Category: Benedict XVI

The Rainbow Sashers aren’t the only dissident folks who are gearing up for campaigns against the new pope.

Planned Parenthood wants to take him on, too.

EXCERPTS:

Planed Parenthood has launched a campaign to motivate all of its members and supporters, nominal Catholics and non-Catholics, to send letters to the editor, requesting that Pope Benedict XVI reconsider his “backward views” and change his opinion on sexual morality.

Pope Benedict XVI must be encouraged to “reconsider his dangerously outdated stances on birth control, abortion and sexuality in order to help move the Catholic Church into the 21st century,” reads a memo issued by campaign manager Eve Fox.

“The new Pope’s positions on these crucial issues pose a terrible danger to the health of millions of women and girls around the world and undermines efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS,” Fox wrote.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

In a related development, Frances Quisling of Catholics For A Free Choice was quoted as saying:

The bad news is that he is Pope, and he was elected by two thirds or more of the princes of the church, who knew what they were doing.

I can no longer delude myself about these princes’ almost total lack of interest in healing the divide in the Church, in showing compassion for or even in listening to the voices of the suffering. The time for nuance is over. Let the unholy war begin [SOURCE–WARNING: Evil Ad].

Cardinal Ratzinger’s choice to take the name "Benedict" left a lot of folks perplexed. Though he’s explained why he chose the name, I thought folks might like it if they had a little more background on St. Benedict and what this may say about the pope’s choice.

So I asked a priest friend of mine for some perspective–Benedictine perspective.

Here’s what my Benedictine friend had to say:

The Order of St. Benedict and the Church of Pope Benedict

As a Benedictine monk, I feel a unique closeness to our new pope who has chosen the name of the founder of my religious order—the oldest religious order in the Church.

St. Benedict of Nursia was born in A.D. 480 and died in A.D. 547.

In his day, what we now call “religious life” was a “grass roots” phenomenon, quite akin to today’s prayer groups started up by anyone who might wish to do so. A wealthy layman might start living as a monk on his own property, or give land to a group of monks. The phrase and formal reality of “religious order” did not exist. St. Benedict, like others before him, simply attracted disciples who wanted to live in community, sharing their daily worship, prayer and livelihoods. A group organized its own way of life, borrowing homemade regulations from other groups, or creating its own set of regulations.

It is a paradox that St. Benedict did not envision changing society, but subsequent history and the present Roman Pontiff rightly credit him with the development of Christian Europe and European civilization. His aim was to give direction to the lives of the men who had joined him inside the confines of a monastery. He made no plans for society outside the monastery.

St. Benedict left his monks a set of regulations we call either “The Rule for Monks” or “The Rule of Benedict.” I’ll refer to it as the “RB.” It has some spiritual advice in it, but it is mostly a set of practical directives: the daily and seasonal organization of community worship, meals, sleep, work and study; policies for hospitality; reception of new members; decision-making and governance in community life. Regulations written by other authors tended to have far less in terms of practical regulations than the RB.

Continue reading “A Tale Of Two Benedicts”

That’s what Fr. Robert Siricio of the Acton Institute is saying.

What does he mean by the provocative statement?

GET THE STORY.

That’s what Fr. Robert Siricio of the Acton Institute is saying.

What does he mean by the provocative statement?

GET THE STORY.

A reader writes to <humor>tap my expertise as a world-famous symbologist</humor> and says:

What is the significance of Pope Benedict XVI using a miter in his coat of arms instead of the tiara? Is their a difference between the two?

There is indeed a difference between the two. A mitre is the symbol of a bishop–a leader of the flock of God. A tiara–as a kind of crown–is a symbol of the ruler of a state, a worldly leader.

The pope used to be the head of the papal states and even today is the head of state for Vatican City (which is an independent country), but as popes have focused more and more on their spiritual office, they have de-emphasized the worldly authority they have as heads of state.

Consequently, Paul VI discontinued actually wearing a tiara on certain occasions. A tiara were previously used, for example, when a pope was crowned after being elected. (And Paul VI apparently was crowned, though he later discontinued the use of the tiara.) John Paul I and John Paul II were merely installed as pope rather than being crowned. (Actually, they already were pope from the moment they accepted their elections, but there was still a formal installation ceremony replacing the crowning ceremony.) They still retained the tiara in their coats of arms, though.

Benedict XVI completed the process by not even having a tiara in his coat of arms, replacing it with a mitre, which symbolizes the true essence of his office as the bishop of Rome and the leader of God’s flock rather than a worldly ruler (even though he may still be the ruler of Vatican City).

Despite the absence of the tiara from his coat of arms, there’s still a lot of fascinating stuff in it.

LEARN MORE ABOUT BENEDICT XVI’S COAT OF ARMS.

ALSO LEARN MORE ABOUT PAPAL TIARAS.

The British "newspaper" The Observer tells us the following:

Pope ‘obstructed’ sex abuse inquiry

Confidential letter reveals Ratzinger ordered bishops to keep allegations secret

Jamie ("I’m too unqualified to hold my job") Doward, religious affairs correspondent

Sunday April 24, 2005

Pope Benedict XVI faced irresponsible know-nothing claims last night he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a confidentialpublicly available letter, obtained in a death-defying feat of investigative journalism by The Observer by downloading it from the Vatican’s web site where it has been available for years [HERE, YOU MORONS], which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001 before the U.S. sex scandal even broke out.

It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors (gasp! next they’ll be wanting grand juries to do that!) and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthoodwhereas what we all know they should do is put the inquiries on CourtTV and hold regular press conferences and put all the humiliating charges and counter-charges out in public so we can sell more newspapers and have a media feeding frenzy and ruin the reputations of all involved by humiliating both innocent victims and priests who have been falsely accused. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II’s successor last week. (Dum! Dum! Dum!)

Please pay no attention to the fact that the document was part of the implementation effort for a set of norms that Pope John Paul II himself had just enacted nineteen days earlier in a letter [HERE/TRANSLATION WITH NORMS APPENDED], so Ratzinger was just doing what his boss told him to do. That shouldn’t get in the way of a good smear on the new pope.

Ambulance-chasing Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim without any foundation it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a ‘clear obstruction of justice’. Yes! By saying that the Church’s own internal investigation is to be secret, that totally prevents victims from contacting the police and reporting what happened to them. It stops them from obtaining their own civil legal representation. And it stops them from holding press conferences and explaining what happened. You can’t have both a closed-door internal Church investigation and a civil investigation at the same time. Everybody knows that!

The letter, ‘concerning very grave sins’, was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office <irrelevant historical smear>that once presided over the Inquisition</irrelevant historical smear> and was overseen by Ratzinger.

It spells out to bishops the church’s position on a number of matterswhich canonical crimes fall under the CDF’s jurisdiction, ranging from celebrating the eucharist with a non-Catholic to sexual abuse by a cleric ‘with a minor below the age of 18 years’. Ha! Fooled you, didn’t we! You thought this document was about the sex abuse scandal (which hadn’t yet broken out in the U.S.) and how to cover it up, when really it was simply a clarification of which crimes the CDF has jurisdiction over! Ratzinger’s letter states that the church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been ‘perpetrated with a minor by a cleric’ and thus prevent the state from doing diddly about them–Not! It says that the CDF has jurisdiction over these cases as far as church law is concerned, saying nothing about what civil courts may do.

The letter states that the church’s jurisdictiontime that the CDF has to hear the case before its competence expires ‘begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age’ and lasts for 10 years. Which says nothing about how long the secrecy lasts, despite what we said in the second paragraph, and which is actually an increase in the amount of time that one normally has to file a complaint, which is normally only three years [SEE CANON 1362 §1].

It orders that ‘preliminary investigations’ into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger’s office (Yes! He really said that! "Send them to my office! Don’t send them to anybody else. Send them to me only. Only I am to see them. Me. Me. Me."), which has the option if it feels like taking the afternoon off of referring them back to private tribunals in which the ‘functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests’–it being, of course, a bad idea to let priests be judged by "a jury of their peers."

‘Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,’ Ratzinger’s letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.

The letter is referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas and Ratzinger on behalf of two alleged abuse victims whose lawyers are obviously incompetent. By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims frivolously claim the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice.

Daniel ("I’m too incompetent to address this matter") Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: ‘It speaks for itself. You have to ask: why do you not start the clock ticking until the kid turns 18? It’s an obstruction of justice.’

Canon law expert John Q. Obvious pointed out that the "clock" of when the complaint can be filed does not start "ticking" when "the kid turns 18." The "kid" can bring an action against the priest even if he is under 18 years of age. What the norms do is guarantee that he has until he is 28 to bring the action so that he isn’t forced to bring the action while he is still a child in order to get it heard.

Father John Beal, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, gave an oral deposition under oath on 8 April last year in which he admitted to Shea who used thumbscrews to wring the tearful and much-resisted admission out of him that the letter extendedclarified the church’sCDF’s jurisdiction and "control" (Dum! Dum! Dum!) over sexual assault crimes in terms of he Church’s internal law.

<guilt by association smear>The Ratzinger letter was co-signed by Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone who gave an interview two years ago in which he hinted at the church’s opposition to allowing outside agencies to investigate abuse claims.

‘In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offence of paedophilia is unfounded,’ Bertone said. </guilt by association smear>

Shea criticised the order that abuse allegations should be investigated only in secret tribunals. ‘They are imposing procedures and secrecy on these cases in terms of their own law. If law enforcement agencies find out about the case, they can deal with it. But you can’t investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10 the priest will get away with it,’ Shea added. "Because obviously if a Church investigation is under way, or if the ecclesiastical statue of limitations has expired, that totally binds the hands of civil authorities. We’re living in a theocracy, after all. There’s no point in the victim contacting the civil authorities to report the matter. They’re powerless unless the Church allows them to do something here."

An unnamed and therefore sinister spokeswoman in the Vatican press office who obviously doesn’t hang out on the Vatican web site very much declined to comment when told about the contents of the letter. ‘This is not a public document since you’d have to, like, go on the Internet to find it, so we would not talk about it,’ she said.

SHEESH!!!

MORE WISDOM FROM ED PETERS.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

Those looking for insights into the theological thought of Pope Benedict XVI will need to set aside the Summa Theologica and dust off their copies of The City of God.  While reading George Weigel’s biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope, I came across the interesting tidbit that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was the first prefect in centuries of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who was not a Thomist.  Weigel didn’t specifically mention who Ratzinger’s theological inspiration was, but I assumed it was Augustine of Hippo; an assumption that appears to have been on target:

"Joseph Ratzinger describes how he prefers Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, ‘whose crystal-clear logic seemed to me to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made.’ Anyone familiar with Augustine and Aquinas would at least pause to reflect on this remark from a man characterized in the press as an inquisitor, rottweiler, enforcer.

"Augustine is the more mystical personality, closer in some ways to the ‘new age’ impulses of our times. In the writings of Augustine, arguably the most complex mind Christianity has produced, the exercise of deep faith carries with it the possibility of what I would call a ‘high’ experience in one’s pursuit of and relationship to God. That was the Church of the 5th century. In our time, religion has become freighted with correct politics (the Left) or correct morality (the Right), rather than the substance of one’s relationship with God."

GET THE STORY.

John Allen, the Rome correspondent for <anathema>National Catholic Reporter</anathema>, is a surprisingly good journalist given the publication he writes for. He recently published a column with a number of insightful things to say and a number of interesting stories derived from Cardinal George.

EXCERPTS:

Two days before the opening of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago had a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, about the American sex abuse norms, arguing that the norms should be maintained more or less as is.

George asked if Ratzinger, whose office is charged with processing sex abuse cases, had any questions. Ratzinger, according to George on April 20, showed “a good grasp of the situation.”

Forty-eight hours later, Ratzinger was the pope. As George kissed his hand, Pope Benedict XVI told him in English that he remembered the conversation the two men had, and would attend to it.

The story is a telling example for those seeking to discern the subtleties that could mark potential contrasts between the pontificate of John Paul II and that of Benedict XVI, who was the late pope’s most loyal lieutenant and yet still very much his own man.

That episode captures an important contrast between the two. In a similar situation, John Paul II, whose passion for travel and dialogue and acting as a global moral authority sometimes meant a certain neglect of internal administration, would likely have passed such a detailed matter to an aide. Benedict XVI, on the other hand, said he’d take care of it himself.

* * *

“In 1978, when Karol Wojtyla was elected as Pope John Paul II, the primary challenge to the church came from the East, in the form of Soviet Communism,” George said. “Today the most difficult challenges come from the West, and Benedict XVI is a man who comes from the West, who understands the history and the culture of the West.”

Ratzinger’s clarion call to resist a Western “dictatorship of relativism” could be likened to John Paul II’s struggle against the Marxist dictatorships of Eastern Europe. If resistance to the Soviets was the defining feature of at least the early stages of the Wojtyla papacy, perhaps resistance to relativism will be the lodestar of Ratzinger’s.

“There was a fault line in the Soviet empire that brought it down, that the concern for social justice was corrupted by the suppression of freedom,” George said. “In the West, there’s also a fault line between concern for personal freedom and the abandonment of objective truth.” George said that both contradictions “are not sustainable in the long run.”

* * *

George said the new pope offered a kind of exegesis of his choice [of the name Benedict] to the cardinals inside the conclave.

“Benedict,” George recalled Ratzinger explaining, is in the first place a reference to St. Benedict, who founded European monasticism at a time when the Roman empire was collapsing, and the church helped preserve human culture and thought. Second, however, the name is also a reference to Benedict XV, the last pope to hold it, who strove for peace in a time of war.

GET THE STORY.

John Allen, the Rome correspondent for <anathema>National Catholic Reporter</anathema>, is a surprisingly good journalist given the publication he writes for. He recently published a column with a number of insightful things to say and a number of interesting stories derived from Cardinal George.

EXCERPTS:

Two days before the opening of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago had a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, about the American sex abuse norms, arguing that the norms should be maintained more or less as is.

George asked if Ratzinger, whose office is charged with processing sex abuse cases, had any questions. Ratzinger, according to George on April 20, showed “a good grasp of the situation.”

Forty-eight hours later, Ratzinger was the pope. As George kissed his hand, Pope Benedict XVI told him in English that he remembered the conversation the two men had, and would attend to it.

The story is a telling example for those seeking to discern the subtleties that could mark potential contrasts between the pontificate of John Paul II and that of Benedict XVI, who was the late pope’s most loyal lieutenant and yet still very much his own man.

That episode captures an important contrast between the two. In a similar situation, John Paul II, whose passion for travel and dialogue and acting as a global moral authority sometimes meant a certain neglect of internal administration, would likely have passed such a detailed matter to an aide. Benedict XVI, on the other hand, said he’d take care of it himself.

* * *

“In 1978, when Karol Wojtyla was elected as Pope John Paul II, the primary challenge to the church came from the East, in the form of Soviet Communism,” George said. “Today the most difficult challenges come from the West, and Benedict XVI is a man who comes from the West, who understands the history and the culture of the West.”

Ratzinger’s clarion call to resist a Western “dictatorship of relativism” could be likened to John Paul II’s struggle against the Marxist dictatorships of Eastern Europe. If resistance to the Soviets was the defining feature of at least the early stages of the Wojtyla papacy, perhaps resistance to relativism will be the lodestar of Ratzinger’s.

“There was a fault line in the Soviet empire that brought it down, that the concern for social justice was corrupted by the suppression of freedom,” George said. “In the West, there’s also a fault line between concern for personal freedom and the abandonment of objective truth.” George said that both contradictions “are not sustainable in the long run.”

* * *

George said the new pope offered a kind of exegesis of his choice [of the name Benedict] to the cardinals inside the conclave.

“Benedict,” George recalled Ratzinger explaining, is in the first place a reference to St. Benedict, who founded European monasticism at a time when the Roman empire was collapsing, and the church helped preserve human culture and thought. Second, however, the name is also a reference to Benedict XV, the last pope to hold it, who strove for peace in a time of war.

GET THE STORY.

Secrecy oaths, like rules in general, seem mean something different to Europeans than to Americans.

Take, f’rinstance the secrecy oaths taken by cardinals and others involved in the recent conclave.

Every time there’s a conclave, details invariably leak out afterwards. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the authentic from the bogus in the stories that are told, but this time I think we’re getting a pretty clear picture of what happened.

Time Magazine has a startlingly detailed account that appears to have multiple sources.

EXCERPTS:

[T]he second balloting saw Ratzinger reach 60 votes. By the third, he was just shy of the 77 required for the papacy. By the fourth, he had won 95 out of 115.

In the Sistine Chapel, as the tally went over the required two-thirds, "there was a gasp all around," Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor of Britain recalled in a press conference. Ratzinger, he said, "had his head down. He must have been saying a prayer." When Jorge Cardinal Arturo Medina Estevez—who would announce the election to the world from the balcony of St. Peter’s—asked Ratzinger what name he would assume, the Pontiff-elect did not hesitate. "In the past, there’s been a wait while the new Pope pondered the question for 10 minutes or so," says an informed source. "Not so this time. Ratzinger replied right away, ‘Benedict XVI.’ He was prepared."

GET THE STORY.