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Showing posts with the label Pope Benedict XVI

Ex ore infantium

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A lovely family that has occasionally come to my parish, recently moved into the area. I saw Mum & Dad and the children today and, as usual with newcomers, made sure that they knew they could come into the parish Social Club after Mass.

Having another good Catholic family move into the parish is always a bonus but today I was given an extra boost. The children are quite young and understandably a bit confused about moving house, and everything that involves. One of the girls (aged 3 I think) asked Mummy "Are we going to our normal Church today?" Mum replied "No, we're going to our new Church." The little one then said "Oh, is that the Pope Benedict Church?"

That made my day! Viva Pope Benedict!
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Feel like singing yet?

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A wonderful rendition of Cardinal Wiseman's classic hymn to pray for the Holy Father. Unfortunately, as is common, the fifth verse is omitted. Here are the words:
For like the sparks of unseen fire,
That speak along the magic wire,
From home to home, from heart to heart,
These words of countless children dart :
“ God bless our Pope,” &c.In Wiseman's day, the "magic wire" was the newly-invented telegraph. The verse can apply just as fittingly to the internet, I think.

On Sunday, my organist and quite a few of the choir will be at the Mass for the Beatification of Cardinal Newman so I think we will be reduced to Low Mass. Whatever happens, we will certainly be singing "God bless our Pope" after Mass. If anyone has difficulty finding the words or the organ score, here is a nice clean jpeg that I prepared. It will print clearly on A4 size paper (go to this Flickr page and download the large size)



(Printing it out just now, I made the mistake of allowing Win…
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Orthodox bishop gives hard-hitting address to Anglicans

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Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk is Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations. Recently he gave an address to the Annual Nicean Club Dinner at Lambeth Palace in which he politely but firmly pointed out that the dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Anglicans,
"is doomed to closure if the unrestrained liberalization of Christian values continues in many communities of the Anglican world."He referred particularly to the impact on this dialogue of the proposed ordination of women Bishops:
We have studied the preparatory documents for the decision on female episcopate and were struck by the conviction expressed in them that even if the female episcopate were introduced, ecumenical contacts with the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches would not come to an end. What made the authors of these documents so certain? He also referred to the ordination in the USA of Gene Robertson, an openly homosexual Bishop, leading to the suspensio…
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Geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death

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Edmund Adamus, Director of Pastoral Affairs for the Archdiocese of Westminster, has been hung out to dry as a result of comments he made in an interview for Zenit: England, The Pope, and Marriage. He has some good things to say about how people reject what they think the Church teaches rather than what it actually teaches, about England as the Dowry of Mary, and about the importance of marriage and the family. Along with these, he makes some particularly trenchant remarks which have caught the attention of our broadsheets the Telegraph, the Independent and the Guardian.
The media focus on the Pope, his message and the Catholic Church becomes frenetic for the people of a nation where he visits.

Great Britain is no different, but there is a certain frisson about the nature of the attention the visit will generate in the media here and in the public consciousness.

Why? Because whether we like it or not as British citizens and residents of this country -- and whether we are even prepare…
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Pope is "an expert in liturgy" - elder Marini

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In the post ICEL translation - don't try this at home, I mentioned the ludicrous assertion made in the Tablet that the Pope is not a trained liturgist. This is occasionally taken seriously and therefore it was interesting to read a quotation, passed on to me by a correspondent, from the former Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, Archbishop Piero Marini (not to be confused with his successor Mgr Guido Marini).

In his valedictory letter, Archbishop Marini referred to the Holy Father as an “expert in the liturgy”. He speaks of his time serving Pope John Paul II and then offers particular thanks to Pope Benedict. He says:
[...] fin dal primo momento mi sono sentito accolto da Papa Benedetto come un figlio. In lui ho potuto conoscere, con mia viva soddisfazione, non solo un Professore ma un Papa esperto in liturgia.

[...] from the very beginning, I felt welcomed by Pope Benedict as a son. In him I have been able to know, with great pleasure, not only a Professor but a Pope who is a…
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Attacco a Ratzinger

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Two respected Vaticanisti, Paolo Rodari and Andrea Tornielli, have written a book analysing the various occasions during Pope Benedict's papacy when he has been subjected to fierce attack in the media: Attacco a Ratzinger: Accuse e scandali, profezie e complotti ("Attack on Ratzinger: Accusations and Scandals, Prophecies and Plots").

There is a lengthy review (in Italian) by Massimo Introvigne: I tre nemici del Papa (The three enemies of the Pope). I was reading this when a tweet came up with a link to an even longer review by John Allen: 'Attack on Ratzinger': Italian book assesses Benedict's papacy.

In addition to the main lines of the various stories which most Catholic blog readers will be familiar with, Attacco a Ratzinger has much material that has hitherto not been published. This is a valuable contribution since, as we know, the Italian Vaticanisti have proved time and again that they do have access to reliable inside information. John Allen quotes a …
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Pope's theological seminar on hermeneutic of continuity

The Holy Father has continued the custom that he maintained as a Cardinal, of meeting each summer with his former students of theology at Tübingen and Regensburg. Since he has become Pope, the meetings have been held at Castel Gandolfo.

This year, the theme is the hermeneutics (or interpretation) of the Second Vatican Council. The video above has a clip of the Holy Father giving his speech to the Roman Curia in December 2005. That speech was the inspiration for this blog.
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When anything goes, the first thing to go is apostolic tradition

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Just a quick heads-up to an excellent article by George Weigel addressing some of the issues facing Pope Benedict on his forthcoming trip to Britain. He begins:
Pope Benedict XVI’s pastoral visit to Great Britain next month will unfold along a pilgrim’s path metaphorically strewn with landmines. Headline-grabbing new atheists like Richard Dawkins, along with their allies in the international plaintiff’s bar, may try to have the pontiff arrested as an enabler of child abuse. More subtly, but just as falsely, homosexual activists and their allies will portray John Henry Newman, whom the Pope will beatify, as the patron saint of gay liberation. No challenge facing Benedict in Britain, however, will be greater than the challenge of re-framing the Anglican-Catholic ecumenical dialogue, which is on the verge of de facto extinction.For the rest of the article, see: When compromise trumps apostolic tradition
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Video: "Pope Benedict XVI - My Vatican"

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A correspondent sent me the link to this video by Journeyman Pictures calle Pope Benedict XVI - My Vatican. There is a (very) irritating advert at the beginning and a few statements with which we would take issue, but on the whole it is a well produced and sympathetic documentary with some fascinating comments by Cardinal Ratzinger when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Embedding is disabled (why would anyone want to choose that option?) so here is the link.
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Open letter from priests to the Holy Father

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Fr Ray Blake has posted an Open letter in support of Pope Benedict to which I have added my name. I encourage other priests to sign up.

Father mentions the possibility of setting up something along the lines of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy which our Aussie brothers have run so successfully for many years. I know that there are plenty of priests who are interested. We really need someone who has the time and energy to get this going.

Here's the text of the letter but please do go over to the post at Fr Blake's blog to sign it.
We, priests of England and Wales, wish to express our joy at the forthcoming visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Britain.

We welcome the many wise things the Holy Father said to us through our Bishops on their ad limina visit earlier this year which are of particular significance to the health of the Church in England and Wales, such as "the Catholic community in your country needs to speak with a united voice" and the need "t…
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Protect the Pope.com

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Protect the Pope.com is a new website which counters attacks on Pope Benedict’s reputation and integrity, and provides information and resources for Catholics to respond to incidents that constitute incitement to religious hatred.

At the launch of Protect the Pope.com Rev Nick Donnelly, a permanent deacon of Lancaster Diocese who set up the site, said:
‘Its been said that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice, and in a way we Catholics have colluded in this by ignoring it, hoping it will go away. But the personal attacks on Pope Benedict in the run up to the Papal visit show us its not going away.

Since 2006 we’ve had the legal right to protect ourselves from religious hatred. Of course people in this country have freedom of expression, but this does not mean they have the right to create a climate of hostility and fear. It’s a question of protecting our human rights to freedom of belief and freedom of worship.’The website gives information on the law regarding hate crime …
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Christ, "centre of history and the cosmos"

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In his General Audience address today, the last before his summer break, the Holy Father returned to the figure of the Blessed John Duns Scotus, commenting that "in this great Christocentric vision, the Incarnate Word appears as the centre of history and the cosmos." Such an affirmation from the Holy Father is always music to the ears of those of us in the Faith Movement who promote just such a vision of Christ as centre and Lord of history and of the cosmos.

As Sandro Magister has commented in his Italian language blog Settimo Caelo, the question of the primacy of the will in Scotist theology raises the question which the Holy Father himself brought up with regard to Islam in his Regensburg lecture. An absolute and innate freedom opens up the possibility of a God who is not tied to the true and the good. However, Pope Benedict points out that the desire to preserve an absolute transcendence of the impenetrable will of God does not take account of the fact that God is reveal…
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Summorum Pontificum three years on

Today is the third anniversary of the publication of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum which established that the older form of the Mass has never been abrogated and that in consequence, no permission is needed to celebrate Mass or the other sacraments in that form. In the letter accompanying the Motu Proprio, the Holy Father said:
In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.On Saturday, 7 July 2007, we celebrated the old Mass in my parish and afterwards had a little champagne and cake.

The effect of Summorum Pontificum has been extraordinary in itself. Although there are some dioceses around the world where positive obstruction is attempted, in many cases the r…
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If the Vatican curia were a football team

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On his Italian blog for L'Espresso, Sandro Magister writes about the reporting in various papers of remarks made by Cardinal Ratzinger on football. These were confined to one page of a book that he published in 1985. In fact, Ratzinger was not a great fan of sport. In Milestones, he describes his disappointment when Hitler changed the curriculum, cutting down on Latin and Greek to make more time for sport in school. (In the quotations that follow, you have my rough translation.)

Magister quotes the summary in L'Osservatore Romano of the future Pope's thoughts:
"Football requires one to order that which is one's own to the needs of the team; it unites by means of the common objective. The success and failure of each one is based on the success and failure of the team; freedom is maintained through the order and discipline in which we learn to act together." Magister allows himself a rare moment of wry humour:
"As coach of the curia, Papa Ratzinger has little…
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Pope Benedict "sanitising Newman"?

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In the Times article attacking the beatification of Newman, John Cornwell does not lose the opportunity to have a go at Pope Benedict whom he says is "clearly bent on sanitising Newman’s progressive Catholicism."

Cardinal Ratzinger's 1991 lecture on Conscience and Truth is well worth reading for an understanding of how he understands conscience and takes Newman's view that it is not merely something subjective but the voice of God within us. As he explains when discussing the Newman toast quote:
Modern man, who presupposes the opposition of authority to subjectivity, has difficulty understanding this. For him, conscience stands on the side of subjectivity and is the expression of the freedom of the subject. Authority, on the other hand, appears to him as the constraint on, threat to and even the negation of, freedom. So then we must go deeper to recover a vision in which this kind of opposition does not obtain.He goes on to show that the lifelong opposition to liber…
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CTS Spiritual Bouquet for Pope Benedict

The CTS is organising a Spiritual Bouquet to be presented to the Holy Father when he visits Britain.

H/T Bara Brith
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"Surprise, dismay and deep sorrow"

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The Vatican Press Office has today released a communiqué concerning the recent Apostolic Visitation of the Legionaries of Christ. The Rorate Caeli blog has helpfully posted an English translation.

Although the whole thing makes sorry reading, it does steer a careful, just, and prudent path through this appalling mess. The goodness and sincerity of the members of the Legionaries of Christ and of Regnum Christi is recognised, together with the smokescreen which Maciel managed to erect around his nefarious activities.

These grave offences, hidden for too long, are recognised for what they were:
The serious and objectively immoral behaviour of Fr. Maciel, supported by incontrovertible evidence, at times constitutes real crimes, and manifests a life devoid of scruples and of genuine religious feeling.There is pastoral compassion in the communiqué for the innocent members of the Legionaries who have devoted their lives to the service of God and are now confused and devastated by the activiti…
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Holy Father's address to Vox Clara

At the end of the lunch with officials of the Vox Clara Committee, the Holy Father gave a short address in which he praised their work, and welcomed the news that the new translations would soon be ready for publication.

Pope Benedict also spoke of the need for the changes to be introduced sensitively and of the "opportunity for catechesis". There is an important nuance in this. People who are well catechised already will not need to have catechesis to be able to accept the texts. But for the very many in the anglophone world who have been poorly catechised, the new translations will present an excellent opportunity for catechesis, especially on the Mass as sacrifice; something that the new translations present much more faithfully, in accord with the original texts.

Here is a link to the Holy Father's address.
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Holy Father & Vox Clara celebratory lunch

Following Cardinal Pell's announcement to the National Catholic Register that the new ICEL translations would receive formal approval today, this notice has appeared on the Vatican Bollettino today:INCONTRO CONVIVIALE DEL SANTO PADRE CON I MEMBRI DEL COMITATO "VOX CLARA"
Alle ore 13.15 di oggi, nella Casina Pio IV, il Santo Padre Benedetto XVI pranza con i Membri del Comitato "Vox Clara", Comitato di consulenza su questioni circa la celebrazione del Rito Romano in lingua inglese, annesso alla Congregazione per il Culto Divino e la Disciplina dei Sacramenti.

CONVIVIAL MEETING OF THE HOLY FATHER WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE "VOX CLARA" COMMITTEE
At 13.15 today, in the "Casino Pio IV", the Holy Father Benedict XVI will lunch with the members of the Vox Clara Committee, the Committee of consultation on questions regarding the celebration of the Roman Rite in the English language, annexed to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of th…
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An "error of judgement"

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In today's Sunday Telegraph, Jonathan Wynne-Jones had a scoop with the story of the memo drawn up by Foreign Office officials after a "brainstorming session." (See: Ministers apologise for insult to Pope) Above is the scan that he posted containing the most offensive part of the memo.

Damian Thompson has pointed out that for all the frantic apologising that has gone on today, the document reflects an attitude that is widespread in our politically correct government.

The official concerned has been told that the memo was "a serious error of judgement". He has apparently "accepted this view". In the light of the obvious sincerity of this Damascene conversion, he has been "moved to other duties".

Foreign Secretary David Milliband goes further to say that the failure of judgement was "colossal". Failure of judgement? In what precisely? To put forward those ideas in the first place, to put them down on a memo, to circulate the memo, o…
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Farewell to Margate

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It was sad to have to pack up and leave Margate this week, saying goodbye to such good people who helped with the worship of God, the care of the poor, the formation of children in the faith, and the stuff like unblocking drains and fixing roofs.

My health deteriorated so much by the early part of this year that I was no longer able to discharge the duties and responsibilities of a parish priest, nor was I likely to be able to do so in the foreseeable future. Archbishop Smith kindly accepted my resignation from the office of parish priest and gave his blessing to my convalescing in Bournemouth where I am being looked after by one of my sisters.

Competent medical care and the good cooking of my sister have helped to improve my health considerably over the past couple of months. The community at the Oratory-in-Formation, the Sacred Heart in central Bournemouth, have been most kind to me, first of all by visiting to bring me Holy Communion at home, and then by making it as easy as possi…
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The new Manichees and the conjugal act

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It is great that the Catholic Herald has Chad Pecknold writing a column "Daily Herald." Today he has a thought-provoking piece called Progressive writers are starting to admit the sexual revolution was a failure.

He refers to a Guardian article in which the writer acknowledges that sexual permissiveness is a "a dystopia that gave rise to a rape culture." So far, so obvious, but the recent development which really puzzles the "progressives" is that there is a decrease in sexual activity among young people.

Pecknold hopes that the progressive writers will arrive at the view that sex is sacred, is "an earthly union which cooperates in the divine act of creating immortal beings" and should be reserved to marriage.

Well that would be really good, but I fear that it is optimistic. It is at least possible that we could see our new Manichaeism develop further. The Manichees saw birth as a bad thing because it introduced evil matter into the world. Our …
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Our care and responsibility for Mary

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Quite rightly, we usually think of Our Lady as having care for us, rather than us caring for her. The titles of the Litany of Loreto remind us of many different ways in which she acts as our Mother: she is among other things the refuge of sinners, consoler of the afflicted, and health of the sick.

So how can we talk about our care and responsibility for Mary? Let me first explain where this thought came from. The third saying of Jesus from the Cross is related by St John as follows:
"When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own." (Jn 19:26-27) These verses are part of the gospel for the Mass of Mary the Mother of the Church. St John represents the whole Church, Our Lady is given to him as his mother, and therefore by extension we recognise Our Lady as Mother of the Church. Pope Paul …
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Rose vestments and the special fruits of the Mass

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On Gaudete and Laetare Sundays, Catholic Internet abounds with photos of rose vestments laid out in sacristies and worn at Mass. Indeed I posted the above image myself on Twitter yesterday ;-) Looking at these pictures prompted me to write something about the fruits of the Mass.

Every Mass is offered for, and benefits, all the living and the dead. This is the will of Christ and the Church, quite independent of the priest who offers the Mass. In addition to these "general fruits," we speak of the "special fruits" gained by those people who assist in offering the Mass.* The most obvious way of assisting is by actually being present at the Mass, and participating devoutly, but it is also possible to assist by providing for the celebration by building the Church, by keeping it maintained, or by providing things for the Mass, such as vessels – or indeed vestments.

The special fruits of the Mass are impetratory, propitiatory, and satisfactory.
Impetratory – the Mass is t…
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Introducing traditional elements into the celebration of the modern rite

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Following on from Michael Davies’ challenge which I quoted yesterday, I would like to support the suggestion made by Fr Hunwicke recently. Father gently suggests that we could learn from the manner in which anglo-Catholics gradually improved the liturgy and he advocates “the gradual, tactful, pastoral introduction of EF elements into the OF Mass?”

The first recommendation, the invariable use of the Roman Canon, is already legitimate. The Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani n.365.a begins:
The first eucharistic prayer, or Roman Canon, which can always be used…
[Prex eucharistica prima, seu Canon Romanus, qui semper adhiberi potest…] The text goes on to detail when the Roman Canon is “more opportunely brought forth” but that does not contradict the basic statement that it can always be used. A priest who never says any of the other Eucharistic Prayers is not disobeying any rubrics.

Fr Hunwicke then suggests the use of the old offertory prayers and goes on to offer some examples of gest…
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