Inside the Vatican magazine March 2020

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INSIDE THE

MARCH 2020 $5 / EUR 5 / £3.30

VATICAN

THE RETURN OF THE KING

"Even Judas’ betrayal became, through divine providence, the occasion for Jesus’ supreme act of love, for the salvation of the world" —Pope Benedict XVI, in Rome at his General Audience, October 19, 2006

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“Art Pieces that are Windows to Heaven.”

Michael D. O'Brien has been a professional painter of religious art for 50 years. Though his reputation as a prolific, popular Catholic novelist began in 1996 with the best-selling book Father Elijah, he is also widely known as a visual artist with his paintings in churches, universities, and public galleries and private collections throughout the world.

In this glorious, over-sized art book, O'Brien presents many of his stunning works of art. His vibrancy, originality, and variety are on display in more than 120 full-color reproductions of his paintings and Byzantine-style icons. Also included are some of his drawings and other works in black and white.

AMOH . . . 10” x 12”, Sewn Hardcover, $39.95

The Presentation Jesus Christ the Word of Life

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“O’Brien’s time spent as writer of Byzantine icons has influenced all his work: these pieces are indeed ‘windows to heaven.’ ” — Sally Read, Poet and Author, Night’s Bright Darkness: A Modern Conversion Story “Freed from stylistic and formal fads, his images arrest viewers in the here and now before propelling them into the depths of spirituality. O’Brien’s story recalls that of Fra Angelico--living Truth while painting Truth.” —Elizabeth Lev, Art Historian and Author, How Catholic Art Saved the Faith “O’Brien has rare gifts as both storyteller and artist which few of his contemporaries can claim. Those who know his fiction will delight in his work. His work incarnates the extraordinary vision of this marvelous man. — Joseph Pearce, Author, Tolkien: Man and Myth and The Quest for Shakespeare

St. Joseph

Also available: ON THE EDGE OF INFINITY A Biography of Michael D. O’Brien Clemens Cavallin ONEFP . . . Sewn Softcover, $18.95

“There are not many people in the world who are more worth meeting than Michae O'Brien."

— Peter Kreeft, Best-selling Author and Philosophy Professor, Boston College

www.ignatius.com P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, CO 80522

1-800-651-1531

03 EDITORIAL March 2020Corr1_B. EDITORIAL December, 08, p. 4 copy 2/24/20 9:35 AM Page 1

EDITORIAL

by Robert Moynihan

The Return of the King

When Jesus told his disciples he was going up to Jerusalem, they were excited, thinking he would announce the coming of his earthly kingdom. Then he went to the Temple, and cast out the merchants and thieves

Jesus’ messianic entrance into Jerusalem (559) Although Jesus had always refused popular attempts to make him king, he chooses the time and prepares the details for his messianic entry into the city of “his father David.”

Acclaimed as son of David, as the one who brings salvation (Hosanna means “Save!” or “Give salvation!”), the “King of glory” enters his City “riding on an ass.” Jesus conquers the Daughter of Zion, a figure of his Church, neither by ruse nor by violence, but by the humility that bears witness to the truth.

—Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 559

Below, I quote at some length from the great Church Father Origen (c. 184-c. 253), a profound mind, a lover of Christ, a passionate believer, one of the greatest of the Church Fathers. His speculations sometimes led him to positions which have been judged un orthodox. Still, Origen’s genius is acknowledged, especially in his detailed commentaries on Scripture. In the passages below, from Book 10 of his Commentary on the Gospel of John, Origen speaks about the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. Origen writes: “In the Gospel according to Matthew, after being left by the devil, and after the angels came and ministered to Him, when He heard that John was delivered up, He withdrew into Galilee, and leaving Nazara He came and dwelt in Capernaum. Then He began to preach, and chose the four fishermen for His Apostles, and taught in the synagogues of the whole of Galilee and healed those who were brought to Him. Then He goes up into the mountain and speaks the Beatitudes and what follows them...

(Matthew 8)... After this most of the events of the Gospels take place, before Matthew indicates the approach of the time of Passover.”

Origen notes that, in John’s Gospel, the cleansing of the Temple was Jesus’ second work, not one of His last works: “And Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” (John 2:13-17) “And He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves and the changers of money sitting; and He made a scourge of cords, and cast out of the temple the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the small coin of the changers, and overturned their tables, and to those who sold the doves He said, ‘Take these things hence; make not My Father's house a house of merchandise.’ Then His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘The zeal of your house shall eat me up.’ It is to be noted that John makes this transaction of Jesus... His second work; while the other Evangelists narrate a similar incident almost at the end and in connection with the story of the Passion.”

Origen gives the parallel passages from Matthew 21, Mark 11 and Luke 19, and suggests that John’s Gospel seems to speak of a second visit to Jerusalem, at the end of Jesus’ life, which would accord with these passages. He writes: “We read (Matthew 21:1): ‘When He drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage over against the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against you,

and straightway you shall find an ass tied and a colt with her; loose them and bring them to Me. And if any man say unto you, What are you doing? You shall say, The Lord has need of them, and straightway he will send them. But this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king comes, meek and seated upon an ass and upon the colt of an ass. And the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them.”

Origen continues: “Let us fix our attention on the words of John, beginning, ‘And Jesus went up to Jerusalem.’ (John 2:13) Now Jerusalem, as the Lord Himself teaches in the Gospel according to Matthew (Matthew 5:35) is the city of the great King. It does not lie in a depression, or in a low situation, but is built on a high mountain, and there are mountains round about it... But that city also is called Jerusalem, to which none of those upon the earth ascends, nor goes in; but every soul that possesses by nature some elevation and some acuteness to perceive the things of the mind is a citizen of that city. And it is possible even for a dweller in Jerusalem to be in sin (for it is possible for even the acutest minds to sin), should they not turn round quickly after their sin, when they have lost their power of mind and are on the point not only of dwelling in one of those strange cities of Judæa, but even of being inscribed as its citizens.

“Jesus goes up to Jerusalem, after bringing help to those in Cana of Galilee, and then going down to Capernaum, that He may do in Jerusalem the things which are written. He found in the Temple, certainly, which is said to be the house of the Father of the Savior, that is, in the Church or in the preaching of the ecclesiastical and sound word, some who were making His Father’s house a house of merchandise. And at all times Jesus finds some of this sort in the temple.

“For in that which is called the Church, which is the house of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) when are there not some money-changers sitting who need the strokes of the scourge Jesus made of small cords, and dealers in small coin who require to have their money poured out and their tables overturned? When are there not those who are inclined to merchandise, but need to be held to the plough and the oxen, that... they may be fit for the kingdom of God?...

“And there are always many who look down on what is sincere and pure and unmixed with any bitterness or gall, and who, for the sake of miserable gain, betray the care of those tropically called doves.

“When, therefore, the Savior finds in the Temple, the house of His Father, those who are selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting, He drives them out, using the scourge of small cords which He has made, along with the sheep and oxen of their trade, and pours out their stock of coin, as not deserving to be kept together, so little is it worth. He also overturns the tables in the souls of such as love money, saying even to those who sell doves, Take these things hence, that they may no longer traffic in the house of God.”m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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MARCH 2020

CONTENTS

Year 28, #3

LEAD STORY The Dreams of Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation “Dear Amazonia”

by Christina Deardurff (with excerpts from the text and its commentators) . . . . . . . . . . . .10 NEWS INTERVIEW/Cardinal Sarah continues the debate on celibacy

by Christina Deardurff, citing Edward Pentin (National Catholic Register) . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 GERMANY/”Synodal Path” proposes married priests, ordaimed women

by Cameron Doody, Novenanews.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18

MARCH 2020 Year 28, #3

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Robert Moynihan ASSOCIATE EDITOR: George “Pat” Morse (+ 2013) ASSISTANT EDITOR: Christina Deardurff CULTURE EDITOR: Lucy Gordan CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Giuseppe Rusconi WRITERS: Anna Artymiak, Alberto Carosa, William D. Doino, Jr., David Quinn, Andrew Rabel, Vladimiro Redzioch, Serena Sartini, Father Vincent Twomey PHOTOS: Grzegorz Galazka LAYOUT: Giuseppe Sabatelli ILLUSTRATIONS: Stefano Navarrini CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER: Deborah B. Tomlinson ADVERTISING: Katie Carr Tel: 202-536-4555, ext.303 kcarr@insidethevatican.com

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EDITORIAL OFFICES FOR MAIL: US: 14 West Main St. Front Royal, VA 22630 USA Rome: Inside the Vatican via delle Mura Aurelie 7c, Rome 00165, Italy Tel: 39-06-3938-7471 Fax: 39-06-638-1316 POSTMASTER: send address changes to Inside the Vatican c/o St. Martin de Porres Lay Dominican Community PO Box 57 New Hope, KY 40052 USA Tel: 800-789-9494 Fax: 270-325-3091 Subscriptions (USA): Inside the Vatican PO Box 57 New Hope, KY 40052 USA www.insidethevatican.com Tel: 800-789-9494

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INSIDE THE VATICAN (ISSN 1068-8579, 1 yr subscription: $ 49.95; 2 yrs, $94.95; 3 yrs, $129.95), provides a comprehensive, independent report on Vatican affairs published monthly except July and September with occasional special supplements.

Inside the Vatican is published by Urbi et Orbi Communications, PO Box 57, New Hope, Kentucky, 40052, USA, pursuant to a License Agreement with Robert Moynihan, the owner of the Copyright. Inside the Vatican, Inc., maintains editorial offices in Rome, Italy.

Periodicals Postage PAID at New Haven, Kentucky and additional mailing offices.

Copyright 2020 Robert Moynihan

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INSIDE THE VATICAN

MARCH 2020

DOSSIER: Giving a Soul to the Economy of Tomorrow

by ITV Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 Pope Francis Hosts a Global Economic Conference (Assisi, March 26-28, 2020)

by Christina Deardurff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 “Look Carefully at Pope Francis’ Economy”

by Dr. Samuel Gregg, Ph.D. (Research Director, Acton Institute) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 The Francesco Economy

by Thomas Storck (Contributing Editor, The Distributist Review) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 ART ESSAY: Lent: The Return of the King...

by ITV Staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 CULTURE INTERVIEW/Russian ambassador: “The Vatican is the most stable state in Europe”

by Gianni Valente, La Stampa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 PERPESCTIVE/The Arian heresy and our present age, Part 1

by Joseph Tamayo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 EDUCATION/

by George A. Harne, President, Magdalen College, New Hampshire, USA . . . . . . . . . . . .40 INTERIOR CASTLE/

by A Hermitess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 FOOTSTEPS ON THE WAY/

by Kevin V. Turley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44

URBI ET ORBI: CATHOLICISM AND ORTHODOXY Icon/

by Robert Wiesner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Spirituality/

By Father El Meskeen (1919-2006) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 East-West Watch/

by Peter Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 News from the East:

by Becky Derks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 FEATURES LATIN/The Pope who promoted “sunbathing” (Pius VII)... A remarkable inscription

by John Byron Kuhner, Paideia Institute, Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Art/”High tides” in Venice threaten to flood the city

by Lucy Gordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 BOOK/Selection from Lord of the World (originally published in 1907)

by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Vatican Watch/A day-by-day chronicle of Vatican events: January and February

by Becky Derks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 People/

by Becky Derks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Food for Thought/Rival Cafés on St. Mark’s Square in Venice

by Mother Martha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

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Great Churchmen Address Crisis in the Church X From the Depths

of Our Hearts Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

T

he Catholic Church faces a major crisis and the turmoil in priestly ministry is at the heart of it. This book, an unprecedented work by the Pope Emeritus and a Cardinal serving in the Vatican, is a serious and unflinching look at the crisis. “The priesthood is going through a dark time,” writes Pope Emeritus Benedict along with his co-author, Cardinal Robert Sarah.

“Wounded by the revelation of so many scandals, disconcerted by the constant questioning of their consecrated celibacy, many priests are tempted by the thought of giving up and abandoning everything.”

In this book, Benedict and Sarah give their brother priests and the whole Church a message of hope. They honestly address the spiritual challenges faced by priests today, including struggles of celibacy. They point to deeper conversion to Jesus Christ as the key to faithful and fruitful priestly ministry and church reform.

Responding to calls for refashioning the priesthood, including proposals from the Amazonian Synod, two wise, spiritually astute pastors explain the biblical and spiritual role of the priesthood, celibacy, and genuine priestly ministry. Besides the crisis in the priesthood, this book is about the nature of the Church and of Christian discipleship.

This is a book that all clergy and laity should read. It is powerful and personal—from the depths of their hearts.

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

INSIDE THE VATICAN welcomes letters but cannot reply to all. Each is read and considered carefully. Printed letters may be edited for clarity. You may email us at editor@insidethevatican.com

@

ON SILENCE IN LENT I was moved by your February issue with the image of Christ in the desert on the cover and the title “Lent: The Way of Silence.”

It is at times hard to remember that Our Lord’s sacrifice and Passion are happening now, even now. Silence is a time to be aware of His present sufferings. It is time set apart to acknowledge and accept the gift God is offering. Silence in our surroundings must be coupled with silence of mind and heart in order to hear the words of Our Lord on the cross, “I thirst.”

In such silence, Lent is truly celebrated.

The word “celebrate” usually brings with it a note of joy, but during Lent it is changed. Joy itself is made silent. Still present in the faint whisper of the coming Resurrection, joy is softened by the present sorrows of Our Lord and Lady. May we be made witnesses to the Passion of Our Lord throughout this Lenten season.

Mary Blicharz Linden, Virginia, USA Thank you for your beautiful reflection on Lent, entitled “Lent: Way of Silence, Way of Sorrow.” This was a great reminder to refocus on what really matters in life. As Christ removed himself to the desert, so we should strive to remove ourselves this Lent from the world of noise to a place of silence.

A desert is a barren place; Christ went there to be alone. This Lent, may we follow Christ into a spiritual kind of desert.

BL. STANLEY ROTHER BUSTS The Vintage Catholic – Sacred Art & Antiques – “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred....” Pope Benedict XVI

www.thevintagecatholic.com 8

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

Here, alone and away from the world, we are forced to face our temptations, but more importantly, as you remind us, to face the reality of our very existence.

As you pointed out in your reflection, it is only when we strip away worldly concerns, such as fears of viruses and cultural battles, that we can truly refocus on what really matters, and face the reality of our existence.

And in this state, you remind us to look toward Christ who is the Truth, and there we will find true Happiness.

For as you say, “the way of Truth is the way of joy and human happiness.”

Evangeline Soutsos Front Royal, Virginia, USA

Your letter (Letter #31, June 19, 2019: The Question of Celibacy, Continence and the Priesthood) is one of the most enlightening treatments of these issues I have ever read, and I intend to get the book by Fr. Christian Cochini, S.J., The Apsotolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, ASAP. I have never heard any of this information before — nor, I believe, have most people, let alone priests. It fully explains the whole matter of a celibate priesthood. I was astounded reading the excerpts you presented. Now the Church’s teaching on priesthood, continence and celibacy makes perfect sense. I would wager that the vast majority of priests have no understanding of this. Up to now, celibacy has been

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presented as a “mere” rule. And, as you said, a “mere” rule easily becomes a rule to be done away with.

After reading your explanations (and your comments after each section really helped my understanding), everything has changed for me. In my eight years in the Chicago seminary system (high school and college; I did not continue in the Theologate; my class was ordained in 1977), I never once heard any of this. I am astounded. My eyes have been opened to the extent that I feel I can finally understand, defend and explain the Church’s teaching on a celibate priesthood, although I don’t think I would find a willing or understanding audience.

I pray in my Morning Offering every day that God intervene with this Pope and prevent any relaxation of the requirement for a celibate priesthood, among other requests. I am firmly convinced Francis is backed by forces intent on destroying the Catholic Church, aided by indifferent shepherds.

(Thank God for bishops like Tom Paprocki who was a year behind me in the seminary).

Thank you so much for having provided these resources for me and others.

Bill Schuetter (bschuetter51@att.net) Orland Park, Illinois, USA

NATURAL LAW IS A FACT Bishop Victor Fernandez is quoted in your January 2017 issue as writing: “When the Church talks too much about philosophical questions or about natural law, it is presumably doing so in order to be able to dialogue on moral issues with the non-believing world. Nonetheless, in doing this, on the one hand we do not convince anyone with the philosophical arguments of other times, and, on the other, we lose the opportunity to proclaim the beauty of Jesus Christ, to ‘make hearts burn’” (italics added).

A more balanced and still effective perspective might be that the natural law is not a “philosophical argument(s) of other times.” Instead the natural law is a fact concretely and personally constitutive of each one of us from the beginning, about which academics then have secondarily written “philosophical arguments.”

The natural law is about a solidlygrounded self-respect that is shared with other selves. Love your neighbor as yourself. (When we abort a preborn child we do not so much violate his/her philosophical

rights as we directly attack the victim whose nature is to go on living.)

Fernandez’s “beauty of Christ,” then, is that Christ elevates our particular/ universal human nature into a gifted participation in the divine life of the Triune God. But how can hearts burn if there are no hearts? The new wine of Christ is in fact poured into a wineskin. The personalism of Pope St. John Paul II gets more to the heart of this reality than does nudging the enduring fact of so-called natural law into the dustbin of history.

Peter D. Beaulieu Shoreline, Washington, USA

THE CHARISM OF PETER The Charism of St. Peter has worked and shown off its truth — the truth of Papal Infallibility. It exists! It is a real, true charism of the papacy. Pope Francis is the one who has made it come back to life.

Not by declaring anything to be infallible, but rather by not declaring something to be true which is not true. He was cornered and surrounded, or so it seemed. But then he bought time and changed his mind and did the right thing.

He did not walk off the cliff of no return, which was to end the continuity, since ancient times, of priestly celibacy.

He did not do it and the Germans are mad. So what? The Americans and many many others are happy. Plus, he is telling everybody to take up Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament (via the American Bishops). Now we’re talking truth because that contemplative spiritual exercise of Adoration will bring more vocations to the priesthood than all the other efforts put together. Hurray for Pope Francis, a true successor to St. Peter.

We love you, Holy Father.

Tom Greerty tgreerty@aol.com

“YOUR BOOKS ARRIVED” Your books arrived yesterday evening!

I was moved by the inscriptions you wrote in each volume, one to Tom and one to me. How thoughtful you are and what a great memory you have in regard to our work and in Tom’s love of and many experiences in aviation. You are an extraordinary person in so many ways.

Thousands are benefiting from your expertise through your “Letters,” your books and your pilgrimages. Many blessings to you in your endeavors.

Susan Stanzel tomstanzel@sbcglobal.net

FROM A PRISONER I recently wrote to you and asked for a donation of back issues of your magazine that could be used to help our small Catholic community here at the Ferguson unit. Truthfully, I did not even know if you would respond, as much correspondence as you must receive. Even then, I only hoped for a few back issues of your magazine.

Sir, your generosity has astounded us.

Two and a half years worth of your magazine, plus other magazines such as The Sower and The Catechetical Review; I was overwhelmed when I received that package. To avoid unwanted attention, it took me three trips to bring them all to our library.

With a sincere heart I thank you for your generosity. Your magazine is wonderful and needed, especially now. May the Church — Christ’s Body — be purified and enriched.

Brian Joseph Wake, #869708 A prisoner

Se Servant of God Padre Domenico Da Cese, Padre Cese, O O.F O.F.M. .FF.M. Capuchin Wi never before seen photographs and enlightening With information of how this humble Capuchin priest whom nf from ro a very early age would be destined for a special apostolate involving the precious relic off the V ap Volto olto Santo Face,, Manoppello Manoppello,, Italy Italy.. kkept ept in the Basilica of the Holy Face

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PadreDomenicoVoltoSanto@gmail.com P adreDomenicooVoltoSanto@gmail. oltoSanto@ com more information or placing orders MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Pilgrims travel on boats as they accompany the statue of Our Lady of Nazareth during an annual river procession and pilgrimage along the Apeu River to a chapel in Macapazinho, Brazil (CNS photo)

THE DREAMS OF FRANCIS IN HIS APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION “DEAR AMAZONIA”

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THE AMAZONIAN PEOPLES “HAVE A RIGHT TO HEAR THE GOSPEL,” HE SAYS — AND LAYS OUT HIS VISION FOR HOW

n BY CHRISTINA DEARDURFF WITH REPORTING BY VATICAN NEWS

uerida Amazonia — “Dear Amazonia” — is Pope Francis’ long-awaited Apostolic Exhortation, written in response to the work of last fall’s Synod on the Amazon, held in Rome October 6-27, and released February 12. Despite widespread anticipation that the document would open the door to the possibility of married, and even female, clergy, no such discussion is advanced by the Pope in the Exhortation. Instead, the Pope accentuates the need for more effective evangelization with a renewed 10 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

missionary zeal, and for efforts to build up the existing faith of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia in a way that respects their cultures and yet is authentically Catholic.

“They have a right to hear the Gospel,” he says, “and above all that first proclamation, the kerygma, which is ‘the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another.’ It proclaims a God who infinitely loves every man and woman and has re-

vealed this love fully in Jesus Christ, crucified for us and risen in our lives.”

In emphasizing the centrality of the Eucharist, Francis writes, “No Christian community is built up which does not grow from and hinge on the celebration of the most holy Eucharist …

This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America, not only to promote prayer for priestly vocations, but also to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region.”

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Pope Francis attends a prayer service at the start of the first session of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon at the Vatican on October 7, 2019 (CNS photo)

The Pope rejected the idea that female ordination was an answer to the priest shortage, or that women could not be full participants in the life of the Church without being ordained, calling that an attitude which would “clericalize women.”

On the subject of “inculturation” of the Church in the Amazon region, the Pope asks for revision to “the structure and content of both initial and ongoing priestly formation” to be more pastoral and in dialogue with Amazonian cultures. Francis says that “the stable presence of mature and lay leaders endowed with authority” is required in the region, calling for more permanent deacons and women religious to address the Amazon’s challenges.

Since the “mature lay leaders” seems to refer to the viri probati that have been proposed by some as potential married candidates for the ordained priesthood, it is clear that the Pope is rejecting the idea of making these men priests, while recommending them instead for the diaconate.

The Pope calls for revision to “the structure and content of both initial and ongoing priestly formation” to be more pastoral and sensitive to Amazonian cultures. And, he wrote, “Let us not be quick to describe as superstition or paganism certain religious practices that arise spontaneously from the life of peoples.”

“It is possible,” he adds, “to take up an indigenous symbol in some way, without necessarily considering it as idolatry.” The Pope’s words call to mind the embattled “Pachamama” statuettes thrown into the Tiber River by a disapproving layman after being used in at least one seemingly pagan ceremony at the Vatican.

“A myth charged with spiritual meaning,” he continues, “can be used to advantage and not always considered a pagan error. Some religious

festivals have a sacred meaning and are occasions for gathering and fraternity, albeit in need of a gradual process of purification or maturation.”

More than half of the Exhortation is structured around what Francis called his four “dreams” for the Amazon region, which he calls his “social,” “cultural,” “ecological” and “ecclesial” dreams.

His social dream for the Amazon region is that the Church take the side of the poor and oppressed, support healthy family and social institutions, and develop “networks of solidarity and development.”

Human relationships, he says,

“are steeped in the surrounding nature” and experience a real “uprootedness” when they are “forced to migrate to the cities.”

Denouncing the evil of corruption which poisons the State and its “broken” institutions, he expresses the hope that the Amazon might become “a place of social dialogue,” first of all, with the least, and that the voice of the poor might be “the most authoritative voice” in the Amazon region.

Under the heading of “cultural dream,” Francis speaks of “intercultural encounter.”

Diversity should, therefore, not be “a wall” but “a bridge” which rejects “a completely enclosed ‘indigenism,’” he says, and he urges the Amazonian peoples to reject “cultural colonization” and a “consumerist vision of human beings.”

In articulating his “ecological dream,” Francis cites poets like Pablo Neruda and their ability to make tangible the beauty of Amazonia, who “help free us from the technocratic and consumerist paradigm that destroys nature.” Taking care of our brothers and sisters as the Lord takes care of us is “the first ecology that we need,” he says. Caring for the environment and caring for the poor are “inseparable.”

Exploitation by international interests, says Francis, must be countered by “responsibility on the part of national governments” for the welfare of their people and their environment.

In laying out his “ecclesial” dream, the Pope speaks at length about inculturation — of the Gospel, and of the Liturgy, especially, saying that incorporating “many elements proper to the experience of indigenous peoples” like their “native forms of expression in song, dance, rituals, gestures and symbols” would respond to the Second Vatican Council’s call for “this effort to inculturate the liturgy among indigenous peoples.”

The Pope’s explanation fell far short of the demand for an Amazonian “rite” for the Mass that some had strongly urged.

Francis calls for a greater missionary presence in the region, while also encouraging greater involvement of the laity, and envisions innovative ministries that respond to the region’s unique spiritual needs — discounting, however, any suggestion of a female priesthood. He concludes Querida Amazonia with a prayer to the Mother of the Amazon Region.

“Mother, look upon the poor of the Amazon region,” he prays, “for their home is being destroyed by petty interests… Touch the hearts of the powerful, for, even though we sense that the hour is late, you call us to save what is still alive.”m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 11

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“DEAR AMAZONIA”

Reactions to Querida Amazonia SOME SEE FRANCIS AS PRESENTING A “THIRD WAY”

eactions to the Pope’s Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia (Dear Amazonia), not unexpectedly, have mostly fallen along ideological

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lines.

Feminists were upset about the Pope’s use of the language of the “complementarity” of the sexes and his dismissal of the supposed need for female priests in order for women to be fully a part of the Church (one progressive Catholic journal headlined: “Disappointment, Outrage over Papal Document on the Amazon”).

Conservatives were generally pleasantly surprised that Francis declined to talk about married priests. Liberals were generally pleased at his condemnation of international exploitation of the Amazon region and calls for the region’s “ecology” to be respected.

Other commentators discerned, amidst the polarization of views on many issues, an attempt on Francis’ part to present a “third way” — what has been called a “signature Jesuit” approach — which is to continue to hold opposing views in tension, without deciding one way or another, and let the Holy Spirit work it out, eventually, in the way He wishes.

Some believe Francis dealt with the subject of married priests in this way: neither outright condemnation nor outright support, but instead inviting people to consider the nature of the priesthood, and let prayerful consideration flow from this. Some connected this approach to that taken by Cardinal Robert Sarah and Pope Emeritus Benedict in their book on the subject, From the Depths of our Hearts, in which they expounded on the question: “What does it mean to be a priest?”

Among the significant positive commentaries on the Exhortation was that of Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who had leveled pointed criticism at the Amazon Synod’s previous documents. Müller says the “hermeneutic” by which to understand the letter must be a Catholic one, “not characterized by dialecticism” but by “bringing all the statements of the revealed faith and the philosophical, scientific and everyday knowledge of the world into a synthesis.” On February 12 in the National Cathoic Register, Müller said the text “does not want to fuel existing political, ethnic and inner-Church conflicts and conflicts of interest, but rather to overcome them.”m October 2019. Pope Francis encounters members of the Amazon region’s indigenous community during the Synod in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

Opposite, the procession from St. Peter's Basilica to the New Synod Hall

EXHORTATION ENVISIONS “LAICIZED CHURCH”

A

By “Fr. Pio Pace” (excerpts) from the Rorate-Caeli.blogspot.com

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ill married viri probati be ordained to the priesthood? …[Querida Amazonia] does not reject the possibility (as it has been hastily claimed): it simply does not mention it. In fact, the exhortation goes much further, in the direction of a Laicized Church... the common priesthood of the baptized largely absorbs the priestly ministry, being mixed up with it...

12 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

Inculturation, says the writer, should also be expressed in the “ecclesial organization and ministry.” The priestly ministry should be rethought. It should not be reduced to the priest-cleric, whose specific power is that of consecrating and of forgiving sins, which is indispensable to ensure “a more frequent celebration of the Eucharist, even in the remotest and most isolated communities.”

On the other hand, the hierarchical power in the Church, which belongs to the priestly ministry, is not specific to the ordained minister: lay people, remaining

lay people, will be able to exercise this other facet of the priestly ministry and to “proclaim God’s word, teach, organize communities, celebrate certain sacraments...”

Those fixated upon the ordination of married men are, in sum, accused of clericalism, since it is much more important to promote a kind of Lay Church: “This requires the Church to be open to the Spirit’s boldness, to trust in, and concretely to permit, the growth of a specific ecclesial culture that is distinctively lay.”

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A “PARADIGM SHIFT”

tion to the Synod Final Document, saying: “I will not go into all of the issues treated at length in the Final Document. Nor do I claim to replace that text or duplicate it.”

“At the same time,” Francis goes on, “I would like to officially present the Final Document, which sets forth the conclusions of the Synod.... I have preferred not to cite the Final Document in this Exhortation, because I would encourage everyone to read it in full.... May the pastors, consecrated men and women and lay faithful of the Amazon region strive to apply it....”

By Jules Gomez Excerpted from ChurchMilitant.com itled Querida Amazonía, the exhortation seemed to signal a paradigm shift in the pontificate of Francis, as it resoundingly affirmed the evangelization of the Amazonian peoples in the words of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians: “We are not ashamed of Jesus Christ” and “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!”

The much-anticipated final document, released to the media on Wednesday afternoon, provoked questions as to the magisterial authority of the exhortation and whether the papal declaration had closed the door to controversial proposals like the ordination of married men...

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“VINTAGE B ERGOGLIO”

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A B LOW TO SOME?

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egular ITV contributor William Doino, Jr., in his commentary on Querida Amazonia, said the Holy Father’s new document on the Amazon region appears to be a significant blow to “progressive” demands, and a strong re-affirmation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“As we reflect upon Francis’ new exhortation,” he said, “it’s relevant to recall that many of our progressive brethren had already begun their victory dance well before this document was released, but it turns out that the Pope has not given them what they wanted and expected.”

Doino notes that Francis refused to approve a married priesthood and female diaconate for the Amazon region, stating: “The fact that the Pope personally does not explicitly endorse the [very progressive] reform plans of the Amazon’s Final Document can be seen as something that might very well discourage and even anger the progressive camp.”

“The Pope’s ‘four strong paragraphs’ (62-65) resoundingly reaffirm

By Austin Ivereigh Excerpted from TheTablet.co.uk hile the world was waiting with bated breath for a historic decision on whether to ordain married men in Amazonia, Pope Francis was busy going in a very different direction. Some will see Beloved Amazonia as ducking an historic challenge, leaving the Church in limbo in order to avoid a contentious decision that would have deepened divisions. But right at the end of the document, Francis offers a revealing window onto his discernment: Beloved Amazonia is less about avoiding conflict than about seeing another path where the Holy Spirit is calling the Church.

In paragraph 104 the Pope observes that when pastoral workers propose “opposed forms of ecclesial organization” in response to challenges, it is likely that the true answer lies in “transcending the two approaches and finding other, better ways, perhaps not yet even imagined.” In the following paragraph he says solutions often come in the form of a “greater gift” that God is offering from which “there will pour forth as from an overflowing fountain the answers that contraposition did not allow us to see.”n

the Gospel of Jesus Christ, declaring it must be proclaimed loudly and clearly in the Amazon region — indeed everywhere — for that is the Church’s highest mission, even as religious and laity should strive to meet the needs of all the Church’s diverse members with love and compassion. I read the Pope’s comments, for example, about bringing about a process of ‘purification and maturation,’ when necessary, as a call to gently but firmly correct erroneous religious or cultural practices — something good missionaries have been doing for centuries.”

But blogger Steven O’Reilly, in a post on Roma Locuta Est, pointed out that at the outset of his Exhortation, Francis does not abrogate the Final Document issued by the Synod itself, which contains the contentious proposals (e.g., ordained women deacons, married priests) which Francis himself declined to discuss. Instead, Francis approvingly draws our atten-

MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 13

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“DEAR AMAZONIA”

“I Dream of an Amazon Region...”

From Chapter One “DREAMS FOR THE AMAZON REGION”

Paragraphs 5-17

5. The Amazon region is a multinational and interconnected whole, a great biome shared by nine countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam, Venezuela and the territory of French Guiana.

Yet I am addressing the present Exhortation to the whole world. I am doing so to help awaken their affection and concern for that land which is also “ours,” and to invite them to value it and acknowledge it as a sacred mystery.

But also because the Church’s concern for the problems of this area obliges us to discuss, however briefly, a number of other important issues that can assist other areas of our world in confronting their own challenges.

I dream of Christian communities capable of generous commitment, incarnate in the Amazon region, and giving the Church new faces with Amazonian features.

From Chapter One “A SOCIAL DREAM” Paragraphs 26-27

26. The Amazon region ought to be a place of social dialogue, especially between the various original peoples, for the sake of developing forms of fellowship and joint struggle. The rest of us are called to participate as “guests” and to seek out with great respect paths of encounter that can enrich the Amazon region.

If we wish to dialogue, we should do this in the first place with the poor. They are not just another party to be won over, or merely another individual seated at a table of equals. They are our principal dialogue partners, those from whom we have the most to learn, to whom we need to listen 6. Everything that the January 2018. Apostolic journey in Chile and Peru, out of a duty of justice, and Church has to offer must Pope Francis encounters indigenous people of the Amazon.

Opposite, Deacon Shainkiam Yampik Wananch prays in a chapel in from whom we must ask become incarnate in a disWijint, a village in the Peruvian Amazon (CNS photos) permission before presenttinctive way in each part ing our proposals. Their words, their hopes and their of the world, so that the Bride of Christ can take on fears should be the most authoritative voice at any a variety of faces that better manifest the inextable of dialogue on the Amazon region. And the haustible riches of God’s grace. Preaching must begreat question is: “What is their idea of ‘good living’ come incarnate, spirituality must become incarnate, for themselves and for those who will come after ecclesial structures must become incarnate. For this them?” reason, I humbly propose in this brief Exhortation to speak of four great dreams that the Amazon region 27. Dialogue must not only favor the preferential inspires in me. option on behalf of the poor, the marginalized and the excluded, but also respect them as having a leading 7. I dream of an Amazon region that fights for the role to play. Others must be acknowledged and esrights of the poor, the original peoples and the least teemed precisely as others, each with his or her own of our brothers and sisters, where their voices can be feelings, choices and ways of living and working. heard and their dignity advanced.

Otherwise, the result would be, once again, “a plan I dream of an Amazon region that can preserve its drawn up by the few for the few,” if not “a consensus distinctive cultural riches, where the beauty of our on paper or a transient peace for a contented minorhumanity shines forth in so many varied ways. ity.” Should this be the case, “a prophetic voice must I dream of an Amazon region that can jealously be raised,” and we as Christians are called to make preserve its overwhelming natural beauty and the suit heard. perabundant life teeming in its rivers and forests.

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From Chapter Two “A CULTURAL DREAM”

Paragraph 33

33. Here I would like to point out that “a consumerist vision of human beings, encouraged by the mechanisms of today’s globalized economy, has a leveling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the heritage of all humanity.” This especially affects young people, for it has a tendency to “blur what is distinctive about their origins and backgrounds, and turn them into a new line of malleable goods.” In order to prevent this process of human impoverishment, there is a need to care lovingly for our roots, since they are “a fixed point from which we can grow and meet new challenges.” I urge the young people of the Amazon region, especially the indigenous peoples, to “take charge of your roots, because from the roots comes the strength that will make you grow, flourish and bear fruit.” For those of them who are baptized, these roots include the history of the people of Israel and the Church up to our own day. Knowledge of them can bring joy and, above all, a hope capable of inspiring noble and courageous actions.

From Chapter Three “AN ECOLOGICAL DREAM”

Paragraphs 42

42. If the care of people and the care of ecosystems are inseparable, this becomes especially important in places where “the forest is not a resource to be exploited; it is a being, or various beings, with which we have to relate.” The wisdom of the original peoples of the Amazon region “inspires care and respect for creation, with a clear consciousness of its limits, and prohibits its abuse. To abuse nature is to abuse our ancestors, our brothers and sisters, creation and the Creator, and to mortgage the future.”

When the indigenous peoples “remain on their land, they themselves care for it best,”[51] provided that they do not let themselves be taken in by the siren songs and the self-serving proposals of power groups. The harm done to nature affects those peoples in a very direct and verifiable way, since, in

their words, “we are water, air, earth and life of the environment created by God. For this reason, we demand an end to the mistreatment and destruction of mother Earth. The land has blood, and it is bleeding; the multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth.”

From Chapter Four “AN ECCLESIAL DREAM”

Paragraphs 63-64

63. An authentic option for the poor and the abandoned, while motivating us to liberate them from material poverty and to defend their rights, also involves inviting them to a friendship with the Lord that can elevate and dignify them. How sad it would be if they were to receive from us a body of teachings or a moral code, but not the great message of salvation, the missionary appeal that speaks to the heart and gives meaning to everything else in life. Nor can we be content with a social message. If we devote our lives to their service, to working for the justice and dignity that they deserve, we cannot conceal the fact that we do so because we see Christ in them and because we acknowledge the immense dignity that they have received from God, the Father who loves them with boundless love.

64. They have a right to hear the Gospel, and above all that first proclamation, the kerygma, which is “the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another.” It proclaims a God who infinitely loves every man and woman and has revealed this love fully in Jesus Christ, crucified for us and risen in our lives.

I would ask that you re-read the brief summary of this “great message” found in Chapter Four of the Exhortation Christus Vivit. That message, expressed in a variety of ways, must constantly resound in the Amazon region.

Without that impassioned proclamation, every ecclesial structure would become just another NGO and we would not follow the command given us by Christ: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15).m

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INTERVIEW

CARDINAL SARAH CONTINUES THE DEBATE ON CELIBACY “Our societies need celibacy, because they need God.” — Cardinal Robert Sarah, co-author with Pope Emeritus Benedict of a new book from Ignatius Press, From the Depths of Our Hearts n BY CHRISTINA DEARDURFF

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eclining to remain silent in the face of criticism of the newly-published book From the Depths of Our Hearts, co-authored

by Cardinal Robert Sarah and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the cardinal from Guinea gave Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register an interview touching upon the book’s main topic, priestly celibacy, and efforts to bring change, whether mild or extreme, to the Latin Church’s discipline on the matter.

(Though the cover of the French-language version of the book gives Cardinal Sarah primary authorship and calls Benedict’s texts a “contribution” — an apparent concession to objections raised by the Pope Emeritus’ secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, that there had been some sort of “misunderstanding” about the extent of Benedict’s work — the English-language version, published by Ignatius Press, retains the original designation of the two as “co-authors.”)

In the interview, published February 8, the cardinal vigorously defends both the theological and practical grounds for retaining the discipline of mandatory celibacy for Catholic priests, and goes on to explain that the “exceptions” so often cited are just that — exceptions, and not the natural or optimal state of affairs for the priesthood. Excerpts from that interview follow.

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INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

The book From the Depths of Our Hearts, co-authored by Cardinal Robert Sarah and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Your Eminence, why did you want to write this book?

CARDINAL SARAH: Because the Christian priesthood is in mortal danger! It’s going through a major crisis.

The discovery of the great number of sexual abuses committed by priests, and even bishops, is an indisputable symptom of this. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had already spoken out strongly on this subject. But then his thinking was distorted and ignored.

Just like today, attempts have been made to silence him. And like today, diversionary maneuvers were mounted to divert attention from his prophetic message. Yet I am convinced that he has told us the essential — what no one wants to hear.

He has shown that at the root of the abuses committed by clerics, there is a deep flaw in their formation. The priest is a man set apart for the service of God and the Church. He is a consecrated person. His whole life is set apart for God. And yet they wanted to desacralize priestly life. They wanted to trivialize it, to render it profane, to secularize it. They wanted to make the priest a man like any other.

Some priests were formed without putting God, prayer, the celebration of Mass, the ardent search for holiness at the center of their lives.

As Benedict XVI said, “Why has pedophilia reached such proportions? In the final analysis, the reason is the absence of God. It is only where Faith no

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longer determines man’s actions that such crimes are possible.”

Precisely how poor has this formation been that you mention, and what have been the effects?

Priests have been formed without teaching them that God is the only point of support for their lives, without making them experience that their lives only have meaning through God and for him. Deprived of God, they were left with nothing but power. Some have fallen into the diabolical logic of abuse of authority and sexual crimes. If a priest doesn’t daily experience he is only an instrument in God’s hands, if he doesn’t stand constantly before God to serve him with all his heart, then he risks becoming intoxicated with a sense of power. If a priest’s life is not a consecrated life, then he is in great danger of illusion and diversion.

Today, some would like to take a further step in this direction. They would like to relativize the celibacy of priests. That would be a catastrophe! For celibacy is the most obvious manifestation that the priest belongs to Christ and that he no longer belongs to himself. Celibacy is the sign of a life that has meaning only through God and for him.

To want to ordain married men is to imply that priestly life is not full time, that it does not require a complete gift, that it leaves one free for other commitments such as a profession, that it leaves time free for a private life. But this is false. A priest remains a priest at all times. Priestly ordination is not first of all a generous commitment; it is a consecration of our whole being, an indelible conformation of our soul to Christ, the priest, who demands from us permanent conversion in order to correspond to him.

Celibacy is the unquestionable sign that being a priest supposes allowing oneself to be entirely possessed by God. To call it into question would seriously aggravate the crisis of the priesthood.

But what about exceptions to the law of celibacy that already exist, for example in the Eastern Catholic rites or the Anglican Ordinariate?

An exception is transitory by definition and constitutes a parenthesis in the normal and natural state of things. This was the case of Anglican pastors returning to full communion. But the lack of a priest is not an exception. It is the normal state of any nascent Church, as in the Amazon, or dying Churches, as in the West. Jesus warned us: “The harvest is plentiful

but the workers are few.” The ordination of married men in young Christian communities would prohibit the raising of vocations of unmarried priests. The exception would become a permanent state. A weakening of the principle of celibacy, even if limited to one region, would not be an exception, but a breach, a wound in the internal coherence of the priesthood. On the other hand, the dignity and greatness of marriage is increasingly better understood. As Benedict XVI points out in this book, these two states are not compatible because they both demand an absolute and total gift.

In the East, some Churches have married clergy. I do not in any way question the personal holiness of these priests. But such a situation is only livable because of the massive presence of monks.

Moreover, from the point of view of the sign given to the whole Church by the priesthood, there is a risk of confusion. If a priest is married, then he has a private life, a conjugal and family life. He must make time for his wife and children. He is unable to show, by his whole life, that he is totally and absolutely given to God and the Church. St. John Paul II stated it very clearly: The Church wants to be loved by her priests with the very love with which Jesus loved her, that is to say, with an exclusive spouse’s love. It is important, the saintly Polish pope said, that priests understand the theological motivation of their celibacy. He said: “Priestly celibacy should not be considered just as a legal norm or as a totally external condition for admission to ordination, but rather as a value that is profoundly connected with ordination, whereby a man takes on the likeness of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd and Spouse of the Church” (Pastores Dabo Vobis, 50).

This is what we wanted to recall with Benedict XVI. The true foundation of celibacy is not juridical, disciplinary or practical; it is theocentric.

On this subject I refer you to the extraordinary speech of Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia on Dec. 22, 2006: “Celibacy for God is an absurdity in the eyes of the secularized and atheistic world. Celibacy is a scandal for the contemporary mind. It shows that God is a reality. If the life of priests does not concretely show that God is enough to make us happy and to give meaning to our existence, then who will proclaim him? More than ever our societies need celibacy because they need God.”m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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NEWS GERMANY

“SYNODAL PATH” PROPOSES MARRIED PRIESTHOOD, ORDAINED WOMEN “We live in a world of freedom,” proclaimed one prelate, so Christian tradition “must prove itself today”

n BY CAMERON DOODY (NOVENANEWS.COM)

N

o to “clericalism” and yes to greater “co-responsibility” and participation on the part of lay people in the Church: those were the key ideas in the first assembly on the German synodal path which took place the weekend of February 1 in Frankfurt.

After the first assembly of the German synodal path — the two-year reform process on power, women, sexual morality and the priesthood — German Bishops’ president Cardinal Reinhard Marx declared, “I am feeling confident.”

Deputy Chair Karin Kortmann of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), and assembly co-president with Cardinal Marx and Thomas Sternberg, lauded the “hierarchy-free space” that opened up in Frankfurt, while Deputy Chairman of the Bishops’ Conference and Bishop of Osnabrück Franz-Josef Bode called the meeting a “great future workshop.”

In the course of the assembly discussions, Bode had proposed that in the future there be in the Church “two distinct forms” of priesthood, “celibacy and non-celibacy.”

In that context, the expression “married priesthood as a prophetic figure” came up multiple times.

“The discussions and encounters are characterized by an intense spiritual atmosphere and the search for God’s will,” said Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen on February 1, adding later that “the debates were

18

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In the small photos, from top to bottom, those open to ordaining women: German Bishops’ president Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Deputy Chair Karin Kortmann of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) and Deputy Chairman of the Bishops’ Conference and Bishop of Osnabrück FranzJosef Bode. Opposite, opposed to the idea, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne

based on mutual respect and showed impressively how much we live in a world of freedom,” and that it is on that possibility of freedom that the message of the Bible and tradition “must prove itself today.”

The work of the assembly over the three days made it clear “that the participants agree on the basic values of the Catholic Church, but also that these values are lived in very different conditions today,” Overbeck said.

For his part, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that in the discussions “I felt a lot of energy” and the build-up of pressure for change “on the issues of power and separation of powers and on the role of women in the Church.”

“We need greater participation by all members of the Church in the decisionmaking processes,” said Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer.

He insisted that that participation in responsibility should extend especially to “women participat[ing] accordingly at all management levels that are currently possible” under present Church law.

Theologian Agnes Wuckelt, the vice-chair of the Catholic Women’s Association of Germany (KFD), proposed on the margins of the assembly a three-step process for achieving women’s equality in the Church.

First of all, Wuckelt said, more women must be placed in management positions and given opportunities for directing churches and celebrating church services.

Next, the German bishops should ask Rome about opportunities for the female diaconate.

The final step in the process would be a vote of the synodal assembly that “at the level of the world Church” — that is, at a Church Council — “the theological arguments for and against the priestly ordination of women… be gathered and examined.”

Wuckelt’s proposal came after a joint position paper put out by the major Catholic women’s associations in Germany, Switzerland and Italy on the occasion of the first meeting of the German synodal path, in which the women’s rights groups insisted that “we believe that people are the image of God.” “That is why women and men have the same dignity and the same rights.

Because of gender, there must be no ecclesiastical or social disadvantage. Therefore women and men must have equal access to all ministries and offices in the Church,” the women’s associations argued.

A NOTE OF DISCORD But if that great push for women’s equality was considered the highlight of the first assembly of the German synodal path — along with the admission on the assembly floor of the

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GERMAN CARDINAL MÜLLER UNDER FIRE Attacked after he compares the bishops’ “synodal path” to Nazi-era law

C

riticism of remarks by Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller comparing the Church reform dialogue underway in Germany with events in Nazi Germany erupted on February 5, with Wuerzburg Bishop Franz Jung saying the comments were “very out of place.” He pointed out that the Synodal Path was based on resolutions of the German Bishops’ Conference: “So then you must also stand by them.”

Meanwhile the highest Catholic laypeople’s group in Germany, the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), also criticized the comments by Cardinal Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican. ZdK president Thomas Sternberg told Germany’s Catholic News Agency (KNA): “There is criticism that disqualifies itself. It is so removed from everyday life that it cannot be taken seriously.”

Müller had drawn parallels between last weekend’s Synodal Path decision-making

Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hesse, that the Church’s teaching on homosexuality is “hurtful and discouraging” and must be changed — the perceived “lowlight” was the continued skepticism of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne.

“My great concern that, due to the way this event was conceived and constituted, a Protestant church parliament is being implemented here, so to speak, has proved to be justified,” Woelki said.

That comment elicited the rebuke of German Bishops’ president Cardinal Marx, and others, to the effect that “I don’t know why Protestant should be a dirty word.”

“Do you want synodality, as the Pope always demands, or do you want an old model of Church organization from the 19th century?” president Sternberg of the ZdK shot back at Woelki.

processes in Frankfurt and the so-called Enabling Act of the German Reichstag parliament of 1933.

“In a suicidal process, the majority decided that their decisions are valid even if they contradict Catholic doctrine,” Müller told the Canadian portal LifeSiteNews.

“This is like the situation when the Weimar Constitution was repealed by the Enabling Act. A self-appointed assembly, which is not authorized by God nor by the people it is supposed to represent, rescinds the Constitution of the Church of Divine Right, which is based on the Word of God (in Scripture and Tradition),” added the cardinal, who confirmed his LifeSiteNews comments to KNA. His political reference was to the Enabling Act of March 24, 1933 when the duly-elected Reichstag gave sweeping powers to the government of Adolf Hitler, allowing it to enact laws without the approval of the Reichstag.

(KNA)

Also firing back at Woelki was the chairman of the Diocesan Council of Catholics in the cardinal’s own diocese of Cologne, Tim Kurzbach, who said he feared that “Woelki destroys the authority of his episcopal office by not trying to convince with good arguments in the assembly, but by being indignant about the fact that he does not have more power resulting from his office.”

“Yet he should have recognized long ago that position alone no longer creates true authority,” Kurzbach added.

Other memorable addresses in the first assembly of the German synodal path came from two young people present at the event: Mara Klein and Janosch Roggel.

Klein denounced the clergy sex abuse and cover-up which were the impetus for the organization of the synodal path, to clear the Church of those factors that facilitate a culture of abuse and secrecy.

Telling bishops that they “are not the victims” but in actual fact an “association of perpetrators,” Klein reflected on the fact that a bishop present at the meeting, Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, said — much for the same reasons as Woelki — that the whole idea of a “synodal path” made him “uncomfortable.”

“I hope that we do feel uncomfortable,” Klein said.

“I am against a polarization of clergy and laity, but I want to emphasize that we are dealing here with a massive structural sin. Show us that you can break out of it. I’m still standing here, and it’s hard for me, because I believe that we can break out of it,” Klein thundered from the synod floor.

Roggel, for his part, took the floor and declared, “I am a transsexual. And abuse by a priest was the worst thing I have ever experienced.”

Roggel’s words led to a round of applause and standing ovations.m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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GIVING A SOUL TO THE ECONOMY OF TOMORROW POPE FRANCIS HOSTS A GLOBAL ECONOMIC CONFERENCE TO RETHINK THE WORLD’S ECONOMY

n BY CHRISTINA DEARDURFF

T

he Economy of Francesco,” a conference “hosted by” Pope Francis, will take place March 26-28 in the town of Il Poverello (“The Poor Man”), St. Francis of Assisi. The title of the conference, therefore, is a reference to both: to the saint who eschewed material wealth in a radical way, and to the Pope who has been a particular champion of the poor and an advocate for world economic reform throughout his pontificate.

The conference’s official website calls it “an interna-

“

20 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

tional meeting between young scholars and activists in the field of economics, convened by Pope Francis: Pope Francis invites young economists and entrepreneurs, changemakers from all over the world and from all the religions to Assisi to make a commitment in the spirit of Saint

Francis, in order to make the economy of today and tomorrow fair, sustainable and inclusive, with no one left behind.

A “covenant” to change today’s economy and to give a soul to the economy of tomorrow, giving hope to “our” future, benefitting the poorest of the poor, the entire human family. A vision necessary for “our common home” as everything is deeply connected.

The safeguarding of the environment cannot be divorced from ensuring justice for the poor and finding answers to the

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Pope Leo XIII and Pope St. John Paul II, the respective authors of two economic social encyclicals: Rerum Novarum (1891) and Centesimus Annus (1991).

In the circle, Dr. Samuel Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute

structural problems of the global economy.

Among some two dozen confirmed keynote speakers at the event will be Amartya Sen, Indian economist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998; Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi entrepreneur who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006; Vandana Shiva, Indian environmental activist; Stefano Zamagni, economics professor and president of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences; and economist Jeffrey Sachs, former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Dr. Sachs, a guest of the Vatican at previous conferences on global development and environmental issues, is a Jewish professor of economics but says that “it’s time for a restoration, for a deeper philosophical basis for economics based on human dignity and the Church’s social teaching.”

However, Dr. Sachs is also a supporter of global population control measures, including contraception and abortion, saying, “High fertility

rates are deleterious to economic development.”

The Hindu Vandana Shiva, known in India as a stalwart environmentalist, has been active in the fight — thus far unsuccessful — to induce the world’s governments to sign legally binding treaties which would have required them to cut “greenhouse gases” emissions by as much as 80% by

this year. She wrote a book in 1993 called Ecofeminism, itself a movement with various facets but generally critical in principle of both capitalism and “patriarchal religions.”

In his 1991 encyclical, Centesimus Annus, Pope St. John Paul II, writing on the 100th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 social encyclical Rerum Novarum, further developed some of the themes of his predecessor’s work,

enlarging on, first, the examination of the first principle of all ethical/moral considerations: what is the nature of man?

From this consideration, all conclusions about moral human action — the sphere to which economics belongs — flow.

John Paul noted that, as created in the image of God, every human being has inalienable dignity, and he went on to discuss the dignity of the worker and work itself, and the economic rights which ensure that each person can live and thrive with the dignity that is his birthright.

One would hope that Rerum Novarum and Centesimus Annus, not to mention the other social encyclicals of the Catholic Church produced since the Industrial Revolution, would be required reading for the participants at “The Economy of Francesco” conference; perhaps it is time for a rediscovery of the Church’s wisdom as a basis for concrete initiatives to create a just and human distribution of the world’s wealth.m

Look Carefully at Pope Francis’ Economy CAUTIONS ABOUT THE NARRATIVE OF THE CAUSES OF ECONOMIC INJUSTICE

n BY SAMUEL GREGG, PH. D.*

F

rom the beginning of his pontificate, Jorge Bergoglio has put questions of economic justice front and center of his speeches, interviews, and magisterial teaching. Since Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, economic questions have assumed a prominent place in the concerns of successive pontiffs, especially through the medium of modern Catholic social teaching. But by virtue of his Latin American origins and Argentine background, Pope Francis was always going to bring new emphases and urgency to these

discussions. This is one reason why the Pope has convened an international meeting for young scholars and activists which will take place in Assisi on March 26-29.

Entitled “The Economy of Francesco,” the name and location reflect not only the pope’s deep interest in issues of justice in the economy but are also meant to invoke the life of El Poverello himself: St. Francis of Assisi.

The program agenda covers many subjects that will take the discussion beyond technical econom-

ics. It also follows a methodology plainly designed to help participants spend as much time listening as speaking.

The roadmap of the gathering, as it’s called, begins with a call to “Empathy with global situations and multi-dimensional view” and to “Immerse yourself in the spirit of Francis of Assisi.”

Empathy is fine as it goes. But if it is not informed by reason — which, combined with free will, is what makes us different from all other created beings — it often leads to a fair amount of sentimen-

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tal humanitarianism. And if there is decline that marks Argentina’s 2020? The reasons are many. One is anything that Jesus of Nazareth was economy is a good illustration of the economic populism which was the deep problems with this expla- developed into an art-form by Arnot, it was a sentimentalist.

Nor was there any trace of senti- nation. There is a saying occasion- gentine strongman Juan Domingo mentalism (let alone nature-wor- ally credited to Peru’s Nobel Prize- Perón in the 1940s and 1950s and ship) in the life of St. Francis of As- winning author Mario Vargas which has been pursued by many Argentine governments ever since. sisi. As Augustine Thompson, O.P., Llosa: That translated into a heavy longThere are countries that are rich shows in his well-researched Franterm reliance on debt to finance and countries that are poor. cis of Assisi: A New Biography And there are poor countries that government spending, the expan(2012), El Poverello was a “fiercely sion of state bureaucracies to proorthodox” Catholic. While St. Fran- are growing rich. vide employment in the form of And then there is Argentina. cis certainly loved the poor and Argentina is the 20th-century’s what are best described as fake-jobs, sought to promote peace, Thompson underscores the saint’s “ab- textbook case of how a once giving Argentina’s trade unions solute lack of any program of legal wealthy, politically stable nation pretty much whatever they wanted, or social reforms.” He also stresses became a country marked by end- and extensive government interventhat St. Francis believed that it was less political upheaval and growing tion into every segment of the economy in the form of tariffs, absolute rather than relative wage and price controls, poverty which “always had a the selective nationalizaclaim on compassion.” tion of particular industries That last point illustrates deemed strategic, as well as that, to the extent that St. subsidies to politicallyFrancis may have thought connected businesses. about poverty’s economic All these policies have dimension, he was far more been overlaid by fiery poprealistic and attentive to facts ulist rhetoric, much of than many people suppose. which functions to blame And if there is any perspecothers — the IMF, the Unittive that I’d hope is brought ed States, foreign banks, to bear during the deliberaglobalización, etc. — when tions of “The Economy of the consequences of folFrancesco,” it is a realism — lowing such policies have even a brutally direct realism their very predictable nega— about the causes of poverUnemployed workers from the slums of Buenos Aires march under ty and economic underdevel- the national flag in the Plaza de Mayo January 15. Argentine bishops tive effects. These consecalled for an end to political corruption, the creation of new jobs and quences include monetary opment. fine tuning of the justice system to help alleviate Argentina's instability and out-of-conIn that regard, it would be economic crisis (CNS photo from Reuters) trol inflation, the crippling especially helpful for participants in the Assisi gathering to economic decadence. In 1900, Ar- of the country’s wealth-creating cahave a frank conversation about gentina was among the world’s 10 pacities, the withdrawal of foreign why some countries seem stuck in wealthiest nations in terms of in- investment and capital, and, peran apparently interminable cycle of come per capita. Immense natural haps above all, the takeover of much economic crises. Much discussion resources and large inflows of for- of the economy by business cronies in the Catholic world, especially in eign capital helped Argentina de- of Argentine’s corrupt political Western Europe and Latin America, velop economically faster and more class.

These are some of the basic facts tends to approach these topics comprehensively than most other through the lens of a narrative in South American countries. Thou- which explain why Argentina’s ecwhich developing nations’ econom- sands of European immigrants, in- onomy is the perpetual sick-man of ic problems are regarded as essen- cluding Jorge Bergoglio’s father, Latin America. And what is notable tially the fault of Western developed subsequently moved to Argentina. about all these problems is that they countries. But what if that narrative Politically, Argentina was relatively are self-inflicted. Argentine political leaders — and, it should be said, milstable until the late 1930s. is flawed?

Why then is Argentina’s econo- lions of Argentine citizens who have The case of Pope Francis’ homeland and the 70 years of crisis and my in such a different place in voted for them — have consistently 22 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

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made bad decisions over many decades which have undermined some of the basic institutional prerequisites for creating wealth and reducing poverty: i.e., constitutionally-limited government, rule of law, clear property rights, enforced contracts, and stable money.

Saying such things “out loud” is never easy, not least because so many poverty activists and NGOs have invested a great deal of time, resources and energy in arguing that poverty in developing nations is primarily the fault of developed Western countries. That’s not to deny that many Western governments’ interventions in developing nations during the immediate postcolonial period and the Cold War often had detrimental effects.

Even today, European Union agricultural policies contribute to blocking the access of developing nations to global markets. At some point, however, the elites and citizens of developing nations, whether in Latin America or Africa, need to take responsibility for the errors of their political leaders and the corruption of their political systems and economies.

Will these issues be raised at the “Economy of Francesco” gathering in Assisi?

I don’t know. Younger people are, however, often more willing to speak their minds than their elders.

Yes, discussing these matters would be risky and, I suspect, lead to heated argument with those wedded to accounts of poverty in developing nations which are increasingly discredited. But, like all other aspects of life, the only sure foundation for economic activity is the truth. Saying the truth and then acting upon it, however difficult that may be, is the path to justice and liberty in the economy today. *Dr. Samuel Gregg is Research Director at the Acton Institute.m

The Francesco Economy CAN WE RETURN TO A TRULY CATHOLIC ECONOMICS — NOT ONE IDENTIFIED WITH ANY POLITICAL CULTURAL BLOC?

n BY THOMAS STORCK

The Giving of the Mantle by Giotto, Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Here, in the circle, Thomas Storck, author of four books and many articles on Catholic economics

F

rom March 26 to 28 of this year, Pope Francis will be hosting a conference entitled “The Economy of Francesco” in Assisi, the venerable home of St. Francis. The event, which focuses on economics and the environment, is aimed at young people, under age 35, but will include a number of economists and entrepreneurs older than that, the most wellknown of whom is probably Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in New York City. Many of the invited economists are known for their economic views outside the mainstream, views which pay more attention to actually existing economies and to economic history, whereas mainstream neoclassical economics works with a theoretical and mathematical model

of the economy, which often is little more than a justification for capitalist globalization.

The Francesco Economy conference seems to have received little attention in the United States. The official website, francescoeconomy.org, describes it as “an international meeting between young scholars and activists in the field of economics, convened

by Pope Francis.”

The website is a little sketchy about the aims and agenda of the conference, summarizing the agenda with the slogan, “Feel, Ideate and Act.” But the official invitation that Francis issued May 1, 2019, addressed “To Young Economists and Entrepreneurs Worldwide,” speaks in more detail and terms it “an event that MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 23

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will allow me to encounter young today equally oddly claimed by those to all mankind. Everyone involved in men and women studying economics entirely unaware of its true meaning, and the economic process — workers, and interested in a different kind of reprobated by those who are ignorant suppliers of capital, consumers — deeconomy, one that cares for the envi- of its long usage in papal documents, serves justice. In particular, workers ronment and does not despoil it... We refers to the duty of those active in the are due in strict justice a living wage.

There is a dictate of nature more need to correct models of growth in- economy, especially those who have capable of guaranteeing respect for power or authority in economic matters, imperious and more ancient than any the environment, openness to life, to work to restructure the economy on bargain between man and man, that concern for the family, social equal- behalf of the demands of justice. Since the remuneration must be enough to ity, the dignity of workers and the in most cases “individual employers support the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comfort. If... the rights of future generations. Sadworkman accepts harder conly, few have heard the appeal... to ditions because an employer or set in place a new economic contractor will give him no betmodel, the fruit of a culture of ter, he is the victim of force and communion based on fraternity injustice. (Leo XIII, Rerum Noand equality.” varum, no. 45) As far as the general theme of The social encyclicals and the conference, to consider ways other documents of the Church to make the economy more reon social questions provide the sponsive to the real needs of huauthoritative teaching that manity, no informed Catholic Catholics are bound to recogcould possibly object. The Popes nize in socio-economic quessince at least Leo XIII have been calling for exactly the kind of Pope Francis with a homeless person in Rome and, below, tions. Although addressed to profound changes in the econo- with Greta Thunberg, the 17-year-old Swedish activist who changing economic conditions has become a global voice in defense of the environment throughout the whole world and my that are suggested here. In over a period of more than a hunparticular, Pius XI’s 1931 endred years, nevertheless they ofcyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, fer “a single teaching, consiswhose formal title was On Retent and at the same time ever constructing the Social Order new,” as Benedict XVI wrote in and Perfecting It Conformably his encyclical Caritas in Verito the Precepts of the Gospel, tate, no. 12. proposed a vast program of At one time the Church’s Catholic socio-economic reteaching on the social order was form, a program which was nevpretty much accepted by iner seriously attempted by the formed Catholics, and there exChurch as a whole, and is now isted a vast secondary literature pretty much forgotten. seeking to understand, interpret Catholic social teaching, as that has been developed and applied are helpless to ensure justice,” it is and apply that to the varied condito modern economies from Leo XI- their duty to organize institutions tions throughout the world. Entire II’s Rerum Novarum of 1891 through akin to the guilds of the Middle Ages, economic systems, such as DistribFrancis’ Laudato Si’ of 2015, offers and “to support and promote such utism or Solidarism, were elaborated both a critique of the existing eco- necessary organizations as normal in- based on Catholic social doctrine. nomic order and a blueprint for an struments enabling them to fulfill Sadly, today, too many Catholics base economy oriented toward meeting their obligations of justice.” (Pius XI, their economic views not on the human needs. For example, the Encyclical Divini Redemptoris, no. teaching of the Church but on whatever political bloc they happen to asSupreme Pontiffs have noted that 53) market forces are not an adequate The social teaching of the Popes sociate with, giving that priority over means of regulating an economy, and emphasizes that man’s economic ac- the Church of Jesus Christ. A century on the positive side, they have called tivity has an inherent purpose, which ago in his first encyclical, Ubi Arfor legal structures and organizations is not individual enrichment or the cano, Pius XI termed this rejection or to orient the economy toward justice survival of the fittest, but the provi- neglect of the Church’s social docand charity. The term “social justice,” sion of necessary goods and services trine as social modernism, and pro24 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

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claimed “We condemn it as strongly as We do dogmatic Modernism� (no.

61).

But what about the Economy of Francesco conference?

Well, as I suggested above, in questioning the foundations of our present economy it is entirely in line with Catholic teaching. On the other hand, one may legitimately wonder, it seems to me, if the focus on those under age 35 is particularly wise, and likewise whether, instead of the threefold theme, Feel, Ideate, Act, a better one might not have been Learn, Apply, Act, which would express well what should be our stance toward the Church’s doctrine, in this or any other matter. In view of the extreme ideological polarization in today’s Church, many will foolishly dismiss this event as simply an instance of socialist influence within Catholicism, while others will embrace it in all respects, no matter what.

Because of the varied problems existing within today’s Church, many Catholics are wandering without clear guidance, “sheep without a shepherd,� while others have latched onto one or another political-cultural bloc in order to provide themselves with some ideological identity.

It is very tempting to take refuge in a Catholicism with a traditional coloring, with an emphasis on customs and practices so largely abandoned in recent decades.

But what must not be forgotten is that traditional Catholicism included a recognition of the Church’s social doctrine.

So while I entirely applaud an embrace of the liturgical and devotional traditions that we have lost, we cannot forget that Catholic social teaching was a crucial part of the life of the Church in the past, and Catholics were more apt to listen to the Church’s voice then than they are now.

The Economy of Francesco conference very rightly calls our attention to an integral part of Catholic teaching. However, unless Catholics become disposed to attend to the Church’s voice in all matters of faith and morals, then it is to be feared that we will take our cues from sources outside of Catholic teaching and tradition.

It is laudable to work on behalf of “the environment, openness to life, concern for the family, social equality, the dignity of workers and the rights of future generations,� but the best way of doing so is to listen to the Church’s heritage of social doctrine, a heritage that is “consistent and at the same time ever new.�

Thomas Storck is the author of four books and numerous articles on Catholic economics. He is a contributing editor of The Distributist Review and a member of the editorial board of The Chesterton Review.m

Pilgrimage to Ireland with us‌ Belfast

Doonegore Castle, Doolin

Powerscourt Waterfall

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THE RETURN OF THE KING ESSAY

HE MUST GO TO JERUSALEM AND SUFFER

“F

rom that time on Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Far be it from you, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’ But Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me. For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for his soul?

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.’”

—Matthew 16:21-27

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“Thus, lest they should think His suffering unworthy of Him, not by the former things only, but also by the events that were coming on, He teaches them the gain thereof. Thus in John first, He says,

Except the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it die, it brings forth

much fruit... And see how He also makes His discourse unexceptionable: not saying at all, whether you will, or no, you must suffer this, but how? If any man will come after me. I force not, I compel

not, but each one I make lord of his own choice; wherefore also I say, ‘If any man will.’ For to good things do I call you, not to things evil, or burdensome; not to punishment and vengeance, that I should have to compel. Nay, the nature of the thing is alone sufficient to attract you.”

—St. John Chrysostom, from Homily 54, on John 12:24

Farewell of Christ to His Apostles, by Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255-1319), Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena, Italy

MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 27

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THE RETURN OF THE KING ESSAY

THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM

“N

ow when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, “The Lord needs them,” and he will send them at once.’

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’

28

“The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’ And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, ‘Who is this?’ And the crowds said, ‘This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.’”

—Matthew 21:1-11

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“We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that

we spread before him. Now that the crimson stains of our sins have been washed away in the saving waters of baptism and we have become white as pure wool, let us present the

conqueror of death, not with mere branches of palms but with the real rewards of his victory.

Let our souls take the place of the welcoming branches

as we join today in the children’s holy song: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name

of the Lord. Blessed is the king of Israel.’”

—St. Andrew of Crete, from a Palm Sunday sermon, Oratio 9

Christ’s Entrance into Jerusalem, by Bernhard Plockhorst, a 19th century German painter (Braunschweig, 1825-Berlin, 1907)

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THE RETURN OF THE KING

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ESSAY

BETRAYED

BY A KISS

W

hile he was still speaking, there came a crowd, and the man called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus said to him, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests and officers of the temple and elders, who had come out against him, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”

—Luke 22:47-53

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“Why did he do it? Some say he was too fond of money, and the offer of 30 pieces of silver was too much to resist.

The Gnostic writers say he wanted to liberate Jesus from the shackles of mortality.

But the Gospels tell us that Satan entered into the heart of Judas. He yielded to a temptation from the evil one. It is a mistake to think that the great privilege of living in company with Jesus is enough to make a person holy.

Jesus does not force our will when he invites us to follow him along the path of the beatitudes.

The only way to avoid the pitfalls that surround us is to give ourselves entirely to Jesus, to enter into full communion with him, so that we think and act as he did, in total obedience to the Father.

God can turn everything to a good purpose. Even Judas’ betrayal became, through divine providence, the occasion for Jesus’ supreme act of love, for the salvation of the world.”

—Pope Benedict XVI, from his General Audience, October 19, 2006

The Kiss of Judas, fresco by Giotto (1266-1337), Cappella degli Scrovegni, Padua, Italy

MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 31

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DIPLOMACY

RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR: “THE VATICAN IS THE MOST STABLE STATE IN EUROPE”

An interview with ALEKSANDR AVDEEV, representative of the Russian Federation to the Holy See. Ten years after the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Moscow and the Vatican: “The Pope and Putin have touched on substantial subjects. I think there is also a personal sympathy”

n BY GIANNI VALENTE (LA STAMPA)

Aleksandr Avdeev, ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Holy See, held the role of Minister of Culture for his country from 2008 to 2012.

Opposite, November 25, 2013, at the Vatican. Pope Francis and Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovi Putin during the exchange of gifts in the Private Library of the Apostolic Palace

“T

he world has become less predictable. The most unpredictable region has become Europe. And in Europe the most stable country seems to me the Vatican.” This is how Aleksandr Avdeev, ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Holy See, commented on geopolitical current affairs in this January 2020 interview. A long-term diplomat, the ambassador held the role of Minister of Culture for his country from 2008 to 2012. And now he continues to express analysis and judgments that are not taken for granted on geopolitical scenarios even from the Eternal City, where he takes care of relations between Moscow and the Roman palaces of the Holy See.

Ambassador Avdeev, has Europe become an enigma for you too?

AMBASSADOR AVDEEV: Now, it is still possible to make predictions on how the situation will be in Africa or Asia ten years from now, while in Europe we do not know what the fate of the European Union will be, nor 34

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

the future of transatlantic relations, nor of commercial ones. Everything is in the storm. Brexit, nationalisms, social conflicts in France... I really think that one of the most stable countries in Europe is the Vatican State!

The first ten years of full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Russia have just been celebrated. What were the most important moments of this journey?

These ten years have been a happy time for the fruitful development of relations between the Russian Federation and the Holy See. And this development is based on affinity, on the sharing of the view expressed by Russia and the Holy See on the facts and problems of the world.

On what factors is the convergence you refer to based?

I think first of all that the Holy See is interested, like Russia, in the stability of the world based on cooperation. There is a shared concern about the situation in the Middle East, especially in Syria. And we are on the same

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wavelength as regards the need to resolve conflicts on the basis of international law. Now, for example, sanctions are in fashion. The United States also imposes them against its own allies. And also on this, the Holy See said, with a responsible voice, that the sanctions must comply with the statutes of the United Nations and must be authorized by the UN Security Council.

As a diplomat and scholar of international politics, how would you define the presence and contribution of the Holy See to international scenarios in the current historical phase?

I want to underline primarily the appeals of the Pope and the Holy See to save Christians in the Middle East, especially in Syria, where before the conflict the baptized represented more than 18% of the population, and now they have become 1% — a real biblical exodus. The Pope and Patriarch Kirill also spoke about it in the joint document they signed in their historic meeting in Havana.

Putin is the global leader who visited the Pope on several occasions after Merkel.

Is this preference just a matter of good manners and geopolitical strategy?

In their conversations, the Pope and Putin touched on substantial matters. I believe there is also a personal sympathy.

They also talked about how Christian values can be effectively preserved, which risk being diluted in the context of the savage globalism in which we live, and in the climate of dominant pseudo-liberalism, which cancels social duties and enhances the limitless pursuit of one’s own instinctive drives and subjective interests. Pseudoliberalism is also an enemy of authentic liberalism, and now it also uses the internet and social media as tools for flattening and homologization. People are fragile; they do not have the stability and consistency that is absorbed over time, in the network of authentic family and social relationships.

How do you define Pope Francis’ modus operandi with respect to geopolitical processes? Realist? Idealist? Conservative?

Pope Francis is a global leader, by given circumstances. In the world there are 1 billion, 300 million Catholics — it is the largest community of believers on the planet, which finds in the Pope its one reference point. Pope Francis exercises this role on international scenarios by working for peace. And he also does this by promoting interreligious dialogue and ecumenical dia-

logue with other Christians. He made an important contribution to fraternal relations with all the other Christian Churches and communities. And the relationship he has built with Muslims, both with Shiites and Sunnis, seems very important to me. It has helped everyone to understand that dialogue between religious traditions can be a factor of stability and peace, especially in this time when religions have gained public relevance. Mostly, it helped everyone to understand that only dialogue between religious traditions can definitively overcome the violence that tries to justify itself with religious motivations. I consider it formidable that the Islamic leaders, in the documents signed together with Pope Francis, such as the Abu Dhabi Document, have affirmed that they and their governments have a duty to defend the Christians with whom they live in their countries from violence.

You spoke of the harmony between Putin and Francis.

Yet there are political leaders who express their antipathy for the Pope, while taking Putin and Russia as a model and reference point. How do you explain this contradiction?

These are superficial positions. Obviously, the Vatican is in a more complicated position than, for example, the Russian Church. The Vatican is also a state, and therefore must always move on two levels, the spiritual-religious one and the political-diplomatic one, harmonizing initiatives and positions in the two different areas. I believe that the Holy See is carrying out this agreement successfully and with good results.

Russia has taken on a key role in the Middle East.

Many analysts say it has filled the space left empty by the US, and add that in the Middle East the US wanted to spread democracy, while Russia supports oppressive regimes. Does this reading of the situation convince you?

This is a deformed representation.

Syria, like it or not with its current government, is a UN member nation, and has its own head of state; it has a sovereign government.

The Russians now present in Syria have been invited by the Syrian government, while the US, even now, is illegitimately in Syria. They say they want to bring democracy. So why did they intervene only in Syria, and not in other countries of that region? How many nations in that area of the world can give democracy lessons to Syria?

MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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DIPLOMACY ALEKSANDR AVDEEV

“eleventh” Commandment, a pre-condition for every Do the criticisms of those who accuse Russia of journey of spiritual conversion. forming alliances with authoritarian regimes really And on the issue of migratory flows, another phehave no basis? nomenon constantly at the center of the Pope’s Russia supports the democratic stabilization of Syria. preaching — how is his attention to this viewed in With the support of the United Nations, it has fostered Russia? dialogue between the various Syrian political forces and We are a country that receives refugees and migrants. the creation of the Commission for the drafting of the We welcomed 3 million Ukrainians. We understand that new Constitution. Then there will be the elections, Pope Francis’ appeals are based on his gaze always which will show who is supported by the people. This is turned to the same experience of the Child Jesus, when the normal way to walk towards democracy. the Holy Family lived the flight to Egypt. For many, Russia has direct and usually good relations with including Christians who flee wars and persecutions, all the nations of the Middle East, often opposed to Europe is like a promised land. each other: Turkey, Iran, Welcoming, in those cases, is a Arabia, Israel... What demoral obligation. Then there sign and what interests are migrants for economic reainspire this strategy? sons, who often pay human It is true, we have open traffickers, whose network is channels with all the actors of organized by criminals. The the Middle East. Even on this, Pope and the Holy See, on this it seems to me that Russia folphenomenon of migration, are lows the same inspiration that following a criterion of realguides the Holy See: it is ism, also inviting people to go always necessary to dialogue and invest economically in the with everyone, and through countries where economic dialogue to develop relations, migrants come from. security, stability. Putin has Is the next meeting besaid many times that Russian The Pope and Patriarch Kirill during their 2016 meeting in Havana tween Pope Francis and forces will leave Syria when Patriarch Kirill imminent? stability is assured and when there is a specific request For now, we are preparing moments of celebration for from the Syrian authorities. the fourth anniversary of the meeting between Kirill and There are divisions between the Orthodox Francis in Havana [on February 12, 2016].

Churches, which also affect the ecumenical journey There was talk of a possible meeting between the with the Church of Rome. What effects do they have Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Moscow in on the relationship between Russia and the Holy Kazakhstan, on the occasion of one of the interreliSee? gious meetings periodically organized in Astana by A great sin in Christianity is the politicization of the the Kazakh government. Would that be a propitious Churches. The parallel Church created in Ukraine arose circumstance? at the request of former President Petro Poroshenko, I read about this hypothesis in the press of Kazawho later lost the election. This does not correspond to khstan and in Italy. I can only add that every possible the Orthodox rules. We are happy with the wise position development and every new step in relationships is very taken by Pope Francis, who has not intervened in eccleprecious. sial controversies, and also, on the conflict in Donbass, Some no longer consider the possibility of a Pope’s has expressed the desire that the crisis be resolved trip to China unrealistic. Will the Pope go to Beijing peacefully, through dialogue. before he goes to Moscow?

How is the sensitivity of the Pope and the Holy See Orthodox Christians in Russia are happy that the sitregarding the ecological issue and the protection of uation of Christians in China is gradually normalizing, creation viewed in Russia? and that the Chinese government looks favorably on this Pope Francis’ encyclical on safeguarding the “comprocess. Patriarch Kirill visited China a few years ago mon home” is a fundamental document of this time. If and also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. I the environment is not protected in the first place, if the myself, on that occasion, communicated to the Holy See world is devastated, humanity will become extinct, and that Kirill’s visit was the visit of a Christian, representthen there will no longer be anyone to put into practice ing all Christians. He took the first step, and that step was the Ten Commandments and the precepts of the Gospel. taken to encourage and open paths.m For this reason, the safeguarding of Creation is like an 36

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PERSPECTIVE

THE ARIAN HERESY AND ITS RELATION TO OUR PRESENT AGE — PART 1 Similarities abound between the current theological chaos in the Church and that of the fourth century

n BY JOSEPH TAMAYO

T

oday, for most people the word “heresy” refers to bygone, forgotten quarrels. Heresy is therefore thought to be of no contemporary interest because it deals with matters no one now takes seriously. If a man speaks of heresy and the powerful effect it has had on history, and still does have, he will hardly be heard. Despite the common indifference to it, heresy is of the highest importance to the individual and to society. In its particular meaning (which is that of Christian Doctrine), heresy is of special interest to anyone who wishes to understand Europe, its history and the history of the Church.

WHAT IS “HERESY?” What is a heresy? According to Webster’s Dictionary, heresy is a) adherence to a religious opinion contrary to Church dogma, and b) denial of a “Revealed Truth” by a member of the Roman Catholic Church (1). Heresy can also be defined as the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by a novel denial of some essential part of the belief system (2). The word “heresy” comes from the Greek word haireo, the first meaning of which was “I grasp or seize”; later it came to mean “I take away” (3).

There are two types of heresy: material heresy and formal heresy. In Catholic theology, a material heresy refers to an opinion objectively contradictory to the teaching of the Church which, as such, is heretical but is uttered by a person without 38

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Left, St. Athanasius of Alexandria.

Below, Arius. The inscription says, “Arius, Heresiarch of the 4th Century.”

Opposite, an icon depicting the Emperor Constantine, accompanied by the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325), holding the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed of 381

knowledge of its being so. In formal heresy, the person believes or teaches the falsehood which is contrary to Catholic doctrine with full knowledge and forethought.

Arianism was the first of the great Christological heresies to seriously threaten the Church.

Arianism proposed that Jesus, as the Son of God, was created

by God. It was proposed early in the 4th century by the Alexandrian priest named Arius.

Arianism is often considered a form of Unitarian theology because it stresses a belief in God the Father at the expense of the Trinity, the doctrine of three distinct persons in one Godhead. The Bible says in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (4). The problem with Arius and the other heretical bishops was that they misinterpreted “begotten.” Arius and the other heretic bishops made the mistake of imposing “time” on God, forgetting that God lives outside of time. They believed that, like human fathers, God the Father existed prior to the Son in time, not just in concept.

Arius was a Greek-speaking African cleric. He was originally a student at the Exegetical School in Antioch. This school was a school of Sophists who were known for studying Greek philosophy. St. Cardinal John Henry Newman said the educational system at Antioch was the “birthplace” of this heresy (5).

Arius studied under Lucian the Martyr.

Early in the 4th century, Arius began to teach his heresy. He was excommunicated in 311 AD by the bishop of Alexandria,

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but the bishop’s successor, Achilles, readmitted him to Christian communion in 313 AD. He was made a priest of the Baucah district in Alexandria. Arius became famous some years before the Roman Emperor Constantine’s victories which freed the Christians from persecution.

Arius was a man of great eloquence and driving power.

He possessed a great deal of ambition, rationalism and arrogance. Arius went from Egypt to Caesarea in Palestine, spreading his rationalizing and Unitarian theories with zeal.

Arianism would have been a dangerous warping of the Catholic faith if left unchecked; it declared that Our Lord was as much of the Divine Essence as was possible for a creature, but that he was nonetheless a creature. It sprang from the desire to visualize clearly and simply something which is beyond the grasp of human vision and comprehension, namely, three Divine persons, all uncreated in one Godhead, the Triune God (6). It inevitably would have led in the long run into mere Unitarianism and the treating of Our Lord as the last prophet, but nonetheless, only a prophet (7).

According to Arianism’s opponents, especially St. Athanasius, Arius’ teachings reduced the Son to a demigod, reintroduced polytheism (since worship of the Son was not abandoned), and undermined the Christian concept of redemption, since only he who was truly God could be deemed to have reconciled humanity to the Godhead (8). This also would eventually allow room for him to have a sinful nature, or at least the possibility of sin in his life. We are seeing examples of this today, such as the denial of Christ’s divinity. Now we have examples of Syncretism, where all religions are treated as inspired

by God. Such heresies must be rejected by the faithful as our Early Church Fathers and their predecessors have done.

THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA Arius was propagating his ideas in earnest and began to canvass for support among the clergy and lay people in Alexandria and beyond.

In 321 AD, a local synod of bishops in Egypt and Libya deposed Arius and his allies, but this didn’t stop him. In 325 AD, the Emperor Constantine convened the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea to deal with this severe crisis.

The Council excommunicated Arius, banished him and condemned his teachings.

The Council created The Nicene Creed which states that the Son (Jesus) is homousion to Patri — a Greek phrase which is translated “of one substance with the Father.” The Greek word homousion is important because it perfectly means “of the same substance”: the same essence, identical in every respect; not different one iota!!

During this time, another great figure appeared, St. Athanasius of Alexandria. St. Athanasius was born in 296 AD. He was learned in philosophy and Neoplatonism, but his special interest was in the Holy Scriptures. He was courageous and unflinching in the face of danger or adversity. St. Gregory the Theologian called him “the pillar of the Church.” In 325 AD, St. Athanasius served as the secretary to the Bishop of Alexandria at the Council of Nicaea. Under the bishop, St. Athanasius wrote many letters and documents condemning the Arians.

Another great figure at this time was St. Hosius of Alexandria, who helped propose the idea of homousion for the Creed. He also wrote letters to the Emperor Constantine to influence his opinion in favor of the orthodox bishops. Under Constantine, the Council of Nicaea included in the Creed the phrase “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father,” which became a dogma of the Church. Some time after the Council, St. Athanasius succeeded St. Alexander and became bishop of Alexandria. In 337 Constantine died, and those Church leaders who had supported Arius, as well as Arius himself, attempted to return to their churches and sees and to banish their enemies. They were very successful.

The Empire was divided under two rulers at this time.

The anti-Arian Emperor Constans ruled in the West and the West remained mostly orthodox, while pro-Arian Constantius II ruled in the East. At a Church Council at Antioch in 341 AD, an affirmation of the faith that omitted the homousion clause was issued. Under Constantius in the East, the Arians gained power and influence.

END PART I 1 Webster’s Dictionary 2 The Great Heresies by Hillaire Belloc 3 Ibid.

4 Douay Rheims Bible: John 3:16 5 Arians of the 4th Century by St. John Henry Newman 6 Belloc, Heresies 7 Ibid. m

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EDUCATION

NEWMAN AS PROPHET, NEWMAN AS PHYSICIAN

St. John Henry Newman foresaw that if the highest truths were cast out from the university, secondary disciplines would try to replace them.

Our children and grandchildren have paid the price in mind, body, and soul n BY GEORGE A. HARNE, PHD*

Central photo: aerial view of the college. Surrounding photos, some of the college’s activities including a cultural exhibit in the campus’ old chapel. Facing page: Newman, and the college’s President Harne

T

he crisis began well before Newman. In the 17th century, René Descartes released pathogens of skepticism and reductionism into higher learning that ultimately hollowed out its core and destroyed its foundations. The effects of his work and those who came after him were not immediately visible as long as society maintained the trappings of Christian conviction. Those trappings have long been discarded. Today, many of those who contributed to the building of the Western intellectual tradition and Catholic education have been recast as unenlightened at best and enemies at worst. And too often, Churchmen who could have offered light

40

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

against the growing darkness have traded the integrity of their educational institutions for the porridge of affirmation offered by cultural elites.

St. John Henry Newman foresaw that if the highest truths about God and man were cast out from the university, secondary disciplines would assert themselves as the explanatory keys of human nature, purpose, and our greater reality. And his vision was accurate. As theology and metaphysics have been pushed to the margins or ejected altogether, the social sciences, usually with a hard ideological and political edge, have taken over and re-oriented the university.

These secondary disciplines, extending themselves

40-41 CULTURE Magdalen Education1corr_Culture 2/22/20 2:12 PM Page 41

beyond their competence, have created ideologies that have colonized beyond the academy, taking root within the very heart of our political and social structures.

And this has had effects beyond the classroom, shaping how universities form — or abdicate in forming — the students entrusted to them.

And our children and grandchildren have paid the price in mind, body, and soul.

But lest we lose hope in this season of shadows, St. John Henry Newman has been raised to the altars, a saint who offers a path for rebuilding what the vandals have torn down. As a prophet, St. John Henry Newman foresaw the course higher learning would take and its effects. As a physician he offers through his writings and example the means to recover what has been lost.

This is a twofold path. In the first path, and in contrast to the contemporary captivity of higher education, with its therapeutic management of students unprepared for reality, Newman directed and often personally undertook the formation of students entrusted to his care in a residential collegiate setting. Newman called for and practiced careful attention to the life of the student in a residential college. In his fine study, The Making of Men: The Idea and Reality of Newman’s University in Oxford and Dublin, Paul Shrimpton documents in detail the great care that Newman took in the formation of students as whole persons.

Applying Newman’s vision to our current moment, we see that residential collegiate life must be about more than shaping students according to the fads of the present news cycle and should be ordered to preparing students to thrive in this life and the next. Properly Catholic collegiate life will form each student intentionally in a way that is rooted in a clear sense of human nature and animated by a robust — and transcendent — vision of human flourishing. The sacraments will be central to this life as well as a realistic understanding of the consequences of the Fall, the need for and means to cultivate natural virtue, the good news of a Christianity to be proposed to the world, and the essential roles of friendship, community, and mentors who can lead the way.

And at the level of curriculum and institutional purpose — the second path — Newman offered a pro-

gram of studies according to which the whole of wisdom finds well-ordered expression. In this curriculum, the truth about God and man takes pride of place as the ordering keystone around which all other disciplines find their places.

And while most Catholic colleges and universities have become indistinguishable in purpose, means, and ethos from their secular counterparts, there are critical exceptions. Simultaneous to the decline of so many institutions, Newman’s example and writings have served as the foundation for a re-birth of Catholic education in other quarters. And I am blessed to see this re-birth unfolding each day. Never doubt the potential of a mustard seed!

Each day, at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, I see an institution in which the curriculum, the classroom, the culture, the governing policies, and the co-curricular programs are ordered to the highest things.

Students learn together in a collegiate community aiming to discover Wisdom — unabashedly engaging deeply the greatest authors and thinkers of the Western tradition — so that they can become saints and be salt and light in renewing the world. Each day I witness an approach to collegiate residential life that calls students to virtue and heroic sacrifice ordered to evangelization and cultural renewal. And each day I walk the halls of a college that reads the Great Books, prepares graduates for professional success, and is animated by a love of our Eucharistic Lord.

Such an education has the power to restore what was lost and to renew our Church and our society.

As prophet and physician, St. John Henry Newman offers a legacy in writing and in deed that only grows with the passing of time. May his heavenly intercession aid us as we seek to embody his vision in our own institution and in the graduates who will one day take the reins of our secular and ecclesial institutions. We thank God for Newman’s example and pray that we may be faithful to what he has given to us.

*President, Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, New Hampshire, USAm MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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THE INTERIOR CASTLE

CONTEMPLATIVE RICHES OF THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS

PART 2: ADORATION AND SACRIFICE – QUOTES TAKEN FROM THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS, SECTION 1, BY NICHOLAS GIHR

n BY A HERMITESS

“T

he sacrificial service of the Old Law was regulated and ordained by God Himself in its most minute details. In the New Law the essential elements and features of worship proceed directly from Jesus Christ. First of them all is sacrifice, which constitutes the fundamental and central act of divine service. Neither to the Synagogue nor to the Church did God impart the right or power to institute sacrifices: in His infinite mercy He Himself condescended to prescribe the sacrifices by which He would be honored and propitiated (required because of man’s fallen condition).”

The connection between adoration and sacrifice may not be immediately obvious, but is shown to man in the Sacrifice of the Mass. “Its object is, in the main, both practical and ascetical: not only to appeal to the understanding, but also to inflame the heart and to move the will.”

Denis the Carthusian confirms that the Mass should “move the heart and excite devotion.”

Suarez: “Without truth, piety is feeble; without piety, truth is terrible and void…”

The Sacrifice of the Mass is the highest form of prayer, because “sacrifice is an act of religion, in fact, the supreme act of religion. For by the offering of sacrifice the Divine Majesty is honored in the worthiest and most perfect manner.”

The virtue of religion is a supernatural virtue, which is infused by grace: “an abiding disposition inclining us to render unto God the worship due Him.” However, man can dispose himself to the increase of this virtue by making some effort. “Ease and readiness in the performance of supernatural acts of religion are the fruit of faithful exercise and are obtainable by our own exertions assisted by grace.”

The actuosus (mistranslated into English by the words “active participation”) is man’s effort in the act of religion.

Religare (to bind) binds one to God most intimately, while religere (“God-fearing”) means to take carefully into con42

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sideration, to ponder over, to weigh conscientiously, to reflect upon with due care.

The virtue of religion involves both of these etymologies. One must exercise the act of religion by “carefully nursing and waiting upon the divine and holy.” To abide in the cultus means veneration and honor to the Final End of all things — particularly the Final End of man, which is GOD. “The Holy Ghost plants the virtue of religion in the garden of the soul”…. It is the “duty of man to nourish this precious gift of heaven… Inasmuch as we acknowledge the greatness, majesty, dominion of the Triune God, and at the same time, confess our littleness, lowliness, dependence,” we dispose ourselves to mystical entry into that very Calvary, that very perfect act of religion performed by Christ Himself at every Mass.

A “humble subjection to His unlimited power and dominion” (not exactly the favorite thing of modern man!) allows a proper ordering of the relation of creature to Creator. “This relation is absolute… entire dependence on God.” The aesthetics of the Mass leads man into a deep awareness of this relation, which is necessary for contemplation.

Man belongs entirely to God as His possession. If this point is forgotten, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will seem quite irrelevant, and graces offered for depth of encounter with God are missed. Man must re-learn this hard lesson, somehow, in these latter times, to be able to understand the Sacrifice of the Mass. “His perfections are inexhaustible and incomparable, surpassing and excelling all things, incomprehensible and unspeakable. God possesses infinite grandeur and dignity. Therefore, all rational creatures, being immeasurably below Him, owe Him the profoundest respect and veneration.”

Man’s greatest debt, his greatest obligation, is contained in the First Commandment: Man owes God sacrifice and adoration. This thought moves quickly through

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the mind on occasion, but perhaps it does not sink in. “God is not only inconceivably exalted above heaven and earth, but by His creative power… He is the Sovereign Master.

All creatures are the work of His hands. They belong to Him as His property. He has, then, the highest and most absolute dominion over all creatures, because they exist only for Him and must act only for Him and serve Him alone.”

Worship consists in adoration but also in propitiation, because of the fall of man.

The cultus latreuticus, the supreme and perfect homage to God alone on account of His infinite perfection, is accomplished by Christ alone in the Mass. The Holy Trinity is the object of worship. Man’s uniting to this supreme act of worship, the actuosus, is to have little reference to the self, because in the Mass, in worship and contemplation, the creature is abnegated. He is not “swallowed up” as in the case of Dathan, not “covered up” as in the case of Abiram, but lost in God Himself, completely blissful in self-forgetfulness.

This perfect act of religion accomplished by Christ in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the actuosus by which man unites himself to that Sacrifice, must be especially interior, i.e. of the mind and heart. But the interior actions must also reveal themselves externally — become corporeal. This actuosus means that “the interior dispositions of the soul should enliven the exterior actions” to point toward religious reverence, and submission of the body toward God, “according to the words of the royal prophet: ‘My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.’ (Ps. 83:3)” Again, the relationship of lex credendi (the “law of believeing,” what we believe the Mass to be) to lex orandi (the “law of praying,” how we pray what we believe) should correspond. Both soul and body, both flesh and spirit, unite in a vertical movement toward the Triune God in the act of religion. “A spirit of reverential homage should as a heavenly spice and consecration, pervade our whole life in order to render it more pleasing to God.” Sacrifice is the supreme act of external worship. “Sacrifice, properly speaking, is the offering of a visible object effected through any change, transformation, or destruction, in order to effectually acknowledge the absolute majesty and sovereignty of God as well as man’s submission.”

In personal prayer, this can mean the many internal acts of submission of the will to God, which is sometimes

shown outwardly by the various prayer postures indicating (effecting, even) the “destruction” or change of the human will to be in conformity with God’s will. In the case of the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Consecration shows outwardly, though in an unbloody manner, the highest act of worship.

Why is sacrifice the highest act of worship? “The value of sacrifice depends chiefly on the dignity and interior disposition of the one offering.” That is why Christ offering the Mass through the instrumentality of the priest, who is in persona Christi, is the only One who can propitiate the Divine Justice. In the case of the Mass, the destruction of the Victim happens at Transubstantiation. This is the effecting of the Sacrifice.

“The value of the gift presented also contributes to make the sacrifice more acceptable to God…. Not every gift is a sacrifice. It greatly depends on the manner of offering. Some change or destruction of the gift must take place to constitute sacrifice. Whatever has not been liturgically transformed cannot be a real sacrifice.”

The Mosaic liturgical rites of sacrifice prefigured this by necessitating the burning of the whole victim. Sacrificium is a real sacrifice, while oblatio is merely a religious gift. “The intrinsic and more weighty reason why such a transformation or destruction of the gift is requisite for the act of sacrifice lies in the peculiar meaning and the special object of sacrifice.” That is, only God is worthy to have sacrifice offered to Him. “Sacrifice, that is, the destruction of the gift offered… essentially aims at glorifying God as the absolute Lord and Supreme Lawmaker of all creatures, and this is to adore God. The meaning is inseparably connected with sacrifice; it holds the first place and is always an act of worship due to God alone — an act of adoration.”

“No mere man, but our divine Savior alone, could institute so sublime and so excellent a sacrifice as we possess in the Mass. Thus, it follows that sacrifice is the most exalted and perfect manner of honoring God, and therefore excels all other worship…. Man, by the offering of sacrifice, renders to God the highest possible honor and homage.”

“In sacrifice the interior adoration of the divine Majesty attains its fullest expression. Sacrifice is essentially an act of adoration and therefore always includes the acknowledgement of the divinity of Him to whom it is offered.

Among all acts of worship, it is the prerogative of God, and may be offered only to the one true God.”m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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FOOTSTEPS ON THE WAY

THOMAS MORE AND LONDON BRIDGE THE VIEW FROM LONDON BRIDGE IS A VISTA OF CENTURIES OF MARTYRDOM AND OF GLORY n BY K.V. TURLEY

I

The meeting of Thomas More with his daughter after his death sentence. Below, Old London Bridge as it was in 1616. The spiked heads of executed criminals can be seen above the Southwark gatehouse.

Opposite , the cell in the Tower of London in which King Henry VIII held St. Thomas More prisoner

f you stand on London Bridge and look east you will see the Tower of London.

It was on a small hill behind the Tower that, in 1535, St. Thomas More was beheaded.

Thereafter, his head was taken to London Bridge and placed upon a spike for all who came and went across that bridge to gaze upon. A month or so after the execution, Margaret, More’s daughter, was rowed up the Thames, from the now desolate family home in Chelsea, to London Bridge to ask for her father’s head. Soon after, clutching this relic of her dead father, the daughter drifted downstream in a barge away from the bridge and its awful memories. It was not the first time a martyr had been so dealt with. St. John Fisher had had his head impaled on the same bridge. It was strangely fitting that the ending of the old order should be played out upon this bridge.

Legend has it that, at the end of the 6th century, it was by the same bridge that St. Augustine of Canterbury entered the city, having been sent by Pope St. Gregory the Great. The pontiff had seen fair-haired English children being sold as slaves on the streets of Rome and famously observed: “Not Angles but angels.” The mission undertaken by St. Augustine was to bear fruit, not least when the King of Kent, Ethelbert, was baptized. Subsequently, as temporal power acknowledged the spiritual power of Rome, a new order was slowly born.

Today’s bridge is not the original one. In fact, on closer inspection, the bridge, or more correctly the many 44

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bridges constructed on this site, have a curious history of appearances and disappearances. The Romans had raised some sort of structure there. A medieval timber bridge followed that, in turn, was replaced by a stone one. The latter was financed by King Henry II as an act of penance for his part in the slaying of St. Thomas à Becket. Thereafter, the bridge became a place of pilgrimage to the memory of that late Archbishop of Canterbury, the most famous martyr in medieval Christendom. It also became part of the pilgrimage route from London to Canterbury and beyond — to Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem. This most ancient of London river crossings by then had become a visible link to the wider world of Christendom and its holy sites.

The old stone bridge of Henry II was demolished in 1831 when another structure was unveiled. It had taken seven years to build this new bridge alongside the old. Something else had changed during those intervening years. The cause of Catholic Emancipation had gathered pace, culminating with the election of the Irish Catholic, Daniel O’Connell, to the parliamentary seat of Clare in 1828. The then-Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, an Irish Protestant, in the face of much opposition, pushed through the reforms that removed centuries-old Penal Laws that had forced Catholics throughout the British Isles to live as secondclass citizens. By the time the latest incarnation of London Bridge was opened in 1831, the religious landscape of the city had irrevocably changed;

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Catholic Emancipation had St. Thomas More had been tried been enacted in parliament two and found guilty of treason, years earlier. and, thereafter, condemned to Almost twenty years after death. His crime was his refusal that, on November 11, 1850, a to recognize the break with certain carriage was spotted Rome as set out in the Oath of traveling over the bridge. It conSupremacy. More had refused tained Nicholas Wiseman: now, to renounce his allegiance to the His Eminence, Nicholas CardiSupreme Pontiff and all that nal Wiseman, the first Cardinal that meant. Centuries later, Archbishop of Westminster, PriPope Benedict had come to mate to a newly restored English acknowledge the Englishman JOURNEY TO ENGLAND hierarchy. He had travelled from and all that he had come to repRome by train, eventually arrivresent to successive generations JUNE 15-23, 2020 ing at London Bridge train staand to all those who choose oin Inside the Vatican Pilgrimages on a tion. He had then made his way freedom of conscience over a unique journey to England June 15-23, 2020 across the nearby bridge to stay to follow in the footsteps of great men and state-imposed ideology. at a friend’s house on the river’s women such as Saints John Henry Newman While the nineteenth-centunorth side. This seemingly sim- and Thomas More, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. ry London Bridge was being ple trip was, in fact, a momen- Tolkein and C.S. Lewis! demolished, some few miles tous one, resonant with over 300 upstream an altogether differOn our “In the Footsteps of Saints Thomas years of history, years of perse- More and John Henry Newman” Pilgrimage ent structure was being erected cution but also telling of sur- you will stand in St. Thomas More’s cell in the upon the banks of the Thames. vival. Two years later, the then- Tower of London, where he spent his last If you were then to travel west Fr. John Henry Newman was to month before his martyrdom, and visit Oxford, from the new bridge being built, preach of a “Second Spring”: “A where St. John Henry Newman lived and past Westminster, you would second temple rises on the ruins taught — and Catholic expert and author K.V. have come to Chelsea. It was Turley will join us on this special journey of of the old.” And, mysteriously, there with his family that More faith! that Temple was being built, in had lived. In the late 1960s, the T O LEARN MORE VISIT part at least, from the ruins of a local authorities decided to pilgrimages@insidethevatican.com bridge that had witnessed the erect a statue to its most famous OR CALL 202-536-4555 seemingly never-ending battle resident: Sir Thomas More. By between state-sponsored religion and the Catholic 1969, the statue was unveiled. Today a larger-than-life faith. stone More sits and gazes out upon the river Thames The 19th-century bridge was not to last either. By and the relentless flow of its waters.

1968 it had been dismantled and sold to a property It is a peculiar piece of art, strangely compelling in developer in Arizona. In Lake Havasu City, it was its size and its stillness. At that spot, Thomas More reconstructed and remains there to this day. Yet anothnow sits and watches until the day comes when the er London Bridge was then built over the Thames, and waters no longer flow into the city, no longer rush past opened by the current Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, on the nation’s seat of power; no longer drift under its St. Patrick’s Day, 1973. many bridges; no longer swirl around the latest strucToday it is that bridge upon which one stands when ture called London Bridge; no longer pass by the looking east to the Tower. Turning to the west, it is Tower and its Traitors’ Gate; and even cease to move Westminster that comes into view. It was there that the ever outwards to the seas and the oceans beyond. successor of Pope St. Gregory the Great came in 2010.

For, at that moment, the age-old struggle in which On September 17 of that year, the then-Supreme Ponthe saint lost his life shall have ended. Then, at last, tiff, Pope Benedict XVI, stood in the Palace of Westthere will descend a new City through which only livminster surrounded by present-day parliamentarians. ing waters flow.

The event he had come to remember was marked upon (This article originally appeared in Crisis magathe floor of that ancient palace. It was the spot where zine online. It is republished with permission.)m

J

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C AT H O L I C I S M A N D O R T H O D O X Y E D I T E D B Y: C H R I S T I N A D E A R D U R F F

The Message of the Icon DIVINIZATION

od became man so that man might become God.” Perhaps no cornerstone statement of Eastern spirituality has been subjected to more misinterpretation than St. Athanasius’ succinct summation of the Incarnation. Yet, the entire mystery of the social relation between humanity and God is indeed contained in that one short statement.

Sin entered the world through disobedience to God; something departed from the world at that very same instant of primal defiance. Humanity lost the very spark of divinity which ensured our likeness to God. An alienation arose within the family; no longer could there be discerned a “family ethos,” though a distorted resemblance remained. The image of God endured, but any likeness to the Good, the True and the Beautiful took on a twisted dimension, a sickness of incompletion.

G.K. Chesterton describes well the miserable state of affairs obtaining without that spark: “A sickness was upon the mind of man,” and “Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung,” and “They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named.”

At the instant of Divine Incarnation, what was lost for so many ages came back to abide once more in humanity.

That which had been perfectly sinless in humanity before the ancestral disaster is restored through the sinless flesh of the Virgin; through partaking of the sinless Flesh and Blood of God made Man, the family is restored to a proper harmony in the Eucharistic holiday meal. The very Blood of God once again runs in the veins of restored human beings and the likeness to God is once more accessible to all.

True, the restoration does not happen without a certain sacrificial effort. Living a likeness to the Savior

“G

BY ROBERT WIESNER

necessarily entails ascending the Cross. With Christ as the norm, a normal Christian life simply is not possible without embracing the full spectrum of Christ’s behavior. All are called to dispense healing in word and act, to extend the Divine Spark to all, even at the cost of our own blood. Most are asked simply to expend their time, treasure and wisdom, and often there is quite enough in those things to satisfy the demands of the Cross. Yet, even today, certain of our family members (perhaps those particularly in the Chaldean branch) are quite literally spilling their blood and thus sanctifying their land for generations yet to come. The Divine Spark grows into a raging, cleansing holocaust under such conditions, a flame which heals human distortion and gives rise to holiness, even in nature itself. Indeed, the land of the Chaldees, from whence came the Magi, has become holy ground through the blood of countless martyrs.

The mystery of divinization in humanity is something not fully to be understood in this life. Even St. Paul, certainly something of an authority on the subject of godliness, affirms that we cannot know exactly what is entailed. He tells us that we don’t precisely know what we will be like in our final form, but that we certainly will be like Christ. Of course, we do not become God by our nature (we are, after all, human!) but we once more take on the divine likeness to match our divine image by the gracious act of God in offering us adoption into the family. Perhaps adoption is not quite the right model, after all, since we do indeed carry the Blood of the family in our bodies through our reception of the Eucharist. We are quite literally blood brothers (and sisters!) to Jesus Christ Himself, a dignity to which even our first ancestors could not lay claim.m

INSIDE THE VATICAN PILGRIMAGES made a special pilgrimage to Russia and Rome for the 100th anniversary of the murder of Tsar Nicholas, his wife, and their five children in 1918. Contact us at insidethevaticanpilgrimages.com for information about joining us for upcoming special pilgrimages like this one. page 46

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Spirituality

BY FATHER EL MESKEEN*

“WE WERE CREATED FOR PRAYER”

CONTINUING CHAPTER 1 OF MATTA EL-MESKEEN’S ORTHODOX PRAYER LIFE: A DEFINITION OF PRAYER AND ITS EFFICACY

od’s willingness to share in man’s temporal life, G with all its failings, is certainly striking. He under-

takes to bear with man the responsibility for the imperfections of the whole temporal order. He accepts with him the oppression of nature that has been “subjected to futility” (Rom 8:20). During our prayer and daily life, we will eventually comprehend this amazing condescension on God’s part in calling us to stand before Him and speak with Him. He is willing to share all our difficulties with us: “In all their affliction he was afflicted” (Is 63:9).

This will open up for us the mystery of how God’s greatness and humility are in harmony. Through our sense of God’s greatness, the fact of our sinfulness will be revealed to us, together with the condemnation we deserve, leading us to repent. Through His humility in dealing with us, all our sense of pride will be burnt up within us. We will feel contrite in His presence and will experience an overwhelming sense of self-abasement. The sacrifice of our humility and our love to Him will thus become perfect.

Through this, the nature of prayer will be revealed to us as an effective means of communion with God that brings sure and definite results.

Thus, prayer begins on God’s part as a secret call to stand before Him. We then carry it as a free response in our yearning to speak with Him. Afterward, prayer assumes its divine purpose as an act of repentance and purification. It subsequently attains its ultimate goal as a sacrifice of love and humility that prepares us for fellowship with God. Although prayer is a spiritual sense implanted in man’s soul, in the very core of its self-consciousness, many people never pray. Prayer thus remains dormant for a whole lifetime. A man may die without ever having been aware of the self or of its affinity to God. St. Jude the Apostle described such souls as “wandering stars for whom the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved for ever” (Jude 13).

This is a very serious matter. Prayer is not merely a sense to be used to organize our lives in this age alone.

It is implanted in our nature that, through it, we may ascend to God and achieve union with Him. We may

thus pass from this fleeting perishable life to an eternal life with God. It seems as if we were created for prayer.

Prayer is the only bond that links us to God. It stands before our hearts as the eternal life, which is our hope.

Prayer is the condition in which we discover our own divine image, on which the stamp of the Holy Trinity is impressed.

When we lose prayer, we actually lose the glory of our image, and we no longer resemble God in any way.

God draws us to himself through prayer, and through prayer we mysteriously travel toward Him in a manner too deep to understand. In fact, through prayer we draw God to ourselves, and He comes to us and makes His home with us. To God, love is not an emotion but a self-offering. In prayer, God offers us Himself. God offered us Himself when He created us in His own image.

Through prayer, He offers us union with Himself so that He may become totally ours, and we may become totally His. Prayer opens up our lives toward God: “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them” (Is 63.9).

Prayer also opens up God’s life to us: “The Spirit himself intercedes for us [during prayer] with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8.26).

Each [of the saints in the book’s chapter] defined prayer as he saw it and tasted it, not as a concept or as intellectual knowledge, but as experience and life…. Their lives became prayer and their prayer became life. Compare your life with theirs and your experience with theirs.

If your spirit burns within you, lay down this book, worship, and pray, and thus mingle your reading with prayer.

(To be continued) *Father Matta El Meskeen (translated as Matthew the Poor), was born Youssef Eskander on September 20, 1919. He died on June 8, 2006. He was a Coptic Orthodox monk and spiritual father of 130 monks in the Monastery of St. Macarius the Great at Scetis in Wadi Natrun, Egypt. He was the key figure in the revival of Coptic monasticism which began in 1969. He was a renowned Orthodox theologian and prolific author.m

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C AT H O L I C I S M A N D O R T H O D O X Y

East-West Watch

BY PETER ANDERSON

THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC-ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE – PART II Vienna plenary. Dialogue Commission, Cardinal Kurt Koch, Ioannis Zizioulas, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn and others (Franz Josef Rupprecht photo)

T

he plenary session of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches (“Commission”), held in Ravenna in October 2007, was very successful and adopted a document on synodality and authority. For the first time in the theological dialogue, Catholics and Orthodox agreed that a protos (primate) is needed at all levels of the Church, including the universal level. However, there was one problem — the Moscow Patriarchate had boycotted the plenary because of a dispute with the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

In October 2008, the Coordinating Committee of the Commission, again without participation of the Moscow Patriarchate, met in Crete and agreed on the text of a new document to be considered by the next plenary in 2009. This “Crete document” focused on the role of the Bishop of Rome in the first millennium. It is the consistent practice of the Commission not to make public a draft, such as the Crete document, until after it is adopted by the plenary. Unfortunately, in this case, an Italian Catholic journalist somehow obtained a copy of the Crete document and posted it on his website. The text caused an uproar among conservative Orthodox who believed that it assigned too important a role to the papacy.

The Commission considered the Crete document at its plenary meeting in Paphos, Cyprus in October 2009.

At this point, the Moscow Patriarchate had rejoined the dialogue. Probably due to the uproar from Orthodox conservatives resulting from the leaked Crete document, the warm atmosphere prevailing at Ravenna was replaced by a cold chill. The hotel in Paphos where the plenary was held was even picketed by Orthodox conservatives. Although the Crete document had been approved by the Catholic and Orthodox members of the Coordinating Committee, it was now subject to harsh criticism from the Orthodox side at Paphos, and only page 48

half the document was reviewed.

Another plenary meeting was scheduled for September 2010 in Vienna to continue discussion of the document.

Although the atmosphere in Vienna was better than Cyprus, there were still serious disagreements on the Crete document.

One major problem was that the Orthodox could not agree among themselves with respect to primacy on the universal level. The Ecumenical Patriarchate, which believes that it possesses a form of universal primacy with certain limited powers over the other Local Orthodox Churches, was very open to the concept of universal primacy. On the other hand, the Moscow Patriarchate, which fiercely opposes the concept that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has more powers than it, contended that universal primacy was simply honor and not authority.

After the conclusion of the plenary, Metropolitan Hilarion (Moscow Patriarchate) expressed his opinion that the Crete document would never be an official document of the Commission.

In December 2013, the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate approved a document, prepared by its own theological commission, which held that primacy at the universal level involves only honor. This Synodal decision in effect prevents any flexibility on the universal primacy issue by the Moscow Patriarchate in the theological dialogue with the Catholic Church. The Orthodox members of the Commission had agreed among themselves that the Orthodox position in the dialogue required a complete consensus of all of its participating churches. This consensus requirement in turn gave the Moscow Patriarchate a veto to prevent the Orthodox side in the dialogue from taking any position inconsistent with the 2013 decision of its Synod.

This set the stage for the next plenary of the Commission which was held in Amman, Jordan in 2014 and which will be discussed in Part III.m

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NEWS from the EAST

METROPOLITAN TIKHON LEADS ORTHODOX PRAYER SERVICE AT MARCH FOR LIFE On January 24, Metropolitan Tikhon, 53, Archbishop of Washington for the Orthodox Church in America, joined by members of the Holy Synod and brother bishops from other jurisdictions, led Orthodox faithful gathered at the 47th March for Life in Washington, D.C. in a prayer service for the innocent children whose lives have been taken.

Following the prayer service, Tikhon addressed the faithful, “Today, we march in solidarity with many others from across our nation to show our government leaders our commitment to life — to life that begins from the very moment of conception. As we march today, we sing praises to God, our God Who does wonders, praying that He works His wonders and moves the heart of our nation to repentance.”

Recalling the words from the Wisdom of Solomon, “God did not make death, and He does not delight in the death of the living. For He created all things that they might exist” (Wis Sol 1:13-14), Tikhon prayed that our Lord would “open the hearts of our government leaders to have pity for His little ones, so that our leaders may overturn the sorrowful legislation which legalized abortion 47 years ago.”

Tikhon then led the Orthodox faithful in the March down Constitution Avenue to the Supreme Court. Marching with Tikhon, from the Orthodox Church in America

MORE AND MORE: HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS COME OUT TO DEFEND MONTENEGRIN CHURCH On February 2, up to 200,000 believers of the Serbian Orthodox Church took to the streets of Montenegro, whose population is about 630,000 people, in prayer processions against an anti-Church law.

The Montenegrin government on December 27, 2019, adopted the law “On Freedom of Religion and Belief and the Legal Status of Religious Communities,” according to which the state becomes the owner of the bulk of Church property (including land, buildings, and

BY BECKY DERKS

were Archbishop Melchisedek of Pittsburgh, Archbishop Michael of New York, Archbishop David of Sitka, Bishop Paul of Chicago and Bishop Daniel of Santa Rosa. Bishop Thomas of the Antiochian Archdiocese in North America, and Archbishop Daniel of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA also marched with Metropolitan Tikhon.

This was the 33rd year in which the Orthodox Church in America has participated in the March for Life. In 1987 Metropolitan Herman, then Bishop of Philadelphia, and Archpriest John Kowalczyk marched for the first time. Bishop Herman addressed the marchers that year, becoming the first Orthodox hierarch to address the annual March.

On the eve of the March, Metropolitan Tikhon and his delegation attended the Prayer Vigil at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, where they were welcomed by Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Archbishop Joseph extended a warm welcome to those representing the Orthodox Church. Also in attendance were Bishop Apostolos of Medeia, representing the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States, Archbishop Daniel of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and representing the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, Archbishop Dionysius John Kawak.

(Orthodox Church in America) even holy relics), provoking massive protests across Montenegro. For example, on the night of January 2627, tens of thousands of Orthodox joined a nighttime religious procession and prayer vigil, standing in defense of the shrines of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.

A record number of believers came out to prayer protests in Podgorica, Bielo-Pole, Beran, Bar, Niksic and other cities of Montenegro. The believers, who are seeking the abolition of the anti-Church law, chanted “We will not give up the shrines!” and claimed that there will be more protesters every day, the Vijesti portal reports.

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C AT H O L I C I S M A N D O R T H O D O X Y

A prayer service in front of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in the country’s capital, Podgorica, gathered “the maximum number of people in the history of the city” on the streets.

“Nobody can do anything to us,” said Archpriest Mamchilo Krivokapich, viceregent of the Montenegrin-Littoral Metropolitan Amphilochios, who led the peaceful prayer procession in Podgorica. “Until this law is withdrawn, we will not leave the streets. Every day there will be more of us. Negotiations will be possible only when the law is revoked.”

The clergyman emphasized that “if he (Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic – Ed.) does not repeal the law, then the law will repeal him.”

The publication said that village residents are joining protest prayers in large cities, among them plenty of young people making a kind of walking pilgrimage. In fact, 17 young men from Plevli had covered the record-setting route of 84 kilometers before the beginning of Sunday services in northern Montenegro. Mass services were also held in Herceg Novi, Budva, Zabljak, Danilovgrad and other cities of the country.

It is noted that small groups of people tried several times to chant political slogans and derogatory remarks against President Milo Djukanovic; however, participants in the prayer processions did not allow them to do this, recalling that the main target of the event was to protect the shrines.

(Union of Orthodox Journalists)

ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH AT THE INTERFAITH MEETING IN ABU DHABI Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew underlined the important role that religions can play in preserving world peace and promoting respect for human dignity, in a spirit of solidarity and safeguarding of fundamental freedoms, in the context of the interfaith meeting organized on February 4, 2020 by the “International Commission on Human Brotherhood” in Abu Dhabi, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the signing, in the same city, of the “Declaration of Human Brotherhood” by the Pope of Rome and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew pointed out that people today are expecting a common witness from the people of faith, and therefore, that it is the duty of all to promote interfaith dialogue as communication frees religions from introspection. He added that if religions act as forces of openness, then this can serve as a positive challenge for secular institutions and humanitarian movements to discover in Faith a valuable ally in promoting the sacred cause of freedom, equality and brotherhood.

During his visit to the United Arab Emirates, the Ecumenical Patriarch met with Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan,

page 50

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, as well as Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign and International Cooperation. He also visited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Center, where he was informed about its history, as well as the local branch of the Louvre Museum. The Ecumenical Patriarch was accompanied by the Metropolitans Emmanuel of France and Ignatius of Dimitrias and Almyros.

On the same day in the morning, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and his entourage met with the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was coincidentally on an official visit to the United Arab Emirates. During their meeting, the Prime Minister of Greece and the Ecumenical Patriarch discussed issues of mutual interest in the presence of Ministers of his Government, the Ambassador of Greece to the Emirates Dionysios Zoi and Mrs. Mareva Mitsotakis. (Ecupatria)

SECRETARY POMPEO AND ORTHODOX CHURCH OF UKRAINE AGREE ON BILATERAL COOPERATION U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Metropolitan Epiphany Dumenko of the recently-formed Orthodox Church of Ukraine met January 31, at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, the administrative center of the OCU. According to the report on the OCU website, the parties reached an agreement on bilateral cooperation.

Hierarchs of the OCU have publicly acknowledged that their Church was created in late 2018 and given autocephaly in early 2019 by the Patriarchate of Constantinople thanks to the support of the U.S. State Department and other Western powers.

Dumenko spoke about the formation of his OCU, its relation with society and the state, and the expansion of its international relations.

He also expressed “gratitude to the American side for the firm and reliable support of Ukraine both in the context of countering external challenges that our country continues to face, and on the path of state and democratic reforms.” The sides also discussed the role of Russia in Crimea and Donbass and charged the neighboring state with persecuting Ukrainian clergy. Dumenko called for sanctions to be increased against Russia until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored.

Moreover, an agreement was reached with the State Department on further support for bilateral cooperation, “especially in the field of protecting the freedom of conscience and religion.”

Recall that Dumenko and Pompeo met in Washington in October, where they discussed many of the same issues.

(OrthoChristian)

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A PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY WAS HELD IN THE CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL IN MOSCOW A prayer for Christian unity was held on January 22 at the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Moscow. Every year, ecumenical worship is held in this cathedral as part of the Week of Prayer for the Unity of Christians, which takes place from January 18-25. The theme of the week for 2020 is “They have shown us considerable humanity” (Acts 28:2). The materials for the prayers were prepared by the Christian Churches on the islands of Malta and Gozo, where on February 10, most Christians celebrate the day of the shipwreck of St. Paul.

The service was attended by: priest Alexei Dikarev (Russian Orthodox Church), secretary of the Department for External Church Relations for Inter-Christian Relations; Pastor Artis Petersons (Evangelical Lutheran Church); rector of the church, Mat Maryam in Moscow; choreographer, Samano Odisho (Assyrian Church of the East); Canon Malcolm Rogers (Church of England); Pastor Vladislav Vovk (Church of Evangelical Christians-Baptists). Parishioners of churches of various Christian denominations participated in the prayer.

Representatives of Churches and denominations were greeted by the Ordinary of the Archdiocese of Our Lady of Moscow in Moscow, Archbishop Pavel Pezzi, who expressed the joy of another prayer meeting. “However, for us once again it always happens like the first time,” he said.

“And we make a prayer, realizing that it can be both the first and last, and the only meeting.” The hierarch called to realize the “saving presence of Jesus Christ among us” in order to follow the one path that Jesus himself is.

The meeting participants read the Apostolic Creed — an ancient creed of the undivided Church.

Archbishop Pezzi read out the Prayer for Unity, which contains a petition that “the disciples of Christ are in solidarity with the needy and gener-

ous in the works of mercy, tolerant of brothers and sisters.”

So that, without remembering evil and realizing their own guilt, they become one, “may the dialogue between the followers of different religions be widened, so that all people will discover the joy of being Your children,” the text of the prayer says.

Penitent prayers were also offered for the fact that “it is difficult for us to accept each other as brothers and sisters, to love and respect each other.”

The worshipers read fragments from the Gospel of John (17:13-26) and the Acts of the Apostles (28:1-2; 11-15).

Representatives of denominations made a general prayer, in which they exclaimed: “On the gift of reconciliation, on the spirit of humility, enlightening and guiding in works for the sake of the true common good, peace and harmony for those endowed with power; the grace of hope for the sick, the outcast, and the afflicted; eternal life in a single house of Heavenly Father for all the departed; to strengthen the true spirit and the brotherhood of solidarity, overcoming borders and divisions and increasing the joy of generosity and gratitude.”

At the end of the prayer meeting, its participants read the prayer “Our Father” — each in their own tradition and in their own language, and conveyed to each other the greeting of the world.

Chants during the service were performed by the choirs of the Lutheran Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul and the Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The weeks of prayer for Christian unity, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and the World Council of Churches, have been held since 1968. Every year, the organizers invite Christians from one part of the world to choose a biblical text and offer a theme for prayers and meditations. In Russia, the week of prayers for Christian unity has been held since the 90s of the twentieth century.

(Blagovest-info)m

The Christian Churches, the communities of the disciples of Christ, were intended to be united as one; Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “The Church must breathe with Her two lungs!” Unfortunately, the Churches are not united. This is a great scandal, an impediment to the witness of the Church. Since unity was desired by Christ Himself, we must work to end this disunity and accomplish the will of the Lord.

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52-53 CULTURE LATIN March1corr_Culture 2/24/20 9:40 AM Page 52

LATIN

THE POPE WHO PROMOTED “SUNBATHING” PIUS VII: PATRON OF THE ARTS, RESTORER OF ANTIQUITIES… AND THOUGHTFUL OF ROME’S CITIZENS

n BY JOHN BYRON KUHNER*

The remarkable Latin inscription on the base of the obelisk in Rome, and Pope Pius VII (1742-1823) in a painting by JacquesLouis David, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, USA

y favorite view of St. Peter’s is from the top of the Pincio Hill (Mons Pincius in Latin), just above the Piazza del Popolo. Low ground — the famous prata Quinctia, where Cincinnatus had his farm(!) — occupies the area between the Pincio and the Vatican. It has been built up, but you still have a pretty unobstructed view to the Vatican Palace, the top of the facade of St. Peter’s, and of course Michelangelo’s magnificent dome.

It’s a great place to catch some sunshine in the cooler part of the year, and even in the sweltering summers the breezes generally make it pleasant (but bring sunglasses during the day — the sun’s rays reflected by the travertine will blind you otherwise).

Behind the sunny city overlook, the summit of the Pincio is laid out as a public park, a splendid early-19th-century example of the breed, with geometrically arranged, bench-lined pathways running beneath the ilex trees, not to mention flowerbeds, fountains, a water clock, a puppet theater and a restaurant. It’s also decorated with 228 busts of famous Italians — apparently these were inaugurated as part of a welfare program for underemployed Italian artists — which lend a distinctly luxurious air to the place.

But the most remarkable object in the park seems a bit hidden, despite the fact that it stands at the center of five converging pathways and stands more than 40 feet tall.

It’s an obelisk, quarried from red Egyptian granite. The trees certainly were not so tall when the obelisk was placed here, and may not even have been part of the orig-

M

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inal plan; the Latin inscription on the obelisk suggests that the park was originally designed to be sunny rather than shady (more on that in a moment).

The obelisk has a most remarkable history (Rome currently has 12 other ancient obelisks, all with remarkable histories). It is covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it was in fact commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian (117-138), who had the obelisk carved in Egypt and then (it is surmised) erected at his villa, in the temple he built there for his young male friend, Antinous, who had drowned in the Nile. The hieroglyphic inscriptions — which could not be read until after Champollion’s deciphering in 1824 — attest to the monument’s dedication to the subsequently “deified” Osiris-Antinous. The emperor Elagabulus (others say perhaps Aurelian) moved it from Hadrian’s villa to a public racetrack (circus in Latin) on the Esquiline Hill, where it was found broken and buried a millennium later. It resided in the Vatican for years, in the Cortile della Pigna, and was moved to its current location in 1822 by Pope Pius VII. His Latin inscription records the event (followed by an English translation): PIUS VII PONT[ifex] MAX[imus] OBELISCUM AURELIANUM QUI UNUS SUPERERAT TEMPORUM INIURIA DIFFRACTUM DIUQUE OBLITUM IN PRISTINAM FACIEM RESTITUI ATQUE HOC IN LOCO ERIGI IUSSIT

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Pius VII Pontifex Maximus ordered that this, the sole surviving Aurelian obelisk, broken by the indignities of the centuries and long forgotten, be restored to its original appearance and erected in this place.

He then adds a priceless purpose clause: UT AMOENA PINCII SPATIA CIVIBUS AD APRICANDUM APERTA EXIMII GENERIS MONUMENTO DECORARET So he might adorn with a remarkable monument the pleasant walks of the Pincio, opened for citizens to sunbathe in.

“For citizens to sunbathe in”?? Needless to say, this is the only instance of the Latin verb apricor, apricari, apricatus sum in all of Rome’s papal inscriptions. When used as an active verb, aprico (accent a-PRI-co) means to warm something, and when used as a deponent verb (with its passive endings), it means to “warm oneself in the sun,” or “sunbathe.” To be in aprico is good Latin for “getting some sun.” (Interestingly, the word “apricot” is not related and appears to be derived from the Latin word praecox, meaning early-ripening or precocious, passing first through Arabic as al-birquq).

Something about the sentiment — the Pope wanting his people to have a place in Rome to “catch some rays” — warms my heart every time I visit the Pincio, and it captures a side of this little-known pontiff which is worth cultivating and remembering. Men have their sins and vices, Popes no exception, and Pius VII certainly had his. His tumultuous pontificate featured a struggle with Napoleon and the chaos emanating from the French Revolution which reads like a high-speed synopsis of all the troubles the Popes ever had with Europe’s monarchs: investiture controversies, a coronation, excommunications, even divorce and remarriage in pursuit of an heir, culminating in Napoleon’s annexation of the Papal States and Pius being dragged off to exile as Napoleon’s prisoner for almost five years. When Pius returned to Rome in 1814 a hero and martyr, he began a trenchant and ultimately shameful reactionary campaign: resuming the Inquisition, enforcing the Index, confining Jews — who had been freed by the French — back in their ghetto.

Though Pius VII could hardly be called one of the better-known Popes, his trip to Paris in 1804 may mean that you actually know what he looks like. He sits at the center of one of the early 19th century’s greatest paintings,

Jacques-Louis David’s Coronation of Napoleon. Pius is enthroned just behind Napoleon, raising his hand (in blessing? or in feeble protest? Napoleon famously refused papal involvement in the ceremony and crowned himself). David painted a further portrait of Pius, also now in the Louvre, which shows the pontiff without pomp: he appears thoughtful, introspective, deeply human, and perhaps a bit resigned. He also looks unique among Popes because, though 63 at the time of the portrait, he had a full head of dark hair!

David the painter was apparently impressed with Pius the man, and he inscribed his subject’s name on the portrait as Pio VII Bonarum Artium Patrono. He uses the dative case (Pio), indicating a dedication, rather than merely identifying him with the nominative (Pius): “for Pius VII, patron of the fine arts.” Pius restored the collapsing Arch of Titus in the Forum — now one of Rome’s handsomest antiquities — and finished the obelisk-cumfountain on the Quirinale begun by Pius VI. But a sense of his tender devotion to the artistic and cultural treasures of Rome can be gained from the story of St.-Paul’s-Outside-the-Walls, which tragically caught fire and burned down on July 15, 1823, while Pius was on his deathbed. No one had the heart to tell the old man what had happened — they thought it would break his heart.

And that he had a heart is not really doubted. Throughout their long relationship he consistently referred to Napoleon as “my dear son,” adding: “a somewhat stubborn son, but a son still.” And even after Pius had spent years as Napoleon’s captive, it was Pius’s Rome which served as the refuge for Napoleon’s family after Waterloo and the Restoration of the Bourbons.

And he saw the new opportunities afforded by the new democratic regimes, quintupling the number of Catholic dioceses in the United States, reconstituting the Jesuit Order in America, England, and Ireland before restoring it to the entire Church, and many other prudent steps. When the French armies had arrived in his diocese of Imola, he proclaimed from the pulpit that there was no inherent conflict between Christianity and the new spirit of Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité. Indeed he insisted that Christianity contained the real truth behind those words: “Equality,” he said, “is not an idea of philosophers, but of Christ.” It’s a line I think of when taking the sun and enjoying the view of the Eternal City to be had from Pius’ beloved Pincio. *John Byron Kuhner is past president of the North American Institute of Living Latin Studies (SALVI) and editor of the Paideia Institute’s online magazine In Media Res.m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Of Books, Art and People

“ACQUE ALTE” OR HIGH TIDES IN VENICE

n BY LUCY GORDAN

T

he water in the canals of tourists need not be afraid to Venice and in the city’s lavisit Venice. goon is part of the Adriatic Vittorio Bonacini, AVA’s Sea and subject to its tides. The president, told us that they’d Centro Maree or Tide Center in been hardest hit by American Palazzo Cavalli on the Grand cancellations because 15% of Canal near the Rialto Bridge colVenice’s yearly 11 million lects tide data and predicts the overnight tourists are Ameriphenomenon of acque alte (high cans. He went on to explain tides). The Centro’s records go why November 12’s acqua alta back to the 1500s. Over the cenwas a freak event. “Acque alte Above, acque alte (literally, “high waters”) in St. Mark’s Square. turies, acque alte have occurred Below usually take place in the fall or left, mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel in St. Mark’s Basilica numerous times, flooding in par- (photo Procuratorie di San Marco). Below right, Venice’s mayor, winter and are caused by the ticular the lower areas of the city: Luigi Brugnaro, meets with the press (photo Lucy Gordan). Bottom, lagoon tides of six-hour cya corroded column in St. Mark’s Basilica (photo Andrea Merola) St. Mark’s Square and one of the cles,” he said, “only this time city’s sestiere (neighborhoods) they were much higher than called Castello. Nonetheless, on usual due to the full moon and November 12, 2019, the Centro the axis of the earth. The lawas caught offguard when an goon was gonfia or swollen acqua alta (high tide) kept on due to lower-than-usual barorising unexpectedly instead of metric pressure and cross following its usual 6-hour patwinds from both the north and tern of receding. the south causing a kind of cyThat evening, from approxiclone. The scirocco, a hot wind mately 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. the next blowing from Africa, pushed morning, its peak being around the lagoon’s waters towards the 11 p.m., the acqua alta reached coast, and therefore toward a high of 1.87 meters (c. 6 feet) Venice, at some 126 kilometers (in recent history superseded on(c. 80 miles) per hour. Such ly in 1966 at 1.94 meters.) The speed was apocalyptic.” news, especially the photoHe was keen to highlight graphs, immediately flashed that the press — particularly its around the world. But, although photographs of St. Mark’s not fake, the pictures were misSquare “underwater” — had leading. It caused an unnecesexaggerated the phenomenon sary international panic and and its danger. “Reporting that some 45% of near-future visitors the acqua alta measured 1.87 canceled their bookings through March. meters (6 feet) was misleading to the general public, if not In an attempt to “calm the waters” and set the record irresponsible. In actual fact, the 1.87 figure is not meastraight, a delegation of the Associazione Veneziana sured from the pavement of St. Mark’s Square, but from a Albergatori (The Venetian Association of Hoteliers), a ‘point zero tide gauge’ at the Punta della Salute across the month later, on December 19, came to the Associazione Grand Canal. What most people don’t realize,” Bonacini della Stampa Estera in Italia (The Foreign Press Associunderscored, “is that some 97% of Venice is a meter (39 ation) in Rome to explain what really happened and why inches) higher than sea level. Therefore, for example, if a 54 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

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ga od Flo

which was thigh-high in gallons of water due to its winhigh tide measure 1.40 meters, which is unusually high, it dows being broken by the force of the water and winds. means that in the lowest areas of the city, the water level “The worst damage,” our encyclopedic guide Caterina can reach some 60 centimeters or some 20 inches and Sopradassi explained, “was not the water itself, but rather floods about half the city.” its salt, which, now that the water has been pumped out, Although Bonacini emphasized that during November is visibly corroding the floor mosaics but also those above 12’s acqua alta no one had been in danger of dying, he in the apse and ceiling through its vapors. Not to forget did admit that it had caused considerable damage. So that that it’s penetrated the marble columns, weakening them.” we could assure our readers of Venice’s safety, he invited us to see for ourselves. So from February 5 to 8, a group Another still-unsolved problem is how to keep the waof some 40 of us went to Venice. We stayed in several difter from entering the 9th-century basilica in the first ferent hotels owned by members of AVA (mine was the place. In the planning stage are 1.2 meter high (four feet) super-comfortable Centurion, between the Church of non-reflective, bullet-proof glass and steel barriers with Santa Maria della Salute and the Peggy Guggenheim gates which should also better order the flow of thouCollection. It’s owned by SINA Hosands of tourists. tels and run by gracious General Officials in charge of St. Mark’s Manager Paolo Morra, originally Basilica worry that the structure from Naples). We visited the Centro may not withstand such violent Maree; city hall for a meeting with flooding in the future, but it was not politically independent Mayor Luithe only church that suffered water gi Brugnaro and Chief of the Muand salt damage. Some 50% of nicipal Police Marco Agostini; St. Venice’s 120 churches suffered.

Mark’s Square for an early-morning Downtown, the worst hit were San sweep and garbage collection Moisè, San Germania, San Fantin, One of the MOSE’s four mobile barriers with demonstration; backstage at the and Sant’Agnese, not to overlook some 80 floodgates during an operational test.

Venice Theater, where there’d been 7th-century Santa Maria Assunta, Bottom, a schematic view of the structure serious damage to its electrical systhe oldest structure in the lagoon, tem; St. Mark’s Basilica (more latand adjacent Santa Maria Fosca, ADRIATIC SEA er) to survey the damage, now estiboth on the island of Torcello. mated to be 5 million euros, and the VENICE LAGOON It must not be forgotten that luckily spared Doge’s Palace; and Venice is built on wooden piles drithe controversial MOSE (Modulo ven by the thousands into the mud Sperimentale Elettromeccanico or over the centuries. Needless to say, Floodgate in stand-by Experimental Electromechanical rising sea levels and recent heavy Module), a project of some 80 mocruise ship traffic have eaten away Foundation structures bile gates to isolate the Venetian Laat the muddy foundations, leaving goon temporarily from the Adriatic the already gradually-sinking city Sea during acqua alta (for tides even up to 3 meters). The more vulnerable to the tides. The clock is ticking!

MOSE is controversial because construction began in At the Centro Maree we were told that the Novem2003 and by 2013 it was more than 85% completed. ber’s acque alte (there were another four not quite as bad Then, after multiple delays and cost overruns, mostly due as November 12: November 13, 15, 16, and 17) caused to corruption, followed by long, expensive and often inestimated damages of some 500 million euros: 400 milconclusive trials, the remaining 15% was scheduled for lion for public works and 100 million for small businesscompletion in 2018, now postponed until June 2021. es and individuals. As I write, in addition to the 20 milThose in favor of finishing it, who include the mayor, say lion euros immediately allocated to Venice on November that, functioning, it would have probably prevented No14, 2019, for immediate emergencies, plus another 40 vember 12’s damage. Those against argue that’s not true. million soon afterwards, on February 13 the Italian govI too am in favor of finishing it, but during our morning ernment unblocked an additional 84 million euros. A bit visit saw almost no workers or activity. less than 10 million of these funds will go to the 3,658 private citizens who’ve filed claims under 5,000 euros; To return to St. Mark’s Basilica, to the naked eye the just over 37 million will go to some 3,258 small busidamage seems minimal, with only a few patches of cover nesses, and the remaining c. 47 million to public in the colored-marble floor to prevent its gold-leaf moworks.m saics from further damage. The same is true of the crypt, te

era op in

n tio

MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 55

56-57 BENSON BOOK March 2020corr1_- 2/22/20 2:20 PM Page 56

THE END EXCERPTS FROM LORD OF THE WORLD

“She was a Catholic once...”

OVER A CENTURY AGO, THE PRIEST AND WRITER ROBERT HUGH BENSON FORESAW THE TREMENDOUS RISE OF SECULAR HUMANISM… AND THE CONTRACTION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

n BY ITV STAFF

Editor’s note: The passage below is from the novel Lord of the World, written by the English Catholic convert Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (the son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury) in 1907. He attempts a vision of the world more than a century in the future — in the early 21st century… our own time… predicting the

LORD OF THE WORLD

BY ROBERT HUGH BENSON (1907) Chapter III, Part II

“ “

Mrs. Brand sent for me,” he said. “She wished to know whether Mr. Oliver would be back to-night.”

He will, will he not? You have not heard?”

“Mr. Brand said he would be here for a late dinner. He will reach London at nineteen.”

“And is there any other news?”

He compressed his lips.

“There are rumours,” he said. “Mr. Brand wired to me an hour ago.” He seemed moved at something, and Mabel looked at him in astonishment.

“It is not Eastern news?” she asked.

His eyebrows wrinkled a little.

“You must forgive me, Mrs. Brand,” he said. “I am not at liberty to say anything.”

She was not offended, for she trusted her husband too well; but she went on into the sick-room with her heart beating.

The old lady, too, seemed excited. She lay in bed with a clear flush in her white cheeks, and hardly smiled at all to the girl’s greeting.

“Well, you have seen Mr. Phillips, then?” said Mabel.

Old Mrs. Brand looked at her sharply an instant, but said nothing. “Don’t excite yourself, mother. Oliver will be back to-night.”

The old lady drew a long breath.

“Don’t trouble about me, my dear,” she said. “I shall do very well now. He will be back to dinner, will he not?”

“If the volor is not late. Now, mother, are you ready for breakfast?” ***** 56

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

rise of Communism, the fall of faith in many places, the advance of technology (he foresees helicopters) and so forth, up until... the Second Coming of the Lord, with which his vision ends. For this reason, and also because Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have repeatedly cited Benson’s book, saying its clarification of the danger of a type of humanitarianism without God is a true danger that we do face, we are printing selections from it in ITV, now and in the months ahead.

Mabel passed an afternoon of considerable agitation.

It was certain that something had happened.

The secretary, who breakfasted with her in the parlour looking on to the garden, had appeared strangely excited. He had told her that he would be away the rest of the day: Mr. Oliver had given him his instructions.

He had refrained from all discussion of the Eastern question, and he had given her no news of the Paris Convention; he only repeated that Mr. Oliver would be back that night. Then he had gone off in a hurry half-an-hour later.

The old lady seemed asleep when the girl went up afterwards, and Mabel did not like to disturb her. Neither did she like to leave the house; so she walked by herself in the garden, thinking and hoping and fearing, till the long shadow lay across the path, and the tumbled platform of roofs was bathed in a dusty green haze from the west.

As she came in she took up the evening paper, but there was no news there except to the effect that the Convention would close that afternoon. ***** Twenty o’clock came, but there was no sign of Oliver.

The Paris volor should have arrived an hour before, but Mabel, staring out into the darkening heavens, had seen the stars come out like jewels one by one, but no slender winged fish pass overhead.

Of course she might have missed it; there was no depending on its exact course; but she had seen it a hundred times before, and wondered unreasonably why she had not seen it now.

But she would not sit down to dinner, and paced up and down in her white dress, turning again and again to the window, listening to the soft rush of the trains, the faint hoots from the track, and the musical chords from the junction a mile away.

The lights were up by now, and the vast sweep of the towns looked like fairyland between the earthly light and the heavenly darkness. Why did not Oliver come, or at least let her know why he did not?

Once she went upstairs, miserably anxious herself, to reassure

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God as seen by William Blake as the Architect of the world, in Ancient of Days, held in the British Museum, London

the old lady, and found her again very drowsy.

“He is not come,” she said. “I dare say he may be kept in Paris.”

The old face on the pillow nodded and murmured, and Mabel went down again. It was now an hour after dinner-time.

Oh! there were a hundred things that might have kept him. He had often been later than this: he might have missed the volor he meant to catch; the Convention might have been prolonged; he might be exhausted, and think it better to sleep in Paris after all, and have forgotten to wire. He might even have wired to Mr. Phillips, and the secretary have forgotten to pass on the message.

She went at last, hopelessly, to the telephone, and looked at it.

There it was, that round silent mouth, that little row of labelled buttons. She half decided to touch them one by one, and inquire whether anything had been heard of her husband: there was his club, his office in Whitehall, Mr. Phillips’s house, Parliamenthouse, and the rest. But she hesitated, telling herself to be patient.

Oliver hated interference, and he would surely soon remember and relieve her anxiety.

Then, even as she turned away, the bell rang sharply, and a white label flashed into sight.—WHITEHALL. She pressed the corresponding button, and, her hand shaking so much that she could scarcely hold the receiver to her ear, she listened.

“Who is there?”

Her heart leaped at the sound of her husband’s voice, tiny and minute across the miles of wire.

“I—Mabel,” she said. “Alone here.”

“Oh! Mabel. Very well. I am back: all is well. Now listen. Can you hear?”

“Yes, yes.”

“The best has happened. It is all over in the East. Felsenburgh has done it. Now listen. I cannot come home to-night. It will be announced in Paul’s House in two hours from now. We are communicating with the Press.

“Come up here to me at once. You must be present…. Can you hear?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Come then at once. It will be the greatest thing in history. Tell no one. Come before the rush begins. In half-an-hour the way will be stopped.”

“Oliver.”

“Yes? Quick.”

“Mother is ill. Shall I leave her?”

“How ill?”

“Oh, no immediate danger. The doctor has seen her.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Yes; come then. We will go back to-night anyhow, then. Tell her we shall be late.”

“Very well.” “… Yes, you must come. Felsenburgh will be there.”

Chapter IV, Part 1

On the same afternoon Percy received a visitor.

There was nothing exceptional about him; and Percy, as he came downstairs in his walking-dress and looked at him in the light from the tall parlour-window, came to no conclusion at all as to his business and person, except that he was not a Catholic.

“You wished to see me,” said the priest, indicating a chair.

“I fear I must not stop long.”

“I shall not keep you long,” said the stranger eagerly. “My business is done in five minutes.”

Percy waited with his eyes cast down.

“A—a certain person has sent me to you. She was a Catholic once; she wishes to return to the Church.”

Percy made a little movement with his head. It was a message he did not very often receive in these days.

“You will come, sir, will you not? You will promise me?”

The man seemed greatly agitated; his sallow face showed a little shining with sweat, and his eyes were piteous.

“Of course I will come,” said Percy, smiling.

“Yes, sir; but you do not know who she is. It—it would make a great stir, sir, if it was known. It must not be known, sir; you will promise me that, too?”

“I must not make any promise of that kind,” said the priest gently. “I do not know the circumstances yet.”

The stranger licked his lips nervously.

“Well, sir,” he said hastily, “you will say nothing till you have seen her? You can promise me that.”

“Oh! certainly,” said the priest.

“Well, sir, you had better not know my name. It—it may make it easier for you and for me. And—and, if you please, sir, the lady is ill; you must come to-day, if you please, but not until the evening. Will twenty-two o’clock be convenient, sir?”

“Where is it?” asked Percy abruptly.

“It—it is near Croydon junction. I will write down the address presently. And you will not come until twenty-two o’clock, sir?”

“Why not now?”

“Because the—the others may be there.

They will be away then; I know that.”

This was rather suspicious, Percy thought: discreditable plots had been known before. But he could not refuse outright.

“Why does she not send for her parish-priest?” he asked.

“She does not know who he is, sir; she saw you once in the Cathedral, sir, and asked you for your name. Do you remember, sir?—an old lady?”

Percy did dimly remember something of the kind a month or two before; but he could not be certain, and said so.

“Well, sir, you will come, will you not?”

“I must communicate with Father Dolan,” said the priest. “If he gives me permission—-” “If you please, sir, Father—Father Dolan must not know her name. You will not tell him?”

“I do not know it myself yet,” said the priest, smiling.

The stranger sat back abruptly at that, and his face worked.

(To be continued)m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN

57

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VATICAN WATCH

By Becky Derks with CNA Reports - Grzegorz Galazka and CNA photos

JANUARY SUNDAY 18

CARDINAL RE IS NEW DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re has been elected the new dean of the College of Cardinals, with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri as vice-dean.

Re, 85, will serve a five-year term under the new term limits created by Pope Francis in a motu proprio issued December 21. Previously, the dean of the College, considered “first among equals,” was a position held for the duration of one’s life.

The dean of the College of Cardinals presides at the conclave for the election of the Pope and represents the Holy See during the sede vacante.

Because Cardinal Re is over the age of 80, he is ineligible to take part in a conclave. The responsibility of presiding over the conclave will therefore fall to 76-year-old vice-dean, Cardinal Sandri.

Both Re’s and Sandri’s elections were approved by Pope Francis on January 18 and January 24 respectively.

THURSDAY 24

SUSPENSION REVOKED FOR VATICAN’S FINANCIAL WATCHDOG AUTHORITY The new head of the Vatican Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF) announced that the Vatican’s internal financial watchdog’s suspension from an international group has been revoked, and the AIF can resume collaboration with foreign financial intelligence units.

“This is a very important step, one which demonstrates the confirmed trust of the Egmont Group in the financial information system of the Vatican,” AIF President Carmelo Barbagallo said January 23.

The Egmont Group, through which 164 financial intelligence authorities share information and coordinate their work, suspended the AIF November 13 following a raid on the Vatican offices of the Secretariat of State and the AIF by the Vatican gendarmes. Barbagallo said that the president of the Egmont Group decided to revoke this decision 58 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

on the night of January 22. “This decision follows the explanations provided by AIF to Egmont concerning the extraordinary nature of the facts that gave rise to the suspension and AIF’s assurances that the information received from the Egmont circuit will be treated in a manner that is consistent with the rules that apply to that circuit, partly thanks to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Promoter of Justice,” he said.

FRIDAY 24

MIKE PENCE AND POPE FRANCIS DISCUSS US PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT DURING VATICAN MEETING As the March for Life got underway in Washington, D.C., Pope Francis and Vice President Mike Pence met at the Vatican to discuss the Church’s commitment to the pro-life movement.

“It was a great privilege to spend time with Pope Francis, and to be able to do so on a day that literally hundreds of thousands of Americans, including many Catholic Americans, are gathered on our National Mall in Washington, D.C. standing up for the right to life, was a particular joy for me,” Pence told EWTN News January 24.

“And to hear his passion for the sanctity of life... It was a great privilege,” Pence added.

SATURDAY 25

POPE FRANCIS PRAYS AT ST. PAUL’S TOMB WITH ORTHODOX AND ANGLICAN CHRISTIANS Pope Francis prayed at the tomb of St. Paul with Orthodox and Anglican leaders to conclude the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

“God’s priority is the salvation of all,” Pope Francis said at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls January 25.

“This is an invitation not to devote ourselves exclusively to our own communities, but to open ourselves to the good of all, to the universal gaze of God who took flesh in order to embrace the whole human race and who died and rose for the salvation of all,” he said.

On the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the Pope presided over ecumenical vespers with Metropolitan Gennadios, representative of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, and Anglican Bishop Ian Ernest, personal representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

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Opposite, US Vice President Mike Pence and Pope Francis discuss the pro-life movement in the US during a Vatican meeting January 24; Pope Francis prays at St. Paul’s tomb with Orthodox and Anglican Christians on January 25.

Below, Middle East patriarchs discuss the plight of Christian minorities with Pope Francis, also on January 25

POPE FRANCIS AND IRAQI PRESIDENT DISCUSS SECURING A FUTURE FOR CHRISTIANS Pope Francis met with Iraqi President Barham Salih and discussed the need to secure the future of Iraq’s deeprooted Christian population.

The president and the pontiff spoke privately for about 30 minutes before Sahil met with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States.

A Vatican statement January 25 said the talks focused on “the challenges the country currently faces and the importance of promoting stability and the reconstruction process.”

“Attention then turned to the importance of preserving the historical presence of Christians in the country, of which they are an integral part, and the significant contribution they bring to the reconstruction of the social fabric,” the Holy See said.

During the talks, the Vatican underlined the need to guarantee Christians “security and a place in the future of Iraq.”

SUNDAY 26

VATICAN DONATES FACE MASKS TO CHINA AMID CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK The Vatican has donated hundreds of thousands of face masks to China to help limit the spread of coronavirus, which has killed 361 people since the start of the new year.

The masks have been sent to the Chinese provinces of Hubei, Zhejiang, and Fujian, according to Vatican News.

The medical supplies were donated as part of a joint initiative of the Office of Papal Charities and the Missionary Center of the Chinese Church in Italy, in partnership with the Vatican City Pharmacy.

Pope Francis prayed for people infected by the coronavirus during his Sunday Angelus prayer on January 26.

FEBRUARY WEDNESDAY 5

POPE FRANCIS TO FINANCIAL LEADERS: ENDING POVERTY IS OUR DUTY Pope Francis called on global financial leaders and economists to end economic inequality saying that modern resources make ending global poverty possible — and a responsibility.

“A rich world and a vibrant economy can and should end poverty,” Pope Francis said February 5.

The Pope made an unscheduled appearance at a Vatican conference on “New Forms of Solidarity,” organized on

the premise that “an outdated financial structure is endangering our planet and dividing our societies.”

“You, who have kindly gathered here, are the financial leaders and economic specialists of the world,” Francis said. “You know firsthand what are the injustices of our current global economy, or the injustices of each country.

Let’s work together to end these injustices.”

VATICAN HAS “NO INFORMATION” ON GÄNSWEIN LEAVE OF ABSENCE REPORT After a German Catholic weekly reported that Archbishop Georg Gänswein was asked to take a leave of absence from his position as head of the papal household, the Vatican has said it cannot confirm the report, and the archbishop is still at his job.

Die Tagespost reported February 5 that the German archbishop had recently been asked by Pope Francis to “focus on his role as private secretary to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.” A Vatican source told CNA the same day that the Die Tagepost report was on the mark. Gänswein has been requested to “stay away from his office [as prefect of the papal household] indefinitely,” the source said.

But the Holy See press office told CNA that it has “no information” regarding Gänswein being on a leave of absence from the prefecture.

FRIDAY 7

MIDDLE EAST PATRIARCHS DISCUSS PLIGHT OF CHRISTIAN MINORITIES WITH POPE FRANCIS Six Catholic patriarchs from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq met with Pope Francis at the Vatican to discuss the difficulties faced by Christians in the region and their mass emigration.

On the morning of February 7, the Pope met Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon; Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch; Coptic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak of Alexandria; Melkite Patriarch Youssef Absi of Antioch; Armenian Patriarch Gregoire Pierre XX Ghabroyan of Cilicia; and Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Youssef III Younan of Antioch.

Patriarch Younan told CNA that the patriarchs requested the meeting with Pope Francis because of the “dramatic situation of the Middle East in general, whether in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon” and because of the “migratory flux” of the Christian minorities from their homelands.

It is a “a threat to our survival,” he said, explaining that they are struggling to provide proper spiritual assistance to their faithful in other parts of the world, especially in Western Europe.n MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 59

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PEOPLE B

Y

BECKY DERKS with G. Galazka, CNA and CNS photos

n BISHOP PAPROCKI’S PASTORAL GUIDE ON GENDER IDENTITY

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois (USA) in January issued a diocesan guide on gender identity. He maintained the policy that schools and other diocesan institutions will recognize students and adults by the biological sex with which they were born.

In the guide, Paprocki noted the need to approach the issue with compassion and sensitivity, while also adhering to Church teaching and the truth.

“Gender dysphoria is a real psychological condition, in which a biological male or female believes he or she is the opposite gender,” Paprocki noted.

“It is of paramount importance to handle such situations with gentle and compassionate pastoral skill and concern. All forms of discrimination and harsh treatment must be strongly resisted and corrected,” he said. n THOUSANDS CELEBRATE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF SOUTH AFRICA’S FIRST BLESSED

In 2015, South Africa was blessed with the beatification of Tshimangadzo Samuel Benedict Daswa, the first South African to be recognized as blessed by the Catholic Church. The fifth anniversary of the event was celebrated by thousands in January, the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference reported.

In January 1990, Tshimangadzo was brutally killed by his own villagers for his strong stand against witchcraft and his refusal to use his financial resources to support the popular belief. He was tired of listening to the cases against vulnera60 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

SPECIAL NEEDS KIDS ATTEND “NIGHT TO SHINE” IN ROME

People with special needs were protagonists of the “Night to Shine” Prom, the first ever held in Rome.

Sponsored by the Tim Tebow Foundation, the event took place February 4, 2020, at the Università Europea di Roma under the stewardship of Nostra Signora di Guadalupe Parish and the patronage of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Every guest of Night to Shine entered this complimentary event in the Eternal City on a red carpet complete with a warm welcome from a friendly crowd and paparazzi (photographers).

“It is awe-inspiring to see how God is using the Church globally to stand up and advocate for people with special needs,” said Tim Tebow, who also met with Pope Francis. “I truly believe that the world is coming together through Night to Shine to celebrate the love that God has for us!” he continued. “Every town, every village, every state, every country needs a Night to Shine for their special needs community — a chance to be a part of something significant and life-changing… and to be blessed in the process,” he added. (Zenit) ble people being killed innocently as the result of unfounded allegations of witchcraft against them.

On January 1, 2020, about 4,000 Catholics and non-Catholics gathered in Tshitanini, at the Blessed Benedict Daswa Shrine, to honor the 30th anniversary of this martyr for the Catholic faith. The Catholic Church in South Africa has already started the cause for Tshimangadzo’s canonization. (Zenit) n TAIWAN PRESIDENT APPEALS TO POPE OVER CHINA’S “ABUSE OF POWER”

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ingwen, has written to Pope Francis describing China’s aggression and persecution of religion as “obstacles to peace,” and detailing the Communist regime’s “abuses of power.”

“The crux of the issue,” she said, “is that China refuses to relinquish

its desire to dominate Taiwan. It continues to undermine Taiwan’s democracy, freedom, and human rights with threats of military force and the implementation of disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, and diplomatic maneuvers.”

Tsai’s remarks came in a letter to the Pope published by her office January 21.

Tsai sent the letter in response to Pope Francis’ message for the 2020 World Day of Peace, the Pope’s annual letter sent to all foreign ministers around the world to mark the new year.

This year, the Pope’s letter, entitled “Peace as a Journey of Hope: Dialogue, Reconciliation and Ecological Conversion,” asked that “the conscience of humanity” rise up to oppose and condemn “every desire for dominance and destruction.” (CNA)

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n APPoInTMEnTS To ConGrEGATIon for CAuSES of SAInTS

The Holy Father has appointed as a member of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints His Eminence Cardinal fernando filoni, Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

The Holy Father has appointed as relator of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints the Reverend Fr. Szczepan Tadeusz Praśkiewicz, o.C.D., professor of Marian spirituality and dogmatic theology, currently consultor of the same Dicastery.

The Holy Father has appointed as consultor of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints the Reverend Mario Torcivia, professor of spiritual theology, Alberto royo Mejía, professor of canon law, and Sr. Mary Melone, Magnificent Rector of the Pontifical Antonianum University in Rome. (Zenit)

n PoPE’S nEw PErSonAl SECrETAry rAn STrEET MInISTry

The Vatican announced on January 26 that Pope Francis has chosen a new personal secretary, fr. Gonzalo Aemilius, a priest from Uruguay known for his ministry with children on the streets.

In one of his first Masses after becoming Pope, on March 17, 2013, Francis recognized Fr. Aemilius in the crowd at the Church of Sant’Anna in the Vatican and said: “I want to introduce you to a priest who comes from afar; he has come, a priest who has been working with street children for a long time, with drug addicts. He opened a school for them, he did many things to make Jesus known, and all these street boys and girls today work with the study they have done, have work skills, believe and love Jesus.”

Aemilius replaces Fr. fabian Pedacchio, who served as the Pope’s secretary from 2013 to 2019. Pedacchio returned to his position in the Congregation for Bishops in December.

PolISh bIShoPS ASK ThAT ST. John PAul II bE nAMED “Co-PATron of EuroPE” Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, head of the Polish Episcopal Conference, is calling for St. John Paul II to be declared a Doctor of the Church and a co-patron saint of Europe.

The late Pope and recent saint should be recognized as a co-patron saint of Europe for his efforts to bring down the Iron Curtain and reunite Western Europe with Central and Eastern Europe, Gadecki said in a letter to the bishops of the world, asking for their support in the effort, according to Poland In. “Fifty years of Soviet domination in East-Central Europe painted an image in many people’s minds of Europe consisting only of Germany, France, the UK, Italy and the Scandinavian countries,” Gadecki wrote.

“One might say that John Paul II ‘brought back’ half of Europe from ‘nonexistence.’ He brought back the grand and wonderful heritage of cultural and Christian roots.” (CNA)

n uGAnDAn ArChbIShoP forbIDS CoMMunIon In hAnD

The Archbishop of Kampala, Uganda, has issued a decree on the proper celebration of the Eucharist, forbidding the reception of Holy Communion in the hand and reaffirming that those “living in illicit marital cohabitation” cannot be admitted to Holy Communion.

The February 1 decree of Archbishop Cyprian lwanga included five norms “meant to streamline the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and curb the abuses that had begun cropping up in the celebration of the Mass.”

The archbishop added that he was issuing the norms “relying on the liturgical and canonical norms of the Church Universal.”

Archbishop Lwanga wrote that “Henceforth, it is forbidden to distribute or to receive Holy Communion in the hands,” adding that the Code of Canon Law enjoins that the Eucharist be held in the highest honor by the faithful. (CNA) n PoPE DISMISSES MILES CHRISTI founDEr froM ClErICAl STATE

Pope francis has dismissed from the clerical state Argentine priest roberto Juan yannuzzi, founder and superior of the Miles Christi (Soldier of Christ) Institute, who has been found guilty of abuse.

The order has locations in the U.S. dioceses of San Diego and Detroit, as well as Argentina, Mexico and Italy. Archbishop Víctor Manuel fernández of La Plata, Argentina, where the institute was founded, said in a February 2 statement that Pope Francis made the decision because Yannuzzi “has been found guilty of crimes against the Sixth Commandment with adults, the absolution of the accomplice, and the abuse of authority.”(CNA)m MARCH 2020 INSIDE THE VATICAN 61

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

n BY MOTHER MARTHA

I

Stefano Navarrini illustration

taly’s major cities all count at least one world-famous piazza. From south to north: Naples: Piazza del Plebiscito; Rome: Piazza Navona, Piazza Barberini, Piazza Venezia, and Piazza di Spagna; Florence: Piazza della Signoria; Bologna: Piazza Maggiore; Genoa: Piazza de Ferrari; Turin: Piazza San Carlo; Milan: Piazza del Duomo; Padua: Piazza delle Erbe and Prato della Valle, Italy’s largest public square and one of Europe’s largest; Verona: Piazza Bra; Trieste: Piazza Unità d’Italia, and Venice: Piazza San Marco.

On May 26, 1805 Napoleon was crowned King of Italy. He soon realized that he needed a large site there for his administration as well as lodgings for his (potentially significant) court when on a state visit. He chose Piazza San Marco, the political and religious center of the old Venetian Republic, and selected the Zecca (mint), the Libreria Marciana, the great library and masterpiece of Renaissance architect Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570), and the Procuratie Nuove to house his royal palace. Unfortunately, they weren’t sufficiently large for his additional needs: a vast room for public ceremonies, a monumental staircase, and a main entrance onto the piazza. So he ordered the construction of the Ala (Wing) Napoleonica opposite the Basilica, which today houses the Correr Museum.

Napoleon never lived in his “Venetian Palace,” which wasn’t completed until 1836 during the Austrian occupation, some 15 years after the death of the “Little Corporal” (one of Napoleon’s 21 nicknames), but nonetheless he’s said to have called St. Mark’s Square, “the drawing room of Europe.”

Napoleon’s remark, although its authenticity is unproved, is still valid today, at least partially thanks to two rival cafés on opposite sides of the Square: Caffè Florian and Gran Caffè Quadri.

According to Ian Littlewood’s A Literary Companion: Venice: “Coffee had first been brought to the attention of the Venetians in 1585 when Gianfrancesco Morosoni, who was bailo (ambassador) in Constantinople, reported to the Senate that the Turks were accustomed to drink ‘a black water, boiled up as hot as they could bear it, which is distilled from a seed called kahvé (coffee!) and which they say has the property of making a man stay awake.’ By the middle of the next century coffee was on sale in Venice as a medicine. Its popularity increased, imports rose, and in 1683 the first coffee shop opened under the arcade of the Procuratie Nuove, where Florian’s still sets out its tables.”

Caffè Florian was founded on December 29, 1720 (so it will soon celebrate its 300th birthday) and named “Alla Venezia Trion-

fante” or “Triumphant Venice.” After Café le Procope founded in 1686 in Paris and Baroque Haus Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum in Leipzig founded by Heinrich Schütze in 1694, it’s the oldest café in Europe continuously open in the same location. The first café to open to women, after a few months Venetians began calling it “Florian’s” after its founder Floriano Francesconi. Over the centuries among its world-famous patrons are poet Giuseppe Parini, political writer Silvio Pellico, poet Ugo Foscolo, Goethe, Dickens, Lord Byron, Rousseau, Canova, D’Annunzio with actress Eleanora Duse, Stravinsky, Proust, and Modigliani.

Its Sala del Senato, one of its six beautifully decorated rooms, is the birthplace of the international art fair, Il Biennale.

In spite of the several steps up from the Square’s pavement, on November 12 last year the acqua alta flooded Florian’s. Fortunately, the water only reached to just below the seats of the red velvet-cushioned sofas. Within two hours after reopening two days later, the Caffè had received 2,500 congratulatory messages on Facebook.

Lord Byron and Rousseau were also clients of the more bustling, pro-Austrian Gran Caffè Quadri, located under the arcade of the Procuratorie Vecchie at the Square’s pavement level so that November’s flood waters, much higher than at Florian’s, reached the wall frescoes luckily protected by Plexiglas panels. Although unnoticeable now, the damage was considerable and Quadri’s was closed for several days.

Several websites report that either a shop owned by Turkish merchants selling coffee or a restaurant called “Il Rimedio” or “The Cure,” thanks to its sweet wine Malvasia, thought to “reinvigorate the limbs and awaken the spirit,” date to 1638 at Quadri’s location. For certain on May 28, 1775, Giorgio Quadri returned after many years to his hometown from Corfu with his Greek wife Naxina. It was her idea to purchase “Il Rimedio” and open a coffee house, even if in Venice she had over 200 competitors, 24 of which were located on the Piazza. Quadri’s guestbook includes Stendhal, Richard Wagner, De Balzac, Dumas’ father, and, more recently, Gorbachev, Mitterand, and Woody Allen.

Redecorated in 2018 by the ingenious French architect Philippe Starck, Quadri’s is the only restaurant on St. Mark’s Square. Since 2011 it’s run by the Alajmo family from Padua, owners of Le Calandre with three Michelin stars. Quadri’s has one.

Both Florian’s and Quadri’s have tables in the Square and an orchestra each. Although rivals, they alternate playing music so as not to drown each other out.m

RIVAL CAFÉS ON ST. MARK’S SQUARE IN VENICE

From left to right: two views of the Caffè Florian; Max and Raf Alajmo of Caffè Quadri; an interior of Caffè Quadri

62 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH 2020

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