The 'crunchy' pope

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Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Pope Benedict has recently gained a bit of credit with world media for emphasizing the urgency of addressing the environmental devastation we have wrought. This (combined with installing solar panels to make Vatican City the world’s only “carbon-neutral” sovereign state) has earned him the title “the Green Pope.” While journalists usually snip sound bites out of papal speeches for their own sensationalist purposes, so they can misrepresent their careful author as outrageous and inflammatory, here they employ their usual habits to make him more acceptable to the cosmopolitan liberal consensus. Consider the PBS coverage of Benedict’s speech to the UN last year:

He also spoke about the negative effects of globalization, especially experienced in Africa and other desperately poor parts of the world; scientific research and technological advances that, while they can bring enormous developments, can also lead, he claimed, to clear violations of “the order of creation, to the point where not only is the sacred character of life contradicted, but the human person and the family are robbed of their natural identity.” He also mentioned the necessity of swift, coordinated, and effective international action to preserve the environment. Overall, this was an uncontroversial—yet no less welcome for that—speech. It highlighted both Benedict and the Church’s internationalist credentials and went some way to gainsaying the idea that he is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.

As PBS is there to remind us, you can’t be altogether conservative if you’re not in favor of allowing globalizing multinationals to devastate the earth.

Of course, the carbon credits the pope earns don’t make the rest of his teaching any more palatable. The Catholic expert voices consulted in a Newsweek piece on papal environmentalism make a well-meaning effort to point out the consistency of the papal message across the board. In the end, however, I don’t think they offer very helpful formulations. Lucia Silecchia of Catholic University observes

When you have an issue getting so much attention, there are a lot of voices talking about it. Benedict knows that and he wanted a seat at the table…. He saw this as a way to push the values of the church in a new context.

And Raymond Arroyo of EWTN insists

It’s all the same argument. I don’t think he loves the earth as an issue in itself, but he sees it as one thing of many that the creator designed. He’s just emphasizing it.

The truth is, however, that Benedict understands our loving and responsible relationship to God’s created earth as central to our human existence as created beings, and as fundamental to the integrity of Catholic teaching. The depth of this theme in his thought (which seems to have received little emphasis from his admirers and interpreters) comes out forcefully in his 1981 Lenten homilies in Munich (published by Eerdmans as ‘In the Beginning’).

Interpreting the symbolic significance of the seven-day creation, the then Cardinal Ratzinger points out the natural basis of the seven-day week in the lunar cycle. His explanation of the significance of this reads almost as if it could have been part of a neo-pagan ecofeminist invitation to dance naked beneath the full moon:

It becomes clear that we human beings are not bounded by the limits of our own little “I” but that we are part of the rhythm of the universe, that we too, so to speak, assimilate the heavenly rhythm and movement in our own bodies and thus, thanks to this interlinking, are fitted into the logic of the universe.

To understand clearly what he is saying here, it is crucial to note the reference to “the limits of our own little ‘I’.” As a student of Augustine, Benedict knows that self-enclosure is the essential form of sin. He also knows that the remedy for self-enclosure cannot be achieved purely “spiritually” by turning the soul to God, but involves the proper relation of love toward our human community and toward the created world—and that these are all fundamentally connected.

Exactly the same insight underlies his explanation, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, of the eastward orientation of the church building and the prayer of Christian worshippers. Praying to the east is “a fundamental expression of the Christian synthesis of cosmos and history.” Christian worship is not something that occurs within the walls of the church; it opens the worshippers to the whole integrated meaning of God’s creation and redemption of the world.

For all of humanity, the rising of the sun signals the return of light to the world after darkness, the dawning of new hopes and possibilities. Directing prayer to the place of the sun’s rising reminds us of the glorious creation we celebrate, the dawning of the world and time. But at the same time, when we look upon the sun as an image of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, our bodily and emotional responses to the world and its rhythms become suffused with the significance of the redemption. The synthesis of the created cosmos and salvation history occurs viscerally in our oriented bodies.

A church not rightly oriented risks self-enclosure in two ways. Physically, it risks the enclosure of worship in the interior of its walls, losing mindfulness of its placement on the earth in relation to the cosmos and its emphasis on opening outward. But this physical enclosure has communal consequences: “The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle.” Worship risks becoming a theater of personality rather than a turning-together and opening-outward of priest and people toward Creator and Redeemer. Thus Ratzinger asks:

Are we not interested in the cosmos any more? Are we today really hopelessly huddled in our own little circle? Is it not important, precisely today, to pray with the whole of creation?

But of course our right relationship to the created world is not primarily a matter of our bodily response to rhythms of sun and moon. Above all, it concerns our living on and from the earth. As Ratzinger emphasizes, the creation account in Genesis portrays humankind as originating from “God’s good earth.” He helpfully contrasts this account to the Babylonian story it is opposing itself to. According to the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the earth and humanity originate from the body and blood of the sinister dragon slain by the just god Marduk. According to Genesis, on the contrary, the earth and its inhabitants are created by God from nothing and recognized by God to be good. Humankind is united by its relationship to the earth: by originating from it, being sustained by its goodness, and returning to it.

It is common today to claim that this “disenchantment” of the earth accomplished by Biblical religion has destroyed reverence for nature, and the injunction in Genesis 1.28 to “subdue the earth” has led to our culture and economy of utilitarian exploitation. Ratzinger shows convincingly that these dire outcomes result, on the contrary, from modern rejections of core elements in the creation teaching. The model for subduing the earth is given in these terms: humanity has the responsibility to “till it and keep it” (Genesis 2.15). This is a model of good agrarian tending, not of exploiting to the breaking point the productive possibilities of “raw materials.” Ratzinger emphasizes that “the world is to be used for what it is capable of and for what it is called to, but not for what goes against it.”

On the Shroud of Turin & The Resurrection

10 Reasons the Resurrection Really Happened

Christianity hinges on whether Jesus rose from the grave on the third day. Jeffrey Hart goes back to re-examine evidence—from the Shroud of Turin to the location of the nails at the Crucifixion.

Did the resurrection really happen? The empirical evidence is better than you may think.

This is important because Christianity requires much more in the way of belief than Islam or Judaism does.

Judaism requires belief in one God, honoring the history of the people as established in scripture (with considerable support from archaeology), and the law, beginning with the Ten Commandments set forth by Moses. Leviticus elaborates on the law at great length, and forms of Judaism differ on how much of the law elaborated there is to be observed.

Christianity asks much more. It requires belief that Jesus was crucified, died, was entombed, and rose from the dead on the third day. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance; that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me...

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith... Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than are all men.

That lays it on the line. “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”

A number of things can be said about this passage. Since Paul was executed in Rome about 65 A.D., this is the earliest testimony we have regarding the alleged resurrection. The four Gospels provide much more, notably Luke 24:32. Second, Paul seems to know that the claims about the resurrection are difficult to believe. He cites 500 witnesses, “most of whom are still living.” That is, empirical evidence exists about what Paul says, and if Paul is lying, this can be established. Incidentally, Arthur Darby Nock, our foremost Paul scholar, thinks Paul (then Saul) very likely heard Jesus speak at the synagogue in Tarsus long before Saul’s famous conversion on the road to Damascus (in today’s Syria).

That Jesus rose on the third day remains very hard to believe. Not least is the fact that a body dead for that length of time would decay considerably and would have to be fully reconstituted in order to appear alive. So let us follow the scholar Ian Wilson to Turin and there walk to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and there to the circular, black Royal Chapel designed by Guarino Guarini. There behind iron grills in a locked chamber is a linen cloth known as the Shroud of Turin.

Ian Wilson is a well-informed scholar on regarding the facts regarding the Shroud of Turin, and in his 1979 book, The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ (Doubleday), he brought together the evidence and the conclusions reached by many other experts in this field (“Sindonologists”). It seems to me, difficult to believe though it may be, that this ancient linen cloth is in fact the shroud Jesus was wrapped in before he was placed in the tomb. Here I will summarize the argument of Mr. Wilson’s book:

1. Pollen does not decay. And ancient pollen in the linen cloth indicates the origin of this linen cloth in Jerusalem and also traces its journey from Jerusalem from the Middle East through Europe. It is almost impossible that forgery could accomplish this. (David Hume: Call your office.)

2. The body was laid on the cloth and the remainder of the cloth folded over the body to produce front and back images of the man.

3. A startling fact: The image of the man on the Shroud turns out to be a photographic negative. When photographed it became a positive. Again, this seems to rule out an ancient forgery, that is, long before the invention of photography.

4. In most modern representations of the Crucifixion, the nails are shown as going through the palms. But as this image shows, the nails actually went through an aperture in the wrists. Had the nails gone through the palms, they would not have sustained body weight and would have torn through the flesh, the body falling from the cross. Execution required that the man die on the cross from lack of oxygen as he repeatedly tried to raise his body on the nails in order to breathe. Execution was slow.

5. Wounds on the back of the body indicate flogging by the Roman flagrum—metal weights attached to leather cords wielded by a wooden handle.

6. Had the image been painted on the cloth by a forger, the paint traces of the pigment would have remained on the surface. The color here penetrates the cloth evenly from one side to another. Note: In this, it is more like a scorch.

7. An objection: The Romans executed many men this way. Indeed, two criminals were executed that day along with Jesus. Could this shroud be that of another similarly executed man? It’s very unlikely. Crucifixion was disgraceful and an expression of contempt for the criminal. It is unlikely that the family or friends of a man of that sort would have wrapped his body in an expensive linen cloth—or that such a cloth would have been saved later on and made its way from the Middle East across Europe. Representations of Jesus in art reflect a knowledge of the Shroud by European artists.

8. Ian Wilson concludes that the image on the cloth is a “paranormal” phenomenon. That is, not made by hands. But how?

9. Speculation: The scorch might have been made by radioactivity attendant upon the resurrection. Whether or not it is pertinent, the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe produced measurable radiation that determines that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. If the scorch on the Shroud is the result of radiation, it could have been radiation that reconstituted the dead body. But that is merely speculation.

10. Ian Wilson’s book appeared in 1978. In 1988, carbon 14 tests were conducted indicating a medieval date for the Shroud. But that result is controversial and almost certainly wrong, for reasons cited above. In fact, along its journey to Turin, the Shroud was in a church that was the scene of a fire, and that could have corrupted the carbon dating.

Jeffrey Hart is professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College. He wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor. He wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan while he was governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.

American Papist: 32 bishops now against Obama at UND

Round-up: *32* Bishops have responded to Notre Dame's Obama invitation
I was going to compile this list, but Catherine Harmon at Catholic World Report did it first. Here it is:

Bishops’ statements on Notre Dame’s invitation to Barack Obama (my additions in bold)

1. Bishop John D’Arcy, Fort Wayne-South Bend
2. Cardinal Francis George, Chicago
3. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Galveston-Houston
4. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Milwaukee (--> NYC)
5. Archbishop John Nienstedt, St. Paul-Minneapolis
6. Archbishop Eusebius Beltran, Oklahoma City
7. Bishop Edward Slattery, Tulsa
8. Archbishop John Myers, Newark
9. Archbishop Alfred Hughs, New Orleans
10. Bishop Joseph Martino, Scranton
11. and Auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty, Scranton
12. Bishop Thomas Doran, Rockford, Ill.
13. Bishop Thomas Olmsted, Phoenix
14. Bishop Gregory Aymond, Austin
15. Bishop Robert Lynch, St. Petersburg
16. Bishop R. Walker Nickless, Sioux City
17. (Paul Schenck, on behalf of) Bishop Kevin Rhoades, Harrisburg, Pa.
18. Bishop William E. Lori, Bridgeport, CT
19. Bishop Robert Morlino, Madison WI
20. Bishop George Murry, S.J., Youngstown, OH
21. Bishop William Higi, Lafayette, IN
22. Bishop Anthony Taylor of Little Rock, AR
23. Archbishop Jose Gomez, San Antonio, TX
24. and Auxiliary Bishop Oscar Cantu
25. Bishiop Jerome Listecki, La Crosse, WI
26. Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, Baltimore MD
27. Bishop Alex Sample, Marquette MI
28. Archbishop Daniel Buechlein, Indianapolis
29. Bishop Robert Baker, Birmingham AL
30. Bishop Samuel Aquila, Fargo ND
31. Bishop Gerald Barbarito, Palm Beach FL
32. Archbishop Fabian Brukeswitz, Lincoln NE

Save the monastery & liturgy, save the world!

Save the monaster & liturgy, save the world!

The Clear Creek Monastery list just sent text of a wonderful Russ Hittinger profile of the congregation of Benedectine monks in Fontgombault, who at the time it was written (1999) was starting to plant a daughter house in eastern Oklahoma. I know this is my kind of thing, but I tell you, when I got to the end of Russ's piece, I got a chill of excitement. This really has to be the year I make a pilgrimage to Clear Creek. It really does. If you have any interest in monasticism and/or Catholicism, read past the jump. God bless these holy monks and their efforts at renewal!

Crisis Magazine
November 1999
Solesmes Monks Coming to Tulsa
by RUSSELL HITTINGER
The establishment of a new Benedictine monastery at Clear Creek, Oklahoma is the occasion for this account of the recent history of monasticism in Europe and the remarkable story behind the new foundation.

In January 1999, as the pope was preparing to fly from Mexico City to St. Louis, a rumor rippled through Cherokee County, Oklahoma. Perched in the foothills of the Ozarks, Cherokee County is the capital of the Cherokee Nation; here ended the 1839 Trail of Tears, the 1,000-mile forced march of the Cherokees from Georgia to Oklahoma. The local grammar school at Lost City had received a fax from a monastery in France. Someone reckoned that the fax was in Italian, and by the time this report reached the local feed store and therefore to cell phones and CB radios country-wide, the rumor was in full orbit.

The pope was headed for Lost City -- specifically, to a 1,200-acre tract of land at one time owned by Cleo Epps, a notorious bootlegger, but recently purchased by French Benedictine monks of the Congregation of Solesmes. That very week, the Lost City school was visited by two black-hooded monks, one wearing a pectoral cross. Someone overheard a remark about the monks meeting with the pope. There were too many coincidences. It was clear, the pope would be touching down enroute to St. Louis.

The monk with the pectoral cross was Dom Antoine Forgeot, abbot of Notre-Dame de Fontgombault, an eleventh-century Benedictine monastery east of Poitiers. His companion was Father Philip Anderson, prior of Notre-Dame de Triors, a daughterhouse of Fontgombault, founded south of Lyon in 1984. And they were indeed going to meet the pope in St. Louis to ask for the Holy Father's blessing on the new monastery outside of Lost City to be christened Our Lady of the Annunciation at Clear Creek. This fall, 13 monks -- two Canadian, three Frenchmen, and eight American -- arrived from France to build their monastery.

Contemplative life in modern Tulsa

Compared with other end-of-the-millennium events, the founding of the new Benedictine monastery at Clear Creek is a rather quiet and certainly unassuming affair. But what these black-hooded monks propose to do in the foothills of the Ozarks is significant, for Clear Creek is the first foundation (for men) of the Congregation of Solesmes in the United States. The most famous Benedictine congregation in Europe, at least in modern times, is planting itself in a place where Catholics constitute little more than 2 percent of the population, during a time of unprecedented American prosperity and power. An hour away in Tulsa, the parking lots of malls, high schools, and mega-churches are packed deep with Lexus SUVs and Land Rovers. Where oil wells once defined the American century in these parts, ten-story cell phone transmission towers now encircle the city, symbolizing the new digitalized Sunbelt. From a worldly perspective, this is a strange time and place to sow the seeds of contemplation.

But more than 150 years ago, Benedictine monasticism was revived at Solesmes under conditions that would have seemed even more unusual. During the late 18th and 19th centuries, from Lisbon to Vienna, European civil authorities declared war on monasticism. As Rousseau said, "Wherever the Clergy constitutes a body it is the master and lawgiver in its realm." Religious orders constituted such a "body" par excellence. Deriving their authority from Rome, they enjoyed independence from the local church and from civil powers. Such imperium in imperio was unacceptable to the new European regimes. Monastic institutions were an affront not only to the state but also to the new civic culture of republicanism. Garat l'Aine declared in the Assemblée Nationale in 1790 that the religious vow "is a civil suicide." Monks, he alleged, detach their affections from things of the world without giving anything back to society in the form of schools, hospitals, or orphanages. In a word, he said, monks are "useless."

The new constitutional democracies in Europe used every means at their disposal to eliminate monasticism. Within one generation, only 30 of 1,500 Benedictine abbeys survived in Europe. Cluny, the capital of medieval monasticism in the West, was closed and auctioned off to the highest bidder. Citeaux and Clairvaux likewise were confiscated and turned into state prisons. At La Trappe, the Trappists were rounded up for chain gangs, and some of the monks were sent to the penal colony of Conenama in French Guiana. By 1803, every one of the 68 Carthusian houses in France and the 18 in Germany had vanished under the legal and extralegal policies of the new regimes. Augustinian Hermits disappeared forever from Portugal, where they once had 50 monasteries. At the end of the 19th century, 500 Dominican houses had dwindled to 80, and the total number of friars plummeted from 25,000 to about 3,000. The consecrated life of religious was over, or so it seemed.

In the 1830s, a secular priest named Prosper Guéranger received permission from Pope Gregory XVI, a Camaldolese monk, to refound Benedictine monasticism at the abandoned priory of Solesmes, not far from Le Mans. Though he had never been a novice or a monk, Guéranger was made an abbot overnight. He rebuilt the Benedictine life by virtue of an extraordinary ability to imagine what monasticism once was and what it is supposed to be. This was the era of Romanticism, when many intellectuals and artists indulged a sympathy for things medieval. Guéranger, however, understood how to revive the older institutions and traditions as living realities, not as a mere exercise in nostalgia.

His multi-volume works, L'Année liturgique and Institutions liturgiques, were devoted not only to the revival of monastic chant but more broadly to exploring the historical and theological grounds for a recovery of the Roman liturgy. He insisted that liturgy and apostolic authority are intertwined, for Christ gave his apostles power to dispense the mysteries; Christ bestowed liturgical power. This simple but profound point was quite contrary to the spirit of the age, which wanted Catholicism reduced to national churches and connected to Rome only by extrinsic authority. Rather than seeing the papacy as a power external to the temporal state, Guéranger saw it as an authority internal to culture, a culture supernaturalized through the "great and mighty river" of liturgical life.

To the liberals of his time, Guéranger seemed to be an ultramontanist, and he was, for he worked behind the scenes writing briefs for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and Pastor Aeternus, the Vatican I document on papal authority. From the right, he seemed to be a dangerous liberal because he believed that efforts to restore political unity between throne and altar distracted from the renewal of the Church's interior landscapes. If permitted civil freedoms, he argued, the Roman Church had sufficient spiritual resources to restore religion and culture. Thus Guéranger anticipated some of the most important issues that would come into view a century later at Vatican II: religious liberty vis-à-vis the state, the role of Rome in evangelizing culture across national boundaries, recovery of patristic theology, and the renewal of the Roman liturgy.

Despite being expelled from France three times (in November 1880, the monks were forcibly removed from their choir stalls while chanting the divine office), the Congregation of Solesmes not only endured but flourished. Today, there are some 29 monasteries and convents, and about 1,000 monks and nuns.. They have continued to resist taking on "useful" apostolates that would distract from the contemplative life and the priority of choir. Many Catholics in the United States have heard of Solesmes, for almost all Gregorian chant by choirs or on recordings -- or even better, at a Catholic liturgy -- is derived from the restoration of chant undertaken by the monks of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes. Today the very word Solesmes evokes the image of serenity, beauty, and liturgical refinement.

The road to Oklahoma

The new foundation in Oklahoma derives from Fontgombault and three of its daughterhouses in the Solesmes system. Monasticism at Fontgombault dates back to 1091, when hermits living in caves on the banks of the Creuse River, east of Poitiers, united under the Rule of St. Benedict. Its history is not atypical of French monasticism. It thrived in the Middle Ages but slowly declined under the force of religious wars, absentee abbots, and finally the French Revolution.

Monasticism first returned to Fontgombault with the Trappists in 1849. The French government permitted the Trappists to reclaim the monastery provided the monks did something "useful" -- in this case, they ran a reform school for boys. Charles de Foucauld visited the Trappists there before becoming a hermit in the Sahara. They were evicted in 1903. In The Waters of Siloe, Thomas Merton recounts how some of the Fontgombault Trappists took refuge at Gethsemani in Kentucky; when Merton entered Gethsemani in 1941, one of the Fontgombault monks was still alive.

After World War II, Solesmes established a daughterhouse at Fontgombault, which became an Abbey in 1953. Plentiful vocations have enabled it, in turn, to found three more monasteries at Randol (1971), Triors (1984), and Gaussan (1994). The average of monks at each of these monasteries is about 40. Randol, on top of a mountain just outside Clermont-Ferrand, is the first contemplative foundation in the Auvergne region of France since 1789. All of these monasteries, including the new priory at Clear Creek, celebrate the traditional Roman liturgy at the Conventual Mass after tierce each morning.

In addition to being the first Solesmes foundation for men (in 1981 a convent was founded in Vermont) in the United States, the new priory at Clear Creek represents yet another first. It is the first time Europeans have sent Americans to spearhead the founding of a contemplative house in America. And this is perhaps the most interesting part of the story.

The connection with America goes back almost 30 years, when there was a remarkable influx of Yanks to Fontgombault. Strangely enough, this movement of Americans across the Atlantic was indirectly aided and abetted by the United States government, which, in 1970, gave University of Kansas (KU) professors John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and Frank Nelick a grant for an experimental program in "Tradition." The Pearson College Integrated Humanities Program provided courses in Western civilization, which in its time and place had just enough countercultural edge to attract a surprising number of students. The program included no overt training in theology or Catholic catechism.

In 1972 two students set out on a field trip to Europe to study village life. They also expressed a desire to hear Gregorian chant. A Trappist monk of Gethsemani who happened to be passing through KU recommended that they visit Fontgombault. Before the boys left for Europe, Professor Senior quipped, "bring back an abbot." As providence had it, the students ended up at the porter's gate of Fontgombault in July 1972. The abbot at that time, Dom Jean Roy, was absent. Upon his return, the master of novices informed him that two Americans in the guest house had requested permission to stay for several months. Dom Roy agreed. Later, he mentioned he had been thinking of the United States all that day and, in fact, had thought of founding a monastery there a few years before.

Despite their parents' incomprehension and even threats of being pursued by cult-deprogrammers, more than 100 KU students followed the first group to Fontgombault. In 1976, 60 American students arrived during Lent. It is said that many of them eventually became Catholics, including three who took monastic vows and four who became secular priests. Meanwhile, back at KU, French professors protested these field trips on the grounds that France belonged exclusively to the French Department. More serious, though unproven, allegations of religious proselytizing and brainwashing were brought against the faculty. The Humanities Program was closed after the 1977-1978 academic year. Evidently, the reality of Kansas Jayhawks exchanging hooded frat sweatshirts for hooded habits could not be tolerated by state and university officials. (An editorial cartoon in the March 31, 1977, Kansas City Times depicted an evolutionary scheme, beginning with a college hippie who evolves into a businessman, before evolving into a monk.)

In any event, 3,000 miles away, Fontgombault now had a significant contingent of Americans and three Canadians who found their way to Fontgombault completely apart from the Kansas program. By the early 1990s, according to Dom Forgeot, "it just did not seem possible to wait any longer before restoring to America the considerable number of vocations that we have received from her." Exploratory trips were made to several dioceses in search for the right combination of factors, such as suitably remote land and episcopal approval of a group of monk who bring no active apostolate.

The right combination was found in the diocese of Tulsa. Bishop Edward Slattery had been to France in 1997 to ordain, in the Carthusian house of Sélignac, a Tulsan who had once tested a vocation at Fontgombault. Three other Tulsans -- a priest, a librarian, and a public school teacher -- had also tested vocations at Fontgombault. Yet another, the daughter of a professor at Oral Roberts University, had become a nun at Jouques, a traditional Benedictine convent in the south of France. Though it might seem like a strange episode in a Catholic X-Files, there was a spiritual chord reverberating between eastern Oklahoma and France.

On the Feast of the Assumption in 1998, on the 50th anniversary of the return of Benedictine monasticism to Fontgombault, Bishop Slattery and Dom Forgeot signed an ecclesiastical charter, Ad Dei Gloriam. The diocese formally recognized the purely contemplative vocation of the new foundation, while the monks promised to be a ministry of prayer and retreats. Bishop Slattery returned to Fontgombault again this year on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul to celebrate Mass and to give some last-minute encouragement to the monks who, after more than 20 years in a French cloister, would be making a trip back to the New World.

Planting seeds in fresh soil

More than 25 years after the Kansas professor made the quip about the boys bringing back an abbot, the Americans are back, along with three Frenchmen and two Canadians. I was so struck by the story of American students from the late 1960s bringing what is essentially Carolingian monasticism to the New World that I decided last spring to visit the three French monasteries at Triors, Randol, and Fontgombault before the monks departed for Oklahoma.

My high expectations for the liturgical ritual were more than fulfilled. There is a kind of Romano-Gallic beauty, at once earthy and refined, that pervades these houses. The Roman rituals never appeared or sounded so good. I felt as if I had happened upon them for the first time. Even a tourist like me could easily catch a glimpse of the impression it must have made on those Kansas students a quarter-century ago. The question I wanted answered is whether this kind of monasticism is transplantable to Lost City, that is, to the United States. After all, this is not a golden or even bronze era of contemplative life in North America.

For his part, the abbot of Fontgombault insisted that it would be a mistake to believe that even the external refinements of the Solesmes Benedictine tradition are merely French, or for that matter merely Old World European. The beauty of the externalities, he explained -- what makes them refulgent even to the casual observer -- derives from St. Benedict's teaching on the degrees of humility. From interior humility, which is a supernatural gift, the body is induced to share in a certain order and beauty. The abbot said, "We do not for a moment forget this beauty, but by the same token we cannot forget its source, which is supernatural." It is not French, and it is not American -- it is the monastic appropriation of Gospel. There is no reason why this cannot be taught to Americans who live in varying degrees of proximity to Lost City.

One monk, an American, took a rather different approach to my question. The French soul, he explained, is old soil for monasticism. It has been tilled and turned for centuries, and even in its exhaustion, it can still produce a sturdy plant. Contemporary France is a jaded, secular culture in which anticlericalism is a democratic sport, but even so, there are 79 Benedictine monasteries in France. The American soul, on the other hand, has not been tilled to this end. (Incidentally, several of the monks, especially the French, expressed great admiration for Thomas Merton and the American Trappists of the era.) The American religious genius has been given to other, more active ends. But once this soil is cultivated for the seeds of contemplation, it will be so fresh that it will produce dramatic results.

Perhaps these monks are right. It is an issue of timing that defies worldly predictions. American Catholics are the most religiously free and prosperous people on earth. Once a church of immigrants who had something to prove to themselves and to their surrounding culture, Catholicism is today the last mainline church; it is the last church that consistently speaks in the voice of Christian tradition on those moral and spiritual issues recognizable to anyone's grandparents, Catholic or Protestant. The Catholic Church in America really doesn't have anything left to prove to the political and economic culture. The question now is how to use and direct her own freedom and generosity. Perhaps the nobility of what St. Therese called her "little way," the hidden life that once created such far-reaching results for Western culture is the next American frontier, the challenge for a truly free people. Perhaps this is to be the next chapter in "How the West Was Won."

Weigel on Neuhaus, Dulles, Smith, & Canavan....

Freed to be images of God

Four distinguished American theologians have died since the beginning of Advent: Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., Father Richard John Neuhaus, Msgr. William B. Smith and Father Francis Canavan, S.J. Each of these men enriched both Church and country with a noble idea of freedom. That idea has much to do with the events of salvation history we recall at this sacred season.

After receiving his vocation from God, Moses tried to tell the Israelites the good news of their impending liberation: they would be freed from the power of the Egyptians and brought into the land that God had given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their offspring. It sounds like a very good deal: Israel comes into the possession of its ancestral land; Israel is brought into communion with God, who is truly the Lord.

But Israel isn’t buying: “Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel; but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel bondage” (Exodus 6:9). After centuries of slavery, Israel could not imagine itself free. Israel had lost the image of God within itself.

As Father Dominique Barthelemy, O.P., puts it in a wonderful book, God and His Image (Ignatius Press), mankind after the Fall had “become wild; (man) flies in terror toward death, in terror because he can no longer bear the gaze of the Father, whose love he has in fact disowned and flouted.” Israel, trapped in the bondage of Egypt, had forgotten the loving gaze of the Father who had called Abraham and spared Isaac. So Israel would have to be tamed anew; Israel could only recover the truth about its freedom by casting off the bad habits of slavery.

“Jacob’s descendants in Egypt are a people in winter,” Father Barthelemy writes, “a people ready to die, who see death staring them in the face. God will be able to tame a people in conditions like these. It is not immediately that he will be able to take them by the hand on Sinai. He must begin by saving them from death in a wholly unexpected manner—hence the exodus from Egypt... . He will not expect this people to start calling him God, a name that evokes terrifying almighty power, immediately. He asks them to call him ...Yahweh, which for Israel means ‘Savior’ ... .

“And Israel will grasp the hand of this Savior as their guide, since it is he who has saved them from death. Afterward, they will allow this saving hand to fashion them anew. It is very necessary that God should fashion man once more in his own divine image. For man was made in the image of God. But this same man has fled ... and has fashioned in himself a caricature of God’s image. God cannot therefore make himself recognized by man unless he first fashions in him (once again) the true image of God ... .”

This is God’s fatherhood, reaching out to refashion us in true freedom which as St. Paul writes, is the freedom of the children of God—the freedom to be the images of God that we were created to be, and thus the freedom to bring into the world the healing power of God’s fatherly love. God begins the definitive work of refashioning his image in us in the Exodus. He completes that work in raising Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, from the dead, so that Jesus the Christ might be the first of many brothers—brothers who live true freedom in the communion of the Church, which is the Son’s mystical body, extended in time and space.

This is the truth about freedom that Cardinal Dulles, Father Neuhaus, Msgr. Smith, and Father Canavan tried to teach us: that true freedom consists in looking up, not looking down—in casting off our broken spirit and living according to the image of God within us. That is the truth of both Exodus and Easter. We learn it crossing the Red Seas of our own life-journeys, where we meet the risen Lord.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Some thoughts on the Notre Dame/Obama scandal & Nienstedt's letter

Just a couple further thoughts on the ND scandal...

Below is a letter from Arch. Nienstedt on the whole Obama/Notre Dame issue.
The bishop sees the bigger picture, I think.
A few things need to be considered on this issue:

-Obama is receiving a 'honorary doctor of law' degree; he promotes laws that
disregard human life, and are an affront to human dignity (gay marriage, etc.).

-Obama is the most anti-life president in history, and this is only 100 days into his
presidency. The ignorant speech he gave about stem cells is enough to
make George Bush look like a philosopher at a prestigeuos university. He also
said we ought not 'politicize science'- basically that means no ethics bind science?

-Obama has a penchant for nominating unfaithful 'Catholic' politicians to his cabinet;
this is a total embarassment and affront on the Church. The message of this is clear:
you don't have to pay attention to your bishop or Rome, we are the authority.

-Times have changed. In the past, everyone expected a lack of fidelity after the council;
this is no longer the case. Vatican II is now becoming more and more clear, thanks
to JPII and BXVI. The post conciliar Church was not pressing the 'reset' button
on doctrine and tradition as the progressivists have pushed for 40 years.

-Although ND has invited presidents to speak since Jimmy Carter,
one cannot simply look to past precedent; past precedent (Carter & Clinton) displays two
presidents who did not respect human life and should not have been honored. It is time
that the Church break from tradition (that of the last 40 years), a tradition of relativism
and infidelity to authentic teaching. It is one
thing to allow a president to speak at a Catholic school, but another to give them an
honoring and let them speak from the pulpit after mass and at commencement.
This has nothing to do with academic freedom, but the promotion of 'worldly' ideas and bowing
down to 'the world'. ND has been doing this since the Land O' Lakes decree under Hessburg.
ND would rather be a second rate Harvard, than the #1 Catholic university.

-This is a teaching moment, and everyone is paying attention. To waffle on this very clear
issue is to promote pusilanimity and infidelity to Church teaching.

-Lastly, here's Obama's anti-life record.

So, I think this is a big deal and dispicable if ND goes through with it.
Neinstedt's letter is below.

March 26, 2009

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President, University of Notre Dame
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556

Dear Father Jenkins:

I have just learned that you, as President of the University of Notre Dame, have invited President Barack Obama to be the graduation commencement speaker at the University’s exercises on May 17, 2009. I was also informed that you will confer on the president an honorary doctor of laws degree, one of the highest honors bestowed by your institution.

I write to protest this egregious decision on your part. President Obama has been a pro-abortion legislator. He has indicated, especially since he took office, his deliberate disregard of the unborn by lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research, by promoting the FOCA agenda and by his open support for gay rights throughout this country.

It is a travesty that the University of Notre Dame, considered by many to be a Catholic University, should give its public support to such an anti-Catholic politician.

I hope that you are able to reconsider this decision. If not, please do not expect me to support your University in the future.

Sincerely yours,

The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt
Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

Jesus Wasn't Always 'Nice'

Jesus Wasn’t Always Nice

Posted Mar 26, 2009

BY BISHOP THOMAS J. TOBIN

The article is a response to this piece written by the bishop.

Jesus wasn’t always nice. I had to remember that in responding to some letters I received from readers who were disappointed by my recent article, My Interview with President Obama. Some folks didn’t like the rhetorical device I employed, namely the fictional interview I composed. Others felt that I was too hard on the President when I criticized him for using tax dollars to fund abortion overseas. They said that I was not being charitable as Jesus would have been.

For example, one letter writer complained that I presented the President as a clown. “I resent the insult to our President,” she said. One of my fans from Ohio wrote, “Wow! The venom really drips on this [column] . . . Easy to blast away from the comfort and security of your cemetery hermitage . . . What did you expect to accomplish?” And a third instructed me that “the Bible teaches us to love and pray for our enemies and to turn the other cheek and not attack them . . . Charity is patient and kind. It is not arrogant or rude.”

First I should note that I am seldom offended by people criticizing the things I’ve written. Inspiring healthy dialogue in the Church is one of the goals of my columns. I hope, though, that critics can always distinguish between my personal opinions and the essential teachings of the Church which, as Catholics they are obliged to accept.

I do find it intriguing, though, that the critics of the Obama column were more offended by my writing than the fact that the President is using their tax dollars to destroy unborn children. (And now to engage in the destruction of human embryos in stem cell research.) But it still seems to me that if the President’s anti-life actions don’t stir up moral outrage in you, nothing will; if they don’t offend your conscience, you need a conscience transplant, my friend.

The other premise of my critics seems to be that because we are Christians we should never be angry or challenge others. We should always be charitable, tolerant, kind and nice, they suggest. After all, isn’t that what Jesus would do?

Well, in fact, no. The Gospels are very clear that in confronting moral evil Jesus wasn’t at all nice or kind. We usually think of Jesus as a prophet of peace, and indeed He was. But His preaching also created bitter controversy and division. “I have come to set the earth on fire . . . Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” (Lk 12: 49, 51)

Think of Jesus cleansing the Temple, an incident recorded in all four Gospels. Jesus entered the Temple angrily, confronted the merchants and money-changers, made a whip out of cords, drove them away and upset their tables and booths. Doesn’t sound too charitable to me!

Jesus railed against the towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum for their lack of faith, and predicted a terrible judgment day for those towns. “You will go down the netherworld,” He warned. (Mt 11: 23) Doesn’t sound too charitable to me!

And of course there’s Jesus’ withering condemnation of the Scribes and Pharisees. He repeatedly called them hypocrites. He described them as “blind guides . . . whitewashed tombs . . . serpents . . . brood of vipers . . . and murderers.” (Cf. Mt, Chapter 23) Doesn’t sound too charitable to me!

There are other examples, but you get the point. In confronting moral evil, Jesus wasn’t nice, kind, gentle and sweet. He lived in a rough and tumble world and He took His message to the streets. He was a fearless prophet who spoke the truth sometimes with harsh and angry language. Jesus’ condemnations infuriated public officials and religious leaders, so much so that they were determined to kill Him. And indeed they did.

In using condemnatory language was Jesus being “uncharitable?” Of course not. It was precisely because He loved people, because He was concerned for their salvation, that He spoke the truth, that He condemned their immoral, sinful behavior.

And that should be the mission of the Church today. Sometimes as Catholics we’re hesitant to challenge the immoral behavior of others, including public officials, because we don’t want to appear judgmental or uncharitable. Our society urges us to be “tolerant” of other people and their behavior, even if it’s objectively wrong. But it’s precisely because we love others that we should never tolerate immoral behavior. As Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver has written so well, “Tolerance is not an end in itself, and tolerating or excusing grave evil in a society is itself a grave evil . . . And it is not a Christian virtue.” (Render Unto Caesar, p. 145-146)

If the language in my article about President Obama’s funding of abortions seemed harsh and offensive, so be it. It has nothing to do with my personal attitude about the man. Admittedly I’m not a fan, but as I’ve written before, I pray for him and his fine family and I wish him well. As a religious leader, though, charged with carrying on the prophetic mission of Christ, I have the right, and in fact the duty, to challenge his immoral actions. I do so because Christian charity requires me to do so, because I love my country and I believe in the sanctity of human life. As St. Paul said, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” (I Cor 9:16)

Cardinal: Criticisms of Pope Have Gone Too Far

Archbishop of Genoa Laments Recent Accusations

ROME, MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Attacks directed toward Benedict XVI have gone too far, and Catholics won't go along with it, says the president of Italy's episcopal conference.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the archbishop of Genoa, said this Monday at the inaugural session of the conference's permanent episcopal council, under way in Rome.

Referring to the recent controversies regarding the lifting of the excommunication of four bishops of the St. Pius X Society, and comments the Pontiff made about condoms on his trip to Africa, the cardinal said "the harshest criticisms to our beloved Pope -- from Italy and above all from abroad -- have gone beyond good sense."

Not wanting to dedicate too much time on the "clumsy accusations," Cardinal Bagnasco directed his comments toward the letter Benedict XVI sent earlier this month to the bishops of the world, in which he explained the reasons for lifting the excommunication of the four Lefebvrite prelates, who had been unlawfully ordained in 1988 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The letter "immediately attracted wide consensus," the cardinal noted. He described it as an appeal to the whole Church for genuine reconciliation.

Nevertheless, the cardinal expressed a "severe judgment" regarding the "postures and words that led to a situation which should never have come about, fueling systematic alarmist interpretations and conduct that is mistrustful toward the hierarchy."

Distraction

Regarding Benedict XVI's trip to Cameroon and Angola last week, Cardinal Bagnasco noted that "from the beginning, [it] was diverted from Westerners' attention by a controversy -- on condoms -- which, frankly, was unwarranted."

"It is no accident that Africa's own media showed no interest in the subject, were it not for the damaging insistence of international agencies, and for the statements of some European political leaders and supranational organizations," affirmed the cardinal.

The archbishop of Genoa lamented that the media, governments and international institutions did not "limit themselves to dissent freely, but reached an ostracism that goes beyond secular canons themselves. In any case, derision and vulgarity will never be part of civilized language, and fatally fall on those who practice it."

Furthermore, the cardinal said the Holy Father's comments on the issue have been confirmed by those who work in the fields of health and education in Africa.

Africa needs to focus more on promoting greater access to education and medical care, as well as the "effective promotion of women," Cardinal Bagnasco continued.

He appealed to governments "to keep their commitments," to go beyond "demagogy and the neo-colonial logic of control."

The cardinal also noted that bishops and the faithful will not accept that the Pope is laughed at or insulted, as "the best tradition of our Catholicism is to be with the Pope always and unconditionally."

Benedict XVI Reflects on Africa Trip

Here's the Vatican link to all the resources of BXVI's visit.

Says He Was Impressed by Joy, Devotion

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The joy of the African peoples, combined with their spirit of recollection and sense of the sacred, were two aspects of the continent that impressed Benedict XVI.
The Pope said this Monday during his return flight from Angola, reported H20news.

The Holy Father said he was impressed, on one hand, by "the almost exuberant cordiality, the joy of a festive Africa, which it seems to me saw in hope, lets say, the personification of the fact that we are the children and family of God."

"This family exists and we, with all our limitations, are in that family and God is with us. So the Pope's presence has helped to feel this," he added.

"On the other hand," continued the Holy Father, "I was very impressed by the spirit of recollection in the liturgies, the strong sense of the sacred: In the liturgies there is no group representation or personal leadership, but the presence of the sacred, of God himself. Their movements were also movements of respect and awareness of the divine presence."

Tragedy

Benedict XVI expressed his profound sorrow over the death of two girls trampled by the crowd, which also left some 90 wounded, in the incident that took place outside Luanda's Coqueiros Stadium, where soon afterward the meeting with young Congolese was to be held.

"I have prayed, and pray for them," said the Pontiff.

The Holy Father also recalled the meeting Thursday with the sick in Yaoundé's Cardinal Paul-Émile Léger Center, a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, founded in 1972 by the Canadian cardinal after whom it is named.

"It touched my heart to see here the world of the many sufferings, of all suffering, the sadness, the poverty of human existence, but also to see how the state and Church collaborate to help those who suffer," commented the Pope.

"And one sees, it seems to me, that when a man helps one who suffers he is more of a man, the world becomes more human: This is engraved in my memory," he added.

Benedict XVI traveled to Africa to personally present to the presidents of the 42 episcopal conferences on the continent the "instrumentum laboris" (working document) for the Second Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Africa, which will be held Oct. 4-25 in Rome.

Bishop D'Arcy to Skip Notre Dame Graduation

Sites University's Preference for Prestige Over Truth

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- For the first time in 25 years, the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend will not attend the University of Notre Dame's graduation ceremony.

In a statement released today on the diocese's Web site, Bishop John D'Arcy revealed his decision to not attend this year's commencement, at which President Barack Obama will speak and receive an honorary degree.

He said his move isn't an attack on anyone, but rather a gesture done in defense of the truth of human life.

Father John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, informed the bishop Friday that Obama had accepted an invitation to speak at the university's spring commencement. Bishop D'Arcy noted that this was the first he had heard that such an invitation had been extended.

"President Obama," he said, "has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred. While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life."

Bishop D'Arcy noted that he made his decision "after much prayer," and that he wishes "no disrespect to our president."

"I have always revered the office of the presidency," he said. "But a bishop must teach the Catholic faith 'in season and out of season,' and he teaches not only by his words -- but by his actions."

"My decision is not an attack on anyone, but is in defense of the truth about human life," he added.

Quoting a 2004 statement of the U.S. bishops, Bishop D'Arcy said, "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

"Indeed, the measure of any Catholic institution is not only what it stands for, but also what it will not stand for," the bishop noted.

Honor for Glendon

Bishop D'Arcy noted that Notre Dame will also honor Mary Ann Glendon, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy, at this year's graduation ceremony. She will be presented with the university's Laetare Medal.

The medal has been awarded annually since 1883 to a Catholic "whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity."

The bishop said he has spoken with Glendon, and he encouraged her to accept the award, "and take the opportunity such an award gives her to teach."

"Even as I continue to ponder in prayer these events, which many have found shocking, so must Notre Dame," concluded Bishop D'Arcy. "Indeed, as a Catholic university, Notre Dame must ask itself, if by this decision it has chosen prestige over truth.

"Tomorrow, we celebrate as Catholics the moment when our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, became a child in the womb of his most holy mother. Let us ask Our Lady to intercede for the university named in her honor, that it may recommit itself to the primacy of truth over prestige."

Cardinal Ruini, summarizing the focus of BXVI's pontificate

Here's the whole piece at Chiesa.

Cardinal Ruini:

The first and greatest priority is God himself, that God who is too easily pushed to the edges of our lives, focused on "doing," especially through "techno-science," and on "enjoyment-consumption." That God is even expressly negated by an evolutionist "metaphysics" that reduces everything to nature, to matter-energy, to chance (random mutations) and to necessity (natural selection), or more often is said to be unknowable according to the principle that "latet omne verum," all truth is hidden, as a result of the restriction of the horizons of our reason to that which can be experienced and measured, according to the view now prevalent. That God, finally, who has been proclaimed "dead," with the assertion of nihilism and the resulting collapse of all certainty.

Benedict's letter to bishops on the SSPX bungle...

This is a letter from a humble shepherd.

Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry!

The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time. Many Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing the Church today. Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope’s concern for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in our time. Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church.

An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church’s path. A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council -- steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support. That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore. I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility. Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust which -- as in the days of Pope John Paul II -- has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God, continues to exist.

Another mistake, which I deeply regret, is the fact that the extent and limits of the provision of 21 January 2009 were not clearly and adequately explained at the moment of its publication. The excommunication affects individuals, not institutions. An episcopal ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism, since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope. Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe punishment -- excommunication -- with the aim of calling those thus punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained. The remission of the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely, to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to the authority of the Council. Here I return to the distinction between individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties. This disciplinary level needs to be distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers -- even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty -- do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.

In light of this situation, it is my intention henceforth to join the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei" -- the body which has been competent since 1988 for those communities and persons who, coming from the Society of Saint Pius X or from similar groups, wish to return to full communion with the Pope -- to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the Popes. The collegial bodies with which the Congregation studies questions which arise (especially the ordinary Wednesday meeting of Cardinals and the annual or biennial Plenary Session) ensure the involvement of the Prefects of the different Roman Congregations and representatives from the world’s Bishops in the process of decision-making. The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 -- this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life. [hahahahaha!]

I hope, dear Brothers, that this serves to clarify the positive significance and also the limits of the provision of 21 January 2009. But the question still remains: Was this measure needed? Was it really a priority? Aren’t other things perhaps more important? Of course there are more important and urgent matters. I believe that I set forth clearly the priorities of my pontificate in the addresses which I gave at its beginning. Everything that I said then continues unchanged as my plan of action. The first priority for the Successor of Peter was laid down by the Lord in the Upper Room in the clearest of terms: "You… strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22:32). Peter himself formulated this priority anew in his first Letter: "Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet 3:15). In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses "to the end" (cf. Jn 13:1) -- in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.

Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith -- ecumenism -- is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light -- this is interreligious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love "to the end" has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity -- this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who "has something against you" (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents -- to the extent possible -- in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim him and, with him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things -- arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them -- in this case the Pope -- he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint. [Boom.]

Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15. I was surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another." I am always tempted to see these words as another of the rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some extent that may also be the case. But sad to say, this "biting and devouring" also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly understood freedom. Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love? The day I spoke about this at the Major Seminary, the feast of Our Lady of Trust was being celebrated in Rome. And so it is: Mary teaches us trust. She leads us to her Son, in whom all of us can put our trust. He will be our guide -- even in turbulent times. And so I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all the many Bishops who have lately offered me touching tokens of trust and affection, and above all assured me of their prayers. My thanks also go to all the faithful who in these days have given me testimony of their constant fidelity to the Successor of Saint Peter. May the Lord protect all of us and guide our steps along the way of peace. This is the prayer that rises up instinctively from my heart at the beginning of this Lent, a liturgical season particularly suited to interior purification, one which invites all of us to look with renewed hope to the light which awaits us at Easter.

With a special Apostolic Blessing, I remain

Yours in the Lord,

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

From the Vatican, 10 March 2009

Former Senator Rick Santorum gets it...

From a recent op-ed piece in a Philadelphia paper:

...Sadly, the church hierarchy has been less assertive when public figures' policy positions openly dissent from core teachings.

That's why Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino got so much national attention last fall. Martino, formerly the auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia, made the welcome decision to publicly bar then Sen. Joe Biden and other abortion advocates from receiving Communion in the Scranton Diocese. Then, after the November election, he admonished his brother bishops for their reluctance to deal with the issue faithfully.

Last month, Martino took on the most influential family in his diocese, the Caseys. He excoriated Sen. Bob Casey, who claims to be pro-life, for voting to give taxpayer dollars to overseas organizations that perform abortions. He warned that Casey was "formally cooperating with evil."

Martino was not done. Two weeks ago, the Philadelphia native and St. Joseph's Prep graduate issued a strong statement of disapproval to a local, nominally Catholic college, Misericordia University, that had scheduled a speech on campus by someone advocating same-sex marriage. "The faithful of the Diocese of Scranton should be in no doubt," Martino said, "that Misericordia University in this instance is seriously failing in maintaining its Catholic identity."

Then, last week, Martino took on some more of the biggest guns in the diocese: the Irish clubs that organize the largest public Catholic event of the year, the St. Patrick's Day festivities. Through a letter from his Irish auxiliary bishop, Martino warned that if any of these groups went ahead with plans that in any way honor politicians who are not pro-life, he would close the cathedral where Mass is usually held prior to the parade, as well as other diocesan churches. He said he would not countenance anything that created confusion about the teachings of the church.

The reason for the letter: Scranton's St. Patrick's Day parade last year featured Hillary Clinton.

Many of his brother bishops will look at Martino as they do at other uncompromising defenders of the faith, worrying about the world's reaction. As a Philly guy, though, his excellency knows something about being booed. He also knows his job and calling: to be the good shepherd who faithfully leads and protects his flock from those who would lead them astray.

Yes, scores of people are reportedly protesting and threatening to leave the church. In the end, however, people leaving the church because of a bishop who enforces its teachings are a blessing compared with the alternative: people leaving because bishops and their priests don't teach, much less enforce, those teachings.

Amen, brother!

2 Cardinals on the dangers of secularism

From Chiesa.

Catholics, secularists, and civil society

by Angelo Scola


"The West must decide to understand what influence faith has in the public life of its citizens, it cannot dismiss the problem."

These scorching words, spoken by a Middle Eastern bishop in Amman during the international scholarly conference of the magazine "Oasis," are coming back to my mind in these days, during which a lively debate has been ignited in the media about the activity of Christians in civil society, the dialogue between secularists and Catholics – which, according to some, has reached the end of the line – the presumed defeat of Christianity, and the interference by churchmen in public affairs. In a word, about the manner in which Catholics should or should not address delicate issues of public life, like those of bioethics.

It seems to me that people often lose sight of the heart of the matter: every faith must always be subjected to a public cultural interpretation. It is an inevitable fact. On the one hand, this is because, as John Paul II wrote, "a faith that did not become cultural would not be fully welcomed, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived." On the other, since the faith – Jewish and Christian – is the result of God's compromise with history, it inevitably has to do with the concreteness of life and death, of love and pain, of work and rest, and of civic action. For this reason, it is inevitably the object of different cultural interpretations, which can be in conflict with each other.

In this phase of "post-secularism," there are two cultural interpretations of Christianity in particular that are at odds with each other. Both seem reductive to me.

The first is the one that treats Christianity as a civil religion, as mere ethical cement, capable of acting as a social adhesive for our democracy and for the European democracies in grave distress. If such a position is plausible in those who do not believe, its structural insufficiency should be evident to those who do believe.

The other, more subtle interpretation is the one that tends to reduce Christianity to the proclamation of the pure, unadorned Cross, for the salvation of "everyone else."

For example, getting involved with bioethics or biopolitics is seen as detracting from Christ's authentic message of mercy, as if this message were in itself ahistorical, without any anthropological, social, and cosmological implications. Such an attitude produces a dispersion, a diaspora of Christians in society, and ends up concealing the human relevance of the faith as such. To such an extent that in the face of life's crises, including public ones, a silence is demanded that risks making adherence to Christ and to the Church meaningless in the eyes of others.

In my view, neither of these two cultural interpretations succeeds in expressing adequately the true nature of Christianity and its activity in social society: the first because it reduces this to its secular dimension, separating it from its specifically Christian dynamism, the gift of an encounter with the personal coming of Christ in the Church; the second because it deprives the faith of its concrete embodiment.

There is another cultural interpretation that to me seems more respectful of the nature of man and his being in relationship. This runs along the ridge that separates civil religion from diaspora and concealment. It presents the coming of Jesus Christ in its entirety – incapable of being reduced to any human federation – and displays the heart of this, which lives in the Church's faith on behalf of all people.

In what way? Through the Church's proclamation of all the mysteries of faith in their entirety, as skillfully compiled in the catechism.

But this leads to the need to explain all of the aspects and implications that always arise from these mysteries. These are interwoven with human affairs in every age, demonstrating the beauty and fecundity of the faith for everyday life.

Just one example: if I believe that man is created in the image and likeness of God, I will have a certain understanding of birth and death, of the relationship between man and woman, of marriage and the family. This understanding inevitably encounters and seeks an exchange with the experience of all men, including nonbelievers. Regardless of their manner of understanding these basic elements of existence.

While respecting the specific responsibility of the lay faithful in the political domain, it is nonetheless evident that if every member of the faithful, from the pope to the last of the baptized, were not to share openly what he believes are the valid answers to the questions that trouble the human heart every day, and bear witness to the practical implications of his own faith, he would take something away from others. He would withhold a positive contribution, he would not participate in the common effort to build up the good life.

And today, in a society that is pluralistic and therefore has a tendency to be highly conflictual, this exchange must extend 360 degrees, to everyone, no one excluded.

In such an encounter, in which Christians, including the pope and bishops, dialogue humbly but firmly with everyone, it can be seen that the action of the Church is not aimed at hegemony, in using the ideal of faith for the sake of power. Its real aim, in imitation of its Founder, is that of offering everyone the consolation of hope in eternal life. This hope can already be enjoyed in the "hundredfold here below,"and helps us to face the crucial problems that make everyone's daily life fascinating and dramatic.

It is only through this untiring testimony, aimed at mutual recognition and respectful of the procedures ratified under the rule of law, that the great practical value unleashed by the fact of living together can be made to bear fruit.

__________


Secularism and the common good

by Camillo Ruini


Reflecting on secularism in relation to the common good seems to me to be a fundamental and somewhat stimulating approach to understanding and appreciating secularism, and in particular for discerning and evaluating the various and very different meanings that the concept of secularism has taken on.

But in order to do this, we must first of all get as clear and specific an idea as possible of the meaning of the expression "common good," in the light of which we will seek to discover the foundations and functions of secularism.

As is well known, "common good" is a typical – if not exclusive – concept of Catholic social thought. It therefore seems proper to refer to the meaning that the term is given in this context. The "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church," published in 2004 by the pontifical council for justice and peace, considers the common good as the first of the principles of this doctrine, deriving it "from the dignity, unity and equality of all people."

It first of all indicates "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily." In concrete terms, the common good is "the good of all people and of the whole person," since "the human person cannot find fulfilment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists 'with' others and 'for' others."

The common good, therefore, "does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains 'common', because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future." Although it is thus founded in the nature and dignity of our being, the common good also has a clear historical dimension: in fact, "the demands of the common good are dependent on the social conditions of each historical period and are strictly connected to respect for and the integral promotion of the person and his fundamental rights" ("Compendium, nn. 164-166).

It is not possible, and perhaps it would not even be useful for our purposes, to dispose of such a clear and organic determination of the concept of secularism. But an initial clarification, unnecessary in English, is indispensable for the Italian term "laicità," which can refer either to political secularism or to the non-clerical dimension of the Church. In this context, we are not speaking of "laicità" in the theological and ecclesial sense, concerning which Vatican Council II says in "Lumen Gentium" (no. 31): "The term laity is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in holy orders and those in the state of religious life... these faithful are by baptism made one body with Christ and are constituted among the People of God... and they carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world. What specifically characterizes the laity is their secular nature... the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God."

This secular nature and the relationship with temporal realities constitute, in a certain way, the bridge that permits a connection and passage to the other major meaning of the terms "laici" and "laicità" [political secularism], which is the one to which we will refer from now on. Here, secular and secularism are, in fact, concepts that indicate and imply an autonomy and distinction from that which is ecclesiastical, from that which refers to the Church, and more broadly to Christianity and religion in general. Still fundamental for understanding the origin of this concept is the comprehensive study by G. de Lagarde "La naissance de l'esprit laïque, au déclin du moyen âge".

Indicative of the plurality and also of the contrast of interpretations given to this concept today is the way in which Giovanni Fornero, in the third edition of Nicola Abbagnano's "Dizionario di filosofia" (which Fornero himself edited), treats the entry "Laicismo," which in ordinary expression indicates a rigid, polemical, and "exclusive" version of secularism. For Fornero, "laicismo" means "the principle of the autonomy of human activities, meaning the demand that these activities be undertaken according to their own rules, that they not be imposed from the outside, for purposes or interests different from those that inspire them."

But this autonomy is affirmed, in terms that are formally rather similar, by Vatican Council II ("Gaudium et Spes, no. 36), which states: "If by the autonomy of earthly affairs we mean that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values which must be gradually deciphered, put to use, and regulated by men, then it is entirely right to demand that autonomy. Such is not merely required by modern man, but harmonizes also with the will of the Creator. For by the very circumstance of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order. Man must respect these as he isolates them by the appropriate methods of the individual sciences or arts."

It is also rather interesting that Fornero traces back the origin of the concept of secularism to Pope Gelasius I, who, at the end of the fifth century, clearly formulated the principle of the distinction between the two powers of the pope and the emperor, and on this basis asserted the autonomy of the religious sphere from that of politics. And then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expressed himself in similar terms in the book "Without Roots" (pp. 56-57), identifying here as well the origin of a profound difference between Christianity in the West and the East, between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, in which the emperor was also the head of the Church, which appeared to be almost equated with the empire.

* * *

But this convergence, or agreement, on the principle of secularism cannot conceal the divergences that have formed throughout history, and continue to reemerge today. The decisive shift was the "new schism" – to use the words of Cardinal Ratzinger in the book already cited (p. 63) – that was seen above all in France between the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, and is still typical especially of the Latin countries of Catholic tradition.

It was here that the defense of reason and freedom asserted with the Enlightenment took on a face that was decisively hostile toward the Church, and, not infrequently, closed to any form of transcendence, while for its part the Church struggled and stalled for a long time in distinguishing between the anti-Christian claims that it clearly could not refrain from opposing, and the defense of social and political freedom which, instead, it could and must accept positively. The "new schism" was therefore between Catholics and "secularists," where the word "secular" took on a meaning of opposition to religion that it did not have before.

It is interesting to note that a similar schism was not seen in the Protestant world, because Protestantism, which from the beginning had understood itself as a movement of liberation and purification from the bonds of ecclesiastical authority, easily developed a kinship with Enlightenment thinking, but with the risk – and sometimes not only the risk – of undermining Christian truth from within and reducing it to an element of culture, rather than of faith in the authentic sense.

The terrain that was immediately the most sensitive – although, in my view, not the most profound – to tensions between Christianity and Enlightenment philosophy was that of relations between Church and state. And here a second and extremely important convergence developed, above all within the Protestant world.

While in Europe the Churches that emerged from the Reformation were constituted as state Churches in a manner that was much more significant than in the case of Catholicism, where the state Churches always had to come to terms with the unity and transnational universality of the Catholic Church, it was entirely different in the United States of America. The country's very origin, in fact, was due to a large extent to those groups of Protestant Christians who had fled from the system of state Churches in Europe, and formed free communities of believers.

The foundation of American society was therefore laid by the free Churches, for which it was essential not to be state Churches, but be founded on the free association of believers. In this sense, it can be said that at the basis of American society is a separation between Church and state that is determined, even demanded by religion and aimed above all at protecting religion itself and its living space, which the state must leave free. We are therefore not far from the intentions and objectives of the distinction asserted by Pope Gelasius I. We are, however, extremely far from that fundamental separation, "hostile" to religion and tending to subordinate the Churches to the state, imposed by the French Revolution and by the state systems that followed it.

As a result, the entire system of relations between the state and non-state spheres in America developed differently than it did in Europe, attributing to the non-state sphere as well a concrete public character, favored by the legal and fiscal system. In this America, with its specific identity, Catholics assimilated well, despite the resistance from the ideology that wanted to reserve full "North American" identity only for Protestants. In concrete terms, the Catholics soon realized the positive character of separation between state and Church linked to religious motivations and the importance of religious freedom thus guaranteed.

* * *

Until Vatican Council II, however, a difficulty remained, or a reservation on principle, which did not the regard American Catholics as such, but the Catholic Church as a whole. This difficulty concerned the recognition of religious freedom, not simply as the acceptance of a given fact, but as the affirmation of a right, founded on the dignity that belongs to the human person by nature. It is not a coincidence that the conciliar decree on religious freedom "Dignitatis Humanae," which clearly affirmed this right – while steering clear basing it on a relativistic approach that would bring the truth of Christianity into question – was drafted with a significant contribution from North American bishops and theologians.

Vatican II did not limit itself to removing the obstacle concerning religious freedom, but represented the overcoming, at least in principle, of the historical stalling of Catholicism to which I referred previously. In fact, it laid the foundations for a true reconciliation between the Church and modernity, and for the rediscovery of the profound correspondence between Christianity and Enlightenment thought.

In concrete terms, the Council made its own the "anthropological revolution" that since the beginning of the modern age had put man at the center: it demonstrated, in fact, the Christian roots of this revolution, and the lack of foundation for the contrast between the centrality of man and the centrality of God. Similarly, it affirmed, as has already been seen, the legitimate autonomy of earthly realities, the rights and freedoms of men and peoples, recognizing at the same time the validity of the great effort that humanity is making to transform the world.

With Vatican II, therefore, a new season in relations between the Church and secularism was inaugurated, and also between the Catholic Church and freedom: a season in which at first there was hope that all of the disputes about secularism were now behind us.

This hope was not without its concrete reasons, in part and especially concerning the "sensitive" terrain of relations between Church and state. With the full recognition of religious freedom on the part of Vatican Council II, in fact, there was a loss of justification in principle for a "state religion," which had constituted the substantial obstacle to the secularism of the state itself, and of its institutions. Even the difference between "concorditarian" regimes and regimes of separation between state and Church came less relevant at this point, since even the Concordats – as exemplified by the agreement on revision of the Concordat stipulated between the Italian state and the Holy See in 1984 – are now expressly situated outside of the context of a state religion. The protocol added to this agreement states, in fact, in relation to article 1: "The principle originally referred to in the Lateran Pacts, of the Catholic religion as the only religion of the Italian state, should be considered as no longer in effect."

* * *

The events of the past two decades seem, however, to shatter such a hope: we find ourselves, in fact, in a new and acute phase of the dispute about secularism.

Considering the issue carefully, however, the object of contention has profoundly changed: it is no longer a matter, at least in principle, of relations between Church and state as institutions. In this regard, in fact, their mutual distinction and autonomy were substantially accepted and shared by both Catholics and secularists, and together with them the pluralistic openness of the democratic and liberal state to the most diverse positions, all of which in themselves have equal rights and equal dignity before the state. The controversies that arose around these issues therefore seem rather fabricated, and are probably the reflection of the other and more substantial dispute to which we must now turn.

This dispute is mainly focused on the major ethical and anthropological problems that have emerged in recent decades, following both the profound changes in customs and behaviors, and the new applications of biotechnology to the human subject, which have opened horizons unimaginable until the recent past.

These problems, in fact, clearly have a dimension that is not only personal and private, but also public, and cannot be answered except on the basis of the understanding of man that is used as the reference: in particular, the fundamental question of whether man is only natural being, the result of cosmic and biological evolution, or instead has a transcendent dimension as well, which cannot be reduced to the physical universe.

It would be strange, then, for the great religions not to say anything about this, and not make their voice heard on the public stage. As is natural, the leading role in this is taken by the religions that predominate in the various geographical and cultural areas: Christianity in the West, and in Italy in particular, the Catholic Church.

In concrete terms, their voice resonates with a force that few would have expected when an increasingly radical secularization was believed to be the inevitable destiny of the contemporary world, or at least of the West: when, that is, it seemed out of the question that there could be that reawakening, on a worldwide scale, of religions and their public role which has been one of the great new developments of the last few decades. I would like to recall, in this regard, the surprise and distress that were provoked, even in Catholic circles, by the statements that John Paul II made at the conference of the Italian Church in Loreto in that long-ago April of 1985, when he called for a rediscovery of "the role, also public, that Christianity can play for the promotion of man and for the good of Italy, with complete respect and even wholehearted promotion of the religious and civil freedom of all and of each one, without in any way confusing the Church with the political community." John Paul II therefore asked the Italian Church to "work, with humble courage and complete trust in the Lord, so that the Christian faith may have or recover – even and especially in a pluralistic and partially de-Christianized society – a role as a guide and effective engine in the journey toward the future."

* * *

The dispute about secularism centered on the major ethical and anthropological questions now has another proponent, which precisely in relation to these problems takes an antithetical stance toward the Church and Christianity. Its conceptual nucleus is the conviction that man is entirely reducible to the physical universe, while on the ethical and legal level his fundamental task is that of individual freedom, in relation to which any form of discrimination is to be avoided.

This freedom, according to which in the final analysis everything is relative to the individual, is set up as the supreme ethical and legal criterion: every other position is admissible only as long as it does not challenge, but remains subordinate to this relativistic criterion. In this way, the moral norms of Christianity are systematically censored, at least in their public influence. In this way, there has developed in the West that which Benedict XVI has repeatedly called "the dictatorship of relativism," meaning a form of culture that deliberately severs its own historical roots and constitutes a radical contradiction not only of Christianity, but more broadly of the religious and moral traditions of humanity.

But this same severing of the roots is far from being shared by everyone in what is typically called "the secular world." On the contrary, many "secularists" maintain that they must reject such a decision, in order to remain faithful to the authentic roots and motivations of liberalism, which they judge as being incompatible with the dictatorship of relativism.

Then-cardinal Ratzinger, in the book previously mentioned, provided an historical and also a theological motivation for this new harmony between secularists and Catholics, to the point of maintaining that the distinction between these "is relative" ("Without Roots," p. 123). In a letter written to Marcello Pera on the occasion of the recent publication of his book "Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani. Il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica [Why we must call ourselves Christian. Liberalism, Europe, ethics]," Benedict XVI again took a strong position in favor of the intrinsic connection between liberalism and Christianity. Moreover, in the address he delivered in Subiaco on April 1, 2005, the day before John Paul II died, he advanced a "proposal to the secularists": to discard the formula of Hugo Grotius "etsi Deus non daretur" – even if God did not exist – now historically outworn because over the course of the twentieth century there has been a steady decline in the extensive communality of content between civil public ethics and Christian morality that constituted the concrete meaning of this formula, and replace it with its inverse, "veluti si Deus daretur" – as if God did exist. That is, even those who are unable to accept God should seek to live and conduct their lives as if God exists: "This does not impose limitations on anyone's freedom; it gives support to all our human affairs and supplies a criterion of which human life stands sorely in need" (J. Ratzinger, "Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures ", pp. 50-52).

It is necessary to add that not all Catholics share this cordial openness toward these kinds of secularists. In fact, there are some who look at them with suspicion – unwarranted, in my view – fearing that they are exploiting the Christian faith for ideological and political purposes. The main reason for this distrust is that not a few of them, although they are Catholics, do not appear to be truly convinced of the necessity of a concerted effort in the field of public ethics. In concrete terms, these Catholics remain rather attached, regarding secularism, to the classical framework of the division of competencies between civil institutions and ecclesiastical institutions, and seem not to grasp fully the significance of the new development constituted by the emergence of the current ethical and anthropological problems.

* * *

The analysis of the concept of secularism in its concrete historical articulation permits us to attempt a specific answer to the question of the relationship between secularism and the common good.

When it is understood as the autonomy of human activities, which must stand according to their own norms, and in particular as the independence of the state from ecclesiastical authority, secularism is certainly required by the common good, as has been amply demonstrated by the history of modern Europe beginning with the wars of religion. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, in his classic essay on "The formation of the state as a process of secularization," is among those who best highlighted how only the independence of the state from the various religious confessions could ensure the peace of nations, and the very freedom of believers.

It is a different matter, however, when the concept of secularism is extended to include any reference of human activities, and in particular of the laws of the state and of the entire public sphere, to those ethical principles that find their foundation in human existence itself, in addition to that "religious sense" that expresses our intrinsic openness to transcendence.

In fact, as Böckenförde himself demonstrated at the end of the essay that I mentioned, the secularist liberal state lives on presuppositions that it cannot guarantee itself, and among these, as Hegel maintained, a particular role seems to belong to the moral impulses and restrictions arising from religion.

Very recently, Rémi Brague, in a contribution about "Fede e democrazia" published in the magazine "Aspenia" in 2008 (pp. 206-208), proposed a rather interesting update to Böckenförde's thesis: first of all, by extending it from the state to the man of today, who to a great extent has stopped believing in his own value, because of his reduction to nature and the total relativism that are at the origin of the aforementioned interpretations of secularism. It is man, therefore, and not only the state, who today needs a form of support that he is unable to guarantee for himself. In the second place, religion is not only, or even primarily, a source of ethical impulses and restrictions, as Böckenförde seems to think. Today, before verifying limits and boundaries, it is a matter of finding reasons for living, and this is, from the beginning, the function, or better the mission most proper to Christianity: this, in fact, says first of all not "how" to live, but "why" to live, why to choose life, why to rejoice in it and why to transmit it.

These are the reasons why Benedict XVI has repeatedly proposed a secularism that he himself defines as "healthy" and "positive," which would join to the autonomy of human activities and the independence of the state not preclusion, but openness in regard to fundamental ethical principles and the "religious sense" that we bear within ourselves.

Only a relativism so understood really seems to correspond to the current requirements of the common good, because it overturns those strange tendencies that seem to take pleasure in sapping the vital and moral energies by which each of us, our people, and the entire West lives, without considering how to replace them, or better without realizing that in practice they cannot be replaced.

It is precisely the perception of the decisive value of these reserves of energy that today instead unites many Catholics and secularists and that, in my view, indicates a great common effort awaiting us: giving something of ourselves in order to reinvigorate, instead of drawing down, these reserves.