One of the clear and sensible assessments reported in the book review of Theodore Ziolkowski's Modes of Belief: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief that I read in the latest issue of Commonweal (as I reported doing on my journey to Montreal) was from a comparison the reviewer made to Charles Taylor's recent masterpiece A Secular Age. (The reviewer was Richard A. Rosengarten, Dean and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School.) There he noted that:

... Taylor argues that, in modernity, how we think about art shifts from imitation or inheritance to creation, from a shared set of common reference points to the expression of an individual sensibility. Poetics, therefore, reflects not public meaning but private expression. Art in turn becomes a separate form of expression rather than an integral function of religion or politics. While Ziolkowski would recognize the shift Taylor describes from art as imitation to art as creation, Modes of Faith underscores in impressive detail the role of individual sensibility in contemporary art. Ziolkowski shows how that sensibility remains not separate from religion but deeply engaged with it. For Ziolkowski, the modern negotiation of various claims to meaning has complicated religiosity – but it also seems to have deepened it.

These observations have been bouncing around in my head. I had long noticed, and been frustrated by, art's turn to the individual that Taylor mentioned, which more and more seems to me to have bogged art down with biography or individual perspective in ways that leave art less communal, and more in danger of slipping into self-absorption. Ziolkowski's observation makes for a useful balance lest I get pessimistic on the point, although a number of his case studies seem to suffer from all the flaws of modernity's tendency of "do-it-yourself" spirituality where people waste an awful lot of time "re-inventing the wheel" because of loss of any real understanding of the Jewish and Christian spiritual legacy. It is in the context of thinking about all this that I notice a few articles regarding the Vatican and the arts. The articles are newspaper-y, and therefore really basic, but they do point in a limited way to the intentional engagement between faith and art that's going on even at the top of the Church's hierarchy.

Reconcilable differences: The church reaches out to modern arts
Vatican says 262 artists accept invitation for meeting with pope

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Huh. I'm always curious and interested to hear or read a story about the way in which the news media conveys news to us, because any reasonably-informed person in our media world (here I mean "media" in the broad sense) knows that the method can have as much impact as the content of what is reported. While I am aware of the difference in the historical reaction to John Paul, I was not aware that things had "faded" to this extent in international coverage. And that's too bad, because while I was fully aware of Karol Wojtyla's/John Paul II's curiously emblematic role as a man of the 20th century, I rather am more impressed with Benedict XVI as a theologian-pope. And I didn't think at all about any of these particularly "Italian" implications. So: huh.

The pope has become an Italian story

By John L Allen Jr for National Catholic Reporter
Created Oct 02, 2009

Rome -- At one point during Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the Czech Republic last weekend, I strolled across the press center in the Prague Hilton. Taking in the conversations floating through the air, and gazing at the people in the room, I was struck by this insight: The pope has once again become largely an Italian story.

Pope John Paul II was a global newsmaker, and the press corps that followed him was strikingly international. These days, the non-Italians who regularly travel with the pope have dwindled to the media equivalent of a remnant church. On this trip, there was no one from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or CNN (unless you count me, but my phone never rang), all of whom used to be regulars. Fox was on the papal plane, but only because their Rome correspondent is invested in the Vatican story; if he weren't around, it's a good bet Fox wouldn't be in the mix either.

To be sure, those agencies have a presence in Prague, so it's not like they blew off the story. But once upon a time, all would have had a correspondent moving with the papal party and filing daily coverage. At that level, the American presence boiled down to the Associated Press, a producer from ABC, and the Catholic News Service. (I made the trip, but not on the plane.)

Probably the lone thing that people who get their news from American TV know about the trip is that at one point a spider crawled across the pope's garments. That clip has become popular on You-Tube, and of course it doesn't require any reporting or analysis to understand.

Two points probably help explain this lack of global interest.

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This National Catholic Reporter story on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great Jesuit paleontologist and theologian, caught my eye today, making me think of the essay I wrote along these lines several months ago for Bishop Seraphim's hoped-for collection of essays on Theosis in honour of Fr. Alexander Men. I was going to try to re-use that essay for an essay contest I noticed posted in the Department of Theology at the end of the spring semester, but the thing slipped my mind, and the deadline had been within a week or two from when I had seen it. I'm wondering now if there's some other appropriate place I might submit it. It's not an academic article, really: it was intended for a more popular audience, but it is still taking for granted some familiarity with reading theology, so I'm having trouble thinking of what kind of journal or magazine it might fit. Perhaps I'll ask Fr. Fahey about it when he returns to Boston College in the next few days. Either way, I'm interested to see anything like this article that meshes the disciplines and gets them collaborating, instead of sticking to the dogmatic ignorance of the "science vs. religion" mindset.

Pope cites Teilhardian vision of the cosmos as a 'living host'
The first stirring of an 'evolutionary leap' in late Jesuit's official standing?
Jul. 28, 2009
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

Though few might have cast him in advance as a "green pope," Pope Benedict XVI has amassed a striking environmental record, from installing solar panels in the Vatican to calling for ecological conversion. Now the pontiff has also hinted at a possible new look at the undeclared patron saint of Catholic ecology, the late French Jesuit scientist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Benedict's brief July 24 reference to Teilhard, praising his vision of the entire cosmos as a "living host," can be read on multiple levels -- as part of the pontiff's rapprochement with the Jesuits, or as a further instance of finding something positive to say about thinkers whose works have set off doctrinal alarms, as Benedict previously did with rebel Swiss theologian and former colleague Hans Küng.

The potential implications for environmental theology, however, are likely to generate the greatest interest among Teilhard's fans and foes alike -- and more than a half-century after his death in 1955, the daring Jesuit still has plenty of both. Admirers trumpet Teilhard as a pioneer, harmonizing Christianity with the theory of evolution; critics charge that Teilhard's optimistic view of nature flirts with pantheism.

Benedict's comment came during a July 24 vespers service in the Cathedral of Aosta in northern Italy, where the pope took his annual summer vacation July 13-29.

Toward the end of a reflection upon the Letter to the Romans, in which St. Paul writes that the world itself will one day become a form of living worship, the pope said, "It's the great vision that later Teilhard de Chardin also had: At the end we will have a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host.

"Let's pray to the Lord that he help us be priests in this sense," the pope said, "to help in the transformation of the world in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves."

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This is the other historical/artistic column by Sandro Magister that caught my eye in recent days. I am interested especially in Pope Benedict XVI giving a new interpretation to the pair of recently-restored Michelangelo frescoes in the Pauline Chapel. I've done a lot of my artistic work on Michelangelo, who has become my favourite artist in the last decade, and who I take seriously, in fact, as a theologian. So it's interesting for me to hear a sitting Pope, especially one who is one of the greatest theologians alive, also take Michelangelo seriously.

The Pauline Chapel Reopened for Worship. With Two New Features

It is the pope's private chapel, in the Vatican buildings. Subjected to a complete restoration, it again has the altar turned toward the tabernacle. But also new is the interpretation that Benedict XVI has given to the two frescoes by Michelangelo, especially concerning the expression of the apostle Peter...

by Sandro Magister


ROME, July 6, 2009 - The illustrations reproduced above are two details from two frescoes by Michelangelo, facing each other in the Pauline Chapel: the conversion of Paul, and the crucifixion of Peter.

The Pauline Chapel is not open to visitors. Situated in the Vatican buildings just a few steps from the Sistine Chapel, it is a place of prayer reserved for the pope. After undergoing a complete restoration, it was reopened for worship on Saturday, July 4, by Benedict XVI, who presided over vespers there.

The news of the reopening of the Pauline Chapel for worship received scant coverage in the media, being overshadowed by the imminent publication of the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" and by the meeting between the pope and Barack Obama.

But at least two new developments must be noted.

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The big theological news of the day – or the last several days – is really the new social justice encyclical that Pope Benedict has published. While my areas of academic interest and competence are more in the historical and artistic kind of things I mentioned in my last entry, I have to sit up and take notice of something this significant. Already I had some involved conversation about it with Dan at the library tonight, and so I thought I would start to keep more formal track of what's being said, as well as trying to get around to digesting the thing itself. It's very economics-oriented, which I find even less professionally and personally appealing as a subject that ethics, I'm afraid.

Included here I have the following items from The New York Times, the Associated Press, Catholic News Service, and the Vatican website:

Pope Urges New World Economic Order
Pope proposes new financial order guided by ethics
Pope says moral values must be part of economic recovery, development
In new encyclical, pope calls for sharing earth's resources equitably
Economist: UN could create economic body with teeth, as pope suggested
Encyclical breaks new ground on social issues, commentators say
Caritas in veritate (On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth: the new encyclical in English translation)

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A few CNS articles I wanted to jot down, two brief ones on the continuing reactions to the awful report on the amount of abuse that was carried on in Ireland under institutions sponsored by the Church, and an article touching on the ongoing collaboration of the Church and the scientific establishment.

Child abuse was part of a prevalent church culture, Irish bishops say
Pope visibly upset to hear of child abuse, Dublin archbishop says
Vatican visit to CERN opens new channel of dialogue for science, faith

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I meant to jot this down last month when I saw it in Sandro Magister's column on Anselm's 900th birthday, but forgot until now. I was just saying to Dan the other week that one thing I've noted over the last few years is that I have an increasing fondness for Anselm of Canterbury (or, less famously, "of Aosta" or "of Bec," as below). When I was doing my Master's degree, I repeatedly heard Anselm blamed for making his Christology too "legal" in its conception, borrowing too much from medieval ideas of law, and thus (I was told) propelling theology of Christ down a path that increased bad, legalistic understandings of the faith.

Like most easy ideas that excuse you from having to actually work through details, that's garbage, I've since discovered.

Like an awful lot of other myths, someone once summed up an idea in a catchy way, that probably had the useful benefit of "explaining everything," and likely also offered the bonus feature of making us feel smug in our superiority for having risen above such tawdry ideas. Augustine of Hippo gets that all the time, usually getting the blame for every dysfunction in the history of Western sexuality and psychology because he had issues with his own sexuality. This gets repeated endlessly among professors of numerous fields, I've found, none of whom have ever read a word of Augustine. After all, why mess up a good punchline with complicated facts and details? That's boring.

So it is with poor Anselm, too, I've found. But as I've been reading him – and more importantly, teaching him – over the last few years, I've found a thinker who is subtle, exciting, human, and complicated; not in the way of "over-complication," of multiplying difficulties, but complicated in the way that anyone trying to describe reality and to avoid "sound bite thinking" has to be complicated. I noticed that my students in engineering and the physical sciences seemed to especially like his passion for logic, and that's no surprise in the writer known as the "Father of Scholasticism." ("Scholasticism" is that medieval movement – the thinking "of the schools" – that gave rise to today's university system.) His thought is rich, urging a wonderful and useful consistency of universal scope, and that's been fun to discover. So I thought it worth while to jot down this more popular note and recognition of one of those long-gone thinkers whose words still challenge and provoke our own thinking today. (Hmm. Even all this is probably too vague and cluttered of me: I need to eat some food. So here's the cartoon version someone made, in case that's more accessible.)

Anselm of Aosta: a "formidable thinker" among the modern prophets of nothing
Nine hundred years later, his "intelligence of faith" is still the main way through "our age of the proliferation of doubts." The blistering homily with which Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, in the name of the pope, opened the celebrations for the great doctor of the Church.
by Sandro Magister

ROME, April 23, 2009 – To celebrate the "doctor magnificus" Anselm at the ninth centenary of his death, Benedict XVI sent as his delegate a bishop theologian like himself, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi. And the cardinal carried out his task in his own way. In the cathedral of Aosta, the birthplace of the saint, in the homily for his liturgical feast on April 21, he defended the extraordinary relevance of the great Anselm: "a formidable thinker" and a man of faith among the many false teachers of doubt, absolutely faithful to the successor of Peter among the many, including bishops, who left him alone. Cardinal Biffi's homily is presented in its entirety further below.

For the occasion, pope Joseph Ratzinger sent two messages: the first, to the abbot primate of the Benedictine Confederation, Notker Wolf, and the second to Cardinal Biffi, his special envoy for the celebrations. The second of these messages was read at the cathedral of Aosta on April 21, immediately after Biffi's homily. A link to the complete text can be found at the bottom of this page.

One of Anselm's savings has become famous: "Non quæro intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam"; I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand.

But even more famous in the history of thought is his way of asserting the existence of God: as the evident, undeniable equivalence of "that than which no greater can be thought" and the being that cannot be thought of as not existing. This argument was criticized and rejected by Thomas Aquinas and by Kant, but considered valid by Duns Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz, and Hegel. But properly speaking, the reformulation that Descartes and others after him made of this "ontological argument" does not correspond to Anselm's authentic thought.

According to the most attentive students of his work, for Anselm the existence of God is not something that must be "demonstrated." The evident "proof" instead concerns the denial of his existence: those who deny the existence of "that than which no greater can be thought" trap themselves in an insurmountable contradiction, cutting off the possibility of all thought.

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Still flattened by the flu. The Most Miserable Christmas Ever. Blech.

Just jotting down a couple news stories of interest that I noticed in the last few days. John Allen's list of the "Top 10 neglected Catholic stories of 2008" is a smart list of some of the most interesting things going on in the Catholic world, but which aren't on the short list of items that the U.S. news media gets worked up about. The second one is another story of what's turning into a longer-term interest of mine, and that's on the public use of the story of "the Galileo Affair." What grabs my interest there is just the way the incident with Galileo has become this killer propaganda item for those who want to perpetuate the idea of "science versus religion." The nonsense that's repeated as historical facts "that everyone knows" regarding the case has been so repeated and drummed into public consciousness that it has become the singlemost prominent Enlightenment anti-Christian parable. The sheer fact of how often this is cited and made a big deal of shows that its importance for people today is about today, and not about one, long-corrected historical mistake centuries past. I'm beginning to think that it would make for a pretty good popular history to write a book that traced the changes in the use of the story: as far as I can tell from the original documents, our version of "what everyone knows" today owes more to Bertolt Brecht's play Galileo than to history.

Top 10 neglected Catholic stories of 2008
Good heavens: Vatican rehabilitating Galileo

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Was this the most alarmist headline that the Times could come up with this morning? No noting that the other major world religions have demonstrated no intrinsic initiative on their own to participate in hip and cool dialogue? No mentioning that Pela, while "center-right" and therefore suspect, is an atheist philosopher who has seen the intellectual dependence of European freedoms – even the secular ones – upon Christian presuppositions, and that undermining the latter threatens the former, as has another of the Pope's conversation partners, atheist philosopher Jürgen Habermas?

The article text, mercifully, isn't that bad, but I gotta wonder if Donadio's article got slapped with this headline by some editor who wanted to make sure that we all understood, whatever the article said, that Benedict was a reactionary nitwit.

Pope Questions Interfaith Dialogue
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: November 23, 2008

ROME — In comments on Sunday that could have broad implications in a period of intense religious conflict, Pope Benedict XVI cast doubt on the possibility of interfaith dialogue but called for more discussion of the practical consequences of religious differences.

The pope’s comments came in a letter he wrote to Marcello Pera, an Italian center-right politician and scholar whose forthcoming book, “Why We Must Call Ourselves Christian,” argues that Europe should stay true to its Christian roots. A central theme of Benedict’s papacy has been to focus attention on the Christian roots of an increasingly secular Europe.

In quotations from the letter that appeared on Sunday in Corriere della Sera, Italy’s leading daily newspaper, the pope said the book “explained with great clarity” that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible.” In theological terms, added the pope, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

But Benedict added that “intercultural dialogue which deepens the cultural consequences of basic religious ideas” was important. He called for confronting “in a public forum the cultural consequences of basic religious decisions.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope’s comments seemed intended to draw interest to Mr. Pera’s book, not to cast doubt on the Vatican’s many continuing interreligious dialogues.

“He has a papacy known for religious dialogue; he went to a mosque, he’s been to synagogues,” Father Lombardi said. “This means that he thinks we can meet and talk to the others and have a positive relationship.”

To some scholars, the pope’s remarks seemed aimed at pushing more theoretical interreligious conversations into the practical realm.

“He’s trying to get the Catholic-Islamic dialogue out of the clouds of theory and down to brass tacks: how can we know the truth about how we ought to live together justly, despite basic creedal differences?” said George Weigel, a Catholic scholar and biographer of Pope John Paul II.

This month, the Vatican held a conference with Muslim religious leaders and scholars aimed at improving ties. The conference participants agreed to condemn terrorism and protect religious freedom, but they did not address issues of conversion and of the rights of Christians in majority Muslim countries to worship.

The church is also engaged in dialogue with Muslims organized by the king of Saudi Arabia, a country where non-Muslims are forbidden from worshiping in public.

( The AP story 'Pope: Dialogue among religions should be pursued' manages to be more clear, noting Jewish and Muslim praise for his remarks. AND a translation of the Pope's letter to Pera, in full. )

180 pages, graded with detailed notation and commentary: Done. And getting ready to start the next lot....

That load, at least, won't have to have all the commentary. First off, just given the fact that I didn't think the situation through when designing the Syllabus and that this lot is just coming due now (a question asking them to creatively synthesize Thomas Aquinas' and Julian of Norwich's treatments of the Trinity), I simply don't have the time before the end of the semester to go into such detail. But everyone has gotten or is getting their first lot back at least a session before their final paper is due, and I wanted to make sure that those had all the analysis and constructive criticism that I could offer, so that perhaps they might have some basis for improvement in their writing. I figure they paid for it, even if I'm only getting $5000 of the $180,000 in tuition they paid for the class. (Catholic universities are still having trouble applying Catholic Social Justice teaching to themselves.)

But they're doing well. We had a great discussion on the Introduction to our current book, an introduction written by philosopher and former head of the Italian Senate Marcello Pera, in the book Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, by Joseph Ratzinger. It was material written shortly before his election as Pope Benedict XVI. Pera is an atheist who, like the even more prominent atheist and philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, agrees with Ratzinger's assessment of ties to Christianity as critical for the future existence of secular Europe, in the face of the standard Secularist Enlightenment philosophy reigning in Europe today which wants to privatize Christianity out of the public sphere. But given that the liberties promoted by the Enlightenment were justified by an inherited Christian intellectual foundation, modern philosophy no longer has any basis for these, and – odd as it may seem – the absolutization of liberty as a value has lead to the destruction of liberty as a concept. If we want to hold on to our political freedoms, then, the secular world has to back off from absolutizing itself and stay in conversation with its own Christian heritage. Pera's Introduction gave us a jumping-off point for talking about the basics of the Enlightenment and its role in our cultural heritage, and so now the students are ready to work with Ratzinger's proposal for the Vatican II-style synthesis or dialogue between Christianity and Modernity. Fun stuff.

Friday was my birthday, and the Lloyds had made a point of verifying some celebration of this when we were out eating Ethiopian last week. (The Harrises were still sick, alas.) It was quietly perfect. Dan grilled some humongous steaks, seasoned the way he does it, and even baked me a yummy and delicious mint chocolate cake (though he tried to pass that off as Amy's work, and which she gleefully tattled on, reminding me that he is traditionally the baker in their family). I understood more of Owen's words and Anna was at her most absurdly charming, and so it was just a pleasant evening all-around. We enjoyed BSG in the usual way, but talked late about other things, ranging from some of the usual patristics (a little more of Dan's reading of Novatian for his new dissertation topic) to politics (I articulated my hope that weakening the presidency back to its constitutional limits would become a major campaign issue) and farther afield.

Erik woke me up that morning, building off the world's worst standing joke by calling before I'd normally wake up (mercifully, I randomly had woken up a few minutes earlier) and, as I was screening him (feeling no inherent obligation to answer an obscenely early phone call), began crowing like a rooster on my answering machine and launching into the opening line of the Beatle's "Good Morning, Good Morning." I picked up and we had a laughing chat to start the day, although he had more news to share than I did, as I mostly was grading while he's figuring out the details of life after having completed his doctorate. But we've been talking more frequently of late, and so his remembering the birthday was a treat: old friends are a unique comfort. And I ended the day with another call (having talked to the folks in the afternoon) when I got home from Dan's to hear a message I'd missed from Leslie, with Grace also on the line wishing me Happy Birthday and a sweetly-coached "I love you" as well. Other messages and notes seasoned the day with happiness. Simple pleasures, but all good ones. I'm kind of low-key about birthdays nowadays, being a bit wigged out in realizing (shock!) that while I felt like I put my life on "pause" to go to grad school, the numbers kept on rising, and life doesn't accept the "pause" setting. So this was all the right "speed" for me.

Wagghh. Everything's been so much about grading over the last week that I've not really been online to speak of, other than to take care of emails about grading. I'll have to catch up on other people's journals as well as my own.

The last few days have featured a few social events, which has been welcome after diving into this school-driven "underground" mode. Other than that, I hadn't had any time with folks since Easter, other than a BSG night two weeks ago, before the little ones of my friends all started passing around some virus to one another. Given that I'd spent January to March in a long run of one flu, cough, cramp, etc., I was warned off from coming last week. Still, I got to see Dan and Amy last night when we went out to dinner to try out this new Ethiopian restaurant downtown. My experience in Africa was all Arab and not sub-Saharan, and I'd never really tried out any specifically-African restaurants in the U.S. before, so I had been curious about this restaurant the last few weeks since I had first spotted it. We kicked around some plans, had Mike and Donna drop out toward the end because of the afore-mentioned viruses, and gathered yesterday around 5pm with the three of us being joined by Andrei.

Except... no Andrei. There had been a bit of debate on the way over – mercifully, Dan and Amy had offered to pick me up on the way, as this would have gotten more complicated for me had I just gone on my own as I'd intended – as to which Ethiopian restaurant we were heading toward. I'd clearly been talking about this new one in our emails, but Amy spoke of one on Farwell in addition to this new one on Wisconsin. We ended up downtown at the Wisconsin one, Alem Ethiopian Village. And no Andrei, who is usually quite punctual. We ended up calling the other restaurant, finding him there, and summoning him, feeling quite tacky for poaching a customer from one Ethiopian restaurant for another. (We vowed to go to the other, next, as a penance of sorts.) The owners of the other, the Ethiopian Cottage Restaurant, are friends of Andrei's from St. George's Orthodox Church, so that made us even more amused/mortified.

Once that was settled, though, and Andrei appeared, it became a relaxed evening. I had a yummy lentil soup with Amy and I trying glasses of Ethiopian honey wine, which I'd never heard of before. I went with the sweeter one, an "Addis," and she the most bitter "Negist," with me liking mine and she not so much hers. She and Dan split a meat dish and a vegetarian one – this being a very vegetarian-laden menu – while Andrei grabbed a vegetarian sampler and I went with a mild beef and vegetable dish that was not much different at its heart from the stew my Mom would make on occasion. The trick was figuring out how to eat Ethiopian-style with the unusual rolls of spongy injera bread torn apart as your primary "utensil," which was new to me. Casual talk, mostly about family and school, just made for a pleasant evening out, with us finishing up before eight so that Dan and Amy could get home to put the kids down.

My big social affair was the traditional packed First Birthday Party that my sister has hosted as a social debut for each of her daughters, this time it being Sophia's turn. The birthday girl actually held up impressively well, I thought, for all the oddity of a house packed with a few dozen well-wishers and their wired children. Grace was pleasantly social, though Haley was a little more stand-offish and at one point told me in no uncertain terms that she was not my niece: she was "Mommy's niece, and Gracie is Mommy's niece and Sophie is Mommy's niece." She's been doing this "I'm right about everything" bit lately, and so I didn't bother trying to explain the difference between nieces and daughters and just shared a laugh with Dad through the whole lesson.



I had been heading out the door for Leslie's when the phone rang, with a voice it took me a moment to identify as Kevin's telling me that he was on 5th Avenue at the moment. This was repeated and, as I figured out who was talking to me, I had a moment's panic that he meant 5th Street and that Kevin was surprising me with a "Hey, I'm in Milwaukee on business and I'm stopping by" surprise, which would have been awful had I just been dashing out the door for Chicagoland. But he did indeed mean that he was on 5th Avenue, in the 10-person deep crush of a crowd straining to catch a glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI as he drove by after saying Mass at Saint Patrick's Cathedral. I told Kev I couldn't talk and why, wished him luck in his seeing and in finding Frannie, who'd gone off looking for the good bagels, and heard him laugh and tell me he'd send a phone-photograph, which is included to the left. I don't know yet whether they had just hopped from Wyoming to New York just to peek at the Pope but, if so, mission accomplished.



Back on my own journey, I went by Mom's new apartment with Bill and Helen to see it now in its finished state, which looked wonderfully comfortable, and to just enjoy some quieter talk there before the party actually started up at Leslie and Jim's place. Joe and Daniele were already at my Mom's when we arrived, so that added to the fun, to get some time with them before blending into the larger crowd. They took the "Classy" award for the year, though, by the end of the day. Making sure not to rain on Sophie's parade, they waited until the end of the day to announce that they were thirteen weeks pregnant. (I had already headed back to Milwaukee, where I went straight to the coffeeshop to continue grading, and so ended up finding out by email, which was just as cool.)

Slate articles I read in the last few days, brought to my attention by friede and kesil.

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As I'm curious to see how the very public conversion of Magdi Cristiano Allam to Catholicism plays out, particularly given the international media coverage of the event, I tossed a bunch of news stories related to it (and a few that really weren't, but sort of thematically caught my eye as I thought about these things) into the journal for keeping. Please excuse the mess.

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A rather provocative entry I copied over from Whispers in the Loggia, noting the incredibly public (and daring) conversion of a prominent Italian media figure from Islam to Christianity, celebrated liturgically by Pope Benedict XVI himself at the Easter Vigil at Saint Peter's. Interestingly, he issues just as bold a challenge to Christianity and to the West regarding its own claimed commitment to individual liberty. The whole thing is reminiscent of the public conversion of Marius Victorinus in Rome that so impressed Augustine in the 380s....

As previously noted, Magdi Allam -- a deputy editor of Italy's Corriere della Sera described as the Bel Paese's "most-prominent Muslim commentator" -- was baptized, confirmed and received his first Eucharist from Pope Benedict at Saturday's Easter Vigil at the Vatican.

Taking the name "Christian," Allam, 55, was revealed as one of the papal catechumens barely an hour before the liturgy began; the group of seven also included neophytes from China and the US. The Egyptian-born journalist's inclusion in the group sparked a tempest in Italy's chattering circles, some of which lamented that the highly public nature of Allam's reception into the church could be viewed in the Muslim world as a "provocation" as Benedict pursues his aim of "reciprocity" with the Islamic street.

In yesterday's edition of his paper -- Italy's largest selling daily -- and on his website, Allam wrote about his conversion.

Yesterday evening I converted to the Christian Catholic religion, renouncing my previous Islamic faith. Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace -- the healthy fruit of a long, matured gestation, lived in suffering and joy, together with intimate reflection and conscious and manifest expression. I am especially grateful to his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who imparted the sacraments of Christian initiation to me, baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, in the Basilica of St. Peter’s during the course of the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil. And I took the simplest and most explicit Christian name: “Cristiano” ["Christian"]. Since yesterday evening therefore my name is Magdi Cristiano Allam.

For me it is the most beautiful day of [my] life. To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom.

On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason. My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy.....

[U]ndoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert was that with Pope Benedict XVI, whom I admired and defended as a Muslim for his mastery in setting down the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization, and to whom I fully adhere as a Christian to inspire me with new light in the fulfillment of the mission God has reserved for me.

It is thanks to members of Catholic religious orders that I acquired a profoundly and essentially an ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to undertake a mission that inserts itself in the framework of a universal and eternal design directed toward the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth and the whole of humanity on the day of judgment, which is founded on faith in God and the primacy of values, which is based on the sense of individual responsibility and on the sense of duty toward the collective. It is in virtue of a Christian education and of the sharing of the experience of life with Catholic religious that I cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension and also sought the certainty of truth in absolute and universal values....

The long years at school allowed me to know Catholicism well and up close and the women and men who dedicated their life to serve God in the womb of the Church. Already then I read the Bible and the Gospels and I was especially fascinated by the human and divine figure of Jesus. I had a way to attend Holy Mass and it also happened, only once, that I went to the altar to receive communion. It was a gesture that evidently signaled my attraction to Christianity and my desire to feel a part of the Catholic religious community.

Then, on my arrival in Italy at the beginning of the 1970s between the rivers of student revolts and the difficulties of integration, I went through a period of atheism understood as a faith, which nevertheless was also founded on absolute and universal values. I was never indifferent to the presence of God even if only now I feel that the God of love, of faith and reason reconciles himself completely with the patrimony of values that are rooted in me.

Dear Director, you asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims....

I hope that the Pope’s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves. If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear. Happy Easter to everyone.

Dear friends, let us go forward on the way of truth, of life and of freedom with my best wishes for every success and good thing.

PHOTO: AP/Alessandra Tarantino

This Holy Saturday finds me tripping through notes from the noted German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, a self-described “methodological atheist,” who Pope Benedict had engaged in very public conversation a few years ago before he was elected Pope. It was a funny moment in that lots of dogmatic atheists in the public sphere were crowing ahead of time about the beating that their "team" was going to give the clearly-inferior (after all, he's Catholic) Ratzinger on the question of Christianity's role in the public future of Europe, and what he had and has been arguing is the importance of acknowledging that in the Preamble to the European Constitution, along with the contributions of the Greeks and of the Enlightenment.

Then, to their surprise, the two of them engaged in very polite and accommodating conversation and Habermas did nothing of the sort, and instead very much supported Ratzinger on this point. Denying it is easy thanks to a determined effort to avoid the hard work of examining the question, he criticizes, and presents a potential threat to the foundations of our free public order. In an essay published in Italy right around that time as “A Time of Transition,” Habermas argues that Christianity, and Christianity alone, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy.

To this day, we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.

Some other samples:

I don’t resent it at all when I am accused of having inherited theological concepts. I am convinced that religious discourse contains within itself potentialities that have not yet been sufficiently explored by philosophy, insofar as they have not yet been translated into the language of public reason, which is presumed to be able to persuade anyone. Naturally, I am not talking about the neopagan project of those who want to ‘build upon mythology.’ Today, in the field of antirational postmodern criticism, these neopagan conceptual figures are back in fashion: a broad anti-Platonism carelessly spread by fashions inspired by the late Heidegger and late Wittgenstein, in the sense of a definitive repudiation of the universalism that characterizes the premises of unconditional truth. I rebel against this regressive tendency of post-metaphysical thought.

In the dialogical dispute among competing religious visions there is a need for that ‘culture of recognition’ which draws its principles from the secularized world of the universalism of reason and law. In this matter, it is thus the philosophical spirit which provides the concepts instrumental in the political clarification of theology. But the political philosophy capable of making this contribution bears the stamp of the idea of the Covenant no less than that of the Polis. Therefore this philosophy also hearkens back to a biblical heritage.

In the general leveling of society by the media everything seems to lose seriousness, even institutionalized Christianity. But theology would lose its identity if it sought to uncouple itself from the dogmatic nucleus of religion, and thus from the religious language in which the community’s practices of prayer, confession, and faith are made concrete.

I also found a West Coast graduate student's paper posted online entitled, Jurgen Habermas: A Secular Atheist Changes His Mind on Religion in the Public Sphere that was engaging reading on this point.

I was interested to see this notice on a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople the other day. Bartholomew I got big points, I thought, for his prayer-style overtures to the Pope. But there are a couple of interesting nuggets of the Eastern Christian perspective of Western Christians in the article made from the point of view of this Patriarch who did his doctorate in Rome under Catholic sponsorship. And that, too, is an interesting ingredient in the current ecumenical mix, I think.... (A few photos of the two hanging out linked here, and what I think are the more interesting pics from the Lecture event here.)

Likewise, in the address itself, linked and copied here, there's a clear sense of the Eastern Orthodox vision of the Church that, along with their characteristic patristic emphasis (that is, an emphasis on the early writers of the Church, the "Fathers"), might make this a good short text for me to use to introduce some of that Eastern perspective to my students, as most of my classes tend to focus on the Western Christian experience, in Catholicism and Protestantism.

Pope, Orthodox patriarch meet privately, pray together
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople spent almost half an hour speaking privately March 6 before going into a small Vatican chapel to pray together.

Although it was the patriarch's first visit to the Vatican since Pope Benedict's election and the funeral of Pope John Paul II in April 2005, the visit was not a formal, orchestrated affair.

The pope and the patriarch did not exchange speeches, but instead sat across a table from each other talking.

And instead of participating in a liturgy, they walked into the tiny Chapel of Urban VIII near the papal library, stood in front of a painting of the Nativity and prayed silently.

After a few moments, the two began reciting the Lord's Prayer in Latin. When the prayer was finished, the pope turned to his guest -- as if to see if he was ready to leave -- and the patriarch began reciting the Hail Mary in Latin. The pope joined in.

When the prayer was finished, the two turned to their aides and together blessed them.

Pope Benedict and Patriarch Bartholomew held their first formal meeting in Turkey in 2006 and met for less formal discussions in October in Naples, Italy.

The patriarch was in Rome to help mark the 90th anniversary of the Jesuit-run Pontifical Oriental Institute, where he earned his doctoral degree.

The patriarch delivered a lecture on "Theology, Liturgy and Silence," focusing on how the spiritual experience of Eastern Christianity can promote Christian unity and respond to the needs of modern men and women.

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I have to thank jucundushomo for giving me the heads-up on this New York Times op-ed that James Martin, S.J. turned in. Tim was right on target in knowing I'd be interested in that I have complained in times past that the official canonization process in the Catholic Church has gotten corrupted by being politicized. Certainly, I merely have to think back a few years to remember a group of rather desperate curial officials from Rome pushing through the beatification of Pope Pius IX as apparently some kind of "balance" to the (somehow also apparently) threatening beatification of Pope John XXIII. But whereas Pius is remembered in the Church more with a shake of the head (except, apparently, in the Roman curia) because of his high-anxiety attitude toward modernity and his 19th-century absolutist monarchical response to it, John XIII – who said Catholicism had nothing to fear from interaction with modernity, had much to teach it and to learn from it, and called the Second Vatican Council to that end – actually has a popular devotion within the Church, which is traditionally one of the characteristics of official "sainthood" in Catholicism. Mercifully, this kind of reduction of canonization to political partisanship is another one of those things that might be cleaned up by having a first-tier theologian like Benedict XVI in the papacy.

In many respects, this is a much more minor affair of the Church's, but I think at the same time it's still one worth paying attention to. Those we promote as models and heroes have an effect in our world, and I think this is all the more apparent in our media- and image-driven society, where far too many of those who become models for others are of a poor or shallow sort.

Op-Ed Contributor
Trials of the Saints
By JAMES MARTIN
Published: March 3, 2008

LAST month, while Americans celebrated the feast days of two secular saints, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the Vatican issued a surprising new directive calling for greater rigor in its own saint-making process. Published by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the 45-page document called for “strict adherence” to existing rules, in response to some concerns that the canonization procedures had been watered down over the last two decades.

Such criticisms are only half correct: the Vatican’s rules are actually far more rigorous than many may suspect. Still, the church could increase its credibility even further in this department with a few additional benchmarks.

During his long pontificate, Pope John Paul II beatified 1,340 people and canonized almost 500 — more than all his predecessors combined since the current procedures were introduced in 1588. John Paul also waived the traditional five-year waiting period required before the process, or “cause,” could begin for Mother Teresa, who died in 1997.

The Vatican’s new document says that some procedures had become “problematic.” As a result, local bishops are now instructed to exercise “greater sobriety and rigor” in determining which saints-to-be they send for approval to Rome. Candidates should not be promoted by small interest groups; rather, their reputation for holiness must be “spontaneous and not artificially procured.” Officials vetting the cases must be impartial, and not omit negative aspects of a person’s life. And the examination of the miracles required for canonization must make use of “all clinical and technical means.”

( The rest of my copy of the text of the Op-Ed, if you're not registered with The New York Times )

I was glad to see the new superior explicitly address the issue of troublemakers simplistically accusing the Jesuits of being a subversive group. That's been another one of those capitulations to our culture's political Left-and-Right polarity that has no place in the Church, whether in the hierarchy or in the laity.

Meanwhile, I'm meditating on that difficult discipline or virtue of "obedience" as I prepare the first have of The Rule of Saint Benedict for my Theology Through the Centuries classes tomorrow. If my students are like me, they are predisposed to see obedience as a negative thing, as something perhaps inevitably abusive. To see it as a discipline of love, both for the abbot and for the monks obeying the abbot, requires a great leap of perspective and imagination in imagining people in a relationship mutually dedicated to life lived in a universe where the ultimate reality is the Triune God who is Living Love Itself. We are instead, I'm afraid, living in a world where our imagination – whether we are Christians or not – is conditioned instead to believe that the not-so-ultimate reality underlying all relationships is power. And therefore Obedience as an ideal or a discipline is simply an abuse disguised as a virtue, the sort of evil the Hollywood mythmakers would have us believe is always at the root of everything the Church has ever done.

I imagine that this might be a most difficult and critical part of the discussion tomorrow, to see if I can get the students to make that leap of vision, and to imagine what that sort of way of looking at the world might really be like, beyond all our cautions and suspicions. (The Rule itself, of course, is not in the least bit naive about human beings, and is amazingly insistent on the moderation of the abbot in leading his or her monks, and is fully aware and cautionary about the abuse of authority.) But imagining such a vision of reality – really imagining it – will be the first step in the students' ability to get really creative in the discussion and start to see how the spirituality The Rule might be adapted to the non-monastic conditions of our lives.

Pope tells Jesuits to make clear their acceptance of church teachings
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI asked the Jesuits to continue to be pioneers in dialogue, theological research and work for justice, but insisted that they also must make clear their faith and their acceptance of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

"The church needs you, counts on you and continues to turn to you with trust," the pope told more than 200 Jesuits chosen to represent the almost 20,000 members of the Society of Jesus for the order's General Congregation.

Led by Spanish Father Adolfo Nicolas, elected superior general of the order Jan. 19, the congregation delegates met Feb. 21 with the pope.

Father Nicolas told the pope, "In communion with the church and guided by the magisterium, we are seeking to dedicate ourselves deeply to service, discernment and research."

The members of the General Congregation are aware of their responsibility to the church as a whole, he said, but they also are aware of the need for humility, "recognizing that the mystery of God and of the human person is much greater than our ability to understand."

The new superior told the pope that "it saddens us" when people try to present the Jesuits as a group of rebel theologians opposed to traditional church teaching or to the hierarchy.

"The inevitable insufficiencies and superficialities of some of us," he said, "frequently are only manifestations of human limits and imperfections or of the inevitable tensions of daily life."

The Jesuits, he said, love and serve the church, including the hierarchy and the pope himself.

Pope Benedict told the Jesuits that the rapidly changing world with its technological advances and its wars, its aspirations for peace and its threats to the environment, the new possibilities it offers for dialogue and its new forms of poverty call for a response of hope and of salvation from the church.

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One of the things that I have very much enjoyed about Benedict XVI is his Augustiniansim, that spirituality and theology so centered around Augustine of Hippo's strong and developed meditations on the nature of God revealed as Love Itself. catholic_heart  points out to me that Benedict has devoted three recent sessions of his Wednesday general audiences to talking with people about Augustine. This is particularly timely and interesting to me as I've begun exploring Augustine and his mighty work The Confessions with my own students.

So I'm copying here these first three audiences (though I see that the last, from this past Wednesday, has yet to be completely translated into English, which I'll update as it becomes available). The first is general biography tracing the rise of the great African teacher, and the second is similar but more focused on the end of Augustine's life and by extension to the ends of things and of life in general, while the third audience turns to that subject so near Benedict's heart here at the end of Modernity and the passage into whatever new phase of human history is before us: the relationship between faith and reason. Here he deals with that fusion in the passionate form Augustine gave to it.

(Updated)

 

( Read more... )

Did anyone pay any attention to the curious story about Pope Benedict XVI and the protests at Rome's Sapienza University this past week? I think that it might become one of those episodes that becomes larger in later history, as the significance of certain events gets taken as emblematic of historical shifts taking place at a given time. In this case, I think it might become the opposite of the infamous "Galileo Affair," to which the players in this event make direct reference. The incident of Galileo's trial before the Inquisition regarding the Copernican theory of the heliocentric solar system – the sun being the center of our star system and not the Earth being at the center of things – became the great symbolic myth of the Enlightenment philosophers in the 18th century, and their anti-Christian program: Galileo's trial became emblematic of obstinate, ignorant, anti-intellectual Religion being defeated by the always-wise, ever-progressive and irresistible onward march of Science into the future.

Yet anyone who does the slightest reading on the matter knows that this simplistic spin on the event was hardly the way of things. The Galileo affair was an historical footnote until it was dusted off and used for Enlightenment propaganda. Galileo was not opposing a Religious view with a Scientific one: his world did not have our later, absolute division of such things. Copernicus himself was a cleric, likely a priest: one might just as easily say that the heliocentric system was then a "priestly" theory. Galileo was not challenging the authority of Scripture as such: there was no unified theory of Scripture in his post-Reformation world to oppose in such a simple dichotomy as "science vs. religion" or "science vs. the Bible" in the way people like to put things. In fact, he appealed in such things to a far older interpreter of Scripture who had high status in theology and philosophy – Augustine of Hippo, who had died over a thousand years earlier, and who, like Galileo, dismissed simple-minded literalism as unworthy of the depths of the documents of Scripture. Galileo's actual trouble came more from challenging the Aristotelian basis of the contemporary science of his day, that is, challenging the current scientific establishment, and claiming for his own experimental results an authority they did not yet possess. It also didn't help that he got into a political mess by getting petulant with the very Pope who had been supporting and authorizing his work. No scientist today who so "jumped the gun" on claiming success for his findings would be accorded the "scientific sainthood" Galileo is: his story has been co-opted by those creating their own narrative of the Modern "conflict of science and religion," ignoring entirely the origin of Modern science in a Medieval and Christian context, not a Modern and Secular one.

Which brings us to the curious events of this past week, events which I wonder whether in the future will come to seem equally emblematic, but in a reverse way. It seems clear to me that Western science and theology, with their commitments to the idea of an objective truth, against much of the thrust of contemporary Western philosophy which has given up on truth, are inevitably going to increase in their collaboration. As the myth of a conflict of science and religion begins to fade away with the Modern worldview as we move into Post-Modernity (whatever that is), I can't help but wonder if the anti-papal fervour displayed this week – is it overstating to call it hysteria? – might come to symbolize the ignorance of the dogmatically anti-religious viewpoint that doesn't recognize the fundamental harmonies between the quests of science and Jewish/Christian religion.

What's most striking to me is the way in which the faculty and student protesters – so locked into the myth of "science versus religion" – failed to understand the clear language of support that Ratzinger used in his 1990 statement (included below). If anything, Ratzinger defended the sciences against the philosophical skewing in the Modern philosophical school of the Enlightenment that produced the great modern myth of unwavering antagonism between the two quests for truth, and attempts to cut lose the sciences from any wider contextualization in the world, including in ethics, which is not the same thing as religion, but which religion and philosophy have always included. Making science ask questions of itself should hardly be interpreted as a fundamental attack on science itself. I hope the episode will have the effect of so embarrassing the traditional reactionaries who fancy themselves the speakers for their hostile vision of "science" so that people capable of actual rational conversation will come forward in leading dialogue with theology.

Included behind the cut are articles from the week:

Ratzinger's 1990 remarks on Galileo
University students attend audience after pope cancels visit
In undelivered speech, pope urges scholars, students to seek truth
All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.: Update on La Sapienza spat
The pope, modern science, and a canary in the coal mine
Do the homework: University fiasco shows scholars miss pope's point
Tens of thousands fill St. Peter's Square to show support for pope
Rejection of Pope's speech is fear of dialogue between faith and reason, professor says
The text of the Letter of Protest

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Cardinals Discuss Other Christians
Nov 23, 6:36 AM (ET)
By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Cardinals from around the world gathered here Friday for a daylong meeting on the Catholic Church's relations with other Christians ahead of a ceremony Saturday to elevate 23 churchmen to the top ranks of the Catholic hierarchy.

Pope Benedict XVI greeted the cardinals and cardinal-designates in a Vatican audience hall before the prelates prayed and set down to business behind closed doors.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, in charge of the Vatican's relations with other Christians, led the discussion, briefing the group on the Vatican's dealings with Protestants, Anglicans and other Christians, the Vatican said.

His talk was also expected to include details of a new document approved by a Vatican-Orthodox theological commission that has been working to heal the 1,000-year schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

In the document, Catholic and Orthodox representatives both agreed that the pope has primacy over all bishops - although they disagreed over just what authority that primacy gives him.

The agreement is significant since the Great Schism of 1054 - which split the Catholic and Orthodox churches - was precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.

Kasper called the document an "important development" since it marked the first time that Orthodox churches had agreed that there is a "universal level" of the church, that it has a primate, and that according to ancient church practice, that leader is the bishop of Rome - the pope.

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Pope praises, Vatican beatifies Italian whose writings were condemned
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI praised the life and example of a 19th-century Italian philosopher and religious-order founder whose writings had been condemned by the church until six years ago.

Blessed Antonio Rosmini was a great priest and an "illustrious man of culture" who generously dedicated his life to harmonizing the relationship between reason and faith, the pope said just a few hours before Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins led the Nov. 18 beatification ceremony in the northern Italian city of Novara.

In remarks made shortly after his midday Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square, the pope asked that Blessed Rosmini's example help the church, "especially Italian ecclesial communities, grow in the awareness that the light of human reason and grace, when they walk together, become a source of blessing for the human person and for society."

Blessed Rosmini, who lived 1797-1855, founded the Institute of Charity -- also known as the Rosminian Fathers -- and the Congregation of the Rosminian Sisters of Providence.

The road to his beatification had been impeded by an 1887 Vatican condemnation of 40 proposals selected from works written by the Italian priest.

But in 2001, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed then by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who is now Pope Benedict, declared that the positions condemned 114 years ago did not accurately reflect Blessed Rosmini's thinking or beliefs.

Historians said the propositions were pulled out of the context in which they were written.

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Sometimes I think that the most interesting piece of data on the iTunes display isn't the "Play Count" column but the "Last Played" one. I glance at it, as "Suffer Little Children" by The Smiths is playing, one of 282 songs in my "All Time Favourites" playlist out of my 4913 songs in iTunes. And I think, "Have I really not listened to this song since 7/19/04 at 11:53pm?!" I still know all the words, all the little cadences, but there is now so much music in my collection that I don't make it around to things for months or years that still sound like "yesterday" to me. Granted, The Smiths were most influential for me in undergraduate days. It resonated with me in a way then that it no longer does, while all these years later Morrissey is still making a career complaining and striking poses over the same material, proving nothing if not that I'm far less the man that I used to be. Anyway, like I said, it's interesting. No, I didn't say it was interesting to you.

I had to tell my student Stacey today that she couldn't sign up for my Theology Through The Centuries course next semester because she won't be a sophomore yet. Apparently the rationale is to keep students from taking their two (if they only have two) required Theology courses both during their freshman year so that they have some maturing time and time to get more advanced as a student before taking their second. It was the strangest sensation of "catch-and-release," of throwing her back into the water until she grows more. Students are registering now, seniors first, in their assigned waves, and both my sections have eight students currently in them. I have three more students from last year who I have now discovered are taking the course, which is fun, but it doesn't look like these are especially Theology-majors' sections by any stretch of the imagination: I saw seniors and juniors from all across the university curriculum, but if the numbers can stay low, it can turn into much more of a "reading circle" or "book club" dynamic than a "classroom" one, which I'm really hoping for.

Fides, the scripture-reading and prayer group of Catholic graduate students that I attend on alternating weeks had a meeting today, followed by dinner at the Jesuit Residence with Father Kurz, our faculty host, and a bit of a birthday party for one of the girls in the group. I don't know many of these students well at all, since I'm not in coursework, but other than a few grad students in English, most seem to be in Theology, though many of these seem to be Master's students, which further takes them out of my usual circles. One of them, Julie, who I spoke with over dinner, is a recent grad of Thomas Aquinas College, and we spoke of the curriculum there, and its strengths and weaknesses in preparing her for this work. She knew my spy at TAC, amea, and spoke of her as the power behind the rise of theatre on campus, which was interesting to hear, since Jenny would talk about the theatre work she was involved in there, but never gave herself such credit for it. (Jenny, you apparently rule.) We were joined by Fr. Philipp Gabriel Renczes, S.J., the Wade Chair this year, whose Wade Lecture, "A Theology of Judaism in 7th Century Byzantium: Maximus the Confessor," I enjoyed very much enjoyed last week before running off to meet Mike and Michelle for dinner. So I was glad to finally speak a few words with him. He's faculty at the Gregorian in Rome (tho' I think we're making a play for him) and is teaching an undergrad course while here that I had hoped to sit in on this year, before realizing I just didn't have the time. But I figured that a class called "The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger" was something I could not only learn a lot from, but could also rip off to great success for teaching at any other Catholic institution in the immediate future.

Off to Starbuck's for some prep for tomorrow (Pt. 2 of Lewis' Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity) and some more work on the theosis essay.

It was amazing outside today: the faded glory of fall gave the flaming reds, oranges, and yellows more dusty tints, while still with the brightness of the sun making them flare, and the wild wind swirling through the city's building in unexpected gusts, directions and strength just gave you such a sense of the world's life that I kept laughing at the sheer fun of it all. When I walked in through the door of Collector's Edge East on my errand run there and to the grocery store, Matt asked what great thing was going on in my life to give me such a smile. I think he was a little disappointed with my explanation.

Life rolled on in its interesting way this week. I had to stop and go back to the drawing board with my Introduction to Theology course on the two lessons I was scheduled to give this week, selections from Anselm of Canterbury's Cur Deus Homo? or Why Did God Become Human?, which I discussed in an earlier entry, and a lesson from Thomas Aquinas: the first question from his Summa Theologiae on whether Theology is necessary as a science. Both of these are more difficult and far more subtle texts than they appear on the surface, and my original lessons were okay, but just weren't getting as much across to the students as I had hoped. So in both cases I slowed down quite a bit, walking with them through the form and argument, letting the students argue out each point at length and thus achieving some kind of "ownership" of the thought before moving onto the next point. Meta-questions about the meaning of the whole then were left until the very end, with only maybe one key idea that I tried to draw out of the students, but one which they were now much more able to articulate and understand the significance of. It felt much better than the last time I taught the material. Wednesday and Thursday, in preparation for Thursday's class, I re-read G.K. Chesterton's masterful study (somewhere between "charming" and "thrilling") Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, with leaps over to James Weisheipl's more academic text Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work for more detailed treatment of various points.

Having dinner at Dan and Amy's this week was fun for the new added thrill of Dan and I getting ready to both teach sections of Theology Through the Centuries next semester, and to discuss possible texts and lessons together. He just fairly recently got the job, and as I noted a few entries ago, I've already ordered my texts, but he was looking at what I ordered and why, checking out the less-known edition of Julian of Norwich that I so favour, and reading Benedict XVI's book Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures. It is interesting to have the opportunity to hear someone else's thoughts on sculpting such a course, like while I had thought to move purely chronologically, and to use the Pope's book as a way of treating and understanding the challenge of the Enlightenment for us today, Dan had countered with the suggestion to open with it, to set up an example of the careful examination – and use of such an examination – of history, so as to model for the students what they would be doing in reading these other historical classics together. I never thought of that! But modeling the skill of appropriation in a text, instead of just trying to engage that skill as we read together, struck me as a great idea. So I'm considering the pluses and minuses of that one.

I was disappointed to find out from Faith that she really didn't feel the kind of connection where she would want to pursue dating, which seemed a shame from my first impression, as I thought her the best conversationalist on a first date of anyone I'd gone out with since the start of summer. So that was too bad: it's been a while since I'd dated an artist, and as stupid as it is to look at dating in such ways, if we had found some chemistry then I thought dating an artist and scholar sounded great fun.

Thursday I had the great pleasure of going out to dinner with Mike and Michelle Dougherty, two of my three closest friends from my first two years at Marquette, but who had since moved on after graduating, and now being down in Columbus, Ohio, at Ohio Dominican University. I had not actually laid eyes on them for at least two years, and so this was pure refreshment. Now they were a trio, having produced a son, Thomas, a year ago, and who Mike thought must be thrilled to be dining with theologians (we were also joined at dinner by another of that old circle, Chris Dorn) because he was so quiet. I don't know that there were great revelations to be posted from the dinner: it was just good, honest conversation of the catching-up sort, with them digging for details on my dissertation (Mike's doctorate is in Philosophy, (particularly Medieval/Renaissance; Michelle's in Literature, 18th century). Mike's book was finally finished, it was good to hear, and brought out by Cambridge University Press, Pico della Mirandola: New Essays, and it was also news to hear that Chris had revised his dissertation from last year and gotten it accepted by a publisher, as well as become an editor of Reformed Review. I felt slovenly by still being a mere doctoral candidate!

We walked back to the Hilton, where the Catholic Philosophers of America or some such group was having their annual conference (thus bringing Mike and Michelle back to Milwaukee, and Chris and Mike talked for a bit while Michelle and I walked and talked a bit ahead of them, with Thomas in his stroller. I had an odd moment when all of a sudden a man with a sledgehammer half-swung the thing at my head, murmuring, "You better BELIEVE I might hit you!" before walking on with his companion as though nothing untoward had occurred. Michelle and I kind of looked at one another in delayed alarm or disbelief (I'm not sure Mike and Chris even noticed, it was so quick and relatively quiet), before just kind of writing it off as the kind of craziness you sometimes run into in downtown Milwaukee. Still, a few days after two police were shot by a 15 year-old, you kind of wonder.... Chris took off and I stuck around the hotel, talking with them in their room for another hour while Thomas ran down his extra energy, and just hearing more about life at ODU, parenthood and the like. Mike says his combined Philosophy/Theology Department is putting in for two new Theology hires for later this year, and that I should be prepared to throw my hat in. Mike's best friend from the Philosophy program here already has gotten hired there in their expansion drive, so Mike might want to continue his run of stocking the program with scholars he can vouch for. I won't deny that it would be pleasant to go someplace where I already know some of the crew, and maybe by a late spring addition, I'd feel better about where I was in my dissertation so as to be willing to apply....

daysprings posted the following gem on her journal, which I thought one of the funniest things I'd read in a long time, and deserving of being remembered:

…Our birth instructor spent part of her early stage labor sculpting clay? Really? The woman brought clay to the hospital, because she wanted to make some “birth art” to help her “remember the experience”? – I cannot even imagine the kind of “art” I would create during labor. Probably the sort that would scare little children.

And tonight, Friday, I was pleased to spend in the company of Diane, who had been plotting with me over the last month to head down for the signing event that was going on at Collector's Edge South with writers Greg Rucka, Gregg Hurwitz, and Brian Azzarello. (I didn't know anything by Hurwitz, and didn't really remember who Azzarello was until later, which I regretted, because there was one writing question I might have profitably asked him.) She and I are both huge fans of Rucka's work, she especially for his espionage thillers like Queen and Country, and me for his stuff in the DC Universe, which had a huge role in bringing me back to reading comics a few years ago, when, intending to only pick up some old runs that were favourites when I was a kid, a guy at South talked me into picking up Countdown to Infinite Crisis, and I got sucked into Rucka's incredible The OMAC Project, which slightly outshone the epic Infinite Crisis it introduced. (That epic was a sort of sequel to the unprecidented story Crisis on Infinite Earths, which capped my childhood comics reading, which I then gave up so that I could afford college.) Diane and I laughed a bit from the back of the modest crowd, about how we so weren't the fans that went to conventions, got really excited about getting things signed, dressed up in costumes, etc., but we were enjoying listening to the conversations going on with Rucka.

But we did go forward, eventually, buying something to have signed so as to get an excuse to talk. Diane asked about his research, which she very much admired, working as a technical writer herself, and laughing with him about her own time working as a clerk at Collector's Edge, and the real minority women still are in the comics readership. I got to talking with him, first with a tongue-in-cheek complaint about his writing drawing me back into the readership over the last two-and-a-half years. When I said, "So the way I see it, I'm out a few grand because of you!" he rolled backward in his chair laughing. More seriously, once I realized all these favourite contemporary stories of mine seemed to be written by the one guy, I realized that the one thing that I like in his work above all is that he takes a most fantastical genre like superhero fantasy/sci fi, and he tries to imagine what would be the impact of such people living in "the real world." What's the political consequences of someone with Superman's abilities? What do good and bad cops in the ruinously corrupt urban jungle of Gotham City do with a nut in a costume crawling through the night waging his own very successful war on crime? That was the drama in Rucka's work, whether that last basic scenario in Gotham Central; the political consequences of Superman's sudden appearance in someplace very like Iraq when his wife Lois, an embedded reporter in a U.S. military unit, is shot; the political fallout Diana of Themyscira (Wonder Woman) as a U.N. ambassador for her people, who is seen on worldwide television breaking the neck of a man only she knows is a terrorist who apparently cannot be stopped any other way; a U.N. program to monitor and respond to people with special abilities; the hijacking of a U.S. military protocol to exterminate all "metahumans," these individuals with such concentrated power.

Rucka (hey! what do you know? he's one of us! ruckawriter) nodded when I described this as a consistent device in his work, and he said that he really thought that that was a central possibility in this kind of literature: not so much the fantastic or extraordinary as such, but the point of contact where the extraordinary meets the ordinary. That rung a bell with me, as I've long thought that that was why the Superman stories had Clark Kent surrounded by such a relentlessly human supporting cast. Rucka started excitedly talking about Renee Montoya in this regard, a minor character who had actually appeared in the 1990s Batman comics after having been created for Batman: The Animated Series, and who then migrated into the comics. It was in Rucka's hands that she began to dramatically fill out as a complex, and very flawed character. By the end of the Gotham Central series, she's virtually destroyed: outed as a lesbian to the public by a criminal fixated upon her, her relationship ruined, her partner on the force murdered, and, well on her way toward alcoholism, her resignation from the police force. The weekly, one-year series 52 further puts her through the wringer, but toward a constructive end, rebuilding her into a character with a place in the DC Universe that puts her on that border between the extraordinary and ordinary, neither "superhero" nor "civilian," but definitely a character to watch. When I asked about the limits of realism that he can bring to a medium like this, his response tended not to be so much focused on inherent limits of the fantasy aspects of the DC characters and universe, but rather the limits of drama itself: you don't write a TV drama about what cops actually do every day because most of it doesn't keep your attention as a story. Most never shoot their gun outside of training, and most never get into a car chase, yet these are conventions of the "cop show." That's what stood out to him as the border of writing realism in even the fantasy of the DC Universe: the mundane. I understood his response, but was certainly not the type of answer I was expecting. I now had a few more things I wanted to ask him about, particularly in getting so involved with a character like Montoya, which he doesn't own (I was curious if DC gives him a certain level of "dibs" on the character, to work with her long-term, as a trusted writer, and not letting other writers turn her in other directions and thus foiling all his intentions), but there were plenty of other people around, a few waiting for signatures, and I felt geeky enough by this point.

Diane and I wandered off, after she'd made the rounds of old co-workers, getting a gyro for her and a fish-fry for me at the Knick, and then heading over to the Metro for dessert (where I was happy to hear Over The Rhine's "Trouble" on the sound system), which we hadn't done in a good long while. Being a Friday, the latter was packed with clubbers, but we talked a long time over apple pie, cinnamon ice cream, and tawny ports, mostly about her and Tim's growing relationship, all of which made me increasingly excited for her, as I really got a good vibe from the guy last week. That, and relationship/love theory in general was enough to keep us going until 11:30. With that, and with my evening with the Doughertys the night before, I really feel like I got in my "weekend" already, and I'm looking very forward to just settling in and working for the next few days.

My journey to Wyoming was about as I had expected: less than three hours of sleep meant that I snoozed as best I could from the Delta hub in Cincinatti to the Delta hub in Salt Lake City. There I felt refreshed as I ran into Kevin himself, who was on his way back to Jackson from Santa Barbara, where he had been working with a client the two days previous. (This was not a surprise -- which in retrospect would have been amazingly funny and shocking -- Kev had given me the heads-up a few days later that we'd be on the same flight into Jackson.) Last night fulfilled my earlier wishes of a night of long talk, with a glass of wine, my goddaughter Sophie full of life and pleasantly taken with me, a warm fire in the wood stove and Kevin strumming along on his wedding-gift mandolin (which I'd helped Frannie pick, back in 2005) to the music quietly playing in the background. And it doesn't look like everything here is going to be lost in snow! They've taken a turn to the colder (Frannie said yesterday she started in short sleeves and sandals, and it was snowing by the time we arrived), but it doesn't look too bad....

I include below the cut two articles: one on the creation of 23 new Cardinals by Benedict XVI, and the other a news article on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (a friend of Barnes' and an amazingly sharp theologian), which reports in not-very-substantial news story fashion on his critique of Dawkins' The God Delusion, part of that "new crop" of atheist writing that seems to be a last gasp of 18th-century Enlightenment propaganda more than anything else. If contemporary atheism thinks it's going to engage Christianity on a playing field of evidence and reason, Christianity is going to win handily. The Enlightenment critique only works with the presumption of evidence, reason, and the mystically-invoked "science" as being against "religion," which they dogmatically define, against all actual evidience, as being against reason and the use of evidence....

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Various articles and such that have caught my eye over the last several days and that I wanted to jot down. Vaclav Havel's unapologetic casting of the climate issue in wider language of morality. I thought this interesting and important because of the strong feelings the cultural Left has in support of environmental issues such as this, but who adamant argue against any idea of a moral order in so many other venues, particularly at the personal level. The article on filmmaker Bill Haney grabs my eye especially because of my awareness of the exploitation of Haitians in the Dominican Republic after loaning that Haitian community my then-girlfriend for two years. The ongoing question of the current importance of Europe's Christian heritage in its political self-conception and order is why the next article grabbed me, from a few weeks ago during Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to Austria. And the last article about lay people or women religious being given more authority in the Vatican is naturally interesting to someone studying ecclesiology....

Op-Ed Contributor
Our Moral Footprint
By VACLAV HAVEL
Published: September 27, 2007 in The New York Times
Prague

OVER the past few years the questions have been asked ever more forcefully whether global climate changes occur in natural cycles or not, to what degree we humans contribute to them, what threats stem from them and what can be done to prevent them. Scientific studies demonstrate that any changes in temperature and energy cycles on a planetary scale could mean danger for all people on all continents.

It is also obvious from published research that human activity is a cause of change; we just don’t know how big its contribution is. Is it necessary to know that to the last percentage point, though? By waiting for incontrovertible precision, aren’t we simply wasting time when we could be taking measures that are relatively painless compared to those we would have to adopt after further delays?

Maybe we should start considering our sojourn on earth as a loan. There can be no doubt that for the past hundred years at least, Europe and the United States have been running up a debt, and now other parts of the world are following their example. Nature is issuing warnings that we must not only stop the debt from growing but start to pay it back. There is little point in asking whether we have borrowed too much or what would happen if we postponed the repayments. Anyone with a mortgage or a bank loan can easily imagine the answer.

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Filmmaker found priest 'extraordinarily charismatic and principled'
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Filmmaker Bill Haney, who made the new documentary titled "The Price of Sugar," said one reason he decided to make a movie on the plight of Haitian sugar-cane cutters in the Dominican Republic was Father Christopher Hartley, the British-born priest who worked for several years with the Haitians and appears throughout the film.

"I found Father Christopher an extraordinarily charismatic and principled man," Haney said. Although "educated in the spirit of reflection and contemplation," he added, "he was a bold leader taking real-life risks on behalf of the principles that he committed his life to."

Another reason was "the kind of startling and stark and almost painful dichotomy between the lifestyle that the resort-dwellers were enjoying along the (Dominican) coast and the deeply, deeply troubling conditions that the sugar-cane workers were enduring just a few miles away," said Haney, a Catholic. "It kind of reminded me of the admonition that where the last among us go, so am I."

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Pope strongly urges Europe not to deny its Christian values
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VIENNA, Austria (CNS) -- Before an audience of Austrian political leaders and international diplomats, Pope Benedict XVI urged Europe not to jettison its Christian values -- especially when it comes to the rights of the unborn and the dying.

The pope made the remarks Sept. 7 in an ornate reception hall of Vienna's Hofburg Palace, which was packed with government officials, legislators, ambassadors and representatives to U.N. and other agencies.

After being welcomed warmly by Austrian President Heinz Fischer, the pope stood on a red-carpeted podium and declared bluntly: "Europe cannot and must not deny her Christian roots. These represent a dynamic component of our civilization as we move forward into the third millennium."

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Oh, and from Whispers in the Loggia, there's an interesting little story with the tongue-in-cheek title of The Curia's "First Lady", about Sister Enrica Rosanna, Benedict's blatant disregarding of reform of canon law in having a non-ordained person in a position of superiority over the ordained, which looks to be an increasing fact of even Vatican life....

Never in my life, I realized with a shock, had I seen a deployed soldier before. Oh, sure, I'd seen ROTC students saddle up for weekend, or the National Guard on summer training manuvers, but an actual, armed, deployed soldier? Never. Not until I reached the age of 27. And when I realized it, I was suddenly grateful and amazed to have reached such an edge in such security, when I knew how different so much of the rest of the world was. But there they were: two British paratroopers, crossing the park in Armagh, Northern Ireland as I was setting up a photograph. I thought, "Oh, that's to be expected," as I watched them looking back and forth as they walked, and then it hit me. A day or two later, standing in the drizzle in Derry, I watched as the armoured personnel carriers went by on their patrol, where even the A.P.C.s went in pairs for safety.... It's great to see it have come to an end.

The other stories I added are just amusing.

British Army Ends NIreland Mission
Jul 31, 1:07 PM (ET)
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - The British army marked a milestone of peacemaking Tuesday as it formally ended its 38-year mission to bolster security in Northern Ireland.

The military's longest-running operation officially was ending at midnight. But the symbolic moment came months after the reality - no British troops have been on patrol on Belfast streets for two years.

As of Wednesday, all 5,000 soldiers remaining in this long-disputed corner of the United Kingdom will be committed to training for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere overseas.

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Church Offers Text Messages From Pope
Jul 30, 9:43 PM (ET)

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Organizers of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Austria next month are offering the faithful a foretaste: daily cell phone text messages with quotes from the pontiff.

The Archdiocese of Vienna said the service, which began Sunday and will continue through the pope's Sept. 7-9 visit, will provide free excerpts of his sermons, blessings and writings.

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237 Reasons We Have Sex
Jul 31, 5:54 PM (ET)
By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) - After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It's more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex - they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and "it feels good," according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

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Here's an interesting follow-up story to the overture made by Benedict XVI to Chinese Catholics in his recent letter to them. This isn't an official invitation from Beijing, but it certainly has some meaning in that it was allowed to be published by an official of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. The feelers are definitely out.

I also include an odd, sad and funny little story about WWI having unusual payoffs for locals in Macedona.

Chinese Catholics Ask Pope to Visit
Jul 24, 10:45 AM (ET)

VATICAN CITY (AP) - A senior official in China's state-sanctioned Catholic Church said in comments published Tuesday that he would like Pope Benedict XVI to visit China.

Benedict did not dismiss the possibility but said the issue was "complicated."

Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, made the comments in an interview with Italian daily La Repubblica in which he praised Benedict's recent letter to China's Catholics as "positive."

"I strongly hope to be able to see the pope one day here in Beijing to celebrate Mass for us Chinese," Liu was quoted as saying.

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WWI Spirits Live on in Macedonia
Jul 23, 8:36 PM (ET)

By KONSTANTIN TESTORIDES

GRADESNICA, Macedonia (AP) - French adjutant-chief Eugene Rouges died with several of his men here when a German artillery shell exploded in their trench on Nov. 16, 1916.

But their spirits live on in Gradesnica.

More than 90 years later, visitors are still drawn to this former World War I battlefield, a remote mountain village in southern Macedonia, where the lure is more than military history: A liquid fortune in vintage cognac and wine lies buried in the old trenches.

Stefan Kovacevski, 64, is among residents who tasted the French army rations that have matured into an exquisite elixir.

"At first we were afraid to taste the dark, thick liquid," he said. "But ... this must be what people mean by the nectar of the gods."

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Oi. I woke up this morning to find that there was a new document that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) had issued regarding the Second Vatican Council's statement that the Church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church. Nicole Winfield, one of the regular AP reporters I read covering the Vatican, has a story out on it that naturally puts things in their bleakest and harshest terms, with a headline – hers or her editor's – that the Pope says (not the CDF, note) that other Christians' communities are "not true churches." Naturally, this language is rather like pissing gasoline into the fire, but I suppose it makes the story more "newsworthy."

The question is of particular interest to me because it is Francis Sullivan's – my dissertation subject – work, although he is not mentioned by name, that is in many respects going to be at the center of this question. In 2000, the CDF – then under the leadership of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict – issued a document entitled Dominus Iesus that said, among other things, something along these lines. The CDF issued Dominus Iesus without consulting the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, the members of which promptly had collective strokes at the clumsy declarations about the nature of other Christian churches. The CDF could issue such a statement without consulting even the Vatican's official group responsible for that area because the CDF has jurisdiction over all doctrinal matters. Naturally, the problem with that formulation is that everything done by each body within the Roman Curia – the papal administration – has something to do with doctrine. This makes for situations where the CDF seems to get really clumsy and oversay things because "doctrine" is too broad a field for total competence without wide consultation. After all, that is part of the reason why we are a church, a community, rather than individual people out trying to be spiritual. It is the CDF's responsibility to be a restraining force regarding teaching in the Church, and it is an important and necessary function. It should be noted, though, in Church politics, that the CDF putting something out, even though the Pope signs off on their doing so, is in itself considered of less weight than a more explicitly papal teaching as in the form of an encyclical.

Sullivan issued a few articles that dealt with the meaning of these two words, that the Church of Christ "subsists in" the Roman Catholic Church – a phrase that was understood after the Council, by the Council Fathers – to indicate that there was a legitimacy to other forms of Christianity. This is a different question than whether or not the Catholic Church might preserve a "fullness" of the way of being the Church of Christ that other churches lack, like having the ministry of the papacy, which provides a kind of unity and leadership lacking in other forms of Christianity. These are fairly delicate and technical questions about the nature of the Church and are probably best handled among the church leadership and theologians of the various churches. News stories like this, unfortunately, tend to reduce asking these technical questions to something more to street-level pissing contests. I'll be curious here to see if Sullivan's careful correction of misunderstandings within Dominus Iesus is taken into account here, or if this is recycling the same confusions: I've not yet read the document, which I include below. The question is made even more interesting (for me and for my dissertation) because Ratzinger's replacement as the head of the CDF is Cardinal Levada, who happens to be a doctoral student of Sullivan's. Professor Fahey wrote to me that Sullivan had sent off a response to Levada this morning, and I've already cheekily asked Sullivan if I could read his mail.

I include below the AP story on the issue, inflammatory as it may be; Sandro Magister's introduction article; the text of the CDF document itself; the commentary on the text, issued by the CDF; and then another, unrelated and much lighter little AP story about Benedict's summer vacation plans.... Now, to actually get to it!


Pope: Other Christians Not True Churches
Jul 10, 8:49 AM (ET)

By NICOLE WINFIELD

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.

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Summer Assignment: Restudy the Doctrine of the Church
This is what is prescribed by a new document from the congregation for the doctrine of the faith. The Orthodox and Protestants are cautioned: the Catholic Church is the only one in which subsist the "essential constitutive elements" of the Church intended by Christ. Turbulence in view, in ecumenical dialogue

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, July 10, 2007 – Benedict XVI departed yesterday for his vacation in the Alps, leaving an assignment for the congregation for the doctrine of the faith: the task of refreshing for the bishops, faithful, and above all the theologians, some of the controversial points of the doctrine on the Church, in order to avert “errors and ambiguities.”

The congregation carried out this assignment with the document published today, which is presented below in its entirety.

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Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Introduction

The Second Vatican Council, with its Dogmatic Constitution "Lumen gentium," and its Decrees on Ecumenism (Unitatis redintegratio) and the Oriental Churches (Orientalium Ecclesiarum), has contributed in a decisive way to the renewal of Catholic ecclesiolgy. The Supreme Pontiffs have also contributed to this renewal by offering their own insights and orientations for praxis: Paul VI in his Encyclical Letter "Ecclesiam suam" (1964) and John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter "Ut unum sint" (1995).

The consequent duty of theologians to expound with greater clarity the diverse aspects of ecclesiology has resulted in a flowering of writing in this field. In fact it has become evident that this theme is a most fruitful one which, however, has also at times required clarification by way of precise definition and correction, for instance in the declaration "Mysterium Ecclesiae" (1973), the Letter addressed to the Bishops of the Catholic Church "ommunionis notio" (1992), and the declaration "Dominus Iesus" (2000), all published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The vastness of the subject matter and the novelty of many of the themes involved continue to provoke theological reflection. Among the many new contributions to the field, some are not immune from erroneous interpretation which in turn give rise to confusion and doubt. A number of these interpretations have been referred to the attention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Given the universality of Catholic doctrine on the Church, the Congregation wishes to respond to these questions by clarifying the authentic meaning of some ecclesiological expressions used by the magisterium which are open to misunderstanding in the theological debate.

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Commentary on "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church"

In this document the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is responding to a number of questions concerning the overall vision of the Church which emerged from the dogmatic and ecumenical teachings of the Second Vatican Council. This Council ‘of the Church on the Church’ signalled, according to Paul VI, “a new era for the Church” in which “the true face of the Bride of Christ has been more fully examined and unveiled.”[1] Frequent reference is made to the principle documents of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II and to the interventions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, all of which were inspired by an ever deepening understanding of the Church herself, and many of which were aimed at clarifying the notable outpouring of post-conciliar theology – not all of which was immune from imprecision and error.

This present document is similarly inspired. Precisely because some contemporary theological research has been erroneous, or ambiguous, the Congregation’s intention is to clarify the authentic meaning of certain ecclesiological statements of the Magisterium. For this reason the Congregation has chosen to use the literary genre of Responsa ad quaestiones, which of its nature does not attempt to advance arguments to prove a particular doctrine but rather, by limiting itself to the previous teachings of the Magisterium, sets out only to give a sure and certain response to specific questions.

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Pope to Write New Book While on Vacation
Jul 9, 3:40 PM (ET)

BY NICOLE WINFIELD

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI said Monday he plans to use his nearly three-week-long vacation in the Italian mountains to write a new book and said he was also preparing a new encyclical.

Benedict spoke briefly to reporters as he arrived at a church-owned villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in the mountains near Italy's border with Austria. He said he hopes to work on the second volume of the book "Jesus of Nazareth." The first volume was published earlier this year.

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I thought this an interesting little article. I wonder what a particular year's focus on Paul could pull out of a church's experience if they really did something with this. I know that my reading of Paul in the last few weeks in the context of my dissertation reading has been very powerful for me. Francis Sullivan's reading of Paul, particularly his First Letter to the Corinthians in Charisms and Charismatic Renewal: A Biblical and Theological Study is the very best and most sensible reading of this material that I've ever seen. It's so sensible that I wonder what effect it could have if it were more widely known, as I've seen and heard a lot of nonsense – distracting nonsense – taught about spiritual gifts and the "God's wisdom versus man's wisdom" contrast. This is Paul at this most vital: a perfect synthesis of theology and spirituality – the link between truth and action that is so neglected in our culture, where spirituality is highly touted but without any ground in truth has little to offer beyond self-satisfaction. I saw some fruit of the three years of Jubilee build-up in the late 90s, focusing on each of the Triune Persons, though I hardly used it to fullest advantage: maybe I can do better with this year's dedication, in union with everyone else in the Church.

Pope announces special year dedicated to St. Paul

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI announced a special jubilee year dedicated to St. Paul, saying the church needs modern Christians who will imitate the apostle's missionary energy and spirit of sacrifice.

The pope said the Pauline year will run from June 28, 2008, to June 29, 2009, to mark the approximately 2,000th anniversary of the saint's birth.

He made the announcement while presiding over a vespers service at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome June 28, the eve of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, patron saints of Rome.

( Read more... )

Long-awaited, Benedict XVI's letter to Chinese Catholics has finally been released and adds an increased impetus to the People's Republic to join the world with an increased freedom for religious liberty to match their economic liberalization.

Pope Makes Plea to China’s Catholics
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: July 1, 2007
The New York Times

ROME, June 30 — In an extraordinary open letter directed to Chinese Catholics and released Saturday, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged the suffering experienced by Catholics under Communist rule but also concluded that it was time to forgive past wrongdoings and for the underground and state-sponsored Catholic churches in China to reconcile.

Openly hoping for a renewal of relations between China and the Vatican, which were suspended in the late 1950s, Pope Benedict reassured the Chinese government that the Vatican offered no political challenge to its authority, while urging the state-sponsored Catholic Church to acknowledge the Vatican’s control on religious matters.

“The misunderstanding and incomprehension weighs heavily, serving neither the Chinese authorities nor the Catholic Church in China,” the letter said.

It was the pope’s long-awaited first official and explicit statement on China’s estimated 12 million Catholics, the majority of whom worship in underground churches to avoid having to register with the government and swear loyalty to it.

( Read more... )

Some notes about the last few days: I had a quiet, casual dinner over at the Lloyds' tonight, just catching up on the news with Dan and Amy, who celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary yesterday, on the Feast of Irenaeus, who happens to be Dan's eventual dissertation subject. Dan had grilled some steaks and we talked around the chatterings of Anna and the grins and gurgling of little Owen. They had gone out last night to the Trocadero, which I'd recommended to them, and apparently really enjoyed themselves. I'd actually thought of going over there myself last night, but ended up at Beans and Barley having a long dinner with a girl I've gone out with a couple of times, Slobodanka. So we hung around until the kids were in bed and then Dan and I dashed over to the Greenfield Half-Price Books with coupons celebrating their remodeling, and we scoured the DVD shelves.

More of my recent book splurge is drifting in.



The Abstracts of Karl Rahner's Theological Investigations I-23 by Daniel T. Pekarske, S.D.S., is a particular treasure – a research tool for Rahner's vast, unorganized work that Father Coffey had insisted I had to add to my library back when I was studying Rahner's Christology with him back in the 2003-04 school year. Pekarske even rates them on difficulty, with a 0.5 being accessible to anyone without a background in theology or philosophy, and a 4.0 being difficult even for theological specialists. Even the abstracts for a classic 4.0 article of his, like the breakthrough one on "Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace" (yes, such an exciting, meaningful title) from Vol. I that we spent such time with, was difficult going. But I've been coming back to Rahner just as part of my thinking about grace in context of the dissertation, and so I figured it was time.

Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI. Hey, we got one of the kick-ass theologians of the 20th century, one of the leading progressive experts aiding the bishops during the Second Vatican Council, as Pope now. I had to see how he was going to talk Jesus to the 21st century. The intro and his reflections on the impact of the historical-critical methodologies of "historical Jesus" studies in the last few decades seemed dead-on. It's too bad they insisted on decorating the book in Ponderously Dull Papal Style: Christianity looks so much more like The Matrix to me.

With the purchase of a used copy of the out-of-print Mercies: Collected Poems by Sheldon Vanauken, I now complete my Vanauken collection, including is one novel and his historical study on the English sympathy and political intrigue for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War. Of course, his undisputed masterpiece is A Severe Mercy, which is more than a cut above the rest of his work. That is, of course, one of the greatest love stories of all time, all the moreso for being true.

I had a vivid flashback to a warm fall evening in 1998 where I attended a concert by the inimitable Ellis Paulwith Scott and Karen Kirner out at what I think was LVD's Concert Hall, then in an old pole barn out in Indiana Amish Country. I had heard some of Paul's music through Kevin, but on this night with just a few dozen of us sitting in chairs with the singer standing in front of us, going through all his many odd tunings song after song, I think I smiled more than I ever have through a night of music. Image after image just resonated as true and dead on target. At one point, in his song "Live In The Now," the lines

I'm alone on the highway, only silos break the view
A field of sunflowers, a scarecrow paying dues...

had me suddenly flash to the images of fields of sunflowers in Provence that Katie Garvey had written to me about and sent photographs from her summer a month or two earlier. I whispered to Karen for a pen and scrap of paper and jotted down the lines

Going home through sunflower fields,
Blossoms black, life must yield

and later that night, I went home and spun out Katie's story about her and Ryan that summer into the song "What They Have," with its stark sound being my attempt at capturing a quiet Provençal sound, as though the song were being spun in some still chapel in the south of France (hear the too-loud, distorted sample at iTunes, and far better samples here). It's not the only time someone else's song suddenly helped give birth to one of my own, with very different words and sounds nevertheless.

Here's a few interesting recent articles from CNS, particularly the address to European university professors on the nature and impact of Modernity, which is kind of an interesting segue from our own conference on that subject at Notre Dame this past fall. There's also an historical article on a display of Isaac Newton's theological work. Lots of people don't know – having got this more recent "science vs. religion" false dichotomy in their heads – that Newton actually wrote more theology than physics. He was, however, much better at the latter, having made some serious mistakes like his trying to re-work the Arian controversy and having concluded that Arius had been correct. Still, we have a great deal more sources about the trinitarian controversies now, so perhaps he ought not be blamed over-much for all that....

Pope urges professors to find solutions to 'crisis of modernity'
By Regina Linskey
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI urged university professors to create solutions for "the crisis of modernity" as well as investigate Christianity's contribution to the study of human nature.

"Europe is presently experiencing a certain social instability and diffidence in the face of traditional values," but its history and universities "have much to contribute to shaping a future of hope," he told participants in the first European meeting of university professors. The participants came to the Vatican to meet the pope June 23.

Representatives from around the world came to Rome for the June 21-24 meeting, "A New Humanism for Europe: the Role of Universities," sponsored by the Council of European Bishops' Conferences.

( Read more... )

Pope tells library, archive employees he had hoped to retire, study
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- With a touch of envy, Pope Benedict XVI told employees of the Vatican Library and the Vatican Secret Archives that he had hoped to retire 10 years ago and spend the rest of his life studying, researching and writing.

"At the end of my 70th year of age, I would have liked it very much if the beloved John Paul II would have allowed me to dedicate myself to the study and research of the interesting documents and items you carefully safeguard," the pope told the employees June 25.

( Read more... )

New exhibit shows Isaac Newton's fascination with religious writings
By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- A new exhibit of never-displayed manuscripts written by Isaac Newton reveals the scientist's fascination with theology and apocalyptic and biblical writings.

Best known as the rational 17th-century mathematician and physicist who discovered the notion of gravity, Newton is considered one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time.

"During that period religion and science were often connected with each other," said Yemima Ben Menachem, curator of the exhibit and philosophy professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where the papers are on display. "Most of the great scientists of the 17th century were religious in different ways. Newton was also a very religious man."

( Read more... )

Well, good. John Paul II changed papal election rules in 1996 to allow a switch to a simple majority being required for election instead of a two-thirds majority if the conclave had failed to elect a Pope after 13 days. This was seen by ecclesiologists – those who study the nature and work of the Church – as a change capable of being abused. We realized that any simple majority who could not persuade a two-thirds majority to vote for their candidate could just stonewall the opposition until the rules changed on the thirteenth day. For this reason the last ten years has seen a great deal of criticism of the rule change. In that time, there has been only one papal election, that of the current Pope, Benedict XVI, where this "loophole" ended up not being a factor, owing to his quick election, but the potential for abuse has nevertheless been criticized.

In previous papal elections, strong candidates who nevertheless could not gain the two-thirds majority needed were set aside in favour of "compromise" candidates who were able to gain such consensus. Such was the papal conclave of 1958, in which the strong contenders were set aside in favour of the unlikely Angelo Roncali of Venice, who became Pope John XXIII and convened the Second Vatican Council – the most significant religious and cultural event of the 20th century. With a precident like that, Benedict XVI's return of the rules of papal election to the requirement of a two-thirds consensus is a particularly welcome sign of unity within the Church.

Pope says two-thirds majority always needed to elect pope
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI has stipulated that a two-thirds majority always is required to elect a new pope, undoing a more flexible procedure introduced by Pope John Paul II.

In a one-page document released June 26, the pope said the two-thirds-majority rule cannot be set aside even when cardinal-electors are at an impasse.

Instead, the pope instructed that if the cardinals are deadlocked after 13 days, runoff ballots between the two leading candidates will be held. A papal election will continue to require a majority of two-thirds of the cardinals present.

In 1996, Pope John Paul introduced a change in the conclave procedure that allowed cardinal-electors to move to a simple majority after 13 days, when 33 or 34 ballots had been held.

Pope Benedict said there had been significant requests for a return to the old rules, under which a two-thirds majority was always required.

( Read more... )

I've heard some buzz along the lines mentioned here, that Tony Blair was planning to convert to Catholicism after he leaves the Prime Minister's position in the U.K. I'll hardly pretend to be an expert on Blair, but I will certainly express some interest in the public significance of such a conversion in Great Britain, where there is such a particular history of defining itself over and against the Catholic Church since the noble Henry VIII suffered the memorable attack of his delicate conscience and seized all of the Church's property in the kingdom.

Blair Meets With Pope in Farewell Visit
Jun 23, 8:16 AM (ET)

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON

VATICAN CITY (AP) - The Vatican on Saturday bid farewell to Tony Blair as British prime minister, wishing him well on what it said were his plans to work for Middle East peace and interreligious dialogue.

Blair held long talks with Pope Benedict XVI, with the Vatican stop on his farewell tour fueling rumors that he plans to convert to Catholicism. The two men met privately for 25 minutes and then were joined for further talks by English Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.

A Vatican press office called the audience a normal meeting between the pope and a government leader. Blair leaves office on Wednesday.

The statement, issued after the talks with Benedict and a separate meeting with Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said there was a "frank" assessment of the international situation, including such "delicate" themes as the Middle East conflict and the future of the European Union.

The Vatican opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which Blair has supported.

The statement said that best wishes were expressed for Blair's future, saying that he has expressed the desire "to dedicate himself in a particular way for peace in the Middle East and for interreligious dialogue."

Earlier this week, it was suggested that President Bush, a close ally, wants Blair to take the job of Middle East envoy for the Quartet of peacemakers - the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia. Downing Street has refused comment on the reports.

Greeted by Benedict, Blair explained that he had just arrived from an EU summit in Brussels.

"I heard it was very successful," Benedict said.

"Yes, we had a very long night. We finished up at 5:30 in the morning," Blair replied.

In an interview with The Times of London, Blair said Saturday the issue of his religious beliefs was complex and that he was nervous about discussing his faith with the pope.

"It's difficult with some of these things," Blair told the newspaper. "Things aren't always as resolved as they might be."

As for reports that Blair is on the verge of formally converting, a spokesman for the prime minister repeated the official line that "he remains a member of the Church of England."

Blair, his wife and children met Benedict in a private, hour-long audience a year ago. He also met with Pope John Paul II in 2003.

Blair's wife Cherie is Roman Catholic, the couple's children have attended Catholic schools and Blair habitually attends Catholic rather than Anglican services.

The call for papers has come out for this next year's Ethics and Culture conference. Again, it looks to be wonderfully thought-provoking. Some of us have met here before, since this is a conference that welcomes people from across the academic disciplines and from beyond the academy itself to join the conversation. Maybe some of you will consider attending or contributing a paper? Me, I've got to try to come up with an essay, preferably one that would work out of my dissertation (I can imagine something crossing the Regensburg Address and Francis Sullivan's Salvation Outside the Church?: Tracing the History of the Catholic Response), but I'm especially hearing all sorts of hints of doing something on the Logos and culture in my head....

CALL FOR PAPERS
NOTRE DAME CENTER FOR ETHICS & CULTURE
8th ANNUAL FALL CONFERENCE
The Dialogue of Cultures
November 29-December 1, 2007
In his address at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI made an argument whose crucial import was obscured by the unproductive furor that followed his speech. Pope Benedict argued:

While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons….Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.

( Read more... )The Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, concerned by the deep cultural divides that characterize so much of our world, has found inspiration in Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address, and has decided to devote its eighth annual Fall conference to the theme: The Dialogue of Cultures. In interdisciplinary fashion, this conference will take up a variety of questions related to both the difficulties and opportunities involved in addressing cultural conflict. Contemporary political issues will certainly be on the table, as will philosophical and theological inquiries into the broader conception of reason of which Pope Benedict speaks, along with its relation to Christian faith. Legal theorists, also, will bring their perspective to the discussion, perhaps especially in regard to questions of natural law. And, if pattern holds, historians, literary theorists, artists, and people in business will make their own substantial contributions.

One of the key purposes of The Dialogue of Cultures is to help restore the richness in the notion of dialogue itself, which too often has devolved into a cultural cliché. But above all, the Center wants to follow the lead of Pope Benedict, who closes the Regensburg Address by declaring: “The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur—that is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time….It is to this great logos, to the breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.”

We welcome the submission of abstracts drawing on a wide range of moral and religious perspectives and academic specialties. Special consideration will be given to submissions of ideas for panel discussions that would bring together several people to discuss a focused theme. Possible issues to be explored are:

• The nature of dialogue itself: going beyond the cultural cliché
• Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Address and his other writings on the dialogue of cultures
• The possibility of peace between Islamic nations and the democracies of the West
• The dialogue of cultures between European, Asian, and African cultures
• Terrorism
• The European crisis of secularization
• Universal human rights
• The natural law and cultural dialogue
• Cultural divisions within the Church
• The challenge of immigration
• Cultural issues affecting the dignity of women
• Models of peacemaking and fruitful cultural dialogue
• The Greek philosophical inheritance of Catholic theology
• The aftermath of the war in Iraq
• The role of technology in fomenting/overcoming cultural conflict
• Globalization
• Obligations to developing nations
• The dialogue of cultures and the specter of incommensurability
• Literature and the arts as vehicles of cultural dialogue
• Ecumenism

One-page abstracts for individual papers should include name, affiliation, address, and e-mail address (if available). Session presentations will be limited to twenty minutes for individuals, one hour for panels. Deadline for submissions is Friday, July 27, 2007. Notification of acceptance will be mailed by Friday, August 31, 2007. ( Read more... )

A very oddly-worded headline....

Pope Martyrs Austrian Beheaded by Nazis
Jun 2, 8:44 AM (ET)

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI approved recognition of martyrdom for an Austrian who was beheaded by the Nazis for refusing to serve in Hitler's army, a step toward possible sainthood.

Ten years ago, a Berlin court posthumously exonerated Franz Jaegerstaetter, who was drafted after Germany annexed his native Austria, for refusing to serve in the Nazi army. His request to be excused from regular army service had been denied, and he was ordered executed for treason.

Jaegerstaetter had been the only person in his village to vote against the creation of a so-called "Greater Germany" shortly after Austria was annexed in 1938. He was beheaded in 1943.

Benedict also approved martyrdom Friday for 188 Japanese who were decapitated, burned at the stake or scalded to death in volcanic hot springs in the early 1700s. Among them was a Jesuit priest, Peter Kibe, a convert to Christianity whose work as a missionary was opposed by authorities.

He and the other Japanese died for refusing to renounce their faith.

The pope also approved a miracle attributed to Antonio Rosmini, an Italian priest and philosopher who died in 1855 and whose writings were once condemned by the Vatican. In 2001, the then-head of the Vatican's watchdog office for doctrinal errors, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, ruled the concerns over his writings were outdated.

Rosmini developed a philosophical system that incorporated political and social ideas with Roman Catholicism. The approval of a miracle opens the way for Rosmini's beatification, the last formal step before sainthood in the Catholic Church.

Being declared a martyr, which means the men died for the church, eliminates the requirement of a miracle to be beatified. However, after beatification, martyrs need to have a miracle confirmed if they are to become saints.

The complicated processes of beatification and canonization usually takes decades and sometimes lasts centuries.

For some reason, I only just now really read one of the final editorials my dissertation director, Fr. Michael A. Fahey, S.J., wrote as the Editor of Theological Studies, one of the great journals of our field. It's a personal, student's observation of the conclave and the election of Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy, but I wanted to retroactively add it – two years late – to all the other material I had on the conclave, back just before those newfangled LiveJournal "tags" came into common use. (Note to self: keep going back and "tag" the old entries....) I think it was the personal aspect of this that particularly interested me, both from Fahey having been a grad student of Ratzinger's and from my being a grad student of Fahey's, one who was very familiar with the list of the "top 20 papabili" that he kept updated in his pocket, and which I'd check on from time to time....

Editorial for June 2005: Blessing on Pope Benedict XVI

From the Editor’s Desk

As a long-time student of Vatican protocol, I had been regularly updating my database regarding the papal elector cardinals and reviewing procedures established by Universi dominici gregis (1996) so that, following the death of the reigning pope, I could assist local TV anchors, journalists, and radio commentators who felt intimidated by the complexities of the conclave. As fate would have it, during the actual voting for the new pontiff, I ended up in a nearby hospital for a week’s treatment. Although unable to respond to media requests, I did have the unusual luxury of watching from my bed the almost non-stop TV coverage of the events in Rome. When Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s, after the white smoke and the tolling bells, to announce: “Habemus papam,” I gasped when he pronounced the baptismal name “Iosephum.” The family name that followed would surely be “Ratzinger.” All my long-range prognostications about the papabili had proven to be far wide off the mark.

My mind at once turned back to my graduate student days in Tübingen, Germany, where Professor Ratzinger taught me systematic theology from 1966 to 1968. His progressive theology, articulated at the university and earlier at Vatican II, inspired his students. In those days, he was collaborating closely with his colleague Hans Küng, co-publishing a theological series entitled Ökumenische Forschungen. The two of them would meet every Thursday evening at their Stammtisch at the Museum Restaurant for an evening of discussion and camaraderie. Then in 1968, in the wake of turbulent student strikes and civil disobedience in Germany and France, Ratzinger underwent an intellectual conversion that drew him politically and ecclesiastically to conservative positions. (I described his paradigm shift in 1981 in an article published in Concilium entitled “Joseph Ratzinger as Ecclesiologist and Pastor.”) Shortly thereafter, when the opportunity presented itself, he gladly relocated from the confessionally mixed setting of Tübingen to the Bavarian Catholic campus of the University of Regensburg where his priest brother Georg conducted the Regensburger Domchor.

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Now that is a healthy exercise in pre-emptive reporting! Some of the divisions we have inherited in the American part of the Roman Catholic Church – divisions often clumsily patterned after the "conservative/liberal" division so cultivated in American politics – are so predictable in their eagerness to spin or distort a news story that John Allen, our best Vatican-watcher has actually laid out exactly the kind of silly reporting one will inevitably hear about an upcoming Vatican announcement. (The deepest comedy will come from whether the hosting newspaper for this op-ed, the New York Times, will offer the stereotypcial reaction predicted within the pages of its own publication.

Op-Ed Contributor
The Pope’s Language Lesson
By JOHN L. ALLEN Jr.
Published: May 30, 2007
The New York Times
Vatican City

A SENIOR Vatican official has confirmed that sometime soon Pope Benedict XVI will expand permission for use of what’s popularly known as the Latin Mass, the service that was standard before the Second Vatican Council. Though some details remain vague, one point seems all too clear: When the decision officially comes down, its importance will be hyped beyond all recognition, because doing so serves the purposes of both conservatives and liberals within the church, as well as the press.

Pope Benedict’s intent, according to Vatican authorities, is to make the pre-1960s Mass optional, leaving Catholics free to choose which Mass they want to attend. Because the older Tridentine Mass, named for the 16th-century Council of Trent, has come to symbolize deep tensions in Catholicism, the pope’s decision is sure to trigger an avalanche of commentary.

Many on the Catholic right will hail the move as a death knell for the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, such as use of the vernacular languages and modern music, and participation by the laity, most of which conservatives have long derided as misplaced efforts to make the church “relevant.” The older Mass, many argue, has such beauty and elicits such a sense of awe that, over time, it will triumph, leaving the changes of the last 40 years as a failed experiment.

That argument fails the smell test of contact with reality. ( Read more... )

Another major article by Magister on Benedict's program of engaging the secular philosophical orientations of Western culture, along with some hefty attached material from Cardinal Ruini. This one is some major reading....

“The Best Hypothesis”: The Humble Proposal of the Church of Ratzinger and Ruini

The pope’s cardinal vicar relaunches this to the secular world, whose beacons are critical reason and unlimited scientific freedom. In exchange, he asks that this reason renounce the pretense of exclusive dominion and open itself to the key questions of every form of theology and culture: God and man

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, May 21, 2007 – The same day on which, in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Benedict XVI addressed the key discourse of his trip to the bishops of that nation, in Italy his cardinal vicar Camillo Ruini was laying down the guidelines for a positive encounter of Christianity with the dominant traits of contemporary culture.

The day was May 11. And the two discourses, by the pope and by his vicar, in spite of their great geographic distance were in reality very close.

In a globalized world, in fact, tendencies like relativism and nihilism, the dominion of the sciences and, on the other side, the public reawakening of the religions no longer have boundaries and reserved areas. They impinge upon everyone’s lives, on all the continents.

And therefore a Church of universal dimensions like the Catholic Church cannot avoid facing the challenge. It has done this since the beginning, as Cardinal Ruini explains in the initial part of his discourse, which traces in very broad lines a history of the encounter between Christian theology and cultures, from the Roman empire to the modern age, moving on from there to concentrate attention above all on the season that runs from Vatican Council II to today.

( Read more... )

I am not entirely convinced by this interesting column by John Allen on Benedict XVI's "communication paradox." It's impossible to control what a TV or newspaper editor will take from something you say and present it out of context, perhaps especially in order to stir controversy. This is true for anyone in the public eye, and it's complicated for the Pope when you also then have to consider "people who don't share his intellectual and cultural premises," particularly given the widespread ignorance among otherwise well-educated people as to what Catholicism or Christianity is really like in its full intellectual form. I wonder if Benedict's choice is perhaps consciously to pull no punches in hope that treating people like adults – despite distortion and hand-wringing along the way – might really put the issues on the table and really raise the level of conversation in the long run. Is the hoopla of the out-of-context reporting (and subsequent uproar) of the Regensburg address ultimately worth it if a corrected vision "Faith and Reason" can get into the mind of the public and destroy the false dichotomy of "science vs. religion" most people believe in?

All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.
The Pope's Communication Paradox
Friday, May 18, 2007 - Vol. 6, No. 37

Benedict XVI hadn't even stepped off the papal plane at Rome's Ciampino airport on Monday, ending his May 9-13 Brazilian swing, when controversy from the trip caught up with him. Spokespersons for Brazil's indigenous populations were incensed by comments the pope made in Aparecida late Sunday afternoon, asserting that the arrival of Christianity did not amount to "the imposition of a foreign culture" upon the native peoples of the New World. To the natives, that seemed a nasty bit of historical revisionism.

This post-Brazil contretemps offers the latest confirmation that as a public figure, Benedict XVI has two qualities which often work at cross-purposes.

On the one hand, Benedict is an exceptionally lucid communicator. He's a gifted logician, so his conclusions flow naturally from his premises. Moreover, he's able to synthesize complex ideas in easy-to-understand formula, so you don't need a degree in theology to get his point. Yet Benedict can also be remarkably tone-deaf to how his pronouncements may sound to people who don't share his intellectual and cultural premises.

( Read more... )