Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don’t have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.

I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better — and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength.

In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. This results, then, in the courage to rejoice, which in turn becomes commitment to making sure that other people, too, can rejoice and receive good news.

Old hat already, but following the announcement of Benedict XVI’s abdication, the Los Angeles Times solicited opinions from eleven American Catholics — among them your humble & obedient scribe — what they would like to see in the new pope.

I posted in on Twitter, but in case you didn’t catch it there, you can find my contributions (in addition to those of the ten others) at this link. (more…)

Pope Francis continues Benedict XVI’s fight

… But there is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the “dictatorship of relativism”, which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples. And that brings me to a second reason for my name. Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace. But there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.

“For those tempted to draw an overly sharp distinction between Pope Francis and his predecessor,” John Allen reports, “the new pope offered a clear reminder Friday that he may have a different style than Benedict XVI, but on substance, he’s cut from much the same cloth.”

“In a speech to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See on Friday, Francis lamented not only the material poverty of the early 21st century but also its ‘spiritual poverty,’ meaning a rejection of God and objective standards of morality.”

Also, I found it interesting that the Holy Father noted that his background in an Argentine family of Italian origin impelled him in his role as bridge-builder. Naturally, as someone from an Estadounidense family of Irish origin, I feel a certain parallel kinship to this first American pope.

[Note: The boldface below is mine.] (more…)

“You will always be with us. Thank you.”

The municipal authorities have put these posters up all around Rome.

In an interview, Benedict XVI reaffirmed the immorality of using condoms, but the press have spread a lie claiming he did the exact opposite

Wow. Just wow. No matter how low my opinion of journalists and the media already is, they’ve proved that they still have the ability to astound by the depths of their depraved mendacity. The latest big giant whopper the media are dealing out is that Pope Benedict XVI has ‘changed church teaching’ by ‘lifting the absolute ban on condom use’. You should know by now that when the media report almost anything relating to the Pope or the Church, the reality is either A) the media have completely made it up, or B) the exact opposite of what the media say is true.

This one we can file under “B”: the Pope has reaffirmed the immorality of using condoms and the media have decided to claim the opposite. A new book, Light of the World is being published this week containing several interviews with the Pope by the German journalist and editor Peter Seewald.

When asked about the Church’s teaching on condoms, the Pope reaffirmed that the Church “of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution”. However, the Holy Father speculated about the intent of some condom users. (more…)

Stop blaming ‘the media’: it’s time to call out the bad apples by name

Strictly speaking, a lie is a false statement with the intent to deceive. Without the ability to read minds, it’s difficult to discern when someone who has made a false statement is intentionally lying or has merely been incorrectly informed. The intent of a journalist should be to inform — but today the deed of journalists is more often to deceive (whether intentional or otherwise). To cite but one example, Jonathan Wynne-Jones (pictured above) holds the job of Religious Affairs Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, the widely read British broadsheet which claims to be a ‘quality’ newspaper.

Read Mr Wynne-Jones’s article alleging that the Pope “has ended the Church’s absolute ban on the use of condoms”. Wynne-Jones spreads this lie from the very first sentence and continues along the same lines throughout the piece. His selective quotation is interesting, as is the fact that the fuller quotations he cites in no way back up the false contentions Wynne-Jones makes in the article.

Let’s have a look at the article. (more…)

Benedict XVI has “Done More to Protect Young Children” Than Any Other Pope According to Harvard Law Professor

The Harvard Law School professor & criminal appellant attorney Alan Dershowitz has defended Pope Benedict XVI while speaking to a television news programme in Australia. Dershowitz travelled to the continent to take part in a debate with the lawyer & activist Geoffrey Robinson QC who has waged a campaign to have the Pope tried under international law as culpable for the abuse of children by Catholic priests.

Robinson (a dual citizen of Australia and Great Britain) is well-known in legal and intellectual circles, where he has defended the use of kangaroo courts to try and convict alleged perpetrators of great crimes: his 2005 book The Tyrannicide Brief defended John Cooke, the solicitor general who prosecuted Charles I of England for treason. The Australian academic has also defended the practice of more powerful nations waging war against smaller ones to prevent the latter from committing crimes against humanity, and has argued in favour of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Dershowitz told the Australina Broadcasting Corporarion’s Tony Jones that Robertson’s attempt to have Pope Benedict tried before under international law was “wrong”.

International law deals with war crimes, it deals with systematic efforts by governments to do what happened, for example, in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, in Darfur and Cambodia. This is not in any way related to that. … This is not a crime against humanity, this is a series of crimes by individual priests and others throughout the world and failures by institutions to come to grips with it quickly enough.

Prof. Dershowitz said he thought Benedict has “probably done more to protect young children since becoming Pope than any previous Pope”. (more…)

What are the best ways of following the Pope’s visit to Great Britain? The official website is offering a live webcast of all events, with highlights from the day interspersed between events. The Daily Telegraph is live-blogging the papal events each day, with frequent updates; today can be found here. The Catholic Herald is also live-blogging the Papal Visit, and updates on today’s events can be found here.

Check catholicherald.co.uk and telegraph.co.uk for more throughout the visit.

(more…)

“Reform movements need an enemy to organize against,” Fr. Thomas Reese, the former editor of America magazine tells TIME (which I stumbled upon at Conservative Blog for Peace). “As most bishops have gotten their acts together on sex abuse, they have looked less like the enemy and more like part of the solution. Enthusiasm for reform declined. With the Pope’s forthright response, it will decline even more.”

Bishops “getting their acts together” is reform! But of course, Fr. Reese is using the word “reform” in an Orwellian manner, meaning not reform, but in fact revolt. His use would be disingenuous, except that I suspect Fr. Reese has actually convinced himself it is appropriate: as the saying goes, “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by …” well, let’s remain charitable and say “credulity”.

As bishops institute genuine reform, the sympathy — never more than limited — for progressive change-for-change’s sake unsurprisingly disappears except among the old die-hards like Fr. Reese. Enthusiasm for reform — genuine reform that is — only grows, especially in those places where it has been implemented, in accordance with the Pope’s clearly stated desires. If he is anything, Benedict XVI is a pope of reform, of putting the house back in order.

One almost feels a tinge of pity for the Fr. Reeses of this world as their hopes and dreams slip further and further away, but then one remembers it is entirely their own fault. He who marries himself to the Spirit of the Age is soon widowed. Attach yourself to the permanent things and you will never end up like poor Fr. Reese.

“The doom and gloom conveyed by the media is not the full picture.”

by HILARY WHITE

ROME, May 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – There is one thing that still surprises me about Italy: the Italians love the pope. Even when they don’t necessarily listen to or obey him on every point, even when he is not an Italian, the Italians have a genuine and very warm paternal relationship with the holder of the Keys. This Sunday, 150,000 people packed into St. Peter’s Piazza to hear Benedict XVI give an address after reciting the Regina Caeli, and to show their Holy Father their love and support after the trying period of the last few months.

I suppose coming from the Anglo world, imbued with its perpetually simmering anti-Catholicism inherited from the Elizabethans and the Glorious Revolution, it will always come as a pleasant surprise to see that, whatever vitriol the mainstream media of the anglosphere continues to pour onto this papacy, that vitriol is not the reality. Whatever Reuters or the New York Times or even Ansa will tell you, the crowd of over 150,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Piazza on Sunday were nearly beside themselves with joy to see their Papa.

It has been unseasonably cold and raining more or less steadily for weeks, and being still something of a newbie around here, I had not expected to have to hurry on Sunday. Still thinking like an Anglo and not expecting the Italian enthusiasm for their pope, I had planned to make my way over to St. Peter’s Piazza about 11:30, and thought I could take a leisurely 9:30 train into the City and take the bus down to the Campo di Fiori to have a sandwich and a cup of awful Roman tea first. But in the café a television was playing live coverage of the Piazza and I could see the crowd was already, at 10:45, starting to fill the huge space. I took my panino di pollo to go.

I had read that the Piazza could hold about 100,000 people, and remembered the day a couple of years ago when the Italians gathered to give a collective two-fingers-up to Rome’s heavily secularist Sapienza University, who had insulted their Holy Father by rescinding his invitation to speak. The English-language press was most reluctant to report that thousands of happy, shouting, smiling Sapienza students filled the square at the General Audience that week.

Today they are admitting that the Piazza held over 150,000 on Sunday, called together from all over Italy by a coalition of Italian lay associations – and that seems about right. What they don’t seem to want to report is the spell of joy that held them, many of whom waited for hours to see and hear and shout cheers to the pope. (more…)

So claims Germany’s Catholic youth leader Dirk Tänzler, who is ‘reserved’ & ‘ambivalent’ about the Pope. Is Tänzler right?

AMIDST THE MEDIA’S attempts to sling mud at Pope Benedict XVI, one of the most prominent Catholic youth leaders in Germany has chimed in with lackluster words about the reigning pontiff. Dirk Tänzler, the head of the BDKJ, the umbrella group of German Catholic youth organizations, gave an interview to Der Spiegel, the prominent weekly news magazine with a circulation of over one million. Asked his verdict of the so-far five years of Pope Benedict’s reign, Tänzler responded with the word “ambivalent”. Contrasting Benedict XVI with John Paul II — a “showmaster” — the BDKJ head said that, despite some good points, “a lot of young people often simply don’t understand him”. “Most have a different idea of how to live their lives than the pope might imagine for them. There is no ‘Generation Benedict.'”

But are Tänzler’s thoughts an accurate reflection of the state of Catholic youth in Germany or elsewhere? Over a million young people travelled to Cologne to experience World Youth Day with the new pontiff in 2005. (The following WYD held in Sydney in 2008, unfortunately offers little comparison given the relative isolation of Australia). Everywhere the Pope has travelled, such as to the Czech Republic last year, or France and the United States in 2008, vast multitudes of youth have greeted him, often waiting hours for the privilege. (more…)

A number of prominent French men & women have written a ‘call to truth’ supporting Pope Benedict XVI in the current media storm and pedophilia scandal. As the Appeal’s about page says, Pope Benedict XVI “is the first pope to address head-on, without compromise, the problem. Paradoxically, he is the subject of undermining and personal attacks, attacks relayed with a certain complacency on the part of the press”.

The list of original signatories includes writers, essayists, literary critics, bloggers, professors, philosophers, businessmen, senators, members of parliament, mayors, publishers, actors, a Protestant minister, a Fields medal winner, and even a sexologist.

The ‘Appel à la Vérité’ is reproduced, in an unofficial English translation, below:

Pedophilia is only the latest weapon aimed against Joseph Ratzinger. And each time, he is attacked where he most exercises his leadership role. One by one, the critical points of this pontificate.

NOTE: For its combination of succinctness and clarity of thought, this piece by the most indispensable of Vatican-watchers, Sandro Magister of L’Espresso, deserves reproduction in full.

ROME, April 7, 2010 – The attack striking pope Joseph Ratzinger with the weapon of the scandal posed by priests of his Church is a constant of this pontificate.

It is a constant because every time, on different terrain, striking Benedict XVI means striking the very man who has worked and is working, on that same terrain, with the greatest foresight, resolve, and success. (more…)

In 1856, Pope Pius IX erected a column dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in the Piazza di Spagna, commemorating the Proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception just two years before, and since that year every reigning pontiff has remembered the Virgin at her column on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Above, the Pope is seen turning onto the Via Condotti which leads to the Piazza di Spagna. The Palazzo Malta is designated by the flags on the right. (more…)

THE HOLY FATHER, Pope Benedict XVI, recently travelled to the Czech Republic in a journey he described as “both a pilgrimage and a mission.” The ancient land of Bohemia was once at the very center of Christian civilization. It was from here that the brother saints Cyril and Methodius launched their mission to convert the Slavic world. From Prague, the realms of the Přemyslid and then Luxembourg dynasties were ruled, followed by the most illustrious house of Hapsburg. Oh to have been in Prague under the reign of the Emperor Rudolf II! With his mysterious court of astrologers and magicians and his cabinet of curiosities. With Arcimboldo, Spranger, Heintz, and Hans von Aachen putting paint to canvas, Giambologna and de Vries sculpting, while Kepler and Tycho Brahe searched the night skies. Centuries later, long after the nucleus of Hapsburg power had moved to Vienna, it was to Prague that the Emperor Ferdinand came following his abdication and remained until his death in 1875.

But of course there is the other Prague — the city of heresy, rebellion, and warfare. (more…)

While Benedict XVI is currently in the headlines for his visit to the Holy Land, here is a translation into French by Béatrice Bohly of my piece on Benedict’s visit to Paris last year.

La devise de la ville de Paris, Fluctuat nec mergitur est parfaitement appropriée: « Battue par les flots, elle ne sombre pas ». Difficile de trouver des mots plus aptes à décrire la barque de Pierre, dont le Saint-Père, le pape, a passé ces deux jours dans la capitale française. Depuis des temps immémoriaux, la France a été considérée comme « la fille aînée de l’Eglise », son siège de primauté de Lyon ayant été établi au cours du deuxième siècle et Clovis, son premier roi chrétien, ayant reçu le baptême en 498. Mais à côté de 1.500 ans de christianisme, au cours des deux derniers siècles, la France, a également servi de fonds baptismaux à la révolution et à la rupture – dans l’esprit-même de ce premier “non serviam” (phrase attribuée à Lucifer, refusant de servir Dieu, ndt) .

Ce fut le penseur français Charles Maurras – lui-même non-catholique jusqu’à la fin de sa vie – qui a conçu de la notion que (depuis la révolution) il n’y avait pas une France mais deux : le pays réel et le le pays légal. La vraie France, catholique et droite, contre la France officielle, irreligieuse et artificielle. Tout comme Maurras différenciait les deux visions de la France, nous, dans le monde d’expression anglaise, savons que l’Angleterre est vraiment un pays catholique qui souffre d’un interregnum de quatre-siècle (de même que l’Ecosse, et l’Irlande, et l’Amérique, et le Canada, et l’Australie…). Nous aimons nos patries mais nous savons qu’elles ne sont pas vraiment elles-mêmes – elles ne reflètent pas vraiment cette idée de leur essence – jusqu’à ce qu’elles jouissent de la plénitude de la communion chrétienne.

(more…)

Benedict XVI brings a message of love & hope to the City of Light

It is wholly appropriate that the motto of the city of Paris is Fluctuat nec mergitur: “Tossed by waves, she does not sink”. It would be hard to find better words to describe the Barque of Peter, whose Holy Father the Pope has spent the past two days in the French capital. From time immemorial, France has been described as “the eldest daughter of the Church”, its primatial see of Lyons established in the second century and Clovis, its first Christian king, receiving baptism in 498. But alongside the 1,500 years of Christianity, France has, for the past two centuries, also been a font of revolution and disruption — the very spirit of that first “non serviam“.

It was the French thinker Charles Maurras — not himself a Catholic until the very end of his life — who conceived of the notion that (since the Revolution) there was not one France but two: le pays réel and le pays legal; The real France, Catholic and true, versus the official France, irreligious and contrived. Just as Maurras differentiated the two visions of France, we in the English-speaking world know that England is truly a Catholic country that is suffering from a four-century interregnum (and so with Scotland, and Ireland, and America, and Canada, and Australia…). We love our homes but we know they are not truly themselves — they do not truly reflect that idea of their essence — until they enjoy the fullness of Christian communion.

(more…)

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