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TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 19 ottobre 2008 11:34





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VESPERS AT SISTINE CHAPEL
AND BARTHOLOMEW I'S SYNOD INTERVENTION
October 18, 2008







ZENIT so far has had the only news report that gives the theological sense of Patriarch Bartholomew's historic intervention, rather than focusing on the couple of statements he made that have 'social' relevance. They took full advantage of having the complete text of the Patriarch's intervention,
www.zenit.org/article-23981?l=english
which really deserves to be read in full. I have also posted it in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH:


Patriarch urges 'touching' - the Word of God
Bartholomew I on the use of "spiritual senses'


VATICAN CITY, OCT. 19, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Most Christians have heard the Word of God, but have they seen it in art or nature, or realized they were touching it in the Eucharist?

Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople spoke Saturday afternoon at the celebration of vespers in the Sistine Chapel of using one's "spiritual senses" to perceive the Word of God.

The event, presided over by Benedict XVI and attended by some 400 cardinals, bishops, religious and laypeople, took place within the context of the world Synod of Bishops on the Word of God, which is under way in the Vatican through Oct. 26.

The first Patriarch in history to be invited to address a world Synod of Bishops, Bartholomew I noted that his presence was "an important step toward the restoration of our full communion."

"We regard this as a manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit leading our Churches to a closer and deeper relationship with each other," he said.

Sitting with Michelangelo's "Final Judgment" behind him, the p\Patriarch discussed the importance of the synod's theme.

"The Church needs [...] to rediscover the Word of God in every generation," he said, "and make it head with a renewed vigor and persuasion also in our contemporary world, which deep in its heart thirsts for God’s message of peace, hope and charity."

He continued: "This duty of evangelization would have been, of course, greatly enhanced and strengthened if all Christians were in a position to perform it with one voice and as a fully united Church.

"It is, therefore, most appropriate, that this synod has opened its doors to ecumenical fraternal delegates so that we may all become aware of our common duty of evangelization as well as of the difficulties and problems of its realization in today’s world."

The patriarch, drawing on the Patristic doctrine of the "spiritual senses," then spoke of three "spiritual ways of perceiving" the Word of God: "listening to God’s Word, beholding God’s Word, and touching God’s Word."

He reflected first of all "on hearing and speaking the Word of God through the holy Scriptures."

"The Christian Church is, above all, a scriptural Church," Bartholomew I said. "Although methods of interpretation may have varied [...] Scripture was always received as a living reality and not a dead book."

"In the context of a living faith," he added, "Scripture is the living testimony of a lived history about the relationship of a living God with a living people."

The Patriarch said that in this sense that Christians must "provide a unique perspective -- beyond the social, political, or economic -- on the need to eradicate poverty, to provide balance in a global world, to combat fundamentalism or racism, and to develop religious tolerance in a world of conflict."

Bartholomew I affirmed that the Word of God can be seen "in nature and above all in the beauty of the icons": "Nowhere is the invisible rendered more visible than in the beauty of iconography and the wonder of creation."

"Icons are a visible reminder of our heavenly vocation," he explained. "They are invitations to rise beyond our trivial concerns and menial reductions of the world. They encourage us to seek the extraordinary in the very ordinary.

"Icons underline the Church’s fundamental mission to recognize that all people and all things are created and called to be 'good' and 'beautiful'."

Regarding nature, the Patriarch affirmed: "All genuine 'deep ecology' is inextricably linked with deep theology."

“Even a stone,” Bartholomew I stated, quoting Basil the Great, “bears the mark of God’s Word. This is true of an ant, a bee and a mosquito, the smallest of creatures. For he spread the wide heavens and laid the immense seas; and He created the tiny hollow shaft of the bee’s sting.”

The Patriarch added, "Recalling our minuteness in God’s wide and wonderful creation only underlines our central role in God’s plan for the salvation of the whole world."

Bartholomew I said that the Word of God, which "receives his full embodiment" in the sacrament of the Eucharist, can be touched and shared "in the communion of saints and the sacramental life of the Church."

In the Eucharist, he explained, "the Word becomes flesh and allows us not simply to hear or see him, but to touch him with our own hands."

"Word and sacrament become one reality," the patriarch added. "The word ceases to be 'words' and becomes a Person, embodying in himself all human beings and all creation."

Bartholomew I said the example of saints is "the tangible experience and human expression of God’s Word in our community."

"In the gentle presence of a saint," he explained, "we learn how theology and action coincide. In the compassionate love of the saint, we experience God as 'our father' and God’s mercy as 'steadfastly enduring'."

"Each of us is called to 'become like fire,' to touch the world with the mystical force of God’s Word," he said, "so that - as the extended Body of Christ - the world, too, might say: 'Someone touched me!'"

"Evil," continued Bartholomew I, "is only eradicated by holiness, not by harshness. And holiness introduces into society a seed that heals and transforms."

"It is like the tectonic plates of the earth’s crust," he explained. "The deepest layers need only shift a few millimeters to shatter the world’s surface.

"Yet for this spiritual revolution to occur, we must experience radical 'metanoia' - a conversion of attitudes, habits and practices - for ways that we have misused or abused God’s Word, God’s gifts and God’s creation."

The Patriarch added: "The challenge before us is the discernment of God’s Word in the face of evil, the transfiguration of every last detail and speck of this world in the light of Resurrection.

"The victory is already present in the depths of the Church, whenever we experience the grace of reconciliation and communion."



Bartholomew I:
A historic intervention
at the Bishops' Synod
by ALBERTO BOBBIO
Translated from

October 19, 2008


VATICAN CITY - Under Michelangelo's great fresco of The Last Judgment, the Patriarch of Constantinople, first among equals of all the patriarchs of the Orthodox Church, addressed a Roman Catholic Bishops' Synod for the first time.

Nothing similar has happened since the Great Schism of 1054. The distinction goes to Bartholomew I, whose address comes during the year dedicated to St. Paul, Apostles of the undivided Church.

His intervention, delivered in the Sistine Chapel after Vespers jointly presided by Pope Benedict XVI and the Patriarch, is a sign of the great attention that Benedict XVI has for his special guest.

Bartholomew himself called his intervention 'a historic event' and expressed the hope that Catholics and Orthodox may arrive at 'full communion', overcoming current differences "to converge fully on the role of primacy and synodality in the life of the Church".

The Patriarch measured his words carefully, in view of the open divisions in the Orthodox world. Not everyone - particularly not Alexei II, Patriarch of Moscow, is happy about Bartholomew's growing association with the Church of Rome and the Holy See.

At a pan-Orthodox summit meeting held last week at the Phanar, Bartholomew's headquarters in Istanbul, the tensions were evident, despite a united front presented to the media.

In fact, there is no certainty yet that a pan-Orthodox Bishops Synod can be held next year - an event that has been spoke about for three decades and which Bartholomew considers a priority, but which the Patriarchate of Moscow has resisted, in its desire to play the lead role in the Orthodox world.

Bartholomew I has now carried out two important gestures to assert the leadership of Constantinople in the Orthodox world. First, he travelled to the Ukraine recently to lead the anniversary of the introduction of Christianity to the Slavic world in the 15th century. Ukrainian Orthodox are divided, with one faction loyal to Moscow, which has lost ground since the Ukraine became an independent country after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

And now, his attendance at the Synod. [At Benedict's invitation, obviously.]

The Patriarch delivered his intervention in English after the Vespers service. He was seated to the left of the altar, the Pope to the right.

He presented a long analysis in which he proposed the Word and the Eucharist as the pillars of Christian involvement in history. [It was not an analysis of anything, but a synthesis of the Orthodox approach to Scriptures, which plays a major role in Orthodox life. So Bartholomew's presentation was pf particular interest to Catholics, for whom Scriptures became relegated to the background in the life of the faithful following the Protestant Reformation.]

At the end, the Pope thanked the Patriarch, saying that listening to the Word of God means facing the challenges of our time with 'Christian realism'.

"We should go the heart of Sacred Scriptures, put the Word of God into words that can open the eyes of the world to the realities of today", he said.

The Pope also pointed out that the Orthodox Fathers that Bartholomew cited in his presentation "are also our Fathers" and therefore, "that means we cannot be other than brothers".

Bartholomew focused his speech on three challenges that both Churches should face together: poverty, racism and fundamentalism.

He said that "as disciples of Christ, it was more than ever imperative to provide a single perspective on the need to eradicate poverty, promote equilibrium in the global society, combat fundamentalism and racism, and develop religious tolerance in a conflictual world."





Pope and Orthodox Patriarch
pray in Sistine Chapel
By DANIELA PETROFF



VATICAN CITY, Oct. 18 (AP) - The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians prayed with Pope Benedict XVI in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday and urged Catholics and Orthodox to work together to combat fundamentalism and to promote religious tolerance.

Benedict praised his guest, Patriarch Bartholomew I, on the occasion of an Orthodox leader’s first service in the chapel, which is famous for its frescoes painted by Michelangelo.

Bartholomew’s participation in the Vespers service and speech, in the chapel where Popes are elected, is a “joyous experience of unity, perhaps not perfect, but true and deep,” Benedict said.

The two men are eager to bridge a nearly millennium-long schism between the two churches, and see moral and social issues — including fundamentalism, religious intolerance, abortion, euthanasia and environmental degradation — as fertile ground for common initiatives.

Bartholomew was invited to address bishops from around the world attending a meeting at the Vatican this month about the importance of the Bible.

Cardinals and bishops listened attentively as the Patriarch spoke about the potential for common initiatives between the world’s 250 million Orthodox and more than 1 billion Catholics.

The Orthodox leader called it more imperative than ever for both sides to provide a “unique perspective -- beyond the social, political or economic -- on the need to eradicate poverty, to provide balance in a global world, to combat fundamentalism or racism and to develop religious tolerance in a world of conflict.”

Bartholomew described the invitation to address the Pope and bishops in the Sistine Chapel as “at once humbling and inspiring.”

The split between Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches centers on the primacy of the Pope.


[The report should then have mentioned, at least, what Bartholomew said about 'synodality' and 'primacy' as essentials in Orthodox ecclesiology. Also, as usual, the report makes it appear that the Patriarch addressed the Synod primarily on social issues - when he mentioned those issues only as an example of the 'sacrament of neighbor' which must be joined to the 'sacrament of the altar', in a presentation about the Word of God in the life of the Orthodox Church.]


TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 19 ottobre 2008 12:36



OR today.

The text of Benedict XVI's intervention on Tuesday at the Bishop's Synod:
'For the future of the faith, exegesis must be not just historical but also theological'

Other Page 1 stories: A note about the Holy Father's pastoral visit to Pompeii today; an editorial commentary
about science distancing from itself when it serves economic interests ahead; French President Sarkozy's
proposal to 'rewrite the rules of capitalism'; and a new refugee crisis in Darfur.


THE POPE'S DAY





PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS, BENEDICT XVI
POMPEII, Sunday, October 19, 2008


PROGRAM

0900 Departure from Vatican heliport

1000 Helicopter lands on the grounds of the Shrine at Pompeii
Welcoming the Pope will be:
- Mons. Carlo Liberati, Archbishop-Prelate of Pompeii
and Pontifical Legate for the Shrine
- Sandro Bondi, Minister for Cultural Assets,
representing the Italian government
- Antonio Zanardi Landi, Ambassador of Italy to the Holy See
- Mons. Giuseppe Bertello, Apolstolic Nuncio in Italy
- Antonio Bassolino, President of the Campania Region
- Alessandro Pansa, Prefect of Naples
- Claudio D’Alessio, Mayor of Pompeii
- Riccardo Di Palma, President of the Povince of Naples

The Pope will travel by car to the Basilica.
- Formal welcome by Mayor D'Alessio

1020 The Pope will be welcomed to the Basilica by
- Mons. Pasquale Mocerino, Vicar General
- Mons. Francesco Paolo Soprano, Rector of the Shrine,

The Holy Father will don vestments for the Mass.

1030 EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION, Piazza Bartolo Longo
- Greeting from Mons. Liberati, Archbishop-Prelate of Pompeii
- Homily
- 'Supplica' to Our Lady of the Rosary
and offering of the Golden Rose
- Angelus

The Holy Father returns to the sacristy.

1300 Lunch with the Bishops of Campania
Residence of the Pontifical Delegation

1700 The Holy Father visits the chapel of Blessed Bartolo Longo
before proceeding to the main Basilica
- Recital of the Rosary
- Meditation by the Holy Father
for priests, seminarians, religious and the faithful

1800 The Pope departs the Shrine by helicopter.
he will be seen off by the same delegation that welcomed him.

1900 Arrival at the Vatican heliport


The Pope in Pompeii
Translated from
the 10/19/08 issue of



The church of Pompeii welcomes Joseph Ratzinger today for the second time as a pilgrim to the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary. On May 17, 1998, he was there as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; now, as Successor of Peter.

He is the second Pope to visit the shrine, after two visits by John Paul II.

Benedict XVI's Marian pilgrimage will begin with his welcome by Archbishop Carlo Liberati, along with civil and religious authorities in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary.

After the Mass, which is the central point of the visit, the Pope will recite the traditional 'Supplica' to the Virgin. Mons. Liberati says "the Pope will entrust to the Mother of the Lord and ours the reflections and conclusions of the Bishops' Synod, and all the families in the world. Together with the Church in Pompeii and the millions and millions of faithful who pray the Rosary, he will ask the Virgin for the unity of families, faithfulness between spouses, and the courage to educate their children in the faith".

The Holy Father will then offer the Golden Rose, a traditional papal homage, to the Virgin - a tribute he rendered to the images of Mary in the other Marian shrines that he has visited in Italy - Loreto, Savona, Genoa, Santa Maria di Leuca and Cagliari.

Afterwards, the Pope will lead the Angelus prayer from the Loggia of the Basilica.

At the Palace of the Pontifical Delegation in Pompeii, the Pope will meet and have lunch with the bishops of the Campania region led by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Archbishop of Naples.

In the afternoon, he will venerate the remains of Blessed Bartolo Longo, founder of the shrine. He will then lead the Rosary at the Basilica, followed by a meditation delivered to the priests and religious of the prelature,the Children of the Rosary, and other lay faithful.

The expectations of the local Church for this papal pilgrimage were expressed by Mons. Liberati: "Benedict XVI is coming to entrust the Bishops' Synod and the family to the Virgin , so that she may enlighten the mind, the conscience and the heart of every man".

The Marian shrine at Pompeii is distinguished by the works of charity started by Blessed Bartolo in 1886, initially focused on caring for orphans and the children of prisoners. Today, the works benefit other disadvantaged children and young people, as well as single mothers and women with special needs, particularly immigrants.


Pompeii Basilica now has
4 million pilgrims yearly



Pompeii, Oct. 19 (Translated from Apcom) - Every year, four million pilgrims come to Pompeii to visit the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Pompeii, which is most famous for the excavated ruins of the ancient city buried under lava by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, has also become one of the leading religious destinations in Italy.

The Basilica of the Rosary is the most important and most visited Marian shrine in southern Italy. Construction began in 1876 with funds raised from contributions of the faithful.

In 1901, Pope Leo XII made it a Pontifical Basilica. The 80-meter belltower which dominates the city was added in 1925. The Basilica, with its three naves, can accommodate 2,500 people.

There are numerous churches around the world dedicated to the Madonna of Pompeii. In the United Sates alone, there are at least 20.

Helping to spread the word about the Shrine is the monthly magazine 'Il Rosario e la Nuova Pompeii' which Blessed Bartolo himself started in 1884. Today, it has a circulation of 265,000, with editions in English and Spanish in addition to the Italian.


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I don't understand EWTN's programming decisions for today, at least for North America. They chose to broadcast live the beatification ceremonies for the parents of St. Therese in Lisieux - an absolutely beautiful ceremony - which overlaps the Papal Mass in Pompeii. One would have thought that they would then air the delayed broadcast of the papal Mass - but their schedule shows a rebroadcast of the Lisieux Mass later today, and then, a one-and-half-hour slot at midnight tonight for the "Papal visit to Pompeii: Holy Mass". So does the short slot mean they won't even broadcast the entire Mass?...

BTW, at noon, they showed the dedication Mass for a new chapel of Our Lady of Pompeii at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. It was a big concelebration led by Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia, with the participation of most of the Italian-American bishops of Northeastern USA. The Mass was said mostly in Italian for the benefit of the Italian-American community which raised funds for the new chapel.





For the Holy Father today - another anniversary:

42 months since he was elected Pope,
three and a half momentous and exciting years so far...
ALL OUR LOVE AND PRAYERS, SANCTE PATER -
AD MULTOS ANNOS!!!!






TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 19 ottobre 2008 13:23






Pope Benedict XVI travels
to shrine in Pompeii
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO



POMPEII, Italy, Oct.19 (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI traveled to a shrine near the ruins of ancient Pompeii on Sunday and prayed for all people in pain or difficulty, saying faith can promote personal and social recovery.

The Pope celebrated an open-air Mass in front of the 19th century shrine to the cheers of tens of thousands of faithful.

"How can we forget, in this moment, the people who suffer, the sick, the elderly who are alone, the youths in difficulty, the inmates, those who are in poverty and in social and economic distress?" Benedict said during his homily. "To each of you I want to ensure my spiritual closeness."

The Pope praised the shrine, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the rosary, and its founder, as a beacon of hope and faith. The town was reborn around the sanctuary, he said, showing "how God transforms the world: by filling the heart of man with charity and turning it into an 'engine' for religious and social renewal."

The remark resonated in a region that is marked by organized crime, poverty and high unemployment rates, especially among the youth.

The Pope called Pompeii the "citadel of Mary and hope."

The shrine draws some 4 million faithful each year to Pompeii, a small town flanking the sprawling ruins of the city that was buried in the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.






Benedict arrived earlier Sunday by helicopter from the Vatican. Along the route to the sanctuary, he smiled and waved to the pilgrims from his Popemobile.

The square in front of the sanctuary was packed with joyous faithful waving flags with the yellow and white colors of the Vatican, applauding and shouting "Viva il Papa!" or "Long Live the Pope!"

The Pontiff was scheduled to recite the rosary before going back to the Vatican in the late afternoon.

Benedict last visited Pompeii a decade ago, when he was the cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, with his brother. An ailing John Paul II visited the shrine, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the rosary, in 2003, in one of his last trips before his death two years later.








The Pope in Pompeii:
"This city of Mary and charity shows
that faith can transform the world'
Translated from
the Italian service of



Benedict entrusts the Church and the whole world to the Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii, but today, he is also thinking in particular of the Bishops' Synod on the Word of God, of families, and on the occasion of World Missionary Day observed today by the Church, those who are engaged in announcing the Gospel.

Arriving by helicopter from the Vatican, he was welcomed at 10 a.m. this morning by more than 50,000 pilgrims celebrating the third visit of a Pope to this city revived by Blessed Bartolo Longo when he established the Shrine to the Virgin of the Rosary in 1876.

The Pope presided at a Mass in front of the Pontifical Basilica of the city's patron saint. Sergio Centofanti reports:

Benedict XVI continues with his Marian pilgrimage throughout the world - having previously visited as Pope the Marian shrines in Czestochowa, Altoetting, Ephesus, Aparecida, Mariazell and Lourdes in other countries (and Loreto, Savona, Genoa, Santa Maria de Leuca and Cagliari in Italy).

In his welcome remarks before the Mass began, Mons. Carlo Liberati, Archbishop-Prelate of Pompeii, mentioned the social work going on in Pompeii thanks to the initiative of Blessed Bartolo, a laymen who promoted devotion to the Rosary and works of charity in the name of Mary: schools, boarding schools and reception centers for orphans; children of prisoners and destitutes, drug addicts, alcoholics, women in difficulty, immigrants. He said it was not a boast, but to say that "The Rosary is our strength!"

Earlier, in welcoming the Pope and giving him the key to the city, Mayor Claudio D'Alessio spoke about the people of Southern Italy: "We live in a land that is at times tormented, but it is beautiful and rich with gifts".

In his homily, the Pope said he entrusts everything to Mary's intercession and is thinking particularly of all those who suffer and are abandoned, and to their tragic stories of loneliness and misery. He exhorted them to confide in the maternal support of Mary.

He said the Gospel is truly the 'good news' because it tells us that God is with us to liberate us: "Where he is, evil is defeated, life and peace are triumphant," renewing everything in his love.

"Yes, the love of God has this power: to renew everything, starting with the human heart, which is his masterpiece, and where the Holy Spirit can best work his transformative action. With his grace, God renews the heart of man by forgiving his sins, reconciling him and instilling in him the impulse for good."

One must "continually renew oneself", the Pope said, in order not to "fall back into the conformism of worldly mentality".

Love, he said, should be the continuing program of every Christian community. Thus, he said, "The new Pompeii, even with the limitations inherent to human beings, is an example" of that new civilization of love "which arises and develops under the maternal gaze of Mary".

He called Pompeii "a city of Mary and of charity, but not isolated from the world, not a 'cathedral in the desert', but situated within this valley to rescue it and promote its wellbeing."

The history of the Church, he noted, is rich with experiences of this type, and even today, there are several such examples in every place on earth.

"They are experiences of brotherhood, which show the face of a different society, placed like a ferment within the civilian context. The power of charity, in fact, is irresistible: it is really love that moves the world forward."

The Pope recalled that Pompeii had been an ancient city destroyed by a devastating volcanic eruption which then was revived through the conversion of a layman, who, like St. Paul, had persecuted the Church "as a militant anti-clerical who also devoted himself to spiritistic and superstitious practices".

These are tendencies, he said, that are still present today. But even a man who is far from faith can change radically when he encounters the 'true face of God', and becomes capable of transforming the desert in which he lives.

"Where God arrives, the desert blooms. Blessed Bartolo Longo, with his personal conversion, gave testimony of this spiritual power which transforms a man interiorly and makes him capable of working great things according to God's plan.

"This city, re-founded by him, is a historical demonstration of how God transforms the world: filling the heart of man with charity and making him a 'motor of religious and social renewal' in the service of the least.

"Here in Pompeii, one understands that love of God and love for one's neighbor are inseparable. Here, genuine Christians, those who face life with sacrifice, find the strength to persevere in doing good without stooping to compromise.

"Here, at the feet of Mary, families rediscover or reinforce the joy of the love that keeps them together."

And the secret of Pompeii is the Rosary, the Pope aid. "This prayer leads us through Mary to Jesus".

"The Rosary is a contemplative prayer that is accessible to everyone - big and small, layman and priests, the educated and those less so. It is a spiritual link with Mary in order to remain united with Jesus, to conform ourselves to him, assimilate his sentiments and behave ourselves as he did. The Rosary is a spiritual weapon in the battle against evil, against every violence, for peace in our hearts, in families, in society and in the world."

At the end of the Mass, the Pope led in the 'Supplica' to the Most Holy Virgin of the Rosary, written by Blessed Bartolo in 1883 - a very moving prayer to the Mother that Jesus has given us from the Cross to implore 'mercy for all'.

In his remarks before the Angelus prayer that followed, the Holy Father entrusted the current Bishops' Synodal assembly on the Word of God "that it may bear fruit in the authentic renewal of every Christian community".

He also noted that today is World Missionary Day, and called on the faithful to offer the Rosary for missionaries and for evangelization.

"The first missionary task for each of us," he underscored, 'is prayer...It is in prayer above all, that one makes way for the Gospel. it is in praying that our hearts open up to the mystery of God and our spirits are made ready to welcome his Word of salvation".

He then recalled the beatification today of the parents of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Zelie Guerin and Louis Martin, in Lisieux, France. St. Therese is patroness of missions.

"In thinking of the beatification of the Martin spouses, I would like to recall another intention which is very close to my heart: the family, whose role is fundamental in the education of their children to a universal spirit that is open and responsible to the world and its problems; as well as in the formation of vocations for missionary life."

The Pope invoked 'the maternal protection of Our Lady of Pompeii" on all the families of the world.




THE POPE PRAYS
FOR ALL FAMILIES
IN THE WORLD



POMPEII, Oct. 19 (Translated from Apcom) - At the Shrine of Pompeii, where he is making a pastoral visit for the day, the Pope invoked the help of Our Lady of the Rosary on all the families of the world.

In his Angelus message that followed the Mass he celebrated in front of the Shrine to the Madonna, he said that the family has a fundamental role in the education of their children and in the formation of missionary vocations.

Taking note of the beatification ceremonies today in Lisieux, France, of Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin, parents of St. Therese, the Pope reaffirmed an intention "which is very close to my heart": "The family, whose role is fundamental in the education of children to a universal spirit that is open and responsible towards the world and its problems, as well as in the formation of vocations for the missionary life".

"And now," he said, "as though we are following ideally the pilgrimage that so many families made a month ago to this shrine, let us invoke the maternal protection of Our Lady of Pompeii on all the nuclear families of the world, while thinking ahead to the VI World Encounter of Families which will take place in Mexico City in January 2009".




Below:Not Pope parodists but members of various local religious sodalities whose 'habit' includes a mozzetta-like capelet.





TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 19 ottobre 2008 18:12


Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican press director, released a formal statement today making clear the Vatican position about the caption to a Pius XII photograph in the Jerusalem Holocaust Museum's 'Hall of Shame', and a possible trip to Israel by Pope Benedict XVI.

The statement follows comments by Lombardi yesterday on remarks made by the postulator for Pope Pius XII's beatification cause that he does not believe the Pope could visit Israel unless the 'historically inaccurate' 9and truth to say, offensive) caption is removed. See background story in preceding page.


STATEMENT BY FR. LOMBARDI
ON PIUS XII CAPTION
IN HOLOCAUST MUSEUM
Translated from


It is well-known that the representative of the Holy See in Israel has manifested objections in the past to the text of the caption about Pius XII in the Museum of Yad Vashem.

It is to be hoped for, therefore, that this be the object of a new, objective consideration in depth on the part of Museum authorities.

Nonetheless, although it (the objection) is relevant, it cannot be considered as a determining factor for any decision on an eventual trip of the Holy Father to the Holy Land, a trip which, it is equally well-known, is desired by the Pope, but which has, for now, not been programmed concretely.

As for the beatification, I repeat what I said recently. The Pope has not yet signed the decree on the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Pius XII, a signature which would be the basis for continuing with the process. On the part of the Pope, it continues to be a matter for reflection, and in this situation, it is not appropriate to seek to exercise pressure on him one way or the other.

Photos show the Pius XII display in Yad Vashem:

The caption reads:
In 1933, when he was Secretary of the Vatican State, he was active in obtaining a Concordat with the German regime to preserve the Church's rights in Germany, even if this meant recognizing the Nazi racist regime.

When he was elected Pope in 1939, he shelved a letter against racism and anti-Semitism that his predecessor had prepared. Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing.

In December 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews. When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene. The Pope maintained his neutral position throughout the war, with the exception of appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia towards its end.

His silence and the absence of guidelines obliged Churchmen throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react.

I must repeat a comment I made yesterday with the initial posts on this matter. It is not just the caption that is objectionable, but the fact that the Pius XII display is in the museum's Hall of Shame.

I am not sure why this has never been mentioned in stories from the Vatican side, not even in 2006 when the objection to the caption was first raised by the then Apostolic Nuncio in Israel, Mons. Antonio Franco. Is the Church really OK with having the Pope included in a Hall of Shame provided the caption is removed or changed?

John Allen's take on the issue:

Don't pressure the Pope
on Pius XII, Vatican warns
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

Oct.19, 2008


Pope Benedict should not be pressured over the possibility of sainthood for Pius XII, his controversial wartime predecessor, the Vatican warned yesterday.

“The Pope has not yet signed a decree on the heroic virtue of the Servant of God Pius XII, a signature which is required for the cause to go forward,” said Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson. “It’s currently the subject of reflection and study on his part.”

“In this situation,” Lombardi added, “it’s not helpful to try to exercise pressure on him in one sense or the other.”

Lombardi also said that Benedict XVI is not delaying putting a trip to Israel on his schedule in protest over a controversial display about Pius XII in Jerusalem’s main Holocaust museum.

“This is not a determing factor for any decision about an eventual trip to the Holy Land by the Holy Father,” said Lombardi said in an Oct. 18 statement.

The presentation of Pius XII at Yad Vashem, Israel’s most important Holocaust museum, has proved a thorn in Jewish/Catholic relations since it went up in 2005. Last year, the Vatican ambassador to the Holy Land briefly threatened to refuse to attend an annual commemoration of the Holocaust in protest.

In the wake of new debates over Pius XII last week, some commentators revived speculation that Benedict had put the brakes on a possible trip to the Holy Land because of the fracas at Yad Vashem.

Lombardi, however said going to the Holy Land “is among the well-known desires of the pope,” but for now, “there’s no concrete plan” for the trip.

Lombardi was reacting to a flurry of commentary on the debates surrounding Pius XII in both the European and Israeli press, following a week in which the wartime Pope’s record once again proved to be a flashpoint in Jewish/Catholic relations.

On Monday, October 6, Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen of Haifa, Israel – the first Jew ever invited to address a Synod of Bishops – indirectly referred to what he termed Pius’ public “silence” during the Holocaust, saying that Jews cannot “forgive and forget.”

On Thursday, Oct. 9, Benedict XVI celebrated a special Mass in the Vatican commemorating the 50th anniversary of Pius’ death. In his homily, Benedict mounted an across-the-board defense of Pius XII, insisting that during the war Pius XII engaged in “an intense campaign of charity in favor of the persecuted, without any distinction in terms of religion, ethnicity, nationality, or political affiliation.”

If he did not directly condemn National Socialism or the Holocaust by name, Benedict asserted, it was because “he understood that only in this way could he avoid the worst and save the greatest possible number of Jews.”

In the wake of those comments, many media commentators pointed to the controversy at Yad Vashem as a possible explanation for why Benedict XVI has not yet made firm plans for a trip to the Holy Land. [Not the media - but the postulator for Pius XII's cause, whose statements precisely were what Fr. Lombardi was referring to!]

A placard concerning Pius XII, displayed alongside photos of the wartime Pope as well as the signing of the Nazi concordat with the Vatican in 1933, has been on display at Yad Vashem since 2005. It appears under a large quotation from the Israeli poet Nathan Alterman, which reads in part: [I pointed out this verse in commenting on the Yad Vashem 'caption' in the first posts on Fr. Gumpel on Saturday, as I had never before read any reference to it in all the reports about the objections to the caption itself, not even in April 2007 when the Apostolic Nuncio in Israel first raised the issue in public. It's far more prominent than the caption, because it leads it off and is in characters of much greater magnification than the caption itself]-
“While the ovens were fed by day and by night,
The most Holy Father who dwells in Rome
Did not leave his palace, with crucifix high,
To witness one day of pogrom.”

[Allen then quotes the full text of the caption.]

The display has long been considered both provocative and historically inaccurate by defenders of Pius XII. To take one example, sympathetic historians assert that Pius XII did protest the round-up of Roman Jews immediately after it began, with the result that almost 6,000 of the 7,000 Jews in living in Rome in October 1943 were not deported.

Last year, the Vatican’s nuncio, or ambassador, in the Holy Land, Archbishop Antonio Franco, announced that he would not attend an annual memorial of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem in protest. Later Franco rescinded that decision after museum officials said they were willing to “reconsider” the text.

At the time, even some critics of Pius XII acknowledged that the caption may be one-sided.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told NCR that the caption is “too judgmental, too conclusory” based on what is presently known, calling it “inappropriate.”

In his statement, Lombardi expressed hope that the Yad Vashem display on Pius XII “will be the object of a new, objective, and deepened consideration on the part of those responsible for the museum.”


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


No mention, either, from Allen that the picture itself is in the museum's Hall of Shame, for heaven's sake!

This most conscientious of Vaticanistas appears to have been 'off duty' this weekend - he has not reported at all on Patriarch Bartholomew's Synod intervention (nor the Vespers in the Sistine Chapel - both historic events in their own right; he makes no reference in this column to Fr. Gumpel's Friday statements which provoked Fr. Lomardi's reaction; and he has not said a word about the Pope's visit to Pompeii. He filed two stories yesterday - this one, and something about defenders of Biblical exegesis.

About Fr. Gumpel's statements: The original reports from Repubblica and Corriere della Sera on Friday did not make it clear that Gumpel's statements were in answer to two newly 'discovered' documents released by Pius XII critics purporting to 'show' Pius XII's choice to remain silent about the Nazi treatment of Jews, which the Corriere report referred to, without saying that the documents had just come to light. -
He says documents available from English and American war archives [at this point, the news item should have qualified when the documents became public knowledge] refute two concrete accusations made against Pius XI.

The first concerns the meeting between the Pope and the ambassador of Great Britain two days reportedly after a round-up of Jews from the ghetto of Rome by the Nazis, about which Pius XII 'made no public comment'.

"That meeting," said Gumpel, "took place two days before the round-up, on October 14, not October 18, so the Pope could not possibly have commented about something that had not yet happened".

The second concerns a conversation that Pius XII had on December 13, 1943 with the Geman ambassador Ernst von Weiszaecker, which the ambsssador reported to Hitler.

Gumpel said, "It is a historical fact that the German ambassadors at the time - Von Wieszsaecker, in particular - usually wrote what they thought would please Hitler, otherwise they risked being fired".


TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 19 ottobre 2008 19:48



Here are Caterina's first set of video-caps from today. Awaiting texts for translation.

POMPEII: MORNING ACTIVITIES




THE HOLY FATHER'S HOMILY

Dear brothers and sisters!

In the footsteps of the Servant of God John Paul II, I have come in pilgrimage today to Pompeii to venerate, together with you, the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Holy Rosary.

I have come, in particular, to entrust to the Mother of God, in whose womb the Word was made flesh, the Assembly of the Bishops' Synod now taking place in the Vatican on the theme of the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church.

My visit also coincides with World Missionary Day. Contemplating Mary, who welcomed the Word of God into her and gave it to the world, let us pray at this Mass for those in the Church who expend their energies in the service of announcing the Gospel to all nations.

Thank you, dear brothers and sisters, for your welcome. I embrace you all with paternal affection, and I am grateful for the prayers which from here you raise to heaven for the Successor of Peter and for the needs of the universal Church.

I address a heartfelt greeting first of all to Archbishop Carlo Liberati, Prelate of Pompeii and Pontifical Delegate for the Shrine, and I thank him for the words he spoke on your behalf.

My greeting also goes to the civilian and military authorities present, especially the representative of the Italian government, the Minister for Cultural Assets, and the Mayor of Pompeii, who greeted me on my arrival with a deferential welcome in the name of all the citizenry.

I greet the priests of the prelature, and the religious, men and women, who offer their daily service at the Shrine, among whom I am pleased to mention the Dominican Daughters of the Holy Rosary of Pompeii and the Brothers of Christian Schools.

I greet the volunteers engaged in different services and the zealous apostles of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii.

And how can I forget, at this time, the persons who suffer, the sick, the aged who are alone, young people in difficulties, the prisoners, all those who are in burdensome situations of poverty, social and economic difficulties?

To each and everyone, I wish to assure my spiritual closeness and to extend to them a proof of my affection. Each of you, dear faithful and inhabitants of this land, and you who are spiritually with us in this celebration through radio and television, I entrust all of you to Mary and invite you to trust always in her maternal protection.

Let us leave it to to her, our Mother and Teacher, to lead us in reflecting on the Word of God that we just heard. The first Reading and the responsorial Psalm express the joy of the people of Israel fro the salvation given by God, salvation which is liberation from evil and hope for new life.

Zephaniah's oracle is addressed to Israel which is designated with the title 'daughter of Zion' and 'daughter of Jerusalem', who are invited to joy: "Rejoice... shout with joy... exult!(Zeph 3,14).

It is the same appeal that the angel Gabriel addressed to Mary in Nazareth: "Rejoice, full of grace" (Lk 1,28), the Angel says.

And the reason for her trust is the same: "The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty savior" (Zeph 3,16), the prophet says.

"The Lord is with you" (Lk 1,28), the Angel assures the Virgin.

And even the canticle of Isaiah concludes this way: "Shout with exultation, O city of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel!" (is 12,6).

The presence of the Lord is a source of joy because, where he is, evil is conquered, and life and peace triumph.

I wish to underscore, in particular, the stupendous expression of Zephaniah who, turning to Jerusalem, says the Lord "will renew you with his love (3,17).

Yes, the love of god has this power: to renew every thing, starting with the human heart, which is its masterpiece, and where the Holy Spirit works its transformative action best.

With his grace, God renews the heart of man, forgiving his sins, reconciling him and instilling in him the impulse for goodness. All this is manifested in the life of saints, and we see it here particularly in the apostolic work of Blessed Bartolo Longo, founder of the New Pompeii. So let us open our hearts at this time to God's renovative love for men and all things.

From its very beginnings, the Christian community has seen in the personification of Israel and Jerusalem as a female figure a significant and prophetic an analogy to the Virgin Mary, who would be recognized precisely as the 'daughter of Zion' and archetype of the people who have 'found grace' in the eyes of the Lord.

It is an interpretation that we find in the Gospel account of the marriage at Cana (Jn 2, 1-11). The evangelist John symbolically highlights that Hesus is the spouse of Israel, of the new Israel which we all are in the faith, the spouse who has come to bring grace to the new Alliance, represented by the 'good wine'.

At the same time, the Gospel also highlights the role of Mary, who is described at the start as 'the mother of Jesus', but whom the Son himself later addresses "Woman!" - and this has a very profound meaning. It implies, in fact, that Jesus, to our surprise, places spiritual linkage ahead of blood relationship, according to which Mary embodies the spouse beloved by the Lord, that is, the people that he has chosen to irradiate his benediction over the entire human family.

The symbol of wine, together with that of the banquet, re-proposes the theme of joy and of celebration. Moreover, wine, like the other Biblical images of the vineyard and the grapevine, metaphorically alludes to love" God is the vineyard owner, Israel is the vineyard, a vienyard which will find its perfect realization in Christ, of whom we are the tendrils; and wine is the fruit, that is love, because precisely love is what God expects of his children.

Let us pray to the Lord, who gave Bartolo Longo the grace of bringing love to this land, so that our lives and our hearts may carry this fruit of love and thus renew the earth.

The apostle Paul also exhorts to love in the second Reading, taken from the Letter to the Romans. We find delineated in this page the program of life for a Christian community, whose members are renewed by love and try to renew themselves continually, in order to be able to discern the will of God and not fall into the conformism of worldly mentality (cfr 12,2-2).

The new Pompeii, even with its limitations inherent to every human reality, is an example of this new civilization that emerged and has developed under the maternal gaze of Mary.

And the characteristic of Christian civilization is properly charity: love of God that translates into love for neighbor. So when St. Paul writes to the Christians of Rome: "Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord" (12,11), our thought goes to Bartolo Longo and all the many charitable initiatives he activated for the most needy of his brothers.

Urged on by love, he was able to plan a new city, which then rose up around his Marian shrine, almost like an irradiation of his light of faith and hope.

A citadel of Mary and of charity, but not isolated from the world, not a so-called 'cathedral in the desert', but one that has become part of this valley to rescue it and promote its wellbeing.

The history of the Church, thank God, is rich with experiences of this kind, and even today, it has several such experiences in every part of the world. They are experiences of brotherhood which show the face of a different society, placed like a ferment within the civilian context. The power of charity is irresistible: it is truly love which moves the world forward.

Who would have thought that here, next to the ruins of ancient Pompeii, there would rise a Marian shrine of global importance? And so many social works that translate the Gospel into concrete service to persons who are mot in difficulty!

Where God arrives, the desert blooms! Even Blessed Bartolo Longo, with his personal conversion, gave testimony of this spiritual power which transforms man interiorly and makes him capable of working great things according to God's design.

The episode of his spiritual crisis and his conversion now appears to have the greatest relevance. He in fact, during his university studies in Naples, influenced by immanentistic and positivistic philosophers, strayed far from Christian faith and became a militant anti-clerical, even following spiritistic and superstitious practices.

His conversion, with his discovery of the true face of God, contains a very eloquent message for us, because unfortunately, similar tendencies are not lacking in our day. During this Pauline Year, I am happy to underscore that Bartolo Longo, like St. Paul, was transformed from a persecutor into an apostle: an apostle of the Christian faith, of Marian devotion, and in particular, of the Rosary, in which he found the synthesis of all the Gospels.

This city, re-founded by him, is thus a historical demonstration of how God transforms the world: feeling with charity the heart of a man and making him into a 'motor' for religious and social renewal.

Pompeii is an example of how faith can operate in the city of man, inspiring apostles of charity who place themselves at the service of the least and the poor, and so that even the least are respected in their dignity and find welcome and promotion.

Here in Pompeii, one understands that love for God and love for one's neighbor are inseparable. Here, genuine Christian people, those who face life with sacrifices everyday, find the strength to persevere in the good without stooping to compromises. Here, at the feet of Mary, families rediscover or reinforce the joy of love that keeps them united.

Opportunely, then, in preparation for my visit today, a special 'pilgrimage of families for the family' was carried out exactly a month ago, in order to entrust to Our Lady this fundamental cell of society. May the Holy Virgin watch over each family and on the entire Italian people!

May this Shrine and this city continue above all to be always linked to a singular gift of Mary: praying the Rosary. When, in the famous painting of Our Lady of Pompeii, we see the Virgin Mother and the Infant Jesus consigning the rosary respectively to St.Catherine of Siena and to St. Dominic, we understand right away that this prayer leads us, through Mary, to Jesus, as we were taught by our dear Pope John Paul II in his Lettera Rosarium Virginis Mariae, where he makes a specific reference to Blessed Bartolo Longo and the charism of Pompeii.

The Rosary is a contemplative prayer that is accessible to all - big and small, layman or [priests, the well-educated and the less so. It is a spiritual link to Mary so we can remain united to Jesus, that we may conform ourselves to him, assimilate his sentiments and act the way he acted.

The Rosary is a spiritual weapon in the battle against evil, against every violence, for peace in hearts, in the families, in society and in the world.

Dear brothers and sisters, in this Eucharist, inexhaustible source of life and hope, of personal and social renewal, let us thank God that in Bartolo Longo he has given us a luminous witness of this Gospel truth. And let us turn our hearts anew to Mary with the words of the Supplica, which together we will recite shortly: "You, our Mother, are our Advocate, our hope, have mercy on us.... Mercy for all, o Mother of mercy"! Amen.



After the Mass, before the Angelus, the Holy Father led the recitation of the Supplica to the Madonna of Pompeii, which would end with offering the papal Golden Rose to the Madonna.





REMARKS BEFORE THE ANGELUS
Dear brothers and sisters,

After the solemn Eucharistic celebration and the traditional 'Supplica' to Our Lady of Pompeii, let us once again turn our gaze on Mary, as we do every Sunday at this time, in the recital of the Angelus, and entrust to her the intentions of the Church and mankind.

Let us pray in particular for for the Ordinary General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod which is taking place in Rome on the theme of "The Word of God in the life and mission of the Church", that it may bear fruits of authentic renewal in every Christian community.

Another special prayer intention is offered to us by the observance today of World Missionary Day which, in this Pauline Year, proposes for our meditation a famous statement by the Apostle of the Gentiles: "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!" (1 Cor 9,1 6).

In this month of October, month of the missions and of the Rosary, how many faithful and how many communities are offering the Holy Rosary for missionaries and evangelization!

I am particularly happy to be here today, on this occasion, in Pompeii, the most important shrine dedicated to the Virgin of the Holy Rosary.

This gives me the opportunity to underscore very forcefully that the first missionary task for each of us is prayer itself. Above all, it is by praying that we open the way for the Gospel. It is by praying that we open our hearts to the mystery of God and our spirit to receive his Word of salvation.

There is yet another happy coincidence today: right now, in Lisieux, beatification rites are taking place for Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin, parents of St. Therese of the Infant Jesus, who was declared patroness of Missions by Pope Pius XI.

These new Blessed Ones accompanied and shared, with their prayer and their evangelical testimony, the path of their daughter who was called by the Lord to consecrate herself to him without reservations behind the walls of a Carmelite monastery.

It was there, behind cloistered walls, that St. Therese realized her vocation: "In the heart of the Church, I will be love" (Manuscrits autobiographiques, Lisieux 1957, 229).

Thinking of the beatification of the Martin couple, I would also like to bring up another intention which is very close to my heart: the family, whose role is fundamental in the education of children to a universal spirit that is open and responsible towards the world and its problems; and in the formation of vocations for missionary life.

Therefore, almost as though following ideally the pilgrimage which so many families made a month ago to this shrine, let us invoke the maternal protection of Our Lady of Pompeii on all the nuclear families of the world, looking forward also to the VI World Encounter of Families which will take place in Mexico City in January 2009.

He spoke his concluding words in French:

On this World Missionary Day, we join ourselves particularly to the pilgrims gathered in Lisieux for the beatification of Louis and Zelie Martin, parents of St. Therese of the Infant Jesus, patroness of missions.

Through their life as an exemplary couple, they announced the Gospel of Christ. They lived their faith ardently and transmitted this to their family and those around them.

May their common prayer be a source of joy and hope for all parents and all families.



TERESA BENEDETTA
00domenica 19 ottobre 2008 21:01



THE POPE LEADS THE ROSARY
AT THE BASILICA IN POMPEII







(The following report synthesizes the Pope's meditation delivered Sunday afternoon to the priests, religious and lay faithful of Pompeii.)


THE POPE'S MEDITATION
ON THE ROSARY
by SALVATORE IZZO


POMPEII, Oct. 19 (translated from AGI) - The media tried to file it away as a dead letter by emphasizing the literal translation of the angel's Annunciation greeting (Rejoice, Mary!) which is featured in the new Italian Lectionary, but what were they thinking?

The "Ave Maria" (literally, Hail, Mary!) remains perhaps the dearest prayer to most of the faithful.

Today, visiting the Shrine of the Holy Rosary in Pompeii, where he led the recital of the Rosary on his knees, the Pope clarified afterwards that the prayer represents an irrenunciable synthesis of the message of Jesus.

In the meditation he delivered to priests, religious and church associations of Pompeii, the Pope said:

"The first part of the prayer, taken from the Gospel, allows us to hear every time the words with which God addressed the Virgin through the angel, as well as the blessing uttered by her cousin Elizabeth.

"The second part of the Ave Maria is the response of her children, who, turning as supplicants to the Mother, are expressing their adherence to the plan for human salvation revealed by God.

"Thus, the prayer anchors the thought of the one who prays to Scripture and to the mysteries that are presented in it."

Calling it 'a prayer that is simple and accessible to all', Benedict XVI said the Rosary is fundamental. Composed of a chain of Ave Maria's, it represents, he said, an extraordinary 'shortcut' to reach God, and in a society of noise, "it is a school for contemplation and silence".

"At first glance," said the Pope,"it may seem a prayer that accumulates words, and therefore hardly reconcilable with the silence that is rightly recommended for meditation and contemplation."

But it is the contrary, he said. "This cadenced repetition of the Ave Maria does not disturb an interior silence, which requires it because it nourishes it".

He said this effect was analogous to the Psalms which are recited in the priest's daily Liturgy of the Hours - silence flowers around the words, not as a void, but as a presence and ultimate sense that transcends words themselves and makes the words speak to the heart".

When we say the Ave Maria, the Pope said, "we must take care that our voices do not cover God's voice, who always speaks through the silence, like 'the murmur of a light breeze'."

Even when the Rosary is prayed in a large gathering, he said, "as we did this afternoon in this Shrine, we must not forget that it is a contemplative prayer which cannot take place without a climate of interior silence".

The Pope expressed the hope that an appeal for a rediscovery of the Rosary as a pious practice in the modern world may be among the recommendations to come from the current Bishops' Synod, which aims to relaunch the centrality of God's Word in the life of the Church.

The Rosary, he said, is 'woven' from elements taken from Sacred Scripture - "above all, the enunciation of mystery, made preferably with words taken from the Bible".

The 'Our Father' in the Rosary, according to the Pope, "helps give a vertical orientation to the prayer and opens the soul of the one who prays to the right filial attitude".

"If contemplation in the Christian sense cannot be on anything other than the Word of God", he concluded, "then even the Rosary, in order to be a contemplative prayer, must always come from the silence of the heart as a response to the Word of God, modelled after Mary's response."


Meanwhile, here are Caterina's video-caps of the events in the Basilica this afternoon. Besides leading the Rosary, apparently, this was when the Pope presented the Golden Rose, not this morning after the Supplica as scheduled and as earlier reported.

She also points out that the Holy Father is wearing a stole that belonged to Leo XIII, who made the Basilica in Pompeii a Pontifical basilica back in 1901.









MEDITATION OF THE HOLY FATHER

Venerated brothers in the Episcopate and the priesthood,
dear religious men and women,
dear brothers and sisters!

Before entering the Basilica to recite the Holy Rosary with you, I stopped briefly in front of the urn of Blessed Bartolo Longo, and while praying, I asked myself: "This great apostle of Mary - where did he get his energy and the constancy to bring to completion a work so imposing and now known throughout the world? Is it not precisely from the Rosary, which he welcomed as a true gift from the heart of Our Lady!"

It was just so! The experience of saints bears testimony to it. This popular Marian prayer is a precious spiritual means to grow in intimacy with Jesus, and to learn, at the school of the Blessed Virgin, always to comply with divine will,

It is a contemplation of the mysteries of Christ in spiritual union with Mary, as the Servant of God Paul VI underscored in the Apostolic
Exhortation Marialis cultus (No. 46), and as amply illustrated by my venerated predecessor John Paul II in his apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, that today I ideally reconsign to the Pompeian community and to each of you.

You who work and live in Pompeii, especially you, dEar priests, religious and laymen committed to this singular portion of the
Church,m you are all called to make yours what was Blessed Bartolo Longo's charism and to become, to the degree and in the ways that God grants to each one, authentic apostles of the Rosary.

But to be apostles of the Rosary, one must experience first hand the beauty and the profundity of this prayer, which is simple and accessible to all. It is necessary above all to allow oneself to be led by the hand by the Virgin Mary to contemplate the face of Christ: a face that is joyous, luminous, sorrowful and glorious.

Whoever - like Mary and together with her - assiduously guards and meditates the mysteries of Jesus will always assimilate his feelings more and more and conform to him.

In this regard, I would like to cute a beautiful consideration by Blessed Bartolo Longo: "Just as two friends", he wrote, "who practice frequently together usually end up conforming to each other even in habits, so also we, conversing familiarly with Jesus and the Virgin in meditating the mysteries of the Rosary, and forming the same life together in Communion, can become - as much as our baseness is able - similar to them, and learn from these supreme examples how to live humbly, poor, hidden, patiently and perfectly" (The Fifteen Saturdays of the Most Holy Rosary, 27th ed., Pompeii, 1916, p. 27: cit. in Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 15).

The Rosary is a school of contemplation and silence, At first glance, it may seem like a prayer that accumulates words, thus difficult to reconcile with the silence which is rightly recommends for meditation and contemplation.

In truth, this cadenced repetition of the Ave Maria does not disturb the interior silence; rather, it requires and nourishes it. In the same way as the Psalms that one prays in the Liturgy of the Hours, the silence flourishes through the words and sentences, nor as a void, but as a presence of that ultimate sense that transcends words themselves and together with them speaks to the heart.

Thus, in reciting the Ave Maria, we must take care that our voices do not 'cover' that of God, who always speaks through silence, like the 'murmur of a gentle breeze' (1 Kings 19,12). How important it is, then, to guard this silence full of God in personal and in community prayer!

Even when it is prayed by large gatherings, as we do today in this Basilica, one must perceive the Rosary as a contemplative prayer, which cannot happen without a climate of interior silence.

I wish to add another reflection relative to the Word of God in the Rosary, particularly timely now while the Bishops Synod is taking place at the Vatican on the theme 'The Word of God in the life and mission of the Church'.

If Christian contemplation cannot do without the Word of God, even the Rosary, to be a contemplative prayer, must always emerge from the silence of the heart as a response to the Word, on the model of Mary's prayer.

Looking at it, the Rosary is all woven with elements taken from Scriptures. First, there is the announcement of the mystery, preferably made, as we do today, with words taken from the Bible. This followed by the Our Father: imprinting a 'vertical' orientation to the prayer, it opens the soul of he who prays the Rosary the right filial attitude according to the invitation of the Lord: "When you pray say, Father..." (Lk 11,2).

The first part of the Ave Maria, also taken from the Gospel, makes us listen again every time to the words with which God addressed the Virgin through the Angel, and the blessing of her cousin Elizabeth.

The second part of the Ave Maria resounds like the answer of children who, addressing the Mother as supplicants, do nothing other than to express their own adherence to the plan of salvation revealed by God. Thus, the thought of the one who prays is always anchored to Scripture and the mysteries it presents.

Recalling finally that today we celebrate World Missionary Day, I wish to point out the apostolic dimension of the Rosary, a dimension which the Blessed Bartolo Longo lived intensely, drawing inspiration from it in order to undertake in this land so many works of charity and of social and human promotion.

beyond that, he wanted his Shrine to be open to the world, as a center to irradiate the praying of the Rosary and a place of intercession for peace among peoples.

Dear friends, both these ends - the apostolate of charity and prayer for peace - I wish to consign and to entrust anew to your spiritual and pastoral commitment. On the example of the venerated Founder, and with his support, never tire of working with passion in this part of the vineyard of the Lord which has found favor with Our Lady.

Dear brothers and sisters, the time has come for me to bid farewell to you and this beautiful Shrine. I thank you for your warm welcome and above all, for your prayers.

I thank the Arch bishop Prelate And Pontifical Delegate, his co-workers and all those who worked to prepare for my visit. I must leave you,but my heart remains close to this land and this community.

I entrust you all to the Blessed Virgin of the Holy Rosary, and to each of you I impart the Apostolic Blessing from the heart.


Presentation of the Golden Rose









The following were the words said by the Holy Father in front of the Basilica before leaving for Rome:

THE POPE'S PARTING WORDS

Dear brothers and sisters, the time for my departure has come, but as I said earlier, I remain with my heart always close to you, close to this most beautiful Shrine, to a people so full of faith, enthusiasm and charity.

Thank you all! Let us remain faithful to the Madonna and thus, faithful to charity adn to peace. O bless you all in the name of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Arrividerci and thank you.
he then boarded the Popemboile to proceed to the helicopter which would take him back to the Vatican.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 20 ottobre 2008 14:04






Benedict XVI's day in Pompeii
by Conchita Sannino
Translated from


Oct. 20, 2008



The actual headline reads "Benedict XVI leaves Pompeii -
without ever mentioning the Camorra", referring to
the Neapolitan version of the Sicilian Mafia.

It's a theme that some of the Italian MSM have been harping on since yesterday - as though the Pope were an Italian politician who has to make an obligatory denunciation of all the ills of Italy - in this case, of a particular region, Campania - every time he speaks in public.

In fairness to the writer, she makes clear from her first line that she does not share the headline writer's evident reproach.


He left behind an exhortation that by obvious choice never once mentioned the Camorra or the other open wounds that afflict Campania, but which is far more encouraging that just making denunciations.

"Don't give up, but work," Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday. "Don't stop persevering in doing what is right without stooping to compromises. Never tire in committing yourself to work with passion in this part of the Lord's vineyard, which has found favor with Our Lady."

Because, he went on, "the charity which is embodied here in Pompeii in so many works, is the face of a different society, a Christian one, that is placed as a ferment within the civilian context."

It was around 6:45 p.m., already dark and almost an hour behind schedule, when the Pope's long day ended among the 50,000 pilgrims who had come to Pompeii and its Marian shrine par excellence to Our Lady of the Rosary.

"Now I must go, but my heart remains close to this land and to this community," the Pope almost murmured, speaking from the altar of the Basilica, after having led the faithful in the Rosary. He was greeted by a lengthy applause with cries of VIVA BENEDETTO.

From Pompeii, he had re-launched a new impetus for t 'the gift of the Rosary as prayer: powerful but simple, profound but accessible to all" and therefore, 'a spiritual weapon in the battle against evil and every violence, for peace in our hearts, in families, in society and in the entire world".

And why should it be a federal case if the Pontiff does not openly name the many open wounds in this part of the country?

Answering questions from newsmen yesterday, Fr. Ciro Benedettini, vice director of the Vatican press Office, said: "The word 'Camorra' has been deliberately excluded from the Pope's speeches here because he has spoken about it many times before, as when he was in Naples last year."

But above all, for two reasons that Fr. Benedettini pointed out: "Out of respect for good people who are the majority of people in Campania. And because this trip is a pilgrimage".

"Campania is not just the Camorra," he said. "The Pope wants to encourage the commitment and work of good people in the defense of values and in brotherhood with those who suffer from social or economic necessities."

The Pope's long day was in the name of 'Mary's redeeming power' and the 'role of the family, fundamental in the education of children'.

From the early morning hours thousands of families started gathering in the Piazza Bartolo Longo in front of the Basilica.

Among the fifty or so cardinals and bishops who concelebrated Mass with the Pope were Cardinal Camillo Ruini and Cardinal Raffaele Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and all the bishops of Campania led by the Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe.

The most moving moments were the Pope's encounter with some children.

Six-year-old Luigi D'Amora screamed his lungs out, "Hi, Papa, come to me!" until he got a papal embrace. And so did Gabriella and Ciro, who knelt before the Pope. and were joined by their father.

They were among the more than 150 children, who attend the day-care center for disadvantaged children operated by the Brothers of Christian Schools, who were gathered together to send off the Pope.

Father Filippo, who accompanied the children, introduced them to the Pope as "the true face of the Church in Pompeii - the poor who can smile and change their lives".

It was Fr. Filippo who, at 6:30, when the Popemobile was taking the Pope from the Basilica to the helicopter for Rome, signalled to have the Popemobile stop by the children.

"Please, you should hear our Banda Bartolo Longo. They've spent the whole day waiting to play for you," he told the Pope.

And the smiling Pope stayed and listened to 'O sole mio'.




I went back to see if I could see the entire front page of Repubblica-Napoli from which the above article comes, and it turns out their banner headline actually had a good quote from the Pope's homily - and the subhead, unlike the headline cited above for Sannino's article, was equally fair:

QUOTE]Translation:
Benedict XVI's vist: The Pontiff does not mention the Camorra 'out of respect for the majority who are honest'
'DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED'
The Pope in Pompeii: Campania is not just the Camorra
BTW, it's the regional newspapers who played up the Pope's visit prominently, not the national ones which treated it like they do most papal news - one for the inside pages.


Andrea Tornielli comments in his blog on the 'negative' MSM line about the Pope's visit to Pompeii:


And now, they're also targetting
Benedict XVi for his 'silences'
Translated from

Oct. 20, 2008


Dear friends, as you know, yesterday Benedict XVI made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Madonna of Pompeii. I have reported in Il Giornale the account of the day and what the Pope said.

Many of the newspapers today have headlines not about what Papa Ratzinger said, but about what he did not say, specifically, on the fact that he did not speak about the Camorra.

In short, the expectation is that the Pope cannot make a pilgrimage, a trip, or even a speech unless he makes some 'news' deserving of a headline [by the newspapers' standards]. If he does not, then focus instead on what he does not say!

I think that Benedict XVI should be free to make a pilgrimage without being obliged to speak about all the social ills of the place which he is welcoming him.

Not that references to such social problems were absent at all from the homily he gave in Pompeii, even if he did not mention the Camorra by name. About which, in fact, he spoke openly when he visited Naples one year ago.

On October 21, 2007, he spoke about the "deprecable number of crimes by the Camorra... (but) violence, unfortunately, also has a tendency to become the widespread mentality, insinuating itself into the very fabric of social life, in the historic quaretrs of the city center and in thew new and anoymous peripheries (suburbs), with the risk of attracting the oyung people, particularly, who grow in an environment where illegality, the underworld and a culture of accommodation prosper". [Homily at Piazza del Popolo, Naples]

Don't you think that the Bishop of Rome, Peter's Successor, has the right and the freedom to make a puilgrimage and deliver a homily dedicated to Mary, the Rosary, and charity, without having to cater to what the newspaper expect for their headlines?


TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 20 ottobre 2008 14:08



No OR or Avvenire today.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with
- His Beatitude Fouad Twal, Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Latins
- Bishops of Ecuador (Group 3) on ad-limina visit
- Participants in the 100th Ntional Congress of teh italian Society of Surgeons.

It's the 13th working day of the Synod assembly.



RESPECTING THE HUMAN DIGNITY
OF ALL PATIENTS





VATICAN CITY, 20 OCT 2008 (VIS) - At midday today, the Pope received participants in the national congress of the Italian Surgical Society, who are meeting to consider the theme: "Towards a Surgery that Respects the Sick".

After highlighting how, in the past, it was possible only to alleviate the suffering of the sick, whereas today, thanks to the advances of science and technology, it is possible to cure them, the Holy Father called attention to the risk of "abandoning patients at the moment when it seems impossible to obtain appreciable results".

Although it may no longer be possible to hope for a cure, "that person's suffering can be relieved", because patients "have a dignity which must be honoured, and which constitutes the necessary foundation of all medical activity. Respect for human dignity, in fact, requires unconditional respect for each individual human being, born or unborn, healthy or sick, whatever their condition may be".

The Pope referred to the importance of doctors discovering "the most appropriate means to communicate with each patient. Such means of communication, while respecting the truth of the facts, will aim to sustain hope which is an essential element of therapy. ... Patients want to be listened to, not just subjected to sophisticated diagnoses".

"On the one hand, it is undeniable that the will of the patient must be respected, without forgetting, however, that the individualistic exaltation of autonomy leads to an unrealistic, and certainly impoverished, reading of human reality.

"On the other hand, the professional responsibility of doctors must bring them to suggest treatments that aim at the true good of patients, with an awareness that their specific competencies generally make them better capable of evaluating the situation than the patients themselves".

Benedict XVI concluded by stressing the need "to promote a sense of responsibility among family members towards sick relatives. This is an important factor in order to avoid increasing the sense of alienation that a person inevitably suffers if entrusted to a form of medical care that is highly technological but lacks sufficient human sentiment".





TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 20 ottobre 2008 15:14



Israeli party website brands
Pope with Nazi swastika



JERUSALEM, Oct. 20 (Reuters) – A photograph of Pope Benedict emblazoned with a superimposed Nazi swastika appeared on Monday on an Israeli website run by self-proclaimed supporters of the governing Kadima party.

It was later removed, and replaced with a picture of a smiling Benedict overlooking a crowd-filled St. Peter's Square in the Vatican, after what "the Yalla Kadima" site said was a request from Kadima's leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

"Tzipi Livni strongly condemns this and we are working to remove this shameful picture. We strongly oppose this. It doesn't represent Kadima," spokesman Amir Goldstein said shortly before the photo was changed.

It was the latest twist in a controversy over whether the German-born Pope should promote the sainthood of his Nazi-era predecessor Pius XII.

Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, has been accused by some Jews of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust during World War II, a charge his supporters and the Vatican deny.

"Yalla Kadima," which describes itself as a portal for "activists and supporters" of the Kadima party, had carried the swastika-emblazoned photo of Benedict alongside an article on the sainthood controversy.

On Saturday, the Vatican urged both Catholics and Jews to stop creating "pressure" over the issue of sainthood for Pius.

Last year, the Vatican's saint-making department voted in favor of a decree recognizing Pius' "heroic virtues," a step in a long process toward possible sainthood that began in 1967.

Benedict has so far not approved the decree - which is needed for beatification, the last step before sainthood - opting for what the Vatican has called a period of reflection.

He has repeatedly defended Pius, saying he worked "secretly and silently" during World War Two to "avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews possible."

In remarks on Monday, Israeli President Shimon Peres said: "If the former Pope Pius helped the Jews, it can be proven, but if he didn't this should also be proven.

"I know the current Pope and I am convinced he will go into the subject in depth and that we can all live with the facts and whatever necessary conclusions are drawn," Peres told reporters.


Historian says 'time to cool down'
on Pius XII dispute -
'History is a complex matter'
by Virginia Piccolillo
Translated from

Oct. 19, 2008


ROME - «Noooooo! Don't ask me - I'm not the Pope. Nor the Secretary of State," he protests, but nonetheless, he adds, "Personally, I don't
believe that the caption has any bearing at all on a papal trip to Israel. But I do believe that we must let the historical dispute cool down. Because history is complex..."

Andrea Riccardi, professor of Contemporary History and founder of the Sant'Egidio Community, has in fact dedicated his new book L'inverno piu lungo (The longest winter, referring to 1943) to such complexities.



The book reconstructs the so-called 'silences' of Pius XII on the Shoah, the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. Silences interpreted in the disputed caption as Pius XII's failure to condemn Nazism.


For Fr. Gumpel [postulator of Pius XII's cause for beatification], the caption is a 'falsehood' which should keep the Pope from travelling to Israel. What do you think?
I think there are many conditions affecting this. Even the political situation in Israel is very complex... And I don't think anyway that such a trip is among the Pope's immediate plans....


What about Pius XII's beatification?
The Pope has asked the faithful to pray that it may end well.


But the Jewish community is protesting.... [How widespread is the protest anyway, outside of the militant groups and voices we have heard over the past several years?]
I think the Pope does not want to offend Jewish sensibilities. But beatification is an internal matter for the Church which has its own criteria for deciding this. Even Pius IX, now Blessed, was not very sensitive to the Jewish world.


But why was Pius XII 'silent' on Nazism and the deportation of Jews from Italy?
What he did say clearly was a call - which was very clear to any Catholic - against 'racial discrimination'. But in the convents and in the churches, he helped Jews and other persecuted persons. And he took measures to save the Catholic Church while St. Peter's Square was under the heel of the Nazi boot.


Did he really put aside a letter against anti-Semitism prepared by his predecessor?
But there were also Popes who were silent about Communism to help the Catholic Church in the USSR. [Besides Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI were said to have followed a policy of accommodation for this purpose, with the so-called Ostpolitik of the Vatican Secretariat of State before John Paul II].

In the Rome of 1943, the Pope had the SS on his very doorstep. The documents show that no one in the Vatican felt safe. Pius XII could do very little in the open. [But why didn't the interviewer press Riccardi to answer her question, which he neatly evaded - when it's a question he should be able to answer Yes, No, or 'We are unable to prove it one way or the other', considering he has just written a book about the subject!]


The German ambassador Weiszaecker described him as more concerned about the Holy See than about the Jewish deportations.
But Weiszaecker was playing a double game. He tried to handle the Vatican by advising them it would be more prudent to avoid taking a hard line, all the while pressing Hitler to get on with the deportations.


Fr. Gumpel has denounced a denigratory campaign against Papa Pacelli. Should we believe him? [What planet does this reporter live on????]
The figure of Pius XII has been extrapolated from real history to become a negative phantasm.


What a half-hearted interview - on both sides - that one questions the seriousness of the Corsera editor about helping to clarify these questions!


Luigi Accattoli has an analytical piece in the same issue of Corsera in which he opines that the ultimate reason for Benedict XVI's 'caution' with respect to the Pius XII question is that he is German, and that this fact would always be a negative factor militating against Pius XII if he should decide to allow the beatification process to continue.

He goes as far as to say that he does not think the process can go any farther under Benedict, that Pius XII's cause will have to wait for another Pope, one who is not German or Italian! I am far from convinced about this interpretation. Nonetheless, I will try to translate the article as soon as I can.


TERESA BENEDETTA
00lunedì 20 ottobre 2008 19:15


NB: I have now posted full translations of all three papal texts in Pompeii
with the corresponding photo coverage in the preceding posts on this page about the visit.


Here is an example of a newspaper's attempt to have it both ways,
i.e., be 'fair and balanced', about reporting the Pope's trip.


The banner headline and its subheads read:
Big crowd for Benedict XVI's visit. An appeal for defense of the family:
'RESCUE ON DIFFICULT TERRAIN'
But the Pope in Pompeii does not mention the Camorra. The Vatican: Out of respect for honest folk.
On the left-hand column however, is a news analysis entitled "The message beyond the words" which I am translating below. It is an extraordinary item to find on the front page of any secular newspaper. It might have been a front-page editorial commentary for L'Osservatore Romano, on whose front page it would be customary.


The message beyond the words
by Francesco Paolo Casavola
Translated from

Oct. 20, 2008


Benedict XVI's speeches in Pompeii were much awaited. Would he touch on the burning issues of the day in Naples and Campania - the Camorra, the crisis of society and politics, the insecurity arising from rampant illegality and intolerance for immigrants?

The Church of Naples, with its Archbishop, Cardinal Sepe, is so much in the forefront of these issues that a reinforcing intervention by the Pope about these immediate realities was taken for granted.

Instead, both in his homily and his remarks before the Angelus, the Pope chose to address the pilgrims in Pompeii with reference to two important occasions for the Church: the Bishops' Synod assembly in Rome and the observance of World Missionary Day.

The bishops are reflecting on the importance of the Word of God in the life of the Church, while the missionaries with their work give a sense to what that Word should mean in the daily promotion of the human being anywhere in the world.

The Marian shrine of Pompeii itself fits into this greater context with two extraordinary messages. The first is the significance that Mary has in linking the history of ancient Israel with Christianity - because as the Mother of the Son of God, she transmitted the hope of the Jewish people to all the peoples of the world in a New Alliance.

The second is in the re-evocation of Bartolo Longo, the Neapolitan lawyer, who was converted from the anti-clericalism inspired by the immanentistic and positivistic philosophers of the 19th century, and who echoed the conversion of Paul by throwing himself into impetuously laborious evangelical activities.

Benedict XVI said Longo did not intend the shrine at Pompeii to be a mere 'cathedral in the desert' but to be a center for redemption in a modern urban society.

Marian devotion and the praying of the Rosary are spiritual nourishment for concrete works - such as homes for unwed mothers, orphanages, housing for laborers.

The mission of the Church is to open the way for God in the hearts of men through prayer and social works.

The Pope moved many when he addressed, beyond the personalities present, all the anonymous people - the sick, the aged, prisoners, indigents, all the inhabitants of our region.

And he was much applauded when he called attention to the beatification of the parents of St. Therese of the Infant Jesus, to underscore the essential role of families in the education of their children, opening them up to a universal sense of humanity, to the world today and its problems; and for believers, by inspiring religious and priestly vocations as well as for missionary life.

And he recalled how all this was relevant to the coming World Encounter of Families in Mexico City in January 2009.

Benedict XVI said much more - and on a much higher level - than what he could have said by simply listing the problems that have occupied newspaper headlines recently.

The Camorra was not mentioned because the citizenry in the countryside is really not directly involved nor affected in their urban-centered activities, even if the evil tends to undermine them as well.

But the Pope also noted how an active religious presence in the region can be a 'force of rescue' in these circumstances.

Once more the Church has a lesson for the world, even if delivered to an audience of rural residents and pilgrims. As it happened in ancient Palestine 2000 years ago when the Son of God walked on earth.

It is not possible to compare this message with any other that comes from any authority or organization, be it political, scientific, cultural or economic.

Simply because no one else wants, or can, or knows how to exhort mankind to an inextinguishable hope in brotherhood and love. Everyone else, except the Church, is after power, dominance, hegemony, or self-interest and self-aggrandizement.

Opening hearts to the Word of God, the Church can realize a silent, assiduous, daily and long-lasting revolution. Not something ephemeral, as so many in history. On that, we must hope.


TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 21 ottobre 2008 01:06

ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/schall_benxvisynod_oct08.asp

Oct. 20, 2008

Father Schall, as usual, comes through and does not disappoint. The only one I have read so far to comment on Benedict's inspired improvisation - a meditation on the Psalm of the day - to open the Synod assembly.

Everybody else just took from it the Pope's condemnation of the worldly lust for money and profit that has brought the world to its current financial crisis, completely ignoring its 'metaphysical' and cosmic formulations, presented so originally - and so well highlighted and analyzed here by Fr. Schall.
"Already the human word has incredible power. Words create history; words form thoughts, the thoughts that create the word. It is the word that forms history, reality."
— Benedict XVI, Address at Opening the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, October 6, 2008.




I.

Benedict continues to instruct a seldom-listening world about what it is all about. His short address at the opening of the Synod on the Word of God is really of remarkable profundity.

Let me go through what the Holy Father says here. The "address" is but two and a half single-spaced pages long. It begins with a passage from Psalm 118 (119) that was in the Office of that day, at the first daytime prayer.

Benedict cites the Latin: "In aeternum, Domine, verbum tuum constitutum est in caelo ... firmasti terram, et permanent. Omnia serviunt tibi. Omni consummationi vidi finem, latum praeceptum tuum nimis. Tuus sum ego: salvum me fac."

This reads: Your word, O Lord, forever stands firm in the heavens.... You have made the earth firm and it remains. All things serve you. I have seen the end in all consummation, thy precept is much hidden. I am Thine, Lord, make me to be saved."

How often do we read such words and never "see" them!

At first sight, we might see here just another pious meditation. We are, however, admonished to recognize God's will and His Face in the Word.

The theme of the "Face" of God is not unfamiliar to modern philosophy. Emmanuel Levinas in particular used it. John Paul II often cited him on this very point, that we search the Face of God. We read in Scripture about our longing to see the Face of God. We might suspect that this desire is just a metaphor until we recall that we are Christians. We know the Incarnation has already happened. The Face of God is not an abstraction for us.

The first words of the Psalm tell us that the "Word is the true reality on which one must base his life." It is not the solid "world," but the word which is even more solid.

The Pope cites the very words of Jesus to follow this Psalm: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." In effect, the word is prior to the heavens, which are outside of God as we know from John's gloss on Genesis. Yet, isn't a word a very fleeting and vanishing thing? Still, the human word has "incredible power."

It is here that Benedict uses the passage at the beginning of this essay: "Words create history; words form thoughts, thoughts that create the world. It is the word that forms history, reality."

At first, this priority will strike us as odd. Yet, if we think about it, our history exists only in words and artifacts that are their equivalent. The fleeting words are permanent if we remember them. The instant that which they name passes, we only have the word left to tell us about what happened or existed.

The next step in Benedict's reflection deals not with words as such. Rather "The Word of God is the foundation of everything; it is the true reality."

We human beings go from reality to word indicating reality. But are the words permanent? We have to understand the really solid things are not matter but words. Material things pass away; words do not. We think we can rely on things, but really they are fleeting.

"Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality." It is more stable than material things. This is astonishing when we first read it. It again reminds us of science, of the relation of cosmos to its own order.

Here Benedict changes the very definition of realism. "The realist is the one who recognizes the Word of God." The realist builds his life on the Word.

Realism is a common topic of political philosophy and philosophy itself. It always purports to base itself on solid things. It is against idealism. It sees things "as they are." It knows about the Fall, about what Aristotle called human "wretchedness." But here, with words, we evidently find something more solid than things, which are passing.

Moreover, all the things that do exist serve the Word. Recalling the words of the Prologue to John, what is in the beginning was not things but the Word. Initially, reality came from word, not vice versa.

With all this preliminary reflection, the Pope reaches the most astounding affirmation: "All of creation, in the end, is conceived of to take the place of encounter between God and his creation, a place where the history of love between God and his creature can develop."

Creation exists so that something can "take place." "All things will serve Thee." How so?

What is this apparently enormous world about? Are we really significant? We seem so tiny, so ephemeral. If we are significant, why? Surely it cannot be merely for the fact of the world's bare existence.

But if the purpose of creation is that there be within it creatures who can freely love the Godhead, and vice versa, there must be a location in the universe for this drama, this choice of what we will be, to play itself out.

"The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is a not minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet." Clearly the Pope here again addresses modern science in its own ethos and apparent conclusions.

Science, presumably, claims to tell us that we are. Still, to use Walker Percy's famous title, we seem to be "lost in the cosmos."

Not so, responds Benedict. We are not a sidelight of creation, but its very center. The drama of our lives takes place within the arena of the cosmos in which we find ourselves whether we like it or not.

The universe exists so that this drama can happen on its own terms. "Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and creature." Such a passage rather reminds me of the Lord of the Rings.

II.

At this point, Benedict recalls that Jewish thought in the Hellenistic period argued that the material world existed so that the Torah or the word of God might exist. Christians do claim the Hebrew Bible as their own.

The Pope finds this same idea in Ephesians, where Christ is the "first born" of creation. Since the birth of Christ took place under Caesar Augustus, Paul could not be referring here to his birth as a human being but his place within the Godhead.

The universe itself moves toward Christ, nothing else. But it does not do so "automatically," as it were; we have to choose to enter. The universe and all in it is gift, but its ultimate purpose is never imposed. God never denies our freedom even in our salvation, or better, especially in our salvation. If it is not free, it is not salvation.

Thus Benedict states, in a marvelous passage: "One can say that, while material creation is the condition for the history of salvation, the history of the Covenant is the true cause of the cosmos. We reach the roots of being by reaching the mystery of Christ, his living word that is the aim of all creation."

In finite being there is already the word that does not have its origins in itself. As Josef Pieper said, of what is, there is a nothing side — in that it could not cause itself — and an origin in the depths of the Godhead.

As the two great commandments tell us, in a priority that has often been confused in the history of theology, being is directed to works which themselves find the purpose of being in real objects.

Love your neighbor. Do good to those who hate you. "In serving the Lord we achieve the purpose of being, the purpose of our own existence."

This is why we can say that each human person is specifically created and that God knew him in the womb of his mother before he was. But it also means that our first being is itself directed to something else, not merely ourselves. This is why in Deus Caritas Est, Benedict was insistent in relating justice to charity as a personal thing to each of us.

Benedict next takes a very Augustinian step. He calls it a "leap forward." "Mandata tua exquisivi." - We are always searching for the Word of God.

Each thing that we find, on living it out, on examining it, is not what we are looking for, even though it is in itself "lovely," as Augustine found out.

We have a drive within us, an unsettlement even in the most settled things, even in our deepest loves. We do not just "read" this word. We may settle for just reading the human words in revelation. But, if this is all we do, "We do not find the true actor within, the Holy Spirit." Or, as Benedict puts it paradoxically, "We do not find the Word in the words."

We can read Scripture, be experts in it, but never find the Word in it, in the words we study and read and pronounce on.

As an example of this latter phenomenon, Benedict recalls the Magi who went to the Pharisees to find out where the Messiah would be born. They knew. "Bethlehem," they told him.

"They are great specialists who know everything. However, they do not see reality." This is a devastating sentence, really. We are experts, scholars, we "know" everything, but we "see" nothing but words. We do not know the Word in the words.

Thus, there can be a great danger "in reading Scripture." The Scriptures are present, not just past. In addition to reading, we must also seek. "We must always look for the Word within the words."

That expression too is quite striking: "The Word within the words." Exegesis is not just literary or just reading a text. Rather, it is "the movement of my existence. It is moving towards the Word of God in the human words." By actively conforming ourselves to the Word.


III.

The things that we can invent, or make, or encounter are "finite." Even mystical experiences are finite, passing. Behind them, in them, is something hidden that we seek. Why are they present to us?

Yet, the infinite God knows no limits. It is not through the world but through the Word of God that we enter "into the divine universe." This takes us to what is universal, the words we encounter in the Church, not into a small group of specialists.

Everyone has hidden in his heart this desire for truth, for the word that has its origin in the "great truth of God."

Here, Benedict connects with a theme that was in the Regensburg Lecture, namely, that Christianity does not come to the nations from the outside.

If it bypasses the political boundaries, it is because already, in each human heart, this "searching" for the commandments of the Lord is found. A "universal culture" unites us all.

This culture, however, is based on the unity of the universe itself in which there are beings who can know and seek to know, for which purpose the universe exists in the first place.

The Psalmist says "Tuus sum ego: salvam me fac." This hope of salvation from nothingness and from sin is already a desire that we have from our very being.

The Lord has a Face that we seek. The Word is made flesh. All of our words relate to the reality in which we find ourselves. We seek to express the truth in words, to possess them when they have passed, to remember them. Nothing is really lost to us. Still, the word is a call we can reject.

"Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and his creature."

"Salvation is no small event." Even if it takes place in some out of the way planet on the outer side of the cosmos. What we are already involved in is this drama.

The Word is addressed to all men because they all already find within themselves that which was there from their beginning, the word in which they stood outside of nothingness. The word is rooted in Word, in Light, the Word that lasts, the Word has a Face.

"The history of salvation, the history of the Covenant, is the true cause of the cosmos."

We thought it was the other way around. We thought that the cosmos was before we were in being, that we were but afterthoughts, if we were thought at all.

We came last, but only in time. We exist prior to the cosmos. We find ourselves in a history in which we are deciding freely, always here and now, whether we shall accept this purpose for which we were made from the beginning, which was our beginning before it began.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


At the time I translated the Holy Father's words,
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354494&p=217
I could not resist adding this post-script, borrowing from the Psalm itself to say what I cannot articulate better:
'Beati immaculati in via qui ambulam in lege Domini' - Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk by the teaching of the Lord - is the first verse of Psalm 119 (Latin from St. Jerome's Vulgate, English from the New American Bible).... I can find no more fitting words to express my awe and admiration for the Holy Father's extraordinary powers of extemporaneous expression and the profundity of thought he expresses.
Father Schall has the words - and far more intellectual tools than I could ever hope to have - to express that awe and admiration.


P.S. Apropos - Sandro Magister has posted his American translator Matthew Sherry's translation of the Pope's intervention at the Synod last Tuesday
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/208710?eng=y
I posted my translation on October 18 in the preceding page of this thread, Post #15382, shortly after the Vatican released the transcript.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 21 ottobre 2008 10:15



OR for 10/20-10/21/08.

Benedict XVI underscores the value of Patriarch Barholomew's Synod intervention last Saturday:
'Walking together with great Christian realism'
with an editorial that ties together the Synod, the Holy Father's visit yesterday to Pompeii,
and Patriarch Bartholomew's historic Synod intervention on Saturday.
The issue also contains the full text of the Patriarch's address.


The front-page photo shows the Holy Father saying the Rosary in Pompeii. The other photos in the inside pages are from the Mass and the Pope's visit
to the Basilica in the afternoon - offering the Golden Rose; praying before the remains of Blessed Bartolo; and greeting the faithful after the Rosary.
The issue includes the texts of the Pope's homily, remarks before the Angelus, and meditation on the Rosary.
[Full translations of these have been posted with the corresponding photo reportage in the preceding posts on this page].


Other Page 1 stories: The White House agrees to a redefinition of international financial regulations; new Taliban attacks kill many civilians, including children, in Afghanistan; Israel to give Saudi peace plan a try, as Hamas and Fatah have new encounters in Gaza; and the Pope's address to Italian surgeons today.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 21 ottobre 2008 10:53


The importance attached by the Holy Father to the participation of Patriarch Bartholomew in the current Synod Assembly may be deduced from the fact that the main story, accompanied by an editorial, in the 10/20-10/21 issue of L'Osservatore Romano, is Benedict XVI's response to the Patriarch's historic intervention at the Sistine Chapel last Saturday.

Here first is the transcript of the Holy Father's remarks.


'Walking together
with great Christian realism'
Translated from
the 10/20-10/21 issue of



In remarks made extemporaneously, Benedict XVI thanked Patriarch Bartholomew I for his reflections on the Word of God, delivered after the celebration of Vespers in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday afternoon, Oct. 18.
Holiness,

With all my heart, I wish to say 'thank you' for your words. The applause of the fathers present here was much more than an expression of courtesy - it was truly an expression of profound spiritual joy and a lived experience of our communion.

In these moments, we have really lived the 'Syn-od': we walked together in the land of the divine Word under the guidance of Your Holiness, and we savored its beauty, with the great joy of listeners to the Word of God, face to face with the gift of his Word.

What you have said is profoundly nourishing from the spirit of the Fathers, of Sacred Liturgy, also strongly contextualized in our time, with great Christian realism which allows us to see the challenges.

We have seen that to get to the heart of Sacred Scripture, to truly encounter the Word in words, to penetrate into the Word of God, also opens our eyes to our world, to the realities today.

This was a joyous experience - an experience of unity which, while not yet perfect, is true and profound. I was thinking: your Fathers, whom you cited amply, are also our Fathers, as ours are yours. If we have Fathers in common, how can we not be brothers among ourselves?

Thank you, Holiness. Your words will accompany us in our work next week, it will illumine us, and even in the coming week - and beyond, we will be walking together a common path with you.

Thank you, Holiness.

And here is the front-page editorial that ties together the Synod, the Holy Father's visit to Pompeii yesterday, and Patriarch Bartholomew's participation - the subjects to which much of this OR issue is dedicated.


Prayer for the Synod
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Editorial
Translated from
the 10/20-10/21 issue of



Benedict XVI went to Pompeii above all to pray. Together with the tens of thousands of the faithful who welcomed him with extraordinary warmth, which the Pope reciprocated with equal affection.

And he spoke to them effectively - explaining the liturgical readings of the day, before the Angelus, and after the impressive recital of the Rosary together with so many men and women who crowded the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary and the piazza facing it.

Allowing thus to show what Jean Danielou called, in a book title, the political aspect of prayer: the experience of Christian brotherhood, in fact, that "shows the face of a different society, placed like a ferment within the civilian context".

Yes, the Pope, said, it is truly love - for God and for our neighbor - that supports the world, and thanks to this, the Christian people find the strength to move ahead 'without stooping to compromises' and 'against every violence'.

The Pope's prayer, offered before one of the most popular Marian images, had a principal aim: "To entrust to the Mother of God, in whose womb the Word was made flesh", the Synod assembly on the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church.

A important assembly, whose work has reached its final week, on a theme that is only apparently abstract and remote from our time, but is, on the contrary, actual and concrete.

A promising synod is, in fact, how it was defined by Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, who, for the first time, addressed such a high-level assembly of the sister Church of Rome. He delivered an address that was certainly not a ritual one, after Vespers, the common evening prayer of Christians that is raised like incense to God.

The occasion was truly historic, and Bartholomew fully lived up to it, participating in a real sense in the life of the Church of Rome, and marking yet another step towards the re-establishment of full communion between the two great Sees.

Thanks to his reflections on the Word of God, which deserve to be read with great attention, and which will remain with us, rooted as they are in our immense common common patrimony of faith and liturgy.

Precisely because of this, Benedict XVI made clear right after the Patriarch spoke - that is, precisely because of its rootedness in tradition - Bartholomew's discourse was "strongly contextualized in our time", demonstrating 'great Christian realism'.

The same realism that imposes a common path, an expression called 'synodo' in Greek - a reality for which Christians must
continue to pray.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 21 ottobre 2008 12:25



I found this on a recent Repubblica photogallery about 'The new look of the Pontiff' which they ran in June, apparently, but there was really nothing new in the 12 pictures they featured, showing the Papal staff that replaced the Paul VI-JPII one, the cope he wore at the Pauline Year opening Vespers (that he firt wore last Palm Sunday), the Pope in the camauro, a close-up of his sash and the coat-of-arms embroidered on it, and three pictures of him wearing the 'saturno' of which this one just leaps out of the screen!

TERESA BENEDETTA
00martedì 21 ottobre 2008 12:56



Cardinal Sepe
at lunch with the Pope:
'We talked about
the problems of Naples'
Translated from

Oct. 20, 9008



POMPEII - "With the Pope, we spoke, of course, of the problems that afflict Naples. The Holy Father asks questions and ponders. For us, it is a source of great encouragement to feel so sustained by his attention and his affection for this land. This was once a swamp, and now it is a shrine for Mary who triumphs. But we know the swamp will always be a lurking threat, and it is for us in the Church to ward off that threat".

Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe spoke about Benedict XVI's lunch with the bishops of Campania on Sunday, at which he sat to the Pope's left, while their host, Archbishop Carlo Liberato of the Pompeii Prelature, sat on the right.

The lunch was frugal but tasty, from the artichoke omelet antipasto to the lemon-flavored torciglione (a serpentine almond-based pastry) with the dessert wine, allowing the renewal of bonds between the bishops and their Pontiff.

"The Holy Father is a great listener," Cardinal Sepe said. "His visit gives fresh lymph not only to us pastors, but to the people, who sometimes become distrustful, and to institutions which need to feel that the Church is alongside them in the effort to bring justice and development to all".

In fact, the civilian institutions represented shared the cardinal's enthusiasm.

Regional governor Bassolina (who took part for the first time in the recital of the Rosary) thanked metaphorically the bright sun which shone on the Pope.

"I said jestingly when the Pope landed, 'I ordered the good weather for you, Holiness.' He smiled. I was thinking, just as the rainstorms last year [during the Pope's visit to Naples] preceded the dramatic tempest of the Naples emergency [uncollected garbage], the clear skies and bright sun today should inspire us to believe in and construct together a Campania which looks ahead and can turn itself around".


benefan
00mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008 01:34
Jeff Israely going negative as usual.



The Pope and the Mob

By Jeff Israely
TIME Magazine
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008

John Paul II set a powerful precedent for how a Roman Pontiff can take on the Italian Mob. In May 1993, after a high-profile spate of Mafia killings, the Pope denounced the Mob's "culture of death" in an emotionally charged sermon in Agrigento, Sicily, the home turf of Cosa Nostra. "I say to those responsible: Convert!" he intoned, shaking his clenched fist and index finger. "One day, the judgment of God will arrive!" Two months after the dramatic papal appeal, the Mafia bombed two historic churches in Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI was certainly aware of that confrontation as he prepared this past weekend to visit Pompeii. The southern Italian city, near the ruins of an ancient site buried by a Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption, lies in the heart of the region controlled by the Camorra. The Naples-based organized crime syndicate has lately tightened its grip on the impoverished region, with more killing sprees and a high-profile death threat against a young writer. But unlike John Paul, Benedict said nothing at all about the Mob in his Sunday homily. Did the Pope back down in the face of one of Italy's most entrenched and destructive evils?

Many were counting on another papal mention about the Mob as violence in the region reaches new heights. Last month, a Camorra death squad unleashed a fury of submachine-gun fire, killing seven immigrants in a single attack. A week ago, reports surfaced of a pointed death threat against Naples writer Roberto Saviano, 28, whose best-selling book Gomorrah, and the movie based on it, reveal the extent of the Camorra's influence and dirty dealings. While the Pope remained silent, more than 100,000 people signed a petition this week in support of Saviano, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Orhan Pamuk, Günter Grass, Jose Saramago and Jonathan Franzen. "It is intolerable that all this can happen in Europe, and in 2008," reads the petition. "The state must make every effort possible to protect (Saviano) and defeat the Camorra." The movie version of Saviano's book, directed by Matteo Garrone, won second prize at the Cannes film festival this year and is Italy's entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

When reporters asked why the Pope had said nothing on such a burning topic in Pompeii, Vatican spokesman Reverand Ciro Benedettini said Benedict had intentionally avoided referring to the Camorra as a "show of respect for decent people" of the region, who "are the vast majority." The Pope, the spokesman added, had also talked about organized crime in a visit last year to Naples, though admittedly not with the same confrontational tone as John Paul did in Sicily.

Benedict's silence has generated a small rumbling of dissent from both inside and outside the church. "It could seem that there is fear now to confront the Mob, and call it by its name," Don Vitaliano Della Sala, a leftist priest from nearby Avellino, said in a Monday radio interview. He drew a parallel between Benedict's decision not to speak out Sunday and the controversy stirring over Pope Pius XII's alleged silence about the Holocaust during World War II.

That analogy seems a stretch: the Italian authorities' decades-long battle to uproot the Mob bears little comparison to the Nazis' state-run policy of genocide. But the comparison between Benedict and his immediate predecessor is illuminating. John Paul not only possessed a pastoral charisma that made him beloved among his flock, but also he could call on a reserve of public passion in order to confront a problem facing his church or the world at large. That kind of fire is simply not in this Pontiff's arsenal.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *



This is outrageous - as usual! And as usual, this gets me going....

The front-page news analysis I translated yesterday from Il Mattino gives the answer to Israely's charges which he picked up lock-stock-and-barrel from the Italian MSM. As well as Cardinal
Sepe's remarks in the post above.

But even the Italian media did not go so far as to say it was cowardly of Benedict not to speak about the Camorra in Pompeii (which is what Israely as much as says directly), much less that it makes him less incisive than his predecessor in addressing social problems!

And I don't believe anyone in the Italian media even brought up the Saviano petition - a typical liberal gesture that is going to do as little to protect Saviano as did similar gestures for Salman Rushdie.

And of course, like all the other critics, Israely was so focused on what the Pope did not say that he failed to report at all on what he did say! If that's not biased and tendentious and totally unobjective reporting, then what is?

So John Paul II spoke out openly against the Mafia. That did not put an end to the Mafia, did it? Israely does not say what other consequences there were - positive or negative - of that 'confrontational tone' other than that the Mafia bombed two churches in Rome as retaliation!

The Pope - and the Church with him - is not the policeman of the world, just as he is not the world's social worker.
But the comparison between Benedict and his immediate predecessor is illuminating. John Paul not only possessed a pastoral charisma that made him beloved among his flock, but also he could call on a reserve of public passion in order to confront a problem facing his church or the world at large. That kind of fire is simply not in this Pontiff's arsenal.
Without meaning any disrespect to John Paul II, did he ever have a follow-up to the fire and brimstone speech in Sicily in the quarter-century of his Pontificate?

I think he was realistic enough to know that there are just some things not within the control of the Church nor that of the people, no matter how impassioned you can whip them up to be, assuming that they even translate this passion into meaningful action! What can they do against the Mafia and similar assorted gangsters who have thugs and weaponry to spare at their command? They get out of the way, to begin with. And the peasants and rural residents of Campania - the pilgrims who were in Pompeii - are generally out of the way of the urban-centered crime gangs.

But what Israely and the other critics of the Pope completely miss is that the Holy Father went to Pompeii on a pilgrimage, not as the caped crusader against crime. Batman he is not! And if successive Italian governments have been unable to defeat organized crime, why is it suddenly the Pope's duty to lead the charge? Render unto Caesar...!

Was it not more constructive - and appropriate - for him to praise and encourage all the works of mercy done in Pompeii for the disadvantaged under the aegis of the Shrine, and to remind the faithful of the power of prayer - which may not always answer human desires as we wish them to be, but can bring the grace to cope with whatever difficulties one must confront. This is his primary duty as Pope, after all.

Besides, on what issue has public passion whipped up by the Church in the past succeeded in truly uprooting a social evil? In Italy or anywhere? [Even the collapse of Communism was not because the oppressed people rose against their oppressors, but because the system started collapsing on itself from within, starting a domino effect that proved the essential instability of totalitarian systems based on fear.]

On the other hand, Benedict and Cardinal Ruini between them pulled off a victory in the referendum on assisted reproduction in 2006 - where the Church had failed before then, in all the previous referendum issues like divorce, abortion and the first assisted reproduction laws in Italy! And they mobilized a million for Family Day months later to underscore the pastoral outreach in defense of family values.

The Church in Italy has not been silent since then in pushing forward its ethical agenda side by side with a pastoral ministry with concrete programs to advance the Church's non-negotiable values. Against all the unthinking Pavlovian putdowns from vocal militants who cry "Interference!" every time the Church restates its ethical principles!

In this respect, the critics of the Pope also completely ignore or under-estimate what conscientious local clergy are doing. Liberals cannot accuse Cardinal Sepe, for instance - one of their own - for sitting on his hands against the Camorra, or being less than courageous.

From what I read, he is doing what he can, walking the tighrope between prudence and foolhardiness, between quiet little undramatic but concrete steps against big dramatic gestures that could do more harm than good.

Moral dilemmas are real - whether in wartime or in times of peace. Not that there was any major dilemma in this particular case about the Pope failing to wag his fingers and pound his fists against the Camorra!

He did not need to do that when he was in Naples last year when he spoke in his usual calm and measured tones about the Camorra and 'the evil that insinuates itself into every fold of society' - and thank God there were no reprisals from what I recall. Equally true, no one found fault with what he said then, or the way he said it.

[On the other hand, when it comes to problems within the Church - and the sex offenses by some priests have been the greatest scandal to both Catholics and the outside world looking in - Benedict, as Joseph Ratzinger and as Pope, has done his best to set the example of what the Church should do to deal with the problem.]

Human beings have to choose. And if they make their choices after having wrestled and prayed over it, as Popes do, then should we not trust that they make the choices they believe the Holy Spirit wants them to? And this goes for Pius XII as much as it does for Benedict XVI.





TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008 06:00


I left this morning before the Vatican posted its 'Rinunce e Nomine' for the day - and look what news it brought:

MONS. MOKRZYCKI IS NOW
FULL-FLEDGED ARCHBISHOP OF LVIV (UKRAINE)



Here's a translation of the announcement:

The Holy Father Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation from the pastoral governing of the Archdiocese of Lviv of the Latins (Ukraine) presented by Cardinal Marian Jaworski, according to Canon 901 s.1 of the Code of Canon Law.

Succeeding him is Mons Mieczysław Mokrzycki, who up to now, was the Archbishop Coadjutor of the Archdiocese.
Mietek, of course, has the probably unequalled distinction of having been second private secretary to both John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

BEST WISHES AND GOD BLESS....ARCHBISHOP MIETEK!

TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008 13:01


The month of October is very much associated with our recent Popes. On October 3 was the 30th death anniversary of John Paul I; on October 9, the 50th death anniversary of Pius XII; on October 16, the 30th anniversary of John Paul II's election, and on October 28, the 50th anniversary of John XXIII's election.


Benedict XVI will be at St. Peter's
to greet Bergamo delegations
on John XXIII's anniversary
by Carlo Dignola
Translated from




"The Pope is doing a favor for the Bergamaschi," says Mons. Maurizio Malvestiti. Because on Tuesday, Oct. 28, exactly 50 years since the election of Blessed John XXIII to the Chair of Peter, Benedict XVI will be at St. Peter's Basilica to venerate his predecessor's body and to salute the pilgrims coming from the late Pope's home town for the occasion.

This will come after the Mass to be celebrated by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

Mons. Malvestiti said, "This occasion has particular fascination for us. On that day 30 years go, the Lord said to someone who was a young boy from our countryside, who had become priest and then bishop, 'You are Peter'. To relive the 'great joy' of that historic day in the Basilica itself will make us feel even closer to our beloved priest and fellow pilgrim to all his brothers and sisters in Bergamo as to all the children of the Church".

The Basilica was also the session hall for the Second Vatican Council which gave the world 'not condemnation for its ills' but 'the medicine of mercy'.

It is a way, Mons. Malvestiti said, that Papa Roncalli not only said in words but embodied. He recalled the night of the day the Council opened, and how "The Pope proved this from his heart with his famous words 'Tonight kiss your children and tell them that it is a kiss from the Pope'.

Cardinal Bertone, who was in Bergamo earlier this month to celebrate Mass there as well, recalled that many in the Roman Curia had not been convinced that John XXIII was right to call the Council, but the new Pope was firm, "I want fresh air to come into the Church".

And that night, he opened his window literally and spoke to the world. He spoke, says Mons. Malvestiti, with the language of the East, the so-called language of 'spiritual infancy' that the Gospel recommends - improvised, yes, but more than just superficial sentiment."

Joseph Ratzinger, who took part in Vatican-II as a theological consultant, has been advocating a correct rereading of John XXIII's Pontificate.

In his famous Christmas 2005 address to the Roman Curia, he presented the Council as a sign of continuity and not of rupture with the bimillenial tradition of the Church.

"It was a moment of high Magisterium," says Mons. Malvestiti, "an invitation to recover the precious treasure of Vatican II which some had squandered away in controversy and opposition."

Benedict XVI recalled that John XXIII loved Church tradition in its fullness, "a son who, thanks to the richness he received, was capable of showing new ways ahead".

Bergamo pilgrims going to Rome will start their itinerary with Mass at the Basilica of St. John Lateran on Sunday. On Monday, they will hear Mass at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and in the afternoon, will have a penitential observance at the fourth of the papal basilicas in Rome - St. Paul outside the Walls, the church where, to everyone's surprise, John XXIII announced that he had decided to call a new Vatican Council.

The Mass at St. Peter's Basilica on Tuesday - with the Pope's address to them on the anniversary day itself - will be the high point of the pilgrimage.

But the pilgrims, which includes many priests from the province of Bergamo, will stay another day to attend the Pope's General Audience on Wednesday.

TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008 13:43



OR today.

There is no banner headline today. The Page 1 stories on the Church are an editorial
commentary on Patriarch Bartholomew I's intervention at the current Synod assembly
and the 53 propositions presented to the assembly yesterday to be voted on as
a summary of their work.
Other Page 1 stories: a UN report says at least 10,000 civilians were killed in 2007 and three million
Somalis (half the population) are refugees from the continuing conflict between Islamic militants
and the transitional government aided by Ethiopian troops for control of the country; the long-inactive
International Commission for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament meets in Australia to make
its recommendations; and President Sarkozy proposes a pan-European economic 'government' as part
of the response to the global financial crisis.


THE POPE'S DAY

General Audience today. The Holy Father's catechesis was on the Christological teaching of St. Paul.


The 'complete works'
of Joseph Ratzinger

Bishop Gerhard Mueller of Regensburg led a Vatican news conference today to present the first
volume of the Opera omnia (Complete works) of Joseph Ratzinger from the German publishing
house Herder. Address in German.

He said, among other things, that the Holy Father had requested him, as Bishop of Regensburg, to take
personal charge of the publication of the Complete Works, as a record of his theological thought, and
also expressed the desire that they be published under the name Joseph Ratzinger alone, since
they only include what he wrote before he became Pope. The complete works runs to 16 volumes.

For the purpose of the project, the Pope Benedict XVI Institute was founded in Regensburg. Bishop Mueller
said each and every volume and its contents are personally reviewed and approved by the Pope.

He gave a brief description of what each volume will contain. Vol. XVI is dedicated to a complete and
exhaustive bibliography of all the writings, as well as an index for every volume.

The volumes present the writings thematically rather than chronologically, but the first two volumes
are the two dissertations by Joseph Ratzinger for his doctorate in theology (on St. Augustine) and
and for his Habilitation to qualify as a Professor of Theology in the German university system (on St.
Bonaventure), together with all his related writings on Augustine and Bonaventure. They will be published
at the rate of two volumes a year between now and 2016.

However, the first volume out is Volume 11, The Theology of Liturgy, by the express desire
of the Holy Father. The Italian translation is expected to come out in May 2009.



TERESA BENEDETTA
00mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008 14:06



GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY


A full translation of the Holy Father's catechesis has been posted in AUDIENCE & ANGELUS TEXTS.




In his catechetical cycle on St. Paul, the Holy Father today spoke about the apostle's teachings on Christ. Here is how he synthesized it in English:
In our continuing catechesis on Saint Paul, we now consider the centrality of Jesus Christ in his teaching. Paul preaches Christ as the crucified and glorified Lord, alive and present within the Church.

He proclaims Christ’s incarnation and exaltation, but also his pre-existence with the Father before all time. His affirmation of Christ’s pre-existence evokes those Old Testament texts which portray God’s Wisdom as being with him before creation and coming down to dwell among men (e.g., Pr 8:22-23).

Paul thus presents Christ as "the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:24), the centre and fulfilment of the Father’s eternal plan of salvation. The hymn found in his Letter to the Philippians (Phil 2:6-11) contrasts Christ’s pre-existence "in the form of God" and his subsequent "kenosis" or self-emptying, "even to death, death on a Cross".

Paul also appeals to Christ’s pre-existence and incarnation in proclaiming Jesus as "the one mediator between God and man" (1 Tim 3:16), the firstborn of all creation and the head of the Church (cf. Col 1:15-20).

Paul’s "sapiential" Christology invites us to welcome the salvation offered by the crucified and risen Lord, the Eternal Son, who is the very wisdom and power of God.
In his greetings at the end, the Holy Father reminded the faithful that October is the month of missions.
The month of October invites us to renew our acticve cooperation in the mission of the Church. With the fresh energies of the youth, with the spiritual support through prayer, sacrifice, and the great potential of conjugal life, know how to be missionaries of the Gospel everywhere, offring your concrete assistance to all those who labor to bring the Word to those who do not know it yet.










Dear Lord! What particularly gorgeous pictures today of Papino!


Other images from the GA:





The last photo is among those Gloria found in the Felici catalog.




benefan
00mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008 21:39




Posted earlier today in the preceding page:
Benedict XVI to address pilgrims from John XXII's hometown at St. Peter's Basilica on Oct. 28,
30th anniversary of the Blessed Pope's accession to the Papacy.

The Pope's Day - with advance story from the Vatican Press Office on
the presentation news conference
for the Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger.

General audience - Synthesis of the Pope;'s catechesis and gorgeous pictures!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


German publishing house to release
complete book of pope's works

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Oct. 22, 2008

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Over the next eight years, the German publishing giant Herder and the Pope Benedict XVI Institute of Regensburg, Germany, will offer the public "The Complete Works of Joseph Ratzinger."

Presenting the first volume in the 16-tome series, Bishop Gerhard Muller of Regensburg told reporters Oct. 22 that Pope Benedict XIV personally approved the project and insisted that it carry his birth name.

Bishop Muller said the pope wants to make it clear that the works, almost all of which were completed before his election in 2005, reflect his personal theological thought and not the magisterial teaching of the church.

Salesian Father Giuseppe Costa, director of the Vatican Publishing House, which controls the copyright of all the written work of the pope, including the writings in the series, said discussions already are under way with the U.S.-based Ignatius Press to publish English translations of the volumes.

The preface to the first published volume, dedicated to articles, lectures and homilies about the liturgy, is signed "Benedict XVI."

"When, after some hesitation, I decided to take on the project of the publication of my collected works, it was clear to me that the priorities of the (Second Vatican) Council were the most important, which is why liturgy had to be first," the pope wrote.

The liturgy volume includes his 2000 book, "The Spirit of the Liturgy."

In the volume's preface, Pope Benedict said that, unfortunately, the only thing most people know about the book is that it is the place where he discusses the direction the priest faces during Mass.

"At a certain point, I had even thought of striking that chapter, which was nine pages in a 200-page work, so that what I really wanted to say would come out," he said in the preface.

Pope Benedict said that after his book came out in 2000, two other well-known works have appeared showing "that the idea of the priest and people facing each other is a modern invention. The priest and people do not pray to each other, but to God."

While he had written in 2000 that he did not think it was a good idea to remodel churches and place the main altars back against the wall, in the preface to the liturgy volume of his collected works he said was pleased with the solution of placing a crucifix in the middle of the altar "so that the priest and people look together toward the Lord."

"But," he wrote, "maybe once again I have gone on too long about what is only a detail" in a book meant to highlight the importance of the liturgy for the life and faith of the church.

Bishop Muller said each volume would include already published and well-known works along with homilies or lectures never previously published and a complete catalogue of references to other articles, homilies and letters by Joseph Ratzinger on the same subject.

The next volume, due out in March, contains the future pope's postdoctoral thesis on the doctrine of revelation in the works of St. Bonaventure, Bishop Muller said.

The only work originally published after Pope Benedict's election to be featured in the series, he said, will be the pope's 2007 book, "Jesus of Nazareth" and its anticipated second volume. The large volume containing them will also include older material on the pope's views about Christology.

***********************

Dear Benefan - I hope you don't mind that I inserted the top-of-the-page headings....

TERESA


benefan
00mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008 21:48
This story actually has almost more to do with Benedict and the synod than it does with the blog idea. The bishop's blog address is correct even though it didn't work when I clicked on it. I had to go to his diocese's main web page first (www.diocesetucson.org) and then click on the World Synod of Bishops' logo on the upper right side and then click on the bishop's name to get to his blog.


Blogging bishop welcomes idea of personal papal blog

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
Oct. 22, 2008

ROME (CNS) -- Someone at the Synod of Bishops on the Bible suggested that Pope Benedict XVI start his own blog, and a blogging U.S. bishop thinks it's a good idea.

Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service a papal blog might make the teaching pope more accessible to a wider audience.

Bishop Kicanas has been blogging on the synod since his arrival in Rome Oct. 4. His first post described the early arrival of his luggage as a "miracle" and included a picture of the view of St. Peter's dome from his room.

Since then, he has offered colorful asides from his conversations with other bishops, reported on meetings with Catholics from back home and catalogued some of the synod's bigger and lesser themes.

So when a Hong Kong synod observer, Agnes Kam Leng Lam, suggested that the pope open his own multilanguage blog, it struck a chord with Bishop Kicanas.

"I think it is a good idea. He has a way of inspiring young people," Bishop Kicanas wrote at www.diocesetucson.org/WorldSynodBlog.html. The pope did not give an answer, but he smiled at the notion, the bishop said.

In an interview with Catholic News Service Oct. 21, Bishop Kicanas said that, at the synod, Pope Benedict has been an attentive listener, taking notes throughout the speeches and smiling whimsically at occasional organizational problems.

"He's obviously someone who, as a teacher, was aware of the contributions of each student," Bishop Kicanas said. "He creates a very powerful presence when he's in the synod hall."

Whether the pope would have time to do a blog is another question. Bishop Kicanas said blogging does take a chunk of time, but that it's helped him to collect his own thoughts at the end of each busy day.

"I told our communications man in Tucson, I hope it's not too boring," he said, but the feedback so far has been good.

What's made his blog richer -- and the demand on his time heavier -- is that Bishop Kicanas was tapped to be a recording secretary, or relator, for one of three English-language discussion groups. His job included working out the wording of synod propositions in English, then coordinating them with the propositions of other language groups.

During the synod's last week, he was putting the final touches on the Latin version of some of the 53 propositions, inserting amendments and preparing them for a final vote Oct. 25.

Bishop Kicanas said that so far the level of agreement in the synod has been amazing considering the variety of points of view and the language and cultural differences of the world's bishops.

A synod's final propositions generally do not include surprises, and the main themes of the synod on the Bible had become pretty familiar: better formation of priests and laity in Scripture, how to pray the Scriptures, homilies more focused on Scripture, the relationship between theology and scriptural interpretation, the role of church teaching and tradition in understanding Scripture, Bible accessibility and translations.

Bishops Kicanas provided a more complete list of topics raised in synod speeches in his three-page Oct. 15 blog entry, which probably would have been useful as a handout in the synod hall.

One particular issue of discussion has been the possibility of making a formal ministry for "delegate of the Word," which some bishops thought would be a fitting ministry for catechists.

Bishop Kicanas said there was wide agreement that catechists are important in promoting the word of God. But because the role of catechist is so different in various parts of the world, it was proving difficult to agree on a proposition on the question, he said.

In developed countries, catechists are essentially teachers of religion. But in many Third World communities, catechists also act as pastoral administrators -- a ministry that would not be completely formalized, since it exists only because of a shortage of priests.

The role of lector also has been highlighted at the synod, he said. But as a formal ministry, lector is currently not open to laywomen, and Bishop Kicanas said it was unlikely the synod would try to change that.

"I would hope that the final document would have an acknowledgment of the role of women in the church and what a significant role they've played, forming families, teaching the faith -- and of course the vast majority of catechists are women," he said.

Bishop Kicanas said the synod's discussions on fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible and religious sects have been interesting. The synod clearly wants to emphasize that the Catholic interpretation of Scripture is not fundamentalist, that it involves a long history of church teaching and tradition, and that even the phrase "Word of God" refers primarily to the person of Christ as "the Word incarnate."

At the same time, he said, some of the synod's small groups have recognized that Christian fundamentalist sects have been popular in part because of the passion of their preaching and the sense of energy they instill.

"Some of those qualities were present in the (Catholic) Church, and are still present in the church in many ways, and I think re-engaging and rediscovering some of those qualities would be helpful," he said.

He said sects often draw people who are struggling with their lives by responding to their feelings of pain and hopelessness. The bishops attending the synod know "how powerful the word of God is to speak to people's struggles" and want to encourage ways to better reach the spiritually suffering, including those who have fallen away from the church or stopped practicing their faith, he said.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Well, I am certainly glad someone else has taken the papal 'blog' idea seriously and not in the flippant dismissive way it has been greeted by those who have commented on it so far!

But even Bishop Kicanas has tunnel vision about blogs - as though there were only one way to do a blog! Lella has probably the most useful blog in the Italian blogosphere, or anywhere else, for papal news - and it's because her emphasis and focus is to try and post every significant mateial about Benedict XVI that she can find in Italian (occasionally, some in French, too). Of course, she puts in her comments when she has to, but the essence of the blog is to be a comprehensive record of Italian reportage and commentary about Benedict XVI.

On the other hand, a very 'do-able' papal blog would use material that already exists - from previous homilies, discourses, writings, and as I said earlier, even the homilies that he gives to his staff when he says daily Mass - and would not require any commenting because the message itself is the comment.

All it requires is for someone to 'organize' what goes into the blog - say, a month at a time - and have the Holy Father review, approve and or modify the choices, and someone like Birgit Wansing, who maintains the JR-B16 bibliography and indices (and I hope, by now, a concordance), to make sure that the post is properly sourced to the date and occasion/publication when it was said or written.

And of course, it shouldn't be called a blog.



TERESA BENEDETTA
00giovedì 23 ottobre 2008 06:44


Here is a translation of Bishop Gerhard Mueller's presentation at the Vatican news conference
Tuesday noon on the Collected Works of Joseph Ratzinger [Joseph Ratzinger: GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN].
His presentation was delivered in German.



The first volume out is Volume XI,
THE THEOLOGY OF LITURGY.

The publisher is the newly-established Pope Benedict XVI
Institute, which will be formally inaugurated on Oct. 30.



The collected works
of Joseph Ratzinger
by Mons. Gerhard Mueller
Bishop of Regensburg
Translated from

Also published in
the 10/22/08 issue of


I

Pope Benedict XVI is one of the great theologians to occupy Peter's Chair. In the long list of his predecessors, one can cite that eminent 18th century erudite, Benedict XIV (1740-1758), then back to Pope Leo the Great (440-461) who formulated the decisive recognition of the Christologic confession in the Council of Chalcedony (451).



In the course of his long academic activity as professor of Fundamental Theology and Dogma, Pope Benedict XVI elaborated a theological work that that places him without doubt among the most important scholars of the 20th century and the early 21st century.

For more than 50 years, the name of Joseph Ratzinger has been linked to an original comprehensive vision of systematic theology.

His writings unite scientific knowledge of theology to a living Gestalt of a lived faith. As a science that has its genuine place within the Church, theology can show the special calling of man as creature and image of God.

In his scientific activity, Benedict XVI has always been able to draw on his wondrous knowledge of history of theology and of dogmas, which he can transmit in an illuminating way to highlight the divine vision of man.

That vision becomes accessible to many through the lexical and linguistic vocabulary that Joseph Ratzinger has adopted over decades. Complex themes are not subjected to complicated reflections that are beyond common understanding, but made transparent in their intimate linearity.

At the center of everything is the divine will to speak to every man, and his Word that becomes the light to illuminate every man today (Jn q,9).

In his academic career, theology professor Joseph Ratzinger taught at the universities of Freising, Bonn, Munster and Tuebingen, ending up finally in Regensburg, where he worked from 1969 until he was named Archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977.

Cardinal Ratzinger remained close to the city and the diocese of Regensburg even during the long period when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1882-2005). He came regularly to visit his brother Georg, who was for many years the director of the famous Boys Choir of Regensburg Cathedral (1964-1994). Unforgettable are the homilies he delivered at the Cathedral on a variety of liturgical celebrations.

His parents Josef and Maria Ratzinger, along with his sister Maria, are buried in the cemetery of Regensburg-Ziegetsdorf. And of Pentling, his residence just outside the gates of the episcopal city of Regensburg, he once said that after so many years of moving from place to place and living in different houses, "we (the Ratzinger siblings) were once more at home".

During his pastoral visit in 2006 to his native Bavaria, his
Regensburg Lecture, the lectio magistralis that was a magic and historic moment in university history - and not only for Regensburg - underscored once again the intimate connection between faith and reason.

Neither reason nor faith can be considered independently of each other, nor can they, independently, arrive at their respective goals. Correcting and purifying each other, reason and faith are able to guard against dangerous pathologies. In this sense, Pope Benedict XVI adheres to the great tradition of the theological sciences, which in the global structure of the University can function as an all-comprehensive connective element.

Thus Regensburg became in a way the genius loci in which to put together and take custody of the theological opera omnia of Joseph Ratzinger. The episcopal see of Regensburg, with its eminent figures of erudite bishops like St. Albertus Magnus (1260-1262) and Johann Michael Sailer (1821-1832), has always advocated the unity of the episcopal and academic Magisterium in order to confirm the rationality of the faith and the pastoral fecundity of science.

This was a tradition carried forward by Archbishop Michael Buchburger (1927-1961) under whose direction, the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche took shape - a basic text that became globally known and has now reached three editions.

Thus, this episcopal city is the appropriate home of the Pope Benedict XVI Institute.

In my capacity as Bishop of Regensburg (since 2002), I have been personally entrusted by the Holy Father with the publication of his Collected Writings in 16 volumes.

As a student at university, I dedicated myself to an in-depth reading of the theological treatises of Joseph Ratzinger. I was particularly struck and lastingly impressed by his work of genius Introduction to Christianity, which in that tempestuous time of student revolts and a general theological disorientation, offered a sure key for approaching the profound mystery of Christian revelation.

The specialized reader may easily observe this in my book Catholic dogma for study and for praxis which was first published by Herder in 1995 and has had various editions since then.

The elaboration of this editorial project was carried out in close consultation with Pope Benedict XVI. Every single volume was personally authorized by the Holy Father, both in the choice of the thematic approach and the choice of the texts themselves. Minor single articles are indicated by references to where they may be found.

It is therefore legitimate to refer to this as the vital testimony of the theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, in which the center of interest was not just putting together and cataloguing the texts, but
the systematic study in depth of theological themes through a freshly-conceived arrangement which brings out their connections and allows a comprehensive overview.

By the express desire of the Holy Father, the Collected Writings are being published under the name of Joseph Ratzinger.

In order to realize this project, I established the Pope Benedict XVI Institute in Regensburg. It is the seat that will host an exhaustive documentation of the life, thought and work of the theologian, bishop and Pope Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

With the preparation of all material, published as well as previously unpublished, highlighting the biographical and theological context of each, and the beginnings of a specialized library, we have created the ideal conditions for a wide-ranging analysis of the Opera omnia.

I wish to express my sincere thanks to the Holy Father. The great demonstration of confidence expressed by him in entrusting to me the responsibility for overseeing the publication of his works, constitutes a joy for me, as well as a great commitment.

II

The present edition of the Collected Writings is meant to be the 'definitive edition' in German of the work of the theologian Joseph Ratzinger.

The objective is to have the most complete presentation possible of works that have been published before, supplemented with texts that have been unpublished before, or that have not yet appeared in German, presented in a systematic arrangement that links chronological and thematic aspects.

Pre-existing monographs are included without changes in the Collected Writings, and are supplemented from time to time by later texts that are related. According to a practice previously adopted by Joseph Ratzinger, texts of a specifically scientific or academic nature are accompanied by texts of other literary genres, like contributions to encyclopedias and book reviews, as well as homilies and meditations.

Earlier volumes of essays published at certain stages of his work as theologian, bishop and Prefect of the CDF, that put together contributions that were thematically linked, have been taken apart, and the individual texts re-ordered into the new editorial arrangement.

The Collected Writings opens - I am referring here to the numbering of the volumes, which does not necessarily correspond to their publication date) - with the two works submitted by Joseph Ratzinger for academic validation: his graduation thesis on Augustine's doctrine of the Church, and his dissertation for his Habilitation for university professorship, on the doctrine of Revelation in Bonaventure. These are supplemented with other essays and texts about Augustine and Bonaventure.

Volume II takes off from the inaugural lecture of Professor Ratzinger, The God of the faith and the God of philosophers, at the University of Bonn in 1959, to which have been added all his subsequent texts on the theme of faith and reason. It includes all his reflections on the historical and ideal foundations of Europe.

Volume IV starts with the Introduction to Christianity (1969) with other texts on the profession of faith, Baptism, conversion, following Christ and fulfillment of Christian existence.

Volumes V-XII are oriented in the broadest sense to the thematic canon of systematic theology.

Volume V has all the texts that refer to the doctrines of creation and the anthropology and doctrine of grace, presenting Mariology as the salvific concretization of the doctrine of grace.

Volume VI takes off from JESUS OF ANZARETH, and includes all the writings on Christology.

Volumes VII and VIII are dedicated to another focal point of Joseph Ratzinger's research - Ecclesiology. Specifically, Volume VII is a global collection of texts - those written in preparation for the Second Vatican Council, the accounts of the Council itself and the commentaries published after each session, as well as interventions related to the reception of the Conciliar texts.

Volume VIII contains the ecclesiological writings in the strict sense, and includes all the writings on ecumenism.

Volume IX concerns the intersection between Fundamental Theology and Dogmatics, and includes all the writings on theological gnoseology and hermeneutics, including his studies about Scriptures and the specific contexts of Revelation, Tradition, Scriptures and Magisterium.

Volume X opens with Eschatology from 1977, the only dogmatic-theological manual of Joseph Ratzinger that has been published to date, supplemented with his later texts on the themes of hope, death, resurrection and eternal life.

In Volumes XI and XII, the author focuses expressly on other aspects of central interest to his thinking. With Volume XI, The Theology of Liturgy, with which the Holy Father wished to inaugurate the publication of the Complete Writings, he places his Opera omnia under the standard of a coherent theocentrism.

Volume XII puts together texts that are relevant to ecclesiology and the doctrine of Sacraments and spiritual service, under the title of 'Announcers of words and servants of joy'.

Volume XIII brings together Joseph Ratzinger's numerous interviews, from the brief early ones, to the three that were published as books (with Vittorio Messori in 1984, and with Peter Seewald in 1996 and 2000).

Volume XIV is the most exhaustive possible collection of Joseph Ratzinger's vast homiletic production, including many sermons and meditations that have never been published before.

Volume XV brings together the autobiography that came out in 1997-1998, with other texts of biographical character and interventions of the personal type, for example, his numerous declarations on John Paul II, or on his brother Georg, as well as various discourses on jubilees, appreciations, etc.

Volume XVI offers a complete bibliography of the works of Joseph Ratzinger in German, and an exhaustive systematic index of all the volumes, which allows an overview of the interior coherence and consistency of the complete works in their entirety. The individual volumes each have detailed indices with a list of the scriptural names and references.



A few more details from the news conference, outside of the above presentation can be found in this report:


Joseph Ratzinger's Opera Omnia
Pier Giuseppe Accornero
Translated from



VATICAN CITY - At the rate of two volumes a year, the publication of the Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger as theologian -"which has, in its center, the divine will to peak to every man so that his Word may become the light that illumines every man" - will be completed in 2016.

Considering that the first book in the series has 757 pages, that each book is to come out in two volumes, and that there are 16 volumes in all, one arrives at an estimated 13,000-15,000 pages that includes footnotes, references and indices.

It is certainly a theological, cultural and editorial event of great importance.

It is significant that the first volume of the series has come out during the current Bishops' synod assembly on the Word of God - which drew great attention and study from the Bavarian theologian from his early career.

The publication is necessarily in German since Joseph Ratzinger's extensive literary production before he became Pope was predominantly written in German originally.

It is a prodigious body of work which puts together at least 700 published books and articles, plus many texts that have not previously been published.

Herder Verlag is the publisher. Translations of the first volume which was released this month will be coming soon in Italian (May 2009), English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, under the supervision of Libreria Editrice Vaticana (ELV), the Vatican publishing house which has all the rights to Joseph Ratzinger/Beneduict XVI's written aND spoken words, as well as exclusive rights to his Pontifical writings.

[The rest of the article is about Mons. Mueller's presentation.]





From the webpage of the Institut Benedikt XVI,
www.bistum-regensburg.de/borPage003770.asp
here are the titles of the 16 volumes in the COLLECTED WRITINGS:

1. Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche
Die Dissertation und weitere Studien zu Augustinus von Hippo
(The People and the House of God in Augustine's Teachings on the Church:
Dissertation and further studies on Augustine of Hippo)

2. Das Offenbarungsverständnis und die Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras
Die ungekürzte Habilitationsschrift und weitere Bonaventura-Studien
(Revelation and St. Bonvaenture's Theology of History:
The unabridged* Habilitation dissertation and other studies on Bonaventure)
[Does this mean it includes the first part of the dissertation that he was forced to cut out
when he had to re-submit it for approval by his academic advisers?]

3. Der Gott des Glaubens und der Gott der Philosophen
Die wechselseitige Verwiesenheit von fides und ratio
(The God of Faith and the God of Philosophers: The reciprocal relationship between faith and reason)

4. Einführung in das Christentum
Bekenntnis – Taufe – Nachfolge
(Introduction to Christianity: Profession of Faith - Baptism - Discipleship)

5. Herkunft und Bestimmung
Schöpfung – Anthropologie – Mariologie
(Origin and Destiny: Creation - Anthropology- Mariology)

6. Jesus von Nazareth
Spirituelle Christologie
(Jesus of Nazareth: Spiritual Christology)

7. Zur Theologie des Konzils
Texte zum II. Vatikanum
(On the Thology of the Councl: Texts on Vatican II)

8. Zeichen unter den Völkern
Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene
(Signs among Peoples: Writings on Ecclesiology and Ecumenism)

9. Offenbarung – Schrift – Tradition
Hermeneutik und Theologische Prinzipienlehre
(Revelation - Scripture - Tradition: Lessons on hermeneutic and theological principles)

10. Auferstehung und Ewiges Leben
Beiträge zur Eschatologie
(The Resurrection and Eternal Life: Essays on eschatology)

11. Theologie der Liturgie
Die sakramentale Begründung christlicher Existenz
(The Theology of Liturgy: The sacramental foundation of Christian existence) - Published October 2008

12. Künder des Wortes und Diener eurer Freude
Zur Theologie und Spiritualität des Ordo
(Announcers of the Word and Servants of your Joy: The theology and spirituality of the Ordo)

12. Im Gespräch mit der Zeit
Interviews – Stellungnahmen – Einsprüche
(In Conversation with the Times: Interviews - Positions - Objections)

14. Predigten zum Kirchenjahr
Meditationen, Gebete, Betrachtungen
(Homilies for the Liturgical Year - Meditations, Prayers, Observations)

15. Aus meinem Leben
Autobiographische Texte
(My Life: Autobiographical Texts)

16. Bibliographie und Gesamt-Register
(Bibliography and Complete Index)



10/23/08
P.S. Tomorrow's issue (10/24/08) of L'Osservatore Romano carries this picture of Bishop Mueller presenting Volume XI of the Complete Works to the Holy Father, who received him in private audience Wedensday afternoon - after the presentation news conference.







I must say it is beyond exciting and thrilling that the undertaking on the Collected Writings of Jossph Ratzinger has been done so promptly. Very few authors get to see their collected works published in their lifetime - nor have such an impressive body of work, to begin with. One inestimable advantage is that the author himself has his say on how the writings are presented - full editorial control in a way, which authors posthumously anthologized do not have.

The other wondrous thing is that there will be Part 2 of the Joseph Ratzinger literary saga - in the form of his Magisterium. The Vatican publishing house has certainly been very 'with it' in this respect - and I have been meaning to do a round-up of all the publications they have released so far on Benedict XVI in the past 42 months. The full record of the Magisterium is found in the series on the INSEGNAMENTI (Teachings), which has now been published up to Vol III, Part 2, which contains all the Papal texts in the latter part of 2007.

I believe from what I have been reading about the JR Collected Writings (JR-CW) that Part 2 of the JON book will be included in Volume VI of the JR-CW on Christology.




TERESA BENEDETTA
00giovedì 23 ottobre 2008 13:59



OR today.

At the General Audience, Benedict XVI speaks of St. Paul's teaching on the centrality of Christ:
'The principle for understanding the world'

Other Page 1 stories: Patriarch Alexei's reply to Benedict XVI's letter hand delivered earlier this month by Cardinal
Crescenzio Sepe in Moscow (photo); broken illusions on stock markets recovery; and Bishop Mueller's presentation on the
Complete Writings of Joseph Ratzinger.

Avvenire's reportage on the book presentation:
'Live and think the faith with the theologian-Pope':



THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with
- Cardinal Francis Eugene George, O.M.I., Archbishop of Chicago and president of the United States
Catholic Bishops' Conference, with USCCB Vice president Mons, Gerald Kicanas, Archbishop of Tucson,
and the USCCB Secretary-General, Mons. David Malloy.
- Mons. Charles Maung Bo, S.D.B., Archbishop of Yangon (Myanmar), on ad-limina visit
- Bishops of Ecuador (Group 4) on ad-limina visit




From yesterday's GA, courtesy of Gloria, a great 'wallpaper' shot!




TERESA BENEDETTA
00giovedì 23 ottobre 2008 14:26




Letter from Alexei II to Benedict XVI:
Common testimony to proclaim
the Gospel to mankind today
Translated from
the 10/23/08 issue of



Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, metropolitan Archbishop of Naples, during his recent visit to Moscow, was received on October 1 by Alexei II, Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias, to whom he delivered - as we reported on October 4 - a letter from Benedict XVI.


Today we publish, in its original Russian and in Italian translation, the reply from His Holiness Alexei II to the Pope. In the text, the Patriarch underscores the positive development of relations and cooperation between the Catholic Church and the Patriarchate of Moscow.

This development, based on common roots, is due to convergence on numerous questions of current relevance and above all, to the awareness of how urgent it is to proclaim the evangelical message and testify to Christian values in the contemporary world.

We are publishing herewith the Italian translation of the Patriarch's letter:


Holiness,

I wish to thank you sincerely for the letter which you sent me through His eminence, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Archbishop of Naples, during his visit to Moscow.

In response to the affectionate words of your message, I too wish to express my sentiments of most profound esteem and sincere benevolence.

I am happy at the growing prospects of developing good relations and positive cooperation between our two Churches. The solid base is our common roots and our convergent positions on many questions which today afflict the world.

We are convinced of the fact that the greatest revelation of the Gospel, 'God is love" (1 Jn 4,8), should become a vital orientation for all those who consider themselves followers of Christ, because only through our testimony to this mystery can we overcome the discord and alienation of this century, proclaiming the eternal values of Christianity to the modern world.

Holiness, with all my heart, I wish you good health and the help of God for your ministry.

With fraternal love in the Lord,


ALEXEI II
Patriarch of Moscow
and all the Russias
TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 24 ottobre 2008 00:36




At the Frankfurt Book Fair:
Explosion of interest in Vatican publications
with Benedict XVI as leading author
by Giuseppe Costa
Director, Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Translated from
the 10/22/08 issue of



Not all book fairs are the same, and the Frankfurt Book Fair is distinct precisely because it is the book fair par excellence.

It is not a mega-stall waiting for joyous scholastic masses as Torin is, nor like the one in Paris where there is high interest but the books presented are all in French. Nor is it a specialized fair like Bologna's fairs on art books and children's books.

The Frankfurt Book Fair takes place every year in mid-October and mobilizes the publishing world in all its components. It is the place for encounters and exchanges about books on an international level.

It first was such in the fifteenth century a few years after the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg when the first printers offered their precious products in nearby Mainz.

And in a Germany that had been destroyed by war, it was revived in 1949. with the participation of 205 German publishers who believed that books were essential to their country's moral reconstruction.

From 1949 onwards, there has been a continuous crescendo of growth to the present day, the 66th postwar version, with the participation of more than 8,000 publishing houses from all over the world, at least 60,000 personnel, and 400,000 books on display.

One goes to the Frankfurt Book Fair to live a cultural event that continues to inspire sensations and emotions in something that is part ritual, part publishing negotiations, part debates on the ideas that move books and therefore move the world.

The Vatican publishing house LEV has participated fo3 32 years now. and has seen a growth of interest in its products, leading to the 'explosion' of this interest lat year, and more so this year, thanks to the growing universal attention to the religious panorama in general, and in particular, to a Pope who was already an acclaimed and sought-after theologian and author.

With a best-selling author like Joseph Ratzinger, it is not difficult to attract the attention of other publishers, especially if the catalog contains a distinctive identity and details about his works. Curiosity about possible new works takes care of the rest.

What was the outcome this year for LEV and the Vatican Museums which shared a stand in Frankfurt?

Above, all there were three very successful cultural events that saw LEV as a protagonist: the presentation with herder Verlag of the first volume from the Collected Works of Joseph Ratzinger; the presentation of new publications by the Vatican Museums, with the interventions of Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo and Cardinal Karl Lehmann; and the presentation of LEV"s historiographic series undertaken with the Vatican Commission for Historical Sciences, which also led to a debate about the Vatican Archives.

Then there was the long list of publishers whom we were able to meet and interact with. Our officials spoke with about a hundred different publishing houses to present and/or negotiate contracts on rights, copyrights and various questions. Every meeting ended with options to acquire rights and a promise of follow-ups.

Thus, those interested right now in rights to publish the Complete Works of Joseph Ratzinger in their respective countries are Ignatius Press (USA), Parole et Silence (France), San Pablo (Spain and Colombia); and BAC, Encuentro and the Association of Catholic Publishers in Spain; while Orbis Books (USA), San Pablo (Spain and Colombia) and Agape Libros (Argentina)have options for Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga's book Il coraggio di prendere il largo ['Prendere il largo' is an idiom that means 'to take to the open seas', so it connotes daring, adventure, openness], a collection of the Honduran cardinal's speeches.

There was great interest for one of the most recent LEV publications, Pietro Principe's Guida essenziale alla sacra Bibbia, from publishers in France, the USA, Germany, Switzerland and Portugal.

[He mentions a number of other LEV titles.]

To all this must be added numerous options exercised on the artistic volumes dedicated to the Wednesday catecheses of Benedict XVI and on the boxed paperback sets of his various Pensieri... [Thoughts...].

The characteristic of the Frankfurt Book Fair is that, in effect, it goes on 365 days a year of follow-ups, at the end of which one can draw the balance sheet on income derived from the October exposure.

But some trends are immediately tangible, such as the widespread interest in reading and meditating on the writings of Benedict XVI and books of Christian witness. As well as the interest in books of quality notwithstanding the precarious financial atmosphere today.

Indeed, one might even speak of a revival of the book [threatened in the Internet age]....

TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 24 ottobre 2008 02:24



BENEDICT XVI'S PREFACE
to 'Theology of Liturgy'
Translated from the
Italian service of



The centrality of liturgy, the primacy of God, the orientation of prayer in the Eucharistic celebration: these are the themes that Pope Benedict XVI writes about in the Preface to the first volume that has been released of the Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger, presented yesterday at a Vatican news conference. Sergio Centofanti reports:



[The volume on liturgy is # 11 in the series, which is organized thematically rather than chronologically.]

"It would make me very happy if the new publication of my writings on liturgy could contribute to make visible the grand perspectives of our liturgy and put into right place the trivial quarrels over exterior forms", the Pope writes in the Preface to the volume on liturgy.

He underscores that to start with liturgy, as did the work of the Second Vatican Council, means affirming the primacy of God.

"Above all else, God: ... where attention to God is not determinative, every other thing loses its orientation.... And as the Benedictine Rule puts it, 'Nothing should come ahead of the work of God', ahead of the Eucharist."

The Pope confides that initially he had thought to cut out [for this re-publication] 9 pages from the book The Spirit of the Liturgy: . An introduction, so as not to re-ignite controversy. The book was first published in 2000 and is the central text of Volume XI of the Collected Writings.

Unfortunately, he adds, almost all the reviews of the book were focused only on those pages that have to do with orientation of prayer during the Mass, almost as though he, Joseph Ratzinger, had intended singlehandedly to re-introduce to the Mass the priest 'with his back turned to the people".

But he says he decided to retain everything, since he felt that his most profound intentions were quite clear. He gladly notes therefore that, for example, his suggestion "not to change structures [altars specially built for the Novus Ordo] but simply to place the Cross at the center of the altar, which both the priest and the assembly can see, to the Lord to whom we pray together."

"The concept that the priest and the assembly should be able to look at each other during prayer," he writes, "developed only in modern times and is absolutely alien to early Christianity.

"In fact, the priest and the assembly are not praying to each other, but to the one Lord. That is why they look in the same direction during prayer: towards the East, symbol of the Lord who is to come again, or where that is not physically possible, towards an image of Christ in the apse, towards a Cross, or simply, everyone together looking upward, as the Lord did during the priestly prayer the evening before his Passion."

The Pope then explains that beyond "questions that are often pedantic about this or that form", the essential intention of his liturgical writings is to place liturgy "within the vastness of the cosmos... simultaneously embracing Creation and History... at the center of which is the Savior, Christ, whom we all address in prayer."


I am trying to find if the Preface has been reported in full elsewhere, because the above report is rather inadequate.





More about the
Pope Benedict XVI Institute
Translated from sources
indicated by the webpage
www.bistum-regensburg.de/borPage003770.asp


During his Apostolic Visit to Bavaria in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI asked the Bishop of Regensburg, Mons. Gerard Ludwig Mueller, to be in charge of supervising publication of his collected theological writings before he became Pope.

To carry this out, Bishop Mueller set up the Pope Benedict XVI Institute as a division of the Diocese of Regensburg, with its physical location at the Diocesan Seminary.

The Apostolic Nuncio to Germany, Mons. Jean-Claude Perisset, blessed the premises for the Institute on March 17, 2008, after which the Institute was formally constituted with a legal document drawn on April 15, 2008.



On May 15, 2008, Bishop Mueller was received by the Pope in a private audience at the Vatican to discuss the Institute and its first project.

He was accompanied by Dr. Rudolf Voderholzer, 49, Munich-born professor of Dogmatic Theology and History of Dogma at the theological Faculty of Trier, who is a recognized expert and scholar on Joseph Ratzinger's theology, named by Mueller as Director of the Institute, and Dr. Christian Schaller, the bishop's theological consultant as resident director.

A historical footnote is that during Prof. Ratzinger's years at the University of Regensburg, most of his lectures were typed up and reproduced on the premises of the seminary. Now, 35 years later, some of those copies have come back to be part of the Institute archives and reference library.

The official inauguration of the Institute takes place October 30, with the presentation of Volume XI on the Theology of Liturgy, to the Apostolic Nuncio. Also attending will be Mons. Robert Zoellitsch, president of the German bishops conference, which is underwriting part of the publication costs of the Collected Writings.

Bishop Mueller says the material for the Collected Writingscomes from some 150 books and 1500 articles, reviews, homilies, interviews and radio-TV broadcasts, as well as previously unpublished material such as the first part of Joseph Ratzinger's Habilitation dissertation which he cut off when he resubmitted it for approval by his faculty advisers, as well as lectures and presentations he made based on his experience as a theological consultant at the Second Vatican Council.

Three staff members of the Institute are in charge of gathering material for its specialized library that will facilitate research on Joseph Ratzinger's work, including books and articles written about him and his work, as well as the primary and secondary sources used by him for his writings.



The webpage links to a book review in Die Tagespost, which, among other things, quotes more from the Pope's Preface to the volume on liturgy, and is informative about the other material included in the 760-page volume. But it is lengthy and must be translated.



benefan
00venerdì 24 ottobre 2008 03:40

Pope meets with old seminary friend

Rome, Oct 23, 2008 / 02:49 pm (CNA).- At the conclusion of this week’s Wednesday General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI greeted one of his old friends from seminary, Father Hans Waxenberger, with whom he briefly conversed about “the years of his youth,” the L’Osservatore Romano reported.

The Vatican daily reported that Father Waxenberger remembers the young Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, as “a outstanding student, first in his class, an avid reader and always interested in the Church and in matters of faith.”

Father Waxenberger was secretary to Cardinal Michael Faulhaber, who was Archbishop of München and Freising in 1951 and ordained Joseph Ratzinger to the priesthood on June 29 of that year.

Cardinal Faulhaber, he recalled, was “a great friend of then-Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII), the Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria, and it was because of his action that the Church in Germany was able to survive during the years of the Nazi regime.”
TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 24 ottobre 2008 06:26





The Camorra and
the anti-rhetorical Pope
by ALDO MARIA VALLI
Translated from

Oct. 21, 2008


So the Pope failed to mention the Camorra? Big deal! Let's be serious!

It is true that in Agrigento, Sicily, in 1993, John Paul II launched a historic invective against the Mafia ("Convert! One day, God's justice will come!"), but to make comparisons between different circumstances is always arbitrary.

When the Pope visits a community, he does so to confirm his brothers in the faith, and Benedict XVI, by his mere presence in Pompeii (after having visited Naples exactly a year earlier), already sent an explicit message of solidarity and encouragement to everyone, including all those who, in one way or other, are fighting against illegality and crime.

His choice not to mention the Camorra phenomenon was a sign of sensitivity towards the local population who cannot be associated only and always with delinquency.

The deputy director of the Vatican Press Office, Fr. Ciro Benedettini, explained that the 'strictly spiritual' nature of the Pope's visit dictated the style, and that the Pope preferred to appeal to positive energies instead of wagging his finger against evils that are well known.

Everything can be said of Papa Ratzinger but not a tendency for rhetoric and demagoguery. Neither of which will do anything to bring down the Camorra. On the contrary, they tend to serve their purpose.

"My heart remains close tho this land and this community. I entrust you all to the Blessed Virgin of the Holy Rosary." This the Pope said. This is what counts.

And did he not exhort to "rescue and promote development of this region"? And to "persevere in the good without yielding to compromises", to put oneself "in the service of the poor and the least in society", to be the 'motors for social and religious renewal"?

And that is what a father does: to encourage his children without mortifying them.

Unlike those who mechanically attach the stereotype image of forgotten and oppressed people to rural populations, the Pope treats them as responsible adults. It is an example that must be followed!

Then there are those who criticize what they consider to be an anachronistic denunciation by the Pope of anti-clericalism. They should listen well to what the Pope said.

Speaking of Bartolo Longo, who founded the Shrine in Pompeii, and who had been transformed as St. Paul was, "from persecutor to Apostle", Benedict explained that Longo's spiritual crisis and conversion appear of great relevance today, because it is emblematic of something that is happening often in our time.

As a student, under the influence of the 19th-century immanentistic and positivistic philosophers, Longo "strayed far from the Christian faith to become a militant-anticlerical who even indulged in spiritistic and superstitious practices". Unfortunately, the Pope, added, "similar tendencies are not lacking in our time".

How can you say he is wrong? In the time of Longo (1841-1926), the term was 'anti-clerical', today one says 'anti-Christian' but the target is the same: the Church.

If one looks at it with a secularized viewpoint, the entire reality of the Shrine at Pompeii would seem anachronistic.

But Longo did not limit himself to urging people to pray the Rosary. From that prayer, he drew the strength to realize numerous works of assistance and charity, including orphanages and homes to care for the children of prisoners (an idea which went against the prevailing mentality then that children of criminals could only become criminal themselves).

And so Benedict XVI said, "Here in Pompeii, one understands that love of God and love for neighbor are inseparable". That is the ultimate message he left, and the one which should be meditated on, rather than to question and reproach him for presumed omissions.


TERESA BENEDETTA
00venerdì 24 ottobre 2008 06:50


Here is a follow-up to a calendar item posted on this thread a few weeks ago, about an event held at the initiative of teh United Sattes Ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon, one of the few people who appreciates the import of the Holy Father's speech to the UN last April and who has been following through on it. Fittingly, this report comes from Ambassador Glendon's daughter, Elizabeth Lev.who has been writing about Rome and Rome events for ZENIT, long before her mother was named ambassador.



The 'Declaration' at 60:
The wobbly history of human rights
By Elizabeth Lev




ROME, OCT. 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- This autumn the Romans have reaped a greater harvest than the usual grapes and olives. The seeds planted 60 years ago this year by the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights are bearing copious fruit through a series of conferences organized by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.

The daylong forum, "For Everyone, Everywhere: Universal Human Rights and the Challenge of Diversity," was held at the Istituto Maria Santissima Bambina on Oct. 16. The hall was packed as prelates, ambassadors, professors and students came to listen to a lineup of remarkable speakers.

While the Declaration has flourished over these six decades, its growth has been unruly, stilted in some places, while forced into hybrid hothouses in others.

Benedict XVI, during his historic speech at the United Nations, pointed out some of the threats to the document in our contemporary age and the need to re-fertilize its foundations.

The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon, responding to the papal invitation to re-evaluate the post-World War II human rights project, opened the conference with a paper by political theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago.

Professor Elshtain vividly and poignantly explained how the universality of the Declaration has been called into question in the last few decades both by those who refer to it as a "Western document," pertinent only to the thinking and attitudes of the European-influenced parts of the world, and by interest groups within the West itself who have begun to fragment the document, as if it were a sort of à la carte menu.

Both groups, explained Elshtain, found it easy to reinterpret the document because they chose to ignore its fundamental understanding of the dignity of the human person, Catholic social teaching's greatest contribution to the creation of the declaration.

The scene for the next section of the conference was set by a beautiful video produced by the embassy staff, with archival footage of the historic moment in Paris on Dec. 10, 1948, when the Declaration was approved by the U.N. General Assembly. The video featured the original members of the United Nations' first Commission on Human Rights.

Ambassador Glendon then paid tribute to the "great generation" of diplomats who served on that commission, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt. She described the Declaration's adoption without a single dissenting vote as something of a miracle, considering the cultural diversity of the commission's 18 members and the political minefield in which they had to work.

Relations between Russia and the West were deteriorating rapidly, Ambassador Glendon explained, and conflicts were erupting in Palestine, Greece, Korea and China. Yet only eight of the 58 member states abstained: Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the six-member Soviet bloc.

Despite the Chinese Civil War that would lead to the birth of the People's Republic of China the year after the Declaration was adopted, one of the principal authors of the document was the Chinese delegate, the Confucian philosopher, P'eng ch'un Chang.

Remarkably, René Cassin, a French Jew who championed the State of Israel, and Lebanese delegate Charles Malik, who was the chief spokesman at the time for the Arab League, managed to find a common ground to work fruitfully together on the Declaration under emotionally charged conditions.

Harvest of the wisdom of many cultures, works of many different hands, and accepted by 48 nations, the Declaration certainly seemed universal when it was adopted. What has since happened to its ability to speak to all men?

Ambassador Glendon pointed out that certain authoritarian regimes began to lay the charge of "Western cultural imperialism" at the door of the Human Rights Project. She noted that those charges were followed, ironically, by efforts of Western special interest groups to formulate their agendas in terms of human rights.

"The more the human rights project showed its power in places like South Africa and Eastern Europe," Glendon said, "the more intense became the efforts to capture its prestige for various ends, not all of which were respectful of human dignity."

She strongly urged all participants to celebrate this important anniversary by reading the document, not as a laundry list, but as a "whole with mutually conditioning parts." Booklets of the document were distributed to all present.

Glendon's remarks were followed by an extraordinary panel of speakers; Professor Hsin-chi Kuan of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Habib Malik, son of U.N. delegate Charles Malik and professor at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, gave papers in a session chaired by the Japanese ambassador to the Holy See, Kagefumi Ueno.

These compelling interventions, frank and forthright regarding situations both past and present, supported the proposition that there was and is a universal basis for the notion of human rights that resonated with people in the East and Middle East, as well as the West.

Papers by Cardinal Renato Martino and Professor Janne Matlary helped, respectively, to relate the Declaration to Catholic social thought, and to reground it in the original vision of its authors, as an integral text with interdependent parts.

During the musical interlude in the late afternoon, Ambassador Glendon proved that some things are indeed universal, such as the capacity of the human heart to be moved by the power of song.

Moist eyes were seen among both Eastern and Western visitors as the Amazing Grace Gospel Choir sang "Oh, Freedom," and the setting of Shakespeare's "What a Piece of Work is Man" from the musical "Hair."

Legionary of Christ Father Thomas Williams, author of "Who Is My Neighbor? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights," closed the day's session by addressing the nagging question of how to recognize a universal foundation for universal rights.

Those who framed the Declaration 60 years ago drew from Catholic social teaching and the idea of human dignity to draft it, while the intervening years have hacked away at that very foundation resulting in an increasing fragmentation of the notion of universal human rights.

Father Williams contrasted two incompatible visions of human dignity: one that sees dignity as possessed by all human beings in equal measure, and only by human beings, and a second vision that admits of degrees of dignity both among humans and among other species as well.

Only the first vision, the priest asserted, is capable of grounding universal human rights. Without this grounding, he warned, the Human Rights Project will continue to evolve into a simple list of special interests determined by consensus and subject to the power plays of pressure groups.


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