Lights and Shadows

And so it comes to the time of leaving, and of summing up.

Who can sum up Russia?

I can only offer glimpses, blurry photographs, impressions, fragments of conversations. And yet, these too have their significance.

And from them, one can try to draw conclusions, without pretending that the conclusions are entirely valid, but only that they are possible.

My first thought is: confusion. Not just in Russia, but everywhere.

Russia is not Russia. Or at least, not the Russia I imagined. I imagined “Holy Russia,” filled with silent, holy monks and splendid, divine liturgies.

But it is a very human and very secularized Russia, especially in Moscow, its streets crowded with cars, its churches often empty, its clubs crowded with pleasure-seekers, its leaders intent, for the most part, I am told, on lining their own pockets and vacationing in the Crimea, or Switzerland, or Miami, or Italy, or Egypt, or the Maldives — any place warm — and the nation be damned.

But then, America is no longer America, and Italy no longer Italy. We have all been changed by the industrial, scientific, information and communications revolutions — changed utterly.

The news on CNN on the television as I leave my room in the Danilovsky Hotel is that the Catholic Church in Washington D.C. is protesting a likely ruling of the Washington D.C. city council that will require the Catholic Church’s social agencies to place orphaned children with homosexual couples. Obviously, America is no longer the simple America of “Mom and apple pie.”

And in Italy, once Catholic, the European Union has ordered that crucifixes no longer be displayed in public places. And so the Constantinian revolution is reversed after 1,700 years.

In the modern West, virtues once honored are honored no longer, and vices, like greed, once denounced as harmful to the person and his or her eternal soul, are now defended as “rights” and even praised as new virtues.

“You are right about the confusion, Bob,” Leonid Sevastianov, 31, the executive director of the Russian Orthodox St. Gregory of Nazianzus Charitable Foundation tells me. (The St. Gregory Foundation was established a few weeks ago with the blessing of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.)

“All Russians know that our country is not what it should be,” he continues. “This is why we are working as we are, and why we want your help, the help of Catholics, and of Western Europeans and Americans.

We are grateful that Communism ended, but clearly we have not yet found our way to a true democracy. There is corruption everywhere — in our government, in our legal system, and, as our faith teaches us, in ourselves. None of us is innocent.

“But the bottom line is, we are getting tired of the way things are. We don’t want to live like this anymore. We are afraid of the consequences if we do not change course. It could be the end of Russia.

“And this is precisely the reason that Patriarch Kirill has called for the moral renewal of Russia, through a return to the deep values of the Christian faith. And at his state of the nation address five days ago, Mr.  Medvedev also urged Russia to develop, or rather, to return to, traditional values. So what we in the Church are proposing seems to have support also at the presidential level, as a national project.

“This is why I am working on the new foundation of St. Gregory, which will work inside Russia, but also with you Catholics in the West. Why? Because in one hundred years, it will not be important how much money I made, or what great secular initiatives I undertook, but what I did for God and the Church.

“We want a revolution in values. No more celebrity idols whose private lives are scandalous. Our ‘idols’ should be the mother who is raising five children, the father who is working hard to support and educate his children. This is our vision.”

Quo vadis, Russia? (”Where are you going, Russia?”)

I was surprised by the pessimism I found in Russia these past few days. One leading Russian economist, once a prominent liberal, told me that the country is under the control of a new elite which occupies 77% of all the leading positions on Russian society, in politics, the media, finance and the legal profession.

His depiction of Russia as almost a “gangster state” without any semblance of the “rule of law” was a drak and gloomy one. And in the media these past few days was the story of a policeman paid by powerful authorities to arrest a man he knew was innocent and fabricate evidence against him.

And so those who are critical of Russia today are not without reason.

But there is another side to the picture.

It is a side with more hope. And even the secular world recognizes the existence of this side.

It is the side of moral renewal, the side of the return to traditional values, the side, at least notionally, represented by Patriarch Kirill and Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev and Bishop Anastasi of Kazan and the Russian Orthodox Church in general.

Even Forbes magazine this week named Kirill as one of the most powerful leaders in Russia today.

“They placed him at #7,” Leonid tells me, then adds, “but that is silly, he is actually #1, no one is more respected in Russia than he is, the editors at Forbes simply don’t know Russia.”

And so the question of Russia’s future becomes, once again, the question of the Orthodox Church.

There are vestiges of the Soviet system which still remain, and dangers from a too-rapid embrace of modern Western Christian ideas.

There are temptations toward a “politicization,” toward making the Church simply an arm of what is still in some ways a “bandit state,” rather than a “loyal opposition” which seeks to reform the ethical and social life of the entire nation.

I believe the Orthodox Church is slowly, gropingly, developing a strategy which is not fascist, not nationalist — though the Church does seek the preservation of the Russian nation and people — but Christian. And the efforts to reach out to Catholics are, for me, the proof of this.

For me, if the “siloviki,” the heirs of the Soviet secret services who still have enormous power in Russia 18 years after Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union, often hidden from public view, win this cultural and moral battle, and the Orthodox Church fails, Russia’s “oligarchs” could consume themselves, and their country.

In this context, I think of Kazan, and of that lonely chapel where “the protection of Russia,” the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, is preserved, after having been lost to Russia from 1918 until 2004, for 86 years.

Recently, the city of Kazan was awarded the World University Games, a type of Youth Olympic Games.

Could not this opportunity be seized upon by the city of Kazan, the government of Tartarstan, the government of Russia, and the Orthodox Church, given the internal situation in Russia, and the nation’s demographic crisis, and the lost youth of this generation, who do not imagine getting married and having children and raising them together, to promote the culture of life and traditional family values?

Svetlana Medvedev, the wife of Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev, is an ardent Orthodox believer.

She has asked that the present year be declared the “Year of the Family” in Russia.

Perhaps she could be persuaded to make the health of children and of families one of the central concerns framing the 2013 athletic games in Kazan, when athletes from around the world will converge on that city.

I have to leave Russia now.

May God bless Russia, and may she be consecrated to Mary, who has watched over and protected Russia so often in the past. She continues to protect Russia — even from herself — and to call upon all Russians to choose a path which leads to life.

It is the icon which was kept by Pope John Paul II in his own apartment for 11 years, from 1993 to 2004. I personally saw it there, when don Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope’s personal secretary, now Cardinal Dziwisz of Cracow, invited me once up to the papal apartment to see it.

This revered Russian icon, which depicts Mary holding the child Jesus, was first discovered under mysterious circumstances by a young Russian girl named Matrona in 1579.

Very early on, miraculous healings were attributed to it, and this prompted the Czar to call for it to be brought to Moscow. Over the following centuries, whenever Russia was in grave military danger, including against Napoleon, the Russian Czar and people would pray before the icon, and on each occasion, the nation was preserved from defeat. And for this reason, the icon came to be popularly known as “the Protection of Russia.”

In 1918, during the Bolshevik revolution, when religious objects were being destroyed and churches turned into latrines, the icon was also in danger, but it escaped. It was spirited out of the country and into the hands of an art dealer in Warsaw. Through many twists and turns, the icon found its way, it is believed (the story still needs to be thoroughly reconstructed) from Warsaw to London, from London to New York, and from New York to… Fatima, Portugal.

Yes, for many years, this most famous Marian icon of Russia was in Portugal, in a special chapel built especially for it next to the site of the apparitions of the Madonna to the three children of Fatima in 1917.

During the 1970s and 1980s, many Russians began to hear that it was kept there, and journeyed to Fatima to venerate it.

Then, in 1991, on Christmas Day, Mikhail Gorbachev signed the document dissolving the Soviet Union. Open religious persecution in Russia was over. The icon could return to Russia without danger of being destroyed.

Immediately, Pope John Paul II went into action. He wrote to Fatima, asking that the icon of Our Lady of Kazan be brought to him in Rome. (I have seen copies of the letter.)

The icon left Fatima and came to Rome in 1993. It was placed on the wall of the Pope’s own private study, and I have been told that the Pope prayed before it almost every day, sometimes for half an hour.

For the next 11 years, John Paul sought a way to carry the icon himself back to Russia — to return Mary, “the Protection of Russia,” back to Russia.

But there was resistance in Russia to inviting the Pope to visit the country. And the invitation never came.

Finally, in 2004, knowing that he would die soon, and would never be able to bring the icon back to Russia himself, Pope John Paul decided simply to send the icon back. “Mary wants to return to Russia,” Dan Stanislaw once said to me.

And so, in August 2004, John Paul sent a special delegation to Moscow, and the icon was handed over to Patriarch Alexi II, and returned to Russia on August 28 of that year.

The question then arose of what would be the fate of the icon, now that it was back in Russia.

The decision was made to return it to Kazan, and to build a pilgrimage center there. In this way, the “protection of Russia” could be venerated by the Russian Orthodox, but also by Kazan’s Muslims, who have a great veneration for the icon and for Mary, and also by Catholics and others, making Kazan into a type of symbolic “city of peace” in a world where religious warfare, despite centuries of secularization, seems to loom darkly over our future.

And the planning for this pilgrimage center was entrusted to my two friends, Maxim Gritschkin and Dmitri Khafizov. (Khafizov in 2001 wrote articles for Inside the Vatican about how much the people of Kazan longed for the return of “their” icon, articles I was told were read by the Pope and moved him deeply, perhaps influencing his decision to return the icon to Kazan.)

“Robert!” Dmitri shouted, when we drove up to the sanctuary gate with Father Diogenes. “Welcome!” And he enfolded me in a Russian-style bear-hug.

We entered through the sanctuary gates, and made our way toward the wide stairway which leads up to the second floor where the icon is kept.

I remembered coming here in the summer of 2000 and climbing these same steps, and on the second floor a choir of Russian children had been gathered to sing for us. Their voices had seemed to bring human song to the portals of heaven, and that song had moved me deeply, and was a factor in my decision to try to work for a brighter future for such children, and now I was back again in this same place, experiencing what Walker Percy calls “repetition” — the memory of “then” and the experience of “now” in one place, mirroring and so intensifying one’s experience of reality.

The icon is in the far corner of the upper room, behind protective glass. There are two steps in front of it, and a stand of candles.

Next to the icon is another case which contains the tiny piece of the robe of the Virgin Mary, and other relics, brought last year from Rome by Immacolata. Click for article on Immacolata’s gift.

The moment comes to venerate the icon.

What does veneration mean? Why venerate a painting? Is it something superstitious, or silly?

The iconoclasts of all ages have thought so, and they have destroyed the images and icons which they feel distract men and women from the awesome transcendence of God. This has always been a tendency within Christianity (remember not only the Iconoclasts, but also those Protestant groups which have shattered stained glass windows and religious statues in their righteous zeal for the greatness of God), within Judaism, and especially within Islam, where it reaches its most radical form — no images whatsoever, only geometric patterns.

But an icon is not a painting. No painter paints an icon. The painter disappears, and the Holy Spirit does the painting, and what is painted is not an image, but a window, from this time into that one, from time, into eternity. It is something other than what the iconoclasts imagine, and that is why they can be forgiven, for they know not what they do.

As one draws closer to the icon, one feels a certain warmth, as if from a holy fire.

It isn’t just the candles, although the candles, too, are warm, and bright. How many prayers are contained in the wax of those candles, which are being oxidized by the flame from the wick, which flickers upward toward heaven?

We are never worthy to pray, to ask for the deep things we long for. We long for them, and wish for them, and hope for them. And these are the gifts that prayer brings, even before it rises to God. For it elicits from our own heart the clarity of what our deepest longings are: good things for our families, peace for our friends, prosperity for all, patience for ourselves in the face of many difficulties, joy even in sorrow.

It would be a poor world in which prayers no longer were prayed.

And now I am directly in front of “the Protection of Russia,” the icon of Our Lady of Kazan.

Silence.

As I rode the overnight train to Kazan, I remembered that St. Basil’s Cathedral, on the edge of Red Square, the last thing I saw as I was leaving Moscow, was built to commemorate the victory of Ivan the Terrible over the Tartars of Kazan in the mid-1500s — more or less the symbolic moment when Russia became a significant power in the world.

It takes 12 and a half hours by train from Moscow to Kazan, about 600 miles almost due east — halfway to the Ural mountains.

So, if we take the Ural mountains to be the eastern border of Europe, Kazan is hundreds of miles inside Europe.

But Kazan, on the Volga River, is also the gateway to Asia, and to the Middle East.

As we hurtled through the night, the forests of white birches passing by my window in a blur, illuminated by a light carpet of November snow , I thought about the special character of Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan.

Here begin the "-stan" countries — beyond Tartarstan is Kazahkstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan… countries which are part of the Muslim world. And Kazan reflects that, as half of its population is Tartar Muslim.

Here also was imperial Russia’s launching point for the conquest of Asiatic Russia, all of Siberia beyond the Urals — a conquest that made Russia the largest country in the world, more than twice the size of the United States.

And the city of Kazan reflects this dual character. Orthodox Russians make up half the population, and Kazan’s Kremlin, or fortress, contains the beautiful Orthodox Cathedral of the Assumption, but just next to the Kremlin, using money from Saudi Arabia, as I was told, the Muslim community has built a splendid mosque, even larger than the cathedral.

This is the first glimpse of Kazan I catch at dawn as the train pulls into the city: the mosque, with its minarets, and the domes of the cathedral, side by side.

But the fascinating thing about Kazan is that it is known throughout the world as a city of tolerant coexistence. There is no evident tension whatsoever between the Muslims and the Christians in this city.

And this, I think, is part of the mystery of the icon of Kazan…

A Miraculous Icon of Our Lady

I have been here before, most recently in the spring of 2008 with the saintly Italian Roman Catholic noblewoman, Marquese Immacolata Solaro del Borgo , famous for helping organize medical assistance for the children of Chernobyl, Ukraine, made ill by radiation exposure after a nuclear power plant meltdown in 1986.

Immacolata, whose family has inherited a number of saints’ relics, brought a tiny piece of the robe of Mary from Italy to Kazan, in witness of her love of the Russian people and the Russian Orthodox Church.

There is a tiny Catholic community in Kazan of about 300 souls, led by Father Diogenes , 42, a native of Argentina. He meets us at the train station and takes us for breakfast to Giuseppe’s, an Italian restaurant and cafe in the heart of the city.

"I’m so happy you could come to Kazan," Father Diogenes says. "There’s a lot happening here." He has been here since 1995.

The Catholic parish is flourishing, he tells us. Most of the Catholics are foreigners working in Kazan, or students from Africa and Asia studying at the University of Kazan. Relations with the city government, which is in Muslim hands, are good, he said. "They built out new church for us," he said. "I don’t know the cost, but it was said to be about 3 million euros." Relations with the Russian Orthodox are also ery good," he said. "We will go visit with Bishop Anastasi this afternoon.

At 11 am, we go to Mass. About 100 people are in attendance. It is in Russian. Father Diogenes preaches on the last things, and tells the faithful they should concentrate less on fears about the chastisements which will accompany the end of the world, and more on the coming of the Lord. "Maranatha ," he tells us. "Come, Lord Jesus."

One of the young nuns in the parish — Father Diogenes comes from a new 200-member Argentine-based missionary order called the Order of the Incarnate Word, which also has an order of sisters — seems to radiate joy.

"What is your name, and who are you?" I ask.

My name is Sister Joy of God," she tells me (photo, with Daniel Scmidt ). "I am a Russian from Kazan."

"And you were not Russian Orthodox?" I ask.

"No," she said. "I was nothing… My parents were atheists."

I remember the icon I saw the first night, at midnight, in Archbishop Hilarion Alefeyev’s church — the icon of Our Lady, Joy of All Who Sorrow.

This nun seems like a living incarnation of the message of that icon.

"Let’s go to see the icon," says Father Diogenes. "Dmitri and Maxim are waiting for us there…"

The icon we are going to see is the icon of Our Lady of Kazan.

It is the icon which was kept by Pope John Paul II in his own apartment for 11 years, from 1993 to 2004. I personally saw it there, when don Stanislaw Dziwisz , the Pope’s personal secretary, now Cardinal Dziwisz of Cracow, invited me once up to the papal apartment to see it.

The Founding

“We were on Mt. Athos on the 11th of August this year, three months ago, and we went to the monastery where are kept the holy remains of St. Gregory Nazianzus the Theologian,” Leonid Sevastianov, a young Russian friend, said to me.

“The archbishop called me to his side, and together we venerated the relics.”

Leonid was referring to Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, 42, the head of the External Relations Department of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“Just at that precise moment, my cellphone rang. It was Moscow calling. A government official informed me that the St. Gregory Foundation had been registered that morning. Just at that moment! We took it as a sign…”

What Will It Mean?

Since the end of communism in 1991, for 18 years, many Catholic groups have tried to help the persecuted Russian Orthodox Church re-emerge from the catacombs. These groups. like Aid to the Church in Need, based in Koenigstein, Germany, Renovabis and Misereor, the charitable foundations of the German bishops, gave many millions of dollars to support Russian Orthodox clergy in a period when the Russian Orthodox Church was attempting to get “back on its feet” after 70 years of repression.

Now, the Russian Orthodox Church is back on its feet. It’s beginning to stretch its legs, and starting to move. But it doesn’t want to run this race alone.

Remembering the Communist time, and the two decades since, the Russians say they are prepared to work together with those who did not forget them in times of persecution and suffering. But what type of work?

Seeing the predicament of modern Russia, where divorce rates are high and the abandonment of children a national tragedy, where financial corruption is eating away at the country’s social fabric and limiting the chances for Russia to transition from totalitarianism to a more open and free society, the Russian Orthodox Church is developing a two-fold strategy: to renew the Church internally, and to engage the wider society externally, confronting the great human and social problems Russia faces.

On both fronts, but particularly on the second, Archbishop Hilarion and Sevastianov have told me, the Russian Orthodox have now decided to engage with Catholics, and others, in a collaboration which can be compared to an actual alliance against the great social evils of our day, not only in Russia, but also throughout Europe and the world.

Therefore, with the spiritual blessing of Patriarch Kirill Archbishop Hilarion, working with a team of young Orthodox clergy and laymen, decided to found the St. Gregory Nazianzus Foundation in order to work together with Catholics and others in the West, to support traditional spiritual values in Russia, but also throughout the world,

St. Greory was a theologian in the 300s, well before the division of the Church into East and West, and so is venerated both by the Catholics and by the Orthodox. He is a Father of the Church for all Christians.

The co-founders of this new foundation are Archbishop Hilarion and Vadim Yakunin, one of the wealthiest businessmen in Russia.

Yakunin has made a personal commitment to support the spiritual and social vision articulated by Patriarch Kirill.

Other wealthy Russians are also prepared to support this Foundation. But participation by Americans and Western Europeans would also be very much appreciated.

Hilarion and Yakunin have chosen Sevastianov to head up the foundation.

Sevastianov, 31, was born in Rostov-on-Don, a Cossack region, into a family of Russian Old Believers. He studied at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1999 to 2002 (he speaks Italian fluently), and at Georgetown University in Wshington DC from 2002 to 2004 (he also speaks English fluently).

“We want to try to attract the attention of religious believers, in Russia and abroad, who believe in traditional Christian values, and who want to contribute to making society more just and more moral,” Sevastianov told me.

“We want to promote the idea of the unity between the West and Russia on the basis of common Christian roots. We believe in this alliance among traditional Christian countries, and we believe we need to talk with one voice in the face of secularism and a false ‘liberalism,’ and we believe that, with a united voice, we can be a strong force against the radical secular world which has become dominant in our societies.

“We believe traditional Christian values are the basis for a more just, prosperous, open and free society, and we can find an example of this at the beginning of the 20th century, when leading Russian Old Believers, the most traditional wing of Russian Orthoxy, like Pavel Ryabushinsky and Savva Timofeyevich Morozov attempted to reform Russian society.”

As evening fell, Sevastianov drove me to the train station, so I could catch the night train to Kazan. We drove past the high walls of the Kremlin.

“There is St. Basil’s Cathedral and Red Square beyond it,” he said. “Quick, take a photograph.

“St. Basil’s is the heart of Russia, and from here Christianity will rise once again in the world.” He paused for a second, and turned to me. “Don’t you Catholics have this prophecy about Russia?”

World Premiere in Moscow

It was called “A Song of Ascents,” and the song did rise, inexorably, from a first, lonely, low note from a single cello to a crescendo of many violins on their highest string with the choir singing: “Give glory to God!”

Those opening low notes from a single cello seemed almost a risk by the composer — too lonely, too stark, too simple. The notes echoed almost eerily in the packed Moscow concert hall. Would they lead anywhere?

“I intended that,” Russian Orthodox Archishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the composer of the piece , told me later that evening. “A song of ascents has to begin low. Then you go up…”

Those first notes reflected the words of the psalm of King David: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee…”

Out of the depths, “de profundis” in Latin, the well-known first words of Psalm 130. King David prayed, as we often do, “from the depths” — from the depths of darkness and despair, from the depths of suffering.

We too often cry out from the depths of the emptiness which can sometimes cast a shadow over our human lives — an emptiness which seems to have threatened our present age with particular vehemence, as many modern men and women wonder whether they (we humans) are the types of beings who have even enough dignity to be worthy to be damned.

If we have no eternal destiny whatsoever, what are we? A brief flurry of dust, nothing more.

This is the peculiarity of our present cultural predicament. Our culture of scientific knowledge, with its unprecedented annihilation of the transcendent, has also annihilated even the hope of an ascent, for there is nowhere to ascend to. And here, within time, there is only endless flux, then silence.

The notes of Hilarion’s song, accompanied by a hundred splendid, powerful male and female Russian voices, began low, but then they rose, moving ever higher, then still higher, until they seemed to strain the capacity of the violins.

I worried that the strings would break.

The ascent seemed to stretch beyond this earth.

I intended that as well,” Hilarion Alfeyev told me after the concert. “I wished to give the sensation of the ascent that stretches toward the eternal. It was a risk, but I took it.”

This approach, first strings, then horns and bells joining in, then voices, all rising higher and higher, yet always simple, even-paced, like a steady hiker ascending a mountain path, is the opposite of much modern composition, which is atonal and unevenly paced.

And in this sense, the composition I heard tonight is revolutionary.

In the second movement, the cellos, violas and violins echoed one another as if across valleys.

In the third movement, Hilarion reflected on the loneliness of exile, of being far from the Promised Land. It was a reflection on Psalm 137, By the waters of Babylon.

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hung up our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

Psalm 137 is one of the best known of the Biblical psalms. It is a hymn expressing the yearnings of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC. (This would mean it is not by King David. Rabbinical sources attributed the poem to the prophet Jeremiah, and the Septuagint version of the psalm bears the superscription: “For David. By Jeremias, in the Captivity.”)

The first lines of the poem are very well known, as they describe the sadness of the Israelites, asked to “sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.” They refuse to do this, leaving their harps hanging on trees.

In the Orthodox Church, and those Eastern Catholic Churches which use the Byzantine Rite, Psalm 137 (which is known by its Septuagint numbering as Psalm 136) is read at Matins on Friday mornings throughout the year (except during the week following Easter Sunday, when no psalms at all are read).

Psalm 137 has been set to music by many composers, including Palestrina, Rossi, Verdi and Partch, and now, in part, by Hilarion.

In a sense, the Russian Orthodox Church, like many other Christian communities, persecuted under communism during the 20th century, was “exiled” from its own country, and could no longer conduct its worship, no longer “sing the Lord’s song,” in its own homeland.

But now, with communism in the past, have the Orthodox remembered their song?

Or, during the time of exile, did they forget the song altogether?

This concert prompts these thoughts in my mind, and the choirs singing suggests to me that perhaps the song is beginning to be sung again…

The fourth movement was centered on a single word: “Alleluia,” and the choirs, men and women, sang this word of praise to one another, accompanied by many single-note ancient horns which have not been used in concerts for 200 years, Hilarion told me, and by drums.

Then came the fifth and final movement, in which the choirs sang “Come, let us give glory to the name of God!” The French horns come in to punctuate the phrases, and the hall shakes with the intensity of the sound.

Why give God glory?

Because we are men. And as men, capable of conceiving of the infinite, but not of grasping it, conscious of our universe, so that we not only know, but know that we know, yet nevertheless mortal, we have enormous dignity, contained in an earthen vessel which does not last.

So, becoming realistic, we embrace both our dignity, and our tragedy.

The dignity of a man is to give glory to God, that is, to act and be truthful and loving toward each of our neighbors so that they sense the meaning, the logos, of the universe at the source of our acting and being, which is truth and love, eternal.

So the glory that we give to God is to live as men — not as ants in a hive, not as demons in a cage, not as angels in a choir, but as men, men marred by sin, but mindful of Zion.

Let us rather cut off our right hand, than forget Zion.

The bell rings at the back of the orchestra, the voices rise to a crescendo, strings and bells, both choirs, highest and lowest notes — the bell insists, insists, rings out again and again. Crescendo. Silence. Applause.

A Mother’s Journey

Archbishop’s Hilarion new symphony was performed this evening as part of a “Country of Resurrection” Musical Festival held in the framework of an annual “Orthodox Russia” exhibition. This concert closed the exhibition.

But it was not the music alone which drew me to this concert hall this evening. It was also the chance to meet an extraordinary woman, Valeria Alfeyeva — the mother of Archbishop Hilarion. (His father passed away some years ago.)

“Is it so important to you to meet her?” he asked me. “I will let you sit next to her.”

And so I sat next to her.

I felt privileged, not because I was being seated in a VIP section among a number of wealthy benefactors of the Russian Orthodox Church, but because I had just discovered and started to read a book by Valeria called A Pilgrimage to Dzhvari: A Woman’s Journey of Spiritual Awakening.

The book is a loosely autobiographical account of a Russian woman’s “coming to faith” in the waning days of the Soviet Union, in about the year 1980, and particularly of her pilgrimage to two Orthodox monasteries in Georgia, the first called Dzhvari.

In this story, shortly after the death of her husband, the narrator, a journalist like Alfeyeva, and her teenage son, called Dmitri (”Mitya”) in the book, arrange an unusual visit to a famous monastery — unusual because women are traditionally forbidden entry.

But it was actually a journey this mother made with her 15-year-old son. It was the journey which sparked her own spiritual awakening — and Hilarion’s vocation as a monk, and now an archbishop, in the Orthodox Church.

The monks in the story urge Valeria to abandon her “intellectual” appreciation of Christianity for a more profoundly spiritual faith, while Mitya is encouraged in his desire to become a priest.

Six years later, Mitya becomes a monk.

The fascination of this work comes not only from the depiction of the monks’ human weaknesses and constant spiritual self-testing, but also from Alfeyeva’s thoughtful explanation of the Orthodox faith and  her lyrical descriptions of the natural beauty of the Georgian countryside.

“Even at the age of two, I could tell he was special,” Valeria tells me about her son. “Listen carefully to this music tonight: it is all about the psalms, from the ‘de profundis‘ to the sorrow by the rivers of Babylon.”
She tells me how, at the age of 22, she circumnavigated the USSR, traveling northward up the entire Pacific coast of the country, then turning west through the Arctic Ocean along the top of the country.

I realize that Alfeyev’s mother was willing to take risks, as he is. It explains something.

I urge others to read this moving story of her spiritual journey during the Soviet time.

Because, born in the middle of the 20th century, no country has seemed more mysterious, more romantic, and, yes, more vaguely sinister, to me than Russia: Holy Russia, cultured Russia, the Russia of the Czars, of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Rachmaninoff, of Lenin and Stalin, and now of Putin and Medvedev, the Russia which was Russia, and then was the USSR for 70 years, and is now Russia once again.

As children in America, we were given a double image of Russia: Russia the communist stronghold, where God was prohibited as “the opiate of the people” and religious believers were persecuted and sent to work camps to freeze and die; and Russia as the “House of Mary,” the nation with more chapels dedicated to the Mother of God than all the other countries in the world put together, the nation therefore cherished by Mary, the nation whose soul and spirit would one day return to faith, and in so doing, bring a time of peace to the whole world. And this, I was told as a boy, was part of the meaning of the mysterious message of Fatima, which we were told was a message from Mary herself, to little children, chosen to hear it because their elders no longer had ears to hear.

And so I always wished to visit here, to see for myself, if there was faith in this country, and, if so, of what kind.

A Walk in Moscow at Midnight

I traveled to Russia with a colleague, Daniel Schmidt of the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We landed in Moscow a little after noon today, made our way through the airport passport control, and were met by a driver sent to pick us up by Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, 42, the “Foreign Minister” of the Russian Orthodox Church, our host. The driver’s name was Raphael.

Raphael took us to the Danilovsky Monastery, where we are the guests of the Russian Orthodox Church — a Church which dates to the year 988 AD, when Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity, and which since that year has been one of the constituent elements of the Russian identity and soul. (I am writing now, at four in the morning, from the lobby of the monastery hotel.)

After resting an hour, we were picked up by an old friend, Leonid Sevastianov, one of Alfeyev’s assistants, and brought to a restaurant where we had dinner with Archbishop Hilarion, Leonid, Alexei Puzakov, the conductor of the Tretyakov Gallery choir, and Vadim Yakunin, a benefactor of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a co-founder with Alfeyev of the St. Gregory Foundation, set up to support Russian Orthodox cultural and religious activity, sometimes in conjunction with Roman Catholics — one of the reasons I am here.

Alfeyev has been quite busy for half a year, since his nomination in April to his post, head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has made him the second most prominent figure in the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy after Patriarch Kirill himself. Alfeyev was in Rome in September to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. He will be traveling to France this weekend, then to China next week, then to other countries.

“I spend 80% of my time now on the road,” he tells me.

I have worked with Alfeyev in recent years to bring concerts of Russian Orthodox music to Rome, Washington, New York, and Boston. The music, composed by Alfeyev himself and performed by Russian orchestras and choirs, includes a Passion According to St. Matthew — an extremely moving interpretation of Christ’s Passion — and a Christmas Oratorio — an astonishingly joyous celebration of Christ’s birth. (In fact, we have DVDs of these concerts available for purchase from our website.)

The goal of this “concert work” was to try to help to “bridge the gap” between Catholics and the Orthodox by means of cultural collaboration, in the hope of hastening the time of closer doctrinal and ecclesial relations between Catholics and the Orthodox worldwide.

And a second reason for my visit to Moscow, in addition to discussing future collaboration with the St. Gregory Foundation, is to attend another Russian concert here tomorrow night.

Meeting with Benedict

Our dinner passed quickly. I asked Alfeyev how his meeting with the Pope had gone. “Very well,” he said.

“I had been told that we would only have perhaps ten minutes together, but the meeting went on for one hour,” Alfeyev said. “We spoke in English. The Pope speaks perfect English.”

Alfeyev also speaks excellent English, as he studied theology and Church history for four years at Oxford in England.

Here is a very brief but interesting link, worth visiting, of a YouTube video showing moments of Alfeyev’s meeting with Pope Benedict at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer palace, on September 18, just seven weeks ago.

As for the content of that meeting, Hilarion said he could not reveal particulars.

But Interfax has reported that “Archbishop Hilarion highlighted the importance of mutual testimony by Orthodox and Catholic believers of traditional Christian values before the secular world. He noted the identical views of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches on such matters as family, maternity, demographic crisis, euthanasia, and many other ethical problems.”

In short, what Hilarion is working on is a worldwide “alliance” between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.

And that is another reason I am in Moscow: because I am persuaded that the Pope’s recent decision to offer “ordinariates” to Anglicans as a way to return to union with Rome may presage an offer to the Orthodox Churches of equally historic importance.

The Icon of Kazan

Hilarion has often spoken of the suffering of believers under the rule of the Soviet regime.

Just three days ago, on November 8, 2009, Hilarion was in the Russian city of Mtsensk (photo) to bring there the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God found by a German soldier in the ruined house in 1943 and returned to the Russian Orthodox Church this year.

Hilarion on Noember 8 told the story of the icon and its return to Russia. “I received the Mtsensk icon from the German Catholics, and today you are receiving it to return it to the place of its abiding. May this holy icon remind us of the tragic past of our Fatherland and be, at the same time, a source of solace, joy, and hope for a better tomorrow. Let us pray to the Mother of God beseeching Her to protect our homeland from any evil and lead us to the Heavenly Fatherland. Take this icon, Vladyka, and may it keep the flock entrusted to your care.”

No doubt, Catholics in Russia have also suffered greatly, and I have mentioned this to Hilarion on a number of occasions.

It is my conviction that the shared suffering of Catholics and Orthodox will soon persuade us that we have more in common than what separates us.

This will be seen as one of the historic documents of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate. We are watching history unfold here.

But this is just one part of a larger papal strategy and vision, which opens outward toward the Orthodox Churches, and which has to do also with the mysterious message of Fatima. Therefore, tomorrow morning I will begin a nine-day trip to Russia, and I hope to file daily about my journey.

The section about married priests is in Chapter VI of the document (see below).

==============================

The Anglican Proposal

The Vatican proposal to the Anglican Communion is now official, dated November 4, 2009, but published [yesterday], November 9, 2009.

There is an important “Australian Connection” here, as the original request for this type of Catholic Church structure came from a very traditional Australian Anglican Archbishop: Archbishop John Hepworth. Hepworth is the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a group of about 400,000 Anglicans from 16 different Anglican groups, out of the total of 70 million Anglicans worldwide, founded in 1991. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Anglican_Communion) These “traditional” Anglicans, over the past generation, became increasingly uneasy with what they believed were unorthodox doctrinal changes in the belief and practice of many in the Anglican Communion, particularly the decision to ordain women priests, then women bish ops, and also an increasing official acceptance of homosexuality.

Andrew Rabel, a Roman Catholic Australian journalist, has been a friend of Hepworth for several years, and Inside the Vatican published Rabel’s interview with Hepworth on these matters several years ago, so  we have been watching this story unfold for a long time.

Andrew last week advised that this historic invitation to the world’s Anglicans would be published today, so I would like him to announce it here. Here is Rabel’s email to me this morning:

“This day comes after 400 years of many unsuccessful efforts, to bring about a reconciliation with the Anglican Communion, and the Roman Church.

“Now the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has taken the lead with this Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus (the words are the first words of the Latin text and mean “Groups of Anglicans”), the first Apostolic Constitution in 13 years, since John Paul II’s Univerisi Domenici Gregis in 1996 (regarding the updating of conclave procedures in the election of a Pope).

“[Other Apostolic Consitutions in recent decades made Opus Dei a personal prelature (Ut sit, November 28, 1982), revised the Church's 1917 Code of Canon Law (Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, January 25, 1983), established military ordinariates (Spirituali militum cura, April 21, 1986), reformed the Roman Curia (Pastor Bonus, June 28, 1988), insisted on orthodoxy at Catholic universities (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, August, 15, 1990), provided a distinct canon law for Eastern Catholic Churches (Sacri Canones, October 18, 1990), and promulgated a new Universal Catechism (Depositum fidei, October 11, 1992). All thes Constitutions regulated Church life, but never dealt with an ecclesial body not in communion with the Church of Rome.]

“Now the Pope has invited members of the Anglican Communion to come back to Rome, and be united but not absorbed, by giving them their own structures.

“Today we are seeing a fulfilment of the words Christ uttered at the Last Supper when He prayed, ‘That they may be one as you, Father in me, and I in you; that the world may believe that You have sent me.’ (John 17:21)

“England has long been called Mary’s Dowry. But a secularized nation and church have caused this gift to be taken from her. She wants it back, and this is the start. Please give a lot of attention to Anglicanorum Coetibus. God bless,
Andrew”

Here is today’s official Vatican press release:

“On October 20, 2009, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced a new provision responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church.

“The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus which is published today introduces a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow the above mentioned groups to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony. At the same time, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is publishing a set of Complementary Norms which will guide the implementation of this provision.

“This Apostolic Constitution opens a new avenue for the promotion of Christian unity while, at the same time, granting legitimate diversity in the expression of our common faith. It represents not an initiative on the part of the Holy See, but a generous response from the Holy Father to the legitimate aspirations of these Anglican groups. The provision of this new structure is consistent with the commitment to ecumenical dialogue, which continues to be a priority for the Catholic Church.

The possibility envisioned by the Apostolic Constitution for some married clergy within the Personal Ordinariates does not signify any change in the Church’s discipline of clerical celibacy. According to the Second Vatican Council, priestly celibacy is a sign and a stimulus for pastoral charity and radiantly proclaims the reign of God (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1579).

Here is a link to the Holy See’s official complete text of the Constitution, which is also included here below: http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/24626.php?index=24626〈=en#APOSTOLIC%20CONSTITUTION%20ANGLICANORUM%20COETIBUS

The text is worth a close reading. It was carefully written and re-written, and is intended to serve as a model also for further developments.

==============================

Official Text, Dated November 4, 2009

APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION ANGLICANORUM COETIBUS

In recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately. The Apostolic See has responded favorably to such petitions. Indeed, the successor of Peter, mandated by the Lord Jesus to guarantee the unity of the episcopate and to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches,1 could not fail to make available the means necessary to bring this holy desire to realization.

The Church, a people gathered into the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,2 was instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ, as “a sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all people.”3 Every division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds that which the Church is and that for which the Church exists; in fact, “such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages that most holy cause, the preaching the Gospel to every creature.”4 Precisely for this reason, before shedding his blood for the salvation of the world, the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father for the unity of his disciples.5

It is the Holy Spirit, the principle of unity, which establishes the Church as a communion.6 He is the principle of the unity of the faithful in the teaching of the Apostles, in the breaking of the bread and in prayer.7 The Church, however, analogous to the mystery of the Incarnate Word, is not only an invisible spiritual communion, but is also visible;8 in fact, “the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, the visible society and the spiritual community, the earthly Church and the Church endowed with heavenly riches, are not to be thought of as two realities. On the contrary, they form one complex reality formed from a two-fold element, human and divine.”9 The communion of the baptized in the teaching of the Apostles and in the breaking of the eucharistic bread is visibly manifested in the bonds of the profession of the faith in its entirety, of the celebration of all of the sacraments instituted by Christ, and of the governance of the College of Bishops united with its head, the Roman Pontiff.10

This single Church of Christ, which we profess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic “subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside her visible confines. Since these are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.”11

In the light of these ecclesiological principles, this Apostolic Constitution provides the general normative structure for regulating the institution and life of Personal Ordinariates for those Anglican faithful who desire to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church in a corporate manner. This Constitution is completed by Complementary Norms issued by the Apostolic See.

I. §1 Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church are erected by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith within the confines of the territorial boundaries of a particular Conference of Bishops in consultation with that same Conference.

§2 Within the territory of a particular Conference of Bishops, one or more Ordinariates may be erected as needed.

§3 Each Ordinariate possesses public juridic personality by the law itself (ipso iure); it is juridically comparable to a diocese.12

§4 The Ordinariate is composed of lay faithful, clerics and members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, originally belonging to the Anglican Communion and now in full communion with the Catholic Church, or those who receive the Sacraments of Initiation within the jurisdiction of the Ordinariate.

§5 The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the Ordinariate.

II. The Personal Ordinariate is governed according to the norms of universal law and the present Apostolic Constitution and is subject to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the other Dicasteries of the Roman Curia in accordance with their competencies. It is also governed by the Complementary Norms as well as any other specific Norms given for each Ordinariate.

III. Without excluding liturgical celebrations according to the Roman Rite, the Ordinariate has the faculty to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See, so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared.

IV. A Personal Ordinariate is entrusted to the pastoral care of an Ordinary appointed by the Roman Pontiff.

V. The power (potestas) of the Ordinary is:

a. ordinary: connected by the law itself to the office entrusted to him by the Roman Pontiff, for both the internal forum and external forum;

b. vicarious: exercised in the name of the Roman Pontiff;

c. personal: exercised over all who belong to the Ordinariate;

This power is to be exercised jointly with that of the local Diocesan Bishop, in those cases provided for in the Complementary Norms.

VI. §1 Those who ministered as Anglican deacons, priests, or bishops, and who fulfill the requisites established by canon law13 and are not impeded by irregularities or other impediments14 may be accepted by the Ordinary as candidates for Holy Orders in the Catholic Church. In the case of married ministers, the norms established in the Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI Sacerdotalis coelibatus, n. 4215 and in the Statement In June16 are to be observed. Unmarried ministers must submit to the norm of clerical celibacy of CIC can. 277, §1.

§2. The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule (pro regula) will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter. He may also petition the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.

§3. Incardination of clerics will be regulated according to the norms of canon law.

§4. Priests incardinated into an Ordinariate, who constitute the presbyterate of the Ordinariate, are also to cultivate bonds of unity with the presbyterate of the Diocese in which they exercise their ministry. They should promote common pastoral and charitable initiatives and activities, which can be the object of agreements between the Ordinary and the local Diocesan Bishop.

§5. Candidates for Holy Orders in an Ordinariate should be prepared alongside other seminarians, especially in the areas of doctrinal and pastoral formation. In order to address the particular needs of seminarians of the Ordinariate and formation in Anglican patrimony, the Ordinary may also establish seminary programs or houses of formation which would relate to existing Catholic faculties of theology.

VII. The Ordinary, with the approval of the Holy See, can erect new Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, with the right to call their members to Holy Orders, according to the norms of canon law. Institutes of Consecrated Life originating in the Anglican Communion and entering into full communion with the Catholic Church may also be placed under his jurisdiction by mutual consent.

VIII. §1. The Ordinary, according to the norm of law, after having heard the opinion of the Diocesan Bishop of the place, may erect, with the consent of the Holy See, personal parishes for the faithful who belong to the Ordinariate.

§2. Pastors of the Ordinariate enjoy all the rights and are held to all the obligations established in the Code of Canon Law and, in cases established by the Complementary Norms, such rights and obligations are to be exercised in mutual pastoral assistance together with the pastors of the local Diocese where the personal parish of the Ordinariate has been established.

IX. Both the lay faithful as well as members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, originally part of the Anglican Communion, who wish to enter the Personal Ordinariate, must manifest this desire in writing.

X. §1. The Ordinary is aided in his governance by a Governing Council with its own statutes approved by the Ordinary and confirmed by the Holy See.17

§2. The Governing Council, presided over by the Ordinary, is composed of at least six priests. It exercises the functions specified in the Code of Canon Law for the Presbyteral Council and the College of Consultors, as well as those areas specified in the Complementary Norms.

§3. The Ordinary is to establish a Finance Council according to the norms established by the Code of Canon Law which will exercise the duties specified therein.18

§4. In order to provide for the consultation of the faithful, a Pastoral Council is to be constituted in the Ordinariate.19

XI. Every five years the Ordinary is required to come to Rome for an ad limina Apostolorum visit and present to the Roman Pontiff, through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and in consultation with the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, a report on the status of the Ordinariate.

XII. For judicial cases, the competent tribunal is that of the Diocese in which one of the parties is domiciled, unless the Ordinariate has constituted its own tribunal, in which case the tribunal of second instance is the one designated by the Ordinariate and approved by the Holy See.

XIII. The Decree establishing an Ordinariate will determine the location of the See and, if appropriate, the principal church.

We desire that our dispositions and norms be valid and effective now and in the future, notwithstanding, should it be necessary, the Apostolic Constitutions and ordinances issued by our predecessors, or any other prescriptions, even those requiring special mention or derogation.

Given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on November 4, 2009, the Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo.

+ BENEDICTUS PP XVI

_________________

1 Cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 23; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter Communionis notio, 12; 13.

2 Cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 4; Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 2.

3 Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 1.

4 Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 1.

5 Cf. Jn 17:20-21; Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 2.

6 Cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 13.

7 Cf. ibid; Acts 2:42.

8 Cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 8; Letter Communionis notio, 4.

9 Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 8.

10 Cf. CIC, can. 205; Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 13; 14; 21; 22; Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 2; 3; 4; 15; 20; Decree Christus Dominus, 4; Decree Ad gentes, 22.

11 Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 8.

12 Cf. John Paul II, Ap. Const. Spirituali militium curae, 21 April 1986, I § 1.

13 Cf. CIC, cann. 1026-1032.

14 Cf. CIC, cann. 1040-1049.

15 Cf. AAS 59 (1967) 674.

16 Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Statement of 1 April 1981, in Enchiridion Vaticanum 7, 1213.

17 Cf. CIC, cann. 495-502.

18 Cf. CIC, cann. 492-494.

19 Cf. CIC, can. 511.

——————————————————–

COMPLEMENTARY NORMS FOR THE APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION ANGLICANORUM COETIBUS

Jurisdiction of the Holy See

Article 1

Each Ordinariate is subject to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It maintains close relations with the other Roman Dicasteries in accordance with their competence.

Relations with Episcopal Conferences and Diocesan Bishops

Article 2

§1. The Ordinary follows the directives of the national Episcopal Conference insofar as this is consistent with the norms contained in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus.

§2. The Ordinary is a member of the respective Episcopal Conference.

Article 3

The Ordinary, in the exercise of this office, must maintain close ties of communion with the Bishop of the Diocese in which the Ordinariate is present in order to coordinate its pastoral activity with the pastoral program of the Diocese.

The Ordinary

Article 4

§1. The Ordinary may be a bishop or a presbyter appointed by the Roman Pontiff ad nutum Sanctae Sedis, based on a terna presented by the Governing Council. Canons 383-388, 392-394, and 396-398 of the Code of Canon Law apply to him.

§2. The Ordinary has the faculty to incardinate in the Ordinariate former Anglican ministers who have entered into full communion with the Catholic Church, as well as candidates belonging to the Ordinariate and promoted to Holy Orders by him.

§3. Having first consulted with the Episcopal Conference and obtained the consent of the Governing Council and the approval of the Holy See, the Ordinary can erect as needed territorial deaneries supervised by a delegate of the Ordinary covering the faithful of multiple personal parishes.

The Faithful of the Ordinariate

Article 5

§1. The lay faithful originally of the Anglican tradition who wish to belong to the Ordinariate, after having made their Profession of Faith and received the Sacraments of Initiation, with due regard for Canon 845, are to be entered in the apposite register of the Ordinariate. Those baptized previously as Catholics outside the Ordinariate are not ordinarily eligible for membership, unless they are members of a family belonging to the Ordinariate.

§2. Lay faithful and members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, when they collaborate in pastoral or charitable activities, whether diocesan or parochial, are subject to the Diocesan Bishop or to the pastor of the place; in which case the power of the Diocesan Bishop or pastor is exercised jointly with that of the Ordinary and the pastor of the Ordinariate.

The Clergy

Article 6

§1. In order to admit candidates to Holy Orders the Ordinary must obtain the consent of the Governing Council. In consideration of Anglican ecclesial tradition and practice, the Ordinary may present to the Holy Father a request for the admission of married men to the presbyterate in the Ordinariate, after a process of discernment based on objective criteria and the needs of the Ordinariate. These objective criteria are determined by the Ordinary in consultation with the local Episcopal Conference and must be approved by the Holy See.

§2. Those who have been previously ordained in the Catholic Church and subsequently have become Anglicans, may not exercise sacred ministry in the Ordinariate. Anglican clergy who are in irregular marriage situations may not be accepted for Holy Orders in the Ordinariate.

§3. Presbyters incardinated in the Ordinariate receive the necessary faculties from the Ordinary.

Article 7

§1. The Ordinary must ensure that adequate remuneration be provided to the clergy incardinated in the Ordinariate, and must provide for their needs in the event of sickness, disability, and old age.

§2. The Ordinary will enter into discussion with the Episcopal Conference about resources and funds which might be made available for the care of the clergy of the Ordinariate.

§3. When necessary, priests, with the permission of the Ordinary, may engage in a secular profession compatible with the exercise of priestly ministry (cf. CIC, can. 286).

Article 8

§1. The presbyters, while constituting the presbyterate of the Ordinariate, are eligible for membership in the Presbyteral Council of the Diocese in which they exercise pastoral care of the faithful of the Ordinariate (cf. CIC, can. 498, §2).

§2. Priests and Deacons incardinated in the Ordinariate may be members of the Pastoral Council of the Diocese in which they exercise their ministry, in accordance with the manner determined by the Diocesan Bishop (cf. CIC, can. 512, §1).

Article 9

§1. The clerics incardinated in the Ordinariate should be available to assist the Diocese in which they have a domicile or quasi-domicile, where it is deemed suitable for the pastoral care of the faithful. In such cases they are subject to the Diocesan Bishop in respect to that which pertains to the pastoral charge or office they receive.

§2. Where and when it is deemed suitable, clergy incardinated in a Diocese or in an Institute of Consecrated Life or a Society of Apostolic Life, with the written consent of their respective Diocesan Bishop or their Superior, can collaborate in the pastoral care of the Ordinariate. In such case they are subject to the Ordinary in respect to that which pertains to the pastoral charge or office they receive.

§3. In the cases treated in the preceding paragraphs there should be a written agreement between the Ordinary and the Diocesan Bishop or the Superior of the Institute of Consecrated Life or the Moderator of the Society of Apostolic Life, in which the terms of collaboration and all that pertains to the means of support are clearly established.

Article 10

§1. Formation of the clergy of the Ordinariate should accomplish two objectives: 1) joint formation with diocesan seminarians in accordance with local circumstances; 2) formation, in full harmony with Catholic tradition, in those aspects of the Anglican patrimony that are of particular value.

§2. Candidates for priestly ordination will receive their theological formation with other seminarians at a seminary or a theological faculty in conformity with an agreement concluded between the Ordinary and, respectively, the Diocesan Bishop or Bishops concerned. Candidates may receive other aspects of priestly formation at a seminary program or house of formation established, with the consent of the Governing Council, expressly for the purpose of transmitting Anglican patrimony.

§3. The Ordinariate must have its own Program of Priestly Formation, approved by the Holy See; each house of formation should draw up its own rule, approved by the Ordinary (cf. CIC, can. 242, §1).

§4. The Ordinary may accept as seminarians only those faithful who belong to a personal parish of the Ordinariate or who were previously Anglican and have established full communion with the Catholic Church.

§5. The Ordinariate sees to the continuing formation of its clergy, through their participation in local programs provided by the Episcopal Conference and the Diocesan Bishop.

Former Anglican Bishops

Article 11

§1. A married former Anglican Bishop is eligible to be appointed Ordinary. In such a case he is to be ordained a priest in the Catholic Church and then exercises pastoral and sacramental ministry within the Ordinariate with full jurisdictional authority.

§2. A former Anglican Bishop who belongs to the Ordinariate may be called upon to assist the Ordinary in the administration of the Ordinariate.

§3. A former Anglican Bishop who belongs to the Ordinariate may be invited to participate in the meetings of the Bishops’ Conference of the respective territory, with the equivalent status of a retired bishop.

§4. A former Anglican Bishop who belongs to the Ordinariate and who has not been ordained as a bishop in the Catholic Church, may request permission from the Holy See to use the insignia of the episcopal office.

The Governing Council

Article 12

§1. The Governing Council, in accord with Statutes which the Ordinary must approve, will have the rights and responsibilities accorded by the Code of Canon Law to the College of Consultors and the Presbyteral Council.

§2. In addition to these responsibilities, the Ordinary needs the consent of the Governing Council to:

a) admit a candidate to Holy Orders;

b) erect or suppress a personal parish;

c) erect or suppress a house of formation;

d) approve a program of formation.

§3. The Ordinary also consults the Governing Council concerning the pastoral activities of the Ordinariate and the principles governing the formation of clergy.

§4. The Governing Council has a deliberative vote:

a. when choosing a terna of names to submit to the Holy See for the appointment of the Ordinary;

b. when proposing changes to the Complementary Norms of the Ordinariate to present to the Holy See;

c. when formulating the Statutes of the Governing Council, the Statutes of the Pastoral Council, and the Rule for houses of formation.

§ 5. The Governing Council is composed according to the Statutes of the Council. Half of the membership is elected by the priests of the Ordinariate.

The Pastoral Council

Article 13

§1. The Pastoral Council, constituted by the Ordinary, offers advice regarding the pastoral activity of the Ordinariate.

§2. The Pastoral Council, whose president is the Ordinary, is governed by Statutes approved by the Ordinary.

The Personal Parishes

Article 14

§1. The pastor may be assisted in the pastoral care of the parish by a parochial vicar, appointed by the Ordinary; a pastoral council and a finance council must be established in the parish.

§2. If there is no vicar, in the event of absence, incapacity, or death of the pastor, the pastor of the territorial parish in which the church of the personal parish is located can exercise his faculties as pastor so as to supply what is needed.

§3. For the pastoral care of the faithful who live within the boundaries of a Diocese in which no personal parish has been erected, the Ordinary, having heard the opinion of the local Diocesan Bishop, can make provisions for quasi-parishes (cf. CIC, can. 516, §1).

The Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved these Complementary Norms for the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, adopted in the Ordinary Session of the Congregation, and ordered their publication.

Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, November 4, 2009, the Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo.

William Card. Levada
Prefect

+ Luis. F. Ladaria, S.I.
Titular Archbishop of Thibica
Secretary

===========================

An Official Commentary on the Meaning of this Document

The Holy See also published today the following commentary on the document, written by the head of the Gregorian University.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION ANGLICANORUM COETIBUS

BY FR. GIANFRANCO GHIRLANDA, S.J., RECTOR OF THE PONTIFICAL GREGORIAN UNIVERSITY

The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus of November 4th 2009, provides the essential norms which will govern the erection and the life of Personal Ordinariates for those Anglican faithful who wish to enter, either corporately or individually, into full communion with the Catholic Church. In this way, as it says in the Introduction, the Holy Father Benedict XVI – Supreme Pastor of the Church and, by mandate of Christ, guarantor of the unity of the episcopate and of the universal communion of all the Churches – has shown his fatherly care for those Anglican faithful (lay, clerics and members of Institutes of Consecrated life and of Societies of Apostolic Life) who have repeatedly petitioned the Holy See to be received into full Catholic Communion.

The Introduction to the Apostolic Constitution lays out the ratio legis of the provision emphasising a number of things which it might be useful to point out:

— The Church, which in its unity and diversity is modelled on the Most Holy Trinity, was instituted as “a sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all people” (Lumen gentium, 1). For this reason every division among the baptized wounds that which the Church is and that for which the Church exists, and constitutes, therefore, a scandal in that it contradicts the prayer of Jesus before his passion and death (cf. John 17:20-21).

— Ecclesial communion, established by the Holy Spirit who is the principle of unity in the Church, is, by analogy with the mystery of the Incarnate Word, at the same time both invisible (spiritual) and visible (hierarchically organized). The communion among the baptized, therefore, if it is to be full communion, must be “visibly manifested in the bonds of the profession of the faith in its entirety, of the celebration of all of the sacraments instituted by Christ, and of the governance of the College of Bishops united with its head, the Roman Pontiff”.

— Although the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church governed by the Successor of Peter and the Bishops in union with him, there are also elements of sanctification and of truth to be found outside her visible confines, in the Churches and Christian Communities separated from her, which, because these elements are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.

Those Anglican faithful who, under the promptings of the Holy Spirit, have asked to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church have been moved towards unity by those elements of the Church of Christ which have always been present in their personal and communal lives as Christians.

For this reason the promulgation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus by the Holy Father, together with what will follow from this, indicate in a particular way the movement of the Holy Spirit.

The juridical means by the which the Holy Father has decided to receive these Anglicans into full Catholic communion is the erection of Personal Ordinariates (I § 1).

The competence of erection has been given to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The reason for this is that during the long process which has finally borne fruit in this Apostolic Constitution many doctrinal questions have had to be addressed, and such questions will continue to arise as the time comes for the erection of particular Ordinariates and for the incorporation of groups of Anglican faithful into full Catholic communion through the Ordinariates. In any case, as specific issues emerge, each Ordinariate will be subject not just to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith but also to the other Dicasteries of the Roman Curia according to their competences (Ap. Cons. II). For example: for associations of the Faithful, the Pontifical Council for the Laity will have competence; for the formation and life of priests, the Congregation for the Clergy; for the various forms of consecrated life, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societie s of Apostolic Life, etc. For the visit ad limina Apostolorum, which the Ordinary is obliged to make every five years, the Apostolic Constitution specifically mentions that the Ordinary must consult not only with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith but also with the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples(Ap. Cons. XI).

The possibility for the erection of Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church which is envisioned in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus does not create a new structure within the current canonical norms, but rather, uses the structure of Personal Ordinariates, originally created for the pastoral care of members of the armed forces, in the Apostolic Constitution of John Paul II Spirituali militum cura of April 21, 1986. Notwithstanding the similarities between these two types of Personal Ordinariates, it is clear that given their different purposes, one for the Military and the other for those coming from Anglicanism, there are also significant differences between them. What we are dealing with are structures created by the Church in order to deal with specific situations which arise from the needs of the faithful, and which are, by definition, exceptional. The pastoral concern of the Church and th e flexibility of her canonical norms permit the creation of juridical structures which are specifically adapted to the spiritual good of the faithful, while not contradicting the foundational principles of Catholic ecclesiology.

Just as the Military Ordinariates were not envisioned in the Code of Canon Law, so also Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church were not specifically foreseen. However, just as the Military Ordinariates are described in the Apostolic Constitution Spirituali militum cura as specific ecclesiastical jurisdictions which are similar to dioceses (Ap. Cons. I § 1), so also the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus describes Personal Ordinariates for the faithful coming from Anglicanism as juridically similar to dioceses (Ap. Cons. I § 3).

These Personal Ordinariates cannot be considered as Particular Ritual Churches since the Anglican liturgical, spiritual and pastoral tradition is a particular reality within the Latin Church. The creation of a Ritual Church might have created ecumenical difficulties. Nor can these Personal Ordinariates been considered as Personal Prelatures since, according to can. 294, Personal Prelatures are composed of secular priests and deacons and, according to can. 296, lay people may simply dedicate themselves to the apostolic works of Personal Prelatures by way of agreements. Members of Institutes of Consecrated Life or of Societies of Apostolic Life are not even mentioned in the canons concerning Personal Prelatures.

The Ordinariates for the faithful coming from Anglicanism are therefore personal structures in as much as the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, and consequently also of parish priests, is not geographically defined within the territory of an Episcopal Conference like a particular territorial Church, but is exercised “over all who belong to the Ordinariate” (Ap. Cons. V). Moreover, one or more Personal Ordinariates can be erected within the territory of the same Episcopal Conference, according to necessity (Ap. Cons. I § 2).

It is clear from a careful reading of the Apostolic Constitution and of the Complementary Norms published by the Apostolic See that the provision of erecting Personal Ordinariates is intended to respond to two needs: on the one hand the need “to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared” (Ap. Cons. III); on the other hand the need to fully integrate into the life of the Catholic Church groups of faithful, or individuals, coming from Anglicanism.

The enrichment is mutual: the faithful coming from Anglicanism and entering into full Catholic communion receive the richness of the spiritual, liturgical and pastoral tradition of the Latin Roman Church in order to integrate it into their own tradition, which integration will in itself enrich the Latin Roman Church. On the other hand, exactly this Anglican tradition – which will be received in its authenticity in the Latin Roman Church – has constituted within Anglicanism precisely one of those gifts of the Church of Christ, which has moved these faithful towards Catholic unity.

What is involved in this provision, therefore, goes beyond what was envisioned in the Pastoral Provision adopted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by John Paul II on June 20, 1980. Whereas the Pastoral Provision foresaw that the faithful coming from Anglicanism would be members of the Diocese in which they were domiciled, although receiving special care from the diocesan Bishop, the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus considers them as members of a Personal Ordinariate and not of the Diocese in which they are domiciled. Furthermore these Ordinariates will be composed of faithful from every sate of life (laity, priests and members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and of Societies of Apostolic Life) coming from Anglicanism either in groups or individually, or receiving the sacraments of initiation within the Ordinariate itself (Ap. Cons. I § 4).

Priests will be ascribed to the Personal Ordinariate by incardination, regulated according to the Code of Canon Law (Ap. Cons. I § 3), while lay people and Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life must manifest their desire to enter and become part of the Ordinariate in writing (Ap. Cons. IX). The Complementary Norms (= CN) state that such lay people and Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life must be inscribed in an appropriate register of the Ordinariate (Art. 5 § 1). Thus, while one is a member of a particular territorial Church by virtue of one’s domicile or quasi-domicile, one is a member of the Personal Ordinariate in virtue of the objective fact of having previously adhered to Anglicanism, or because one has come to the Catholic faith through the Ordinariate. In this sense, inscription in the appropriate register substitutes for the fact of domicile or quasi-domicile, which in relation to membership in a Pers onal Ordinariate is irrelevant.

This Apostolic Constitution wishes above all to provide a means to re-establish full communion, in some way “corporately”, for groups composed of people in various states of life. Personal Ordinariates for such groups appear to be the most suitable canonical structure by which the spiritual, liturgical and pastoral tradition, developed within Anglicanism and recognised as authentic by the Catholic Church, can be protected and nourished. All of which does not exclude the possibility of membership in the Ordinariate for individuals coming from Anglicanism, or for individuals who come to the Catholic faith through the pastoral or missionary work of the Ordinariate and who receive the sacraments of initiation within the Ordinariate. The Pastoral Provision was not suitable for the new situation to which that the Holy See was called upon to respond.

The Ordinary, to whom the pastoral care of the faithful who belong to the Ordinariate is entrusted, exercises ordinary vicarious authority (potestas ordinaria vicaria) in the name of the Roman Pontiff (Ap. Cons. V.b). He enjoys legitimate autonomy with respect to the jurisdiction of the Diocesan Bishops in which the faithful of the Ordinariate have their domicile and is, therefore, better able to ensure that those faithful are not simply assimilated into the local Dioceses in a way which would lead to the loss of the richness of their Anglican tradition – which would be an entire impoverishment of the entire Church. On the other hand, the Ordinary in the exercise of his vicarious authority must ensure the full integration of the Ordinariate into the life of the Catholic Church, making sure that it does not evolve into an isolated community.

The safeguarding and nourishing of the Anglican tradition is guaranteed:

1. by the concession to the Ordinariate of the faculty to celebrate the Eucharist and the other sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical rites proper to the Anglican tradition and approved by the Holy See, without, however, excluding liturgical celebrations according to the Roman Rite (Ap. Cons. III);

2. by the fact that the Ordinary may determine specific programmes of formation for seminarians of the Ordinariate living in a diocesan seminary, or may establish a house of formation for them (Ap. Cons. VI § 5; CN Art. 10 § 2); the seminarians must come from a personal parish of the Ordinariate or from Anglicanism (CN Art. 10 § 4);

3. by the concession that those who were married Anglican ministers, including bishops, may be ordained priests according to the norms of the Encyclical Letter of Paul VI Sacerdotalis coelibatus, n. 42 and of the Declaration In June, while remaining in the married state (Ap. Cons. VI § 1);

4. by the possibility that, following a process of discernment based on objective criteria and the needs of the Ordinariate (CN Art. 6 § 1), the Ordinary may also petition the Roman Pontiff, on a case by case basis, to admit married men to the priesthood as a derogation of CIC can. 277, § 1, although the general norm of the Ordinariate will be to admit only celibate men (Ap. Cons. VI § 2);

5. by the fact that the Ordinary may erect personal parishes, after having consulted with the local Diocesan Bishop and having obtained the consent of the Holy See (Ap. Cons. VIII § 1);

6. through the capacity to receive into the Ordinariate Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic life coming from Anglicanism, and of erecting new ones;

7. by the fact that, out of respect for the synodal tradition of Anglicanism: a) the Ordinary will be appointed by the Roman Pontiff from a terna of names presented by the Governing Council (CN Art. 4 § 1); b) that the Pastoral Council will be obligatory (Ap. Cons. X § 2); c) that the Governing Council, composed of at least six priests, apart from fulfilling the duties established in the Code of Canon Law for the Presbyteral Council and the College of Consultors, will also exercise those duties specified in the Complementary Norms which include in some cases giving or withholding consent or of expressing a deliberative vote (Ap. Cons. X § 2; CN Art. 12).

The integration of the Ordinariate into the life of the Catholic Church is assured by those norms which govern the profession of faith and the relationships of an Ordinariate with an Episcopal Conference, and with individual Diocesan Bishops. According to these norms:

1. the Catechism of the Catholic Church will be considered the authentic expression of the faith of the members of the Ordinariate (Ap. Cons. I § 5);

2. a Personal Ordinariate will be erected by the Holy See within the territorial confines of an Episcopal Conference, after having consulted with that Episcopal Conference (Ap. Cons. I § 1);

3. the Ordinary will be a member of his respective Episcopal Conference and will be obliged to follow its directives, unless they are incompatible with the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (CN Art. 2);

4. the ordination of ministers coming from Anglicanism will be absolute, on the basis of the Bull Apostolicae curae of Leo XIII of September 13, 1896. Given the entire Catholic Latin tradition and the tradition of the Oriental Catholic Churches, including the Orthodox tradition, the admission of married men to the episcopate is absolutely excluded (NC Art. 11 § 1);

5. the priests incardinated into an Ordinariate constitute its presbyterate, but are obliged to cultivate bonds of fraternal unity with the presbyterate of the Dioceses in whose territory they exercise their ministry. They are to encourage joint initiatives and pastoral and charitable activities, which may be regulated by agreements between the Ordinary and the Diocesan Bishop or Bishops concerned (Ap. Cons. VI § 4; NC Art. 3). The Complementary Norms envisage the possibility of mutual pastoral assistance between priests incardinated into the Ordinariate and those incardinated into Dioceses in which there are faithful of the Ordinariate (NC Art. 9 §§ 1 and 2);

6. the priests of the Ordinariate are eligible for election to the Presbyteral Council of the Dioceses in whose territory they exercise the pastoral care of the faithful of the Ordinariate (NC Art. 8 § 1);

7. the priests and deacons of the Ordinariate are eligible to be members of the Pastoral Council of the Dioceses in whose territory the exercise their ministry (NC Art. 8 § 2);

8. the authority (potestas) of the Ordinary is exercised together with the Diocesan Bishop in the circumstances envisioned in the Complementary Norms (Ap. Cons. V; NC Art. 5 § 2);

9. candidates for Holy Orders will be formed together with other seminarians, especially with regard to doctrinal and pastoral formation, even though particular programmes or houses of formation may also be established for them (Ap. Cons. VI § 5; CN Art. 10 § 2);

10. before establishing a personal parish the Ordinary must listen to the opinion of the Diocesan Bishop of the area (Ap. Cons. VIII § 1);

11. the Complementary Norms establish when the rights and duties proper to a parish priest of the Ordinariate are to be exercised in mutual pastoral cooperation with the parish priest of the territory in which the personal parish has been erected ( Ap. Cons. VIII § 2; CN 14 § 2);

12. the competent tribunal for judicial cases regarding the faithful of the Ordinariate is that of the Diocese in which one of the parties has domicile, presuming that the Ordinariate has not constituted its own tribunal (Ap. Cons. XII).

It is clear that the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus provides norms which establish the nature and, in general, regulate the life of Personal Ordinariates erected specifically for Anglicans who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.In this way a flexible canonical structure has been instituted. Moreover, it is foreseeable that what is contained in the present Apostolic Constitution and Complementary Norms may be adapted in the Decrees of Erection of each individual Ordinariate in the light of particular local situations. As the Holy Spirit has guided the preparation of this Apostolic Constitution, so may he also assist in its application.

On this historic Monday, unprecedented high-level theological discussions between representatives of the Society of St. Pius X and of the Holy See got underway to discuss “all the unresolved doctrinal questions” (”grandi temi dottrinali non risolti“) related to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), its implementation and interpretation.

The talks took place in the building once known as the “Holy Office of the Inquisition” and still called the Sant’Uffizio in Italian — the Holy Office.

On one side, representatives of the Society of St. Pius X, founded by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (died 1991). From their founder, the members of the Society are often called “Lefebvrists.”

On the other, top theologians from the Vatican itself, men very close to Pope Benedict XVI, led by Mosignor Guido Pozzo, the head of gthe Ecclesia Dei commission.

The talks continued for three hours.

They went very well.

And they will continue.

Not only will they continue, they will continue at an almost frenetic pace for the Holy See, which generally “thinks in centuries”: there will be meeting every two weeks for as long as it takes to settle these questions.

Father Federico Lombardi noted this relative haste when he delivered a brief communique on the meeting this afternoon in the Vatican Press Office. “This is a rather rapid paste for the Holy See,” he said.

This is worth noting because it suggests that the Pope wants this dialogue on a “fast track,” not something that drags on interminably.

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What Is at Stake?

If one looks at these meetings in the context of recent events, the essential point is this: Benedict XVI, though now 82, is moving on many different fronts with great energy in a completely unexpected way, given his reputation as a man of thought, not of action. (We are going to have to revise our understanding of his pontificate.)

He is clearly reaching out to reunite with many Christian groups: the Lefebvrists, as these meetings show, but also Anglicans, the Orthodox, and others as well.

He seems to be trying to make Catholic Rome a center of communion for all Christians.

This activity, occurring at an accelerating speed over recent months, looks almost like a “rallying of the troops” before some final, decisive battle.

The activity is critically important, in this sense, for our current global “culture war,” especially our anthropology (can man be anything our technology can make him, or are their moral limits we should observe?), our sexuality and sexual behavior (how important is our sexual identity, how important are our gender roles?), and our traditional family structures (are these now outmoded, perhaps even to be completely discarded?).

Now, 44 years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, Benedict XVI evidently has committed some of his best men to seek unity with the most conservative wing of the Catholic Church, the Society of St. Pius X, and by extension, all so-called “Traditionalist” Catholics.

The plan is very ambitious: to go step by step through all of the great, controversial doctrinal issues of the post-conciliar period. This includes religious freedom, it includes ecumenism, it includes the Chruch’s teaching on Judaism and the Jews, it includes the new Mass vs. the old Mass and the role of the priest of the laity in the liturgy — all the great issues of the Council.

Benedict will be watched very closely here by progressives, who seem to be a bit off-balance, wondering what Benedict is really after.

And he will be watched by the Anglicans, some of whom are considering entering into communion with Rome, overcoming a schism which dates from the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, 500 years ago.

And he will be watched by the Orthodox, some of whom are also thinking of overcoming the “Great Schism” which dates to 1054, as they have stated in recent days.

And he will be watched very closely here by representatives of the world Jewish community, some of whom are wondering which direction Benedict and the Church he leads will take with regard to Catholic teaching regarding Judiasm and the Jewish people.

In short, many eyes are now on Benedict, wondering what he really intends here.

The answer seems simple enough: Benedict is trying energetically to “get his house in order.”

But which house?

On one level, it is the Christian Church — a Christian Church under considerable pressure in the highly secularized modern world.

In this “house,” this “ecclesia Dei” (”church of God” or “community of God”), dogmas and doctrines, formulated into very precise verbal statements, are held as true. These verbal formulas are professed in creeds. Benedict is seeking to overcome divisions over the content of these creeds, these doctrinal formulas, in order to bring about formal, public unity among separated Christians.

He is trying to find unity not only with the Lefebvrists (and all Traditionalists within the Church) but also, as we have seen in recent days, with the Anglicans and the Orthodox Churches.

So this dialogue with the Lefebvrists must be seen in the context of multiple dialogues, all occurring at once: Catholic Traditionalists, Protestant Anglicans, the Orthodox Churches.

One might almost say this pontificate is become one of “all dialogue, all the time.”

But on a second level, considering world events and the evolution of the world’s economy and culture, something else is also at stake.

Benedict is rallying his troops. He is trying to reunite all those factions and denominations and groups in the West that share common beliefs in the eternal destiny of human beings, in the sacredness of human life (since human beings are “in the image and likeness of God”), in the existence of a moral standard which is true at all times and in all places (against the relativism of the modern secular culture), in the need for justice in human affairs, for the rule of right, not might.

And so he is doing his best, in what seems perhaps to be the “twilight of the West,” to build an ark, centered in Rome, to which all those who share these beliefs about human dignity may repair.

And this means that what Benedict is doing in this dialogue which got underway today is also of importance to Jews, to Muslims, and to all men and women of goodwill. Mankind seems to be entering a new period, a period in which companies and governments may produce, even for profit, “designer humans,” a period of resource wars, a period of the complete rejection of the traditional family unit.

Benedict, from his high room in the Apostolic Palace, seems to be trying to rally the West in the twilight of an age, so that what was best in the West may be preserved, and shine forth again after the struggles of our time are past.

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Rupture, or Continuity?

What is the real, fundamental issue of these talks?

It is this: Did the Second Vatican Council teach new doctrines not in keeping with prior Church teaching, and so lead the Church into error (as the Society of St. Pius X, and other traditional Catholics, have often argued)?

Or did the Council develop doctrines based on what the Church has always taught, and so open up new, legitimate aspects of old doctrines?

To put it another way: Did a “new Church” come into being after Vatican II, a Church which broke with the “old Church” of the pre-conciliar period?

Or is it still the same Catholic Church of all time, which has simply been passing through a confusing period as it attempts to find a way to live in and bear witness to the modern world?

Benedict has been calling for a reinterpretation of Vatican II for almost 40 years. In book-length interviews when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, in major studies of the liturgy and in addresses as Pope, he has denounced interpretations of Vatican II which claim it as a rupture with the Catholic faith of all time.

The Lefebvrists have maintained that is is difficult, if not impossible, to interpret Vatican II as being in continuity with all prior Church tradition.

But Benedict has said he believes this interpretation can be made.

And he has sent his chosen men into this dialogue to show the Lefebvrists how it can be done.

The true drama of this dialogue is whether his men will succeed.

Because if his men succeed, the Traditionalists will come back into full union with the Church — and many conservative Anglicans and Orthodox will also feel more willing to enter into Rome’s embrace.

But this very success will mean a defeat for… many progressive theologians, who have argued that Vatican II is a clean break with many “negative” teachings of the “old Church.”

Therefore, if Benedict and his men succeed in this effort, the result will be to bring the Traditionalists over into a Church that rejects what they too have hitherto rejected, by defining certain teachings of Vatican II in a traditional way which will suddenly close off to progressives avenues of interpretation that they have freely exploited for four decades now.

So what is at stake in these discussions is far more than what happens to the Lefebvrists.

What is at stake is how the Church of the future will judge and interpret Vatican II.

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The Communique

“On Monday, 26 October, 2009, in the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio [Palace of the Holy Office], headquarters of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, the study commission made up of experts of Ecclesia Dei and from the Society of St. Pius X hed its first meeting, with the aim of examining the doctrinal differences still outstanding between the Society and the Apostolic See,” said a Vatican Press Office Communique released just an hour ago.

“In a cordial, respectful and constructive climate, the main doctrinal questions were identified. These will be studied in the course of discussions to be held over coming months, probably twice a month. In particular, the questions due to be examined concern the concept of Tradition, the Missal of Paul VI, the interpretation of Vatican Council II in continuity with the Catholic doctrinal Tradition, the themes of the unity of the Church and the Catholic principles of ecumenism, the relationship between Christianity and non-Christian religions, and religious freedom. The meeting also served to specify the method and organisation of work.”

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Brief Background to the New Dialogue between the Society of St. Pius X and the Holy See

This dialoge has been nine years in the preparation.

For a number of years after the 1988 consecrations, there was little if any dialogue between the Society of St. Pius X and the Holy See. This state of affairs ended when the Society led a large pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee in the year 2000.

A sympathetic Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, approached the SSPX bishops during the pilgrimage and, according to Bishop Fellay, told them that the Pope was prepared to grant them either a personal prelature (the status enjoyed by Opus Dei) or an apostolic administration (the status given to the traditionalist priests of Campos, Brazil). The SSPX leadership responded with distrust. They requested two preliminary “signs” before continuing negotiations: that the Holy See grant permission for all priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass; and that its statement that the 1988 consecrations had resulted in excommunication for the clerics involved be declared void.

In 2005, Benedict XVI became Pope. In August 2005, Benedict met with Bishop Fellay for 35 minutes, at the latter’s request.

In July 2007, the Pope issued Summorum Pontificum, which liberalised the restrictions on the celebration of the Tridentine Mass.

In April 2008, Bishop Fellay issued Letter to Friends and Benefactors No. 72, informing the SSPX faithful that, in spite of both Summorum Pontificum and the recent Vatican documents on the true meaning of Lumen Gentium and evangelisation, the Society still could not sign an agreement with the Holy See.

By a decree of 21 January 2009 (Protocol Number 126/2009), which was issued in response to a renewed request dated 15 December 2008 that Bishop Fellay made on behalf of all four bishops whom Lefebvre had consecrated on 30 June 1988, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, by the power granted to him by Pope Benedict XVI, remitted the automatic excommunication that they had thereby incurred, and expressed the wish that this would be followed speedily by full communion of the whole of the Society of Saint Pius X with the Church.

A Note of the Secretariat of State issued on 4 February 2009 specified that, while the lifting of the excommunication freed the four bishops from a very grave canonical penalty, it made no change in the juridical situation of the Society of St. Pius X.

The note added that future recognition of the Society required full recognition of the Second Vatican Council and of the teaching of Popes John XIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Moreover, it repeated the assurance given in the decree of 21 January 2009 that the Holy See would study, along with those involved, the questions not yet settled, so as to reach a full satisfactory solution of the problems that had given rise to the split.

That is the study that has now begun.

“Where Is the Shame?”

I attended the Vatican press conference this morning which presented the final message.

Two paragraphs in the document stand out.

They are paragraphs 30 and 33.

Only in these two places do the bishops express the type of righteous wrath Christ displayed when he overturned the tables of the money-changers in the precincts of the Temple in Jerusalem, saying that the money-changers had made the house of God into a “den of thieves.” (And note: it was just a few days later that Christ was condemned to death and nailed to a cross on the hill of Golgotha, just outside the city limits.)

The first paragraph, Paragraph 30, deals with the way the international community has carried out its humanitarian work in Africa.

“On the whole,” the paragraph begins, “the UN agencies are doing good work in Africa for development, peace keeping, defence of the just rights of women and the child, and combating poverty and diseases: HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and other issues. The Synod commends the good work that they are doing.

“However,” the paragraph continues, “we call on them to be more consistent and transparent in implementing their programmes. We urge the countries of Africa to carefully scrutinise the services being offered to our people, to ensure that they are good for us. In particular, the Synod denounces all surreptitious attempts to destroy and undermine the precious African values of family and human life (e.g. the obnoxious art. 14 of the Maputo Protocol and other similar proposals).”

The words that struck me here were “denounces” and “obnoxious.”

These are strong words, unequivocal.

The bishops are not being diplomatic.

They are saying that the international agencies, even when saying they are there to help Africa, sometimes in fact “destroy and undermine the precious African values of family and human life.”

This is remarkable.

The African bishops are saying that the very people who are in Africa supposedly to help them in fact sometimes “destroy” their traditional African family values.

People who should be friends and benefactors turn out to be enemies and destroyers.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing.

And the bishops in particular denounce “the obnoxious  art. 14 of the Maputo Protocol and other similar proposals.”

I note that he Italian text handed out to journalists this morning used the word “detestable” for “obnoxious.”

“Detestable” is a strong word.

It is something to be scorned, detested… hated.

Why do the bishops “detest” Article 14 of the Maputo Protocol?

To answer that questions, we need to understand first what the Maputo Protocol is. (In the following sentences, I am drawing from a document on the subject from human Life International, which I cite at the end.)

Maputo is the capital city of Mozambique, located in southeastern Africa, bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north,  Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest.

The Maputo Protocol, a type of international treaty binding on all countries that ratify it, was originally adopted by the “Assembly of the African Union” in Maputo on July 11, 2003.

The official document is titled “Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.”

The Maputo Protocol went into effect in November 2005, after the minimum 15 of the 53 African Union member countries ratified it.

As of mid-2007, 43 nations had signed it, and 21 had formally ratified it: (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Libya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Mauritania, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Seychelles, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia).

Those who ratify the treaty are called “States Parties.”

Proponents of the Maputo Protocol generally present it as a method of combating female genital mutilation in Africa.

It is estimated that this practice is performed on approximately two million women a year worldwide, many in Africa.

Pro-Protocol forces often try to portray opponents of the Protocol as callous toward women’s rights, even though the Maputo Protocol is not principally aimed at eradicating female genital mutilation.

Rather, the Maputo Protocol is one part of a well thought-out, decades-long campaign by Western elites to change traditional social patterns of African family life.

The ultimate goal, many pro-life Catholic activists contend, is… continent-wide population control, first to limit the increase of the number of black Africans, then to slowly decrease that number.

The Maputo Protocol has been presented to Africa and the world as a method to combat female genital mutilation (FGM), but out of 23 pages, it mentions female gential mutilation in only one sentence.

Large sections of the Protocol are devoted to the radical feminist transformation of African society and the destruction of traditional African cultures.

Essential to the implementation of this “new society” is the elimination of all differences in social roles between men and women, insofar as that is possible.

To achieve this goal, abortion-on-demand is necessary, and the Maputo Protocol aims to legalize abortion-on-demand on the entire continent.

The Protocol calls for abortion for rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother, and wants abortion allowed for the physical and mental health of the mother. The mental health exception is interpreted in the United States and other Western countries as allowing abortion-on- demand because an abortionist can always claim a woman would have suffered distress if he had not performed the abortion.

Catholic leaders, including the Pope, African cardinals, and African bishops, have repeatedly denounced the pro-abortion provisions of the Maputo Protocol, which are primarily present in Article 14, “Health and Reproductive Rights,” which calls for the legalization of what would be in effect abortion-on-demand in Africa.

As typically interpreted by international jurists and Western courts, the language of the Maputo Protocol would legalize any abortion for any woman at any point in pregnancy, even in the ninth month.

All effective restrictions on abortion would be abolished by the Protocol.

It also demands that African governments promote other policies that Catholics and others believe to be immoral.

Here is Article 14 in its entirety:

1. States Parties shall ensure that the right to health of women, including sexual and reproductive health, is respected and promoted.

This includes:

a) the right to control their fertility;
b) the right to decide whether to have children, the num-
ber of children and the spacing of children;
c) the right to choose any method of contraception;
d) the right to self-protection and to be protected against
sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS;
e) the right to be informed on one’s health status and on the
health status of one’s partner, particularly if affected with
sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, in
accordance with internationally recognized standards and
best practices;
f) the right to have family planning education.

2. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to:

a) provide adequate, affordable and accessible health ser-
vices, including information, education and communica-
tion programmes to women especially those in rural ar-
eas;
b) establish and strengthen existing pre-natal, delivery and
post-natal health and nutritional services for women dur-
ing pregnancy and while they are breast-feeding;
c) protect the reproductive rights of women by authoriz-
ing medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, in-
cest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the
mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the
mother or the foetus.

This article 14 is what the final message of the African Synod explicitly, by name, denounced.

(Here is a link to the text of the Maputo Protocol: http://www.maputoprotocol.org/mp_english.pdf)

The second passage in the Synod message which is striking for its righteous anger is Paragraph 33.

Here is that paragraph in its entirety:

“33. Humanity has a lot to gain, if it listens to the wise counsel of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI in Caritas in veritate. A new and just world order is not only possible but necessary for the good of all humanity. A change is called for with regard to the debts burden against poor nations, which literally kills children. Multinationals have to stop their criminal devastation of the environment in their greedy exploitation of natural resources. It is short-sighted policy to foment wars in order to make fast gains from chaos, at the cost of human lives and blood. Is there no one out there able and willing to stop all these crimes against humanity?”

Here, in the last line, the African bishops speak of “crimes against humanity.”

This is strong language.

It usually refers to horrible acts, like genocide, like ethnic cleansing, like wholesale murder of innocent people.

Who is committing such terrible crimes in Africa?

The text says “multinationals” are at least remotely responsible.

Here is the sentence again: “Multinationals have to stop their criminal devastation of the environment in their greedy exploitation of natural resources.”

And it is followed by: “It is short-sighted policy to foment wars in order to make fast gains from chaos, at the cost of human lives and blood.”

The implication is clear: the African bishops are saying, in their final message, that they believe the multinational corporations are fomenting wars in Africa to “make fast gains from chaos.”

In short, they are saying that Africa’s tribal wars are not just “Africa’s savage tribes” fighting between each other, but Africans goaded and prodded into war by wealthy companies which need to break down all state order in order to function in an area where disorder prevails, allowing natural resources to be obtained without any accounting to local governments, which augments profits enormously.

And here is the anguished cry of the bishops, once again: “Is there no one out there able and willing to stop all these crimes against humanity?”

Doesn’t this sentence seem rather odd?

To whom are the bishops directing this cry?

Are they addressing the cry to Africa’s leaders?

Are they addressing the cry to the people of the world?

Are they addressing the cry to the International Court at the Hague in the Netherlands?

To whom are they speaking? Are they crying out, perhaps, like King David, from the depths of their souls, to God Himself?

All the text says is: “Is there no one out there able and willing to stop all these crimes against humanity?”

But this much seems clear: the Africans are supporting a more just “world order,” something which the Pope also called for in his recent encyclical, not because they want a “one world government” which might be a prelude to a type of “anti-Christian” rule (the rule of anti-Christ), but precisely because there is already a “world mis-government” which allows enormous injustices to be perpetrated with impunity.

This leads to another thought: those who would encourage simple, good Catholics, and others, to fear that the Pope is calling for a dangerous, anti-Christian “new world order” are being duped.

The Pope knows that there already is a dangerous “world government” (or “mis-government”) which is busily implementing things like the Maputo Protocol, and allowing the rape of Africa, and even encouraging it.

So, those who are fanning the passions of the simple against any calls for a government which could restrain these excesses, are playing the devil’s game.

The type of “world governance” the Pope was calling for is the same type these bishops are calling for: a reasonable government, with reasonable laws, able and willing to impede and prosecute these crimes against humanity.

Until such a government is formed, to reign in the excesses already occurring, “anti-Christian” forces will continue to have their day, and simple people will continue to suffer.

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There was much else in this final message. There was a spiritual core to the text.

“We are convinced that the first and most specific contribution of the Church to the people of Africa is to proclaim the Gospel of Christ,” the bishops said.

They also called attention to the “good things” in Africa: the strength of religious belief, the number of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and the growth in the number of Catholics in Africa.

And they did not simply blame foreign multinationals for Africa’s problem.

The suffering of Africa, the message said, is due largely to “a tragic complicity and criminal conspiracy of local leaders and foreign interests.”

Africa’s own leaders bear responsibility, the bishops said: “Whatever may be the responsibility of foreign interests, there is always the shameful and tragic collusion of the local leaders: politicians who betray and sell out their nations, dirty business people who collude with rapacious multinationals, African arms dealers and traffickers who thrive on small arms that cause great havoc on human lives.”

The international community has for years called on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who was raised a Catholic and educated by Jesuits, to step down, saying he had brought his once-prosperous country to its knees.

Another African leader who was raised a Catholic and has been accused of corruption is Angola’s President Eduardo dos Santos.

Both men deny any wrongdoing.

Rights groups and international agencies have accused Angola’s government of siphoning away billions in oil revenue. Angola rivals Nigeria as Africa’s biggest oil producer but about two thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day. It ranks 158th on Transparency International’s 180-nation list, in which the country perceived as most corrupt is in last place.

And then the bishops ask: “What has happened to our traditional African sense of shame?”

And so the Synod message challenges African leaders to set new models for responsible public service, and asks government officials who have been guilty of corruption to “repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc.”

“Africa needs saints in high political office,” the message said.

The Synod message warned Africans against the influence of Western development experts who sometimes undermine the traditional moral standards of the culture. “We alert you to be on your guard against some virulent ideological poisons from abroad, claiming to be modern’ culture,” the message said.

More specifically, the Synod Fathers endorsed the stand taken by Pope Benedict that the spread of AIDS “cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics.”

The message also endorsed efforts to promote cooperation with Muslims. But the Synod challenged African states — implicitly the continent’s Islamic states — to be respectful of religious freedom.

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My sense, after attending the press conference and read the message is that, on the political level, the African bishops have not developed a coherent strategy.

There is no pan-African Christian or Catholic-inspired party to stop corruption, support traditional values, and heal a wounded Africa.

No structure, or party, or alliance, has been announced to block the evils denounced.

And without such a pragmatic step, the evils will continue. Ofifcials will be corrupted, one by one. Governments will be divided and rendered ineffective or counter-productive.

So what now needs to be done?

The bishops need to work with other Africans, and foreigners, of good will, to put in place concrete structures to implement the vision set forth in this final Synod message.

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The Synod of Bishops was established by Pope Paul Vl by Motu Proprio “Apostolica sollicitudo” of September 15, 1965.

Pope Paul Vl gave the definition of the Synod of Bishops at the Sunday Angelus of September 22, 1974: “It is an ecclesiastic institution, which, on interrogating the signs of the times and as well as trying to provide a deeper interpretation of divine designs and the constitution of the Catholic Church, we set up after Vatican Council II in order to foster the unity and cooperation of bishops around the world with the Holy See. It does this by means of a common study concerning the conditions of the Church and a joint solution on matters concerning Her mission. It is neither a Council nor a Parliament but a special type of Synod.”

What this means is that the deliberations of the Synod on Africa will now go to Pope Benedict — who was present at most of the sessions — and he will decide what kind of document to write based on what he has heard and seen.

In the Pope’s document, there could be specific proposals to deal with Africa’s problems, including, perhaps, the creation of continent-wide structures to help implement the vision of a prosperous and peaceful Afrrica set forth by the Synod Fathers.