Pope Benedict XVI Roundup!

An occasional roundup of news, articles and commentary on Pope Benedict XVI

Lent - 2006

• The 2006 Message for Lent, Pope Benedict XVI returns to many themes addressed in his first encyclical. He protests what his predecessor described as the "gradual secularization of salvation" -- the superficial reduction of Christianity to a purely moral humanism, concentrating on the temporal welfare of man to the exclusion of our souls:

  We cannot ignore the fact that many mistakes have been made in the course of history by those who claimed to be disciples of Jesus. Very often, when having to address grave problems, they have thought that they should first improve this world and only afterwards turn their minds to the next. The temptation was to believe that, in the face of urgent needs, the first imperative was to change external structures. The consequence, for some, was that Christianity became a kind of moralism, ‘believing’ was replaced with ‘doing’. Rightly, therefore, my Predecessor, Pope John Paul II, of blessed memory, observed: “The temptation today is to reduce Christianity to merely human wisdom, a pseudo-science of well-being. In our heavily secularized world, a ‘gradual secularization of salvation’ has taken place, so that people strive for the good of man, but man who is truncated…We know, however, that Jesus came to bring integral salvation” (Redemptoris Missio, 11).

  Domenico Bettinelli discusses the Pope's reference to "integral salvation" and its meaning in the writing of John Paul II.

• "A Propitious Moment to Be Converted to Love" - translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered during the general audience today, Ash Wednesday, in St. Peter's Square. March 1, 2006:

  The life of a Christian is a life of faith, founded on the Word of God and nourished by it. In the trials of life and in each temptation, the secret of victory consists in listening to the Word of truth and rejecting with determination the lie of evil.

  This is the authentic and central program of the Lenten Season: to listen to the Word of truth, to live, speak and do the truth, to reject lies that poison humanity and are the door to all evils. It is urgent, therefore, during these 40 days, to again listen to the Gospel, the Lord's Word, Word of truth, so that in every Christian, in each one of us, the awareness be reinforced of the truth that has been given, that he has given us, to live it and be his witnesses.

• "Memento, Ruini, Quia Pulvis es...." - Rocco Palmo has photos of the Holy Father receiving the imposition of ashes.

• From the Philipines, Fr. Odon de Castro has devoted his blog, Gloria Oliva, "to promote the messages of Pope Benedict XVI and harness small monastic Benedictine communities in his and the service of the Church." [Update According to one reader, the community to which this blogger belongs is presently in schism, a legal document noting in part:

  "Unfortunately, the Caryana Movement was denied canonical recognition and its spiritual director [Fr. Odon de Castro] was himself expelled from the Benedictine order and stripped of his priestly functions by the Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin."

  For further details, see this discussion from Vita Brevis (January 12, 2006)].

  I thank our reader for their word of caution. I guess one can never too be careful. It looks to be a promising blog -- as Vita Brevis noted, there is a certain irony in a schismatic who blogs in support of the Pope. The least we can do is pray for de Castro's reunion with Mother Rome.

Relenquishing of Title "Patriarch of the West"

• The motivation for dropping of the title 'Patriarch of the West' by Benedict XVI has prompted a great deal of speculation and commentary by Catholic bloggers including Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. and Rocco Palmo Whispers in the Loggia.

  This week's "Word from Rome" by Vatican correspondent John Allen Jr. provides an excellent roundup of perspectives on the subject, including Jesuit Fr. Robert Taft, an expert on Eastern Christianity at Rome's Oriental Institute, and Msgr. Michael Magee, an American who recently defended a dissertation on the institution of patriarchs at Rome's Gregorian University.

  According to John Allen Jr., "While initial speculation construed the move as a gesture of ecumenical sensitivity to the Orthodox, most experts say the real logic was almost certainly the exact reverse - a rejection of attempts to impose Eastern concepts upon the ecclesiology of the Catholic Church."

  Also discussed by Allen is the proposition "by theologians who favor greater collegiality . . . that Western Christianity create new patriarchates as a way of assigning greater autonomy and authority to local churches." Allen notes that the very idea was floated by Fr. Joseph Ratzinger in a 1969 essay "Primacy and Episcopacy," which appeared in the book Das neue Volk Gottes -- a translation of which appears here courtesy of Fr. Joseph A. Komonchak. The key passage cited:

  "The image of a centralized state which the Catholic church presented right up to the council does not flow only from the Petrine office, but from its strict amalgamation with the patriarchal function which grew ever stronger in the course of history and which fell to the bishop of Rome for the whole of Latin Christendom. The uniform canon law, the uniform liturgy, the uniform appointment of bishops by the Roman center: all these are things which are not necessarily part of the primacy but result from the close union of the two offices. For that reason, the task to consider for the future will be to distinguish again and more clearly between the proper function of the successor of Peter and the patriarchal office and, where necessary, to create new patriarchates and to detach them from the Latin church. To embrace unity with the pope would then no longer mean being incorporated into a uniform administration, but only being inserted into a unity of faith and communion, in which the pope is acknowledged to have the power to give binding interpretations of the revelation given in Christ, whose authority is accepted whenever it is given in definitive form."

  Ratzinger concluded at the time: "In the not too distant future one could consider whether the churches of Asia and Africa, like those of the East, should not present their own forms as autonomous 'patriarchates' or 'great churches' or whatever such ecclesiae in the Ecclesia might be called in the future."

  Catholic World News also reported this week that Bishop Hilarion of Vienna, spokesperson for the Russian Orthodox Church, was not impressed by the gesture complaining that it did not advance ecumenical prospects.

Pope Benedict in Print

• Interested in Lenten reading from Pope Benedict XVI? - Pauline Books and Media have published Benedict XVI's The Way of the Cross, presenting the Stations which Cardinal Ratzinger gave for Lent 2005 at the request of his predecessor. (The stations can be found on the Vatican website as well.

  Also appropriate for this season is Journey to Easter : Spiritual Reflections for the Lenten Season, The Crossroad Publishing Company - featuring Cardinal Ratzinger's Lenten meditations for Pope John Paul in 1983. (A brief excerpt of which is available at Gerald Augustinus' The Cafeteria is Closed).

• Book Review: Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, by Jay at Living Catholicism, on the published lectures by Pope Benedict XVI and Marcello Pera, a philosopher of science and present of the Italian senate, with an introduction by George Weigel:

  Mr. Pera holds his own in the initial discussion. He does an excellent job pointing out the problems of relativism and why they must be avoided going forward. He also goes a little further in talking about the Church. Mr. Pera refers to the “relativism of the theologians” and points out that religious dialogue has become ecumenism, a “inclusiveness often associated with . . . the Second Vatican Council.” This, he says, inhibits us from really dealing with Islam, since we don’t feel correct in saying that Christianity is the better religion – we use ecumenism, rather than apologetics.

  That’s a point I’ve been pondering since reading the book and will probably continue to think about in order to really grasp the significance of his points. Mr. Pera does get a little crazy in his letter to Ratzinger when he actually suggests a new state-version of Christianity, which provides some insight into how he sees the Church. You’ll have to read the book to hear Cardinal Ratzinger’s rebuttal.

  Without Roots arrived in the mail this week and I'm just getting around to reading it. Thanks to Jay it sounds like provocative reading and I'm looking forward to tackling it this week.

Further Commentary on Deus Caritas Est

• The Secret of Love, According to Benedict XVI, Zenit News Service. Feb. 7, 2006. Breaking with tradition, Benedict XVI decided to present personally his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" to readers of Famiglia Cristiana, the biggest weekly magazine in Italy.

  According to the Holy Father, "I only wished to respond to a couple of very concrete questions for Christian life" -- concerning the first part: Is it possible to love God? Can we really love our "neighbor" when he is strange or even disagreeable? With her commandments and prohibitions, does not the Church embitter the joy of "eros," of feeling ourselves loved, which pushes us toward the other and seeks to be transformed into union?

  And concerning the second: Can the Church leave this service to other philanthropic organizations? Would it not be better to promote an order of justice in which there are no needy, and charity would become something superfluous? -- A good introduction from the Holy Father.

• Philosophy Behind "Deus Caritas Est" - Zenit News Service interviews one of my personal favorites, Monsignor Robert Sokolowski, philosophy professor at Catholic University of America and author of Introduction to Phenomenology (highly recommended) and the soon to be published Christian Faith And Human Understanding: Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, And the Human Person. Here's a little taste of the interview:

  Q: Why did Benedict XVI mention the philosophers Descartes and Nietzsche in an encyclical about love, both human and divine?

  Monsignor Sokolowski: He also mentions Plato and Aristotle later in the encyclical.

  Descartes is alluded to only in an anecdote, but Nietzsche is mentioned right at the beginning, as saying that Christianity has poisoned "eros." He is mentioned here to provide the counter-position to what the Pope wishes to show -- that Christianity does not neglect the deepest wants and needs of human beings.

  The love that God reveals to us is not gnostic; it reaches into, heals and elevates all our desires, including those involved in sustenance and procreation.

  The Pope uses Nietzsche in the way that St. Thomas Aquinas uses adversaries at the beginning of his treatment of a question: He presents the opposing view fairly as the sharp contrast to what he wants to show. Nietzsche is fundamentally unsound, of course, but he raises very good questions and is always a good foil for philosophical reflection.

  Q: Does Benedict XVI adhere to a particular philosophical tradition in the way the Pope John Paul II was known as a Thomist and personalist?

  Monsignor Sokolowski: I think that the work of Benedict XVI could be said to resemble the Christian Platonism one finds in the Fathers of the Church.

  Also, his extensive and thoughtful survey of the various uses of words, in both current and historical texts and discourse, makes one think of Aristotle's and Heidegger's way of looking for philosophical phenomena in the way people speak about things.

• Pope Benedict featured in America. According to Mark Mossaj, SJ (blogging at You Duped Me, Lord), the March 13 issue of America will focus on Benedict's encyclical Deus Caritas Est. Mossaj posts some excerpts from articles, including this from Fr. Richard Ryscavage, S.J.:

  In the minds of various Catholic social activists, justice should always trump charity. Pope Benedict XVI disagrees. He uses the strongest teaching instrument of the papacy to affirm the intrinsic salience of the Catholic Church’s charitable work.

  , and Fr. Robert Imbelli:

  ". . . the transformation of eros in agape entails the transformation of the subject, the lover. Encounter with the living Christ, especially in the Eucharist, if it takes place in Spirit and in truth, transforms the disciple so that she or he becomes a new self, a eucharistic self.

  Sounds like a good issue, watch for it.

• The Love Behind The Rules, by Mary Beth Bonacci, on Pope Benedict's choice of love as the subject of his encyclical:

  It was my theory that this wonderful, loving, pastoral man is saying "Finally!" Finally he has the opportunity to go beyond the "rules," to explore the heart of the Christian message, which is the Heart of God — love. "Deus Caritas Est" is Latin for "God is Love." That simple truth — the subject of all of those collages we made in CCD back in the ‘70’s — is the guiding principle behind all of those rules. And without understanding the love behind the rules we are, as St. Paul said, no more than "sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."

Other News and Commentary

Via American Papist Source: AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano

• Benedict XVI's Letter on Monsignor Giussani - On February 21, 2006, Benedict XVI sent a letter to the president of Communion and Liberation, to mark the first anniversary of the death of Monsignor Luigi Giussani, founder of the ecclesial movement. Monsignor Giussani died Feb. 22, 2005, in Milan, at age 82.

  David Jones of "La Nouvelle Theologie"; Steven of Being & Nothingness also reflect.

• Benedict XVI, Live. Fifteen Questions, and As Many Responses, by Sandro Magister. L'Espresso. On March 2nd, the priests of the diocese of Rome met their bishop, Benedict XVI, and his cardinal vicar, Camillo Ruini. for a little Q&A:

  For the occasion, the pope did not read from a text prepared ahead of time, but responded spontaneously to the questions that the priests posed to him. He did the same thing last July 25 with the priests of the diocese of Aosta, during his vacation in the Alps. In both cases, the conversation took place behind closed doors, without journalists being present.

  As back then, so also this time the question and answer session brought out the pope’s viewpoints with the freedom typical of an open conversation.

  The complete transcript of the conversation was published by L'Osservatore Romano in Italian, an extract of which appears courtesy of Sandro Magister -- with topics ranging from topics ranging from the Bible and the Qur'an to Pope Pius XVII ("Pius XII was the pope of my youth. We all venerated him. As has rightly been said, he loved the German people very much") to women's participation in the governance of the Church to the relationship between creation and history.

• In 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger visited the cemetary of La Cambe to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy (D-Day). Not much was published about the event, but Timothy Ryback used it in a recent story for the New Yorker. The article is not available online, but you can get the gist of it from a post by Daniel Sauerwein (How Cardinal Ratzinger Dealt with Germany’s Past History News Network, February 13, 2006):

  The pope’s membership in the Hitler Youth when he was a young man became an issue upon his elevation to the papacy. Ryback observes, however, that the pope was enrolled in the group, which may mean that his membership was involuntary. But Ryback argues that the pope was reluctant to reflect critically on his own past (unlike many post-war Germans). This received little media attention, he notes.

  Before he became pope, Benedict served in many capacities. Ryback takes particular interest in his service as archbishop of Munich. Ryback mentions that the Dachau concentration camp was located near Munich and that some people criticized the pope for not visiting the site often while archbishop. However supporters note that the pope was only archbishop for five years, during which there were no notable anniversaries or events that might have warranted a major visit.

  As Mr. goes on to explain, "Ryback's main focus is not the pope, but the relationship between the Vatican and the Nazi state."

  In Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!, Professor Scott Carlson (The Examined Life) takes issue with Ryback, likening his hermeneutic to that used by Daniel Goldhagen in his collective indictment of the German people in Hitler's Willing Executioners (Random House, 1996):

  The upshot of the essay, which runs from page 66 to page 73 with only one large photo and a few cartoons to break the pace, appears to be that Ratzinger/Benedict was morally amiss to say as little as he did about, not Nazi attrocities, but the guilt of the entire German people for allowing those Nazi attrocities. . . .

  Ryback's rant does not foam at the mouth as Goldhagen does, but it labors mighty hard to work up a lather over statements and actions that, upon reflection, seem perfectly harmless and, upon closer inspection still, are evidently benign.

  Carlson sees in both Goldhagen and Ryback a tendency "to conflate individuals and institutions", a "reification of institutional structures" which is unfortunately all too prevalent in our time.

  Cardinal Ratzinger's address was originally published, and later appeared in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; a translation was later published in the journal Logos: In Search of Freedom; Against Reason Fallen Ill and Religion Abused.

• A Clear and Coherent Direction in the Beginning of Pope Benedict’s Pontificate - Mid February, Italian columnist Sandro Magister (L'Espresso) gave an interview to Catholic leaders in Washington on the first ten months of Benedict XVI's pontificate. The event was sponsored by the Athanasius Conferences -an iniciative of the Morley Institute- and Catholic News Agency. Magister made the case that "it is possible to identify a clear and coherent direction in the beginning of Pope Benedict’s pontificate." The full text of Magister's interview is available here.

• Ratzinger Studies 101, by Joseph Pronechen. National Catholic Register Feb. 12-18, 2006:

  Not even a year has passed since the last wisp of white smoke rose over Rome, and already courses on the thinking of the Holy Father formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have begun springing up.

  And they’re attracting students by the classful. . . .

On a lighter note . . .

• On March 3, 2006, the Holy Father visited the headquarters of Vatican Radio, which was celebrating it's 75th anniversary. The full text of the Pope's address is available in translation from Zenit News Service (A "Great Family Which Has No Borders").

  The employees of Vatican Radio presented the Pope with an I-Pod Nano:

  Hundreds of radio journalists, sound engineers and support staff lined the radio's hallways to greet the pope and present him with gifts, . . .

  "We don't have a huge gift to give to the pope, but we do have small signs of our work" to give him, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican Radio's general director, told Catholic News Service.

  Though the white iPod nano is tiny, it still made an impression on the pope. When the head of the radio's technical and computer support department, Mauro Milita, identified himself and handed the pope the boxed iPod, the pope was said to have replied, "Computer technology is the future."

  The pope's new 2-gigabyte digital audio player already was loaded with a sampling of the radio's programming in English, Italian and German and musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. The stainless steel back was engraved with the words "To His Holiness, Benedict XVI" in Italian. . . .

  The iPod also contains an English-language radio drama on the life of St. Thomas a Becket and a 10-minute feature on the creation of Vatican Radio, with original sound clips of the inventor of the radio, Guglielmo Marconi, and Vatican Radio's founder, Pope Pius XI.

  As reported by Ananova, the Holy Father has taken a liking to his new toy:

  He has been spotted around the Vatican using his iPod and distinctive white earphones.

  According to The Sun a spokesman said: “He is very pleased with the iPod. The Holy Father likes to unwind listening to it and is of the opinion that this sort of technology is the future.”

  The Queen, President Bush and Tony Blair all own an iPod.

• The House of Benedict, by Rocco Palmo. Whispers in the Loggia educates us in ecclesial fashion and dress -- an expanded version of an article in the New York Times.

Pope Benedict XVI Roundup!

The big news, of course, is the release of Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. For those who've missed it, I've posted a lengthy roundup of reactions and commentary to the encyclical last week. What follows is the usual roundup of various events and Benedict-related material that caught my eye.

• February 2006 will see the publication of Benedict XVI's latest book, Without Roots: Europe, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, co-authored by Marcello Pera, president of the Italian Senate.

  There was a minor flap on Amy Welborn's over the fact that Ignatius didn't get dibs, but as Mark Brumely clarified: "Ignatius Press was asked to take a pass on the book, notwithstanding our ongoing relationship with B 16. Since we already have half a dozen other B 16 projects in the works, we did as we were asked." (Two of those books "in the works" is God's Revolution, an anthology of the Holy Father's addresses during Youth Day; another being Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, collecting then-Cardinal Ratzinger's addresses on the erosion of Europe's Christian roots).

  A rather hostile review of Without Roots by Domenico Pacitti has already been posted to justbookreviews.com, while Commonweal's editor(s) provide a brief summary (A Hospitable Place Volume CXXXIII, Number 1. Jan. 13, 2006):

  Benedict’s concern over the secularization of Europe and his hopes for its re-evangelization are widely known. Without Roots developed from a 2004 exchange then-Cardinal Ratzinger had with Marcello Pera, a secular philosopher and president of the Italian Senate. Pera’s analysis of Europe’s moral malaise is essentially compatible with the pope’s own assessment. Both men think Europe’s alleged loss of identity and vitality requires “primarily cultural remedies,” remedies that can shore up social institutions such as marriage and the family while combating the materialistic and utilitarian biases of science and secular morality. To that end, Pera proposes the cultivation of a “nondenominational Christian religion” or “Christian civil religion.” At first blush, one would hardly expect Benedict to warm to what sounds like a doctrinally anemic version of the faith. Yet he welcomes Pera’s advocacy of a “consensus that, irrespective of membership in a specific faith community, accords a public, sustaining value to the fundamental concepts of Christianity.”

  Benedict is too grudging in acknowledging the peace, prosperity, and democracy Europe has achieved over the last sixty years, much of it the work of Christian Social Democratic parties. Still, his discussion of the continent’s religious and secular history is provocative, and his high regard for the American tradition of separation of church and state may also come as a surprise. His feel for the dynamism of religious communities in the United States and his critique of the weaknesses of mainline Protestantism has a familiar neoconservative ring to it, but it is good to hear the pope affirm the need for compromise in the political sphere. “The church,” he writes, “does not wish to impose on others that which they do not understand.”

  Subscribers of First Things have already received a preview, as a chapter was published in the January 2006 issue under the title Europe and Its Discontents.

• On Reading the Pope, Pt. 1 and Part II, by Fr. James V. Schall. Ignatius Insight "Already in reading the remarkable amount of material the present Holy Father writes each week, it is clear, as in the case of his predecessor, that it is a full time job just to keep up with him." Fr. Schall offers a valuable guide to the topics touched on by Pope Benedict in recent letters and addresses.

• Likewise, Providence College assistant professor of biology and adjunct professor of theology Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco lends some assistance Reading Genesis with Cardinal Ratzinger (Homiletic & Pastoral Review).

• Pope Benedict has released his Message for Lent 2006, touching on themes familiar to his first encyclical. Recalling his predecessor's observation that "The temptation today is to reduce Christianity to merely human wisdom, a pseudo-science of well-being." The Holy Father reminds us that

  the primary contribution that the Church offers to the development of mankind and peoples does not consist merely in material means or technical solutions. Rather, it involves the proclamation of the truth of Christ, Who educates consciences and teaches the authentic dignity of the person and of work; it means the promotion of a culture that truly responds to all the questions of humanity. . . .

  The examples of the saints and the long history of the Church's missionary activity provide invaluable indications of the most effective ways to support development. Even in this era of global interdependence, it is clear that no economic, social, or political project can replace that gift of self to another through which charity is expressed. Those who act according to the logic of the Gospel live the faith as friendship with God Incarnate and, like Him, bear the burden of the material and spiritual needs of their neighbors. They see it as an inexhaustible mystery, worthy of infinite care and attention. They know that he who does not give God gives too little; as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta frequently observed, the worst poverty is not to know Christ. Therefore, we must help others to find God in the merciful face of Christ. Without this perspective, civilization lacks a solid foundation.

• The Year of Two Popes, by Paul Elie. Readers might recognize Elie as the author of the biography The Life You Save May Be Your Own (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), an impressive biographical study of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor. Unfortunately, Amy Welborn reviews Elie's article and finds it lacking:

  I think what is missing in this piece is an understanding of how serious Christians understand service and discipleship. No one argues that ego can always get injected into the mix, or that motives, even of good people, are always pure and unmixed. But Elie, while not ascribing outright deviousness to Ratzinger, does indeed imply that he was angling for the job of running the Church his own way. But even based on his own evidence, one can come to a very different conclusion, based, as I said, on a different understanding of what should motivate Christians, and, indeed, does motivate many of them: to discern the call of the Spirit to do what is necessary. So if John Paul was unable to engage substantively with visiting bishops, and if ad limina visits are supposed to serve a certain purpose which and if the Pope cannot engage or make use of the information that might come out of those meetings...why should everything come to a halt? Someone needs to step in and hear those concerns and make sure that the process works the best it can under the circumstances. And if, during those meetings, Ratzinger was, indeed, interested and attentive (which is what I've heard , and what Elie reports) - why does that imply that he's interested because he's trying to curry favor or make a good impression in order to serve his own interests - for that is the implication of this article. Why can't it be that Ratzinger truly was concerned and interested? One of the things that has struck me about this Pope since I started reading and paying attention to him, is not just how intellectually deep and adept he is, but of how understanding he is of the human condition, and not just abstractly, but as it is lived in 2006. That "desert" imagery in his homily at his inaugrual Mass sealed the deal for me on that score, and nothing I've heard since has disappointed me.

  The Catholic Outsider also offers a substantial three-part critical review of the article (The Atlantic and How Benedict was elected January 12, 2006).

  Rocco Palmo, on the other hand, apparently loved it ("It's worth the five bucks. Don't walk -- RUN . . . Elie's dead-on with his analysis, mostly as he's saying a lot of things I've been saying for months") but points out some discrepancies in Elie's rendering of John Paul's opening of the Holy Door at St. Paul Outside the Walls.

• Pope Benedict to visit the United States in 2007? -- The story began with a comment made by Cardinal Keeler of Baltimore during a radio interview. Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia) has additional speculation as to the time and motivation for the visit.

• The Vatican has recently reasserted its legal ownership of the copyright to works by Pope Benedict XVI. The news that a Milanese publishing house had already been sent a bill for more than $18,000 to a Milanese publisher for the inclusion of 30 lines from B16's speech to the conclave in an anthology has prompted some to charge the Vatican with "cashing in" [on the Pope's words] (Richard Owen, Times UK Jan. 23, 2005), but Catholic News Service has further details:

  . . . in a Jan. 23 statement the Vatican publisher said the introduction to the 124-page book explicitly told readers, "Everything you will find here, after the introduction, comes from the pen or the voice of Joseph Ratzinger," now Pope Benedict.

  The book was being sold for about $12 a copy, and it was published without the knowledge or consent of the Vatican, the Vatican said.

  Francesca Angeletti, who handles copyright permissions for the Vatican, told Catholic News Service the Vatican wanted to ensure the integrity of texts attributed to the pope and to prevent publishers from making money off his works without the knowledge of the Vatican and without giving the Vatican appropriate compensation.

  Newspapers, magazines and bishops' conferences, she said, still may publish papal texts without paying royalties as long as the texts are not changed and a line is included saying the text has been copyrighted by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

  Question: how does this affect the frequent citation of the Holy Father's works by Catholic bloggers and periodicals in the United States?

• On January 8, 2006, Benedict performed the first baptisms of his pontificate, abandoning the prepared texts for the occasion to launch an impassioned denunciation of irresponsible sex and a "culture of death" (Crispian Balmer / Reuters. January 8, 2006). Here is the transcript of Benedict's baptism homily, courtesy of Zenit News Service.

• No place like home: Papal apartment gets extreme makeover, by John Thavis. Catholic News Service January 5, 2006, covering the transformation of the papal apartment, badly in need of renovations. I only mention the article as it notes the Holy Father's reaction to his new library:

  . . . while the pope didn't whoop or jump up and down at the unveiling, he made it clear he was pleased with the results.

  "I can only admire the things you've done . . . I really like my new library, with that antique ceiling. For me it's like being surrounded by friends, now that there are books on the shelf," he said.

  The floors were the original 16th-century marble slabs and inlay, restored to their original luster. The library solved the problem of where to put the pope's 20,000 books, which he did not want to leave in storage somewhere.

  Twenty thousand! -- Oh, to browse the shelves of the Holy Father's personal collection. I know I am not alone in this wish. =)

• Pope Benedict XVI's Emerging Papacy: 'A Service to Joy' - a profile of the Holy Father by Tablet writer Robert Mickens. St. Anthony Messenger February 2006.

• According to a "recent" survey (February 2002), Pope Benedict XVI has written "some 86 books, 471 articles and prefaces, and 32 other contributions." Concentrating on the scholarly works, the Reverend D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, a former doctoral student of the Holy Father, takes on the ambitious task of presenting The Mind of Benedict XVI, The Claremont Review Dec. 23, 2005.

  According to Twomey, the "central question" of Benedict's thought on Christianity and the modern world is: "How can Christianity become a positive force for the political world without [itself] being turned into a political instrument and without on the other hand grabbing the political world for itself?" -- Much of Benedict's thought on the respective boundaries of church and state and their interrelationship as presented in Twomey's summary is reminiscent of the latter half of Deus Caritas Est.

• In February of 2005, Sandro Magister speculated that "Among the typically Wojtylian battles that have distinguished [John Paul II's] pontificate, the defense of life is almost certainly destined to continue with his successor as well, unlike other matters that will slip into the shadows, like the interreligious meetings such as the ones in Assisi and the 'mea culpas.'" (Lent in the Vatican: The Pope, the Curia, and the Conclave, www.chiesa Feb. 2, 2005)

  The prospect of the Assisi gatherings "slipping into the shadows" was discussed by Bill Cork and myself on this blog (John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger and the Lessons of Assisi 1986/2002 Against The Grain Feb. 14, 2005).

  Now, Alejandro Bermudez revisits the issue, with a buzz from "Vatican circles that Pope Benedict is thinking of pulling the plug on the interreligious prayer meetings for peace, the last of which took place in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis, on January 24, 2002." (Auf Wiedersehen to Assisi? Catholic Outsider January 25, 2006). No sources are cited, but given then-Ratzinger's criticisms of the event as well as the recent conciliatory gestures made towards the SSPX, I wonder if this is indeed a possibility.

• Speaking of the SSPX, John Allen Jr. has The latest on Lefebvrites; Edward N. Peters, JD, JCD (In the Light of the Law) takes a look at the possible reunion and its difficulties from a canon law perspective, and Alejandro Bermudez (Catholic Outsider revits the 2003 expulsion of Father Aulagnier from the SSPX -- suffice to say the reasons don't bode well for those who hope for "a faster, full reconciliation with Rome."

  Nevertheless, it appears that Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) will meet with leaders of the Roman Curia on February 13. "The top item on the agenda for discussion, according to an Italian media report, will be the Vatican efforts to achieve a reconciliation with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX)." (Catholic World News, Feb. 3, 2006).

Pope Benedict XVI Roundup!

• Pope Benedict has "issued a rare decree curbing the autonomy of [Franciscan] monks," guarding the tomb of St. Francis in the central Umbria region, according to the New York Times (Nov. 22, 2005):

  The decree . . . put the monks under control of three people -- the local bishop, a Vatican cardinal, and the head of the Italian bishops conference.

  The move marked the first attempt by Benedict to discipline a religious order and revoked another decree issued by Pope Paul VI in 1969 which gave the Assisi monks wide-ranging autonomy. . . .

  In the past decades, the monks of Assisi, which is one of the holiest and most visited sites in all Christendom, have been associated with leftist political parties and leftist causes.

  The annual Easter season peace march organised by the Assisi monks is frequented by leftist leaders and often boycotted by centre-right politicians.

  They have also hosted highly controversial figures such as former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, Italian communist party leaders and Oscar-winning actor-director Roberto Benigni, a life-long leftist.

  (Writing from Rome, LifeSiteNews' John Jalsevac provides a detailed report on Benedict's latest decision:

  Almost simultaneous with the announcement that the basilicas were to again answer to the bishop, Benedict announced the appointment of Archbishop Dominico Sorrentino as bishop of the diocese of Assisi. Although slipping by general notice amidst the furor over the controversy surrounding the Franciscan shrines, some commentators are speculating that the appointment of Sorrentino may be the most important development yet in Benedict's papacy. . . .

  Pope Benedict Enforcing Traditional Rules and Orthodoxy LifeSiteNews.com Nov. 24, 2005. See also John Allen, Jr. on the transfer of Sorrentino.

• "The bishops have come to realize that every time they meet Benedict XVI, alone or as a group, they must be ready for anything: accolades, rebukes, surprises," says Sandro Magister ("The Italians Pass, the Austrians Flunk, the Brazilians... The Bishops under Examination" www.Chiesa Nov. 18, 2005). Among those on the receiving end of criticism from the Pope were the Austrian bishops who were read "the riot act":

  “As you well know, the confession of the faith is one of the bishop’s primary duties. ‘I did not draw back’, St. Paul says in Miletus to the pastors of the Church of Ephesus, ‘from the task of proclaiming to you the whole counsel of God’ (Acts 20:27). It is true that we bishops must act with discretion. Nevertheless, this prudence must not prevent us from presenting the Word of God in all its clarity, including those things that are heard less willingly or that consistently provoke reactions of protest and derision. You, dear brothers in the episcopacy, know this well: there are some topics relating to the truth of the faith, and above all to moral doctrine, which are not present in the catechesis and preaching of your dioceses to a sufficient extent, and which sometimes, for example in pastoral outreach to youth in the parishes or groups, are either not confronted at all or are not addressed in the clear sense understood by the Church. Thanks be to God, it is not like this everywhere. Perhaps those who are responsible for the proclamation [of the Gospel] are afraid that people may draw back if they speak too clearly. However, experience in general demonstrates that it is precisely the opposite that happens. Don’t deceive yourselves! Catholic teaching offered in an incomplete manner is a contradiction of itself and cannot be fruitful in the long term. The proclamation of the Kingdom of God goes hand in hand with the demand for conversion and with the love that encourages, that knows the way, that teaches that with the grace of God even that which seemed impossible becomes possible. Think of how, little by little, religious instruction, catechesis on various levels, and preaching can be improved, deepened, and, so to speak, completed! Please, make zealous use of the ‘Compendium’ and the ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’! Have the priests and catechists adopt these tools, have them explained in the parishes, have them used in families as important reading material! Amid the uncertainty of this period of history and this society, offer to men the certainty of the fullness of the Church‘s faith! The clarity and the beauty of the Catholic faith are what make man’s life shine, even today! This is especially the case when it is presented by enthusiastic and exciting witnesses.”

  Any thoughts on the report card for the American bishops?

• On October 25, 2005 Cardinal Dulles lectured on “Pope Benedict XVI [as] Interpreter of Vatican II". The full text of the lecture is not yet available online, but we'll let you know as soon as we locate it.

• Back in September my father blogged the first part of a discussion on Michael S. Rose' series "The Man Who Was Ratzinger" in New Oxford Review (September 2005) -- see "Pope Benedict & Church Bureaucracy", Musings of a Pertinacious Papist Sept. 16, 2005. This past week he discusses part two, on Pope Benedict's view of bishops, generating a lively discussion.

• Michael Rose himself has recently penned Benedict XVI: The Man Who Was Ratzinger (Spence Publishing, Oct. 2005), which adheres more closely to the "Vatican Enforcer" motif of John Allen's earlier biography:

  Perhaps the most imposing intellectual ever to assume the papacy, Ratzinger has been recognized as a world-class theologian since the time of Vatican II. In two decades as the chief guardian of Catholic doctrine, he addressed every controversy facing the Church: clerical sex abuse, feminism, religious pluralism, sexual revolution and the culture of death, secularism, and militant Islam. This uncommonly rich record, Rose argues, promises a new Counterreformation, purifying and reorienting the Catholic Church.

  Rose reveals that Cardinal Ratzinger, unquestionably John Paul II’s closest collaborator, was privately critical of certain ecumenical, liturgical, and administrative policies of the late pope. While Benedict will undoubtedly follow John Paul’s fundamental path, Rose predicts some critical departures that could enable this supposedly "polarizing" figure to become a powerful unifying force, reviving the Church and reawakening the West’s Christian identity in its moment of crisis.

• Remember Pope Benedict's meeting with Hans Kung? -- Apparently he is not the only dissident theologian to have made friendly overtures to former Prefect of the CDF. Professor Richard McBrien -- presently serving as "consultant" to the cinematized version of The Da Vinci Code -- gave a positive assessment of the pontiff's first months:

  “I have observed little or nothing from my vantage point that would trouble me or other reform-minded Catholics,” McBrien said. . . .

  “Benedict is open and secure,” McBrien said in assessment of the 78-year-old pontiff. “He’s not afraid of discussion. The initial signs are encouraging.”

  Although McBrien said no drastic changes in Catholic doctrine were imminent, the new pope was already doing his best to maintain the legacy of goodwill and interdenominationalism that his predecessor had begun.

  (Source: "ND prof says new pope more open to discussion", by Catherine LaFrance. LaPorte Herald- Argus Nov. 14, 2005. (Of course, as Stephen wonders: Why does anyone give two cents what McBrien thinks of the pope?"

• On October 28, 2005, Pope Benedict commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate by expressing his [Commitment] to Advancing Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Zenit. October 28, 2005:

  "The Jewish-Christian dialogue must continue to enrich and deepen the bonds of friendship which have developed, while preaching and catechesis must be committed to ensuring that our mutual relations are presented in the light of the principles set forth by the council," wrote the Pope.

  "As we look to the future, I express my hope that both in theological dialogue and in everyday contacts and collaboration, Christians and Jews will offer an ever more compelling shared witness to the one God and his commandments, the sanctity of life, the promotion of human dignity, the rights of the family and the need to build a world of justice, reconciliation and peace for future generations," he said.

  Meanwhile, Father Franz Schmidberger, apparently the "right hand man" of Bernard Fellay and member of the traditionalist schismatic organization Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), chastised the Holy Father for his dialogue and fraternization with other religions, urging him to abstain from "false systems" and convert them instead (Ultra-traditionalist says pope should convert Jews Reuters, Nov. 19, 2005).

• Catholic Exchange published the Catechetical Dialogue that took place October 15, 2005, between some children who were preparing to celebrate their First Holy Communion and Pope Benedict XVI.

• L'Osservatore Romano has published its very own gallery of "The most beautiful photos of the Pope":

  The gallery includes a picture of the Holy Father looking out on the lake of Castel Gandolfo from the balcony of the papal summer residence. Another shows him imparting an apostolic blessing during his first appearance as Pope on April 19. And still another shows him, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, embracing Pope John Paul II.

  There are photos of particular events, including one taken Nov. 2 while the Holy Father was praying in the Vatican Grottoes for the deceased Popes; another on Oct. 23 while presiding over the closure of the Synod of Bishops and of the Year of the Eucharist; and one taken Oct. 5 during a celebration with children who made their first Communion.

  According to the website, prints are available from the "L'Osservatore Romano" Photographic Service.

• Back in June, Jacqueline Bassell discussed the wave of "instant-books" that appeared on the shelves soon after the whisp of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel. Michael Walsh reviews the latest wave of the "Benedict biography" cottage industry ("Only One Wry Eye on Benedict XVI" The Tablet October 29, 2005). The books in question:

  - In the Vineyard of the Lord: The Life, Faith and Teachings of Joseph Ratzinger, by Marco Bardazzi. Rizzoli (May 31, 2005)
  - We Have a Pope! Benedict XVI, by Matthew E Bunson. (Our Sunday Visitor, May 19, 2005)
  - Pope Benedict XVI : His Life and Mission, by Stephen Mansfield. Tarcher (July 21, 2005)
  - Benedict XVI: Commander of the Faith, by Rupert Shortt. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (October 24, 2005).
  - Labourer in the Vineyard: a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI, by Greg Watts. Lion Publishing Plc (October 15, 2005).

  Judging by the reviews I'm reading, the various and sundry introductions to the Holy Father that spontaneously appeared in the weeks following the conclave pale in comparison to George Weigel's God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (the rival being John Allen Jr.'s The Rise of Benedict XVI).

  Justin Nickelsen (Ressourcement - Restoration in Catholic Theology) posts his reflections on Weigel's book, and in keeping with his blog directs our attention to Ratzinger's early years as a ressourcement theologian, his participation in the Second Vatican Council and the co-founding of Communio.

  As Justin noted, Weigel's book follows the same scheme as the rest ("1. the last days of John Paul II with some commentary on his pontificate and coverage of the funeral; 2. the election of a new pope; 3. a short biography of Joseph Ratzinger with predictions for the future"), and with the exception of John Allen Jr's factually-educational but ultimately-flawed-due-to-liberal-prejudice attempt The Vatican Enforcer, we have yet to see a full-fledged papal biography on the scale of JPII's Witness to Hope. Someday . . .

• Say it isn't so! -- Deutsche-Welle reports that the Prada Pope Causes "Cassock War":

  The stylish Benedict has angered many in the holy city by allegedly switching allegiances from the company which has made papal robes for over 200 years to a tailor who has only been in business for a tenth of that time.

  In what is being called the “cassock wars,” both tailors are said to be squaring up for a dispute over the papal contract in a bid to win the pope’s favor. Annibale Gammarelli, of the eponymous firm of outfitters who have been making papal cassocks since 1792, is locked in a struggle with Mancinelli, a small shop that has been operating for a mere 20 years.

  This is what passes for news?

George Weigel: God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church

George Weigel's biography of Pope Benedict XVI is out, and Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus -- enthusiastically getting in the swing of things as a blogger -- posts a review to "On The Square":

George Weigel was by for dinner the other night. He was in town to do the Today show and other promotions for his new book, God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (HarperCollins) which was released this week. I read the manuscript in advance and can warmly recommend the book. And yes, I would say that even if George were not among my closest friends. It is, quite simply, the most thorough and readable account of the collaboration between John Paul and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, and the legacy of the pontificate of the former and the prospects for the pontificate of the latter. He also has insightfully critical words, combining respect and candor, about the leadership of the U.S. bishops. (The title, by the way, is not meant to suggest as an article of faith that God chose Joseph Ratzinger to be pope. It is to suggest that God had a hand in the process of choosing, and that, as Benedict has said, we have the promise that God would not let anyone be elected pope who would destroy the Church.) If you want to understand what is happening in Catholicism, both in this country and the world, get a copy of God’s Choice.

Since the election, biographies and introductions to Pope Benedict XVI have been quite the rage. I'm curious to see what Weigel brings to the table to differentiate himself from John Allen Jr. (The Rise of Benedict XVI); Robert Moynihan (Let God's Light Shine Forth : The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI - founder/editor of Inside the Vatican) and Matthew Bunson (We Have a Pope! Benedict XVI (Our Sunday Visitor), along with a good number of others.

• EXCERPT: "A Pope of Quiet Suprises" Newsweek Nov. 7, 2005.
• VIDEO: Discussion at Princeton's Center for the Study of Religion Oct. 13, 2005. [RealAudio]

Pope Benedict XVI Roundup!

• On October 6, 2005, Pope Benedict honored the centenary of the birth of Hans urs Von Balthasar, the Swiss 'ressourcement' theologian and good friend of the Holy Father, with whom he co-founded the Communio International Catholic Review in the wake of Vatican II:

  . . . [Balthasar] had made the mystery of the Incarnation the preferential object of his studies, and he saw in the Mysterium Paschale–as one of his works in significantly entitled–the most expressive form of this descent of God into human history. Indeed, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the mystery of God’s Trinitarian love is revealed in its fullness. The reality of the faith finds here its unsurpassable beauty. In the drama of the Paschal Mystery, God fully lives out his act of becoming man, but at the same time he makes man’s action meaningful and gives concrete form to the engagement of the Christian in the world. Von Balthasar saw in this the logic of revelation. God becomes man so that man might experience communion of life with God. In Christ is offered the ultimate truth, the definitive answer to the question that everyone asks himself about the meaning of life. Theological aesthetics, dramatics and logic make up the trilogy in which these concepts find ample room [for development] and principled application. I can testify that his life was a genuine search for truth, which he understood as a search for the true Life. He looked everywhere for signs of the presence of God and of his truth: in philosophy, in literature, in religions, always managing to break through the circuitous reasoning that often holds the mind a prisoner of itself, and opening it up to the horizons of the infinite. . . .

  For further information on this great theologian, see:

  - Hans Urs von Balthasar: Author Page from Ignatius Press, the chief english publisher of von Balthasar's works.
  - Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Online Archive Collected online articles and resources on Balthasar.
  - Ressourcement: Restoration in Catholic Theology, a blog by Justin Nickelsen featuring in-depth coverage and discussion of the ressourcement theologians. (See also David Jones' Nouvelle Theologie for similar links).
  - Love Alone is Believable: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Apologetics, by Fr. John R. Cihak @ Ignatius Insight.

• On October 16, 2005, Pope Benedict granted an interview with Polish State Television, conducted by Fr. Andrzej Majewski, head of Catholic programming at TVP. EWTN News has the English translation. Pope Benedict discussed his friendship with John Paul II ("I liked him from the beginning . . . Above all, when I watched him pray, I saw and understood, that he was a man of God"), his appointment to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ("with great frankness and he was very paternal towards me. He gave me time to reflect and said he also wanted to reflect. Finally he convinced me that this was the will of God") and the most significant moments in the pontificate of his predecessor.

• Pope Benedict canonized the first 5 saintsof his pontificate at the close of the Synod on the Eucharist on October 23. Here is the closing homily of the Holy Father.

• Ratzinger’s Revolution Passes with Flying Colors, says Sandro Magister (www.chiesa Oct. 20, 2005), on the compelling witness of Pope Benedict's devotion to the Eucharist:

  Few had believed it when, during his first trip outside Rome, to Bari at the end of May, pope Joseph Ratzinger re-proposed the motto of the martyrs of ancient Rome: “Sine dominico non possumus”; we cannot live without the Mass on the Lord’s day.

  And yet it was the Eucharist that distinguished the first Christians right from the beginning in the pagans’ eyes. The Eucharist was the reason they faced martyrdom. For saint Benedict and pope Gregory the Great, celebrating the liturgy and building up civilization were all of a piece. The greatest event for the Church in the last century, Vatican Council II, left its most visible and lasting (and controversial) mark in the liturgy. As it was in the past, so also now the Mass is the measure of Catholic identity, as it has been since Jesus said the words “ Do this in memory of me” at the last supper. In the worldwide panorama of the Church which has been explored over the three weeks of the synod, from October 2-23, the most flourishing areas of Christianity have been shown to be those where faith in and celebration of the Eucharist are strongest, sometimes flourishing in the face of death.

  Benedict XVI is doing nothing other than taking seriously – very, very seriously – this foundational reality of Christian life.

  Magister goes on to applaud the "doubling of numbers" of those attending B16's Wednesday audience and the Sunday Angelus in St. Peter's Square (also reported by Catholic News Service); the humble nature of his presence ("Benedict XVI doesn’t practice any showmanship, he doesn’t stress any flashy phrases, doesn’t encourage applause or acclamation . . . he arrives only to celebrate the liturgy and preach") and speculations on papal appointments to the Vatican curia.

• Pope Benedict's speeches at Cologne/World Youth Day have been collected and published in a book titled God's Revolution, with an introduction by Cardinal Ruini. "The Italian edition hit bookstores in Italy Oct. 11, while the English edition published by Ignatius Press was expected to be ready for release in the United States and Canada by the end of October." (Catholic News Service).

• Pope Shares Memories of His First Communion Zenit. October 10, 2005. Responding to an invitation of Pope Benedict XVI's predecessor, thousands of children receiving their first communion met with the Holy Father in Rome for a meeting entitled "Bread of Heaven":

  The highlight of the day was their conversation with Benedict XVI who responded to seven of the children, seated close to him, who asked him questions about the Eucharist.

  One of the girls, Andrea, asked the Holy Father about his first Communion.

  It was "a beautiful Sunday in March 1935," he said, "69 years ago."

  "It was a sunny day, the church was very beautiful, there was music," said the Pontiff with a broad smile. "I promised the Lord, in the measure possible: 'I want to be always with you' and I said to him: 'But you must always be with me.'"

  Another of the first communicants, Livia, asked him why she should go to confession before going to Communion when she always commits the same sins. The Pope laughed when he heard the question.

  "It's true, in general our sins are always the same, but we clean our house, our room, at least every week, although the dirt is always the same," he said.

  Confession is necessary "only in the case of grave sin," he explained. "But it is very useful to go to confession regularly to cultivate cleanliness and beauty of soul, and to mature little by little in life."

  To Giulia, who asked what she should do if her parents do not go to Mass on Sunday, he responded that she should speak to them "with great love, with great respect."

  "Tell them," he said, "'Dear mommy, dear daddy, do you know that there is something very important for all of us, and even for you? We will meet with Jesus.'"

  The full text of Pope Benedict's catechesis to children can be found here.
  

• Dialogue Not Monologue: Benedict XVI & Religious Pluralism, by Francis X. Clooney. Commonweal Volume CXXXII, Number 18. Fr. Clooney takes along as reading material on his trip to India several of B16's books and encounters an opportunity for reflection:

  Near the end of my visit to India, I was perhaps providentially visited by some concerned Hindus who accused me-Catholic priest, Jesuit, aficionado of interreligious dialogue, and provocatively named “Francis Xavier”-of being the “pope’s man,” come to fulfill his plan to subvert and convert the subcontinent. Pondering my reading, their questions, and my Jesuit credentials, I had to ask myself, what would it mean to be sent as a missionary to India by the pope responsible for these writings? What follows is not so much a summation of Benedict’s writings as a practical reflection written with Hindu concerns in mind too. . . .

  
• Christendom College of Front Royal, VA commissioned a portraint of Pope Benedict XVI, painted by Tim Langenderfer, a Dayton-based portrait artist. The oil painting was unveiled by Christendom College on Sept. 4th:

  . . . the College was pleased to welcome Mary Popp, from the Society for the Preservation of Roman Catholic Heritage (SPORCH), who, along with College President Dr. Timothy O'Donnell, unveiled the portrait for those present.

  The students responded with great enthusiasm by immediately chanting "Benedetto...Benedetto," led by the group of seniors who spent last semester studying in Rome during the election of Benedict XVI.

  Popp gave a short talk explaining the artist and her organization. Langenderfer, the artist, received his BFA from Ohio University in 1984, said Popp, and has been a Professor of Art at the University of Dayton for 13 years. . . .

  According to Popp, SPORCH, founded in 1993, has the distinct purpose of rescuing endangered Catholic sacred art and artifacts, and providing needed ecclesiastical items to poor parishes and priests. SPORCH also seeks to educate Catholics about the historical and spiritual significance of these items in an effort to preserve Catholic tradition.

  A reproduction of the portrait was delivered to the Vatican by Dr. Tim O'Donnell. The original remains on display at the school, while prints and reproductions may be purchased in various sizes through the website of The Society for the Preservation of Roman Catholic Heritage.

Pope Benedict XVI Roundup!

[Note: I may add a few more notations to this post over the course of this week as I compile them, but nothing like the meeting of Pope Benedict XVI and Hans Küng to start it off, eh? -- Chris]

Pope Benedict XVI meets Hans Küng

"In a dramatic gesture of reconciliation, Pope Benedict XVI met Sept. 24 with his former colleague and longtime nemesis, Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Küng, a fiery liberal who once compared then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger with the head of the KGB in his capacity as the Vatican's top doctrinal enforcer." So reports John Allen Jr. (National Catholic Reporter's uber-correspondent from Rome) on the big story of the week:

During a four-hour session that stretched over dinner, the two men essentially agreed to disagree on doctrinal matters. The pope offered warm praise for Küng's efforts to foster dialogue among religions and with the natural sciences, while Küng expressed support for the pope's commitment along the same lines.

"It's clear that we have different positions," Küng told NCR in a telephone interview from his home in Tübingen, Germany. "But the things we have in common are more fundamental. We are both Christians, both priests in service of the church, and we have great personal respect for one another."

A Sept. 26 statement from the Vatican did not say who had requested the meeting, but said that it took place in a "friendly climate" and that Benedict XVI offered special support for Küng's efforts to build a Weltethos, or a moral framework based on values shared among religions which can also be recognized by secular reason.

"We should not have delusions," Küng said of what the meeting suggests about the pontificate of Benedict XVI. "His stances on church policy are not my own."

Nevertheless, Küng said, he regards the meeting as a "sign of hope for many in the church with the same vision as mine."

He described the session as "very joyful," with "no reproaches, no polemics."

Küng said he did not request that Benedict XVI restore his license to teach Catholic theology.

The National Catholic Reporter provides some behind-the-scenes details:

Küng told NCR that he wrote to the new pope to request a meeting roughly a week after his April 19 election. He said he had repeatedly requested a meeting with John Paul II, both before and after the 1979 decision to revoke his license as a Catholic theologian, without response.

I have to wonder if Pope John Paul II might have been more considerate of Küng's request to meet if Küng weren't so vehement in his polemics. Openly ridiculing the Holy Father as a third-rate theologian with "a very thin theological foundation -- not to mention a lack of modern exegesis, the history of dogmas and the church" and accusing him of betraying Vatican II" by "rigorous moral encyclicals [and] traditionalist-imperialist world catechism" (as he did in his biography ) doesn't exactly cultivate an amicable relationship. If anything, this week's conciliatory meeting is a testament to Pope Benedict's patience, forgiveness and goodwill.

Further Links:

• Amy Welborn says "This is Awesome" - "Why awesome? Because it's a model for how all of us should be with each other. It's a model of pastoral fatherhood. Impressive."Küng's Gripe Against The Grain April 13, 2005

• On the Withdrawl of Hans Küng's Authorization to Teach, by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Communio Spring, 1980. (Presented in full text, for the first time on the web by Justin Nickelsen -- who, btw, has a good roundup on the Benedict-Kung meeting himself).
• Towards a 'Continual Reform of the Church': Interview with Hans Kung interview with Laura Sheahen. Beliefnet.com. [circa 2004?]
• A Religion the New York Times Can Love, by Donna Steichen. Ignatius Insight August 2005 / Catholic World Report June 2005. (Via Domenico Bettinelli). On Küng's "Global Ethic" -- what he terms theology for a "postmodern paradigm" as compared to the "old paradigm of the medieval church" held by Pope Benedict XVI. Honestly, for Kung to say "it's clear we have different positions" is quite the understatement.
• Heretic Dines with the Inquisitor, by Michael Liccione. Sacramentum Vitae.

In Other News . . .

• Pope to put his stamp on U.S. church hierarchy, by Rocco Palmo. Religion News Service. Sept. 17, 2005. Rocco (Whispers in the Loggia) on a very important element of the Holy Father's task -- choosing the future leaders of the Catholic Church:

  For nearly a quarter-century, Benedict, as the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, played an advisory role in the appointment of bishops. But when he was elected pope in April, he inherited the papacy’s absolute authority to select suitable leaders for the world’s 2,700 dioceses — 197 of which are in the United States. . . .

• Vatican schedule released for September- December, indicating B16's plans to resume regular visits to Rome parishes, and preside at all the major traditional Vatican celebrations of the Christmas season. Catholic World News, Sept. 26, 2005.

• The Monk under the Mitre, by Austen Ivereigh. Godspy.com. [Reprint from The Catholic Herald] Sept. 9, 2005 -- Reflecting on World Youth Day in Cologne, Ivereigh counters the speculations of the media that the final Mass at Cologne "to launch a broadside against the Dictatorship of Relativism":

  f this was an offensive, it was free of offence. It roused prayer, not adulation; it was less holy crusade than meditation for a silent retreat. While Catholics for a Free Choice gave out condoms, the Pope never even mentioned contraception. Those who hoped for a hammering of the heretics were left twiddling their whips.

  The Word Youth Day homily was just that: not a manifesto; not a Gettysburg address; not even rhetoric tailored to television. It was a superb, old-fashioned piece of catechetics, unafraid to be bookish, which paid young people the compliment of not patronizing them. In the age of CNN and MTV it takes real daring to explain the Eucharist in front of a million young people by dwelling on the nuances of the word 'adoration' in Greek (proskynesis, in case you wondered).

  It was a flawless performance: the Pope smiled and waved, radiated hope, reached out to Protestants, Jews and Muslims, and confirmed hundreds of thousands of young people in their faith. Not only did Cologne exorcise the Panzerkardinal demons, but Benedict "left critics taking a new look at the Church he leads" according to the Reuters religion editor, Tom Heneghan. "It was his humility," clapped The Times, "that captured hearts".

• On a similar note, Hartwig Bouillon (freelance journalist, Germany) reports that "Project Benedict confounds German critics" (Mercator.Net, Sept. 9, 2005):

  What actually happened left German TV journalists gobsmacked. The received wisdom -- that youngsters would like the event, but didn’t care for the Faith -- was shattered. More than one million joyful young pilgrims invaded Cologne, cheered the Pope and openly prayed. The sheer impact of the images was overwhelming. Dominating the news was the white-garbed Pontiff on a catamaran slowly cruising up the Rhine encircled by 1200 youths from all over the world. On both banks of the immense river half a million more, the front row standing knee-deep in water, were cheering and singing: “Be-ne-detto! Be-ne-detto!”

  Now that a few weeks have elapsed, the penny has dropped for the commentariat. Benedict XVI is neither the “German shepherd”, as he was dubbed by the British tabloid press, nor a doddering Übergangspapst, a mere nightwatchman for John Paul the Great’s legacy. In fact, Pope Benedict has his own agenda. Shy and friendly he may be, but with his razor-sharp intellect, long experience, and deep piety, he is setting his own course. . . .

  (Thanks to Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia) for passing along this article.

• Radio-Novel Looks at Life of Joseph Ratzinger Zenit. Sept. 13, 2005. Zenit News Service reports that "Beginning Sept. 25, and continuing every Sunday for the next 12 weeks, Vatican Radio will broadcast the Italian-language novel [on the life of Pope Benedict XVI] by chapters. . . . The idea of a radio broadcast of the Pope's biography came to journalist Franco Bucarelli when paging through the volume "My Life," written by Cardinal Ratzinger himself, and published in Italian by St. Paul's, which has granted the rights for this program."

St. Blog's Reads Pope Benedict: Book Reviews and Reflections

• At Cahiers Peguy, Clairity and co. are reading Pope Benedict's Feast of Faith, posting some good reflections:
  • "The Origins of the Liturgy" Sept. 17, 2005 (on the chapter: "Form and Content in the Eucharistic Celebration", p. 33);
  • "The Gift of the Liturgy" Sept. 20, 2005. Response to, "On the Structure of Liturgical Celebration", p. 61);
  • "the Nature of Christian Prayer" Sept. 9, 2005 (on "On the Theological Basis of Prayer and Liturgy").
  • Stephen M. Bauer ("Musings of an Ordinary Catholic") posts his review as well.
  

• Justin Nickelsen (Sources Chretiennes) reads and reviews On The Way to Jesus Christ. Sept. 1, 2005.

• Shawn Tribe -- founder and coordinator of the excellent new weblog The New Liturgical Movement -- reviews Looking again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger: Proceedings of the July 2001 Fontgombault Conference, edited by Dom Alcuin Reid, OSB. St. Michael's Abbey Press: 2003.

* * *

Closing with some powerful words of prayer and reflection from Pope Benedict's Sept. 25 Angelus: On the Eucharist and Love: "Source of the Spiritual Energy That Renews Our Life":

The whole of Jesus earthly existence, from his conception until his death on the cross, was an act of love, to the point that we can summarize our faith in these words: "Jesus, caritas" -- Jesus, love. In the Last Supper, knowing that his hour had come, the divine Master gave his disciples the supreme example of love, washing their feet, and entrusted to them his precious legacy, the Eucharist, in which the whole paschal mystery is centered, as the venerated Pope John Paul II wrote in the encyclical "Ecclesia de Eucharistia." Take and eat, all of you, because this is my Body," "Take and drink all of you, because this is the cup of my Blood."

Jesus' words in the cenacle anticipated his death and manifested the consciousness with which he faced it, transforming it into a gift of himself, in the act of love that gives itself totally. In the Eucharist, the Lord gives himself to us with his body, with his soul and with his divinity, and we become one with him and among ourselves.

Our response to his love therefore must be concrete, and must be expressed in a genuine conversion to love, in forgiveness, in reciprocal acceptance and in attention for the needs of all. Many and varied are the forms of service that we can offer our neighbor in everyday life, if we pay a little attention. The Eucharist becomes in this way the source of the spiritual energy that renews our life every day and, in this way, renews the love of Christ to the world.

Pope Benedict XVI Roundup!

With the ascendance of Joseph Ratzinger to the throne of Peter the Ratzinger Fan Club isn't quite the novelty it used to be. Nor, for that matter, is the pasttime of blogging about Benedict -- if you have not already been acquainted, I'd like to introduce Papabile, Michael S. Rose's Papa Ratzi Post and Rocco Palmo's Whispers in the Loggia (who, judging by his incredible popularity needs no introduction).

All three do a more-than-capable job of covering the "Benedict Beat." What follows from yours truly are merely some highlights that caught my eye over the past month.

• Benedict XVI, Recorded Live: His Ecumenism? It’s Right Here - L'Espresso. Sept. 1, 2005. Sandro Magister notes the Holy Father's penchant for "speaking off the cuff", even with regards to "very demanding topics. Case in point, his August 19 address to the representatives of the Protestant and Orthodox Churches:

  On that day, the journalists had received an advance copy of the written text, in various languages. And this is the text to which they referred in their reports.

  But in reality, Benedict XVI said much more. On a number of occasions he raised his eyes from the text and improvised.

  A quantitative idea of the variations can be gathered from the fact that the speech that pope Joseph Ratzinger delivered, in German, is almost twice as long as the initial written text: 2,010 words versus 1,179.

  Magister presents the complete transcript – in the English version prepared by the Vatican’s offices – of the speech that Benedict XVI addressed to the representatives of the non-Catholic Churches on the evening of August 19, in Cologne. Pay attention, as "the underlined words are the ones that the pope added off the cuff, departing from the written text," and revealing at greater length his own understanding of ecumenism and the "unity of all Christians." [NOTE: for further elaboration on the issues presented in Magister's article, I would also recommend "On the Ecumenical Situation", pp. 253-267, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith (Ignatius Press, 2005)].

• So, World Youth Day 2005 is over, What's on the Agenda? - Zenit lays out the Pope's ambitious schedule of visitations including a visit to Israel ("I have a long list of commitments to visit foreign countries, but Israel has priority" was the Pope's response); synods, curial appointmens, canonizations . . . and, of course, books!

• On August 31, 2005, Benedict XVI paid tribute to the Solidarity union, recognizing the Polish labor movement born in the workers strikes of 1980 and which, over the course of that decade, sparked a national movement contributing to the peaceful overthrow of Communism in Poland and the eventual collapse of neighboring dictatorships in the Soviet Union. The Holy Father plans to visit Poland in 2006, according to Bishop Kazimierz Nycz.

  See also: "The Revolution Solidarity Launched" Zenit interview with Journalist Gianfranco Svidercoschi, and "Don't Waste What Solidarity Helped to Win, Says Walesa" Labor Union Founder Addresses 25th Anniversary Conference. August 31, 2005.

• Felix Colonia: More on the Epiphany of the Catechist Pope www.Chiesa August. 26, 2005. Pietro De Marco, a professor of the sociology of religion at the University of Florence, reflects on Pope Benedict's celebration of the mass at Marienfeld and the theme of World Youth Day 2005 ("We Have Come To Worship Him"):

  In the the kontakion on the nativity of Christ by the greatest of the Byzantine religious poets, Romanos the Melodist, the Child Jesus instructs the heart of his Mother on the meaning of the Kings and Magi who were asking Mary to permit them to adore her Son: "Welcome those who have welcomed me. I am in them as I am in your arms; I did not leave you, and yet I came with them."

  The kontakion proceeds: "And she opens the door and receives the company of the Magi. She opens the door who is the unopened door through which Christ alone has passed. […] She opened the door, she from whom was born the Door, a little child, God before the ages."

  The kontakion offers a profound key for the liturgical and theological event of the epiphany of Marienfeld. With the wisdom that had previously guided the inaugural Mass of his pontificate, Benedict XVI drew as much as he could from the symbolic terrain offered by sacred Cologne. Beneath the sign of the three Kings and the Epiphany . . . he proposed to the crowds the nucleus of the faith: the icon with the Mother and Child, the cross, the Eucharistic bread: "his presence in our midst."

  For readers (myself included) unfamiliar with the term, kontakion "is a form of hymn performed in the Greek Orthodox Church " (Wikipedia):

  . . . The word derives from the Greek word kontos, meaning pole, describing the way in which the words were and are unfurled on a scroll that has been wound around a pole. The word was originally used to describe an early Byzantine poetic form, whose origins date back certainly as far as the 6th century AD, and possibly earlier

• After Cologne: The Remarkable Lesson of Professor Ratzinger, by Sandro Magister. www.chiesa August 25, 2005. On April 20, his first morning as Pope, Benedict XVI said "the Eucharist will be the centre of the World Youth Day in Cologne in August.” Providing a wonderful recap of the week's events (on and off camera), Magister believes he delivered on his promise:

  From August 18-21 in Cologne, Benedict XVI did not bestow upon the crowd a mere theatrical gesture, or nothing more than a striking phrase. He led the young people to look, not at him, but always and only at the true protagonist: that Jesus whom the Magi adored in Bethlehem, the “House of Bread,” and who is now concealed in the consecrated host.

  Read on for details on the Pope's meetings with Jews at the Cologne synagogue (in which he urged "progress towards a theological evaluation of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity") and the Muslim community ("no pope had ever been so explicit and hard-hitting in facing the question of terrorism on a personal level").

• "Young People Relaunched . . . the Message of Hope" reflections of Pope Benedict on his first foreign apostolic trip to Germany, for World Youth Day. August 24, 2005:

  Dear brothers and sisters, from the heart of "old" Europe, which in the past century, unfortunately, knew horrendous conflicts and inhuman regimes, young people relaunched to the humanity of our time the message of hope that does not disappoint, because it is founded on the Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ, dead and risen for our salvation. In Cologne, young people met and worshipped the Emmanuel, the God-with-us, in the mystery of the Eucharist and understood better that the Church is the great family through which God creates a space of communion and unity among all continents, cultures and races, a -- so to speak -- "great group of pilgrims" led by Christ, radiant star that illuminates history.

  Jesus makes himself our travel companion in the Eucharist, and, in the Eucharist -- as I said in the homily of the concluding celebration, borrowing a well-known image from physics -- effects a "nuclear fission" in the depth of the being. Only this profound explosion of goodness that overcomes evil can give life to the other transformations necessary to change the world. Let us pray therefore so that the young people of Cologne will bear with them the light of Christ, who is truth and love and will spread it everywhere. In this way we will be able to witness a springtime of hope in Germany, Europe and the whole world.

• From Cologne to the Conquest of Europe: How the Muslim Brotherhood is Challenging the Pope wwww.chiesa August 18, 2005. Sandro Magister on the Pope's August 20 meeting with "representatives of some of the Muslim communities" at the residence of the Archbishop, Benedict apparently having declined the invitation to visit inside a mosque. According to Magister "His prudence is understandable. Cologne and Munich – where Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop from 1977 to 1981 – are the cities in which the Muslim Brotherhood, which has for decades been the main ideological and organizational source of radical Islam in the world." Magister provides a history of the Brotherhood's expansion and propogation of radical Islam throughout Europe, with attention to some not exactly laudable moments in Muslic-Christian dialogue:

  One memorable occasion was the audience on October 13, 1993, held at the Vatican by John Paul II and Hassan Al Turabi of Sudan, who at the time was the leading ideologue in the world for radical Islamism, an inspirer and protector of Osama Bin Laden.

  But in more recent times, and after the shift that took place on September 11, one can recall the meeting in Doha, in Qatar, from May 27-29, 2004. On the one side were Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the previous foreign minister for the Holy See, and Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and on the other were the leading imam of the Al Azhar mosque in Cairo, Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, and one of the most widely followed leaders of Sunni Islam, Youssef Al Qaradawi.

  Both prior to and since this meeting, Tantawi has repeatedly justified the Palestinian suicide terrorists. As for Qaradawi, he justified such acts even outside of the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . .

  For further information see The Muslim Brotherhood's Conquest of Europe, by Lorenzo Vidino (Middle East Quarterly Winter 2005).

"First 100 Days" - Further evaluations . . .

• After 100 Days, It's Clear That New Pope Is A Friend of the Jews July 15, 2005. - Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, Director of Interfaith Affairs of the Anti-Defamation League, marks the traditional "first 100 days" in B16's pontificate with a detailed look at his interactions with the Jewish people, pronouncing YES to the question: "Is he good for the Jews?"

• The first 100 days of Benedict XVI: Interview with Sandro Magister David Rutledge interviews the "Arch-Vaticanologist and Roman Insider" and Professor of Contemporary Church History at the University of Urbino, for the Australian radio program "The Religion Report." Magister discusses, among other things, liturgical reform ("to turn back to the big tradition is not, according to Josef Ratzinger, to turn back the clock. On the contrary, a new step forward for the church in fidelity with two millenniums"), Benedict's closeness to lay movements, and the place of women in the Church. [See also: The First Three Months of Benedict XVI: New Pope, New Style July 15, 2005]

• Panelists examine Pope Benedict XVI's first 100 days Tidings August 12, 2005. Beth Griffin reports on a "progressive" panel discussion by John Allen, Jr. (who said that B16 is "not looking to headhunt, but will draw the line if objective truth is at stake," yet demonstrates "a new, sincere commitment to more openness and collegiality"), William R. Burrows, managing editor of Orbis Books (noting that Papa "has a nose for smelling out genuine faith in people"), Dale T. Irvin, dean of New York Theological Seminary (noting that the early response from Evangelical Protestants was "we've finally got someone who's on our side in the culture wars" -- and John Paul II wasn't?) and Sociologist Susan A. Farrell of Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, who complains that "women didn't get what they want in the conclave" but are sticking it out because progressives have "a long-term commitment to the faith."

• We might recall that on April 19, 2005, Catholics for Free Choice Laid out a Schedule for the New Pope on their terms, calling for meetings between survivors of sexual abuse by the clergy, a lift on the ban condoms, establish "the Pontifical Academy on Women's Rights in the Church," a complete and unequivocal renunciation of capital punishment and "the possibility of just war by a superpower." They're still waiting.

On a lighter note . . .

• "The Pope and the Puzzling African King" (Boston Globe August 4, 2005) - Globe columnist Alex Beam speculates on the origins and meaning behind the "Moor of Freising" found on Pope Benedict XVI's coat of arms. According to the Vatican website "this is the ancient emblem of the Diocese of Freising, founded in the eighth century." There are many theories as to its origin, but I thought it funny how the Globe couldn't help but indulge in the most incendiary of suggestions:

  . . . There are two other possible identities for the unknown Moor. He could be St. Maurice, a Roman commander from Africa whose Christian soldiers refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods after an important victory, and were themselves massacred. . . . And there is a more grisly possibility. At the time of the Crusades, some Christian kings displayed a severed Moor's head on their flags or crests to symbolize victories over their Islamic enemies. It is conceivable that the king, known as the ''Moor of Freising," evolved from such an image, although the figure shown on Benedict's coat of arms is wearing a collar and has suffered no violence.

  The Boston Globe's provocative speculations are rivaled by the hyperventilating rant of Michael Cain @ Daily Catholic (comical, if it weren't so disturbing), for whom Benedict's choice of insignia "breaks with tradition" and reveals his capitulation to the Islamic horde:

  As for his personal symbols, evidently the rooster-like Aztecan head bust is, in actuality a "Moor of Freising" - in other words a royalty from Ethiopia - caput ethiopicum. Yeah, it's caput alright! Moor as in Muslims? The very Moors St. Anthony of Padua wanted to convert? Racially politically correct? Who knows.

  According to the Vatican website, "Italian heraldry . . . usually depicts the Moor wearing a white band around his head instead of a crown, indicating a slave who has been freed; whereas in German heraldry the Moor is shown wearing a crown."

  Among the more benign possibilities are the proposals that the depiction may be that of Saint Maurice, a Roman-Egyptian martyr, Saint Zeno, frequently shown as a Moor, Saint Sigismund, often confused historically with Saint Maurice, or Saint Corbinian, founder of the Diocese of Freising, mistakely thought to have been a Moor.

  So, liberated slave, Ethiopian royalty, severed head . . . or Catholic saint?

• If Pope Benedict has the trads fuming about a "break with tradition", wait until they see what he has in store for the Mass. (As Prof. Bainbridge says, "This is just wrong in so many ways . . .")

Meeting the Holy Father

• Some people have confuse me with this guy because we share the same name. Regretfully, I've yet to have the pleasure of meeting the Holy Father in person. Hence, it is always a delight to hear from members of the RatzingerFanClub (or, rather, the Pope Benedict Fan Club who have the opportunity. Agnes Santos (from California) writes:

  I thought I’d update you on my trip to Europe. My mother and I were in Rome, 8 Aug through 12. The most amazing thing happened, we attended the Papal audience on the 10th and we were lucky enough to be able to shake the Holy Father’s hand. My mom was even able to kiss his ring. It was at the Pope Paul VI hall in the Vatican and since we had aisle seats, the Pope shook hands with the people on the center aisle. . . .

  By the way, at the Papal audience, the Pope spoke in 6 languages. I would say English is one of his weaker languages although he’s very fluent but his German accent is very heavy. I am enclosing the pictures taken by the official photographer. I’m the one in the pink shirt and my mother is beside me.

  A very happy photo indeed! -- Thanks again, Agnes. If you have a photo from Rome you'd like to share, contact me at webmaster "at" ratzingerfanclub "dot" com.