obscurantist have had to admit that his decision to give up the Papacy was truly revolutionary and radical.

But instead of acknowledging his achievements, they have taken the insidious tack of presenting his Pontificate as if it were the alpha and omega of everything that’s wrong with the Church, or that the major problems the Church has to face in the world are exclusive to his Pontificate alone.

Even so, those who had been consistent in their admiration and adherence to him have not hesitated to call him a great Pope and have been doing so since after his first two to three years as Pope.

My intention here is not to review the achievements and attributes that make him great in every sense of the word - they are obvious to those who love him, and they deserve better than the cursory comments I can make – but to point out how not even his worst critics can come up with anything substantial to fault him with.

My starting point is the AP’s pre-conclave story on March 11 (see earlier post) which echoes Marco Politi’s brief list of Benedict’s supposed ‘failures’.

To begin with, the fresh furor that is whipped up at will by the media over abusive priests and permissive bishops - for cases that had mostly taken place decades before Benedict became Pope. This issue had been thoroughly worked over in 2000-2002, but was revived to peak intensity in 2009-2010, it seems with the sole purpose of getting Benedict XVI to resign out of shame. MSM’s biggest guns in the US and Germany huffed and puffed to find anything in his past that they could defile him with but found nothing.

You'd think from the continual harping in the media that only Catholic priests had ever been guilty of sex crimes against children, that all Catholic priests were sex predators, and that the Church, and especially Benedict XVI, had not done anything to redress a past in which such shameless deeds took place and were tolerated and/or covered up. But on this front, Benedict acted in a way his sainted predecessor did not, and everyone knows it. The sex-abuse scandals attributed to him patently constitute a false charge.

Then, consider the mediagenic and media-generated false controversies like Regensburg and the Williamson case - which were pumped up far beyond the actual significance of the almost trivial details on which MSM (and the public opinion they shape willy nilly) chose to focus to the exclusion of everything else. But which did notimpede Benedict from proceeding to build bridges to Islam, to the Jews and to non-believers. In concrete ways that were visible to everyone.

And finally, 'Vatileaks' - the most over-hyped petty felony in history, more than Watergate which had been a case of inept housebreaking into rival party headquarters raised to epic proportions by an unnecessary and stupid cover-up.
Here we had rank thievery of private documents by the Pope's own valet. He may have been acting on behalf of still unnamed others, but he himself was on a monomaniacal mission of his own - 'to save the Church' from a Pope he considered uninformed, and from everything and everyone in the Vatican whom he sanctimoniously considered 'evil and corrupt' with the shining exception of himself! Yet MSM gladly used his line as if it were gospel truth, without looking for any substantiation at all of that generic accusation.

The media treated this episode as if they were covering the crime of the century - even if the stolen documents showed nothing negative about Benedict XVI himself, nor any outrageous scandal in the Church, nor any previously unreported power games in the Curia. There was not even a show attempt by the media to investigate any lead that might yield a genuine expose of the much-bandied 'evil and corruption' in the Vatican.

Moreover, Vatileaks provided the cue for open season by all and sundry to eviscerate 'the Curia' as if it were a single amorphous monstrous organism that is the Church's heart of darkness. And so the Curia has become the scapegoat of this Conclave, the villain of villains in a vile and thoroughly villainous Vatican.

When someone I have respected and admired a great deal like Mons. Charles Chaput - whom I had secretly thought would make the ideal first North American Pope - tells an Italian newspaper that the next Pope "should clean the Vatican bureaucracy from the ground up (as) a pressing task that would require an energy that Benedict XVI could no longer provide", then I truly despair.

If the media meme can get to someone as intelligent and perceptive as Archbishop Chaput, no wonder the whole world is ready to toss the Church into the dustbin of history. Is it a surprise then when a Catholic anchor like Bill O'Reilly, whose following is astronomical, declares ex cathedra that "the Church has really damaged itself with the sex abuse scandals that I do not see how it can ever repair the damage"?

Although he ought to be better informed, but is not in this case, he is speaking for the many who consider that a few rotten apples in a silo full of fruit means that everything else is tainted and spoiled beyond salvage and must be condemned.

And there is the sideshow of IOR, rightly criticized for its lack of transparency for most of its history. But who was it who, for the first time in Vatican history, decreed that all Vatican offices should follow minimum standards of transparency and be subject to a Financial Information Authority? Who first sought to bring IOR in line with commercial banks that are certified for efficient financial controls by an international authority?

Benedict XVI decreed financial transparency at the Vatican in the same way that he sought zero tolerance for abuses committed by priests and dismissed bishops shown to have failed to apply canon law to erring priests or even to have covered up for them.

But MSM is blind to anything clean and shining, at least where JR-B16 was and is concerned - and can only see what is sordid and sinister, because bad news is news, and good news is no news. Meanwhile, their current meme for the Ratzinger Pontificate is 'evil and corruption, upheaval and uncertainty' without an objective basis, but only because that is what they choose to tell the world about the Church. Without a single good word.

As I said in my comments on Marco Politi's 'making nice' after years of Benedict-bashing, if he could only mention the few 'topics' that he does, and cited above, as the major criticisms of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, then we are talking of manufactured crises (Regensburg, Williamson and Vatileaks), or of conditions left to fester for decades without any redress (abusive priests and IOR) until Benedict XVI took a hand, or conditions endemic to any bureaucracy (‘the Curia’).

No one can name a major problem ‘caused’ directly by Benedict XVI or his administrators. But certainly a major problem for the Church now is the widespread perception created by MSM and the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ that the above-mentioned problems are genuine crises that have 'rocked and damaged' the Church – even those that have been addressed well and positively, such as priestly perversions and financial opacity.

They have established a black myth about the Church that is as pernicious and dishonest – and unfortunately as devastatingly effective - as that which Soviet propagandists constructed around Pius XII.

My only consolation is that those who appreciate Benedict XVI for who he is and what he has accomplished are not just a few scattered voices among those who write the chronicles which future historians will use as sources to report on his Pontificate.

Whatever judgment secular historians make of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, Church history will get it right. Especially when it concerns the Pontificate of a potential and future Doctor of the Church.

As a sort of complement to the above, here is an account by a French priest who lived in Rome at the time of the 2005 Conclave - and his reaction to Benedict XVI's election, and how he had been conditioned by what he had read in the media about Cardinal Ratzinger. From the thread 'THE EXPERIENCE OF APRIL 19, 2005' in the PAPA RATZINGER FORUM. The article appeared in the June 2005 issue of “Feu et Lumiere”, a monthly Catholic magazine in France.

Joseph Ratzinger:
His heart was 'Christified'
during two decades of calumny
while he was Prefect of CDF

Translated from
Feu et Lumiere
Issue of June 2005

Editor's Note: Many things have been said about Benedict XVI since his election. It seemed important to us to allow our readers to make their own judgment. Father Ide, who lives in Rome, tells us how he experienced the event and the immense hope that fills his heart.

I think I will remember all my life the moment when Benedict XVI was elected. I was in my office which overlooks St. Peter’s Square. It was around 4:30 p.m. I had to make a long-distance call, and the operator said:”We have a new Pope!” -“No!”- “Yes!”…Well in that case, my call could wait…

I looked out the window. The police were clearing the sagrato, the space right in front of the entrance to St. Peter’s, where important celebrations take place. The crowd was swelling fast. Then, the bells of St. Peter’s started ringing, driving away all my doubts. After 4 ballots and within less than 24 hours, a new Pope had been chosen. The Piazza filled up with unprecedented speed: businessmen, familes, children, all Rome seemed to arrive, running to St. Peter's.

16:40 The window on the Loggia of Benedictions had hardly started to open when a cry of joy ran through the crowd.

What followed, you have all seen. First, we found out who the new Pope is – “Josephum…Ratzinger”. And then the name he had chosen, “Benedictus XVI”.

Nevertheless, I felt myself oddly ambivalent. On the one hand, I thought, “How well-prepared this new Pope is!” On the other hand, I could not bring myself to rejoice. For me, Cardinal Ratzinger was and could only be the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, chosen by John Paul II to help him guard the treasury of the Faith, though with an incomparable openness to doctrinal debate.

I also remembered some opinions that had been reported of his years as Archbishop of Munich: that he was more a doctor rather than a pastor. But most of all, I imagined all the negative reactions that would come and I was saddened in advance.

Unfortunately, I was not wrong. The same evening, the false judgments, the caricatures, the unfair criticisms started to air. We have since heard everything said against him, including the unimaginable and the unsupportable. But these criticisms require our discernment, because they mask a diversity of different internal attitudes towards Joseph Ratzinger.

At one extreme, we find a hatred that is destructive and lying, that dares to say Benedict XVI had colluded with Nazism, a charge that amounts to the most inadmissible calumny. In his admirable autobiography, which has been translated in French, Ratzinger tells how at age 17, he refused, despite the jeers of his friends, to join the SS militia by affirming that he planned to become a Catholic priest.

The more moderate feed their anger by trite arguments that “he is too conservative.” Behind all this misinformed and sectarian anger, one senses fear.

One person told me: “I love the Church. I loved John Paul II. I did not have any a priori objections to Benedict XVI as I did not know anything about him. On the contrary, when I saw his face on television, I liked him at first sight. But afterwards, all that I have heard of him makes me afraid that the Church will lose the beautiful openness that his predecessor had brought to it.” We then talked about the new Pope’s personality, and I could see confidence gradually replacing my friend’s fear.

But there is also sadness. We need some time to mourn John Paul II and to fully welcome his successor without comparing them. The Vicar of Christ is not Christ, and if Benedict XVI does not have all the qualities of John Paul, the reverse is equally true.

Some anecdotes often reveal the man far more than long discourses. For instance, a group of American pilgrims now recall that one day, at St. Peter’s Square, they asked a priest to take their pictures. He did so, gladly, and they asked him to pose with them. Imagine their surprise to see that the obliging priest in the picture is now the Pope!

After the Pope’s inaugural Mass, a simple man, who says he barely knows how to write, said wondrously: “I understood everything he said in his homily. And yet, it lasted all of 35 minutes.”

A theologian on the prestigious International Theologic Commission, of which Cardinal Ratzinger was president [ex-officio, as CDF Prefect], recalls: “It often happened that we would lose ourselves in endless debates that were increasingly complex. After listening, the Cardinal had his say, offering his point of view which, almost always, reconciled opposing views, and even better, clarified them.”

And someone told me: “When the time comes that the world will say goodbye to Ratzinger, the high and the mighty will be surprised to see they will be surrounded by beggars and hobos, those whom the Cardinal greeted each day when he met them on the street, stopping to exchange a few words and to hand them alms.”

How better to describe the man’s simplicity, his concern for the poorest, his openness, his exceptional intelligence? These are qualities that the faithful began to discover in the first few days of his Papacy. But they were always there, even when he was a cardinal.


There are those who are concerned about his “intransigence.” But they mistake his sense (and defense) of the truth for intransigence. Today, to speak of love and solidarity and compassion will elicit only unanimity. But some contrast what they take to be all-tolerant love with a truth they consider to be “exclusive”. But isn’t truth the greatest good needed by the soul? Benedict XVI, who in his inaugural homily recalled at length the significance of the pallium, does not separate love and truth.

There are those who are unhappy about his “conservatism.” But didn’t Christ himself say that "not the smallest letter…will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”(Mt 5, 18)? And who will dare to say that Christ is “conservative”?

There are those who are concerned about his stand in matters of ecumenism and inter-religious dialog. It is to forget that Ratzinger worked alongside Protestant theology faculties during his university career, that he sent his first Papal letter to the Jewish community in Rome, that he speaks modern Greek fluently, that he is a friend of the Patriarch of Moscow, that in all the liturgical celebrations since the death of John-Paul, the Vatican has allowed [to use John Paul’s metaphor] both lungs of the Church, the East and the West, to breathe freely.

I think hope will prevail over any fears if we adopt a resolutely theological attitude towards the election process itself at the Conclave. First, it required a two-thirds majority. And it required that each cardinal, before placing his ballot into the urn, pronounce the following oath: “I take as my witness Christ who will judge me, that I cast my vote for the person who I judge should be elected.”

Benedict was elected by a great majority of his brother cardinals from all over the world. The fact was more evident and significant because the process was quite short.

Afterwards, a passage from his homily on April 24 gave me a sense of joyous hope about the new Pope: “I do not need to present a program of government…My true program of government is not do my will, not to pursue my ideas, but, with the whole Church, to listen to the word and the will of the Lord and to let myself be guided by him in such a way that it will be God himself who will guide the Church at this hour in our history.”

A man endowed with all the gifts he has, who puts himself entirely in the hands of God – that is a winning formula! After more than 20 years of testing and calumnies of all sorts that have come his way, he has learned to pardon unconditionally. A gentle and humble man, his heart was “Christified” in his previous office, preparing him in turn for his new and crushing mission as Vicar of Christ.

Finally, how can one not think that John Paul II must have prayed for his successor, and prayed in particular for this successor? Benedict has said he feels his predecessor’s hand holding him firmly by the hand. From the day after he was elected, my heart has felt much lighter – now it is in a state of thanksgiving and deep confidence.

The past has proven that our predictions often go wrong. Who would have thought that John XXIII, whom everyone said would simply be a “transitional” Pope, would call the Second Vatican Council?

Moreover, the history of the past two centuries shows that the Church has often been blessed with Popes who have led incontestably saintly lives.





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Fr H starts this brief post with a droll suggestion about role reversal, then proceeds to his main point, obviously a sore one with him, as it is for many orthodox liturgists...

Will the Bishop of Rome once again be
the only able-bodied bishop who will not
celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper
with his priests and the diocesan faithful
at his cathedral (in this case, St. John's Lateran)???


27 February 2015

Why don't people swap roles occasionally? Fr Lombardi could go riding around in airliners making remarks to journalists; then the Holy Father could do the News Conferences explaining what the remarks had really meant.

This year's Vatican Liturgical Schedule doesn't include the Holy Father presiding at the Mass of the Last Supper. Is Cardinal Burke, il Cardinale volante, still free to step into this breach? If, by then, the Swiss Guard has been abolished, he could bring his Knights of Malta to the Lateran to provide Security. Juventutem could waggle flabella [ostrich-plume fans] over the sedia gestatoria. Except Burke can't because he is not the Bishop of Rome. But if the Bishop of Rome chooses to be elsewhere, could his Vicar-General in Rome not celebrate the Cathedral Mass instead?]

I wonder if the Bishop of Rome will be the only able-bodied Latin Rite diocesan bishop in the world not to celebrate the Mass of the Last Supper openly with his priests, deacons, and people?

There will of course be sound precedents galore from the much more flexible age of the Renaissance papacy ... it's praxis within the rather more rigid post-Vatican II dispensation that I'm curious about.

{colore=#0026ff][Fr. H is, of course, ironizing, as usual. I am sure he is well aware that as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio decided unilaterally, with regard to the Mass of the Lord's Supper - which commemorates both the institution of the Eucharist and of the priesthood - to reduce it, in effect, to focus on the footwashing ritual, imbuing it with a distorted symbolism. In which he ignores the rules set down in the post-Vatican II manual of rituals for the Paschal Triduum - the rites celebrated by the Church in the three days preceding Easter, starting on the eve of Good Friday - precisely with the Mass of the Lord's Supper - and ends with the Vespers of Resurrection Sunday). [One gets an idea of the considerable 'autonomy' this Pope would allow local bishops from all the liberties he took unilaterally as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. most notably, 'communion for everyone'. How anyone could have thought of him as fundamentally 'conservative and orthodox' considering his record in Buenos Aires would make an excellent study on the psychology of reality-denying perception !][colore]

I must hunt up Fr. Giovanni Scalese's very informative post in 2013 about the Triduum and why the liturgical manual specifies that the diocesan bishop must hold the Mass of the Lord's Supper at his cathedral, in the presence of his priests and the diocesan faithful.

Maundy Thursday is not about Jesus demonstrating his humility to his apostles - they already knew that. The footwashing was a reminder that they must be 'clean' in carrying out their ministry, and yes, that their ministry is service above all. These are prerequisites/ corollaries to the priesthood which Jesus instituted that night and to the even greater institution that the Mass of the Lord's Supper commemorates - the Eucharist. henceforth to be celebrated by the priest in persona Christi.

Why then has Jorge Bergoglio chosen to 'downgrade' the Mass of the Lord's Supper to manifest his personal humility and his symbolic service to 'outcasts' and 'the least' in society? Why can he not celebrate this signally-important Mass in his Cathedral, washing the feet of priests as traditionally done, in keeping with Jesus's original gesture, then afterwards, hold a separate foot-washing ritual at the venue of his choice - a hospital, a jail, a hospice for terminal AIDS patients, a leprosarium, even in places where there is no consecrated chapel, a beggar's hovel in some shantytown - instead of co-opting the hardly unimportant Mass of the Lord's Supper for his own agenda?

Since he first did this as Pope in 2013, how many bishops around the world have thought it 'wise' to emulate his example?

The Mass of the Lord's Supper - or any Mass, for that matter - is not about the priest celebrating it, but one would not think that to observe how much store JMB has put into his footwashing 'fetish'. It is not, after all, called the Mass of the Footwashing.

And, in this Pontificate, is the Lateran Cathedral, seat of the Bishop of Rome, destined to be empty and dark on the evening of Maundy Thursday when its bishop chooses to celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper elsewhere? (Personally, I have very vivid memories of attending, from a sixth-row seat, the Mass of the Lord's Supper celebrated at the Lateran by St. John Paul II in 1984.)
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Sorry for the three-day lapse. Thankfully, nothing earth-shaking has happened in the meantime... or did I miss anything? Maybe some coruscating gem of blistering reproof from Casa Santa Marta? A blog from Fr. Ray helps me gets back into the groove.

Avoiding stereotypes
Fr. Ray Blake's Blog
February 27, 2015

We should all avoid stereotypes. The Holy See was placed in such an embarrassing position earlier this week over a leaked private email from His Holiness in which he had used the phrase 'avoid the Mexification'. [The remark was something about his not wanting the drug problem to lead to the 'Mexification' of Argentina. Were you listening, John Allen? That's one mighty serious gaffe', ain't it. If Benedict XVI had written it, you'd have told the world right away that "once again, he has put his foot into his mouth", or some such hyperbole! And what does it say that a Pope, no less, allows a 'national' slur to color his thinking and articulate it?]

Poor old Fr Lombardi had to again, 'clarify', the Vatican Information Service had to issue an explanation and an assurance that no-one on earth was more loved by the Holy Father more than Mexicans, which suggests the Secretary of State had to do a great deal to soothe ruffled feathers behind the scenes. It is all very reminiscent of Vatileaks at the end of the last Pontificate. [Excuse me, Fr. Ray, but i fail to see any analogy at all. In Vatileaks, Benedict XVI was totally the 'aggressed' party, both on the part of his thieving valet and on the part of the media who turned the random assortment of documents pilfered by Gabriele - much of whose contents had previously been reported at the time the incidents happened - by e into major fiction about 'evil and corruption' in Benedict's Vatican. Benedict was never guilty of saying anything tactless about anyone!]

Just as one should avoid 'Mexification', so one should avoid 'Argentinianisation' or 'Latin-Americanisation' but this last week or so seems to have been a rather dramatic gear change, rather unpleasant things seem to have hatched out of the mud. [What a good way to describe the slimy ooze squishing beneath feet of clay at the Vatican!]

The latest, Card. Baldisseri ordering the interception or theft and destruction of 'Remaining in the Truth', the book by five of his fellow Cardinals, which was sent Synod members. He had the rather limp excuse of protecting the Synod participants from 'confusion', yet as Matt Archbold reminds us the Pope had demanded 'parrhesia' open speech from Synod members. [Fr Blake goes on to cite quite a few JMB/PF statements about parrhesia before and during the Oct. 2014 family synod. Yeah, right! Parrhesia for all, unless you do not share the Bergoglio-Kasper-Baldisseri 'communion for all' working postulate!]

Then there was the curious case of Fr Rosica, Fr Lombardi's assistant, someone close to the Pope, who has been threatening an obscure Canadian pensioner blogger for reporting his involvement in manipulating the Synod. Coupled with Fr Volpi's reneging on an arbitration agreement with the family of Fr Manelli the founder of the Franciscans of Immaculate, there seems to be a strong sense of bullying, of the total opposite of what His Holiness really wants: mercy. [In a sycophantic follow-the-leader environment, perhaps they are merely taking lessons from the bully-in-chief's Casa Santa Marta tirades!]

All of this takes place against a background of accusations of 'dissident' leveled against those who are against changing the teaching of the Church. This, of course, gives rise to actions like the rather unpleasant twitter of Fr Scott, Fr Rosica's confrere. And in Rome, as Sandro Magister suggests there is open season on kangaroos, there are increasingly vicious attacks on Cardinal Pell.

Though one would want to avoid words like 'Argentinianisation' or 'Latin-Americanisation', that seems to be what we are steadily paddling towards. The methods of President Kirchner or the Perons seem to have an echo in the Vatican.

There is an unpleasant ruthlessness in those around the Pope and even his allies elsewhere. I was rather shocked by an article by Cardinal Wuerl, obviously directed against Cardinal Burke, but not engaging in theology or ideas but simply an attack on him personally, and calling those who did not agree with a change in Church teaching, "dissenters".

Pope Benedict left in place those who disagreed with him fundamentally - Abp Piero Marini and Cdl Kasper are the most obvious examples but under Francis we seem to have a one party state, opposition is dealt with ruthlessly.

The great problem with such a situation, as we have often seen in South America, Argentina in particular, in the recent past, is such a system breeds revolution and instability, it is useful for quick-fix solutions but ultimately leads to injustice, impoverishment and disaster. It creates a climate of fear, fear of 'el presidente' [El Caudillo] or at least a desire to be sycophantically subservient but fear of unknown henchmen, of denunciation.

Many of the Cardinal electors had hoped that the election of the 'new Pope' might be about clearing Rome of its cliques and anonymous accusations, its denunciation by innuendo and its bitter feuds and corruption. It it is simply not happening - on the contrary it is happening with renewed vigour.

And Father Z quotes from a post by Father H who just got back from a week in Ireland doing his apostolate for the Ordinariate:

Renaissance triumphalist crowing
both in bad taste and divisive

by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf quoting
Fr. John Hunwicke
March 3, 2015

[I was surprised to get back home to my computer to discover that in Rome there is going to be a special Mass to commemorate fifty years since the first Mass entirely in the Italian Language.

Surely, this sort of rather Renaissance triumphalist crowing is both in bad taste, and sadly divisive? Will the Mass be a Requiem to pray for the souls of those whose faith was disastrously weakened by those of the post-Conciliar changes which were praeter Concilium seu contra Concilium [beside the Council or against the Council][?? I think), and which proliferated during this half-century?

If you are a no-longer-fertile Mexican grandmother possessing shares in the Ignatius Press, whose newly ordained narcissistic grandson possesses a semi-Pelagian biretta and works in the deeply flawed Roman Curia, you must be in sore need of something to cheer you up. This event may not be precisely what you’ve been waiting for.

[That's a really hilarious compendium of JMB/PF's 'pet peeves', to use an understatement!]

Then there's this item picking up from a recent interview given by Cardinal Burke to Rorate caeli - I haven't read it yet - which belongs on this post since it is about Fr. Rosica, whom I am finding more and more odious. (Surely, St. John Paul II never thought his press officer for Toronto WYD was so heterodox at heart!)...


Catholics shouldn’t sue one another:
Cardinal Burke comments on
Fr. Rosica’s lawsuit against blogger

by Hilary White


ROME, March 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Citing Scripture, Cardinal Raymond Burke told an interviewer this week that Catholics should not sue each other: “Our Lord in the Gospel and St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians instruct us not to take our disputes to the civil forum, that we should be able, as Catholics, to resolve these matters among ourselves.”

The cardinal’s comments to the Traditionalist Catholic website Rorate Caeli follow an uproar in the Catholic media world last week when it was revealed that Vatican spokesman Father Thomas Rosica has threatened to sue a Canadian blogger for defamation in the civil courts.

Cardinal Burke, who served under Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis as the head of the Vatican’s highest court, is a noted expert on canon law. He told Rorate Caeli, “Unless the blogger has committed a calumny on someone's good name unjustly, I certainly don't think that that's the way we as Catholics should deal with these matters.”

“I think contact should be made. I presume that the Catholic blogger is in good faith, and if there’s someone in the hierarchy who is upset with him, the way to deal with it would be first to approach the person directly and try to resolve the matter in that way,” Burke added.

Fr. Rosica, a Canadian Basilian, is the English language press officer for the Vatican and founder of the Toronto-based Salt and Light Television network.

He sent the legal letter to David Domet, a Toronto music composer and part-time Catholic blogger who has long criticized what he says are Fr. Rosica’s departures from Catholic orthodoxy. The priest’s lawyer told Domet to remove nine separate items from his blog and apologize, but added that this would not necessarily remove the threat of the civil action.

The conflict was covered in a feature by Michael Voris’ Church Militant TV, and the internet’s Catholic blogger world exploded with indignation. So furious was the backlash that it got coverage by the US conservative news site, Breitbart. This followed dozens of blog posts, nearly unanimously calling the threatened legal action of a well-placed priest against a lay pensioner a “PR disaster” for Rosica.

The uproar has launched Domet’s small blog, Vox Cantoris, into the international limelight, and has earned Fr. Rosica an avalanche of criticism. “Though Rosica publicly defends the right to freedom of speech and press, he is attempting to silence the blogger who has criticized him,” Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, wrote for Breitbart.

Among Domet’s criticisms of Fr. Rosica is his apparent support for the proposal by Cardinal Walter Kasper to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, and others in “irregular” sexual unions, to receive Holy Communion.

Fr. Rosica has also recently come under fire for comments he made a year ago, in a lecture in Windsor, Ontario, in which he argued that Catholic doctrine could change.

“Will this Pope re-write controversial Church doctrines?” Fr. Rosica said in the lecture, which was posted to Youtube. “No. But that isn't how doctrine changes. Doctrine changes when pastoral contexts shift and new insights emerge such that particularly doctrinal formulations no longer mediate the saving message of God's transforming love.”

Fr. Rosica continued: “Doctrine changes when the Church has leaders and teachers who are not afraid to take note of new contexts and emerging insights. It changes when the Church has pastors who do what Francis has been insisting: leave the securities of your chanceries, of your rectories, of your safe places, of your episcopal residences go set aside the small-minded rules that often keep you locked up and shielded from the world.”

In the Rorate Caeli interview, Cardinal Burke refuted the idea that the Church can change its “pastoral practice” without changing doctrine.

“I think it’s very important to address a false dichotomy that's been drawn by some who say, ‘Oh no, we’re just changing disciplines. We’re not touching the Church's doctrine.’ But if you change the Church’s discipline with regard to access to Holy Communion by those who are living in adultery, then surely you are changing the Church's doctrine on adultery.”

“You’re saying that, in some circumstances, adultery is permissible and even good, if people can live in adultery and still receive the sacraments. That is a very serious matter, and Catholics have to insist that the Church’s discipline not be changed in some way which would, in fact, weaken our teaching on one of the most fundamental truths, the truth about marriage and the family,” Cardinal Burke said.

Fr. Rosica recently criticized Cardinal Burke on his Twitter account by posting an article by Washington, D.C.’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl on “dissent” in the hierarchy, saying, “Cardinal Wuerl’s response to Burke (and dissenters).”

The priest has also had a confrontational relationship with the pro-life movement for years.

In 1996, Fr. Rosica called the police on pro-life advocates who were leafletting in protest at a lecture by famous dissident Gregory Baum at the University of Toronto’s Newman Centre.

In 2009, Fr. Rosica wrote against objections to the lavish Catholic funeral for US Senator Ted Kennedy’s in Boston. He excoriated the pro-life movement for what he called their lack of “civility.”

“Civility, charity, mercy and politeness seem to have dropped out of the pro-life lexicon,” Fr. Rosica wrote. “To recognize and bring out the sin in others means also recognizing one’s self as a sinner and in need of God’s boundless mercy.

“Let us pray that we will become more and more a people, a church and a community overflowing with mercy.”
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Contrary to what some may think,
a Pope cannot do anything he pleases:
The limits to what a Pope can do


March 4, 2015

There is a report that some daft archbishop somewhere has suggested that since the Pope has the power of the keys, perhaps he can dissolve valid consummated sacramental marriages.

But, however hard these extreme ultrapapalist mavericks struggle to portray the Holy Father as some sort of magically cunctipotent wizard or godlike superman or supremely effective alchemist, the fact remains that only a nutter, surely, really believes the Pope could do anything.

He can't, for example, in my humble and respectful but cynical and decided opinion, turn the Alps into cheese or add the Da Vinci Code to the Bible or beam Obama up to Mars or grow a tail or turn Walter Kasper into the Dalai Lama or abolish the Sacrament of Baptism or suppress Easter or turn a pumpkin into a carriage or abolish bodily death or transsubstantiate a consecrated Host into bread or dissolve a Christian marriage or erase the character of Holy Order or transmute lead into gold.

I repeat, underneath, a previous post about what the Pope is for and is supposed to do and does have the grace of the Holy Spirit guaranteed to him to accomplish. You might have thought that someone, such as a seminary lecturer, would have broken this somewhat ancient news, dating from at least 1870, to wannabe archbishops.

Having posted not too long ago the commentary on 'Papal authority' that Father H refers to above, I shall merely re-post the three substantive citations he made to underscore the limits of what a Pope can do:

The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter so that by His revelation they might disclose new teaching, but that, by His assistance, they might devoutly guard, and faithfully set forth, the Revelation handed down through the Apostles, the Deposit of Faith.

So this gift of truth and of unfailing faith is divinely invested in Peter and his successors in this chair, so that they may discharge their lofty job [munere] in order that the whole flock of Christ, turned away through them [the popes] from the poisonous food of heresy, may be nourished by the food of heavenly teaching so that, all occasion of schism being done away, the whole Church may be kept as one and, resting upon its foundation, may stand firm against the Gates of Hell.

- From the Decree on Papal Infallibility
The First Ecumenical Vatican Council, 1870


It is one of the reproaches urged against the Church of Rome, that it has originated nothing, and has only served as a sort of remora or brake in the development of doctrine. And it is an objection which I embrace as a truth; for such I conceive to be the main purpose of its extraordinary gift.
- Blessed John Henry Newman


After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything ... especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council. ... In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ... it is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition.
- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger



Of course, if you believe, as Vatican-II 'spiritists' do, that Vatican-II created a 'new Church', or that, at the very least, it represented a 'rupture' or 'discontinuity' with everything about the pre-Vatican-II Church [a really stupid claim, to begin with, on the basis of objective fact - i.e., the Vatican II documents themselves, even the parts that were deliberately ambiguous], then anything from Vatican-I or all the other ecumenical councils before it would necessarily be worthless, and the supposedly 'new church', which it would be presumptuous of them to refer to with a capital C, would have to build its own 'tradition' and 'magisterium'.

Under 'new church' tradition, we would have the Novus Ordo and all its manifold abuses, and all the practices carried out and endorsed by adherents of this 'new church'. like Bologna-school bishops, priests, male and female religious (e.g., LCWR), all the priests who left the Church to get married (and whom the spiritists would want now to be allowed to say Mass and administer the sacraments), the women claiming to have been ordained as 'priests', remarried divorcees with un-annulled church marriages, practising homosexuals and unmarried cohabitating couples - all of whom Cardinal Bergoglio generously allowed communion in Buenos Aires and would like to do so now on a universal basis - and all bishops and priests who have routinely defied Church teaching to exercise their pastoral ministry as they see fit, thus breaking their formally avowed communion with the Successor of Peter.

A significant number, probably - all assuming that the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Roman Church is no more, and yet, no one having the foolhardy courage to declare the See of Rome 'sede vacante' under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who were both committed to Vatican II in the correct hermeneutic, and who therefore were Pontiffs of the Church as it has always been.

The spiritists could have joined the ranks of ultraright sedevacantists who believe there has been no legitimate Pope since Pius XII, but obviously the spiritists have not been stupid enough to make any such preposterous claim about John Paul II and Benedict XVI whom they did continue to recognize as Popes even if more in the breach.

In other words, the courage of their convictions has not reached the logical end point. They can't declare 'schism' because they think the 'new church' has taken over from the 'pre-Vatican II Church' and that therefore, they are rightfully in the saddle ("We are Church") - except that their 'new church' did not and does not have the infrastructure nor the wherewithal to be in the saddle, and they still have to work with and through all the institutions of the one Church about which Benedict XVI said, "The Church, both before the Council and after the Council, remains the one, true, catholic and apostolic Church, journeying through time".

Perhaps the spiritists believe that their time has finally come - that the 'new church' they've professed to have since December 1965 will materialize substantially in the 'church of Bergoglio' that their progressivist brother in the spirit (of Vatican-II) is intent on creating in place of the one, true Church of Christ (which, contrary to the Great Jubilee year reaffirmation of Dominus Iesus, Bergoglio does not think she is. "All ways to Christ are valid", he tells the Protestants, while in his catecheses, he pays lip service to the fact that Catholics must practice their faith 'within the Church'. Which 'Church' he means is something else.)

As for the 'Magisterium' of the 'new church', only the bishops among the spiritists have any magisterial authority, and what dissident bishops have been teaching is not in communion with the Successor of Peter, which is a prerequisite to the validity of any teaching they make. Everything else - the history of Vatican-II through the progressivist prism of the Bologna school, the torrents of 'dissident' theology and commentary that have been written and spoken since December 1965 - has no magisterial status.

Though they may certainly claim, as many of them have done, that Evangelii gaudium is the greatest papal document ever issued, in which case it would count as their fundamental Magisterial document. (Cardinal Burke cites Pope Francis himself as saying that EG is not a magisterial document - but how can it not be? It is a formal Apostolic Exhortation by a duly-elected Pope. Not to mention the daily-growing number of the Casa Santa Marta homilettes that do constitute 'teachings' by the duly-elected 266th Successor of Peter. regardless of whether you think they are magisterial or not, effectively they are - the public considers them to be 'teachings' of Pope Francis, not just of one Jorge Mario Bergoglio.)

Of course, in parts, EG refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and I don't think the 'new church' would consider that Catechism - prepared under Cardinal Ratzinger - as the catechism it would adopt. (Nor do I think anyone of them has bothered to write an alternative Catechism - other than the 'Dutch catechism' published in 1966 by the bishops of the Netherlands. Paul VI named a cardinals' commission to review the adequacy of certain doctrinal statements in the text, such as those on the nature of creation and of original sin, Christological issues, the nature of the Mass and the Eucharist, the Church's infallibility, the nature of the priesthood, and various other points of moral and dogmatic theology. The problems of the Church in the Netherlands were such that John Paul II convened an extraordinary synodal assembly just about them in 1979.]

As even JMB/PF will find, it's not that easy to create a whole 'new church' out of scratch, even when necessarily utilizing huge chunks of the old structure to build the new one. So it's more convenient to simply say he is 'fundamentally transforming the Church' - as if 'fundamental transformation' did not mean creating a new entity altogether. (When JMB's Spanish transsexual fan Diego decided to 'fundamentally transform' from a woman to a man, the resulting transgendered individual is a new entity altogether, albeit artificially created through genital plastic surgery and penile prosthesis, that 'he' must support all his life with hormones that will keep 'his' secondary female sexual characteristics like breasts from reappearing.)

The first leg of the trinity of truths - along with but preceding Tradition and Magisterium - upon which the one, holy, catholic, apostolic and Roman Church rests is Revelation or Scripture. Even the new-churchers cannot change that, but they certainly can impose their own idiosyncratic interpretations or selective reading, as JMB/PF consistently does about mercy, forgiveness, and 'the poor'. Can any Christian really accept his obsessive and exclusivist tunnel view that the Gospel is about 'the poor' and that the center of the Gospel is 'the poor'? (Yet hardly any one protests when he makes such statements! It must be that JMB/PF is applying a basic propaganda principle - that if you say something often enough, it becomes established in the public mind as 'fact' or 'truth', and that in the past 23 months, he has managed to condition the public mind to accepting his most questionable statements as 'fact' or 'truth' - the gospel according to Bergoglio.)


Related to the limits of papal authority is the dissent and criticism made by orthodox Catholics to some of this Pope's statements and actions. What distinguishes current dissent with Pope Francis is that with previous Popes in the modern era, the dissenters always protested that the Popes were being orthodox, or too orthodox - as if orthodoxy in the faith were objectionable, erroneous, sinful and/or criminal. This time, orthodox Catholics are protesting the current Pope's apparent heterodoxies and heterodox tendencies.

I find the following article by Church historian Roberto De Mattei another useful contribution to the growing literature about why orthodox Catholics, lay and clergy alike, have the duty to speak out against a Pope they perceive to be straying from the 'deposit of faith' that he is sworn to uphold, defend and protect.


St. Bruno’s filial resistance
to Pope Paschal II

by Roberto De Mattei
Translated by Francesca Romana for Rorate caeli from
CORRISPONDENZA ROMANA
March 4, 2015

Among the most illustrious protagonists of Church reform in the XI and XII centuries, one that stands out is the figure of St. Bruno, Bishop of Segni and Abbot of Montecassino.

Bruno was born around 1045 in Solero, near Asti, in Piedmont. After his studies in Bologna, he was ordained a priest of the Roman clergy and enthusiastically adhered to the Gregorian reform. Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) appointed him Bishop of Segni and had him among his most faithful collaborators. his successors, Victor III (1086-1087) and Urban II (1088-1089) ALSO availed themselves of the Bishop of Segni’s assistance, who combined his scholarly work with an intrepid apostolate in defense of the Primate of Rome.

Bruno participated in the Councils of Piacenza and Clermont, when Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade and in the following years he was legate for the Holy See in France and Sicily. In 1107, under the new Pontiff, Paschal II (1099-1118), he became Abbot of Montecassino, an office which made him one of the most authoritative ecclesiastical personalities of his time.

A great theologian and exegete, resplendent in doctrine, as Cardinal Baronio writes in his Annali (Tome XI, year 1079) he is considered one of the best commentators of Holy Scripture of the Middle Ages (Réginald Grégoire, Bruno de Segni, exégète médiéval et théologien monastique, Italian Centre of Studies on the High Middle Ages, Spoleto 1965).

It was an age of political disputes and deep moral and spiritual crisis. In his work, De Simoniacis, Bruno offers us a dramatic picture of the disfigured Church of his times. Already at the time of Pope St. Leo IX (1049- 1054) “Mundus totus in maligno positus erat(The whole world lay in evil): there was no longer any holiness; justice was failing and truth buried. Iniquity reigned, avarice ruled; Simon Magus possessed the Church, the Bishops and priests were given over to sensual pleasure and fornication. The priests were not ashamed of taking wives, of celebrating their weddings openly and contracting nefarious marriages. (…) Such was the Church, such were the Bishops and priests, such were some among the Roman Pontiffs” (S. Leonis papae Vita in Patrologia Latina (= PL), vol. 165, col. 110).

At the centre of the crisis, besides the problem of simony and the concubinage of priests, there was the question of the investiture of bishops. The Dictatus Papae (1075), wherein St. Gregory VII had affirmed the rights of the Church against imperial demands, constituted the magna carta to which Victor III and Urban II referred, but Paschal II abandoned the intransigent position of his predecessors and tried in every way to come to an agreement with the future Emperor Henry V.

At the beginning of February 1111, at Sutri, he asked the German sovereign to renounce the right of investitures, offering him in exchange the Church’s renunciation of all temporal rights and goods. The negotiations went up in smoke, and, yielding to the king’s intimidations, Paschal II accepted a humiliating compromise, signed at Ponte Mammolo on April 12th 1111. The Pope conceded the privilege of the investitures of bishops, prior to their pontifical consecration, to Henry V, with the ring and the crosier which symbolized both temporal and spiritual power, promising never to excommunicate the sovereign. Paschal then crowned Henry V Emperor in St. Peter’s.

This concession provoked a multitude of protests in Christendom, since it overturned the position of Gregory VII. According to the Chronicon Cassinense (PL, vol. 173, col. 868 C-D),the Abbot of Montecassino protested vigorously against what he defined as not a privilegium, but a pravilegium [a wrongful right], and promoted a movement of resistance against the papal compliancy.

In a letter addressed to Peter, Bishop of Porto, he defined the treatise of Ponte Mammolo as a “heresy”, by referring to the definitions [made] in many councils: “Whoever defends heresy – he writes – is a heretic. Nobody can say that this is not heresy”(Letter Audivimus quod , in PL, vol. 165, col.1139 B).

Turning directly to the Pope, Bruno states:

My enemies say that I do not love you and that I am speaking badly of you behind your back, but they are lying. I indeed, love you, as I must love a Father and lord. To you living, I do not desire another Pontiff, as I promised you along with many others. Nevertheless, I obey Our Savior Who says to me: “Whoever loves father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me.” (…) I must love you, but greater yet must I love Him who made you and me.

With the same tone of filial candor, Bruno invited the Pope to condemn the heresy, as “whoever defends heresy is a heretic” (Letter Inimici mei, in PL, vol. 163, col. 463 A-D).

Paschal II did not tolerate this voice of dissent and removed him from his office as Abbot of Montecassino. However, St. Bruno’s example pushed some other prelates into asking with insistence for the Pope’s revocation of the pravilegium. Some years later, in a Council which met at the Lateran in March 1116, Paschal II withdrew the agreement of Ponte Mammolo.

The same Lateran Synod condemned the pauperistic conception of the Church in the Sutri agreement. The Concordat of Worms (1122), stipulated between Henry V and Pope Callixtus II (1119-1124), ended – at least momentarily – the fight over the investitures.

Bruno died on July 18th 1123. His body was buried in the Cathedral of Segni and, through his intercession, there were immediately many miracles. In 1181, or, more probably, in 1183, Pope Lucius III placed him among the Saints.

There are those who will object [saying] that Paschal II (like Pope John XXII later on with regard to the Beatific Vision) never fell into formal heresy. This, however, is not the heart of the problem. In the Middle Ages, the term heresy was used in a wide sense, whilst theological language was becoming more refined especially after the Council of Trent, and precise theological distinctions were introduced among heretical propositions i.e. near to heresy, erroneous, scandalous, and so on.

We are not interested in defining the nature of the theological censures that would apply to Paschal II and John XXII’s errors, but in establishing if it be licit to resist these errors. Such errors certainly were not pronounced ex-cathedra, but theology and history teach us that if a declaration by the Supreme Pontiff contains censurable elements on the doctrinal level, it is licit and may be right and proper to criticize it, even if it is not a formal heresy, solemnly articulated.

That is what St. Bruno of Segni did against Paschal II and the Dominicans in the 14th century against John XXII. They were not in error, but the Popes of that time were, and in fact withdrew their positions before their deaths.

The fact should be stressed, that those who resisted with the most determination the Pope deviating from the faith, were precisely the most ardent defenders of Papal Supremacy. The opportunistic and servile prelates of that time, adapted themselves to the fluctuations of men and events, by placing the person of the Pope before the Magisterium of the Church.

Bruno of Segni, on the other hand, like many other champions of Catholic Orthodoxy, placed the faith of Peter before the person of Peter and reproached Paschal II with the same respectful determination which Paul had directed to Peter (Galatians 2, 11-14). [dim][Two centuries later, St. Caterina of Siena would assert the right to protest the unorthodox actions of a Pope, even one whom she had addressed as 'dolce Cristo in terra'.]

In his exegetical comment on Matthew 16:18, Bruno explains that the foundation of the Church is not Peter, but the faith confessed by Peter. Christ, in fact, states that He will build His Church, not on the person of Peter, but on the faith that Peter manifested saying: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” To this profession of faith, Jesus responds: “it is upon this rock and upon this faith that I will build My Church” (Comment. in Matth., Pars III, cap. XVI, in PL, vol. 165, col. 213).

By elevating Bruno of Segni to the honors of the altar the Church sealed his doctrine and his behaviour.


Pope Francis denounces 'worldliness' -
obviously not thinking that his continuing
'accommodation' with the world is worldliness at all


On the specific subject of Pope Francis himself, let me call attention to what Vatican Radio reports about his Casa Santa Marta homilette today, March 5:
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-worldliness-blinds-us-to-the-needs-of

"Worldliness blinds us to the needs of the poor," he says. My problem with this, of course, is that in all the statements he is reported to have made in the homilette, he refers to worldliness as if it were only material worldliness, when he himself has been quoting Henri de Lubac all along about 'spiritual worldliness'.
Of course, the resounding irony to me is that JMB seems entirely unaware that his ongoing pas de deux with the world and its prevailing mentality - along with all the celebrity and media glorification that he gets for it - is worldliness of the worst kind! Adapting oneself to the mentality of the world and to its criteria is not what one expects of a Pope.

Clearly, JMB's worldliness does not blind him to the needs of the poor, but he is by no means the only person in the world, nor the only high-profile personality or agency, who thinks of the poor - and these others actually do what they can to materially help those in need, which is what he wants 'the world' to do.

To begin with, JMB/PF always seems to forget that the Catholic Church herself - with her associated charitable and social organizations - still constitute the largest ongoing effort at day-to-day humanitarian, charitable, educational and health assistance everywhere they can operate, and that the Church has been doing this long before he became Pope.

As for 'the world', there's the United Nations which does have many wide-ranging assistance programs, even if they may come with ideological strings attached. The same goes for philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates.

There are individuals like the singer Bono who has not only spearheaded fund-raising campaigns to benefit the needy but has also worked for years seeking to get the richer nations to condone Third World debt.

Yet no one would say that the UN, the Gateses and Bono are not 'worldly' in any sense!

Perhaps JMB wants all those now engaged in helping the needy to channel all their efforts through him? To give all the aid they mean to give, to Peter's Pence, so that the Successor of Peter alone can dispense all the material assistance possible?

In the two millennia of Church history, no one - not till now - has ever, ever interpreted Jesus's words to Peter to "Feed my flock" and "Feed my lambs" in the literal sense, because he clearly did not mean it in the literal sense.

However, if Jorge Mario Bergoglio does not think that his primary mission towards 'the poor' [and everyone else, for that matter, though he seems to consign all the 'non-poor' to a limbo beneath and beyond his consideration, and that's a considerable part of his flock!] is spiritual - to look after the salvation of their souls - then he is being consistent with his weird and clearly false notion that 'the poor' are virtuous and sinless simply because they are poor (therefore they do not need his spiritual assistance), whereas all 'the non-poor' are necessarily vicious and sinful simply because they are not 'poor', and worse, that their very existence is causing the miseries of 'the poor' (and therefore, they are not worthy of his consideration except as objects to vilify and condemn, even if he does not mind, and seems to enjoy, playing footsie with the powerful).

This notion equating poverty with automatic virtue - and the corollaries implied thereof - is one that no theologian, ethicist or sociologist in his right mind would even countenance. Yet this Pope's every word, no matter how patently absurd, is reported and widely accepted as if he were an omniscient oracle who could never say anything wrong! Yet, even in the best of times, that is not the reception that 'the world' has given to the Gospel! What does it say that the word of Bergoglio has the weight in the world today that the Word of God does not?


Entirely without meaning to, this post has turned into an omnibus 'the problem with JMB/PF' meme. Here's a provocative but academic thought from Fr. Blake. Not that I have ever thought JMB/PF would actually fall into heresy - I could be wrong, but he's much too astutely jesuitic and will make sure somehow that he does not cross the line from heterodoxy to heresy.

What if a pope commits heresy?

March 5, 2012

One of the meanders that seemed to fascinate Canon Lawyers was: who can depose a Pope, if he fell into heresy?

I was sent an article by Jacob Wood ("Can the Pope be a heretic?", CRISIS, March 4, 2015) that gives a brief summary of Suarez's and Bellarmine's arguments on the question. [Francisco Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine, both Jesuits, were the great canonists post-Trent.]

Basically canonists after Trent say that it is possible but there is no power to do it, either God removes him or 'the bishops' somehow do it. In previous age it might have been suggested, at least by certain schools of theology, that emperor could do it or I suppose the Roman mob. The problem was that although the Pope de jure, if he fell into heresy, might lose the Papacy, de facto he remained Pope.

The problem is of course no-one is able to judge the Pope, except the Pope. Up until the last Conclave that meant that only a successor who judge his predecessor. The arguments of the 16th-century canonists never of course envisioned the idea of a retired Pope. Does this change the situation?

Though I think the arguments put forward by some Italian authors that Benedict has retained something of the Papacy are more than cranky, the idea that a retired Pope might at some stage intervene in a crisis is an interesting idea.

[IMHO, should it happen, God forbid!, that JMB does commit an actual heresy, Benedict XVI would not hesitate to say so publicly - he would be dutybound to do it. The promise of obedience and reverence to a Pope no longer holds if that Pope commits heresy. In which case, Benedict XVI would not be 'judging' him but stating an objective fact. Because surely, if anyone knows what heresy is, it would be Benedict XVI.]
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Speaking of JMB/PF's continuing accommodation to the world and to Catholics who are refractory to orthodox Catholic doctrine, someone has finally sought to pinpoint a fundamental explanation for such leniency.

It explains, of course, why, as I have often observed, he never seems to point out that all of man's sufferings are a consequence of The Fall; that such consequences cannot be cancelled out and were, in fact, not cancelled when God sent down his Son to redeem man from the eternal damnation that is the worst consequence of The Fall.

It is not and has never been the mission of the Church - which prolongs Christ's presence among men throughout time - to erase the material and physical consequences of the The Fall, only its ultimate effect on men's souls. JMB/PF's obsession with 'eradicating' poverty, hunger and war from the world is as unrealistic and impossible as if he were speaking of 'eradicating' disease and death. Suffering is part and parcel of man's earthly lot - as Catholics, we are taught that our individual sufferings constitute our participation in carrying the Cross of Christ. Christ' way, which is the Way of the Cross, would be meaningless if the idea was to spare every man from suffering. (Even the Buddha's basic teaching is based on the fact of human suffering of all kinds, and how to transcend it by attaining detachment from the things of the world which are by their nature nothing but illusion, and in the process losing the self.)

Unfortunately, the writer fails to develop his postulate far enough, nor to spell out better what he means by the revival of obscurantism he believes this Pope is bringing instead of renewal.


My thanks to Lella for providing the link to this item on her blog.


Why the Pope does not speak of original sin
He seems to believe in Rousseau's idea that man
is born innocent and is corrupted by living in society

by Piero Ostellino
Translated from
IL FOGLIO
March 3, 2015

A friend pointed out to me that Pope Francis never speaks of original sin. I don't think it is because of an adherence to the modern view that no longer puts 'sins of the flesh' at the center of individual and collective morality.

Nor are we seeing a confirmation of Nostradamus's prophecy that 'a man of the Society of Jesus' would come to the Chair of Peter and poison the doctrine of the Church.

But it is one thing to attribute human evils and sufferings to the sin of pride committed by Adam and Eve - as St. Augustine and the Church have maintained till yesterday.

It is another thing to attribute such evils and sufferings, as this Pope does, to the inequality between rich and poor, to the modern world which validates the autonomy of politics from religion, a world modelled on the concept of utility, for the production of wealth and the quest for happiness.

Pope Francis seems to believe in the idea of [French philosopher Jean-Jacques] Rousseau that man is born innocent and is corrupted by living in society - in particular, in democratic-liberal and capitalist society, where freedom and private ownership, in his view, would only produce inequalities which generate injustices.

It's the same idea that inspired the Jesuits to aim for a perfect society, regulated by a moral authority, in which all men would satisfy all their natural needs, including eating and procreating, to the tune of a bell rung by the Jesuits themselves - in short, the idea of a perfect society which also inspired the authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century.

Like it or not, this pope, far from obeying any theological principle, is reproposing a reactionary model of political coexistence such as that which held man in medieval obscurantism and later within the schemes of rationalist plans whose very defect was not to consider man as he is but man as he ought to be.

I do not like this Pope - who is terzomondista (Third World-ist) demagogic and pauperist - nor do many Catholics. Perhaps he may attract new believers in places of the world, like his native Latin America, where social inequalities are most marked. [Strange hypothesis when all statistics show that the Church in Latin America continues to lose members by the millions to evangelical Protestantism, and that this trend hasn't declined because a Latin American is now Pope.]

But I am afraid that with his subjectivism, he will do more damage to religion rather than bring advantages to it. I understand and respect those believers who see in him the authority that the history of Catholicism attributes to the Pope.

But while the power (historical and political) of the Church has always consisted in her ability to adapt herself to circumstances [without yielding anything from her deposit of faith], the systematic detachment by this Pope from the larger part of historical circumstances in which Christianity has been threatened, now risks causing damage rather than bringing any advantage. And what the Papacy is going through right now is not a moment of renewal, as many would like to believe, but a new time of obscurantism.

Ostellino ought to have, at least, spelled out the damage he warns against. Thinking Catholics can flesh out his postulate but as a journalist/commentator, he cannot assume his readers will read his mind.

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I am still trying to catch up on what went on while I was 'disabled' (I had eye surgery and I needed a few days to get my vision back to normal)...

So, now we know. Cardinal George Pell will not be 'czar' of all things financial and economic at the Vatican, as we had been led to believe for the past 12 months, nor will the Secretariat of the Economy which he heads be the super-dicastery it had been touted to be. A few days after the first anniversary of the grand Vatican announcement in 2014 that Pope Francis was creating a Council for the Economy, a Secretariat for the Economy and an Office of Auditor-General for the Vatican, the statutes for these offices were finally released, and it appears to have the stamp of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts whose president, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmiero, had previously expressed his opposition to any sweeping powers for the new economic structures.

Andrea Tornielli should be an authoritative guide through the major points of the new statutes.


Statutes for economic reform are in force:
Pell will oversee but not manage Vatican assets

by Andrea Tornielli
Adapted from the English service of
VATICAN INSIDER
March 3, 2015

Pope Francis promulgated the statutes governing the new economic structures he created one year ago on February 22 before he began a weeklong Lenten retreat with officials of the Roman Curia. They came into force as of March 1st. There will be three general revisors as per the proposals made by the Council for Legislative Texts

The major surprise is in the nature and functions of the Secretariat for the Economy established a year ago under Australian Cardinal George Pell as Prefect.

The charter for the Secretariat indicates it will not be a super-dicastery with powers of control, investment and expenditure as was suggested on a number of occasions. But it will have a strong oversight element to advise on and supervise the correct management of human and material resources.

In fact, the Pope has established that the Secretariat will remain a body with powers similar to those of a reinforced Prefecture for Economic Affairs, with some of the powers previosuly held by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (known by its Italian acronym, APSA) and the ability to standardize the budgets and accounting procedures of the various Vatican offices.

Reading through the statutes of the Secretariat, the Council for the Economy and the Auditor-General approved by the Pope on 22 February, before he set off on his Lenten retreat to Ariccia, it turns out that Francis took into account the most significant suggestions sent by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, which advised increasing the number of auditors and keeping monitoring and management tasks separate.

All three statutes came into effect ad experimentum on March 1st, allowing for adjustments and any potential corrections to be made in the next few months.

The charter for the Secretariat for the Economy defines it as the dicastery of the Roman Curia that exercises functions of administrative and financial control and oversight of the dicasteries of the Roman Curia, institutions that are either linked or refer to the Holy See, as well as the administration of the Vatican Governorate.

The new law stipulates that the Secretariat for the Economy acts in collaboration with the Secretariat of State, which has exclusive responsibility for relations with States and with other subjects of public international law [but whose first 'section', headed by the Deputy Secretary of State, already supervised and coordinated the various offices of the Roman Curia. Apparently, such administrative supervision and coordination will continue, except on financial and economic matters.]

It adds that the Secretariat must deal with the issues relating to entities and administrations mentioned in article 1, taking the independence and responsibilities of each of these into due account.

Pell's dicastery split into two sections - one for for control and oversight, the other administrative. A prelate secretary will oversee each of the two sections; the one overseeing the first section will be called the general secretary.

The first section will control and oversee activities relating to planning, expenses, budgets, final balances, investments and the management of human, financial and material resources of controlled entities: the aim is to reinforce the powers so far held by the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, established in 1967 by Paul VI for the purpose of checking balance sheets.

The task of control and oversight will now also have a preventive element and the dicastery will have a lot more freedom of movement and intervention and will promote inspections. When the Secretariat learns about any losses relating to the patrimony of the entities and administrations mentioned in article 1, the former will ensure that corrective measures are adopted and that civil or criminal action or administrative sanctions are resorted to where appropriate.

The administrative section – will provide guidance and model procedures for tenders [bids] to ensure that all assets and services requested by the dicasteries of the Roman Curia and institutions linked or referring to the Holy See, are acquired in the most prudent, efficient and economically advantageous way, in line with appropriate internal checks and procedures.

It will give guidelines to optimize the management of resources in order to prevent waste and rationalize expenses. It will oversee the establishment of wages and hiring of new staff, although the Secretariat of State will be responsible for ascertaining the required qualities and skills of candidates applying for a position. The emphasis placed on this point shows that the Secretariat of State has been left without any influence in this matter.

The statute appears to indicate that while the first section will be monitoring the offices of the Holy See as well as the Vatican Governorate, the actions relating to procedural guidance (second section) will only regard the Holy See’s dicasteries and institutions linked to the Holy See, not the Vatican City State.

The statute make no mention of the possibility of the Secretariat for the Economy taking on the management of moveable and immoveable property which has so far been administered by APSA, as Pell would have wanted, and in view of the assumed creation of a Vatican Asset Management body for the unified management of investments under the aegis of the Secretariat, to be entrusted to IOR president, Jean-Baptiste de Franssu.

So APSA is still responsible for the management of properties and its powers have not been transferred to the secretariat for the Economy.

The charter for the Council for the Economy defines it as an entity in charge of overseeing the structures and administrative and financial activities of the dicasteries of the Roman Curia and the Governorate, with a view to protect the entities’ assets, reduce financial risks and rationalise human and financial resources. The Council will check budget plans and annual and consolidated financial statements which it will send to the Pope for approval. [The description seems to fudge the roles of the Secretariat for the Economy and the Council for the Economy.]

It is composed of 15 members, 8 cardinals or bishops and 7 lay experts. It will also have a prelate secretary and will meet four times a year. It will exercise significant influence on policy in this field but will not have the power to create legislation. [When these new structures were first announced last year, it was said that the Council would set policy for the Secretariat. How then will this policy be legislated?]

Finally, Francis has also approved the statute for a Vatican Auditor-General, who will be assisted by two other auditors, as suggested by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. This is to ensure that the work of this new office will be more autonomous, and that the three auditors will exercise mutual checks in case any pressure is exerted on the office by other Vatican offices.

The auditors will be in charge of auditing and carrying out administrative checks on the various Vatican entities. The Auditor will be alerted about any irregularities and he will carry out specific checks into activities that move away substantially from the set guidelines and approved budget plans. He will look into any irregularities that may arise in the allocation of tenders (bids) or contracts for external services or in transactions involving cases of alienation. [???]

All the statutes guarantee that documentation acquired in the process of these checks and controls is protected by professional secrecy. Significantly, is is also stated that the languages to be used in these are Italian and English.

The documents, which have been posted to the bulletin boards in the San Damaso Courtyard [main entrance to the Apostolic Palace and the offices of the Secretariat of State]for a few days now, show that additional proposals and observations have been included in the texts which the Secretariat for the Economy had taken nine months to prepare.

3/7/14
NECESSARY 'PRE-SCRIPTS' TO THE ABOVE
So Andrea Tornielli, JMB/PF's unofficial chief propagandist, makes it clear that the Pope did heed the advice of Cardinal Coccopalmiero in revising Cardinal Pell's proposed draft for the statues of his Secretariat of the Economy... I am sure Cardinal Pell will live with it - he has no choice - because he still has considerable power of administrative supervision and fiscal control over all Vatican offices, not just those of the Curia (i.e.,c Church-related affairs) but also of Vatican City State itself (i.e., the government of the State of which the Pope is the absolute monarch).

In all this, however, a remaining puzzle for me is Cardinal Pell's astounding claim in a Catholic Herald article last December that his Secretariat had 'discovered hundreds of millions of euros' that had never been accounted for, though he did not explain where all this money was 'found' and why they had not previously been 'accounted for'. Shortly afterwards, Fr. Lombardi issued a statement to say that there was nothing illicit at all about these 'found' funds, but he gave no other explanation of what they are.

I have not been able to figure out why a satisfactory explanation could not be given in public if there was nothing illicit about the funds. Nor, more importantly, why someone like Cardinal Pell would have disclosed their existence without an explanation whatsoever.

It turns out that the Secretariat of State - which apparently, is the repository of much of those funds - had prepared a 7-page Note to explain them away. But for some reason, the story by Gerald O'Connell, who is a regular contributor to VATICAN INSIDER, only appeared in AMERICA, the US Jesuits' print and online organ, and seems not to have been picked up by anyone. Which is strange because one might have thought that the media would gobble up and lick their chops over a story involving unaccounted 'hundreds of millions of euros' anywhere, but especially so, in the Vatican!


Here first is the AMERICA article - which has not been denied or disowned since it was published two weeks after the Pell claim was first published in the Catholic Herald. Indeed, it has been altogether ignored. In which it appears that the funds in question are mostly if not wholly held in the Secretariat of State, of all places.

Were 'hidden funds' really
'discovered' in the Vatican?

by Gerard O'Connell

Dec 19 2014

Did the new Secretariat for the Economy established by Pope Francis earlier this year really “discover”’ some “hundreds of millions of dollars” in hidden funds in the Vatican, as Cardinal George Pell wrote in an article for the Catholic Herald, a UK weekly, on December 4, and the media reported worldwide?

In reaction to this news, an internal document was prepared in the Vatican which examines and disputes this claim. The seven page text, which has not been made public but which America’s Vatican correspondent has seen, provides important background history, information and clarification regarding the funds in question and states clearly that, far from being "discovered," the information about them had already been made available to the group of lay experts appointed by the pope last year for the reorganization of Vatican finances, before the Secretariat for the Economy came into existence.

The Australian cardinal, whom Pope Francis appointed to head the new Secretariat that was established on February, 24, 2014, wrote in the Catholic Herald that “we have discovered that the (Holy See’s financial) situation is much healthier than it seemed, because some hundreds of millions of euros were tucked away in particular sectional accounts and did not appear on the balance sheet.”

The cardinal, who is also a member of the council of nine cardinals that advises the pope, explained that this could happen because “those in the (Roman) Curia were following long-established patterns. Just as kings had allowed their regional rulers, princes or governors an almost free hand, provided they balanced their books, so too did the popes with the curial cardinals …”

And so, he added, “Congregations, Councils and, especially, the Secretariat of State enjoyed and defended a healthy independence. Problems were kept 'in house' (as was the custom in most institutions, secular and religious, until recently). Very few were tempted to tell the outside world what was happening, except when they needed extra help.”

His article gave the impression — and certainly the media read it this way — that because of the way the system was run with another cultural mentality that did not operate with the modern accounting standards and procedures that are normal in the Anglophone world, something questionable, shady, if not downright illicit or illegal, had been happening in Vatican offices and “especially” in the Secretariat of State, before and under Pope Francis.

He affirmed, however, that thanks to the reforms and new structures introduced by Pope Francis in the Vatican’s financial sector, including the setting up of the Secretariat for the Economy, and with the assistance of the Financial Information Authority, it will be impossible to go back “to the bad old days.”

Not surprisingly, the main international media outlets pounced on Pell’s revelation about the “discovery” of considerable “hidden funds” in various Vatican offices, and especially the Secretariat of State, and wondered why they existed and how they are used. [If they did, they must have 'pounced' with utmost stealth, like cougars in the dark, because I was on the lookout for any reactions to Pell's article, and the 'discovery' of the 'hundreds of millions of euros' appeared not to have made any news impact at all.]

This news, of course, cast other Vatican officials, especially those in the Secretariat of State, in a very bad light, so much so that on December 5 the Director of the Holy See’s Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, hastened to issue an important clarification.

He observed, among other things, that “Cardinal Pell has not referred to illegal, illicit or poorly administered funds, but rather funds that do not appear on the official balance sheets of the Holy See or of Vatican City State, and which have become known to the Secretariat for the Economy during the current process of examination and review of Vatican administration…” [Never however saying where those funds were being held and for what purpose.]

Lombardi’s statement went some way to removing the impression that something improper or suspicious may have been happening to Vatican finances even under Pope Francis who, as is well known, has adopted a "zero tolerance policy" also in regards to the misuse or mishandling of monies in the Vatican.

His statement, however, could not entirely undo the dismay and upset felt among Vatican officials, in the Secretariat of State and elsewhere, who felt their good name and professionalism, as well as the good name of the Roman Curia was yet again being called into question. Moreover, Lombardi’s statement left many questions unanswered.

To clarify the situation, as mentioned above, and to remove any shadow of doubt regarding the "hidden" funds in the Secretariat of State an “informative note” (henceforth ‘Note’) was prepared in the Vatican, as mentioned earlier, which shows that these funds were not hidden after all.

The Note confirms Pell’s affirmation that the Secretariat of State [which was never mentioned in Pell's article] maintains funds “off the books,” but it contests the way he presented them in his article which gave the media the impression that they were in some way suspect.

According to the Note, the information about the existence of these funds was not discovered by anybody, much less by the Secretariat for the Economy. On the contrary, the information had actually been provided by the Secretariat of State to the Organization for the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA), an international body of lay experts appointed by Pope Francis to examine the situation and propose reforms.

It was given to this group in interviews and written communications, with the assent of the Secretary of State [by then, this was Cardinal Parolin), between October 2013 and January 2014. (Note: the Secretariat for the Economy was established on February 24, 2014)

The Note further explains that these funds are composed for the most part of the collections made on the basis of Canon 1271 (contributions from dioceses to the Holy See) and of Peter’s Pence (financial contribution given by the faithful to the Holy Father). All these incomes and outgoings are duly registered, it said. [My only reservation is that during Benedict XVI's Pontificate, I did pay attention to the annual financial statements released by the Vatican, and to my recollection, neither the diocesan contributions nor Peter's Pence ever amounted to 'hundreds of millions of euros' in any given year. And if 'hundreds of millions of euros' remain available, much of those contributions must have remained largely unused for years!]

Indeed, the incomes are published annually and made available to the Council of 15 (The Council for the Study of Organization and Economic Problems of the Holy See) and to the Prefecture for Economic Affairs. The outgoings remain "reserved information," it said, but everything regarding the existence and use of such funds – papal funds – are always available to the Holy Father.

As for the reservations regarding the public disclosure of how these funds are used, the Note says this reserved information relates to operations such as to how and when money is sent to different parts of the world to help Christians in difficulty, or for the construction of nunciatures in countries in Africa or in the East, or for the payment of compensation for legal costs in particularly important cases, and so on.

It recalls that similar kind of information is also not disclosed by dioceses or religious orders worldwide. Not because there is something illicit involved, but because it is deemed appropriate to keep certain information reserved and not put it in the public domain.

The Note then provides some important historical background information. It explains that these “funds” were created by decision of Paul VI in the early 1970s, when the accounts of the Holy See were in real difficulty and there was talk of selling off real-estate to pay its debts.

Wishing to cut costs and to create a “structural” fund to protect the Holy See from economic problems in the future, Paul VI approved the creation of these funds that would remain outside the balance sheet by reason of their juridical character and in order to avoid pressure from other Vatican offices for the use of these funds. It was therefore to be a strictly “reserve” fund.

In the early 1980s, however, at the time of the crack of the Banco Ambrosiano, when the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) and also the Holy See, found themselves faced with requests for compensation to the sum of 800 million US dollars, this reserve fund served its purpose.

The IOR itself was not able to cover the request for compensation and so the Secretariat of State had to negotiate to reduce the debt to 250 million dollars and drew this money from the “reserve” fund. In this way, the Secretariat of State was able to give the necessary financial assistance (and not for the first or last time) to the Holy See through a combination of diplomatic efforts and the capacity to pay its debts.

Following that episode, a decision was taken at the highest levels (during the pontificate of John Paul II) to increase these funds held by the Secretariat of State so as to be able to face other eventual structural problems in the future.

Subsequently, the Secretariat of State increased these funds colore=#0026ff][HOW? Other than from diocesan contributions and Peter's Pence?] which in the following years, and also today, are used to cover expenses that cannot be covered by other Vatican offices (dicasteries) .

The Note recalls that for the past 40 years the Secretariat of State has operated with prudence, increasing and creating a considerable fund, which is put at the disposition of the Apostolic See every month, and without which the Holy See would not be able to cover its own expenses. Moreover, the Note insists that the existence and the use of these funds were always reported directly to the pope, and therefore were not "hidden."

Given the above facts, the Note says it cannot therefore be asserted that the Secretariat of State ‘hid’ these funds that were only now ‘discovered’ by the Secretariat for the Economy.

Apart from clarifying this matter, the Note actually raises many questions including whether such funds should be now managed by the Secretariat of State or by another entity, and whether the information regarding how they are spent should be made public.

It also asks the question as to whether the funds accumulated by the Secretariat of State, which are raised for works of charity and religion, should be used also to cover the running costs of the Roman Curia. [An important point. Diocesan contributions are a significant part of the Holy See's revenues, and it is generally understood that these funds may be used by the Holy See as it sees fit, mainly to pay for its operating expenses (and therefore, that of the Curia). Peter's Pence, on the other hand, which are raised by contributions from the faithful around the world
collected on special Sundays during the year, is specifically intended to fund the charities and social causes supported by the Holy Father. It doesn't seem right to lump it in with other funds intended for operating and emergency costs.]


To make matters worse, at the time of the Feb. 12-13 consistory of cardinals to discuss the proposed reforms in the Roman Curia, Pell told John Allen of CRUX that the 'hidden funds' actually come to $1.5 billion, perhaps more, even if he still does not bother to give any indication at all of where all this money is. Strange way to show transparency! More surprisingly, Allen does not seem aware about the 'Note' prepared by the Secretariat of State to clarify Pell's Catholic Herald revelation. Allen's report below would read differently if he had seen the 'Note'.

I do not doubt Cardinal Pell's uprightness and crusading zeal to effect reforms, but his statements about all that 'hidden money' are far from informative, as opaque as a rich man's tinted car windows (JMB/PF's new metaphor), so why did he even bother to disclose it at all?


Vatican’s finance czar reports
$1.5 billion in hidden assets

by John L. Allen Jr.

February 13, 2015

ROME — Pope Francis’s finance czar today informed fellow members of the College of Cardinals that the Vatican has more than $1.5 billion in assets it didn’t previously know it possessed, although that potential windfall has to be balanced against a projected deficit of almost $1 billion in its pension fund.

The discoveries mean that the Vatican’s total assets rise to more than $3 billion, roughly one-third more than previously reported.

The cardinals were also informed that the Vatican’s real estate holdings may be undervalued by a factor of four, meaning that the overall financial health of the Vatican may be considerably rosier than was previously believed.

The disclosures at the closed-door meeting by Australian Cardinal George Pell, installed as secretary for the economy a year ago, was part of a wide-ranging overview of efforts at financial reform under Francis presented today to cardinals from around the world.

“We’re sound,” Pell said of the Vatican’s financial condition. “We’re muddled, it’s been muddled, there’s been inadequate information, but we’re far from broke.”

Pell spoke in an exclusive interview with Crux from his Vatican office.

In a speech to cardinals on Friday who were meeting in Rome ahead of a Saturday ceremony in which Pope Francis will create 20 new Princes of the Church, Pell said the Vatican’s total assets include some $500 million in various accounts that were purposefully excluded from an overall 2013 balance sheet, as well as $1 billion in assets that should have been included in that report but weren’t.

Pell stressed the discrepancies were not the result of illegal activity, but an overly compartmentalized and unwieldy reporting system that allowed significant pockets of assets to go undetected. He styled Friday’s revelations as a major step forward for transparency.

“This is the first time we’ve had a comprehensive and, we believe, accurate picture about what’s going on economically,” Pell said.

He said the clean-up effort on finances drew “massive support” from the cardinals gathered in Rome.

On other matters, Pell conceded that his clean-up operation stirred “enthusiastic opposition” earlier in the process, especially from some of the Vatican’s other traditional centers of power such as the Secretariat of State, but said much of that has dimmed.

“There was a bit of a dream world that this wouldn’t really take off, that after some huffing and puffing the world would return to way it was,” he said.

The statutes governing Vatican finances that Pope Francis approved largely confirm the authority of the man he put in charge of cleaning things up: Australian Cardinal George Pell. [A premature statement by Allen as those statutes were not formally approved till February 22, and more importantly, they do not give Pell the sweeping powers it was originally thought he would have.]

He pointed to last October as a turning point, when Pope Francis approved a set of procedures for money management intended to bring the Vatican into line with international best practices.

“The penny dropped after that,” Pell said. “People realized the game has changed.” [I really see no reason why Pell should continue to speak slightingly about the Vatican offices he now supervises in terms of personnel hiring and fiscal affairs, as though anyone had thought that the financial transparency reforms at the Vatican - quietly but effectively begun by Benedict XVI on his own initiative and without any pressure from anyone, least of all the media who kept predicting that the Vatican would fail the international banking standards required by the Council of Europe's Moneyval - were anything less than serious. Not exactly the best way to win friends and favorably influence those whose cooperation you need.]

He also confirmed a point made recently by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of South Africa, a member of the Council for the Economy, in an interview with the Catholic News Service: That a proposed set of statutes for the new secretariat, prepared by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, would have hamstrung their efforts. [Surely Pell had a clue by February 13 that Legislative Texts would get its way somehow with the Pope, as it turns out it did! But the statutes as they now stand certainly do not hamstring Pell's Secretariat in its administrative and fiscal monitoring control of all the Vatican offices; he just can't manage all the Vatican assets at the same time. So, Propaganda Fide which has had its own considerable patrimony for centuries autonomous from the Holy See will continue to manage that patrimony, APSA will manage all other Vatican assets other than those of the IOR and, apparently, of the Secretariat of State.]

In early December, Pell revealed in an essay for a Catholic publication in England that his office had discovered “hundreds of millions” of Euro in previously unreported assets, although by Friday’s report to the College of Cardinals, that total had risen to $1.5 billion.

Pell told Crux that while he can certify that number is accurate, he’s not yet sure that’s everything that was previously unreported. He cautioned, however, that those discoveries have to be balanced against difficulties in maintaining the pension fund.

“We don’t want to frighten people, because the fund is secure for the next 10-15 years,” he said. “But to make sure we can fund pensions in 20 years’ time, we’ll have to somehow put in progressively at least $800 million to $900 million.”

Pell said the actual number may be higher still, given that projections on fund performance going forward may be overly “fanciful,” given trends in interest rates.

One of the Vatican’s senior financial officials, Pell said, went out of his way on Friday to reassure elderly cardinals that “their pensions are secure.”

Pell said that providing an honest picture of the Vatican’s true financial condition is the opening salvo of the broader reform effort.

“What we’ve got to do is to get in place structures so that the Vatican is a model to others and not a scandal,” he said. “We have to make it terribly difficult to return to waste and inefficiency and some measure of corruption.”

In terms of future steps, Pell vowed that an independent auditor general for the Vatican, reporting directly to the pope, will be appointed by the summer, and that sometime later in the year, a new supervisory board will be in place for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, another of the Vatican’s important financial centers.

Pell also promised that sometime later in the year, “for the first time ever in Vatican history,” the various departments will be providing quarterly reports comparing expenditures to budgets.

In general, Pell said, Pope Francis has supported the reform effort at every turn.

“Whenever there were things we couldn’t clean up on our own, [SUCH AS???] he’s been there to support us,” he said. [DUH!]

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A controversy that has been ongoing for the past several days involves Mons. Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, known for his orthodoxy, who has decided to remind the teachers of the city's four diocesan Catholic high schools that they are teaching in Catholic institutions and are therefore dutybound to uphold Catholic doctrine. And he wants the reminder made clear in a new handbook for the faculty as well as in all forthcoming teacher contracts. It is probably unprecedented for a bishop to do this, but if his archdiocese is funding and running the schools, he is certainly well within his rights to be explicit about requiring all the school's faculty and personnel to commit themselves to upholding Catholic doctrine, particularly in terms of sexuality, marriage and the family - subjects on which the teachers insist they and their students ought to have the freedom to make their own decisions. The following article summarizes the issue and the reactions so far...

City of San Francisco tells archbishop
his Catholic school reform is discriminatory

Legal action being considered, even as 80% of the city's Catholic high school teachers
protest inclusion of Catechism guidelines in faculty handbook and New faculty contracts

by Lisa Bourne


SAN FRANCISCO, March 6, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors says the archbishop’s effort to ensure the city’s Catholic schools uphold their faith is discriminatory, and one member of the board says the city is considering legal action.

At the same time, a reported 80 percent of teachers in the archdiocese’s four Catholic high schools have sent a petition to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone that accuses him of fostering “mistrust and fear.”

“We believe the recently proposed handbook language is harmful to our community and creates an atmosphere of mistrust and fear,” the letter said. “We believe our schools should be places of inquiry and the free exchange of ideas where all feel welcome and affirmed.”

Organizers report that 355 teachers from Sacred Heart Catholic Prep, Serra High School, Archbishop Riordan, and Marin Catholic have signed the petition, according to CBS San Francisco.

The archdiocese announced plans in early February to add language from the Catechism of the Catholic Church spelling out Church teaching on sexual morality into faculty handbooks for the purpose of clarifying the long-standing expectation that Catholic school teachers uphold Church teaching and not publicly contradict it. Three new clauses clarifying the same were also proposed for teacher contracts in the four archdiocesan high schools.

Part of the opposition was over the idea of classifying teachers as ministers, which some fear would make it more likely for teachers to face discrimination. The archbishop has said they would not be defined as ministers, but the word ministry would be part of the contract language.

The archbishop has stressed throughout that the efforts to preserve Catholic principles in the schools are not meant to target anyone.

Earlier this week the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution calling Archbishop Cordileone's efforts to preserve the Church’s moral teaching "contrary to shared San Francisco values of non-discrimination, women’s rights, inclusion, and equality for all humans."

The resolution pressed the archdiocese "to fully respect the rights of its teachers and administrators, and pursue contract terms with ... educators that respects their individual rights, but also recognizes the informed conscience of each individual educator to make their own moral decisions and choices outside the workplace." [[But in this case, their workplace is a Catholics school, in which they have no right to impose 'their own moral decisions and choices'!]

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, supervisor Mark Farrell, who is Catholic, says “city officials are considering legal action to prevent what [Farrell] described as Cordileone’s discriminatory measures from going into effect.”

Eight San Francisco-area lawmakers sent Archbishop Cordileone a letter February 17 telling him his efforts “conflict with settled law, foment a discriminatory environment, violate employees’ civil rights, send an alarming message of intolerance to youth, infringe upon personal freedoms, and strike a divisive tone.”

Archbishop Cordileone wrote the lawmakers back, asking whether they would hire a campaign manager "who advocates policies contrary to what they stand for, and who shows them and their party disrespect."

“My point is: I respect your right to employ or not employ whomever you wish to advance your mission,” said Archbishop Cordileone. “I simply ask the same respect from you.”


Two of the Democrat legislators then called for an investigation of working conditions at the archdiocesan high schools by the California Assembly Labor and Employment Committee and Assembly Judiciary Committee.

A high-profile PR strategist was hired last month by as-of-yet unidentified individuals to counter the archbishop’s efforts in the court of public opinion. It’s not clear whether this week’s petition and related media coverage are a result of that.

“This language in this judgmental context undermines the mission of Catholic education and the inclusive, diverse and welcoming community we prize at our schools,” said Sacred Heart Cathedral teacher Jim Jordan, who was among those who organized the campaign. “It is an attack not only on teachers’ labor and civil rights, but on young people who are discovering who they are in the world.”

The Cardinal Newman Society, which promotes and defends Catholic education, said the petition underscores the need for Archbishop Cordileone to be doing precisely what he is doing to defend Church teaching in the schools.

“These protests against common-sense policies only confirm the great need for Archbishop Cordileone’s efforts to shore up his schools’ Catholic identity,” Adam Wilson, the Cardinal Newman Society’s director of communications, told LifeSiteNews. “The Archbishop is doing a service to students, but these protesting teachers pose a serious threat to students’ Christian formation.”

Sign a petition to support San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone!
https://www.lifesitenews.com/petitions/i-stand-with-archbishop-cordileone



To affirm truth in the Church today,
one needs a Cordileone

by Riccardo Cascioli
Editor
Translated from

March 5, 2015

Cordileone (heart of a lion): Destiny gave this surname to the Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, who has decided to defy the LGBT juggernaut armed only with the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

In fact, Mons. Cordileone did something very simple: he circulated a document saying that in Catholic schools, teachers are required to observe behavior and teaching in line with Catholic morality. Accordingly, as Metteo Matzuzzi points out in [Il Foglio, they cannot tell students that “homosexual acts are not against natural law”, that contraception is “not intrinsically negative”, and that research using embryonic stem cells is “a great scientific breakthrough”.

If the bishop felt it was his duty to make these matters explicit – which would seem to be something all Catholics ought to know – he must have received information that statements contrary to truth and the Magisterium of the Church are being routinely affirmed and borne witness to, by the teachers at his Catholic high schools. Indeed, an uproar ensued immediately.

Beyond the reaction of The New York Times, scandalized that Mons. Cordileone would have dared issue such a reminder in the city that gave rise to the ‘gay’ movement, and of some local legislators who accuse Cordileone of discrimination (from which one might think that in the USA, religious freedom is a thing of the past), what must make us reflect is the internal reaction: An ‘uprising’ of teachers and students who speak of ‘witch hunts’ and staged a torch parade of protest in front of St. Mary’s Cathedral, obviously trotting out Pope Francis’s ‘Who am I to judge?” as an argument!

A tempest has descended on Mons. Cordileone, who said that the document he circulated to the four Catholic high schools simply contained what is written in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.. [In fact, those who would use the JMB/PF slogan to justify LGBT should also remember that on the occasion he said it, he added that he was ‘a son of the Church’ and advised the journalists he was addressing to check what the Catechism says about homosexuality. So, in his own way, Mons. Cordileone was facilitating the Pope's advice for his teachers – by actually quoting what the Catechism says, which JMB/PF could not be bothered to say even if it only takes one sentence - "The Church considers homosexual practices sinful because they violate natural law"]

But there’s the rub: It seems that today, in order to affirm what the Church has always taught in two millennia, one needs lionhearted courage not just to confront the world but many within the Church itself – that is the extent to which worldly thinking has penetrated into the mystical Body of Christ (the Church).

We can be sure that the anti-Catholic drift of teaching in Catholic institutions (including seminaries) isn’t confined to San Francisco, but how many bishops are there who, despite being aware of this, keep quiet and do nothing about it, if they are not themselves protagonists of such a drift?

We are equally sure that today, Mons. Cordileone does not have the sympathies of most of his fellow bishops in the Western world. Not even in Rome, at least, not from those who are seeking to steer the family synod not just towards allowing communion for unqualified remarried divorcees but also towards a change of Catholic teaching on homosexuality.

We know the stock objection: That it is useless to lay down moral rules – and what is needed is witness. [Yes, but what ‘witness’ exactly? To allow what is, in effect, a class exemption from sin in the case of these favored categories of Catholics living in a chronic state of sin?]

But this is exactly what Mons. Cordileone is asking of this teachers: to bear witness to the truth, and Truth is Christ and what he has taught us.

“It is not he who says, ‘Lord, Lord...’ but he who does my Father’s will…”, Christ said. Not to reduce everything to moralism but to make it clear that following the will of God (which includes the indissolubility of marriage and the existence of two sexes which are complementary, not just helping the poor) is what makes my life more human.

The tragedy that we are now experiencing in the Church – and which we are being taught by the debate on the ‘favored’ issues in the family synods [Which were the pretext for calling them, not any direct crises involving normal families, which still constitute the great majority of Catholic families today! Whereas validating the situation of RCDs and practicing homosexuals, and even unmarried cohabiting couples - a stealth addition at the last minute to those whom JMB/PF, from all indications, wishes to favor with sacramental leniency - would aggravate the trend of declining marriages (sacramental as well as civil), routine divorce and LGBT lifestyles.] – is precisely this scission of the human from the divine, in which doctrine is considered as nothing more than rules invented by men to wield power over other men.

In recent days, I came across an item about a Lenten conference organized by a Milan parish with the suggestive title, “Correct doctrine or contradicting human nature?” Whoever thought up the theme evidently does not believe that doctrine is what Jesus taught us for a true understanding of man. It shows a true and proper spiritual schizophrenia.

And yet in the Gospel, all of the encounters with Jesus are marked by clear judgment on good and evil, even as he welcomes the sinner who wishes to convert himself or who, at the very least, perceives the wound dealt to his soul by sin.

The mercy of the father in the parable of the prodigal son is shown towards the son who returns home – the son he always expected to return home – not for he who ended up tending pigs after he had squandered his inheritance in women and other diversions.

Moreover, what could be more useless than mercy bestowed on a sinner who is not even able to recognize his own sins? [Worse, in the cases we are discussing, when the sinner is told, in effect, that he has not really sinned, and presumably, may go on living in a state which, in all other Catholics, would be considered sinful!]

What makes matters worse is the fact that whoever tries to reaffirm these rather simple and rather obvious truths, is now made an object of intimidations and calumnious accusations. In the collective imagination, Mons. Cordileone will end up in the cauldron of the supposed ‘enemies of the Pope’, a category created by that powerful lobby which, being able to count on the support of the powerful MSM – are seeking to lead Pope Francis to carry out actions and take decisions that would constitute a ‘rupture’ with the Tradition of the Church. [Cascioli is here taking his habitual ‘normalist’ stance which assumes that despite all contrary indications, this is the best of all times for the Catholic Church and we have a Pope who would never ever change the ‘deposit of faith’ by the slightest iota. How can normalists continue to ignore that Jorge Mario Bergoglio already enforced ‘communion for everyone’ as the pastoral rule in Buenos Aires? What does it say for his Episcopal divergence from the universal Church at the time? (So much for his repeated references to ‘collegiality’ – though I suppose, as Pope, he wants all bishops to be ‘collegial’ with him, even if on this particular point, he did not think he needed to be ‘collegial’ with the universal Church.) Other bishops may have tacitly allowed ‘communion for everyone – “Do whatever you think is right, just don’t let me know” – but Bergoglio actually issued a directive to his priests. With his announced intention of giving doctrinal authority to every bishop, he would not just be diluting the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, but encouraging episcopal autonomy of the kind he practiced in Buenos Aires. Imagine the universal chaos in the Church when each bishop thinks his word is just as good as the Pope's on practically anything in his diocese?]

One must forcefully denounce the lie which would divide the Church into friends and enemies of the Pope. The true division is between friends and enemies of the Truth. [Fine words, Mr. Cascioli, but who is it who has labeled critics of this Pope as ‘enemies of the Pope’ but the breast-beating, proudly triumphalist, and self-identified ‘friends of Pope Francis’? One must suspect they realize that ‘opposition’ to Pope Francis is growing among Catholics who write for the media and are active on the Internet, and are trying to preempt any impact they might have by intensifying their pro-JMB propaganda, which means crushing his ‘enemies’ if they can. Would Mr. Cascioli call them ‘friends of the truth’?]
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I know this comes two days late but I must go on record about it - an anniversary I would not have observed at all, but the event it commemorates did happen, and the protagonist of the event is now a Blessed who will one day be a saint. So I thought Father Z's sendoff of the post- Vatican-II liturgical reform was an excellent way to mark the day.

Speaking of 50th anniversary of vernacular Masses…
BUGNINICARE! revisited

by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

March 9, 2015

In some circles there has been some panting whoopdeedoo about the fact that 50 years ago Paul VI celebrated Mass for the first time in a Roman parish in Italian.

I posted on the parish once before, some time ago. I noted a photo from a friend of mine in Rome of the marble plaque and inscription commemorating the event. Apparently the first plaque was damaged. The replacement they put waaaaay up high, though it shows signs of people having thrown things at it. There are stains. I guess the event wasn’t embraced with universal joy.

Anyway, I was reminded of my post called BUGNINICARE (after Annibale Bugnini who engineered the dismantling of the traditional Roman Rite and the so-far-wildly-successful Obamacare). What a gift they both have been.

Here is, once again, BUGNINICARE, written for the anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium (in 2013).


Bugninicare!
UNIVERSAL SPIRITUAL-CARE REFORM FOR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

(Socialized Worship)


Taking his cue from post-war European national health care programs, Annibale Bugnini, assisted by a small circle of spiritual-care specialists and church policy makers, spearheaded a massive overhaul of the Catholic Church’s spiritual care system in the 1960s.

The centerpiece of “Bugninicare” was a program known as Novus Ordo, so-called because it introduced a New Order into the regulation of the Church’s worship. The NO regulations were aimed at extending spiritual-care benefits to those for whom active participation was previously thought to be inaccessible.

Bugninicare guaranteed that barriers to full participation were removed, thus permitting access to spiritual care on the part of ordinary believers. Bugnini and his consultants were convinced that the costs their programs would exact would not be excessive.

Special guarantees were built in to Bugnini’s socialized spiritual care system to protect the rights of women. The program also reached out to previously disenfranchised sectors of the general population, ensuring that mainline Protestants, Pentecostals and charismatics would no longer be excluded from participation.

In fact, Bugninicare so lowered the bar of spiritual care throughout the Church that other obstacles to full participation, stemming from language, education, religion, gender and sexual orientation, were also effectively removed. The goal of equal distribution of spiritual care in the Church was now guaranteed.

Novus Ordo was designed by Bugnini as a monopoly, a “single-provider” liturgy that would allow no room for competition from previous forms of spiritual care delivery. In order to ensure that élite types would not be able to opt out of the Novus Ordo, spiritual care decisions in the Church were left to a small circle of bureaucrats, headed by Bugnini.

Images for your contemplation:





Of course, what occasioned the whoopdedoo over this anniversary, to begin with, was the Vatican announcement weeks ago that JMB/PF was going to mark the anniversary by saying Mass at the same parish church in Rome where Paul VI first said Mass in the vernacular 50 years ago. By coincidence, the church of Ognissanti (All Saints) happens to be the titular church in Rome of JMB/PF pet Cardinal Walter Kasper.



Seeing these headlines, I thought that PewSitter was using its habitual selective bias about JMB/PF, but I checked the links provided, and found this on the blog PRAY TELL by a Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB (Benedictine) who attended the anniversary Mass and wrote an effusive item about it, and translates what JMB/PF said in an accompanying video showing him addressing the crowd outside the church after the Mass. (Another blogger decided to fisk the homily, about which Ruff says nothing - but that's something else which requires separate consideration altogether, in line with much of what JMB/PF's eyebrow-raising pontifications.)



Ruff's full account may be seen here:
http://www.praytellblog.com/[Another bloindex.php/2015/03/08/pope-francis-the-liturgical-reform-was-courageous-we-must-always-go-forward-those-who-go-backward-are-mistaken/

I think the above makes it clear what this Pope thinks about the traditional Mass, and more generally, that his idea of progress is simply 'moving forward' for the sake of moving forward. And that he has no use for the traditional Mass - the Mass that the great majority of the Church's saints and martyrs, including the founders of the Society of Jesus (Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Pierre Favre) - despite his pro-forma lip service to Summorum Pontificum, which on more than one occasion he has described as nothing more than a 'prudent' action by Benedict XVI to reach out to Catholics who prefer the traditional Mass to the Novus Ordo.

Someone brought up this appropriate quotation from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.

If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.


Serendipitously - and to take away the unpleasant 'taste' of JMB/PF's remarks about the traditional Mass - Beatrice has posted her translation of the Preface written by Cardinal Ratzinger in 2004 for the book The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Alcuin Reid, a name familiar to all those who have been following the liturgical culture war over the past two decades... Here is the Preface published years ago online by the book's publisher, Ignatius Press. How refreshing and bracing it always is to read Joseph Ratzinger - his flowing linear presentation, his scrupulous sense of balance, and the forceful way he makes his points without a touch of belligerence or sanctimony.

The unspoken but underlying statement is, of course, that the Novus Ordo is hardly organic - it was devised by a committee intent on 'protestantizing' the Mass and it was sprung on the universal Church literally overnight! Nothing organic in that, unless you think of it as somewhat like Jack's magic beanstalk, from which a malignant outgrowth materialized overnight and immediately took on a life of its own.





In the last few decades, the matter of the right way to celebrate the Liturgy has increasingly become one of the points around which much of the controversy has centred concerning the Second Vatican Council, about how it should be evaluated, and about its reception in the life of the Church.

There are the relentless supporters of reform, for whom the fact that, under certain conditions, the celebration of the Eucharist in accordance with the most recent edition of the missal before the Council – that of 1962 – has once more been permitted [under one of John Paul II's indults] represents an intolerable fall from grace.

At the same time, of course, the Liturgy is regarded as semper reformanda, so that in the end it is whatever "congregation" is involved that makes "its" Liturgy, in which it expresses itself.

A Protestant "Liturgical Compendium" (edited by C. Grethlein [Ruddat, 2003]) recently presented worship as a "project for reform" (pp. 13-41) and thereby also expressed the way many Catholic liturgists think about it.

And then, on the other hand, there are the embittered critics of liturgical reform – critical not only of its application in practice, but equally of its basis in the Council. They can see salvation only in total rejection of the reform.

Between these two groups, the radical reformers and their radical opponents, the voices of those people who regard the Liturgy as something living, and thus as growing and renewing itself both in its reception and in its finished form, are often lost.

These latter, however, on the basis of the same argument, insist that growth is not possible unless the Liturgy's identity is preserved, and they further emphasise that proper development is possible only if careful attention is paid to the inner structural logic of this "organism":

Just as a gardener cares for a living plant as it develops, with due attention to the power of growth and life within the plant and the rules it obeys, so the Church ought to give reverent care to the Liturgy through the ages, distinguishing actions that are helpful and healing from those that are violent and destructive.


If that is how things are, then we must try to ascertain the inner structure of a rite, and the rules by which its life is governed, in order thus to find the right way to preserve its vital force in changing times, to strengthen and renew it.

Dom Alcuin Reid's book takes its place in this current of thought. Running through the history of the Roman rite (Mass and breviary), from its beginnings up to the eve of the Second Vatican Council, it seeks to establish the principles of liturgical development and thus to draw from history – from its ups and downs – the standards on which every reform must be based.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, very brief part investigates the history of the reform of the Roman rite from its beginnings up to the end of the nineteenth century. The second part is devoted to the Liturgical Movement up to 1948.

By far the longest part – the third – deals with liturgical reform under Plus XII up to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. This part is most useful, because to a great extent people no longer remember that particular phase of liturgical reform, yet in that period – as, of course, also in the history of the Liturgical Movement – we see reflected all the questions concerning the right way to go about reform, so that we can also draw out from all this criteria on which to base our judgments.

The author has made a wise decision in stopping on the threshold of the Second Vatican Council. He thus avoids entering into the controversy associated with the interpretation and the reception of the Council. Yet he can nonetheless show its place in history and show us the interplay of various tendencies on which questions as to the standards for reform must be based.

At the end of his book, the author enumerates some principles for proper reform:
o It should keep openness to development and continuity with the Tradition in a proper balance;
o It should include awareness of an objective liturgical tradition and therefore take care to ensure a substantial continuity.
o The author then agrees with the Catechism of the Catholic Church in emphasizing that "even the supreme authority in the Church may not change the liturgy arbitrarily, but only in the obedience of faith and with religious respect for the mystery of the liturgy]"
(CCC 1125).

As subsidiary criteria we then encounter the legitimacy of local traditions and the concern for pastoral effectiveness.

From my own personal point of view I should like to give further particular emphasis to some of the criteria for liturgical renewal thus briefly indicated. I will begin with those last two main criteria.

It seems to me most important that the Catechism, in mentioning the limitation of the powers of the supreme authority in the Church with regard to reform, recalls to mind what is the essence of the primacy as outlined by the First and Second Vatican Councils:

The pope is not an absolute monarch whose will is law; rather, he is the guardian of the authentic Tradition and, thereby, the premier guarantor of obedience.

He cannot do as he likes, and he is thereby able to oppose those people who, for their part, want to do whatever comes into their head. His rule is not that of arbitrary power, but that of obedience in faith.


That is why, with respect to the Liturgy, he has the task of a gardener, not that of a technician who builds new machines and throws the old ones on the junk-pile.

The "rite", that form of celebration and prayer which has ripened in the faith and the life of the Church, is a condensed form of living Tradition in which the sphere using that rite expresses the whole of its faith and its prayer, and thus at the same time the fellowship of generations one with another becomes something we can experience, fellowship with the people who pray before us and after us. Thus the rite is something of benefit that is given to the Church, a living form of paradosis, the handing-on of Tradition.

It is important, in this connection, to interpret the "substantial continuity" correctly. The author expressly warns us against the wrong path up which we might be led by a Neoscholastic sacramental theology that is disconnected from the living form of the Liturgy.

On that basis, people might reduce the "substance" to the matter and form of the sacrament and say: Bread and wine are the matter of the sacrament; the words of institution are its form. Only these two things are really necessary; everything else is changeable.

At this point modernists and traditionalists are in agreement: As long as the material gifts are there, and the words of institution are spoken, then everything else is freely disposable. Many priests today, unfortunately, act in accordance with this motto; and the theories of many liturgists are unfortunately moving in the same direction.

They want to overcome the limits of the rite, as being something fixed and immovable, and construct the products of their fantasy, which are supposedly "pastoral", around this remnant, this core that has been spared and that is thus either relegated to the realm of magic or loses any meaning whatever.

The Liturgical Movement had in fact been attempting to overcome this reductionism, the product of an abstract sacramental theology, and to teach us to understand the Liturgy as a living network of Tradition that had taken concrete form, that cannot be torn apart into little pieces but that has to be seen and experienced as a living whole.

Anyone who, like me, was moved by this perception at the time of the Liturgical Movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.

I should like just briefly to comment on two more perceptions that appear in Dom Alcuin Reid's book. Archaeological enthusiasm and pastoral pragmatism – which is in any case often a pastoral form of rationalism – are both equally wrong. These two might be described as unholy twins.

The first generation of liturgists were for the most part historians. Thus they were inclined to archaeological enthusiasm: they were trying to unearth the oldest form in its original purity; they regarded the liturgical books in current use, with the rites they offered, as the expression of the rampant proliferation through history of secondary growths that were the product of misunderstandings and of ignorance of the past.

People were trying to reconstruct the oldest Roman Liturgy and to cleanse it of all later additions. A great deal of this was right, and yet liturgical reform is something different from archaeological excavation, and not all the developments of a living thing have to be logical in accordance with a rationalistic or historical standard.

This is also the reason why – as the author quite rightly remarks –the experts ought not to be allowed to have the last word in liturgical reform. Experts and pastors each have their own part to play (just as, in politics, specialists and decision-makers represent two different planes).

The knowledge of scholars is important, yet it cannot be directly transmuted into the decisions of pastors, for pastors still have their own responsibilities in listening to the faithful, in accompanying with understanding those who perform the things that help us to celebrate the sacrament with faith today and the things that do not.

It was one of the weaknesses of the first phase of reform after the Council that to a great extent specialists were listened to almost exclusively. [It would be interesting to find out the sum pastoral experience of Mons. Bugnini and the members of his committee who devised the Novus Ordo. Not that it matters because obviously, the great majority of priests and bishops welcomed the Novus Ordo because it is so much simpler, less demanding, and it casts the Mass celebrator as chief protagonist in what came to treated as performance art rather than liturgy.] A greater independence on the part of pastors would have been desirable.

Because it is often all too obvious that historical knowledge cannot be elevated straight into the status of a new liturgical norm, this archaeological enthusiasm was very easily combined with pastoral pragmatism: People first of all decided to eliminate everything that was not recognised as original and was thus not part of the "substance", and then they supplemented the "archaeological remains", if these still seemed insufficient, in accordance with "pastoral insights".

But what is "pastoral"? The judgments made about these questions by intellectual professors were often influenced by their rationalist presuppositions and not infrequently missed the point of what really supports the life of the faithful.

Thus it is that nowadays, after the Liturgy was extensively rationalised during the early phase of reform, people are eagerly seeking forms of solemnity, looking for "mystical" atmosphere and for something of the sacred.

Yet because – necessarily and more and more clearly – people's judgments as to what is pastorally effective are widely divergent, the "pastoral" aspect has become the point at which "creativity" breaks in, destroying the unity of the Liturgy and very often confronting us with something deplorably banal. [Worse than banal, in many cases, i.e., not just commonplace and pedestrian but downright vulgar in the worst sense of the word.]

That is not to deny that the eucharistic Liturgy, and likewise the Liturgy of the Word, is often celebrated reverently and "beautifully", in the best sense, on the basis of people's faith.

Yet since we are looking for the criteria of reform, we do also have to mention the dangers, which unfortunately in the last few decades have by no means remained just the imaginings of those traditionalists opposed to reform.

I should like to come back to the way that worship was presented, in a liturgical compendium, as a "project for reform" and, thus, as a workshop in which people are always busy at something.

Different again, and yet related to this, is the suggestion by some Catholic liturgists that we should finally adapt the liturgical reform to the "anthropological turn" of modern times and construct it in an anthropocentric style.

If the Liturgy appears first of all as the workshop for our activity, then what is essential is being forgotten: God. For the Liturgy is not about us, but about God. Forgetting about God is the most imminent danger of our age. As against this, the Liturgy should be setting up a sign of God's presence.

Yet what happens if the habit of forgetting about God makes itself at home in the Liturgy itself and if in the Liturgy we are thinking only of ourselves? In any and every liturgical reform, and every liturgical celebration, the primacy of God should be kept in view first and foremost.


With this I have gone beyond Dom Alcuin's book. But I think it has become clear that this book, which offers a wealth of material, teaches us some criteria and invites us to further reflection. That is why I can recommend this book.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
26 July 2004




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In his preface to Fr. Reid's book on liturgy, Cardinal Ratzinger had occasion to point out the limits to a Pope's authority. Probably another thing that distinguishes Joseph Ratzinger from other Popes if the modern era is that, as a scholar on ecclesiology, he thought and wrote extensively about the Papacy from long before anyone ever even thought of him as a possible Pope. So in that sense, what he wrote was completely disinterested... In recent days, Fr. Hunwicke has had occasion to quote him about the limits of papal authority... Now, another orthodox priest, writing for Rorate caeli with the pseudonym Padre Pio Pace, riffs on the same subject by quoting from recent statements made by Cardinals Burke, Mueller and Sarah, respectively.

Cardinal Müller: On laying the foundations
for a return to the Magisterium

by Don Pio Pace

March 11, 2015

God only allows evil so as greater good may be accomplished. The immense disorder of the assemblies of the Synod on the Family prompts beautiful professions of faith by high-placed prelates of the Church, who are signs of hope for the future of the Church.

The extreme-progressive French magazine Golias moreover notes with disquiet the "danger" that men such as Cañizares, Burke, Müller, Ranjith, Ouellet, Sarah, and other "young" Cardinals (around 65 years old) represent to their viewpoint, that is, in the perspective of a further liberalization of the Church's constitution, adding to them some over seventy-year-olds, such as Scola, Caffarra, Pell, among others. [Not sure if Ouellet belongs to this group. He has been resoundingly silent on the battlehorse issues of the Bergoglian family synods, and his early effusions about Pope Francis were almost embarrassing for their seeming sycophancy.]

Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the Cardinals who took part in the authorship of the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ, along with his brothers Brandmüller, Burke, Caffara and De Paolis, has, for example, just made public a lecture that he presented on the past January 13, in Esztergom, Hungary, on the "Theological nature of the Doctrinal Commissions [of the Episcopal Conferences] and the role of Bishops as Doctors of the Faith".

In a very Ratzingerian way (reference is made to the motu proprio Apostolos Suos of John Paul II), he puts each thing in its place: one thing is the supplementary power of the Conferences of Bishops and their organs, such as Doctrinal Commissions, charged with the harmonization of pastoral orientations; one very different thing is the power of Divine Right of the Successors of the Apostles, Doctors of the Faith and guardians of their Particular Churches, at the same time in which they take part at the solicitude for the whole Church, in communion with the Supreme Shepherd.

The following passage, concerning the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff, was particularly noticed in Rome:

In his 1998 "Considerations" on the primacy of the Successor of Peter, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith affirms that the primacy of the Successor of Peter is — as all the faithful — submitted to the Word of God, to the Catholic Faith, and is the guarantor of the obedience of the Church and is, in this sense, servus servorum (servant of the servants of God).

He [the Pope] does not decide according to his own will (arbitrio], but voices the will of the Lord, who speaks to man in Scripture as lived and interpreted by Tradition; in other words, the episkopè of the Primacy has limits that proceed from Divine Law and the inviolable Divine Constitution of the Church contained in Revelation.


The Successor of Peter is the rock that, against arbitrariness and conformism, guarantees rigorous faithfulness to the Word of God. [And what if, as it appears to be the case today, one does observe, without having to try at all, 'arbitrariness' and 'conformism' in the pontifications emanating from the current Successor of Peter? He would not enjoy the phenomenal and unprecedented popularity he has if he were not 'conforming' in many ways to worldly mentality, or, at the very least, to the world's expectations of him? ]

At the same time, Cardinal Robert Sarah, new Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, plays from a similar score in his interview book that has come out in France in the past few days, Dieu ou rien (God or nothing) (Fayard). The work has the subtitle "Conversation on the Faith", which is by itself a whole program...

The organization of the Cardinal's words on the liturgy, done under the care of a writer called Nicolas Diat, is absolutely remarkable: Robert Sarah presents a very detailed and very moving account of his life, displays his (solid) theology and his high spiritual aspirations for the priesthood and for the pastors of the Church.

The tone of the African bishop, who risked his own life more than once, reaches a solemn level when he speaks of the relativistic Western ideology upon which some wish to sacrifice the message of Christ, especially concerning marriage and family. All of it, according to current usage, sprinkled with beautiful quotes by Pope Francis.

On February 8, Cardinal Müller published an article in L'Osservatore Romano entitled "Cleansing the Temple" (on the Vatican website: "Theological Criteria for a Reform of the Church and of the Roman Curia").

In it, he shows that the traditional reforms of the Church are spiritual, and not political. The reform of the Curia must be exemplary in this regard: its organizational structure and its functioning must be understood to be subject to the specific mission of the Successor of Peter, "the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity" (Lumen Gentium, 23).

The Curia is not, "an intermediate level between Pope and bishops," but it is intimately linked to his mission of universal pastoral government of flocks and lambs. Based on this, the Cardinal dismisses as something opposed to its essence the integration into the Curia of the Synod of Bishops:

"The Synod of Bishops, the Conferences of Bishops, and the various aggregations of particular Churches belong to a different theological category of that of the Roman Curia."

Which is a head-on criticism of the idea, within the cardinalatial Commission in charge of propositions to reform the Curia, that considers the integration into the traditional dicasteries of a sort of permanent delegation of the Synod of Bishops.

In definitive words, Cardinals Müller and Sarah express their distinctness from, let us say, the Baldisseris, the Marxes, the Tagles, the Kaspers...


This is rather off-topic, but I feel I must make it clear that my reservations are growing rather than diminishing about my compatriot, Cardinal Luis Tagle, Archbishop of Manila. Not that what I think and feel matter in any way. Right now, he is riding the crest of his build-up by the media as 'the Francis of Asia' (even if, to his credit, he was known for his simple living and 'pressing the flesh' outreach to his flock years before Jorge Mario Bergoglio's lifestyle and 'odor of the sheep' pastorality got worldwide headlines when he was elected Pope) and being touted as a 'likely successor to Francis' who would be the first Asian ever to become Pope.

If he were not the Vatican II progressivist that he is, and less sycophantic (almost embarassingly so) to the Pope even if he does not have to be, I would be beyond happy that a Filipino was being considered so highly in the MSM - obviously, in this case, for what I consider to be the wrong reasons... As subjective and utterly 'irrational' as it is, my gut feeling about Tagle from the very beginning was the same mistrust I felt about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the first occasion I can remember ever reading anything about them. That gut feeling has not proven wrong so far...


P.S. 3/12/15
What do you know - there's an appositely appropriate news item about Cardinal Tagle that reinforces my bias...Just as the report itself reinforces the MSM meme about Tagle as 'a future Pope'... His riff on Bergoglian mercy is, of course, sheer sycophancy and opportunism.

Cardinal says Church’s ‘severe’ stance towards gay
or divorced Catholics left people ‘branded’

Church has to relearn its own teaching on ‘mercy’, he insists

By John Bingham
Religious Affairs Editor

May 9, 2015

The “harsh” and “severe” stance adopted by the Catholic clerics towards gay people, divorcees and single mothers has done lasting harm, one of the most prominent members of the Church’s new generation of Cardinals has acknowledged.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines, said the Church had to learn lessons from changing social attitudes and a greater understanding of psychology and recognise the “wounds” its judgmental approach had caused in the past.

He was speaking after addressing thousands of young British catholics at the “Flame II” rally in Wembley Arena in London where he gave an impassioned call for Christians to learn again the meaning of the word “mercy”.

The 57-year-old cleric who is widely considered to be a possible future Pope, was given an ecstatic reception from the crowd as he told them that “only mercy can save humanity”.

Speaking afterwards, he said it was clear that the tone taken towards gay people, divorcees who remarried against Catholic teaching and unmarried mothers had left many feeling “branded” and socially ostracised. [How strange for Tagle to say this when the Philippines has always been one of the most 'gay'-friendly countries in the world!

When I was growing up in the 1950s-1960s, the most prominent couturiers and hairdressers in the country and quite a few film directors and painters were known to be gay but that didn't affect their social prestige or standing in any way. Nor was there any discrimination at large about 'gay' people' who at that time, before homosexuality became a buzzword, we Filipinos merely considered 'effeminate' without making any judgment about their sexual orientation.

From the 1970s onward, the number of known 'gays' in the arts, entertainment, fashion and media world, and eventually, in politics, expanded almost exponentially, and the persons concerned had no problems acknowledging their lifestyle, which was never relevant to their social status. Nor, as far as I know, did anyone ever complain that he/she was being ostracized, much less that he/she had been 'branded' by the Church.

In fact, I don't think any Filipino priest ever preached against the gay lifestyle at all - just as I don't think any priest has ever done elsewhere in the Western world. Since there is no divorce in the Philippines, the question of RCDs does not apply to our society. But unmarried cohabiting couples and unmarried mothers have never ostracized either (although perhaps in the rural areas, unmarried mothers were a topic for lively gossip).

And most certainly, unless Cardinal Tagle has documented facts to prove it, I was not aware (and I worked in the media from 1967-1987) that any Catholic priest or bishop had ever said anything that 'branded' homosexuals or unwed couples or single mothers in any way. We Filipinos (whose schizophrenic history includes "300 years in a convent and 50 years in Hollywood" - referring to our Spanish colonial past and our history as a US colony until we became independent in 1946) do not exercise social or religious ostracism against anyone for any reason. Culturally, over the past five-six decades, at least - and not that it is an entirely positive thing - the Philippines has been very much a 'laissez-faire' society.

So Cardinal Tagle is doing us a disservice by projecting onto Filipino society what he perceives to be the problem elsewhere. His countrymen do not need his pontificating on this subject, and to make general statements of the sort he made in Wembley seems to me an instrumentalistic media shtick on his part.


He added that improved understanding of child psychology had exposed the scale of harm done to children by the disciplinarian stance taken in schools.

The word “mercy” has been the central theme of Pope Francis’s pontificate but has exposed sharp divisions over possible moves to relax the ban on remarried divorcees receiving communion.

Cardinal Tagle told The Telegraph: “We have to admit that this whole spirituality, this growth in mercy and the implementation of the virtue of mercy is something that we need to learn over and over again.

“Part of it is also the shifts in cultural and social sensibilities such that what constituted in the past an acceptable way of showing mercy, ... now, given our contemporary mindset, may not be any more viewed as that.”

He said that the past approach in Catholic schools and other institutions had often been to dictate rules and tell people that they were “for your own good”.

“Now with our growing sensibilities, growth in psychology, we realise that some of them were not as merciful,” he said. “Now with the growth of insights in child psychology we see some of the wounds inflicted with that – and so we learn.”

Asked whether clerics must find new ways of dealing with people once treated as outsiders, he said: “Yes, I think even the language has changed already, the harsh words that were used in the past to refer to gays and divorced and separated people, the unwed mothers etc, in the past they were quite severe.

“Many people who belonged to those groups were branded and that led to their isolation from the wider society.

“I don’t know whether this is true but I heard that in some circles, Christian circles, the suffering that these people underwent was even considered as a rightful consequence of their mistakes, so spiritualised in that sense. But we are glad to see and hear shifts in that.”
[None of the above applies generally to the Philippine situation at all!]

He insisted that the Catholic Church could not abandon its traditional teaching on sexual ethics but added: “Here, at least for the Catholic Church, there is a pastoral approach which happens in counselling, in the sacrament of reconciliation where individual persons and individual cases are taken uniquely or individually so that a help, a pastoral response, could be given adequately to the person.” [But hasn't that been always the recommended way for priests to deal with problematic cases? Assuming that the confessee would even confess a homosexual lifestyle or unmarried cohabitation as a sin.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/03/2015 17:24]
12/03/2015 21:23
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Now it seems that even the most determined FOFs have backed away from calling what the Pope is doing about the Roman Curia a revolution, scaling down to the less ambitious word 'reform', which is, after all, what JMB/PF announced he intended. Only he thought he could do it virtually overnight, but events have shown it takes more than the best of intentions - even supported by universal consensus - to effect reform. It also needs time, patience and the right direction. In his Monday column, Andrea Gagliarducci offered a far more realistic account of how things stand in Curial reform than other Vaticanistas have so far, even if his commentary continues to be encumbered by dubious statements that raise more questions than they answer. Also, two titles were provided for this commentary, and I am showing them both:

Behind Pope Francis: A hidden Vatican
and
Pope Francis: Looking for a reform scenario

March 9, 2015

The official approval of the statutes of the three recently established Vatican economic bodies marked a small turning point in the path toward Vatican reforms. [The statutes were approved a year and a day after the bodies were created by papal fiat.] The anomaly that Pope Francis created by establishing curial dicasteries without any statutes has now come to a close. [An anomaly no one disputed at the time, along with the fact that the new Secretariat of the Economy was asked to draw up the statues for itself, the Council for the Economy and the new office of Auditor-General. Do you think MSM would ever have let Benedict XVI get away with anything like that?]

The era of external consultants has now turned into the era of institutionalization. It has now been accepted that a reform, more than a revolution, is needed. But the fact that the statutes have been so hotly debated also shows there is a breach, albeit a small one,[???? Isn't it more than a 'small breach', when Le Figaro's Jean Guenois presented a dossier at year's end 2014 entitled 'Secret war in the Vatican'? An allegation Fr. Lombardi did not bother to question. Surely, Gagliarducci would be the last one to claim that there will ever be 100% consensus at the Vatican!] within Pope Francis’s administration. This breach can be understood only by taking a wider view.

The debate surrounding the drafting of the statutes was wide and lively. The central question was how to reconcile the need for financial transparency and the wish to adhere to international standards with the need to maintain the sovereignty of the Holy See? This topic of discussion has recurred in all the debates over the reform of Vatican finances since Benedict XVI’s pontificate.

The final model [under Benedict XVI} was then completely developed within the Vatican, after external consultants were entrusted with outlining reforms for a short and difficult period. The adoption of these recommendations resulted in a generally positive evaluation of the Vatican by the Council of Europe’s committee MONEYVAL, and in a substantial promotion of the Vatican once the anti-money laundering law was completely re-written, a process through which the new law overcame some of the limits present in the first draft. [Thanks for pointing this out from the start! - And not as if financial reform at the Vatican had sprung from scratch in this Pontificate, which is the general impression peddled by the media and now firmly planted in the public mind.]

Vision seems to be the main problem in the case of Pope Francis’s economic reform. On one side were the external consultants, the true main players during the first part of Pope Francis’s pontificate. Their menu of recommendations aimed at creating out of the Holy See an effective institution, able to generate revenues, as if the Holy See were like any other corporate business. On the other hand stood the usual Vatican curialists, men involved for years in a renewal process who were quite aware that the Holy See was not a company, but a sovereign state with all of its complexities.

Debate engaged both of these two poles. But as is always the case, the truth is nuanced, since the two ‘teams’ are not so clearly defined.

Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, has committed himself to financial transparency. [A superfluous statement, as he wouldn't be where he is if he were not!] At the same time, the initial decision to place the management of the real estate holdings of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) under the umbrella of the Secretariat for the Economy [before any statutes had been written for the new 'economy' structures] was considered a sort of ‘casus belli’ in terms of the debate.

In the end the debate resulted in the decision that the real estate management should be left out of the Secretariat: it has yet to be decided whether an ‘ad hoc’ department for real estate investment will be established, or whether the real estate will return to APSA (which in this case would become a hybrid central treasury).

Meanwhile, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, worked in order to secure all of the structural components in the Roman Curia. In the absence of statutes for each of the new dicasteries, Cardinal Parolin matched each of his proposals with supporting documents. [colore-#0026ff][This is important information that has not been reported elsewhere, to my knowledge. It shows independent initiative rather than passive submission (to a substantially ungrounded initial decision by the Pope) on the part of Cardinal Parolin] He showed that he wanted to defend the institution. Nevertheless, many curial officials played their own games in an effort to maneuver around Parolin, perhaps in order to protect their own interests.

In the end, the final decision made clear that the Secretariat of State exercises its proper role in the international arena, while the Secretariat for the Economy oversees the dicasteries of Roman Curia, as well as the Vatican City State administration.

This latter point is noteworthy. A large part of the Holy See’s economic scandals stemmed from the administration of Vatican City State, the point in which the Vatican records the biggest profits. These profits come from the Vatican Museums, or from of public works contracts – a problem raised by the Vatileaks scandal. [There are two things wrong in the preceding statements. 1) Since when has Vatican City State administration (i.e., the Governatorate) been responsible for 'a large part of the Holy See's economic scandals? Name one glaring instance that ever made the news! In fact, the Vatican Museums which fall under the Governatorate, has been the Vatican's largest and steadiest revenue maker - and it hasn't been involved in any financial scandals at all. 2) On public works contracts and the Vatileaks scandal: Mons. Vigano made one specific accusation in his shotgun screed against his perceived enemies at the Vatican - that the annual construction of the Nativity scene in St. Peter's Square was overpriced in 2010 and that he brought it down the following year. The Governatorate explained after Vigano's 2012 letter to Cardinal Bertone (in which he mentions the 'scandal') was made public, that the cost in 2010 was in large part due to the decision to order a permanent modular steel foundation for the Nativity scene that could be reused every year instead of building a new temporary foundation every year. Vigano never rebutted that explanation.

What other 'scandals' involving public works contracts does Gagliarducci know of? Vigano's letter gave the impression that such contracts are generally awarded to 'favored' individuals or firms, but he did not cite specific cases. Whether there are favored individuals or firms, surely the records will show if they presented the best bid possible for the specific jobs they got. And if any bidding was irregular in any way, then prove it.]


If the Secretariat for the Economy had not been able to extend its oversight powers to the Governatorate, it would have failed to satisfy one of the reasons it was conceived.

Not by chance, as this debate was heating up, the media published leaks about the expenditures of Cardinal Pell. The leaks followed the same Vatileaks pattern – a personal attack intended to slow down a reform process. [This statement illustrates one of my major reservations about Gagliarducci's reporting and commentary. The statement does not apply to Vatileaks at all, about which no one at any time mentioned any 'reform process' - first of all, because MSM was always careful not to attribute any 'reform' (or anything positive, for that matter) to Benedict XVI, and second, because Vatileaks seemed to be directed mainly at discrediting Cardinal Bertone, not for any reforms he attempted, but simply because he was persona non grata to the Curial establishment.]

It is still unknown who was behind the leaks, which included documents accompanied by a narrative that included factual errors. But in the Vatican leakers are either men who have lost their power or who are on the verge of losing it.

The nature of the leaks concerning Cardinal Pell along with some clues provided by the leaks lead observers to surmise that the leakers come from the ranks Prefecture for the Economic Affairs (that is going to be suppressed as a result of Cardinal Pell’s reform) or from some former ranks of the Bambino Gesù Hospital that is run by the Secretariat of State: Cardinal Parolin recently appointed new governors to the hospital. Both of these groups have voiced discontent. [In any case, the 'leak' was so picayune and easily shot down that I am surprised L'Espresso (Italy's equivalent of TIME magazine) took it seriously - 2500 euros or something spent for ecclesiastical garments, which, it turns out, were not for Pell's personal use, but for the use of the priests in his office. At the very least, L'Espresso could have called Pell to ask for his side before they published their dud of a 'scoop'.]

Clues are not proofs, but sources say that “you should look among the gang of discontents to understand what is going on”. In the end the gang war is not merely over vision.

This is the usual game of crisscross interests that targeted Benedict XVI as well, and the targetting includes even those officials who have sponsored these popes. There is no gratitude, nor vision. Every Pope must face this issue.

Pope Francis is facing the issue as well. The scenario may be even widened. Economic reform was so much a priority that the Council for the Economy, Secretariat for the Economy and General Auditor statutes were issued before the statutes of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors – even though the latter are almost ready. “There was a priority to be respected,” one of the
experts in drafting the statutes said.

Because of this anxiety to carry forward the economic reform, Pope Francis filled the Vatican with external consultants, at first inserted in the Pontifical Commission for Reference of the Institute for Religious Works and in the economic-administrative structure of the Holy See, and sometimes contracted, for millions in fees. These experts brought expertise and skills within the Vatican, and presented all the possibilities to improve management and generate revenues. At the same time, external experts also seized Vatican secrets, with the possibility to raise infamous campaigns against the Vatican if things do not meet their expectations. [It may not be as sinister as Gagliarducci paints it, but the fact is that all those external consultants have been made privy to all the Vatican documents they could ask for in carrying out their assignments, and one has to trust in the good faith of each consultant not to abuse that rare privilege. One of the main concerns when the Pope appointed Italian media consultant Francesca Chiaoqui as a member of the commission to investigate IOR and make appropriate recommendations was that the woman had a record of using her social network accounts to spread false information about Benedict XVI and Cardinal Bertone. Imagine what someone like her could do with documented facts about any Vatican irregularities or anomalies that the public has never heard of but which would be far more damaging than mere rumors!]

All of their proposals suffered from limitations when it came to understanding the inner nature of the Vatican. Which is not to generate revenues, but to preserve a sovereignty that is needed for the mission of the Church.] [But the primary reason they were hired was to recommend measures that would keep the Vatican/Holy See's financial and economic transactions open and aboveboard at all times. Any recommendations on how to maximize or generate revenues from existing assets and operations would be secondary and in keeping with the primary motivation for their engagement. Besides, the Vatican was not hiring no-name ignoramuses, and the first thing they would have been told by whoever hired them at the Vatican was to learn the fundamentals about the Holy See and Vatican City State - the Holy See is the entity that governs the universal Church under the leadership of the Pope, and Vatican City State is its geographical and juridical location that guarantees the sovereignty of the Holy See in carrying out her mission for the universal Church.][/dim

Who spun Pope Francis to fill the Holy See with consultants? And why did cardinals have such a secular view? ['Spun Pope Francis'? Tsk-tsk, Mr G. Such condescending language for the pluperfect Pope! No one had to 'spin' him - he 'spins' himself enough. But seriously, if, as John Allen recently said of JMB/PF in a recent speech to open the annual 'Partners for Charity' campaign of St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, "beneath the humble exterior lies the mind of a brilliant Jesuit politician”, as his down-then-up-and-never-again-down career in the Society of Jesus proves, he surely must have been in lockstep with his advisers in the matter of financial reforms. As for his advisory cardinals having 'such a secular view', the fact alone that they unquestioningly swallowed Vatileaks as the media served it to them, i.e., 'evil and corruption' in Benedict XVI's Vatican, and considered this the most urgent problem facing the Church when they chose his successor, tells it all.]

These are still unanswered questions. The internal discussion evolves around these questions. It is not a fight between Italian and Anglo-Saxon mentalities, as it is often presented in a very simplistic way by the media – this issue was overcome a long time ago, and Vatican finances were already following the ‘international’ path.

From an external point of view, which lacks many nuanced details, the visions at stake at the moment could even be reconciliable. They are not only because those who are counseling and leading the debate are following their personal interests, [That is a very serious charge - and since it would seem to involve the 'Gang of Nine', are we to think that each of those nine cardinals are really pushing their own agenda ahead of any other consideration? The most prominent members of that advisory council - Parolin, Pell, Maradiaga, Marx and O'Malley - have also been the most outspoken in the past two years, the last three for rash and near-heretical statements that neither the Pope nor Fr. Lombardi has ever disavowed or corrected.] thus blocking any possibility of mutual agreement for the sake of the Holy See.

So, while Pope Francis is turning the page on the second year of Pontificate, the same old problems still affect the Vatican, as the power of different factions has even increased from Benedict XVI’s time. [If this is true, then no one but Gagliarducci has seen fit to make the observation because it is is so antithetical to the universal narrative about this Pope who was widely hailed as the 'can-do' Pope.]

Pope Francis is not pushing a particular agenda of government, while people behind his back are. [Of Gagliarducci's many questionable statements since this Pontificate began, this is one manifest denial of fact that I cannot explain. What was Evangelii gaudium but the manifesto or agenda for his Pontificate? No Pope in my lifetime ever felt compelled to issue such a statement as an Apostolic Exhortation, no less! (Whereas Benedict XVI famously made it clear from the start that he had no agenda other than 'with the whole Church, to listen to the Word of God") This one denial of fact alone considerably diminishes, to my mind, the reliability of Gagliarducci's analyses!

And if 'people behind his (JMB's) back' are pushing their own agenda, hasn't that always been a fact of Vatican life? What is new is that JMB came in expecting and creating the expectation that the very fact of his election would miraculously change human nature, or at least, that of the persons who work at the Vatican. Finding out there was no such miracle perhaps explains why he decided to lecture the Roman Curia on their 'diseases' fully 20 months into his Pontificate!]


How can things be brought to a conclusion? The synthesis – or balance – is achieved when proposals of reform get to the desk of Vatican experts – people who have been always working in the Vatican: they know the Vatican’s peculiarity, and they have always been faithful to the Vatican. The most important reforms carried forward in the course of the last years must be ascribed to these Vatican experts. [And who are these 'Vatican experts', exactly? Names, please! If they have been responsible for the most important reforms in recent years, their names ought to be published! It also means they were part of that Curia under Benedict XVI that has been so thoroughly 'discredited' by the media and in public opinion. So, are they good guys or villains?]

We can now set our glance to the Curia reform, which is a broader issue. A Council of Cardinals in great majority from outside the Curia has been entrusted with studying a possible reform. Their task was to bring the perspective and concerns of peripheries, and to dialogue with the central power in Rome. It seems that they want to bring their ideas to Rome, as a sort of local Churches’ vindication.

Just a few of them know the Curia and its real scope. ['A few'? Who, exactly? There are only nine of them. Other than Cardinal Bertello, president of Vatican City State, not one of them had Rome-based Curial experience before March 13, 2013. Since then, Pell and Parolin have necessarily immersed themselves in the affairs of the Vatican and the Holy See. Maradiaga is president of Caritas International, which is not a Vatican agency, and has mostly operated as a free agent in that capacity.]

Often, these cardinals have merely set their the gaze on Curia scandals, flaws and human contradictions. But only people who are really within the Curia are able to fully understand the Curia.

In the end, the paradigm of the Pontificate is slowly changing. From external consultants to consultants from within. External consultants are called to give opinions, to provide an external point of view; but they are not called to carry out the reforms, to change the Holy See framework.

Now, Pope Francis’s pontificate seems to be turning to normality.[And what exactly is 'normality'? The US army coined the word SNAFU from the acronym for 'situation normal - all f... up"!] If there must be a revolution, this can be done at a slow pace, building the reform structure step by step. Paradoxically, the paradigm of revolution helps more the old powers, which find a way to preserve themselves in the face of continuous announcements of revolution. If reform is slow and 'surgical', instead, tensions are suffocated as they arise, and there is not so much space for media campaigns. [dim=#0026ff][Really? Wouldn't that give them much more time and space???]

There is a group that is silently working in the Vatican to back a true, deep, real reform. Not even Pope Francis is probably aware of it.

Step by step, this group is taking things in their hands. Small signals of a change of pace may be detected. It seems now certain that the Curia reform will take time and that the revision of the Apostolic Constitution that regulates the Curia functions will be now studied by an ad hoc commission.

And the new vice director of the Institute for Religious Works was appointed on March 6: Gianfranco Mammì, who had started his career in the Institute in 1992 as a cashier. Is this the signal that the era of external consultants has come to an end? [One swallow doesn't make a summer. Isn't it more definitive to just check the dates when the external consultants' contracts expire?]

This question is in suspension, as are Pope Francis’s intentions. While the debate was getting heated, Pope Francis did not take a position, and his will was used by both sides. The impression is that the Pope is not very much interested in these discussions. This is another reason why the scenario is really more complicated than foreseen: when the Pope is not providing a clear vision, everyone is afraid to make any moves.[colore] [/dim=9pt][With all those high-powered advisers and announcements right and left about what he wants to do about the Curia, he is 'not providing a clear vision'?][/dim And those who are not afraid are usually those who play a dirty game. [The saying is 'Where there's a will, there's a way'. Whose will is stronger in this case, the Pope's or his opponents? Surely, a determined reformer - he does not even have to be a 'revolutionary - knows that he has to break eggs to make an omelet. Let him break the eggs he has to break in order to get his way!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/03/2015 21:35]
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