CATHOLIC LEAGUE FOR RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Common Sense Catholicism: The Right Tonic For What Ails Us April 26, 2019Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on his new book:   My new book, Common Sense Catholicism: How to Resolve Our Cultural Crisis, has just been published. It declares war on virtually every politically correct idea, demonstrating just how out of touch with reality the deep thinkers are.   “From my years spent as a college professor, I can testify that some of the stupidest people I have ever met teach college.” I define stupidity as “a lack of common sense, as in sound judgment.” I also write that “it is entirely possible to be well educated yet not possess common sense. This is especially true of intellectuals—they are more likely to lack common sense.“   What is it that makes many intellectuals stupid (I hasten to add I am not indicting all of them)? Above all, they believe in neither human nature nor nature’s God. And because they get that wrong, they get everything wrong.     The Founders understood human nature, and that is why, despite obvious flaws, America has enjoyed unparalleled freedom and prosperity. That is now imperiled, mostly because of the deep thinkers who reject nature and nature’s God. Their stupid ideas are the reigning ideas in education and in our cultural institutions. They have also found their way into law and public policy.   No institution in society better understands human nature than the Catholic Church. Its teachings are a repository of wisdom. The Church is not at war with nature, or nature’s God; on the contrary, it is at home with them.   The contrast between the norms and values of the dominant culture, and those that inhere in Catholicism, shine brightly. This is brought to light when we consider the goals of the French Revolution, namely, freedom, equality, and fraternity. These were, and still are, noble ends, but they were completely obliterated by the intellectuals and the architects of the French Revolution, and they are now imperiled by the contemporary wizards of our day.   The dreamers understand liberty as license; the Church knows better. The blue-sky thinkers envision a world where male-female differences, and the inequalities that mark the economic classes, will be eliminated; the Church knows better. The bookworms do not seek fraternity in tradition and religion—they hate both; the Church knows better.   We live in strange times.   There was a time, not too long ago, when it was illegal to burn the American flag on a courthouse lawn, but it was legal to erect a Nativity scene in the same spot. Now the reverse is true.   When TV bloomed in the 1950s, we never even saw the bedroom of Ralph and Alice in “The Honeymooners.” Now there is nothing we don’t see.   It seems like only yesterday when men who thought they were women, and vice versa, were housed in the asylum. Now they are housed in the university.   Up until just recently, we rewarded those who worked hard. Now college students are told that working hard is a microaggression, a sign of patriarchy that must be eradicated.   Respecting Western civilization was the norm for most of my life. Now the professors want to tear it down.   From the beginning of Hollywood movies, up until at least the 1970s, priests and nuns were portrayed positively. They have since been trashed.   The bottom line is this: Freedom, equality, and fraternity have been distorted by the brainy ones who think they know better. They don’t.   The deep thinkers believe human nature and the Almighty are a fiction, and as a result they have created a social and cultural mess. Moreover, their own lives, and the ideas they entertain, are a colossal train wreck.   Common Sense Catholicism is the only cure for the stupidity that these geniuses have bequeathed.

What I Didn’t Know about Bugnini and the Liturgy –

What I Didn’t Know about Bugnini and the Liturgy

Julia MeloniApril 25, 2019

As a Millennial who was weaned on the Novus Ordo Missae, I have been inescapably molded by its main architect, Abp. Annibale Bugnini. Yet there is so much that I didn’t know about Bugnini and his revolution of the liturgy.

I didn’t know, growing up, that a man infamously alleged to have been a Freemason or “something far worse” was behind the freewheeling liturgy of my youth. I didn’t know that the Roman Canon was supposed to be shrouded in the silence of the Cross — or that my pastor’s altar theatrics were but the logical extension of abandoning ad orientem worship. I lacked a context to process the various haywire liturgies before me.

I didn’t know that Bugnini allegedly used “subterfuge” to obtain what his “handlers” passed through him, to quote Fr. Louis Bouyer’s Memoirs. Notably, as secretary of Vatican II’s preparatory commission on the liturgy, Bugnini explained to some peers that they needed to strategically say things “in embryo” to foment postconciliar changes. As he put it:

It would be most inconvenient for the articles of our Constitution 

to be rejected by the Central Commission or by the Council itself.

That is why we must tread carefully and discreetly. Carefully, so 

that proposals be…formulated in such a way that much is said 

without seeming to say anything: let many things be said in 

embryo and in this way let the door remain open to legitimate 

and possible postconciliar deductions and applications: let nothing

be said that suggests excessive novelty and might invalidate all 

the rest … [i]

It was a bald admission of a plan to load council texts with “liturgical time bombs” — ambiguous passages later subversively interpreted by Bugnini’s implementation committee. I didn’t grasp that I had been caught in the explosions, left with the rubble and ruin.

I didn’t know that, in March 1965, Pope Paul VI celebrated a Mass almost exclusively in Italian, facing the people, to help validate the escalating liturgical upheaval. Two years later, Bugnini was pushing the Holy Mass to morph, Proteus-like, into increasingly unrecognizable forms. 

At a 1967 synod, he celebrated a “normative Mass” in Italian, ad populum, with three readings, reduced genuflections, more hymns, an altered Offertory, and a new Eucharistic Prayer III. I had no idea that Eucharistic Prayer II was brainstormed on a café terrace — on a twenty-four-hour deadline.

I didn’t know that the bishops voted against unreservedly embracing this revolutionary Mass, in what Yves Chiron calls a “public disavowal” of Bugnini’s work. 

Pope Paul VI still assured Bugnini of his “complete confidence,” and two years later — exactly fifty years ago this month — the rejected 1967 “normative Mass” was “reintroduced and imposed” as the Novus Ordo Missae. I didn’t know that Paul VI’s apologias for this new Mass “calmly noted that Latin and Gregorian chant would disappear,” as Dr. Peter Kwasniewski puts it.

No, I didn’t know just how much had been burned in the fires of aggiornamento. Bugnini’s writings patronize the “mute and inert” assembly of the past; his slogan is “active participation” via incinerated mystery. 

In the 1940s, Bugnini was already experimenting with a “paraphrased” Mass, in which a reader made the people say aloud Italian paraphrases of the Latin liturgy. 

I didn’t grasp that Latin was the great obstacle to the revolution’s time bombs — a veritable “arsenal of orthodoxy,” as Dom Prosper Guéranger puts it.[ii] I didn’t grasp that this sacred language was an inviolable “veil over the whole sacrifice” and liturgical silence was “a single great canticle” to God — to quote the marvelous Nothing Superfluous. 

I didn’t truly grasp the transcendence of Gregorian chant—its preternatural ability to awaken the soul’s deepest aches for God. Growing up, I loved hymns like “Gather Us In”; now I cringe at the narcissistic kitschiness of lyrics such as “We have been sung throughout all of history.” 

I never realized that this new cult of man was the logical consequence of turning away from facing God—or that Bugnini’s team loaded the new Mass with an Enlightenment aggrandizement of the people [iii]. Now I ache at all the liturgy’s discarded sublimity, cast off like so much meaningless detritus.

I didn’t know that, against Bugnini’s iconoclastic impulse to “simplify” the Holy Mass, the Council of Trent taught that the Church’s rites “contain nothing unnecessary or superfluous.” 

For instance, the Tridentine Mass’s nine Kyries evoke the nine choirs of angels and nine kinds of sin; its prolific signs of the cross symbolize everything from the selling of Our Lord to His physical and mental sufferings.[iv] 

Nonchalantly, Bugnini suppressed — among other things — numerous genuflections, kisses of the altar, and signs of the cross because they allegedly caused “incomprehension and weariness.” I had no idea that he once said we must “strip” from the liturgy all that can be a “stumbling block” for Protestants — and called his revolution a “major conquest of the Roman Catholic Church.”

But above all, I didn’t know how impoverished my understanding of the Holy Mass truly was. I still have a lingering image of my childhood priest, surrounded by extraordinary ministers, holding up the Eucharist and theatrically inviting us to the “Supper of the Lamb,” like a showman; I more or less deduced, from this dramatic climax, that we were at a celebratory communal “meal.” 

I had no idea that the Ottaviani Intervention had strongly criticized the new Mass for “obsessively” defining itself as a “supper” instead of emphasizing “the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary.” The definition of the Mass in the Institutio Generalis was soon amended, yet the intervention’s underlying criticism still rings true. “The mystery of the Cross is no longer explicitly expressed. It is only there obscurely, veiled, imperceptible for the people,” the intervention lamented.

Then I assisted at an unforgettable Tridentine Mass after reading Nothing Superfluous. The priest faced East, alone — save for the presence of a server — and I suddenly saw the embodiment of a line from Ven. Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ: “The high priest must offer the sacrifice alone.” 

The priest solemnly said the Offertory, bowed at the altar, and turned and said, “Orate, fratres” (“Pray, brethren”) — and we were somehow present at Gethsemane, watching the high priest bend from sin’s heaviness and beckon us to prayer. 

Then a profound, mysterious silence enveloped the chapel, broken by speech exactly seven times from the “Orate, fratres” to the priest’s Communion. The eternal high priest was offering the sacrifice — Himself — alone.

Then I knew that Calvary’s mystery had irrupted into that place; this was the silence of the Cross, pierced intermittently by Our Lord’s Seven Last Words.[v] 

Then I knew how to adore the sacrificial Victim spontaneously, unhindered by priestly histrionics, liturgical verbosity, or the chatty sign of peace. Then I knew, dimly, why the blessed ceaselessly fall down and worship the Lamb in the ethereal heavenly liturgy (cf. Rev. 7:11).

Then I knew just how much I had lost in the Bugninian coup.

---

[i] Quoted in Ives Chiron’s Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy. Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent facts about Bugnini, Pope Paul VI, and the Novus Ordo Missae come from this work.

[ii] See Michael Davies’s Liturgical Time Bombs for this quotation and point.

[iii] See Peter Kwasniewski’s Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis.

[iv] See Fr. James Jackson’s Nothing Superfluous.

[v] Nothing Superfluous points out that medieval commentators saw Christ’s Seven Last Words “expressed liturgically” in the seven times the priest speaks distinctly from the “Orate, fratres” to his Communion.

OnePeterFivehttps://onepeterfive.com/bugnini-liturgy/

CATHOLIC LEAGUE FOR RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Common Sense Catholicism: The Right Tonic For What Ails Us April 26, 2019Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on his new book:   My new book, Common Sense Catholicism: How to Resolve Our Cultural Crisis, has just been published. It declares war on virtually every politically correct idea, demonstrating just how out of touch with reality the deep thinkers are.   “From my years spent as a college professor, I can testify that some of the stupidest people I have ever met teach college.” I define stupidity as “a lack of common sense, as in sound judgment.” I also write that “it is entirely possible to be well educated yet not possess common sense. This is especially true of intellectuals—they are more likely to lack common sense.“   What is it that makes many intellectuals stupid (I hasten to add I am not indicting all of them)? Above all, they believe in neither human nature nor nature’s God. And because they get that wrong, they get everything wrong.     The Founders understood human nature, and that is why, despite obvious flaws, America has enjoyed unparalleled freedom and prosperity. That is now imperiled, mostly because of the deep thinkers who reject nature and nature’s God. Their stupid ideas are the reigning ideas in education and in our cultural institutions. They have also found their way into law and public policy.   No institution in society better understands human nature than the Catholic Church. Its teachings are a repository of wisdom. The Church is not at war with nature, or nature’s God; on the contrary, it is at home with them.   The contrast between the norms and values of the dominant culture, and those that inhere in Catholicism, shine brightly. This is brought to light when we consider the goals of the French Revolution, namely, freedom, equality, and fraternity. These were, and still are, noble ends, but they were completely obliterated by the intellectuals and the architects of the French Revolution, and they are now imperiled by the contemporary wizards of our day.   The dreamers understand liberty as license; the Church knows better. The blue-sky thinkers envision a world where male-female differences, and the inequalities that mark the economic classes, will be eliminated; the Church knows better. The bookworms do not seek fraternity in tradition and religion—they hate both; the Church knows better.   We live in strange times.   There was a time, not too long ago, when it was illegal to burn the American flag on a courthouse lawn, but it was legal to erect a Nativity scene in the same spot. Now the reverse is true.   When TV bloomed in the 1950s, we never even saw the bedroom of Ralph and Alice in “The Honeymooners.” Now there is nothing we don’t see.   It seems like only yesterday when men who thought they were women, and vice versa, were housed in the asylum. Now they are housed in the university.   Up until just recently, we rewarded those who worked hard. Now college students are told that working hard is a microaggression, a sign of patriarchy that must be eradicated.   Respecting Western civilization was the norm for most of my life. Now the professors want to tear it down.   From the beginning of Hollywood movies, up until at least the 1970s, priests and nuns were portrayed positively. They have since been trashed.   The bottom line is this: Freedom, equality, and fraternity have been distorted by the brainy ones who think they know better. They don’t.   The deep thinkers believe human nature and the Almighty are a fiction, and as a result they have created a social and cultural mess. Moreover, their own lives, and the ideas they entertain, are a colossal train wreck.   Common Sense Catholicism is the only cure for the stupidity that these geniuses have bequeathed.

CATHOLIC LEAGUE FOR RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL RIGHTS Arizona Gov. Whips Militant Secularists April 26, 2019Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a courageous decision by the Arizona governor:   Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is standing fast against militant secularists who want him to take down a social media post that sends Easter greetings; the post also cites a Bible verse.   Ducey, who is a practicing Catholic, is not bowing to pressure from anti-religion activists, saying that his official Facebook page will continue to offer greetings recognizing a variety of religious holidays. He cited Christmas, Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, Palm Sunday, and Passover as examples.   Other leaders, in and out of government, should take note of Ducey’s stance. Contrary to what many in the mainstream media think, the Arizona governor will not pay a political price for his decision. If anything, it will endear him to most voters.   Social media is often overrated. A new Pew Research survey discloses that 10% of Twitter users account for 80% of all tweets. Who are they? Mostly women (65%) who are left-of-center and college educated. In other words, the voice of this small cluster may be loud, but it is not representative of the public. It is best not to take them too seriously.   Those who want to stamp out religious greetings from public officials are a menace to freedom. They are not liberals of old. No, they are today’s totalitarians.   Kudos to Gov. Ducey.

Dear Abyssum,

As always, God bless you for your fidelity in promoting the Truth!

I had to post a response to the latest re: Benedict XVI on your blog.

What I did not include in the post was 1) the compelling Prophecy of Pope St. Pius X, 2) the vision of Bl. Anne Emerick, or 3) the prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi, all of which refer to ‘2 popes’ in the end times.  I plan to write something up which includes this.  What I also did not offer, but which I shared with you years ago, was my dream about Pope Benedict.  I attach it again for your edification.  Our dear true pope is now at long last putting on the red shoes of the papacy, signifying his willingness to die for the faith. And he is being supported by the prayers of all the saints of heaven as he does so.

Below is the actual post by my nom de plume, Jeremiah11619, a reference to Jeremiah 1:16-19, a scripture which came to me in a quite miraculous fasion.)

One must ask ‘WHY?’ Why after 6 years did Benedict XVI choose to release this? The answer is simple. He is prompted to clarify that which has remained murky and ambiguous, indeed hidden. There is no Church unless there is clarity in Truth. There hasn’t been, so he had a solemn obligation to speak out, as if to say ‘Enough is Enough!’ As we have seen nothing but obfuscation, omission, innovation and confusion from Rome over the past 6 years, it became clear that the ONLY man on the planet who posessed the real Authority to correct the plethora of errors coming out of the Vatican since the occupation began was Pope Benedict XVI, who by the way never renounced his papal munus.  The process of correcting has now officially begun, and the Mystical Body of Christ, those who believe in the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, eagerly awaits!  May God bless and protect him.

God bless you, dear Bishop Gracida! I pray you are well and continue to bless us with your courageous work!

Jeremiah 11619

“Brain Dead” Woman in Coma for 30 Years Wakes Up and Regains Consciousness

INTERNATIONAL   MICAIAH BILGER   APR 25, 2019   |   9:58AM    WASHINGTON, DC 

A woman who spent almost 30 years in a coma is now alert and talking after her family refused to give up hope for her recovery.

Munira Abdulla, of Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, suffered brain damage in a car accident in 1991 and never regained consciousness, according to Tribune Media. She had been picking up her 4-year-old son, Omar Webair, now 32, from school.

The National reports her son spent countless hours by her side, hopeful that the doctors were wrong and his mother would wake up eventually. And 27 years later, in 2018, she did.

“I never gave up on her because I always had a feeling that one day she will wake up,” Webair said.

Webair remembers the accident well. He said his mother and her brother-in-law came to pick him up from school, and he and his mother were sitting in the back seat when they saw a bus coming toward them, he said.

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“When she saw the crash coming, she hugged me to protect me from the blow,” Webair said.

He survived with minimal bruises, but his mother suffered severe head injuries. According to the report, Abdulla was moved around to multiple different hospitals for treatment.

Here’s more from the Daily Wire:

Omar would visit his mother every day, walking more than a mile to see her. He said he spent hours with her each day and could tell whether she was in pain, even though she couldn’t speak. He said it was tough to hold down a job due to his mother’s condition, but he didn’t regret anything.

“I never regretted it. I believe that, because of my support for her, God saved me from bigger troubles,” he told The National.

In 2017, the family received a government grant for special treatment at a hospital in Germany, according to the report. While there, one day, Webair said he got into an argument in his mother’s hospital room, and his mother seemed to sense that something was wrong. He said she began to make sounds, but doctors dismissed them as not being unusual.

Three days later, however, Webair said his mother screamed his name and then the names of other people she knew.

“I was flying with joy. For years I have dreamt of this moment, and my name was the first word she said,” he told The National.

Bobby Schindler, whose sister Terri Schaivo was euthanized because she was in a minimally conscious state, talked with LifeNews about Abdulla’s case.

“This extraordinary woman, Munira Abdulla, was thought to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for almost 30 years,” he said. “The PVS diagnosis is mis-diagnosed close to 50% of the time.”

“Often times, as in the case of my sister, Terri, it is used to justify ending the patients life. It is deeply disturbing that we are deliberately killing patients based on a diagnosis that is wrong almost half of the time. In fact, new research is learning that what these patients need is not only time for the brain to recover, but ongoing therapy and rehabilitation,” Schindler added.

He told LifeNews: “Sadly, as long as we accept death as the alternative to caring for these persons, too many of these patients will be purposely killed without ever receiving the benefit of rehabilitation and the opportunity to recover. God bless her family for their life-affirming care and for never giving up hope!”

Since waking up, Abdulla has been making slow and steady progress. According to the report, she now is able to answer questions, recite verses from the Koran and make short trips out of the hospital, including to a mosque.

Her son encouraged families “not to lose hope for their loved ones. All those years, the doctors told me she was a hopeless case.”

New scientific research provides more hope for these families as well. Research in 2018 by the renowned American Academy of Neurology found that about four in 10 people who are thought to be unconscious are actually aware. They estimated the misdiagnosis rate is about 40 percent for people with severe brain injuries, including those diagnosed as persistent vegetative state (PVS), and noted that the misdiagnosis can lead to inappropriate treatment and poor outcomes.

A hopeful sign, approximately one in five people with severe brain injury from trauma will recover with proper treatment – many to the point that they can live at home and care for themselves without help, according to the academy.

S

CATHOLIC LEAGUE FOR RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Benedict XVI Incurs Wrath Of Critics April 17, 2019Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on reaction to an essay released last week by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:   If only he would just shut up. That is the consensus of liberal and dissident Catholics to the brilliant essay by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on the roots of clergy sexual abuse. They made it clear that their support for dialogue is a ruse.   The first sentence of the front-page news story in the April 12 edition of the New York Times set the tone: “In his retirement, Pope Benedict XVI is apparently tired of hiding.” The next sentence notes that he previously “declared he would ‘remain hidden to the world.'”   Get it? He should have stayed under his rock.   Why the anger? The Times says that his essay “amounted to the most significant undercutting yet of the authority of Pope Francis,” a view also held by John Thavis; he used to pose as a non-partisan journalist for the Catholic News Service.   The Catholic Left, after decades of criticizing Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, have become very protective of Pope Francis. They are upset with Benedict for raising issues they prefer not to talk about. Like homosexuality.     Julie Hanlon Rubio, who teaches at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University, is angered at the retired pope’s “willingness to blame a permissive culture and progressive theology for a problem that is internal and structural.” Rachel Donadio of The Atlantic finds it “strange” for him to talk about the “destabilizing” forces of the sexual revolution. Similarly, Thomas Farrell at the website opednews finds such talk “rubbish.”   It is fun to watch this dance. Usually, we are told that we cannot understand any social problem unless we come to grips with the environment that unleashed it. But when it comes to offering a root cause analysis of the clergy abuse scandal, we are told to focus on internal Church issues, not the cultural milieu in which it was embedded. In other words, we are expected to believe the scandal took place in a social vacuum.   Brian Flanagan at Marymount University says that to blame the 1960s and “a supposed collapse of moral theology” is “embarrassingly wrong.” From Marquette University we learn that theology professor James Bretzke says it is wrong to say that “liberal theologians” fostered an irresponsible sexual ethics that helped to create the problem.   They are in denial. Are they aware of a book by Anthony Kosnik, Human Sexuality, which was supported by the Catholic Theological Society of America? Or how about a book by the same title by Crooks and Bauer? These three authors maintain that there is no such thing as a deviant sexual act, and both volumes were assigned reading in many seminaries in the 1970s. Wouldn’t this suggest a collapse of moral theology?     Some try to say that the sexual revolution had nothing to do with the problem because clergy sexual abuse occurred before the 1960s. This is the position taken by Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle. It is also accepted by Andrew Chesnut; he teaches Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Church historian Christopher Bellitto subscribes to this view as well.   It won’t work. Every study on the subject has shown that there was no crisis until the 1960s. Obviously, there were cases of abuse in the previous decades, but most of those priests who had sick urges kept them in check, until, that is, there was no penalty for acting out. Just read what happened in Boston.   Some are chagrined because Benedict only spoke about the abuser, not the enabling bishop. Michael Sean Winters feels this way. Tom Kington of the Los Angeles Times shares this view, saying the essay was “incendiary” for not discussing what Pope Francis stressed, namely the role of clericalism.   At least Winters and Kington don’t look as clueless as Bellitto or David Gibson. The former says, “The essay essentially ignores what we learned there,” a reference to the February summit in Rome on this subject. Gibson, the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture, said that Benedict’s essay “runs against everything said and done at the February summit.”   Precisely. And for good reason—the summit never addressed why molesting priests acted out. It was content to discuss why some bishops made lousy decisions. Clericalism may account for why some bishops were enablers, but it is of no explanatory value understanding why abusing priests did what they did. It took Benedict to bring balance to the discussion.   It is impossible to honestly engage the issue of clergy sexual abuse without explaining the role of homosexual priests, though Benedict’s critics try to do so.    For example, we have the spectacle of New Ways Ministry, a totally discredited outfit, telling us it is a “red herring” to mention homosexuals. Jamie Manson at the National Catholic Reporter, which is also partly responsible for the crisis, tells us that Benedict’s “radically homophobic theology” is responsible for the homosexual subculture.   Finally, we have Massimo Faggioli from Villanova University. He tries to deflect the obvious—the pernicious role played by homosexual priests in the scandal. He provides a link to one of the John Jay reports on the subject, as if that settles the issue.   This is a familiar retort, and it is unpersuasive. The John Jay researchers did an excellent job assembling the data—there is no reason to conclude that the two studies were deficient in terms of their methodology or data collection—but as with any study, conclusions drawn from the data are open to interpretation.   The researchers report that 8 in 10 of the molesting priests had sex with postpubescent males, and that less than five percent of them were pedophiles. There is only one word in the English language to describe such behavior: homosexuality.   Yet the researchers conclude that homosexuality is not the issue. How did they manage to skirt the obvious? They said not all the priests who had sex with adolescents identified themselves as homosexuals.   Now if the homosexual priests identified themselves as heterosexuals, would anyone in his right mind conclude that heterosexuals accounted for most of the problem? Self-identification is an interesting psychological variable, but it is not a substitute for drawing truthful conclusions based on behavior. A dwarf is still a dwarf even if he stands on stilts and announces he is no longer a dwarf.   Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI did the Catholic Church a great public service in outlining his thoughts on priestly sexual abuse, and there is nothing his detractors can do about it.

Settimo Cielodi Sandro Magister 

24 apr 19

The Two Paschas of Jews and Christians. A Previously Unpublished Letter By the Pope Emeritus

*

92 years after his birth and 6 after his resignation from the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger is still highly active. A few days after the sensational publication of his “notes” on the scandal of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, another never-before-published text of his is seeing the light, which was known to exist but can be read in its entirety only now, in this freshly published book edited by Elio Guerriero:

> Benedetto XVI in dialogo con il rabbino Arie Folger, “Ebrei e cristiani”, Edizioni San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo, 2019.

The text now made public is the letter that the pope emeritus wrote to the chief rabbi of Vienna, Arie Folger, in August of 2018.

Rabbi Folger replied to this letter on September 4, with a letter of his own that is also published in the book.

And this epistolary exchange was followed was followed on January 16 of this year by a visit to Ratzinger, at his Vatican hermitage, by Rabbi Folger, Darmstadt rabbi Josh Ahrens, and Saxony rabbi Zsolt Balla, member of the board of trustees of the conference of Orthodox rabbis of Germany.

“It was an intense conversation that lasted an hour,” Folger comments in the preface to the book. “In him I found a very genial and profound thinker who is repulsed by anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism in all its forms.”

And yet the questions discussed by the pope emeritus and the rabbis were not of little account. They have always been among the most controversial in the relationship between Judaism and Christianity: the messiah, the promised land, the covenant, worship, the commandments.

Ratzinger had discussed these in depth in a previous text of his, sent in 2017 to Swiss cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Vatican commission for dialogue with Judaism, and published the following year in the international theological magazine “Communio” in its editions in German, French, and English (this last with the entire text downloadable) and finally, in Italian, at the beginning of 2019, in the “Rivista di Vita Spirituale.”

And in its turn this text by Ratzinger – entitled “Grace and call without misgiving. Observations on the treatise ‘De Iudaeis’” – followed a document published in December of 2015 by the Vatican commission headed by Cardinal Koch, at the 50th anniversary of the declaration “Nostra Aetate” of Vatican Council II.

This document, entitled “The gifts and call of God are irrevocable,” rejected first of all, on the Catholic side, the so-called “theory of replacement,” according to which Israel, for having refused to recognize Jesus Christ as messiah, ceased to be the bearer of the promises of God, in this “replacement” by the Church.

Moreover, it decisively maintained that between God and the people of Israel there endures a “covenant never revoked.”

So then, in Ratzinger’s judgment “both of these statements are fundamentally correct, in many aspects, but they are imprecise and must be critically, further developed.”

And it is to precisely this development that his entire text of 2017 is dedicated.

Which immediately received, after its publication in the summer of 2018, a storm of criticism on the Catholic side, especially from German-speaking theologians who saw in it “a danger for Catholic-Jewish dialogue” and even “the foundation for a new anti-Semitism.”

Ratzinger replied to one of his critics, Wuppertal theologian Michael Böhnke, in the magazine “Herder Korrespondenz” of December 2018.

At the same time, however, on account of that same text of his Ratzinger elicited interest and appreciation in the Jewish camp, which was expressed by, among others, Rabbi Folger in a commentary published in “Jüdische Allgemeine” on July 16 2018, with the interrogative title “Danger for dialogue?”

It is precisely in response to this commentary that Ratzinger wrote to Rabbi Folger the letter that has now been made public.

The book edited by Elio Guerriero – for twenty years the director of the Italian edition of “Communio” and author of an acclaimed biography of Benedict XVI that has been translated into many languages – collects this sequence of letters and documents, among which there is also a place of great prominence, on the Jewish side, for the 2016 declaration entitled “Between Jerusalem and Rome,” undersigned by three of the most important religious Jewish organizations: the conference of European rabbis, the rabbinical council of America, and the chief rabbinate of the state of Israel.

But it should suffice here to cite the most evocative passages of Ratzinger’s letter of August 2018. Starting with that phrase which was greeted by Folger and both other rabbis with warm approval and has been printed with great emphasis on the back cover of the book:

“By human reckoning this dialogue will never lead to the unity of the two interpretations within the current history. This unity is reserved to God at the end of time.”

Regarding the messianic hope of Israel, Ratzinger writes:

“I have sought to grasp ‘ex novo’ the entirety of the messianic promises in their multiformity and thus to understand the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of the hope in their intimate interpenetration. The form of messianic expectation that is based on the figure of David remains valid, but is limited in its meaning. The decisive form of hope for me is Moses, of whom Scripture says that he spoke face to face with the Lord, like a friend. Jesus of Nazareth appears to us Christians as the central figure of hope, because he stands on a first-name basis with God. From this new vision the time of the Church no longer appears as the time of a world definitively redeemed, but rather the time of the Church is for us Christians that which for Israel the forty years in the desert were.”

As for the promised land, Ratzinger writes that “the State of Israel as such cannot be considered theologically as the fulfillment of the promise of territory. In itself it is a secular state,” which however “has entirely legitimately religious foundations.” Therefore “I maintain that in the formation of the State of Israel one can recognize in a mysterious way the fidelity of God to Israel.”

Finally, as for the commandments and worship, Ratzinger writes that “over the entire theme from the beginning of the modern era there extends the shadow of the anti-Jewish thought of Luther… which has generated a pseudo-religious ‘Marcionism’ that has not yet been brought truly into discussion. I maintain that precisely on this point there are present important possibilities for a renewed dialogue with Judaism.”

In the letter to Rabbi Folger, Ratzinger does not return to the question of the salvation of the Jews in God’s plan. But he did so in his text of 2017, particularly in this passage:

“Not only does Saint Paul write that ‘all Israel must be saved,’ but the Revelation of Saint John also sees two groups of the saved: the 144 thousand of the 12 tribes of Israel, and beside these ‘an immense multitude that no one could count,’ as a representation of those saved among the pagans. From the point of view of the New Testament tradition, this perspective is not a reality that will simply take place at the end, after many millennia. It is instead something that in some way is always present.”

Present like the two Paschas celebrated this year during the same days and with the respective “interpretations” both by the “12 tribes of Israel” and by the “multitude” of believers in Jesus of Nazareth. In the hope of that unity “reserved to God at the end of time.”Condividi:

•  24 aprile 2019

Between Time and Eternity

Romano Guardini

MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2019

The days between Christ’s Resurrection and his return to the Father are full of mystery. If we accept them, as we should, not as a legend, but as a vital part of our faith, then we must ask what they mean in the life of the Lord, and what their significance in our own Christian existence.

These are the days between time and eternity. The Lord is still on earth, but his feet are already detached, prepared to depart. Before him unfold the reaches of everlasting light, but he still pauses here in transitoriness.

In the New Testament there are two figures of Jesus; one “the carpenter’s son.” (Matt. 13:55) It is he who stands in the midst of earthly events, who toils, struggles, submits to his destiny. He has his own personal characteristics – mysterious and inexplicable, certainly – and yet so unmistakably his that we almost hear the tone of his voice, see the accompanying gesture. In the main, it is the Gospels that portray this Son of Man. (See the Epistles and Revelation.)

The other “nature” of Jesus is centered in eternity. Here all earthly limitations have fallen away. He is free, divinely free, Lord and Ruler. Nothing transitory, nothing accidental remains; everything is essence. “Jesus of Nazareth” has become “Christ our Lord,” the eternal one whose figure St. John describes as it was revealed to him on the Island of Patmos: “One like to a son of man, clothed with a garment reaching to the ankles, and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle. But his head and his hair were white as white wool, and as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire; his feet were like fine brass, as in a glowing furnace, and his voice like the voice of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars. And out of his mouth came forth a sharp two-edged sword; and his countenance was like the sun shining in its power.”

“And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and he who lives; I was dead, and behold, I am living forevermore; and I have the keys of death and of hell.’ ”

St. Paul also describes him in the Epistle to the Colossians when he speaks of him: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers. . . .For it has pleased God the Father that in him all his fullness should dwell, and that through him he should reconcile to himself all things, whether on the earth or in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross.” (Col. 1:15–20)

Here all concrete detail falls away. Not one familiar trait remains; hardly a human feature. Everything is strange and disproportionate. Is it the same Jesus who walked on earth?. . .

It might be asked: Why this mysterious lingering on earth after the Resurrection? Why didn’t the Lord return home directly?

What was happening during those forty days? Let us for a moment suppose that the Resurrection and the period afterwards had been only offshoots of morbid religious experience, legend or myth – what would those days have looked like?

Doubtless, they would have been filled with demonstrations of the liberated one’s power; the hunted one, now omnipotent, would have shattered his enemies; he would have blazed from temple altars, would have covered his followers with honors, and in these and other ways, have fulfilled the longings of the oppressed.

He would also have initiated the disciples into the wonderful mysteries of heaven, would have revealed the future, the beginning and end of all things. But nothing of all this occurs. No mysteries are revealed; no one is initiated into the secrets of the unknown. Not one miracle, save that of Christ’s own transfigured existence and the wonderful fish-catch, which is only a repetition of an earlier event.

What does happen? Something completely unspectacular, exquisitely still: the past is confirmed. The reality of the life that has been crosses over into eternity. These days are the period of that transition. And we need them for our faith; particularly when we evoke the great images of the eternal Christ throning at his Father’s right, coming upon the clouds to judge the living and the dead, ruling the Church and the souls of the faithful growing from the depths of God-summoned humanity “to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:13)

Such images place us in danger of losing the earthly figure of the Lord. This must not happen. Everything depends on the eternal Christ’s remaining also Jesus of Nazareth, who walks among us until the day when all things will be enfolded in eternity; on the blending of borderless spirit with the here and thus and then of the process of salvation.

In the Christ of the Apocalypse one vision holds this fast: the Lamb standing “as if slain” but alive. (Apoc. 5:6; 1:18) Earthly destiny entered into eternity. Once and forever, death has become lasting life.

But there is a danger that this truth will dangle in space, enigmatic as a rune on an ancient stone. This period of transition deciphers the rune, gives us the key to the parable: All that has been remains in eternal form. Every word Jesus ever spoke, every event during his lifetime is fixed in unchanging reality, then and now and forever. He who is seated on the throne contains the past transfigured to eternal present. – From “The Lord”

*Image: Adoration of the Mystic Lamb by Jan van Eyck, c. 1430 [Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent]. This is the center panel of the Ghent Altarpiece. Top left and anti-clockwise: the male martyrs, the pagan writers and Jewish prophets, the male saints, and the female martyrs.

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Romano Guardini

Fr. Romano Guardini (1885 – 1968), author and academic, was one of the most important figures in Catholic intellectual life in 20th-century. This essay is adapted from his most famous book, The Lord. He was a mentor to such prominent theologians as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger.