Unconfirmed: Benedict to visit Turkey

Istanbul, 19 August (AKI) - Pope Benedict XVI - head of the Catholic church - will visit Turkey on 28-30 November, according to the Turkish daily Milliyet.
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Read the complete article VATICAN: POPE TO VISIT TURKEY from AKI.

The article goes on to detail past efforts at inter-religious dialogue and John Paul II's efforts that Benedict promised to continue. The article also puts much stock in the idea that Benedict is coming as some kind of "reassurance to the Turkish population of the Vatican's efforts in inter-religious dialogue and its support for the country's EU membership bid." Cardinal Ratzinger has said in the past that he opposes Turkey's EU membership as a dilution of European identity.

As far as the visit goes, the Holy Father was invited to Turkey by the Patriarch of Constantinople soon after his election and inauguration. If in fact he is going, Benedict is simply taking the patriarch up on his invitation, though he will no doubt address the Turkish question when he arrives in Constantinople.

(Factoid: Road signs in Greece still refer to Istanbul as Constantinople.)

Navarro-Valls categorizes the Pontificate

Pope Benedict's first day of his first foreign trip led Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls to draw a comparison.

"John Paul expressed himself in gestures; this pope gives great space to words. This will be a pontificate of concepts and of words," the spokesman said.

Read the complete article Young people on banks, in Rhine, give pope rousing welcome to Germany from Catholic News Service.

The Brotherhood in Germany

Magister examines the control that the Muslim Brotherhood exerts over many and the most important of the Muslim organizations in Germany and across Europe.

ROMA, August 18, 2005 – The penultimate event of Benedict XVI's visit to Cologne, before the vigil and Mass with the young people of World Youth Day XX, will be a Saturday, August 20 meeting with the "representatives of some of the Muslim communities."

The meeting will take place at the residence of the city's archbishop. The Muslims asked the pope to visit a mosque, but Benedict XVI declined the invitation.

His prudence is understandable. Cologne and Munich – where Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop from 1977 to 1981 – are the cities in which the Muslim Brotherhood, which has for decades been the main ideological and organizational source of radical Islam in the world, has gained control of most of the mosques and of active Islam in Germany and in Europe.

Mahdy Akef, an Egyptian now residing in Cairo who is the present murshid, or supreme guide, of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide, is an explicit supporter of the suicide terrorists in Iraq. From 1984 until 1987, he directed the most dynamic Muslim center of Germany, in Munich, with its great mosque in the northern part of the city.

Munich was the birthplace of the Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland, IGD, one of the largest Islamic organizations in Germany. The IGD is under the full control of the Muslim Brotherhood and has sixty mosques spread throughout the country.

For a few years, its organizational headquarters has been located in Cologne. The president of this body is Ibrahim Al Zayat, a 39-year-old Egyptian, the charismatic leader of a network of youth and student organizations that are linked to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY, the largest Islamic youth organization in the world. WAMY is financed by Saudi Arabia, bears a strong, rigorist Wahhabi imprint, and produces vehemently anti-Jewish and anti-Christian publications.

Curiously, the commitment to young people on the part of the Roman papacy, which is celebrating one of its key moments in Cologne during these days, has in that same city a parallel in one of the leading centers in Europe for promoting radical activism among young Muslims.
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Read the complete article From Cologne to the Conquest of Europe: How the Muslim Brotherhood is Challenging the Pope from www.chiesa.

Of key interest is Magister's look at the various Muslim leaders whom various Vatican officials have met over the years. Many of these leaders are well connected to radical Islam:

This is the same kind of misunderstanding that has compromised the dialogue between Vatican authorities and Muslim representatives a number of times.

One memorable occasion was the audience on October 13, 1993, held at the Vatican by John Paul II and Hassan Al Turabi of Sudan, who at the time was the leading ideologue in the world for radical Islamism, an inspirer and protector of Osama Bin Laden.

But in more recent times, and after the shift that took place on September 11, one can recall the meeting in Doha, in Qatar, from May 27-29, 2004. On the one side were Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the previous foreign minister for the Holy See, and Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and on the other were the leading imam of the Al Azhar mosque in Cairo, Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, and one of the most widely followed leaders of Sunni Islam, Youssef Al Qaradawi.

Both prior to and since this meeting, Tantawi has repeatedly justified the Palestinian suicide terrorists. As for Qaradawi, he justified such acts even outside of the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Qaradawi completely embodies the stance of the Muslim Brotherhood, and is the de facto Islamic "maestro" with the greatest audience among the Arab people. But Qaradawi also has a broad audience among Muslim immigrants in Europe, where he founded the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which is headquartered in Ireland, in 1997.

The interreligious meetings organized every year by the Community of Sant' Egidio, with the participation of numerous cardinals and bishops, are another example of murky dialogue.

Last July 24, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, "Avvenire," criticized the fact that at the 2004 meeting in Milan, authorization to speak had been granted to another apologist for the suicide terrorists: Ahmad Al Tayyib, the rector of the Al Azhar university in Cairo.

"Avvenire" also defined as "imprudent" the fact that some Italian universities – including the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, which is affiliated with the Pontifical Gregorian University – have signed last June 15 an agreement to collaborate with that same university, Al Azhar. This is the most influential university in the Sunni Islamic world, with 400,000 students from 92 countries, and is under significant control from the Muslim Brotherhood.

One would think that the Vatican intelligence organs could get some serious information on these guys before they ended up meeting with various members of the Curia and at times the Holy Father himself.

Stranger in a strange land

When Pope Benedict XVI lands in Cologne for World Youth Day, he will be arriving in a country that has become foreign to him. The churches are empty, the politicians are non-believers and the people in the east are complete strangers to God. And now organizers of the biggest religious festival of the post-war era plan to turn it into a launching pad for a new religious awareness.
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Read the complete article WANTED: PIOUS PEOPLE: When the German Pope Returns Home, He'll Find an Un-Christian Land from Spiegel Online.

This article is chockful of depressing factoids. Let's take a look...

Two-thirds of young people say that it's cool to believe in something.

Only 32 percent of Germans surveyed said that they had great or very great confidence in the church.

Pope Benedict XVI fares only slightly better than the church as a whole, with an approval rating of 36 percent. But he isn't especially popular among 18 to 29-year-olds, who are even less likely to express confidence in the pope than the general population.

Just under two-thirds of Catholics -- and less than half of all Protestants -- believe in life after death, a central tenet of Christianity.

Twenty-seven percent of the faithful say that God is not all-powerful, a concept that also deeply contradicts Christian teachings.

In the East, the pope would find cities and villages filled with nonbelievers, places where only one in three people believes in God.

In 1992 there were still 19,266 Catholic priests. In 2004, this number had shrunk to 326. In the whole of Germany, 210 trainee priests were accepted into seminary last year.

Every 75 seconds, a Christian leaves the church. In 2003, 180,000 Protestants left the church. Only 60,000 joined.

According to the report, the number of Catholics has decreased every year since 1974. The latest figures for 2003 show that around 65,000 more Catholics were buried as were baptized.

This meant in 2003 there was a "decision to join negative," as they put it in the report, of 117,000. Fewer Catholics were baptized in 2003 than at any time since 1960. There were exactly 205,904 Catholic baptisms in 2003. That's 3.5 percent lower than the previous years and 31 percent lower than in 1990. In other words, Catholics are dying out.

And finally:

The Germans have irrevocably moved into a post-religious world. They would like to believe. They suspect that it might help and therefore they respect anyone who is able to believe. But they themselves, for the most part, can't do it anymore. They read Peter Hahne, because Ratzinger is too hard for them. They still say "the pope is right, that's how it should be." But if a politician starts seriously talking about God, they roll their eyes and change the channel.

The pilgrimage paths on Our Lady's field will be deconstructed in an environmentally sound fashion. The components are biodegradable. Only the 3,000 chalices made by ThyssenKrupp pose a slight problem. They have been built to last an eternity and cannot be recycled. And very soon there will no use for them in this country. Only the papal hill will remain. It will be a reminder of an unreal event. Something which is almost impossible to believe.

Orthodox protest

KIEV, August 17 (Itar-Tass) -- Dozens of people who support Ukraine’s Brotherhood party organised a protest in front of the residence of the papal nuncio (the Vatican’s envoy) in Kiev on Wednesday.

They protested against the planned transfer of the cathedra of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from Lvov to Kiev.

The protesters demanded “to stop the expansion of Catholicism to Orthodox territories and give up plans to transfer the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics to the Ukrainian capital, the historical centre of Slavic Orthodoxy”.

The Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) has decided to transfer the residence of the supreme archbishop from Lvov to Kiev on August 21.
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Read the complete article Orthodox believers organise protest in front of Vatican embassy. from ITAR-TASS.

Aside from the protest outside the nuncio's residence, the article basically recounts the same details from the article in the previous entry.

Some data from ITAR-TASS:

There are presently over 27,500 religious communities in Ukraine. Over 10,000 of them are under the authority of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, just over 3,000 are controlled by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, and more than 3,000 are under the UGCC.

Mark August 21 on your calendars when Husar is officially installed in Kiev and see if there is a general acclamation of 'Patriarch!'. Three patriarchs in one city ought to make things quite interesting...

What is World Youth Day?

According to the organizers of World Youth Day 4 All, it ought to be a gathering for discussing relevant topics in the Church. I wonder though just who those guys think attend World Youth Day?

Maybe... world youth attend World Youth Day... Maybe! I think we're on to something here!

World Youth Day is a gathering of young people from around the world to affirm their faith and enjoy the fellowship of one another through a variety of fun and faith-enhancing activities. I just find it very amusing that these people want to turn it into a seminar for the discussion of the dumbing down of the morality of the Church, with the youth of said Church as active participants. Do we really need to be asking little 12 year olds about the proper place of condoms in the Church?

Does that sound as ridiculous to anyone else as it does to me?

Alexy II speaks out

Moscow, August 16, Interfax - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia expressed his hope for Vatican’s wise and considered approach to the problem of transferring the chair of the Ukrainian Greek Catholics to Kiev.

‘These actions cannot be justified either from historical point of view, or by church rules and canons. Kievan chair from the very first years of its existence was an ecclesiastical capital of the Russian Orthodox Church, first as the centre of metropolia, and later as the major one among the Ukrainian dioceses’, - Alexy II said in his interview to the Moscow Patriarchate press service.
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Read the complete article Alexy II calls the Roman Catholic Church to show wisdom in the problem of transferring the Uniate chair to Kiev from Interfax.

The Patriarch of Moscow laid down the preconditions for a meeting with the 'Pope of Rome':

...the policy of proselytism, the champion of which in Ukraine is the Greek Catholic Church, would be stopped.

The article then concludes with the story that during the years of the suppression of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, the Orthodox assisted the Uniates and that the way Rome was repaying their kindness was just a slap in the face (or something to that effect).

The move form Lviv to Kiev is supposed to happen before the end of August. I read the comment somewhere that referencing canon law is pointless since the Orthodox and Rome do /not/ share a common code of canon law. So Alexy II doesn't get points there. The point that the Catholics should be more grateful for the help of the Orthodox also rings hollow, given the fact that the Orothodox pretty much had the monopoly on religion (such as it was under godless communism) in the USSR. From Wikipedia:

At the state organized 1948 sinod in Lviv (Lvov), some [Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church] clergy were coersed into proclaiming the annulement of the 1596 Union of Brest thereby breaking the canonical ties with Rome and transferring under the Moscow Patriarchy. This move's acceptance was mixed. With many crergy members and lay beleivers turning to ROC, some adamantly refused. While the UAOC [one of the splinter Orthodox groups in Ukraine] and UGCC church property in Ukraine was liquidated by the Soviet authorities or transferred to the [Russian Orthodox Church], many beleivers refused to accept liquidation of their churches and for nearly 40 years the UAOC and UGCC existed in Western Ukraine underground lead by the clergy members under the threat of prosecution by the Soviet state.

As Wikipedia points out in the article on the Greek Catholic Church, it is not the implanted creature of Rome that the Russian Orthodox Church makes it out to be:

Within Ukraine itself, the UGCC is a minority faith of the religious population, being a distant second to the majority Eastern Orthodox faith. However, since the Ukrainian Orthodox were split into at least three denominations around the onset of independence in the 1990s, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church denomination thereby accidentally became the second largest religious organization in Ukraine in terms of number of communities.

Papabile

Papabile has returned.

And there was much rejoicing! Welcome back.

Catholicism in China

My brother and I went to visit our parents this last weekend. On Sunday, we attended Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Fort Dodge. The celebrating priest was visiting from India and in his homily, he talked about being a Christian there. This included being a minority and the hostility toward Christianity there.

Perhaps it is mere coincidence that Sandro Magister would write about India's northern neighbor a day later. The article is a summation of Sino-Vatican relations over the past year or so. Please read it.

Read the article:
New Bishops for Tomorrow’s China from www.chiesa.

The basic premise of the article is that the Patriotic Association, the official Church in China, and the underground Church that maintains unity with the Holy See, are converging. Magister explains the situations of several bishops who while officially approved in the Patriotic Association, are tacitly united with Rome as well.

What I am more concerned with is the situation in Taiwan. This quote stands out:

As for Taiwan, the Holy See has already made it known that it is ready to move its nunciature from Taipei to Beijing, where it was before Mao rose to power. It has paved the way for this transition with both the government and the Catholics of Taiwan, with whom it will in any case maintain de facto relations. But “it would be fitting that this step be taken, not before, but after Beijing has guaranteed genuine religious liberty,” as Joseph Zen, the bishop of Hong Kong, has cautioned.

I'd like to know just what 'paving the way' with the Republic of China and the Catholics of Taiwan entails. Joseph Zen clearly states the qualification that needs to come about before the Holy See moves from Taipei to Beijing. If the Holy See tries to grasp too much in China, it's going to find itself getting burned, badly.

Sounding off on celibacy

I was watching 'World News Tonight with Peter Jennings' tonight (it's still titled that) out of morbid curiosity to see who had the anchor's chair and saw the piece on Monsignor Clark.

They had the obligatory interviews with the so-called experts. Father O'Brien blamed Clark's affair and declining numbers of priests on celibacy. The president of the Catholic League's words were simply those of sorrow. The 'average Catholic on the street outside St. Patrick's' made some shallow comments about getting with the 21st century, blah blah blah.

I just don't like O'Brien. Yes, he was asked to deliver a sound bite and he provided one, but is the guy really that shallow? (You're all saying, 'yes, he is'.) I just find it entertaining that guys like Father O'Brien can look no farther than the US border when they make their pronouncements on how celibacy is dumb and needs to be done away with for good. Even in the US, if you buy all the stories out there of traditional movements that have a net number of vocations, celibacy doesn't seem to be that much of a hurdle for those entering the religious life.

A sound bite on ABC News may score points with the viewers, but if all the evidence is true, O'Brien and his colleagues have time against them...

(This post is more my reaction than any serious analysis. Don't read too deeply.)

Chess with Death

I'm not going to get into the whole situation in New York.

What I will get into is chess. Specifically, chess with Death. Yesterday, I watched one of my favorite 'religious' movies, The Seventh Seal. Max von Sydow in the movie is the knight Antonius Block who challenges Death to a game of chess in order to buy time to perform one meaningful act before he dies. Along the way, there is much soul searching and looking for answers in plague-ridden medieval Sweden.

Death has no answers. The witch who has carnal knowledge of the devil has no answers. The only one who provides any is the squire Jons, but his are answers that deny God, answers that Block, despite his doubts and his fears, cannot accept.

I'm not a film critic, so we'll not delve too much. How many of you have seen the film and what do you think? Does the film have anything to say to us in our post-modern, increaingly secular society?

For myself, I would say yes. Block's doubts are at once timeless, but at the same time, increasingly relevant. The question is how will we face them? By seeking God with all our hearts or turning away into the darkness of eternal death?

Waiving diplomatic immunity

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Archbishop William Levada agreed Wednesday to waive diplomatic immunity and answer questions about sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests after he takes over as the church's guardian on doctrine _ the Vatican post formerly held by Pope Benedict XVI.
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Read the complete article Levada to Answer Questions on Priest Abuse from The Washington Post.
The deposition had been held up by the immunity issue and is now scheduled for January.

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Abuse victims' attorneys want to question Levada as part of the bankruptcy case of the Archdiocese of Portland. Last year, Portland became the first Catholic diocese in the nation to declare bankruptcy, citing sex abuse lawsuits seeking more than $155 million in damages.

Levada led the Portland Archdiocese from 1986 to 1995, when he became the archbishop of San Francisco.
[...]

Nothing earth-shattering. I just found it interesting that they were being held up over immunity, though that isn't all that surprising, given the case of that one guy who never stepped out of the Vatican City in order to avoid arrest by the Italian cops and extradition back to the US.

Gandalf, the Church and the Code

British actor IAN McKELLEN has slammed the leaders of the Catholic Church for urging people not to read DAN BROWN's controversial novel THE DA VINCI CODE.

While the book has proved hugely popular internationally, the Vatican's reaction to the way its religion is depicted by Brown has been far from positive.

But McKellen, who recently finished filming a movie version of the book with TOM HANKS, brands the church's stance against the novel "pathetic".

He says, "People are always interested in mystery, but when it's a mystery that suggests that a major influence on all our lives - the Catholic Church - has perhaps been misleading us all this time, then it becomes spectacularly sensational.

"The idea that it shouldn't be read, which I think is the official Vatican line, is pretty pathetic."
10/8/2005 02:37

From contactmusic.com.

See especially the last two paragraphs. Sir Ian seems to think that the 'mystery' has factual basis...

It really is too bad Mel Gibson didn't make 'The Lord of the Rings' instead of Peter Jackson. Tolkien must be rolling over in his grave with comments like this from guys who played central characters in his fundamentally Catholic novel-turned-movie.

Detente with the Masons?

Rome, Aug. 08, 2005 (CNA) - In an unusual show of “openness” to the Catholic Church, a Masonic lodge in Italy has announced the appointment of a Catholic priest as chaplain. The news was announced during an address to members of the lodge by Grand Master Fabio Venzi of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Italy.
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Read the complete article Masonic Lodge in Italy appoints Catholic priest as chaplain, claims "openness" to Catholic Church from Catholic News Agency.

Freemasonry has alwasy intrigued me, though I've never really read a whole lot about it. Its relationship with the Church is perhaps my true interest. For instance, a portion of the sedevacantists of the world believe that there has been no pope since Pius XII died because John XXIII's election was invalid? Why? Because according to the theory, in the 1930s, John XXIII became a Freemason and thus incurred automatic excommunication. (More info can be found at Wikipedia.)

Then there's the case of P2 and the conxpiracy theories that surround it and the supposed membership of various high-ranking Church officials. The principal case is the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano and the involvement of P2 and the Vatican Bank. If one goes down this path even further, one reaches the fringe where it is believed that John Paul I was murdered to prevent investigation of corruption in the Vatican Bank...

But we shalln't go there. In any case, if a Masonic Lodge wants to appoint a Catholic chaplain, I'm interested in seeing what, if any response there will be from the Church.

Cosmetic post

At the moment, I'm testing out new things that require the blog to be republished...

More new links

As you might have noticed, I finally went with Blogrolling and its one-click link addition feature has proven addictive. ;)

Levada's last Mass

The article from The San Francisco Chronicle takes a look at the last Mass of William Levada before his move to Rome later this month. It takes the obligatory look at the sex abuse issue and those who think he's not done enough. It's a standard article. Read it for yourselves if you wish.

I'll just call attention to the last paragraph and the sentence that I've bolded:

Levada's new appointment in Rome will last five years. His successor in San Francisco will likely be chosen within the next six months, a topic of great interest for local Catholics.

Is the AP writer misinformed, did Benedict suddenly introduce term limits or did Levada say he's only going to stick around for five years? What did I miss?

Catholic sites in Iowa: the Grotto

One often reads about pilgrimage sites around the world, particularly those ancient ones in Europe that remain popular among the faithful. Pilgrimage has been an ever-present motif in our culture, from The Canterbury Tales onward. Yet too often those places worth visiting near us are forgotten or simply not publicized enough. Though well known in Iowa and among those who look for such places, the Grotto of the Redemption is a worthy place of pilgrimage.

"If your messages are carved in stone they are well nigh imperishable. The imperishableness is the outstanding feature of the Grotto."
-Father Dobberstein

From the website:
"The story of how the Grotto came into being is as moving as are the scenes it portrays. It is generally told as a fact that as a young seminarian, Father Dobberstein became critically ill with pneumonia. As he fought for his life he prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary (the Mother of God) to intercede for him for the grace of health. He promised to build a shrine in her honor of he lived."

Once Father Dobberstein arrived in Iowa and became pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul in West Bend, he set to work on his creation, a monument of stone depicting the fall of Man and his eventual redemption through Christ as well as Mary's role in that process.

It's really pretty amazing. I've been to the Grotto several times over the years and had the privilege of hearing the lecture on the building by Father Dobberstein's original assistant and successor, Father Greving (nowadays, the tour guides give a short introduction and then play the video of Father Greving's lecture).

As far as pilgrimages go, a stop at the Grotto is always an interesting experience and a faith-enhancing one as well. Next time you're blowing along Interstate 80 on summer vacation or some other reason, give a thought to taking a day to driving up into northwest Iowa and visiting West Bend.

Sydney's ace in the hole

From the always well-informed Amy comes this on Cardinal Pell's efforts to enlist Mel Gibson to recreate the Passion for Sydney, should it be chosen to host World Youth Day 2008.

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The crucifixion reenactment -- similar to scenes from Gibson's hugely successful film "The Passion of the Christ" -- would begin with the Last Supper staged at Sydney's landmark Opera House at sunset, and would end with the crucifixion of Christ at St. Mary's Cathedral, according to bid documents the newspaper said it obtained.

The Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, told the newspaper that intermediaries had "started approaches" to Gibson to stage the event. Gibson's involvement with World Youth Day was on the city's "wish list," Pell said.

"He might well be attracted. I think his devotion to Christ is very real," he said.
[...]

I find that last comment of Pell's to be rather funny. I'm sure he means it a different way, but it just sounds like there is some doubt that Mel's devotion to Christ is very real. The guy spent his own money in making a movie about the Passion, in an effort that became something of a quest and the cardinal only 'thinks' that Mel's devotion is very real. Really.

In any case, if they can confirm Mel's involvement before the final decision is made, I would say that would clinch the deal for Sydney. Mel's movie is the direct anti-thesis of the Da Vinci Code mindset. Can you imagine the publicity WYD would get if such an event were to be put together? I have no doubt CNN and every other major news network would be all over that, aside from the usual coverage from the Catholic outlets.

New link

From Father Jim at Dappled Things comes the new link at the left under 'Catholic liturgy'. The New Liturgical Movement is a new blog looking at (you guessed it) the new liturgical movement. Interesting stuff, have a good read.

Re: Vatican and Israel

John Allen today briefly recounts the latest on the Vatican-Israel affair at The Word From Rome. A few points are interesting:

A July 28 declaration, plus an accompanying note listing instances when John Paul II had in fact spoken out about terrorism against Israel, was issued by the Press Office of the Holy See. For that reason, most observers assumed the material had been prepared by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesperson.
[...]
A senior Vatican source told NCR on July 30, however, that Navarro was not the author of the documents. In fact, according to this source, the first time Navarro saw them was on the papal plane bringing Benedict XVI back to Rome on July 28 from his vacation in Val d'Aosta, after they had already been released.

According to this source, the documents were prepared by Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the official in the Secretariat of State responsible for relations with governments -- in effect, the pope's foreign minister. They were then released under the aegis of the Vatican Press Office.

This vindicates Mr. Navarro-Valls of the charges made against him in this instance. Mr. Allen then points out how this would be the third instance that State has meddled and caused much controversy, starting with the Maciel press release back in May then the 'anti-Christian' remark on the London Bombings in July.

As Rocco at his blog likes to point out and as I noted a long while ago here, State is quite active in its turf war. As Rocco pointed out the other day, with the CDF man now in charge, they seem to be going out in a blaze of glory.

Civilizations clashing? (conclusion)

With the actors of the hypothetical clash set out, the question remains: is there an actual clash of civilizations? Is Islam in its totality fighting the Western process of globalization?

No.

But how can one say no? After all, if the likes of al-Qaeda are tacitedly approved by so many Muslims around the world, how can there not be a clash?

Just as there are different levels of warfare, so too there are different levels of this conflict. The final example will be Iraq, which is the present flashpoint of the alleged clash. On the one hand, there are the foreign fighters who are supported in-country by Ba'athists and others who are against the US involvement in their country. On the other hand, there are those who support US from both the Sunni and Shi'ite sides. (It is also important to note that it is never mentioned that the Kurds who for the most part support the US also happen to be Muslims.)

With all these different factions vying for control both peacefully and through violence, they are all Muslims of different stripes. To say that 'Islam' is the source of one side and not the other would be factually incorrect. The Sunnis who simply want a stable government and peace to return are as much Muslims as the foreign fighters (who knows what the Ba'athists are, being socialistic secularists).

In the wider context of global Islam, is Islam the first cause of all the violence against the proponents of globalization? Again, no. Look back at what was said about Shariah law. So much of Shariah law refers more to fourteenth century custom than to what Muhammad was actually preaching to his followers in Mecca back in the seventh century. Veils, the subjugation of women and so many other customs that are seen as forms of Islamic repression are simply sediment that has accrued over time and taken as holy writ when it fact the provenance of such concepts is simply nonexistent.

In the end, there are those Muslims who are fully integrated into the Western world. There are those who are disgruntled, but do nothing. And there are those who actively resist the West with guns and bombs. Those who advocate violence and those who tacitly consent to violence are fighting for an Islam that is more their own construction than the authentic Islam that they claim it to be.

Civilizations clashing? (part 3)

Over the last quarter-century, Saudi Arabia has spent its petrodollars on spreading the Wahhabi version of Islam all around the globe, first for altruistic reasons and later for reasons of survival. At the same time, the Saudis have spent much time and effort supporting efforts in Afghanistan and then al-Qaeda. In the former case, they wanted to defeat godless communists and the in the latter case, they wanted to save themselves from a coup d'etat.

Since September 11th and the rising tide of terrorism that has taken place on Saudi Arabian soil, the Saudi royal family has slowly come around to the fact that buying off the likes of ibn Laden and his supporters will no longer serve their purposes. Since then, they've moved to clamp down as best they can and at the same time initiate reforms that have been promised for decades but never carried out. But for the Saudis and the rest of the world, it is too late to undo the damage wrought.

Is there a clash of civilizations? For the moment, let us suppose that yes, there is a clash. Who are the principal actors. On the one hand, there is al-Qaeda, the world-wide network of terrorist cells founded and sustained by the Wahhabi form of Islam. On the other hand, there is the so-called Coalition of the Willing led by the United States and its allies around the world. It is an assymetrical war, with the vast military resources of the US confronting al-Qaeda abroad while security, intelligence and law enforcement organs work both at home and abroad as well to stop terrorist attacks before they occur.

In the second tier of actors could be included the entire Muslim world. As it has been noted, the Saudis did their work too well in disseminating the Wahhabi doctrines of Islam. As various sources point out time and again, there are very few mosques even in the West that can validly claim to not display or have on hand literature or information on Wahhabi Islam. Despite so many claims that Islam is a religion of peace (which is a valid debate for scholars), imams may proclaim their disgust at terrorism and hatred, but in the reading rooms and libraries of their mosques, young men may easily access the very literature that proclaims just the oppose. The Saudis did their work too well.

We have the first tier of actors in the form of committed hard-core jihadists of al-Qaeda. Associated with with this first tier are the imams and others who make no secret of their hatred for the West and who actively recruit new members, even in the heart of Western cities such as London and elsewhere. In the second tier lies a good majority of the Muslim world who give tacit consent to the works of the first tier by continuing to tolerate the distributed literature and active recruitment under their very noses of those hard-core believers of the first tier.

The question of Western civilization and the actors on its behalf is a question that is perhaps beyond the scope of this essay. Western civilization is not dying, by any means. But it has been so completely diffused around the world that it is difficult identify any specific actors. There are so many traditions and successors to Western civilization that identifying any one as 'Western civilization' would be pointless and inaccurate. Instead, it is simple enough to identify 'globalization' as the counterpart of an Islam that would turn back the clock from the 21st century back to the 7th.

Civilizations clashing? (part 2)

(Thanks to John for not letting me get ahead of myself.)

With the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan concluded and people heading home, Saddam Hussein in 1990 invaded Kuwait. Kuwait is as we know one of the Gulf oil states. President Bush 41 drew a line in the sand and in early 1991, the United States armed forces expelled Saddam from Kuwait.

Unfortunately, Bush 41's line in the sand was drawn in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which as we've seen, is the stronghold of fundamentalist Wahhabism. What was even more outrageous for jihadists such as Osama ibn Laden was that 'infidels' were being based in the same country where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina were located. Non-Muslims have never been allowed to enter the holy cities without special permission and the fact that tens of thousands of foreign military personnel were based in Saudi Arabia with the blessing of the king of that land was simply unacceptable.

Osama ibn Laden has been the central figure in the story of al-Qaeda. The son of a rich Saudi family, ibn Laden ended up in Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets. Using his wealth, he did much to bring in the Wahhabi doctrines of his homeland. This put him in a position to serve as a central point for the various cells that would form after the end of that war. But he shouldn't get all the credit. The Saudi royal family deserves some as well. After the oil crisis of the early 70s, the Saudis were flush with petrodollars. With rampant inflation, those dollars had to be spent before their value went down. So the Saudis, like good Muslims, started spending those dollars on building a network of schools around the world in Muslim countries. Those schools would of course teach good clean Wahhabi doctrines to the students. Thus over time, in places where Muslim communities had lived in peace with their non-Muslim neighbors for generations, tolerance slowly degraded and sectarian strife grew. As the 80s came in and on through the 90s, the rulers of Saudi Arabia were not as pious as King Faisal. With the growing hatred of their western lifestyles and corruption, the Saudi royal family didn't spend their money charitably, but rather spent it in a bid to buy off the fundamentalists. In short, they were paying ibn Laden and the jihadists to take their terrorism elsewhere.

The final straw was the continued and unrelenting US support for the House of Saud, the ruling house of Saudi Arabia. In the land their father created out of the disparate factions of the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi princes and their descendents slipped ever further into corruption and vice. In a country where Wahhabism has thrived in no small part due to the sponsorship of the royal house, this slide was been viewed as a betrayal. Yet despite the unpopularity of the ruling elites, they managed to hang onto power by spending the oil wealth of their country in an attempt to buy off their citizens. But the average Saudi Arabian was and continues to be disgruntled. Since the Gulf War, various sources have indicated that Osama ibn Laden is more popular in Saudi Arabia than the House of Saud.

Ibn Laden and the nascent al-Qaeda turned their eyes away from their homeland and came to the Great Satan itself: the United States.

Civilizations clashing? (part 1)

Magister opens his latest with the following little prologue:

Everyone is talking about it, but few know what it is. The Vatican is confusing matters. Pietro De Marco analyzes Islamic terrorism and the Christian response to it in the light of Huntington's theory.

Going on, he introduces the gist of what everyone is talking about:

ROMA, August 1, 2005 – "There is no clash of civilizations, there are only small groups of fanatics," Benedict XVI responded last July 20 to a journalist who asked if Islamic terrorism shows that a clash of civilizations is underway. The pope had been besieged by journalists during his first public appearance outside the protected solitude of his mountain retreat, at Les Combes in Introd, close to Mont Blanc, and this was one of his fragmentary responses.

Read the complete article Required Reading: A Brief Catechism on the Clash of Civilizations from www.chiesa.

I urge you all to read the full article and Di Marco's essay before going on with this.

*
*
*

You've read the article and essay, right? Good. We're on the honors system here. First a disclaimer. I've never read Huntington, though I've personally listened to various authorities and read various articles from different sources. As a student of political science, I'm not a sociologist and 'trends' in mass behavior are not my area.

But here's what I think...
Aside from all the talk on culture, civilization, religions of peace or war, we have to realize one very important fact. The metaphorical gates of Ijtihad (independent juridical reasoning and interpretation of the Islamic law) closed in the Sunni world in the fourteenth century (1). All legal decisions had from that point on to be based on past decisions. Shariah law is effectively the same now as it was when the Turks were on the verge of taking Constantinople. (The Shi'ites on the other hand still allow their judges to interpret Islamic law according to present circumstances.)

Depending on which Muslim country one examines, the Shariah law is more or less enforced in just about everywhere. From places like Pakistan where Shariah law exists side by side with a western-style court system to places like Saudi Arabia, where the Shariah law (coupled with Wahhabi fundamentalism) is the law of the land, totally and without exception, the ancient law is paid at the very least lip service and at the most it is enforced without question.

In addition to its archaic nature, Shariah law also has a fundamental quality that is recognized among all objective scholars. Despite what true believes may believe, the Shariah represents the fourteenth century legal landscape rather than the laws and doctrines of Muhammad. The legal landscape it represents may have retained traces of the old ways of the early Muslim community, but it had also acquired much in the way of local cultural custom from various sources that do not represent Islam. The veil and all the subsequent extensions in burqas and other garments meant to completely cover a woman are perhaps the most well known examples of social custom infiltrating the Shariah law and being accepted as what was handed down from Muhammad's time.

The rise of al-Qaeda is intimately tied with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and I won't delve into that here. But it suffices to say that the particularly extreme Wahhabi doctrines imported from Saudi Arabia by the likes of ibn Laden and diffused among the many young men who had come to fight the atheist Soviets from around the world. These young men fought a jihad against the godless communists under the auspices of the United States. The war, when it was concluded, saw the Soviets expelled and the US involvement basically ended completely. Without a foreign power, that land in central Asia slipped into anarchy and civil war from which it is just emerging due to the renewed intervention of the United States.

Unfortunately, the damage was already done. The freedom fighters of Afghanistan watched as the US abandoned the land they'd fought to free. They watched as the US entered a period of material prosperity while Afghanistan destroyed itself in civil war. These young men returned home, taking with them their well-learned skills. When Osama ibn Laden issued his call against the United States, these jihadists were scattered around the world and well placed to begin forming and organizing terror cells.

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Footnotes
(1) Armstrong, Karen. Islam: A Short History. New York: Random House, 2000

The return of 'God's Rottweiler'?

An opinion piece by Claus Christian Malzahn at Spiegel Online takes aim at Benedict XVI. The attention-getter/summary at the beginning of the piece pretty much sets the tone for what is to follow:

The argument between the Vatican and Israel is a nasty step back to the days of animosity between Judaism and Christianity. All the trust between the religions which John Paul II spent two decades building up, is now being shattered by his successor.

Malzahn begins by proclaiming that rather than following in the steps of his predecessor, the new pontiff "is a reactionary who is leading his church into a spiritual fortress, rather than sending it confidently out into the field." Malzahn then goes on to the ongoing affair with Israel, making the obligatory reference in that "Benedict XVI refuses to say that terrorism against Israel is actually terrorism, proves that he is following in the spiritual tradition of Pius XII more than that of John Paul II. Pius was also a pope who acted according to the rule book and viewed dogma as more important than true life and political reality."

In contrast to the alleged flaws of Benedict's first 100 days, Malzahn holds up John Paul II as the model of papal leadership both in the Church and without. After recounting John Paul's standing up to totalitarianism, he goes on to describe his ecumenical streak:

No pope before him has ever done so much for dialogue and conciliation between the world's major religions. And this he achieved without ever opting for a spiritual relativism which would compromise the Church's true principles. Principles which included taking a critical view of Catholicism's past.

Malzahn then recounts the late pontiff's accomplishments in building a relationshipm withe the Jews, including visiting a synagogue and punishing members of the clergy who supported anti-Semitic positions. But these accomplishments are being undone.

This is mainly because Benedict XVI has barely needed 100 days to trample over the infant seedling of trust between Jews and Christians that John Paul II planted.
[...]
Ratzinger's politics, on the other hand, are over the top. And he's not just risking a return to a kind of cold war with Israel and the Jews.

Malzahn then elaborates with a reference to the late invitation of the Protestants of Germany to the World Youth Day, which did not take place until after complains were lodged. The author then concludes:

Such bull-in-a-china-shop tactics cannot be considered dialogue. But then, Ratzinger doesn't want dialogue. The German pope wants to be right. His predecessor, on the other hand, battled for faith, and was successful. What a difference.

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Is the Jewish/Vatican relationship destroyed over this? I think Mr. Malzahn has some kind of ax to grind and personally I'm disappointed in Spiegel Online. It usually is a bit more moderate in its opinions.

Enter Levada

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has handed down a stiff sentence against Fr. Gino Burresi. The transgressions? The same ones charged against Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the powerful Legionaries of Christ

by Sandro Magister
[...]

Magister examines the implications of the Burresi case as they pertain to Father Maciel and what could be expected in the case of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ.

Read the complete article The First Sentence from Prefect Levada Makes the Legion Tremble from www.chiesa.

Dear readers

The blog passed 3,000 hits tonight. A small milestone. :)

Thanks for reading.

Israel: protesting just what exactly?

Amy over at open book pulled out the relevant points of the two articles I linked to and discussed here. From there, she let her readers have at it and the debate was on.

The debate over Amy's entry is basically centered around Israeli motivations for wanting to attack the Holy See and specifically Benedict XVI for what they perceive as a lack of comment on Israeli civilian deaths at the hands of suicide bombers.

Amy-reader Christopher Fotos provided a link to a Jerusalem Post article detailing the new Israeli protest. The article begins with a recap of the July 24 Angelus and the lack of any mention of Israel. From there, it goes on to explain the new Israeli position.

Nimrod Barkan, director of the Foreign Ministry's World Jewish Affairs Bureau, called Vatican Archbishop Pietro Sambi into his office to protest what Israel believes was not just an innocent oversight.

Barkan said not condemning terrorism in Israel had been Vatican policy for years, and "now that there is a new pope, we have decided to deal with it."

"We feel that now that there is a new pope, we need to turn over a new leaf and change the fact that the Vatican refrained in the past from condemning attacks here," he said. "They need to help the moderates in the Middle East, not the extremists."

Barkan said that during the reign of pope John Paul II, Israel "quietly" protested in Rome the pope's lack of condemnation of attacks in Israel. He said Israel had now decided to go public with the matter to change an entrenched but negative mode of conduct.

Mr. Barkan commented on why he thought John Paul II failed to comment often enough on terrorism in Israel and then added further on what Israel will do if the Holy See does not alter its ways to suit his government.

If the protest is not effective, "we will have to weigh other steps," he said.

Barkan said he was not concerned the public protest would damage relations with the new pope.

"What could be worse than implying that it is okay to kill Jews? What else am I supposed to do," he said.

Another reader of Amy's responded with a selection of different speeches and letters written by the late pontiff that either condemned terrorism as a whole or specifically mentioned the Holy Land. Apparently, one has to specifically mention Israel's situation in particular when condemning terrorism or else one is implicitly saying it is okay to kill Jews. As one reader pointed out over at Amy's, even when specifically condemning violence in the Holy Land, it's still not a sure thing that one will be cleared of charges of anti-Semitism.

Smokescreen or protest, the State of Israel is playing with fire. The UN condemns Israel and everyone brushes it off as more UN nonsense. But Israel condemning the Holy See over slights both real and more often imagined (it would seem) is a policy that risks that government's credibility with its allies in war against terrorism.

Israel: ulterior motives?

The other day, during his Angelus address on July 24, the Holy Father condemned the terror attacks of 'these days'. This was in the wake of the terror attacks in the past 72 hours in Egypt, London and elsewhere.

Doctor Navarro-Valls explained in comments to the press two days later on the 26th:

"Concerning the Israeli reaction to the fact that the Holy Father, in his Angelus of Sunday July 24, did not also mention Israel alongside other countries, it should be noted that Benedict XVI's words specifically referred to the attacks of 'these days.'

"It is surprising that the Holy Father's intention should have been thus groundlessly misinterpreted, it being well known that in numerous interventions the Church, the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs, and most recently Pope Benedict XVI, have condemned all forms of terrorism, from whatever side it comes and against whomsoever it is directed.

"Obviously, the serious attack in Netanya two weeks ago, to which the Israeli comments refer, also falls under the general and unreserved condemnation of terrorism."

In addition to Doctor Navarro-Valls' comments, there is a story at AsiaNews.it detailing how the Israeli protests were allegedly a smokescreen to cover pulling out of talks scheduled with the Holy See that has been postponed several times already. Israel has failed to live up to its obligations in negotiating with the Holy See the Church's tax status in Israel. The Church is exempt from paying taxes. However, those rights have been continually eroded by the Israeli government over time.

After agreeing to very few meetings in 2005, Israel agreed to meet on 19 July, only to cancel the meeting at the last moment, and have it transferred to 25 July. Apparently Israeli officials feared the consequences of cancelling this meeting too at the very last moment, so they contrived to find fault with the papal Angelus address to cover up their non-compliance with their treaty obligation to negotiate with the Holy See.

It's interesting the kinds of things that Israel is ready to pull when it comes to Christians. The Jews throughout the centuries have been persecuted and exterminated out of fear, greed and prejudice and the Israelis are right to remind the world of this occasionally, since the world too often forgets. However, being Jews should not a free pass for the Israeli government to be able to slander and double-cross one's allies against terrorism.

Taking a look at my previous post, Israel has made it all too evident this year with the Patriarchate affair and now this latest incident with Benedict XVI that it is all too willing to take advantage of the Christian churches in its territory as it sees fit for its own gain. The AsiaNews article did not say if the negotiations were actually held or not yesterday.

As the CWN story points out, the earlier Israeli comments were tempered later by a statement that the Holy Father's failure to mention Israel was a mistake rather than some deliberate omission. Whatever Israel's motives, one gets the sense that its condemnation of the Holy Father backfired a bit.

The Jerusalem debacle

Magister discusses the reform of the procedure of the Synod of Bishops and then contrasts the Western institutions with those in the East, leading into a look at the Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the upheaval that has been going on there for quite awhile.

First, the reform:

[...]
The opposite took place in the Roman Church. There, papal primacy was greatly strengthened during the second millennium. Benedict XVI – together with the cardinals who elected him – is convinced that the time has come to strike a balance of powers and give greater recognition to the role of the bishops.

A small first corrective measure has already been introduced into the synod Rome is planning for next October. The synod – an institution inaugurated by Paul VI after Vatican Council II, periodically gathering around the pope representatives of the Catholic bishops from all over the world – will remain a consultative rather than a deliberative body, but the bishops will be able to discuss their topic, the Eucharist, using procedures much better adapted to bringing out different points of view, which the pope will have to consider.

Benedict XVI hopes that by reinforcing the college of the bishops, he will heal the schism that has divided the Church of Rome from the Eastern Churches. He wants to bring the respective systems of governance closer together according to the best that each has produced throughout its history.
[...]

On the election of a new patriarch:

[...]
The Israeli government, in fact, has not yet recognized the dismissal of Ireneos from his office, unlike Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, which have approved it.

And this is another difference in comparison with the Church of Rome. In the East, the Orthodox patriarchs have ties with the respective national governments that go back to the "caesaro-papist" model typical of the Byzantine Empire, which remained in force even after the arrival of Muslim domination.

In the case of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, both his removal and his election must be approved by Israel, the kingdom of Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority.
[...]

Read the complete article (and the accompanying essay) The Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Is Being Replaced. How the Vatican Is Voting from www.chiesa.

I'm out for a week

This week, my brother and I, with the help of our beloved parents, are moving to another abode here in Iowa City. Thus, my time online may be curtailed and posts made here could be few and far between.

But take heart and be of good cheer, for as MacArthur once said, "I shall return." In the meantime, I'll leave you all with pictures, links and comments on the five parishes of Iowa City.

The picture on the left here is St. Mary of the Visitation (the official name, which has been pared down to just St. Mary's) Church here in Iowa City. The church takes its name from the large painting depicting that event contained in the high altar. Father Ken Kuntz has helped me out and St. Mary's is where I go to Mass.

Iowa City has around 60,000 people and has five Catholic churches, including the Newman Center. The unusual thing is that four of the five are all in the same general area and three of the five are within eight blocks of each other.


This second picture is of St. Patrick's Church. It is one of the three that is closely clustered here in downtown Iowa City. St. Pat's is not far from where I currently live and I can see its steeple from my living room window. The Very Reverend Rudolph Juarez, EV, JCL is the current pastor. The decor is shall we say austere. One reason why I prefer St. Mary's over St. Patrick's is the decor.

Given the fact that liturgy has come to play such a small role for me (all Masses are pretty much silent), the visual is far more important to me these days. I'd prefer to sit/kneel/stand in a church that reaches out to me as Catholic rather than one that would be more at home as a post-Lutherian meeting house in Madgeburg.

St. Wenceslaus' Church was the 'Bohemian' church in Iowa City. I've only been to Mass there a couple times. It has a nice altar, but the interior is just kind of bland. The church and its associated buildings are located in a nice neighborhood not far north of Mercy Hospital. Father Michael Phillips is the pastor.

St. Thomas More Church here on the right is the last parish in Iowa City. I've been to a range of Masses at St. Thomas More, including First Communion and Confirmation (for my cousin). The church is located on the west side of the Iowa River close to the University of Iowa's arts campus. Completed in 1966, the 'worship center' seen at the right is an example of a non-traditional design. The actual 'church' where Mass is held is I think unique that it is wider than it is long (as far as I can tell). St. Thomas More is okay, but personally, I prefer my churches to be brick and mortar rather than steel and concrete. Just my preference (probably why I went with St. Mary's).

Last of all, we come to the Newman Catholic Student Center, which is located diagonally across the intersection of Jefferson and Clinton from the Pentacrest. The Pentacrest is the group of four buildings that flank Old Capitol (the first capitol building of the State of Iowa).

It's your standard student center, I would suppose. It has a large worship area with chairs rather than pews. Kneeling is optional (be prepared to kneel on the floor if you choose to kneel at all). I don't know Father Ed Fitzpatrick at all, but Catholic students that I know come away with positive experiences and that is the important part.

Recruitment

Earlier this summer, there was some debate over the fact that the United States Army had below average recruitment and that at current levels, it was going to miss its recruitment goal for the year. (Of course, the articles and debate missed the fact that Army recruitment was about the same in the first half of the year last year and picked up in the secend half enough to reach the goal.) What all the naysayers who were suggesting that young men and women just don't want to join up and go die in Iraq missed was that the Marine Corps has sustained a substantial percentage of all casualties in Iraq since the US invaded, but during that same time, the Marines have consistently met their recruitment goals and in some years have had to turn people away.

Why do the Marines do better than the Army in terms of recruitment? As a viewer of that medium known as the television, all I can say is that the Marines have kick-ass commercials and the Army does not. (Anyone who has seen the movie Patton ought to know what a crock that 'Army of One' line is...)

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- "Just as Keanu Reeves fought against the powers of evil, a priest comes to help people fight against sin. There is a battle out there," explained Father Jonathan Meyer, associate director of youth and young adult ministry for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.
[...]
Father Meyer said the poster, on which he is featured as the "Matrix"-style priest, had its origins in a skit that he saw during his first year at the North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome. The skit, put on by a group of older seminarians, was based on the film. In it, a group of priests fought Satan in a series of mock martial-arts confrontations.
[...]
After a few initial edits, the poster was given a trial run at Our Lady of the Greenwood, in Greenwood, where Father Meyer also serves as associate pastor.

Father Meyer said it got a huge response. "They were going like hotcakes. Young kids wanted them to hang in their bedrooms, high school students wanted them to hang in their lockers," he said. "That is invaluable. If we can get kids to hang a picture of a priest in their room, we've done something huge for vocations."

The response, though, seems to make sense to him. It appeals to people at a level that everyone appears to share. "People love heroes. The poster personifies the priest as a hero," he said.
[...]

Read the complete article A la 'Matrix,' vocations recruitment poster shows priest as hero from Catholic Online from CNS.

This poster here I hope is the start of a new trend. The Priesthood ought not be misrepresented, but it could definitely use a little glamour. After all, priests are heroes and they are saving lives around the world everyday. Is the Holy Father's sunwear all that unexpected in this light?

EDIT: If any of my dear, wonderful readers lives in the Indianapolis Archdiocese or has contacts there and could donate a copy of the poster to this author for 'research' (it would look pretty sweet in my room at my new apartment), it would be most appreciated.

The CDF in action

A recent decree by a Vatican congregation removing the well-known founder of a religious order from active ministry could indicate how Pope Benedict XVI will handle the sexual abuse crisis.

The action also may provide some hint of how the Vatican could handle other high profile cases of a similar nature, including one involving the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a worldwide religious order.
[...]
The case has significance for at least three reasons: it's the first such decree under Levada and the new pope; Burresi is a widely known mystic and Fatima devotee sometimes compared by his followers, including groups in the United States and Canada, to the Capuchin mystic and saint Padre Pio; and finally, because it involves action against a widely known founder of a religious community on the basis of decades-old accusations.

This last point, observers say, could potentially have implications for how the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith eventually handles similar cases, such as charges of sexual abuse against Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Maciel has been accused by a number of former seminarians of sexual abuse. His case is reportedly under investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
[...]

Read the complete article CDF acts against a religious founder from The Word From Rome.

As John Allen points out, this move against Father Gino Burresi could serve as the prototype for such a move in the case of Father Maciel, founder and former head of the Legionaries of Christ. Despite the confusion created by certain announcements earlier this summer regarding the case of Father Maciel, it would seem according to Allen that the investigation still exists.

A report cited by Allen that was written by a commission of cardinals is instructive not only in Burresi's case, but also in light of recent events surrounding the CDF's investigation of Maciel. (See this entry and others subsequent for the story on Maciel's investigation that came about in late May and into June.)

In its conclusion, the report urged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to take administrative action against Burresi despite the statute of limitations. One concern, the report suggested, was that if no action resulted, Burresi's followers would interpret the investigation as evidence of unfair hostility against him.

"It should not be forgotten that during this process some persons said that the accused 'would come out of it triumphant, more esteemed than ever, and thus without any shadow, indeed more glorious than before,' " the judges wrote.

"[They said] 'that the Secretariat of State defends Fr. Gino, thus victory is assured.' If no new limitation is applied to his ministerial liberty simply due to the fact that the proven offenses have been prescribed [by the statute of limitations], probably the sentence of this court will be used as an instrument of propaganda in favor of the accused. He will be able to continue to do harm to those psychologically weak persons who place themselves under his spiritual direction."

Allen points out just who that reference to the Secretariat of State could be referring to, but it is merely his speculation. But in any case, it is interesting that once again, State is seen as a 'protector' of someone who was under investigation by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Hope yet for the Spanish

Madrid, Jul. 21 (CNA/CWNews.com) - A judge in Alicante, Spain, is refusing to marry a lesbian couple and has filed a legal challenge against the change in Spain's Civil Code allowing same-sex couples to contract "marriage." If the case reaches Spain's Constitutional Court, that body could reverse the new law.
[...]
The leading opposition party in Spain, the Partido Popular, is also considering a challenge to the new law's constitutionality. In order to initiate such a proceeding, the party would need 50 senators or representatives to vote in favor. Such a vote is all but guaranteed as more than 143 representatives and 131 senators voted against the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Read the complete article High Court might reverse same-sex marriage in Spain from Catholic World News.

Hopefully the Spanish judiciary has enough 'reactionary' judges to garner a reversal. Not a fan of judicial activism, but a move like this is certainly one reason why the courts exist and exercise judicial review. We'll see what comes of this.

WYD itinerary of the Holy Father

Thursday, August 18:
1000 - Depart from Rome
1200 - Arrive at Köln/Bonn Airport/welcome ceremony
From there, the Holy Father will travel to the Archbishop's residence.
Afternoon - Rhine ferry trip with young people and visit to Kolne Cathedral
After, the Holy Father will return to the Archbishop's residence.

Friday, August 19:
Morning
- Courtesy call on the President of Germany
- Visit to the Kolne Synagogue and address to the Jewish community
Lunch - Archbishop's residence with a group of young people
Afternoon
- Meeting with seminarians at St. Pantaleon Church
- Ecumenical meeting at the Archbishop's residence

Saturday, August 20
Morning - reception of civil and political authorities
Afternoon - reception of the various Muslim communities
2030 - The Holy Father will preside over the WYD Vigil at Marienfeld.

Sunday, August 21
Morning - The Holy Father will preside over the WYD Mass.
Immediately following - The Holy Father will lead the midday Angelus.
Afternoon - Meeting with bishops and greeting of the WYD committee
1930 - Depart for Rome

Read the complete article from Agenzia Fides.

Comments on Spirit...

I finished The Spirit of the Liturgy today. It was my first Cardinal Ratzinger book. Any recommendations on what I should read next of his?

The then-cardinal brought up a lot of different points about Mass that I had perhaps considered in the past but never took the time to really think through to the logical conclusion. Why is the Sign of Peace where it is and does it belong there? Just structural questions like that were brought up as points to consider.

The one point that I've been considering the most was at the end of the book when Ratzinger discussed silence and prayer in the Mass. He suggested how perhaps the Eucharistic Prayer should be recited silently by the priest after saying the first few words of each section as a cue for those present. This would serve as a means of drawing everyone into the 'action' rather than just standing/kneeling and listening to the recitation. It brought to mind my own experience during Mass. I have always followed along and in places where I knew the parts well, I mouthed the words along with the priest. Would silence bring closer attention or would it just allow those present to space off?

Of course, in my present condition, the Mass is pretty much silent anyway, so for me, Ratzinger's thought is in fact reality, though I have no cue words to go by...

Clarification

A thank you goes out to a long time reader for emailing and clarifying a point on the Ukrainian situation. I wasn't aware of certain points, but the email and a quick trip to the following article clarified a few things.

History of Christianity in Ukraine from Wikipedia

I didn't realize the situation in Ukraine was that complex. In any case, I'm interested in seeing how it all pans out.

Sunglasses

In a few different places, comments have been made about Benedict XVI's sunglasses. Most all of these comments have centered on the choice of sunglasses made by His Holiness and how they fit into his wider taste in clothing...

While this is a rather interesting and humorous line of discussion, I would also note that it is misguided. Sunglasses are a part of our lives. They are recommended to protect our eyes from the harsh UV rays of the Sun. That Benedict would choose a pair of sunglasses that are close-fitting and wrap around his eyes is completely understandable. That they happen to cost around £200 is perhaps a bit vain on his part, but so what? I'm just wondering if he talked to his confessor about wanting £200 sunglasses... ;)

A new catechism

PERTH, Australia (CNS) -- The writers of the first comprehensive catechism for Ukrainian-rite Catholics hope it helps diminish the effects of the "Latinization" of the Byzantine church, said the bishop in charge of the project.

Australian Bishop Peter Stasiuk of the Ukrainian Catholic Diocese of Sts. Peter and Paul of Melbourne said Ukrainian Catholics worldwide "have become instilled" with teachings of the Latin rite.

"We attend Roman Catholic schools, we read their religious literature and we have become more or less immersed in Roman Catholic theology and tradition. No wonder our church is deeply Latinized -- to the extent that we have become so comfortable that we do not even see a need to change or to rediscover our own roots and traditions," said the bishop, who also chairs the Synodal Catechetical Commission of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
[...]
The catechism, a draft of which is 600 pages long, will be divided into three sections: "Our Faith," "Our Prayer" and "Our Life," he said.

The first section will explore the Nicene Creed, the Ukrainian Catholic liturgy and how God has revealed himself, Bishop Stasiuk said. The second section will focus on prayer and the liturgy and will follow the cycles of the day and the year in the prayer life of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, he said. The last section will be dedicated to morality.

The "thread that will keep the catechism" together will be the prayers of St. Basil the Great recited during the act of consecration during the liturgy, he said.
[...]

Read the complete article Catechism will help Ukrainian Catholics recover identity, bishop says from Catholic News Service.

I'm interested in picking this up once there's an English translation. It's nice to see the Ukrainians reclaiming their identity. I'm sure Moscow is not going to be pleased with a catechism aimed at strengthening the identity of the Ukrainian Church in Ukraine itself.

I read the other day about how the Ukrainian Orthodox community was pushing on with its efforts to form their own church independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. All the noise that the Russians make regarding the Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Catholic situation I'm sure is muted compared to the internal battle surrounding the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Personally, if I were the Ukrainian Catholics, I'd let the Orthodox situation resolve itself. That way, if the local Orthodox do indeed get their own patriarch, then Moscow would perhaps be quiet since a Catholic patriarch in Kiev would not really its problem anymore...

Down south II

In comments to the previous post, fears included the people choosing Chavez over the Church. It would appear that the Venezuelan people have their priorities straighter than previously thought.

[...]
Caracas sociologist Mercedes Pulido, a Chavez critic who was minister of the family under a previous government, said Chavez also was angered by several surveys released in mid-July that found that the Catholic Church is the institution with the highest credibility among Venezuelans.

The church "is the only institution which (Chavez) has not been able to control," she said.

Read the complete article Venezuelan bishops' statement leads to war of words with president from Catholic News Service.

Down south

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuela's highest Catholic prelate on Sunday condemned President Hugo Chavez's rule as a dictatorship and urged Venezuelans to reject it in an attack likely to strain already poor church-government ties.

"I am convinced that what we have here is a dictatorship," Cardinal Rosalio Castillo, who is retired, said in a interview published by El Universal newspaper.

He told Venezuelans to use their constitutional right to refuse to recognize the left-wing president on the grounds he was not ruling democratically. Castillo did not elaborate on what actions he thought Venezuelans should take.
[...]

Read the complete article Venezuelan cardinal: Chavez a dictator from CNN.

Today, I'm not going to write so much as a Vatican watcher...

In prosecuting the War on Terror, the United States has let its responsibilities in the Western Hemisphere be sidetracked. The War on Terror needs to be fought, but Chavez is an excellent example of how US foreign policy has 'forgotten' what are traditionally its primary areas of focus.

As recently as twenty years ago, the President of the United States and his close advisors were prepared to secretly run counter to the will of Congress in funding anti-communist forces in Latin America. The current administration doesn't seem to give Chavez and his emerging brand of communism in Venezuela a second thought while it deals with Iraq and other hot spots in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Fighting for liberty for all people around the world is something I'm 100% behind. The US thought could stand to reevaluate its priorities as Latin America slowly drifts left.

I commend the Church in Venezuela for seeing Chavez for what he really is and calling attention to him and his brand of totalitarianism. Hopefully, they'll pull their country back from the brink before it's too late.

Thanks goes out to the Fly for the link to CNN.

A blog I found

Does anyone else read White Around the Collar?

It looks interesting.

It's all in the details

Vatican, Jul. 15 (CWNews.com) - Vatican employees will lose one annual holiday under a work schedule set by Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news).

In an internal memo to the offices of the Vatican, Cardinal Angelo Sodano (bio - news), the Secretary of State, has listed the holidays set by the new Pontiff.

As usual, the new Pope has set the anniversary of his election, April 19, as a holiday for Vatican employees. But Pope John Paul II (bio - news) also declared a holiday on the feast of his patron saint, St. Charles, on November 4. The March 19 feast of St. Joseph, the patron saint of the new Pontiff, is already a full holiday on the Vatican calendar.

Many Vatican employees had hoped that the new Pope would a holiday on July 11, the feast of St. Benedict, whose name he chose when he was elected to the papacy. But Pope Benedict held with tradition and left the holiday on the feast of the saint in whose name he was baptized. Born Joseph Ratzinger, he will celebrate the feast of St. Joseph, just as the previous Pope, born Karol Wojtyla, celebrated the feast of St. Charles. ("Karol" is a Polish form of "Charles.")

The anniversary of the current Pope's election, on April 19, will replace the previous annual holiday on October 16, the anniversary of Pope John Paul's election. Several new memorials have been added to the working calendar. Vatican employees will also be asked to commemorate April 2, the anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II; April 16, the birthday of Pope Benedict XVI; and April 24, the anniversary of the current Pope's installation. But those dates will not be full holidays, and Vatican offices will be open for business.

Read the complete article Vatican employees will lose one annual holiday from Catholic World News.

Will the personnel at the Vatican go on strike like the French when they lost the Monday after Pentecost? Developing...

Educating the masses

Magister's new look at the pontificate of Benedict XVI as it has progressed so far provides much insight into what's going on in Rome and the changes that are waiting to be made as the Vatican continues the transition from John Paul II to his successor. Rocco takes a good look at these different points over at Whispers in the Loggia and I don't need to rehash the excellent points he's made.

There is one section of Magister that I would like to examine in more detail, however.

[...]
But for his part, Benedict XVI is captivating the crowds.

The same masses of the faithful that applauded the gestures or striking phrases of pope Karol Wojtyla, while almost completely missing what it was that he was talking about, are doing the opposite with the new pope. They follow Ratzinger's homilies word for word, from beginning to end, with an attentiveness that astonishes the experts. Verifying this takes nothing more than mingling among the crowds in attendance at a Mass celebrated by the pope.

The new pope's style is sober in terms of his contact with the masses. His symbolic expressiveness comes entirely from the liturgy, which he celebrates with a great sense of authority. But apart from the Masses, catecheses, and blessings, Benedict XVI is a minimalist. "The pope must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God's Word," he said when taking possession of the Chair of the Bishop of Rome, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, on May 7. And he keeps to this standard even in regard to public gestures. He does very little of his own. He wants the faithful to pay attention to what is essential, which is not his own person but Jesus Christ alive and present in the sacraments of the Church.
[...]

Read the complete article The First Three Months of Benedict XVI: New Pope, New Style from www.chiesa.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the book Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's about computer hackers who set up a secure data storage site as a commercial venture, but the venture morphs into something much bigger.

In the novel, one of the major characters is Enoch Root. Root is a former Catholic priest whose departure from the Church is never spelled out, but still works with the Church at the grassroots level. While he is in jail with the protagonist, he talks about how at one time, those in his profession were expected to deliver interesting and thoughtful theological and philosophical homilies every week (back when Oxford was still dedicated to educating the clergy).

While I'm sure Stephenson is exaggerating to some extent, I would find it most interesting if Benedict XVI were to lead Catholics into a new period taking the faith seriously not only as a 'faith', but as an intellectual subject that is worthy of study and understanding. The 'why' we believe what we believe can be just as important is the 'what' we believe.

This is not to say that what our priests are teaching us each Sunday in Mass is boring or not very stimulating. Far from it, learning about the Gospel is fundamental. But on issues that have divided and caused so much debate in society, it is as important to learn about the Church's reasoning behind its positions on stem cell research, abortion and marriage.

As the section above illustrates, the laity are probably far hungrier for such reasoning than they're given credit for by most everyone.

Rest in peace, Bishop Locati

VATICAN CITY, JUL 15, 2005 (VIS) - Bishop Luigi Locati, apostolic vicar of Isiolo, Kenya, was murdered last night by a group of unidentified persons who shot him as he returned home from a parish center. The police are unaware of the motive for the killing.

The Italian bishop, who was almost 77 years old, presented his resignation upon having reached the age limit for bishops two years ago, but was still awaiting the appointment of a successor.

MURDER OF BISHOP LOCATI, APOSTOLIC VICAR OF ISIOLO, KENYA from Vatican Information Service.

Please everyone take a moment and say a prayer for the deceased bishop and the Kenyan authorities that they may bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.

Convergence

LONDON (CNS) -- A Catholic bishop said Anglican clerics opposed to the ordination of women bishops should not be received into the Catholic Church for "negative reasons."

Bishop Declan Lang of Clifton, one of England's leading Catholic ecumenists, spoke amid rising speculation that the vote taken by the Church of England July 11 to remove legal obstacles to the episcopal ordination of women would lead to mass defections of traditionalist clergy.

Bishop Lang, co-chairman of the English Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee, a group that meets twice a year to promote ecumenical projects and the joint study of theology, said mechanisms existed within the English Catholic Church to receive married Anglican ministers and even to ordain them as Catholic priests.

"When there was the ordination of women in the first place there were some Anglicans who applied to be received into the Catholic Church, and the same provision is there at the moment," he told Catholic News Service July 12. "But there is an understanding that you don't come into the Catholic Church for a negative reason.

"Those Anglican priests who were received into the church were received for positive reasons -- for example, that they accepted the teaching authority of the church," he said.
[...]

Read the complete article Bishop says fleeing Anglicans must join church for positive reasons from Catholic News Service.

Just another article on the situation with the Church of England. Towards the end, the article looks a possible 'third province' provided by the Catholic Church for former Anglicans:

[...]
Oddie, a former Anglican minister who converted to Catholicism in the 1980s, said that in the 1990s some disaffected Anglicans made contact with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, about a possible "parallel jurisdiction," and the future Pope Benedict XVI was said to have been sympathetic.

Such a parallel jurisdiction, Oddie said, would mean that the former Anglicans would be in communion with the Catholic Church but would be under the authority of their own bishop.
[...]

The only question I would have on this idea is when all these bishops and clergy move to the Catholic Church, are they going to be bringing their parishes with them?

Regarding the previous post and a comment made about it, I would think that any kind of communion between the English and Roman Churches after some kind of crisis in the Anglican Communion would not be a bad thing insofar as bringing in elements that led to the Anglicans' current crisis of identity. The exact circumstances I don't care to predict, but such an event precipitated by a crisis I think would be an expression of a return to more orthodox (i.e. Catholic) doctrines) over all.

The third way: a third province?

Nearly a quarter of the Church of England's bishops, including several of its most senior, are likely to oppose moves to consecrate women as bishops at the General Synod in York today.
[...]
The traditionalist wing does not have the numbers to halt the proposed reform at today's vote, but they intend to demonstrate their strength.

They are threatening a mass exodus if the Church refuses to grant them a Third Province, a parallel Church with male-only clergy led by its own Archbishop and bishops.
[...]

Read the complete article Hundreds of clergy 'will leave church over women bishops' from Telegraph Online.

The 'traditionalists' want a third province. I'm assuming that this province would be without any territory, but instead would include all those parishes that don't want to be under female bishops... That's an interesting solution to the problem. But do they really think anyone would go for it?

I keep waiting for the final conflict that will lead to the complete dissolution of the Church of England and the greater Anglican Communion. How these guys manage to string along their organization when its membership is composed of such disparate factions is really amazing in a way.

In the end though, I am still of the belief that the see of Thomas Becket and many others will be in communion in Rome again in my lifetime.

Memorial erected

From July 6th:

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNS) -- In an effort to promote healing, the Diocese of Davenport has dedicated a monument to victims of clergy sexual abuse.

About 50 people, including abuse victims, gathered around the modest monument, called the Millstone Marker, outside diocesan headquarters June 20 for a solemn dedication ceremony of prayers, Scripture readings, songs, blessings and bagpipe music.
[...]

Read the complete article Davenport Diocese erects monument to abuse victims from Catholic News Service.

The Diocese of Davenport is of course my diocese at the moment. I should drive over and check out the monument. It's interesting how some victims were satisfied and others weren't. I do think that most of the priests being on a golf outing is kind of tacky. Personally, I'd suggest that they put up a statue next of a priest and a layman or woman walking together as a symbol of all the hard work and memorial to all the good people who've made the diocese what it is today.

Audiences with Amato

AUDIENCES

VATICAN CITY, JUL 8, 2005 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in separate audiences:
[...]
- Archbishop Angelo Amato S.D.B., secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
[...]

From the VIS daily email.

Once again, the Holy Father has met with Archbishop Angelo Amato. I do believe that the archbishop has been granted more audiences than any other person, even the likes of Sodano, etc.

Does anyone out among my wonderful readers know anything about Archbishop Amato? He was appointed to his current post only three years ago. Is he a trusted associate of Ratzinger or what?

My (definite) return

I was sucked into the Fourth of July holiday and spent much time visiting. I intended to get back in the loop, but something always came up and I wasn't able to do much of anything. Plus, my mom's keyboard just causes so much pain.

In any case, I'm back home now and will be able to post at a regular clip. Take care all and say a prayer for our British comrades.

A personal update

I've been gone this last week as you all noticed. I've been off getting my housing situation in hand and spending time with my parents. It's been a long week of driving, as both activities needed doing, but were separated by a three hour drive.

A few news items...
Spain passed the marriage bill and it is now law there. Canada's lower house passed the marriage bill and it goes to the senate for consideration. Pallia (plural?) were handed out this week. Bishops were appointed, audiences were granted.

Check out the links along the left and I'll see you all hopefully with something new tomorrow.