The Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club is pleased to announce the launch of a new page on our website: Reading Benedict (in the UK), a lasting resource to accompany our special blog devoted to Pope Benedict XVI's September 16-19 2010 visit to the UK.
In an August 2 interview with Asia News, John Milbank, Anglican theologian and professor of Religion, Politics and Ethics, at the University of Nottingham, perceives the papal visit as a chance to revitalize the Pope's image in the eyes of the British media and fostering goodwill between Catholics and Anglicans.
Anglicans by no means feel that Newman ‘betrayed’ them by becoming a Catholic. On the contrary, they are very proud of Newman’s double contribution to both modern Anglicanism and to modern Catholicism. Newman is a sign of unity: he belongs to both Churches and I am sure that our prayers to God through him will aid us in the cause of Church unity, as in the revival of a Christian Britain.William Oddie takes issue with Milbank in the Catholic Herald ("Sorry, Professor Milbank, Newman was no ecumenist" August 6, 2010):
The “cause of Church unity”, however, was hardly one ever espoused by Newman, and I fear that Professor Milbank’s mellifluous sentiments are part of a general movement towards setting him up as a somewhat anaemic “plaster saint”.The fact is that Newman was the very opposite of an ecumenist: he was, in his very bones, a controversialist in such matters. To say that “Newman belonged to both Churches” is absurd: the Catholic Newman didn’t believe that the Established Church was a Church at all, but a mere national institution.
This is how he addressed those of Catholic mind within the Church of England (Difficulties of Anglicans, lecture 4): “You can have no trust in the Establishment or its Sacraments and ordinances. You must leave it, you must secede; you must turn your back upon, you must renounce, what has—not suddenly become, but has now been proved to you to have ever been—an imposture. You must take up your cross and you must go hence.”
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From Aug. 28-29, the pope will host his traditional “Ratzinger Schulerkreis” (Ratzinger student circle) with former students of his. This year the topic will be the hermeneutic of Vatican II, a theme the pope talked about in his address to the Roman Curia Dec. 22, 2005.
It presents a collection of the Holy Father's descriptions of Jesus' relationship with his "first companions," taken from his catecheses at general audiences over the past five years. ...The 48-page volume produced for the youngest of readers is a "route that takes the reader to the origins of the Church, through the events of the first people who found Jesus and became his friends," according to the publishing house.
Fr. Julian Carron, president of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, says in the preface of book that, through the stories, "The Pope takes us by the hand and accompanies us to discover who were the first companions of Christ, how they found him and how they were conquered by him until they decided that they would never abandon him again."
Millions of dollars each year are distributed by the Holy Father, through the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. In this way, the Successor of Peter is able to manifest the solicitude of the universal Church for needy populations.There are a handful of channels that direct the funds to projects deemed most needy. The funds themselves come from donors around the globe. The Pontifical Council Cor Unum, established by Pope Paul VI in 1971, coordinates the initiatives of Catholic charitable institutions.
Ignatius Press said it is planning several activities leading up to the book’s release aimed at fomenting discussions over the themes it addresses. “We really want to have this broader discussion, so we’re going to be working with Protestants, exploring this issue of biblical scholarship and the questions that it raises with respect to Gospel presentations of Jesus,” Brumley told the Register. “We’re excited about launching the book simultaneously, and we’re excited about the impact it will have on wider culture.”Ignatius will also be releasing a study guide to broaden these discussions, thereby offering parish groups, students and seminarians a springboard to talk about the issues raised in the book. Brumley said he expects to see “very sophisticated” discussions on a subject made “very accessible.”
Msgr. Giuseppe Costa, the director of Libreria Editrice Vaticana, is one of only a few to have read the book. He told Rome Reports July 29 that one of the most impressive things is “the rich spirituality that it conveys.”
"After having handed in some months ago the manuscripts of the second volume, dedicated to the Passion and the Resurrection, which are now being translated and edited in various languages, and should be available next spring, Benedict XVI has now begun the third and last part" of his work on "Jesus of Nazareth," Father Lombardi reported.
Since the Vatican accepted the euro in Jan. 2002, the only coins bearing the Pope's visage available were those sold as part of a collection. Now, as the result of a Dec. 2009 accord between the European Union and the Holy See, approximately two million 50 cent pieces have been minted for circulation. ...The coin features the image of Pope Benedict on one side along with the words "Citta del Vaticano 2010."
"a charming little book that purports to expose Pope Benedict XVI’s complicated relationship with homosexuality while mocking his dress sense". His verdict? -- "The latest tasteless attack on the Pope has a strangely self-defeating undercurrent."
| Ignatius Press ("The Pope's Publisher in English") is having a summer clearance sale, featuring many Catholic books (including those by Pope Benedict), music and DVD's at a discounted price.
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A lookalike of the Protestant Reformation leader John Knox will welcome Pope Benedict to Scotland. Mike Merrit reports for the Daily Record (UK) July 25, 2010:
The actor has been hired by the Catholic Church to play the leader of Scotland's Protestant Reformation in a pageant of the country's historical figures. ..."I can only think that someone in the Catholic Church has taken leave of their senses and clearly has no concept of Knox's theology", muses Martin Hannan (Edinburgh Evening News July 27, 2010):Knox's surprise inclusion by Catholic Church leaders follows accusations that this year's 450th anniversary of the Reformation is being ignored by the Scottish Government.
The Reformation of 1560 revoked the Pope's authority in Scotland and banned Catholic Mass. ...
A Church of Scotland spokesman said: "It is a sign of a healthy nation that diversity within the Christian community is something to be celebrated as opposed to a source of division and struggle.
"It is a gift to those of us of a Protestant persuasion that by including this figure, the Catholic Church is contributing to the celebrations of the Reformation."
The man himself smashed "graven images" in churches across Scotland, and never sat for a portrait. He would find the prospect of a mummer playing him in a Papal cavalcade utterly offensive, and I suspect more than a few Protestants and not a few Catholics will be angered by this patronising gesture.(Regular roundups of news on Pope Benedict's visit to the UK may be found at here).
 | Pope Benedict in the UK A project of the Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club Featuring weekly roundups of news, articles and commentary on Pope Benedict's upcoming visit to England and Scotland. |
Try it for yourself.The Pope’s Cologne is a classic Old World cologne made from the private formula of Pope Pius IX (1792-1878). We obtained this formula from descendants of the commander of his Papal Guard and faithful friend, General Charles Charette. We have followed this complex, exclusive formula meticulously, using the same essential oils that his perfumers used 150 years ago. We believe that we have succeeded in capturing the same fragrance that he and those around him enjoyed so long ago. This is a truly extraordinary cologne with surprising freshness and notes of violet and citrus. We are pleased that you will have the opportunity to enjoy this wonderful, historic fragrance. It is an honor for us to be able to produce it and make it available for your pleasure today.
-- according to Catholic News Service, "The translators are being careful. So careful, in fact, that the book isn’t expected to be published before Lent of 2011":It seems the first volume of “Jesus of Nazareth” has some discrepancies in the various language versions. To make sure that doesn’t happen this time, the translators are doing a lot of cross-checking.The Vatican wants the book to be released simultaneously in major languages. Lent would be an appropriate time to launch Volume 2, which treats Christ’s Passion and the Resurrection. The first volume of the work, which ran more than 400 pages, was published in the spring of 2007 and covered Jesus’ life from his baptism to his transfiguration.
"I think that the Church should also open today a sort of 'court of the gentiles' where men can in some manner cling to God, without knowing him and before they have found the entryway to his mystery, which the interior life of the Church serves. To the dialogue with the religions it must above all add today a dialogue with those for whom religion is something foreign, to whom God is unknown, and who nonetheless would not like simply to remain without God, but at least to approach him as the Unknown."These words, addressed to the Roman curia by Benedict XVI on the occasion of the Christmas greetings of 2009, have produced concrete effects: a Vatican dicastery, the pontifical council for culture, has given rise to an institution, called "Court of the gentiles," in order to open a serious and respectful dialogue between believers and agnostics or atheists.
The inaugural event will take place in Paris in March of next year, simultaneously in multiple locations: the Sorbonne, UNESCO, and the Académie Française, according to different perspectives. ... [more]
examines Benedict XVI's Turn Toward Mary (Zenit News. June 11, 2010).
He apparently timed his unofficial trip to coincide with the Italian soccer team's first World Cup game against Paraguay so that he could slip unnoticed through the empty streets as locals concentrated on the game.The claims, confirmed by a shocked waiter, were the subject of fevered speculation in the Italian media after they first appeared in a gossip column yesterday.
When it comes to Pope Benedict and St. Thomas Aquinas, the general impression is that the two don't get along.
Ratzinger has referred to himself as a "decided Augustinian" and that "from the beginning, St. Augustine interested me very much -- precisely insofar as he was, so to speak, a counterweight to Thomas Aquinas" (Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium
p. 33 and p. 60), and that if he were trapped on a deserted island, his two choice picks would be the Holy Bible and the Confessions.
his gravitation towards Augustine rather than the Angelic Doctor was itself "a minor act of rebellion ... a bit daring, though in keeping with the intellectual ferment [of ressourcement theology] in the pre-Vatican II era."
And in his own personal memoirs, Milestones, we find Ratzinger's admission that:
This encounter with personalism [in the thought of Martin Buber] was for me a spiritual experience that left an essential mark, especially since I spontaneously associated such personalism with the thought of St. Augustine, who in his Confessions had struck me with the power of all of his human passion and depth. By contrast, I had difficulty penetrating the thought of Thomas Aquinas, whose crystal-clear logic seemed to me to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made.Howbeit Ratzinger clarifies his remark by attributing his difficulties to "a rigid, neoscholastic Thomism that was simply too far afield from my own questions.")
can't help but take notice:
And here, I would like to say a second thing: true prayer is in fact not foreign to reality. If praying alienated you, took you away from your real life, beware: it would not be true prayer! On the contrary, dialogue with God is the guarantee of truth, of truthfulness with oneself and with others and, therefore, of liberty. To be with God, to listen to his Word, in the Gospel, in the liturgy of the Church, defends us from the fascinations of pride and of presumption, from fashions and conformism, and gives us the strength to be truly free, including from certain temptations masked as good things.Transcription of Benedict XVI's Sunday address to young people in the cathedral of Sulmona. The Pope made a one-day trip to the region, which was devastated by an earthquake in 2009.You asked me: how can we be in the world without being of the world? I answer you: precisely thanks to prayer, to personal contact with God. It is not about multiplying words -- Jesus already said that -- but of being in the presence of God, of making one's own, in one's mind and heart, the phrases of the "Our Father," which embrace all the problems of our life, and also of adoring the Eucharist, meditating on the Gospel in our rooms, or participating with recollection in the liturgy. All this does not separate us from life, but helps us to be ourselves in every environment, faithful to God's voice that speaks to our consciences, free from the conditioning of the moment. [...]
Dear friends! Faith and prayer do not resolve problems, but enable one to address them with a new light and strength, in a way fitting to man, and also more serenely and effectively. If we look at the history of the Church, we will see that it is rich in figures of saints and blesseds who, precisely beginning with an intense and constant dialogue with God, illumined by faith, were always able to find new, creative solutions to respond to concrete human needs in every century: health, education, work, etc. Their daring was animated by the Holy Spirit and by a strong and generous love of brothers, especially of the weakest and most underprivileged.
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