Participants at the meeting say some progress has been made during the talks.

They say a possible model for the future is that of “sister churches” with separate hierarchies and liturgies, with the Orthodox accepting the Pope as their “titular” head.

The meeting ends on Sunday, September 26.

Dangers for the Faith?

Many traditional Catholics and Orthodox have a certain fear of talks such as these.

Some, in both Churches, are concerned that theological discussions like this may lead one or the other Church to “water down” essential doctrinal teachings for the sake of an external form of union.

In this specific case, some Orthodox may fear they will be asked to accept a type of “papal primacy” they do not in conscience believe in.

Likewise, some Catholics may feel that the Orthodox may be invited into a union with Rome without giving their assent to essential Catholic doctrines on the office of the Pope.

So there are fears on both sides.

And the fears have a certain basis.

For there is always a danger that some aspect or tenet of the deposit of the faith may be placed at risk in the process of such a theological dialogue.

On the Other Hand…

But there is another concern that must also be kept in mind.

Today, in our actual historical context, there is a danger that the enemies of the Church — and the chief enemy behind them — can exploit such fears to keep Christians divided against the wishes and the prayer of Christ himself.

Christ prayed on the night of the Last Supper that all of his followers would always remain “one” — united, not divided.

But divisions between Christians came.

Some argue that divisions are necessary to clarify truth.

Assertions of heretical doctrine do call forth from the defenders of orthodoxy a clear statement of doctrinal truth.

Pope Benedict once said precisely this, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, and the chief defender of doctrinal orthdoxy in the Church, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.

So, though the way is treacherous, it would seem a mistake to not at least try to set out upon this path, despite the dangers.

The Purpose of the Meeting

The purpose of this meeting is to examine key doctrinal questions dividing the Churches carefully, and calmly, and to see where the limits lie, from the perspective of each side.

And in this sense, it is a very positive sign that the meeting has been held at all, and that it hasn’t broken up in acrimony, but is continuing toward its conclusion.

For, in the end, the present state of the world counsels openness to such discussions.

In the West, a certain “post-Christian” secular vision is dominant.

At the same time, Islam is undoubtedly spreading its influence widely.

These developments seem to counsel those who profess belief in Christ as the savior of man and the Son of God — Christians, that is — make every possible effort, short of compromising the deposit of the faith, to draw closer together, first in common work and charity efforts, then, eventually, in some form of public Church unity.

Without this, not single tenets of the faith, but the faith itself, whole and entire, may find itself in danger in this world.

The Ultimate Victory

The Christian message offers an entirely new type of existence to men and women.

Preserving and defending the Church is to preserve and defend the vehicle, the means, of this message.

The theology of one of the participants at the Vienna meeting, Metropolitan John Zizioulas, has expressed this in a striking and powerful way.

Zizioulas, who studied under the Russian Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky, received his doctorate in 1965 from the University of Athens and has taught theology at the University of Edinburgh and then the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Zizioulas has argued that full humanity is achieved only as “person” so that one may participate (koinonia) in the personal Trinitarian life of God — participate in the life of the divinity.

He argues that man initially exists as a biological hypostasis (person), constrained as to the types of relationships such a being can have (biological) and doomed to the eventual end of this type of being — death.

He argues that Baptism constitutes an ontological change in the human, creating an ecclesial hypostasis, or person.

This rebirth “from above” gives new ontological freedom as it is not constrained by the limits of biological existence.

Such an ecclesial being is eschatological, meaning it lives in a paradoxical “now,” but “not yet.”

The completion of this rebirth from above is the day of resurrection when the body will no longer be subject to death.

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The Proceedings

The 12th Session of the Joint Theological Commission for Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches began its work on 22 September 2010 in Vienna.

The commission is co-chaired by Metropolitan John of Pergamon, Patriarchate of Constantinople, and Archbishop Kurt Koch, president of Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Each Local Orthodox Church is represented by two delegates. Representing the Moscow Patriarchate are Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, DECR chairman, and Prof. Archpriest Valentin Asmus, St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Humanitarian University. Archimandrite Kirill Govorun, chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s education committee, participates in the meeting as consultant.

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, Archbishop of Vienna, and Metropolitan Michael of Vienna, Patriarchate of Constantinople, welcomed the participants.

The first day was mainly devoted to the methods of further work on the theme “The Primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the First Millennium.” Participants exchanged views on the status to be given to the document on this theme, which was partly considered by the previous meeting of the Commission.

In the evening, Vienna Burgomaster Michael Haupl gave dinner in honour of the participants in the session.

The 12th session of the commission will work till September 26.

On September 22, 2010, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, DECR chairman, met with the head of the Vienna archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn.

Metropolitan Hilarion told the cardinal about today’s life of the Russian Orthodox Church, the trips made by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia in Russia and far- and near-abroad countries, the Church’s missionary and educational work as well as the work of the Department for External Church Relations and some other Synodal institutions of the Moscow Patriarchate.

They discussed prospects for Orthodox-Catholic cooperation in Europe in general and a possibility for carrying out joint educational activities and youth events, in particular.

In conclusion of the talk, which was held in a warm and friendly atmosphere, Metropolitan Hilarion presented Cardinal Schoenborn with an icon of the Most Holy Mother of God.

(Here is a link to this information: http://byztex.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-on-ongoing-orthodox-catholic.html)

The action raises the spectre of another scandal, this time financial, in addition to years of scandal involving sexual abuse of young people by priests.

In short, it is a new, powerful blow against the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.

This is a real story, not simply a verbal accusation: the funds have actually been impounded — $30 million, a considerable sum.

Even more important, Italian finance officials now say they are pursuing “money laundering” allegations against the Pope’s top financial official, a prominent Italian Catholic banker and scholar of economics named Prof. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.

Gotti Tedeschi was Pope Benedicts’s choice to lead the Vatican’s Istituto per le Opere di Religione (“Institute for Religious Works,” commonly known as the Vatican bank)

The Vatican Reaction

What is the Vatican’s reaction to this attack?

In a statement today, the Vatican said that it is “perplexed and surprised” by these events and has the “greatest trust” in the two men.

The statement also said the Vatican has already been working for greater transparency in its finances, to comply with new international banking regulations.

Further Questions, and Some Background

So why is this happening now? This is what is not clear.

Gotti Tedeschi, a devout Catholic and a member of the Prelature of Opus Dei, has taught financial ethics at the Catholic University of Milan. He is a close adviser to Italy’s Treasury Minister, Giulio Tremonti.

I have met and spoken with him at some length about the functions of the Vatican bank, and problems in the world economy. From my contacts with him, I judge him to be a man of considerable integrity and high ideals. This does not mean that the accusations made against him cannot be true, but it does mean that I would have to be persuaded by weighty evidence before drawing the conclusion that he had done something intentionally illegal.

He was a contributor in the drafting process of the Pope’s encyclical last summer on the economy, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), which was critical of the wild, unregulated excesses of the current international financial system, where capital can move, in size, with astonishing rapidity, improving or crushing the prospects for industries, and nations, literally overnight.

I have been in the offices of the IOR many times.

In fact, I knew Gotti Tedeschi’s predecessor, the late American Archbishop Paul Casimir Marcinkus , very well, and often spoke with him in his offices.

Marcinkus, too, was accused of financial crimes in the late 1970 and early 1980s, 30 years ago now.

And there has never been complete clarity on what actually happened on that occasion.

Some people swear that Marcinkus was involved in nefarious dealings; others swear the opposite, saying he was naive, or out of his depth, and so got caught up in affairs that he had never been trained to deal with.

(This much is true: he was not a trained banker or economist, as he himself told me, and this is part of the reason the Vatican has decided to have trained laymen in these delicate posts. “He had no experience of international banking prior to his appointment in 1971, his sole preparation for which had been a short crash course in banking at Harvard University,” David Willey of the BBC wrote at the time of his death. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4738134.stm)

The IOR principally manages funds for the Vatican and religious institutions around the world, such as charity organisations and religious orders of priests and nuns.

Yes, you can see many nuns in the offices of the Vatican bank, making deposits, and taking withdrawals.

The Church needs the ability to support missionary and other efforts around the world, through financial institutions, just as she needs access to visas to travel, or legal protection to found and build orphanages and schools.

The Church is “in” the world — though she should not be “of” the world.

This need for an institutional support network was famously summarized by Marcinkus in the perhaps somewhat scandalous phrase, for an archbishop: “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys.”

But that phrase can be taken as a mark of healthy realism, the same type of realism expressed in the words of Christ’s himself when he said: “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God that which is God’s.”

In this world, a mechanism of exchange for goods and services (money) is a means members of the Church, like all others in society, often need to use.

So one point may be made about this latest development: it strikes directly at the Church’s ability to have the institutional banking structure that she needs to support her global mission.

And this blow comes just following the moment when Benedict seemed to have recovered a considerable moral capital for the Church with his quiet, eloquent, visit to the very heart of “the City” (London) — the most influential financial capital in the world, at least until recently.
Marcinkus. as head of the IOR, was involved in a worldwide scandal in 1982 when the IOR was entangled in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Milan’s Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy’s largest private bank.

The IOR held a small stake in the Ambrosiano, whose president, Roberto Calvi, was found hanged under London’s Blackfriars Bridge in June of that year. (A first investigation concluded that the death was a suicide, but a more recent investigation has concluded that it was a murder. No suspects in the killing have been named.)

Marcinkus, who died in Arizona in 2006, always maintained — also to me — that the Vatican had not been responsible for the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

Marcinkus told me he was opposed to making what the Vatican later called a “goodwill payment” of $242 million to compensate Ambrosiano creditors — Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, then Secretary of State, was the one who persuaded the Pope to make that payment, against Marcinkus’s strong objections, Marcinkus once told me.

And so the matter was settled, though a shadow remained against Marcinkus’ name.

(In 1990, Marcinkus told me, “Before I die, come talk to me. I will tell you things that will curl your hair.” He then retired to Sun City, Arizona. Early in 2006, I phoned him there. “Would it be the right time now for me to come talk to you?” I asked him. He said, “Not yet.” A week later, I called a second time — I felt it was about time to see him, as 16 years had passed since our last meeting. “Not yet, but soon,” he told me. A few days later, he died.)

Vatican Bank Tied to Money Laundering Scandal

Here is the report today of Rachel Donadio, reporter on Vatican and Italian affairs for the New York Times, on this latest story (link to the web posting: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world/europe/22vatican.html)

ROME — Italian monetary authorities said Tuesday that they had impounded $30 million from the Vatican bank and placed its top two officers under investigation in connection with a money laundering inquiry. The announcement amounted to another potential storm confronting the papacy of Benedict XVI, who is struggling with the effects of a priestly abuse scandal.

In a statement, the Vatican expressed “perplexity and surprise” that the bank’s chairman, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, and its director general, Paolo Cipriani, had been placed under investigation. It added that it had the “greatest trust” in the two men and had been working for greater transparency in its finances.

The investigation is the first into the Vatican bank since the early 1980’s, when it was implicated in the collapse of an Italian bank whose director, nicknamed “God’s banker,” was mysteriously found dead, hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London.

Italian authorities have historically shied away from investigating the Vatican’s finances — as much out of deference to the church as owing to the complex relationship between Italy and the Holy See, a sovereign state.

“The era of omertà is over,” said Gianluigi Nuzzi, the author of the 2009 bestseller “Vaticano S.P.A.,” using the Italian term for the code of silence. S.P.A. stands for limited liability corporation in Italian.

The investigation was undertaken because of a new directive by the Bank of Italy. Aimed at preventing financing of terrorist groups and money laundering, it now requires all foreign banks operating in Italy — including the Vatican Bank — to provide detailed information about the origins of the money it transfers.

Officials said that Mr. Gotti Tedeschi and Mr. Cipriani were under investigation for having failed adequately to explain the origins of funds transferred from one account held by the Vatican Bank to two others it holds. They said the seizure was preventive and neither man had been formally charged or placed under arrest. In the coming months, a judge is expected to rule on whether to proceed with the investigation.

The investigation could potentially blight the record of Mr. Gotti Tedeschi, a well-respected banker and a former head of operations in Italy for Spain’s Banco Santander who was brought in by the pope last year to help clean up the murky finances of the Vatican bank, a private bank formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR, which manages funds aimed at charitable activities.

The new investigation appeared more mundane but no less explosive.

Officials said they had opened the investigation on Monday after the Bank of Italy, adhering to anti-money-laundering directives, alerted them to two suspicious transfers on Sept. 6 from an account held by the Vatican bank at a Rome branch of Credito Artigiano S.P.A., a bank based in Northern Italy.

One transfer of $26 million was directed to an account held by the Vatican bank at a Frankfurt branch of the U.S. bank J.P. Morgan, and another of $4 million was directed at an account it held at a Rome branch of the Banca di Fucino.

Under Italian law, magistrates are required to open an investigation if there is a suspicion that a crime may have been committed. Magistrates in Rome opened the investigation because the accounts in question were in bank branches in Rome.

News reports last year said that the same magistrates had opened up a broader investigation last year into bank accounts held by Vatican officials and charitable entities in Rome banks.

In both cases, investigators bypassed the sovereignty of the Holy See by looking into Italian accounts that had received funds from the Vatican Bank.

In a statement, the Holy See said it expressed “perplexity and surprise at the initiative taken by the Rome court, considering that all the necessary data were already made available to the competent office at the Bank of Italy and similar operations are ongoing with other Italian credit institutions.”

It added that the funds were transfers originating within the Vatican bank itself, and that the bank was working to join the “white list” of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the highest ranking on its transparency charts.

In the early 1980’s, the Vatican bank was involved in a scandal at Italy’s Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed after the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans to companies in Latin America. The Vatican bank denied wrongdoing but paid $250 million to Banco Ambrosiano’s creditors.

The new investigation appeared to show a more aggressive stance by the Bank of Italy, a player in the complex power dynamics of contemporary Italy. “It has a central role, whereas before it had a subaltern role,” Mr. Nuzzi said.

A spokeswoman for the Bank of Italy said it had been acting under European Union directives.

(end of New York Times story)

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

“European Union Directives”

It is the very last phrase of this article which catches my attention.

Here, in the final sentence of the story, we learn something that turns the entire story upside down, as it were.

Throughout the story, we are under the impression that someone at the Bank of Italy was responsible for this decision to sequester Vatican funds and open an investigation of the Vatican bank’s top two officials.

Then, here, at the end of the story, we learn that the Bank of Italy was “acting under European Union directives.”

We know that the European Union began — with considerable input from leading Catholic laymen, like Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, Robert Schuman — as a political structure to try to ensure that Europeans would never again engage in a fratricidal civil war.

We know that Europe has become something different than what those three men envisioned: a place where the Christian roots of Europe are denied, and where many Christian moral beliefs have been cast aside.

What were the “European Union directives” which led to this action against the Vatican by the Bank of Italy. Who issued those directives, and for what reason?

These are open questions.

Day #4 of the Visit to Scotland and England

Today in Birmingham, England, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated a Mass in which he raised to the honors of the altars the great 19th century British Catholic convert, Blessed John Henry Newman.

He declared Cardinal John Henry Newman blessed while celebrating an open-air Mass with 60,000 worshipers present in a Birmingham park on his fourth and final day in Great Britain.

There was a slight drizzle during the ceremony.

Here is a link to a video of the Mass, hosted on the website of the Catholic Herald in England: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/multimedia/2010/09/19/pope-beatifies-cardinal-john-henry-newman

Beatification brings Newman one step closer to becoming a saint.

Newman was an Anglican clergyman, scholar, educator, poet and leader of the Oxford Movement of the 1830s —which aimed to help the Church of England return to its Catholic roots — who converted to Catholicism in mid-life.

It was a wrenching experience, which turned Newman’s personal life upside down.

Before the Pope’s trip, many questioned whether the beatification of an Anglican convert would be a provocation.

But this visit has in fact highlighted the common ground between Anglicans and Catholics.

Today it was not Newman’s brilliant mind alone that Benedict wished to recall in his homily.

Rather, it was Newman’s humanity.

The fact that Newman was an ordinary man, not an angel.

Newman was a pastor of souls, the Pope said, who, because he was a simple, fallible man, was able to be compassionate toward fallible and sinful human beings, while all the time calling them to a better, higher way of life.

And Newman lived out during his life this “profoundly human vision of priestly ministry,” the Pope said.

Precisely this “profoundly human vision” of priestly ministry, Benedict suggested, makes Newman a model for the priests of our time, and of all time.

The key passage is this one from the Pope’s homily today:

“While it is John Henry Newman’s intellectual legacy that has understandably received most attention in the vast literature devoted to his life and work, I prefer on this occasion to conclude with a brief reflection on his life as a priest, a pastor of souls.

“The warmth and humanity underlying his appreciation of the pastoral ministry is beautifully expressed in another of his famous sermons: ‘Had Angels been your priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathized with you, have had compassion on you, felt tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you’ (“Men, not Angels: the Priests of the Gospel”, Discourses to Mixed Congregations, 3).

“He lived out that profoundly human vision of priestly ministry in his devoted care for the people of Birmingham during the years that he spent at the Oratory he founded, visiting the sick and the poor, comforting the bereaved, caring for those in prison. No wonder that on his death so many thousands of people lined the local streets as his body was taken to its place of burial not half a mile from here.”

(Note: The word “condoled” above may seem to be a typo for “consoled,” but is not; it is an unusual verbal form of the word which is more familiar to us as “condolence” or “condolences,” meaning “sympathy for another in sorrow.” Newman, citing St. Paul here, is saying that priests, being men, not angels, can sympathize with other sorrowing sinners because they too are sinners.)

I include below, after the text of the Pope’s homily, the complete text of Newman’s original sermon, which is itself a marvelous summary of Newman’s teaching on the priesthood.

In both the Pope’s text and in Newman’s text, I bold-face the key words.

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

HOMILY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

MASS FOR THE BEATIFICATION

OF BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

COFTON PARK

BIRMINGHAM

19 SEPTEMBER 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This day that has brought us together here in Birmingham is a most auspicious one. In the first place, it is the Lord’s day, Sunday, the day when our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead and changed the course of human history for ever, offering new life and hope to all who live in darkness and in the shadow of death. That is why Christians all over the world come together on this day to give praise and thanks to God for the great marvels he has worked for us. This particular Sunday also marks a significant moment in the life of the British nation, as it is the day chosen to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

For me as one who lived and suffered through the dark days of the Nazi regime in Germany, it is deeply moving to be here with you on this occasion, and to recall how many of your fellow citizens sacrificed their lives, courageously resisting the forces of that evil ideology. My thoughts go in particular to nearby Coventry, which suffered such heavy bombardment and massive loss of life in November 1940. Seventy years later, we recall with shame and horror the dreadful toll of death and destruction that war brings in its wake, and we renew our resolve to work for peace and reconciliation wherever the threat of conflict looms.

Yet there is another, more joyful reason why this is an auspicious day for Great Britain, for the Midlands, for Birmingham. It is the day that sees Cardinal John Henry Newman formally raised to the altars and declared Blessed.

I thank Archbishop Bernard Longley for his gracious welcome at the start of Mass this morning. I pay tribute to all who have worked so hard over many years to promote the cause of Cardinal Newman, including the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory and the members of the Spiritual Family Das Werk. And I greet everyone here from Great Britain, Ireland, and further afield; I thank you for your presence at this celebration, in which we give glory and praise to God for the heroic virtue of a saintly Englishman.

England has a long tradition of martyr saints, whose courageous witness has sustained and inspired the Catholic community here for centuries. Yet it is right and fitting that we should recognize today the holiness of a confessor, a son of this nation who, while not called to shed his blood for the Lord, nevertheless bore eloquent witness to him in the course of a long life devoted to the priestly ministry, and especially to preaching, teaching, and writing.

He is worthy to take his place in a long line of saints and scholars from these islands, Saint Bede, Saint Hilda, Saint Aelred, Blessed Duns Scotus, to name but a few.

In Blessed John Henry, that tradition of gentle scholarship, deep human wisdom and profound love for the Lord has borne rich fruit, as a sign of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit deep within the heart of God’s people, bringing forth abundant gifts of holiness.

Cardinal Newman’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur, or “Heart speaks unto heart”, gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God.

He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of his many fine sermons, “a habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world in every season, in every place, in every emergency – prayer, I say, has what may be called a natural effect in spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is no longer what he was before; gradually … he has imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv, 230-231).

Today’s Gospel tells us that no one can be the servant of two masters (cf. Lk 16:13), and Blessed John Henry’s teaching on prayer explains how the faithful Christian is definitively taken into the service of the one true Master, who alone has a claim to our unconditional devotion (cf. Mt 23:10).

Newman helps us to understand what this means for our daily lives: he tells us that our divine Master has assigned a specific task to each one of us, a “definite service”, committed uniquely to every single person: “I have my mission”, he wrote, “I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place … if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling” (Meditations and Devotions, 301-2).

The definite service to which Blessed John Henry was called involved applying his keen intellect and his prolific pen to many of the most pressing “subjects of the day.”

His insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in civilized society, and into the need for a broadly-based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of profound importance for Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and enlighten many all over the world.

I would like to pay particular tribute to his vision for education, which has done so much to shape the ethos that is the driving force behind Catholic schools and colleges today.

Firmly opposed to any reductive or utilitarian approach, he sought to achieve an educational environment in which intellectual training, moral discipline and religious commitment would come together.

The project to found a Catholic University in Ireland provided him with an opportunity to develop his ideas on the subject, and the collection of discourses that he published as The Idea of a University holds up an ideal from which all those engaged in academic formation can continue to learn.

And indeed, what better goal could teachers of religion set themselves than Blessed John Henry’s famous appeal for an intelligent, well-instructed laity: “I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it” (The Present Position of Catholics in England, ix, 390).

On this day when the author of those words is raised to the altars, I pray that, through his intercession and example, all who are engaged in the task of teaching and catechesis will be inspired to greater effort by the vision he so clearly sets before us.

While it is John Henry Newman’s intellectual legacy that has understandably received most attention in the vast literature devoted to his life and work, I prefer on this occasion to conclude with a brief reflection on his life as a priest, a pastor of souls.

The warmth and humanity underlying his appreciation of the pastoral ministry is beautifully expressed in another of his famous sermons: “Had Angels been your priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathized with you, have had compassion on you, felt tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you” (“Men, not Angels: the Priests of the Gospel“, Discourses to Mixed Congregations, 3).

He lived out that profoundly human vision of priestly ministry in his devoted care for the people of Birmingham during the years that he spent at the Oratory he founded, visiting the sick and the poor, comforting the bereaved, caring for those in prison. No wonder that on his death so many thousands of people lined the local streets as his body was taken to its place of burial not half a mile from here.

One hundred and twenty years later, great crowds have assembled once again to rejoice in the Church’s solemn recognition of the outstanding holiness of this much-loved father of souls.

What better way to express the joy of this moment than by turning to our heavenly Father in heartfelt thanksgiving, praying in the words that Blessed John Henry Newman placed on the lips of the choirs of angels in heaven:

Praise to the Holiest in the height
And in the depth be praise;
In all his words most wonderful,
Most sure in all his ways!

(The Dream of Gerontius).

(end of the Pope’s homily)

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

“Men, not Angels”

And now for a bit of literary detective work.

The source of the Pope’s key quotation from Newman is one of Newman’s discourses on the priesthood, entitled “Men, not Angels, the Priests of the Gospel.”

The work was dedicated to a Catholic scholar and bishop, “the Right Rev. Nicholas Wiseman, D.D., Bishop of Melipotamus, and Vicar Apostolic of the London district.”

It was an essay by Wiseman, Newman says, which contributed to his conversion.

Newman writes, “I cannot forget that when, in the year 1839, a doubt first crossed my mind of the tenableness of the theological theory on which Anglicanism is based, it was caused in no slight degree by the perusal of a controversial paper, attributed to your Lordship, on the schism of the Donatists.”

Below, I bold-face the quotation from this essay that the Pope chose today for his homily.

But note also this: in the second half of Newman’s sentence (the Pope in today’s homily stopped his citation at the end of the first half of Newman’s rather long sentence), Newman says priests know very well both “the strength of the flesh” and “the wiles of the devil.”

But, Newman says, priests have learned to discern and overcome these diabolical “wiles.”

Priests, Newman says, have “baffled” the devil’s wiles, not succumbed to them.

This is the entire sentence in Newman’s original discourse:

“Had Angels been your Priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathised with you, have had compassion on you, felt tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you [thus far the quotation used today by the Pope], who have been led on themselves as you are to be led, who know well your difficulties, who have had experience, at least of your temptations, who know the strength of the flesh and the wiles of the devil, even though they have baffled them, who are already disposed to take your part, and be indulgent towards you, and can advise you most practically, and warn you most seasonably and prudently.”

In a sense, Newman has a double emphasis: on the compassion of priests because they share the humanity of all those entrusted to their care, but also on their steadfastness in resisting the “wiles” of the devil.

On a separate matter, I note that Newman here, writing prior to 1849, and just a few years after his conversion from Anglicanism, sets forth as accepted truth the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, not proclaimed as dogma by Pope Pius IX until 1854, a few years later. (I bold-face these lines in the text below.)

This discourse may be found among the texts of Newman’s writings on the internet at “Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman,” posted by The National Institute for Newman Studies, here: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse3.html

Here is Newman’s text on the priesthood. It is admittedly rather long, but well worth reading in its entirety, especially on this day of his beatification:

Discourse 3. Men, not Angels, the Priests of the Gospel

By Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman
{43} WHEN Christ, the great Prophet, the great Preacher, the great Missionary, came into the world, He came in a way the most holy, the most august, the most glorious. Though He came in humiliation, though He came to suffer, though He was born in a stable, though He was laid in a manger, yet He issued from the womb of an Immaculate Mother, and His infant form shone with heavenly light. Sanctity marked every lineament of His character and every circumstance of His mission. Gabriel announced His incarnation; a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, a Virgin suckled Him; His foster-father was the pure and saintly Joseph; Angels proclaimed His birth; a luminous star spread the news among the heathen; the austere Baptist went before His face; and a crowd of shriven penitents, clad in white garments and radiant with grace, followed Him wherever He went. As the sun in heaven shines through the clouds, and is reflected in the landscape, so the eternal Sun of justice, when He rose upon the earth, turned {44} night into day, and in His brightness made all things bright.

He came and He went; and, seeing that He came to introduce a new and final Dispensation into the world, He left behind Him preachers, teachers, and missionaries, in His stead. Well then, my brethren, you will say, since on His coming all about Him was so glorious, such as He was, such must His servants be, such His representatives, His ministers, in His absence; as He was without sin, they too must be without sin; as He was the Son of God, they must surely be Angels. Angels, you will say, must be appointed to this high office, Angels alone are fit to preach the birth, the sufferings, the death of God. They might indeed have to hide their brightness, as He before them, their Lord and Master, had put on a disguise; they might come, as they came under the Old Covenant, in the garb of men; but still men they could not be, if they were to be preachers of the everlasting Gospel, and dispensers of its divine mysteries. If they were to sacrifice, as He had sacrificed; to continue, repeat, apply, the very Sacrifice which He had offered; to take into their hands that very Victim which was He Himself; to bind and to loose, to bless and to ban, to receive the confessions of His people, and to give them absolution for their sins; to teach them the way of truth, and to guide them along the way of peace; who was sufficient for these things but an inhabitant of those blessed realms of which the Lord is the never-failing Light?

And yet, my brethren, so it is, He has sent forth {45} for the ministry of reconciliation, not Angels, but men; He has sent forth your brethren to you, not beings of some unknown nature and some strange blood, but of your own bone and your own flesh, to preach to you. “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” Here is the royal style and tone in which Angels speak to men, even though these men be Apostles; it is the tone of those who, having never sinned, speak from their lofty eminence to those who have. But such is not the tone of those whom Christ has sent; for it is your brethren whom He has appointed, and none else,—sons of Adam, sons of your nature, the same by nature, differing only in grace,—men, like you, exposed to temptations, to the same temptations, to the same warfare within and without; with the same three deadly enemies—the world, the flesh, and the devil; with the same human, the same wayward heart: differing only as the power of God has changed and rules it. So it is; we are not Angels from Heaven that speak to you, but men, whom grace, and grace alone, has made to differ from you. Listen to the Apostle:—When the barbarous Lycaonians, seeing his miracle, would have sacrificed to him and St. Barnabas, as to gods, he rushed in among them, crying out, “O men, why do ye this? we also are mortals, men like unto you;” or, as the words run more forcibly in the original Greek, “We are of like passions with you”. And again to the Corinthians he writes, “We preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord; and ourselves your servants through Jesus. God, who {46} commanded the light to shine out of darkness, He hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus: but we hold this treasure in earthen vessels.” And further, he says of himself most wonderfully, that, “lest he should be exalted by the greatness of the revelations,” there was given him “an angel of Satan” in his flesh “to buffet him”. Such are your Ministers, your Preachers, your Priests, O my brethren; not Angels, not Saints, not sinless, but those who would have lived and died in sin except for God’s grace, and who, though through God’s mercy they be in training for the fellowship of Saints hereafter, yet at present are in the midst of infirmity and temptation, and have no hope, except from the unmerited grace of God, of persevering unto the end.

What a strange, what a striking anomaly is this! All is perfect, all is heavenly, all is glorious, in the Dispensation which Christ has vouchsafed us, except the persons of His Ministers. He dwells on our altars Himself, the Most Holy, the Most High, in light inaccessible, and Angels fall down before Him there; and out of visible substances and forms He chooses what is choicest to represent and to hold Him. The finest wheat-flour, and the purest wine, are taken as His outward symbols; the most sacred and majestic words minister to the sacrificial rite; altar and sanctuary are adorned decently or splendidly, as our means allow; and the Priests perform their office in befitting vestments, lifting up chaste hearts and holy hands; yet those very Priests, so set apart, so consecrated, {47} they, with their girdle of celibacy and their maniple of sorrow, are sons of Adam, sons of sinners, of a fallen nature, which they have not put off, though it be renewed through grace, so that it is almost the definition of a Priest that he has sins of his own to offer for. “Every high Priest,” says the Apostle, “taken from among men, is appointed for men, in the things that appertain unto God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can condole with those who are in ignorance and error, because he also himself is compassed with infirmity. And therefore he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.” And hence in the Mass, when he offers up the Host before consecration, he says, Suscipe, Sancte Pater, Omnipotens, æterne Deus, “Accept, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God, this immaculate Host, which I, Thine unworthy servant, offer to Thee, my Living and True God, for mine innumerable sins, offences, and negligences, and for all who stand around, and for all faithful Christians, living and dead”.

Most strange is this in itself, my brethren, but not strange, when you consider it is the appointment of an all-merciful God; not strange in Him, because the Apostle gives the reason of it in the passage I have quoted. The priests of the New Law are men, in order that they may “condole with those who are in ignorance and error, because they too are compassed with infirmity”. Had Angels been your Priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathised with you, have had compassion on you, {48} felt tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you, who have been led on themselves as you are to be led, who know well your difficulties, who have had experience, at least of your temptations, who know the strength of the flesh and the wiles of the devil, even though they have baffled them, who are already disposed to take your part, and be indulgent towards you, and can advise you most practically, and warn you most seasonably and prudently. Therefore did He send you men to be the ministers of reconciliation and intercession; as He Himself, though He could not sin, yet even He, by becoming man, took on Him, as far as was possible to God, man’s burden of infirmity and trial in His own person. He could not be a sinner, but He could be a man, and He took to Himself a man’s heart that we might entrust our hearts to Him, and “was tempted in all things, like as we are, yet without sin”.

Ponder this truth well, my brethren, and let it be your comfort. Among the Preachers, among the Priests of the Gospel, there have been Apostles, there have been Martyrs, there have been Doctors;—Saints in plenty among them; yet out of them all, high as has been their sanctity, varied their graces, awful their gifts, there has not been one who did not begin with the old Adam; not one of them who was not hewn out of the same rock as the most obdurate of reprobates; not one of them who was not fashioned unto {49} honour out of the same clay which has been the material of the most polluted and vile of sinners; not one who was not by nature brother of those poor souls who have now commenced an eternal fellowship with the devil, and are lost in hell. Grace has vanquished nature; that is the whole history of the Saints. Salutary thought for those who are tempted to pride themselves in what they do, and what they are; wonderful news for those who sorrowfully recognise in their hearts the vast difference that exists between them and the Saints; and joyful news, when men hate sin, and wish to escape from its miserable yoke, yet are tempted to think it impossible!

Come, my brethren, let us look at this truth more narrowly, and lay it to heart. [Here follows Newman's statement of the Marian doctrine of the Immaculate conception.] First consider, that, since Adam fell, none of his seed but has been conceived in sin; none, save one. One exception there has been,—who is that one? not our Lord Jesus, for He was not conceived of man, but of the Holy Ghost; not our Lord, but I mean His Virgin Mother, who, though conceived and born of human parents, as others, yet was rescued by anticipation from the common condition of mankind, and never was partaker in fact of Adam’s transgression. She was conceived in the way of nature, she was conceived as others are; but grace interfered and was beforehand with sin; grace filled her soul from the first moment of her existence, so that the evil one breathed not on her, nor stained the work of God. Tota pulchra es, Maria; et macula originalis non est in te. “Thou art all fair, O Mary, and the stain original is not in thee.” But {50} putting aside the Most Blessed Mother of God, every one else, the most glorious Saint, and the most black and odious of sinners, I mean, the soul which, in the event, became the most glorious, and the soul which became the most devilish, were both born in one and the same original sin, both were children of wrath, both were unable to attain heaven by their natural powers, both had the prospect of meriting for themselves hell.

They were both born in sin; they both lay in sin; and the soul, which afterwards became a Saint, would have continued in sin, would have sinned wilfully, and would have been lost, but for the visitings of an unmerited supernatural influence upon it, which did for it what it could not do for itself. The poor infant, destined to be an heir of glory, lay feeble, sickly, fretful, wayward, and miserable; the child of sorrow; without hope, and without heavenly aid. So it lay for many a long and weary day ere it was born; and when at length it opened its eyes and saw the light, it shrank back, and wept aloud that it had seen it. But God heard its cry from heaven in this valley of tears, and He began that course of mercies towards it which led it from earth to heaven. He sent His Priest to administer to it the first sacrament, and to baptise it with His grace. Then a great change took place in it, for, instead of its being any more the thrall of Satan it forthwith became a child of God; and had it died that minute, and before it came to the age of reason, it would have been carried to heaven without delay by Angels, and been admitted into the presence of God. {51}

But it did not die; it came to the age of reason, and, oh, shall we dare to say, though in some blessed cases it may be said, shall we dare to say, that it did not misuse the great talent which had been given to it, profane the grace which dwelt in it, and fall into mortal sin? In some instances, praised be God! we dare affirm it; such seems to have been the case with my own dear father, St. Philip, who surely kept his baptismal robe unsullied from the day he was clad in it, never lost his state of grace, from the day he was put into it, and proceeded from strength to strength, and from merit to merit, and from glory to glory, through the whole course of his long life, till at the age of eighty he was summoned to his account, and went joyfully to meet it, and was carried across purgatory, without any scorching of its flames, straight to heaven.

Such certainly have sometimes been the dealings of God’s grace with the souls of His elect; but more commonly, as if more intimately to associate them with their brethren, and to make the fulness of His favours to them a ground of hope and an encouragement to the penitent sinner, those who have ended in being miracles of sanctity, and heroes in the Church, have passed a time in wilful disobedience, have thrown themselves out of the light of God’s countenance, have been led captive by this or that sin, by this or that religious error, till at length they were in various ways recovered, slowly or suddenly, and regained the state of grace, or rather a much higher state, than that which they had forfeited. Such was the blessed Magdalen, {52} who had lived a life of shame; so much so, that even to be touched by her was, according to the religious judgment of her day, a pollution. Happy in this world’s goods, young and passionate, she had given her heart to the creature, before the grace of God prevailed with her. Then she cut off her long hair, and put aside her gay apparel, and became so utterly what she had not been, that, had you known her before and after, you had said it was two persons you had seen, not one; for there was no trace of the sinner in the penitent, except the affectionate heart, now set on heaven and Christ; no trace besides, no memory of that glittering and seductive apparition, in the modest form, the serene countenance, the composed gait, and the gentle voice of her who in the garden sought and found her Risen Saviour. Such, too, was he who from a publican became an Apostle and an Evangelist; one who for filthy lucre scrupled not to enter the service of the heathen Romans, and to oppress his own people. Nor were the rest of the Apostles made of better clay than the other sons of Adam; they were by nature animal, carnal, ignorant; left to themselves, they would, like the brutes, have grovelled on the earth, and gazed upon the earth, and fed on the earth, had not the grace of God taken possession of them, and set them on their feet, and raised their faces heavenward. And such was the learned Pharisee, who came to Jesus by night, well satisfied with his station, jealous of his reputation, confident in his reason; but the time at length came, when, even though disciples fled, he remained to anoint the abandoned corpse of Him, whom {53} when living he had been ashamed to own. You see it was the grace of God that triumphed in Magdalen, in Matthew, and in Nicodemus; heavenly grace came down upon corrupt nature; it subdued impurity in the youthful woman, covetousness in the publican, fear of man in the Pharisee.

Let me speak of another celebrated conquest of God’s grace in an after age, and you will see how it pleases Him to make a Confessor, a Saint and Doctor of His Church, out of sin and heresy both together. It was not enough that the Father of the Western Schools, the author of a thousand works, the triumphant controversialist, the especial champion of grace, should have been once a poor slave of the flesh, but he was the victim of a perverted intellect also. He, who of all others, was to extol the grace of God, was left more than others to experience the helplessness of nature. The great St Augustine (I am not speaking of the holy missionary of the same name, who came to England and converted our pagan forefathers, and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, but of the great African Bishop, two centuries before him)—Augustine, I say, not being in earnest about his soul, not asking himself the question, how was sin to be washed away, but rather being desirous, while youth and strength lasted, to enjoy the flesh and the world, ambitious and sensual, judged of truth and falsehood by his private judgment and his private fancy; despised the Catholic Church because it spoke so much of faith and subjection, thought to make his own reason the measure of all things, and accordingly {54} joined a far-spread sect, which affected to be philosophical and enlightened, to take large views of things, and to correct the vulgar, that is the Catholic notions of God and Christ, of sin, and of the way to heaven. In this sect of his he remained for some years; yet what he was taught there did not satisfy him. It pleased him for a time, and then he found he had been eating as if food what had no nourishment in it; he became hungry and thirsty after something more substantial, he knew not what; he despised himself for being a slave to the flesh, and he found his religion did not help him to overcome it; thus he understood that he had not gained the truth, and he cried out, “O, who will tell me where to seek it, and who will bring me into it?”

Why did he not join the Catholic Church at once? I have told you why; he saw that truth was nowhere else; but he was not sure it was there. He thought there was something mean, narrow, irrational, in her system of doctrine; he lacked the gift of faith. Then a great conflict began within him,—the conflict of nature with grace; of nature and her children, the flesh and false reason, against conscience and the pleadings of the Divine Spirit, leading him to better things. Though he was still in a state of perdition, yet God was visiting him, and giving him the first fruits of those influences which were in the event to bring him out of it. Time went on; and looking at him, as his Guardian Angel might look at him, you would have said that, in spite of much perverseness, and many a successful struggle against his Almighty {55} Adversary, in spite of his still being, as before, in a state of wrath, nevertheless grace was making way in his soul,—he was advancing towards the Church. He did not know it himself, he could not recognise it himself; but an eager interest in him, and then a joy, was springing up in heaven among the Angels of God. At last he came within the range of a great Saint in a foreign country; and, though he pretended not to acknowledge him, his attention was arrested by him, and he could not help coming to sacred places to look at him again and again. He began to watch him and speculate about him, and wondered with himself whether he was happy. He found himself frequently in Church, listening to the holy preacher, and he once asked his advice how to find what he was seeking. And now a final conflict came on him with the flesh: it was hard, very hard, to part with the indulgences of years, it was hard to part and never to meet again. O, sin was so sweet, how could he bid it farewell? how could he tear himself away from its embrace, and betake himself to that lonely and dreary way which led heavenwards? But God’s grace was sweeter far, and it convinced him while it won him; it convinced his reason, and prevailed;—and he who without it would have lived and died a child of Satan, became, under its wonder-working power, an oracle of sanctity and truth.

And do you not think, my brethren, that he was better fitted than another to persuade his brethren as he had been persuaded, and to preach the holy doctrine which he had despised? Not that sin is better than {56} obedience, or the sinner than the just; but that God in His mercy makes use of sin against itself, that He turns past sin into a present benefit, that, while He washes away its guilt and subdues its power, He leaves it in the penitent in such sense as enables him, from his knowledge of its devices, to assault it more vigorously, and strike at it more truly, when it meets him in other men; that, while our Lord, by His omnipotent grace, can make the soul as clean as if it had never been unclean, He leaves it in possession of a tenderness and compassion for other sinners, an experience how to deal with them, greater than if it had never sinned; and again that, in those rare and special instances, of one of which I have been speaking, He holds up to us, for our instruction and our comfort, what He can do, even for the most guilty, if they sincerely come to Him for a pardon and a cure. There is no limit to be put to the bounty and power of God’s grace; and that we feel sorrow for our sins, and supplicate His mercy, is a sort of present pledge to us in our hearts, that He will grant us the good gifts we are seeking. He can do what He will with the soul of man. He is infinitely more powerful than the foul spirit to whom the sinner has sold himself, and can cast him out.

O my dear brethren, though your conscience witnesses against you, He can disburden it; whether you have sinned less or whether you have sinned more, He can make you as clean in His sight and as acceptable to Him as if you had never gone from Him. Gradually will He destroy your sinful habits, and at once will He restore you to His favour. Such is the power of the {57} Sacrament of Penance, that, be your load of guilt heavier or be it lighter, it removes it, whatever it is. It is as easy to Him to wash out the many sins as the few. Do you recollect in the Old Testament the history of the cure of Naaman the Syrian, by the prophet Eliseus? He had that dreadful, incurable disease called the leprosy, which was a white crust upon the skin, making the whole person hideous, and typifying the hideousness of sin. The prophet bade him bathe in the river Jordan, and the disease disappeared; “his flesh,” says the inspired writer, was “restored to him as the flesh of a little child”. Here, then, we have a representation not only of what sin is, but of what God’s grace is. It can undo the past, it can realise the hopeless. No sinner, ever so odious, but may become a Saint; no Saint, ever so exalted, but has been, or might have been, a sinner. Grace overcomes nature, and grace only overcomes it. Take that holy child, the blessed St. Agnes, who, at the age of thirteen, resolved to die rather than deny the faith, and stood enveloped in an atmosphere of purity, and diffused around her a heavenly influence, in the very home of evil spirits into which the heathen brought her; or consider the angelical Aloysius, of whom it hardly is left upon record that he committed even a venial sin; or St. Agatha, St. Juliana, St. Rose, St. Casimir, or St. Stanislas, to whom the very notion of any unbecoming imagination had been as death; well, there is not one of these seraphic souls but might have been a degraded, loathsome leper, except for God’s grace, an outcast from his kind; not one but might, or rather would, {58} have lived the life of a brute creature, and died the death of a reprobate, and lain down in hell eternally in the devil’s arms, had not God put a new heart and a new spirit within him, and made him what he could not make himself.

All good men are not Saints, my brethren—all converted souls do not become Saints. I will not promise, that, if you turn to God, you will reach that height of sanctity which the Saints have reached:—true; still, I am showing you that even the Saints are by nature no better than you; and so (much more) that the Priests, who have the charge of the faithful, whatever be their sanctity, are by nature no better than those whom they have to convert, whom they have to reform. It is God’s special mercy towards you that we by nature are no other than you; it is His consideration and compassion for you that He has made us, who are your brethren, His legates and ministers of reconciliation.

This is what the world cannot understand; not that it does not apprehend clearly enough that we are by nature of like passions with itself; but what it is so blind, so narrow-minded as not to comprehend, is, that, being so like itself by nature, we may be made so different by grace. Men of the world, my brethren, know the power of nature; they know not, experience not, believe not, the power of God’s grace; and since they are not themselves acquainted with any power that can overcome nature, they think that none exists, and therefore, consistently, they believe that every one, Priest or not, remains to the end such as nature made him, and they will not believe it possible that any one {59} can lead a supernatural life. Now, not Priest only, but every one who is in the grace of God, leads a supernatural life, more or less supernatural, according to his calling, and the measure of the gifts given him, and his faithfulness to them. This they know not, and admit not; and when they hear of the life which a Priest must lead by his profession from youth to age, they will not credit that he is what he professes to be. They know nothing of the presence of God, the merits of Christ, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin; the virtue of recurring prayers, of frequent confession, of daily Masses; they are strangers to the transforming power of the Most Holy Sacrament, the Bread of Angels; they do not contemplate the efficacy of salutary rules, of holy companions, of long-enduring habit, of ready spontaneous vigilance, of abhorrence of sin and indignation at the tempter, to secure the soul from evil. They only know that when the tempter once has actually penetrated into the heart, he is irresistible; they only know that when the soul has exposed and surrendered itself to his malice, there is (so to speak) a necessity of sinning. They only know that when God has abandoned it, and good Angels are withdrawn, and all safeguards, and protections, and preventives are neglected, that then (which is their own case), when the victory is all but gained already, it is sure to be gained altogether. They themselves have ever, in their best estate, been all but beaten by the Evil One before they began to fight; this is the only state they have experienced: they know this, and they know nothing else. They {60} have never stood on vantage ground; they have never been within the walls of the strong city, about which the enemy prowls in vain, into which he cannot penetrate, and outside of which the faithful soul will be too wise to venture. They judge, I say, by their experience, and will not believe what they never knew.

If there be those here present, my dear brethren, who will not believe that grace is effectual within the Church, because it does little outside of it, to them I do not speak: I speak to those who do not narrow their belief to their experience; I speak to those who admit that grace can make human nature what it is not; and such persons, I think, will feel it, not a cause of jealousy and suspicion, but a great gain, a great mercy, that those are sent to preach to them, to receive their confessions, and to advise them, who can sympathise with their sins, even though they have not known them. Not a temptation, my brethren, can befall you, but what befalls all those who share your nature, though you may have yielded to it, and they may not have yielded. They can understand you, they can anticipate you, they can interpret you, though they have not kept pace with you in your course. They will be tender to you, they will “instruct you in the spirit of meekness,” as the Apostle says, “considering themselves lest they also be tempted”. Come then unto us, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and ye shall find rest to your souls; come unto us, who now stand to you in Christ’s stead, and who speak in Christ’s name; for we too, like you, have been saved by Christ’s all-saving blood. We too, like {61} you, should be lost sinners, unless Christ had had mercy on us, unless His grace had cleansed us, unless His Church had received us, unless His saints had interceded for us. Be ye saved, as we have been saved; “come, listen, all ye that fear God, and we will tell you what He hath done for our souls”. Listen to our testimony; behold our joy of heart, and increase it by partaking in it yourselves. Choose that good part which we have chosen; join ye yourselves to our company; it will never repent you, take our word for it, who have a right to speak, it will never repent you to have sought pardon and peace from the Catholic Church, which alone has grace, which alone has power, which alone has Saints; it will never repent you, though you go through trouble, though you have to give up much for her sake. It will never repent you, to have passed from the shadows of sense and time, and the deceptions of human feeling and false reason, to the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

And O, my brethren, when you have taken the great step, and stand in your blessed lot, as sinners reconciled to the Father you have offended (for I will anticipate, what I surely trust will be fulfilled as regards many of you), O then forget not those who have been the ministers of your reconciliation; and as they now pray you to make your peace with God, so do you, when reconciled, pray for them, that they may gain the great gift of perseverance, that they may continue to stand in the grace in which they trust they stand now, even till the hour of death, lest, perchance, after they have preached to others, they themselves become reprobate.

(end of Newman’s discourse on the priesthood)

The Pope and the Archbishop both addressed the assembled Catholic and Anglcian bishops of England, Scotland, and Wales, meeting together.

Dr. Williams is, like the Pope, a brilliant scholar (among other things, Williams is one of the world’s leading authorities on the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and he speaks Russian fluently).

Here below are brief summaries of the speeches delivered by the Pope and Archbishop Williams, and then the important speech on politics that the Pope delivered just moments ago in Westminster.

Pope Benedict XVI this afternoon visited His Grace Archbishop Rowan Williams at the Archbishop’s London home, Lambeth Palace.

Together they addressed a meeting of Anglican and Roman Catholic diocesan bishops from England, Scotland and Wales in the Great Hall of the Archbishop’s Library.

In his address to the bishops (full text below), Dr Williams stressed the wider spiritual and missionary context in which ecumenical dialogue and growth in unity must take place. “Perhaps we shall not quickly overcome the remaining obstacles to full, restored communion; but no obstacles stand in the way of our seeking, as a matter of joyful obedience to the Lord, more ways in which to build up one another in holiness,” Dr Williams said.

But the essential point of the Pope’s reply to the Archbishop of Canterbury was that the Catholic Church cannot compromise on matters of fundamental doctrine out of a desire to be “inclusive.”

The Pope said: “In fidelity to the Lord’s will, as expressed in that passage from Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, we recognize that the Church is called to be inclusive, yet never at the expense of Christian truth. Herein lies the dilemma facing all who are genuinely committed to the ecumenical journey.”

The meeting ended with Pope Benedict leading the bishops in the Lord’s Prayer and a concluding prayer.

The Archbishop and Mrs Jane Williams then welcomed Pope Benedict into their home, where the Archbishop and the Pope spent half an hour in private discussion.

This was the first time in history that a Pope had visited Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official London residence, Pope John Paul II having visited Archbishop Robert Runcie in Canterbury in 1982.

Here is the complete text of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s address today:

Address by Archbishop Rowam Williams to a Meeting of Anglican and Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishops of England, Scotland and Wales on the occasion of The Fraternal Visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Great Hall, Lambeth Palace, 17 September 2010

Your Holiness, brother bishops, brothers and sisters in Christ:

It is a particular pleasure that on this historic occasion we are able to come together as bishops of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in this country to greet you, Your Holiness, during a visit which we all hope will be of significance both to the Church of Christ and to British society.

Your consistent and penetrating analysis of the state of European society in general has been a major contribution to public debate on the relations between Church and culture, and we gratefully acknowledge our debt in this respect.

Our task as bishops is to preach the Gospel and shepherd the flock of Christ; and this includes the responsibility not only to feed but also to protect it from harm. Today, this involves a readiness to respond to the various trends in our cultural environment that seek to present Christian faith as both an obstacle to human freedom and a scandal to human intellect. We need to be clear that the Gospel of the new creation in Jesus Christ is the door through which we enter into true liberty and true understanding: we are made free to be human as God intends us to be human; we are given the illumination that helps us see one another and all created things in the light of divine love and intelligence.

As you said in your Inaugural Mass in 2005, recalling your predecessor’s first words as Pope, Christ takes away nothing “that pertains to human freedom or dignity or to the building of a just society…. If we let Christ into our lives we lose absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. Only in his friendship is the great potential of human existence revealed.” [Inaugural Homily, Rome, 24 April 2005]

Our presence together as British bishops here today is a sign of the way in which, in this country, we see our task as one and indivisible. The International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission has set before us all the vital importance of our common calling as bishops to be agents of mission. Our fervent prayer is that this visit will give us fresh energy and vision for working together in this context in the name of what a great Roman Catholic thinker of the last century called ‘true humanism’ – a passionate commitment to the dignity of all human beings, from the beginning to the end of life, and to a resistance to every tyranny that threatens to stifle or deny the place of the transcendent in human affairs.

We do not as churches seek political power or control, or the dominance of Christian faith in the public sphere; but the opportunity to testify, to argue, sometimes to protest, sometimes to affirm – to play our part in the public debates of our societies. And we shall, of course, be effective not when we have mustered enough political leverage to get our way but when we have persuaded our neighbours that the life of faith is a life well lived and joyfully lived.

In other words, we shall be effective defenders or proclaimers of our faith when we can show what a holy life looks like, a life in which the joy of God is transparently present. And this means that our ministry together as bishops across the still-surviving boundaries of our confessions is not only a search for how we best act together in the public arena; it is a quest together for holiness and transparency to God, a search for ways in which we may help each other to grow in the life of the Holy Spirit. As you have said, Your Holiness, “a joint fundamental testimony of faith ought to be given before a world which is torn by doubts and shaken by fears.” [Luther and the Unity of the Churches, 1983]

In 1845, when John Henry Newman finally decided that he must follow his conscience and seek his future in serving God in communion with the See of Rome, one of his most intimate Anglican friends and allies, the priest Edward Bouverie Pusey, whose memory the Church of England marked in its liturgical calendar yesterday, wrote a moving meditation on this “parting of friends” in which he said of the separation between Anglicans and Roman Catholics: “it is what is unholy on both sides that keeps us apart”.

That should not surprise us: holiness is at its simplest fellowship with Christ; and when that fellowship with Christ is brought to maturity, so is our fellowship with one another. As bishops, we are servants of the unity of Christ’s people, Christ’s one Body. And, meeting as we do as bishops of separated church communities, we must all feel that each of our own ministries is made less by the fact of our dividedness, a very real but imperfect communion. Perhaps we shall not quickly overcome the remaining obstacles to full, restored communion; but no obstacles stand in the way of our seeking, as a matter of joyful obedience to the Lord, more ways in which to build up one another in holiness by prayer and public celebration together, by closer friendship, and by growing together both in the challenging work of service for all whom Christ loves, and mission to all God has made.

May this historic visit be for all of us a special time of grace and of growth in our shared calling, as you, Your Holiness, bring us the word of the Gospel afresh.

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Here is the text of the Pope’s response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks:

ADDRESS OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
LAMBETH PALACE
LONDON
17 SEPTEMBER 2010

Your Grace,

It is a pleasure for me to be able to return the courtesy of the visits you have made to me in Rome by a fraternal visit to you here in your official residence. I thank you for your invitation and for the hospitality that you have so generously provided. I greet too the Anglican Bishops gathered here from different parts of the United Kingdom, my brother Bishops from the Catholic Dioceses of England, Wales and Scotland, and the ecumenical advisers who are present.

You have spoken, Your Grace, of the historic meeting that took place, almost thirty years ago, between two of our predecessors – Pope John Paul the Second and Archbishop Robert Runcie – in Canterbury Cathedral. There, in the very place where Saint Thomas of Canterbury bore witness to Christ by the shedding of his blood, they prayed together for the gift of unity among the followers of Christ. We continue today to pray for that gift, knowing that the unity Christ willed for his disciples will only come about in answer to prayer, through the action of the Holy Spirit, who ceaselessly renews the Church and guides her into the fullness of truth.

It is not my intention today to speak of the difficulties that the ecumenical path has encountered and continues to encounter. Those difficulties are well known to everyone here. Rather, I wish to join you in giving thanks for the deep friendship that has grown between us and for the remarkable progress that has been made in so many areas of dialogue during the forty years that have elapsed since the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission began its work. Let us entrust the fruits of that work to the Lord of the harvest, confident that he will bless our friendship with further significant growth.

The context in which dialogue takes place between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church has evolved in dramatic ways since the private meeting between Pope John XXIII and Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher in 1960. On the one hand, the surrounding culture is growing ever more distant from its Christian roots, despite a deep and widespread hunger for spiritual nourishment. On the other hand, the increasingly multicultural dimension of society, particularly marked in this country, brings with it the opportunity to encounter other religions. For us Christians this opens up the possibility of exploring, together with members of other religious traditions, ways of bearing witness to the transcendent dimension of the human person and the universal call to holiness, leading to the practice of virtue in our personal and social lives. Ecumenical cooperation in this task remains essential, and will surely bear fruit in promoting peace and harmony in a world that so often seems at risk of fragmentation.

At the same time, we Christians must never hesitate to proclaim our faith in the uniqueness of the salvation won for us by Christ, and to explore together a deeper understanding of the means he has placed at our disposal for attaining that salvation. God “wants all to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4), and that truth is nothing other than Jesus Christ, eternal Son of the Father, who has reconciled all things in himself by the power of his Cross. In fidelity to the Lord’s will, as expressed in that passage from Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, we recognize that the Church is called to be inclusive, yet never at the expense of Christian truth. Herein lies the dilemma facing all who are genuinely committed to the ecumenical journey.

In the figure of John Henry Newman, who is to be beatified on Sunday, we celebrate a churchman whose ecclesial vision was nurtured by his Anglican background and matured during his many years of ordained ministry in the Church of England. He can teach us the virtues that ecumenism demands: on the one hand, he was moved to follow his conscience, even at great personal cost; and on the other hand, the warmth of his continued friendship with his former colleagues, led him to explore with them, in a truly eirenical spirit, the questions on which they differed, driven by a deep longing for unity in faith. Your Grace, in that same spirit of friendship, let us renew our determination to pursue the goal of unity in faith, hope, and love, in accordance with the will of our one Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

With these sentiments, I take my leave of you. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Cor 13:13).

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Joint statement

Following the Pope’s departure from Lambeth, the following joint communiqué was issued:

Fifty years after the first meeting of a Pope and an Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times – that of Pope John XXIII and Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, in December 1960 – Pope Benedict XVI paid a fraternal visit to Archbishop Rowan Williams.

In the first part of their meeting they both addressed the Anglican and Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishops of England, Scotland and Wales, in the Great Hall of the Archbishop’s Library, before moving to a private meeting.

In the course of their private conversation, they addressed many of the issues of mutual concern to Anglicans and Roman Catholics. They affirmed the need to proclaim the Gospel message of salvation in Jesus Christ, both in a reasoned and convincing way in the contemporary context of profound cultural and social transformation, and in lives of holiness and transparency to God. They agreed on the importance of improving ecumenical relations and continuing theological dialogue in the face of new challenges to unity from within the Christian community and beyond it.

The Holy Father and the Archbishop reaffirmed the importance of continuing theological dialogue on the notion of the Church as communion, local and universal, and the implications of this concept for the discernment of ethical teaching.

They reflected together on the serious and difficult situation of Christians in the Middle East, and called upon all Christians to pray for their brothers and sisters and support their continued peaceful witness in the Holy Land. In the light of their recent public interventions, they also discussed the need to promote a courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace, especially the needs of the poor, urging international leadership to fight hunger and disease.

Following their meeting they travelled together to the Palace of Westminster and to Evening Prayer at Westminster Abbey.

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The Address to Politicians

Pope Benedict XVI then went to Westminster Hall, where he spoke to both houses of the British Parliament. It was a much-awaited speech, as it dealt with the obligations of politicians in pluralistic democracies.

The Pope’s essential point is that religious faith should not be excluded from the public discourse, or the public policy, of a secular democracy.

The Pope said: “I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization. Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation.”

And Benedict said that he is very concerned about the increasing attacks on religious belief and its expression in the Western democracies.

The Pope said: “In this light, I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance.

“There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere.

“There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.

“And there are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience.”

What does the Pope propose? He makes only a very modest request: that room be made for religious faith in public life: “I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.”

Here is the Pope’s speech.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

ADDRESS OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
TO BRITISH SOCIETY
WESTMINSTER HALL
THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
LONDON

Mr Speaker,

Thank you for your words of welcome on behalf of this distinguished gathering. As I address you, I am conscious of the privilege afforded me to speak to the British people and their representatives in Westminster Hall, a building of unique significance in the civil and political history of the people of these islands. Allow me also to express my esteem for the Parliament which has existed on this site for centuries and which has had such a profound influence on the development of participative government among the nations, especially in the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world at large. Your common law tradition serves as the basis of legal systems in many parts of the world, and your particular vision of the respective rights and duties of the state and the individual, and of the separation of powers, remains an inspiration to many across the globe.

As I speak to you in this historic setting, I think of the countless men and women down the centuries who have played their part in the momentous events that have taken place within these walls and have shaped the lives of many generations of Britons, and others besides. In particular, I recall the figure of Saint Thomas More, the great English scholar and statesman, who is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose “good servant” he was, because he chose to serve God first. The dilemma which faced More in those difficult times, the perennial question of the relationship between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God, allows me the opportunity to reflect with you briefly on the proper place of religious belief within the political process.

This country’s Parliamentary tradition owes much to the national instinct for moderation, to the desire to achieve a genuine balance between the legitimate claims of government and the rights of those subject to it. While decisive steps have been taken at several points in your history to place limits on the exercise of power, the nation’s political institutions have been able to evolve with a remarkable degree of stability. In the process, Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law. While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.

And yet the fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident — herein lies the real challenge for democracy.

The inadequacy of pragmatic, short-term solutions to complex social and ethical problems has been illustrated all too clearly by the recent global financial crisis. There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world. Just as “every economic decision has a moral consequence” (Caritas in Veritate, 37), so too in the political field, the ethical dimension of policy has far-reaching consequences that no government can afford to ignore. A positive illustration of this is found in one of the British Parliament’s particularly notable achievements – the abolition of the slave trade. The campaign that led to this landmark legislation was built upon firm ethical principles, rooted in the natural law, and it has made a contribution to civilization of which this nation may be justly proud.

The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation. In this light, I cannot but voice my concern at the increasing marginalization of religion, particularly of Christianity, that is taking place in some quarters, even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance. There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere. There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none. And there are those who argue – paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination – that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience. These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square. I would invite all of you, therefore, within your respective spheres of influence, to seek ways of promoting and encouraging dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life.

Your readiness to do so is already implied in the unprecedented invitation extended to me today. And it finds expression in the fields of concern in which your Government has been engaged with the Holy See. In the area of peace, there have been exchanges regarding the elaboration of an international arms trade treaty; regarding human rights, the Holy See and the United Kingdom have welcomed the spread of democracy, especially in the last sixty-five years; in the field of development, there has been collaboration on debt relief, fair trade and financing for development, particularly through the International Finance Facility, the International Immunization Bond, and the Advanced Market Commitment. The Holy See also looks forward to exploring with the United Kingdom new ways to promote environmental responsibility, to the benefit of all.

I also note that the present Government has committed the United Kingdom to devoting 0.7% of national income to development aid by 2013. In recent years it has been encouraging to witness the positive signs of a worldwide growth in solidarity towards the poor. But to turn this solidarity into effective action calls for fresh thinking that will improve life conditions in many important areas, such as food production, clean water, job creation, education, support to families, especially migrants, and basic healthcare. Where human lives are concerned, time is always short: yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”. Surely the integral human development of the world’s peoples is no less important: here is an enterprise, worthy of the world’s attention, that is truly “too big to fail”.

This overview of recent cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Holy See illustrates well how much progress has been made, in the years that have passed since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, in promoting throughout the world the many core values that we share. I hope and pray that this relationship will continue to bear fruit, and that it will be mirrored in a growing acceptance of the need for dialogue and respect at every level of society between the world of reason and the world of faith. I am convinced that, within this country too, there are many areas in which the Church and the public authorities can work together for the good of citizens, in harmony with Britain’s long-standing tradition. For such cooperation to be possible, religious bodies – including institutions linked to the Catholic Church – need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles and specific convictions based upon the faith and the official teaching of the Church. In this way, such basic rights as religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of association are guaranteed. The angels looking down on us from the magnificent ceiling of this ancient Hall remind us of the long tradition from which British Parliamentary democracy has evolved. They remind us that God is constantly watching over us to guide and protect us. And they summon us to acknowledge the vital contribution that religious belief has made and can continue to make to the life of the nation.

Mr Speaker, I thank you once again for this opportunity briefly to address this distinguished audience. Let me assure you and the Lord Speaker of my continued good wishes and prayers for you and for the fruitful work of both Houses of this ancient Parliament. Thank you and God bless you all!

Here are brief summaries of the first two events.

To children: “Become holy”

The main point of the Pope’s talk to young people: that they should strive to be saints.

That they should strive for holiness.

The Pope said: “What God wants most of all for each one of you is that you should become holy. He loves you much more than you could ever begin to imagine, and he wants the very best for you. And by far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness.”

To teachers: “Form the human person”

The main point of the Pope’s talk to teachers: that they should not reduce teaching to just one subject matter, but should consider the whole child, the formation of the entire person entrusted to their instruction.

The Pope said: “Education is not and must never be considered as purely utilitarian. It is about forming the human person, equipping him or her to live life to the full – in short it is about imparting wisdom.”

To representatives of other religions: “Seek the ultimate”

The main point of the Pope’s talk to representatives of other religions: that all human attempts to find the ultimate meaning of life are valuable, and can unite men and women in a common search to fulfill the deepest longings of the human heart.

The Pope said: “On the spiritual level, all of us, in our different ways, are personally engaged in a journey that grants an answer to the most important question of all – the question concerning the ultimate meaning of our human existence. The quest for the sacred is the search for the one thing necessary, which alone satisfies the longings of the human heart.”

He continued: “Genuine religious belief points us beyond present utility towards the transcendent. It reminds us of the possibility and the imperative of moral conversion, of the duty to live peaceably with our neighbour, of the importance of living a life of integrity. Properly understood, it brings enlightenment, it purifies our hearts and it inspires noble and generous action, to the benefit of the entire human family. It motivates us to cultivate the practice of virtue and to reach out towards one another in love, with the greatest respect for religious traditions different from our own.”

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Here is the text of the Pope’s address to Catholic students:

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

ADDRESS OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
TO SCHOOL PUPILS
ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TWICKENHAM

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Dear young friends,

First of all, I want to say how glad I am to be here with you today. I greet you most warmly, those who have come to Saint Mary’s University from Catholic schools and colleges across the United Kingdom, and all who are watching on television and via the internet.

I thank Bishop McMahon for his gracious welcome, I thank the choir and the band for the lovely music which began our celebration, and I thank Miss Bellot for her kind words on behalf of all the young people present. In view of London’s forthcoming Olympic Games, it has been a pleasure to inaugurate this Sports Foundation, named in honour of Pope John Paul II, and I pray that all who come here will give glory to God through their sporting activities, as well as bringing enjoyment to themselves and to others.

It is not often that a Pope, or indeed anyone else, has the opportunity to speak to the students of all the Catholic schools of England, Wales and Scotland at the same time. And since I have the chance now, there is something I very much want to say to you.

I hope that among those of you listening to me today there are some of the future saints of the twenty-first century.

What God wants most of all for each one of you is that you should become holy. He loves you much more than you could ever begin to imagine, and he wants the very best for you. And by far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness.

Perhaps some of you have never thought about this before. Perhaps some of you think being a saint is not for you. Let me explain what I mean.

When we are young, we can usually think of people that we look up to, people we admire, people we want to be like. It could be someone we meet in our daily lives that we hold in great esteem. Or it could be someone famous. We live in a celebrity culture, and young people are often encouraged to model themselves on figures from the world of sport or entertainment.

My question for you is this: what are the qualities you see in others that you would most like to have yourselves? What kind of person would you really like to be?

When I invite you to become saints, I am asking you not to be content with second best. I am asking you not to pursue one limited goal and ignore all the others.

Having money makes it possible to be generous and to do good in the world, but on its own, it is not enough to make us happy. Being highly skilled in some activity or profession is good, but it will not satisfy us unless we aim for something greater still. It might make us famous, but it will not make us happy.

Happiness is something we all want, but one of the great tragedies in this world is that so many people never find it, because they look for it in the wrong places. The key to it is very simple – true happiness is to be found in God. We need to have the courage to place our deepest hopes in God alone, not in money, in a career, in worldly success, or in our relationships with others, but in God. Only he can satisfy the deepest needs of our hearts.

Not only does God love us with a depth and an intensity that we can scarcely begin to comprehend, but he invites us to respond to that love.

You all know what it is like when you meet someone interesting and attractive, and you want to be that person’s friend. You always hope they will find you interesting and attractive, and want to be your friend. God wants your friendship.

And once you enter into friendship with God, everything in your life begins to change. As you come to know him better, you find you want to reflect something of his infinite goodness in your own life. You are attracted to the practice of virtue.

You begin to see greed and selfishness and all the other sins for what they really are, destructive and dangerous tendencies that cause deep suffering and do great damage, and you want to avoid falling into that trap yourselves.

You begin to feel compassion for people in difficulties and you are eager to do something to help them.

You want to come to the aid of the poor and the hungry, you want to comfort the sorrowful, you want to be kind and generous.

And once these things begin to matter to you, you are well on the way to becoming saints.

In your Catholic schools, there is always a bigger picture over and above the individual subjects you study, the different skills you learn. All the work you do is placed in the context of growing in friendship with God, and all that flows from that friendship. So you learn not just to be good students, but good citizens, good people.

As you move higher up the school, you have to make choices regarding the subjects you study, you begin to specialize with a view to what you are going to do later on in life. That is right and proper. But always remember that every subject you study is part of a bigger picture. Never allow yourselves to become narrow.

The world needs good scientists, but a scientific outlook becomes dangerously narrow if it ignores the religious or ethical dimension of life, just as religion becomes narrow if it rejects the legitimate contribution of science to our understanding of the world. We need good historians and philosophers and economists, but if the account they give of human life within their particular field is too narrowly focused, they can lead us seriously astray.

A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints.

I know that there are many non-Catholics studying in the Catholic schools in Great Britain, and I wish to include all of you in my words today. I pray that you too will feel encouraged to practise virtue and to grow in knowledge and friendship with God alongside your Catholic classmates. You are a reminder to them of the bigger picture that exists outside the school, and indeed, it is only right that respect and friendship for members of other religious traditions should be among the virtues learned in a Catholic school. I hope too that you will want to share with everyone you meet the values and insights you have learned through the Christian education you have received.

Dear friends, I thank you for your attention, I promise to pray for you, and I ask you to pray for me. I hope to see many of you next August, at the World Youth Day in Madrid. In the meantime, may God bless you all!

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Here is the text of the Pope’s address to Catholic teachers:
ADDRESS OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
TO TEACHERS
ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TWICKENHAM
17 SEPTEMBER 2010

Your Excellency the Secretary of State for Education,
Bishop Stack, Dr Naylor,
Reverend Fathers, Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I am pleased to have this opportunity to pay tribute to the outstanding contribution made by religious men and women in this land to the noble task of education. I thank the young people for their fine singing, and I thank Sister Teresa for her words. To her and to all the dedicated men and women who devote their lives to teaching the young, I want to express sentiments of deep appreciation. You form new generations not only in knowledge of the faith, but in every aspect of what it means to live as mature and responsible citizens in today’s world.

As you know, the task of a teacher is not simply to impart information or to provide training in skills intended to deliver some economic benefit to society; education is not and must never be considered as purely utilitarian. It is about forming the human person, equipping him or her to live life to the full – in short it is about imparting wisdom. And true wisdom is inseparable from knowledge of the Creator, for “both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill in crafts” (Wis 7:16).

This transcendent dimension of study and teaching was clearly grasped by the monks who contributed so much to the evangelization of these islands. I am thinking of the Benedictines who accompanied Saint Augustine on his mission to England, of the disciples of Saint Columba who spread the faith across Scotland and Northern England, of Saint David and his companions in Wales.

Since the search for God, which lies at the heart of the monastic vocation, requires active engagement with the means by which he makes himself known – his creation and his revealed word – it was only natural that the monastery should have a library and a school (cf. Address to representatives from the world of culture at the “Collège des Bernardins” in Paris, 12 September 2008). It was the monks’ dedication to learning as the path on which to encounter the Incarnate Word of God that was to lay the foundations of our Western culture and civilization.

Looking around me today, I see many apostolic religious whose charism includes the education of the young. This gives me an opportunity to give thanks to God for the life and work of the Venerable Mary Ward, a native of this land whose pioneering vision of apostolic religious life for women has borne so much fruit. I myself as a young boy was taught by the “English Ladies” and I owe them a deep debt of gratitude. Many of you belong to teaching orders that have carried the light of the Gospel to far-off lands as part of the Church’s great missionary work, and for this too I give thanks and praise to God. Often you laid the foundations of educational provision long before the State assumed a responsibility for this vital service to the individual and to society. As the relative roles of Church and State in the field of education continue to evolve, never forget that religious have a unique contribution to offer to this apostolate, above all through lives consecrated to God and through faithful, loving witness to Christ, the supreme Teacher.

Indeed, the presence of religious in Catholic schools is a powerful reminder of the much-discussed Catholic ethos that needs to inform every aspect of school life. This extends far beyond the self-evident requirement that the content of the teaching should always be in conformity with Church doctrine. It means that the life of faith needs to be the driving force behind every activity in the school, so that the Church’s mission may be served effectively, and the young people may discover the joy of entering into Christ’s “being for others” (Spe Salvi, 28).

Before I conclude, I wish to add a particular word of appreciation for those whose task it is to ensure that our schools provide a safe environment for children and young people. Our responsibility towards those entrusted to us for their Christian formation demands nothing less. Indeed, the life of faith can only be effectively nurtured when the prevailing atmosphere is one of respectful and affectionate trust. I pray that this may continue to be a hallmark of the Catholic schools in this country.

With these sentiments, dear Brothers and Sisters, I invite you now to stand and pray.

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Here is the text of the Pope’s address to representatives of other religions:

ADDRESS OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
TO THE REPRESENTATIVES OF OTHER RELIGIONS
ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TWICKENHAM
17 SEPTEMBER 2010

Distinguished guests, dear friends,

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to meet you, the representatives of the various religious communities in Great Britain. I greet both the ministers of religion present and those of you who are active in politics, business and industry. I am grateful to Dr Azzam and to Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks for the greetings which they have expressed on your behalf. As I salute you, let me also wish the Jewish community in Britain and throughout the world a happy and holy celebration of Yom Kippur.
I would like to begin my remarks by expressing the Catholic Church’s appreciation for the important witness that all of you bear as spiritual men and women living at a time when religious convictions are not always understood or appreciated. The presence of committed believers in various fields of social and economic life speaks eloquently of the fact that the spiritual dimension of our lives is fundamental to our identity as human beings, that man, in other words, does not live by bread alone (cf. Deut 8:3). As followers of different religious traditions working together for the good of the community at large, we attach great importance to this “side by side” dimension of our cooperation, which complements the “face to face” aspect of our continuing dialogue.

On the spiritual level, all of us, in our different ways, are personally engaged in a journey that grants an answer to the most important question of all – the question concerning the ultimate meaning of our human existence. The quest for the sacred is the search for the one thing necessary, which alone satisfies the longings of the human heart. In the fifth century, Saint Augustine described that search in these terms: “Lord, you have created us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions, Book I, 1). As we embark on this adventure we come to realize more and more that the initiative lies not with us, but with the Lord: it is not so much we who are seeking him, but rather he who is seeking us, indeed it was he who placed that longing for him deep within our hearts.

Your presence and witness in the world points towards the fundamental importance for human life of this spiritual quest in which we are engaged. Within their own spheres of competence, the human and natural sciences provide us with an invaluable understanding of aspects of our existence and they deepen our grasp of the workings of the physical universe, which can then be harnessed in order to bring great benefit to the human family. Yet these disciplines do not and cannot answer the fundamental question, because they operate on another level altogether. They cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor indeed can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

The quest for the sacred does not devalue other fields of human enquiry. On the contrary, it places them in a context which magnifies their importance, as ways of responsibly exercising our stewardship over creation. In the Bible, we read that, after the work of creation was completed, God blessed our first parents and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). He entrusted us with the task of exploring and harnessing the mysteries of nature in order to serve a higher good. What is that higher good? In the Christian faith, it is expressed as love for God and love for our neighbour. And so we engage with the world wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, but always with a view to serving that higher good, lest we disfigure the beauty of creation by exploiting it for selfish purposes.

So it is that genuine religious belief points us beyond present utility towards the transcendent. It reminds us of the possibility and the imperative of moral conversion, of the duty to live peaceably with our neighbour, of the importance of living a life of integrity. Properly understood, it brings enlightenment, it purifies our hearts and it inspires noble and generous action, to the benefit of the entire human family. It motivates us to cultivate the practice of virtue and to reach out towards one another in love, with the greatest respect for religious traditions different from our own.

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has placed special emphasis on the importance of dialogue and cooperation with the followers of other religions. In order to be fruitful, this requires reciprocity on the part of all partners in dialogue and the followers of other religions. I am thinking in particular of situations in some parts of the world, where cooperation and dialogue between religions calls for mutual respect, the freedom to practise one’s religion and to engage in acts of public worship, and the freedom to follow one’s conscience without suffering ostracism or persecution, even after conversion from one religion to another. Once such a respect and openness has been established, peoples of all religions will work together effectively for peace and mutual understanding, and so give a convincing witness before the world.

This kind of dialogue needs to take place on a number of different levels, and should not be limited to formal discussions. The dialogue of life involves simply living alongside one another and learning from one another in such a way as to grow in mutual knowledge and respect. The dialogue of action brings us together in concrete forms of collaboration, as we apply our religious insights to the task of promoting integral human development, working for peace, justice and the stewardship of creation. Such a dialogue may include exploring together how to defend human life at every stage and how to ensure the non-exclusion of the religious dimension of individuals and communities in the life of society. Then at the level of formal conversations, there is a need not only for theological exchange, but also sharing our spiritual riches, speaking of our experience of prayer and contemplation, and expressing to one another the joy of our encounter with divine love. In this context I am pleased to note the many positive initiatives undertaken in this country to promote such dialogue at a variety of levels. As the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales noted in their recent document Meeting God in Friend and Stranger, the effort to reach out in friendship to followers of other religions is becoming a familiar part of the mission of the local Church (n. 228), a characteristic feature of the religious landscape in this country.

My dear friends, as I conclude my remarks, let me assure you that the Catholic Church follows the path of engagement and dialogue out of a genuine sense of respect for you and your beliefs. Catholics, both in Britain and throughout the world, will continue to work to build bridges of friendship to other religions, to heal past wrongs and to foster trust between individuals and communities. Let me reiterate my thanks for your welcome and my gratitude for this opportunity to offer you my encouragement for your dialogue with your Christian sisters and brothers. Upon all of you I invoke abundant divine blessings! Thank you very much.

The Pope in Edinburgh and Glasgow, September 16, 2010

Today’s papal visit to Scotland, which began at about 10:30 a.m., had five main “moments”: (1) the landing in Edinburgh’s airport; (2) the meeting with the Queen at her residence (photo, left, the Queen and Pope Benedict today); (3) the ride through the crowded streets of Edinburgh; (4) lunch with Scotland’s bishops; (5) an open-air Mass in Glasgow.

The Pope then flew to London, where he is now — and where his address tomorrow (Friday), on the role of Catholic politicians in memory of St. Thomas More is being looked forward to as one of the most important addresses of his pontificate.

There was also a sixth “moment” today: (6) a press conference on the papal plane en route from Italy to Scotland, where the Pope acknowledged that the Church did not do enough over many years to address the problem of clerical sexual abuse of young people (transcript below)

There were three major addresses today: (1) the Queen’s greeting to the Pope; (2) the Pope’s greeting to the Queen; (3) the Pope’s homily at the Mass in Glasgow. There was also: (4) the impromptu press conference on the plane. All four of these texts are included below.

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The Pope addresses the sex abuse scandal

While answering journalists’ questions on the papal airplane on the flight to Scotland, the Pope acknowledged that Church officials had not been sufficiently vigilant or sufficiently quick in responding to the problem of sexual abusers among clergy.

Speaking of the sexual abuse scandal, he said: “First of all I must say that these revelations were a shock to me, a great sadness; it is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly ministry was
possible. At the moment of ordination, the priest, prepared for years for this moment, says ‘yes’ to Christ to be his voice, his mouth, his hands.[...] How a man who has done and said this can then fall into this
perversion is difficult to understand.

“It is a great sadness, a great sadness also that the authority of the Church was not sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick and resolute in taking the necessary measures.”

Benedict then recommended three steps to be taken now.

The first, he said, is to give priority to the victims: “What can we do to help these persons overcome this trauma, to rediscover life, to find again as well trust in the message of Christ? Concern for the victims is the first priority with material, psychological and spiritual help.”

Second, he said, is “the just punishment (of abusers), excluding them from any possibility of access to young people, because we know that this is an illness, that free will does not function where this illness exists; hence, we must protect these persons from themselves and find the way to help them and keep them from any access to young people.”

Finally, he called for careful selection of candidates for the priesthood: “To be careful so that, inasmuch as humanly possible, future cases are prevented.”

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Texts of Speeches

Text #1: Queen Elizabeth II’s Greeting to Benedict XVI
Here is the address Queen Elizabeth II delivered today at the Palace of Holyroodhouse upon welcoming
Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom.

Your Holiness,

I am delighted to welcome you to the United Kingdom, and particularly to Scotland, on your first visit as Pope. I recall with great pleasure the memorable pastoral visit of the late Pope John Paul II to this country in 1982. I also have vivid memories of my four visits to the Vatican, and of meeting some of your predecessors on other occasions. I am most grateful to them for receiving, over the years, a number of members of my family with such warm hospitality.

Much has changed in the world during the nearly thirty years since Pope John Paul’s visit. In this country, we deeply appreciate the involvement of the Holy See in the dramatic improvement in the situation in Northern Ireland. Elsewhere the fall of totalitarian regimes across central and eastern Europe has allowed greater freedom for hundreds of millions of people. The Holy See continues to have an important role in international issues, in support of peace and development and in addressing common problems like poverty and climate change.

Your Holiness, your presence here today reminds us of our common Christian heritage, and of the Christian contribution to the encouragement of world peace, and to the economic and social development of the less prosperous countries of the world. We are all aware of the special contribution of the Roman Catholic Church particularly in its ministry to the poorest and most deprived members of society, its care for the homeless and for the education provided by its extensive network of schools.

Religion has always been a crucial element in national identity and historical self-consciousness. This has made the relationship between the different faiths a fundamental factor in the necessary cooperation within and between nation states. It is, therefore, vital to encourage a greater mutual, and respectful understanding. We know from experience that through committed dialogue, old suspicions can be transcended and a greater mutual trust established.

I know that reconciliation was a central theme in the life of Cardinal John Henry Newman, for whom you will be holding a Mass of Beatification on Sunday. A man who struggled with doubt and uncertainty, his contribution to the understanding of Christianity continues to influence many. I am pleased that your visit will also provide an opportunity to deepen the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the established Church of England and the Church of Scotland.

Your Holiness, in recent times you have said that “religions can never become vehicles of hatred, that never by invoking the name of God can evil and violence be justified”. Today, in this country, we stand united in that conviction. We hold that freedom to worship is at the core of our tolerant and democratic society.

On behalf of the people of the United Kingdom I wish you a most fruitful and memorable visit.

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Text #2: Papal Address to the Queen and to Scottish Authorities
Here is the address Benedict XVI delivered today to political, civil, and church leaders of Scotland in the Park of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, after meeting privately with Queen Elizabeth II.

Your Majesty,

Thank you for your gracious invitation to make an official visit to the United Kingdom and for your warm words of greeting on behalf of the British people. In thanking Your Majesty, allow me to extend my own greetings to all the people of the United Kingdom and to hold out a hand of friendship to each one.

It is a great pleasure for me to start my journey by saluting the members of the Royal Family, thanking in particular His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh for his kind welcome to me at Edinburgh Airport. I express my gratitude to Your Majesty’s present and previous Governments and to all those who worked with them to make this occasion possible, including Lord Patten and former Secretary of State Murphy. I would also like to acknowledge with deep appreciation the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Holy See, which has contributed greatly to strengthening the friendly relations existing between the Holy See and the United Kingdom.

As I begin my visit to the United Kingdom in Scotland’s historic capital city, I greet in a special way First Minister Salmond and the representatives of the Scottish Parliament. Just like the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, may the Scottish Parliament grow to be an expression of the fine traditions and distinct culture of the Scots and strive to serve their best interests in a spirit of solidarity and concern for the common good.

The name of Holyroodhouse, Your Majesty’s official residence in Scotland, recalls the “Holy Cross” and points to the deep Christian roots that are still present in every layer of British life. The monarchs of England and Scotland have been Christians from very early times and include outstanding saints like Edward the Confessor and Margaret of Scotland. As you know, many of them consciously exercised their sovereign duty in the light of the Gospel, and in this way shaped the nation for good at the deepest level. As a result, the Christian message has been an integral part of the language, thought and culture of the peoples of these islands for more than a thousand years. Your forefathers’ respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity come to you from a faith that remains a mighty force for good in your kingdom, to the great benefit of Christians and non-Christians alike.

We find many examples of this force for good throughout Britain’s long history. Even in comparatively recent times, due to figures like William Wilberforce and David Livingstone, Britain intervened directly to stop the international slave trade. Inspired by faith, women like Florence Nightingale served the poor and the sick and set new standards in healthcare that were subsequently copied everywhere. John Henry Newman, whose beatification I will celebrate shortly, was one of many British Christians of his age whose goodness, eloquence and action were a credit to their countrymen and women. These, and many people like them, were inspired by a deep faith born and nurtured in these islands.

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

Sixty-five years ago, Britain played an essential role in forging the post-war international consensus which favoured the establishment of the United Nations and ushered in a hitherto unknown period of peace and prosperity in Europe. In more recent years, the international community has followed closely events in Northern Ireland which have led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the devolution of powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Your Majesty’s Government and the Government of Ireland, together with the political, religious and civil leaders of Northern Ireland, have helped give birth to a peaceful resolution of the conflict there. I encourage everyone involved to continue to walk courageously together on the path marked out for them towards a just and lasting peace.

Looking abroad, the United Kingdom remains a key figure politically and economically on the international stage. Your Government and people are the shapers of ideas that still have an impact far beyond the British Isles. This places upon them a particular duty to act wisely for the common good. Similarly, because their opinions reach such a wide audience, the British media have a graver responsibility than most and a greater opportunity to promote the peace of nations, the integral development of peoples and the spread of authentic human rights. May all Britons continue to live by the values of honesty, respect and fair-mindedness that have won them the esteem and admiration of many.

Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate. Let it not obscure the Christian foundation that underpins its freedoms; and may that patrimony, which has always served the nation well, constantly inform the example your Government and people set before the two billion members of the Commonwealth and the great family of English-speaking nations throughout the world.

May God bless Your Majesty and all the people of your realm. Thank you.

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Text #3: Papal Homily at Bellahouston Park Mass, Glasgow

Here is the homily Benedict XVI delivered today during an open-air Mass at Bellahouston Park, about
three miles from the center of Glasgow.

HOMILY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
MASS OF ST NINIAN, APOSTLE OF SCOTLAND
BELLAHOUSTON PARK
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND
16 SEPTEMBER 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“The Kingdom of God is very near to you!” (Luke 10:9). With these words of the Gospel we have just heard, I greet all of you with great affection in the Lord. Truly the Lord’s Kingdom is already in our midst! At this Eucharistic celebration in which the Church in Scotland gathers around the altar in union with the Successor of Peter, let us reaffirm our faith in Christ’s word and our hope a hope which never disappoints in his promises! I warmly greet Cardinal O’Brien and the Scottish Bishops; I thank in particular Archbishop Conti for his kind words of welcome on your behalf; and I express my deep gratitude for the work that the British and Scottish Governments and the Glasgow city fathers have done to make this occasion possible.

Today’s Gospel reminds us that Christ continues to send his disciples into the world in order to proclaim the coming of his Kingdom and to bring his peace into the world, beginning house by house, family by family, town by town. I have come as a herald of that peace to you, the spiritual children of Saint Andrew and to confirm you in the faith of Peter (cf. Luke 22:32). It is with some emotion that I address you, not far from the spot where my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass nearly thirty years ago with you and was welcomed by the largest crowd ever gathered in Scottish history.

Much has happened in Scotland and in the Church in this country since that historic visit. I note with great satisfaction how Pope John Paul’s call to you to walk hand in hand with your fellow Christians has led to greater trust and friendship with the members of the Church of Scotland, the Scottish Episcopal Church and others. Let me encourage you to continue to pray and work with them in building a brighter future for Scotland based upon our common Christian heritage. In today’s first reading we heard Saint Paul appeal to the Romans to acknowledge that, as members of Christ’s body, we belong to each other (cf. Romans 12:5) and to live in respect and mutual love. In that spirit I greet the ecumenical representatives who honour us by their presence. This year marks the 450th anniversary of the Reformation Parliament, but also the 100th anniversary of the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, which is widely acknowledged to mark the birth of the modern ecumenical movement. Let us give thanks to God for the promise which ecumenical understanding and cooperation represents for a united witness to the saving truth of God’s word in today’s rapidly changing society.

Among the differing gifts which Saint Paul lists for the building up of the Church is that of teaching (cf. Romans 12:7). The preaching of the Gospel has always been accompanied by concern for the word: the inspired word of God and the culture in which that word takes root and flourishes. Here in Scotland, I think of the three medieval universities founded here by the Popes, including that of Saint Andrews which is beginning to mark the 600th anniversary of its foundation. In the last 30 years and with the assistance of civil authorities, Scottish Catholic schools have taken up the challenge of providing an integral education to greater numbers of students, and this has helped young people not only along the path of spiritual and human growth, but also in entering the professions and public life. This is a sign of great hope for the Church, and I encourage the Catholic professionals, politicians and teachers of Scotland never to lose sight of their calling to use their talents and experience in the service of the faith, engaging contemporary Scottish culture at every level.

The evangelization of culture is all the more important in our times, when a “dictatorship of relativism” threatens to obscure the unchanging truth about man’s nature, his destiny and his ultimate good. There are some who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatize it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty. Yet religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or sister. For this reason I appeal in particular to you, the lay faithful, in accordance with your baptismal calling and mission, not only to be examples of faith in public, but also to put the case for the promotion of faith’s wisdom and vision in the public forum. Society today needs clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection in the face of their weakness and fragility. Do not be afraid to take up this service to your brothers and sisters, and to the future of your beloved nation.

Saint Ninian, whose feast we celebrate today, was himself unafraid to be a lone voice. In the footsteps of the disciples whom our Lord sent forth before him, Ninian was one of the very first Catholic missionaries to bring his fellow Britons the good news of Jesus Christ. His mission church in Galloway became a centre for the first evangelization of this country. That work was later taken up by Saint Mungo, Glasgow’s own patron, and by other saints, the greatest of whom must include Saint Columba and Saint Margaret. Inspired by them, many men and women have laboured over many centuries to hand down the faith to you. Strive to be worthy of this great tradition!

Let the exhortation of Saint Paul in the first reading be your constant inspiration: “Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering and persevere in prayer” (cf. Romans 12:11-12).

I would now like to address a special word to the bishops of Scotland. Dear brothers, let me encourage you in your pastoral leadership of the Catholics of Scotland. As you know, one of your first pastoral duties is to your priests (cf. “Presbyterorum Ordinis,” 7) and to their sanctification. As they are alter Christus to the Catholic community, so you are to them. Live to the full the charity that flows from Christ, in your brotherly ministry towards your priests, collaborating with them all, and in particular with those who have little contact with their fellow priests. Pray with them for vocations, that the Lord of the harvest will send labourers to his harvest (cf. Luke 10:2). Just as the Eucharist makes the Church, so the priesthood is central to the life of the Church. Engage yourselves personally in forming your priests as a body of men who inspire others to dedicate themselves completely to the service of Almighty God. Have a care also for your deacons, whose ministry of service is associated in a particular way with that of the order of bishops. Be a father and a guide in holiness for them, encouraging them to grow in knowledge and wisdom in carrying out the mission of herald to which they have been called.

Dear priests of Scotland, you are called to holiness and to serve God’s people by modelling your lives on the mystery of the Lord’s cross. Preach the Gospel with a pure heart and a clear conscience. Dedicate yourselves to God alone and you will become shining examples to young men of a holy, simple and joyful life: they, in their turn, will surely wish to join you in your single-minded service of God’s people. May the example of Saint John Ogilvie, dedicated, selfless and brave, inspire all of you. Similarly, let me encourage you, the monks, nuns and religious of Scotland to be a light on a hilltop, living an authentic Christian life of prayer and action that witnesses in a luminous way to the power of the Gospel.

Finally, I would like to say a word to you, my dear young Catholics of Scotland. I urge you to lead lives worthy of our Lord (cf. Ephesians 4:1) and of yourselves. There are many temptations placed before you every day — drugs, money, sex, pornography, alcohol — which the world tells you will bring you happiness, yet these things are destructive and divisive. There is only one thing which lasts: the love of Jesus Christ personally for each one of you. Search for him, know him and love him, and he will set you free from slavery to the glittering but superficial existence frequently proposed by today’s society. Put aside what is worthless and learn of your own dignity as children of God. In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks us to pray for vocations: I pray that many of you will know and love Jesus Christ and, through that encounter, will dedicate yourselves completely to God, especially those of you who are called to the priesthood and religious life. This is the challenge the Lord gives to you today: the Church now belongs to you!

Dear friends, I express once more my joy at celebrating this Mass with you. I am happy to assure you of my prayers in the ancient language of your country: Sìth agus beannachd Dhe dhuibh uile; Dia bhi timcheall oirbh; agus gum beannaicheadh Dia Alba. God’s peace and blessing to you all; God
surround you; and may God bless the people of Scotland!

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Text #4: Benedict XVI’s Comments en Route to Scotland

Here is a translation of a transcription of the press conference Benedict XVI gave today aboard the papal plane en route to Edinburgh, Scotland. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, led the press conference.

Press conference on papal plane

As is tradition, Pope Benedict XVI held a mid-flight press conference with journalists accompanying him on his four day visit to the United Kingdom. We publish a draft Vatican Radio translation of the question and answer session:

Q. – Your Holiness, welcome among us and thank you for being available for our questions. We have a group of 70 journalists present here from different parts of the world. Of course some have come especially from the UK to join our group for the flight. As usual, in recent days my colleagues have given me several questions for consideration in this initial conversation, the beginning of a long-awaited and challenging journey, which we hope will be truly beautiful. I chose a series of questions, from among those that were submitted, and I will ask them in Italian so as not to tax you too much. My colleagues will help those who are not familiar with Italian, to understand. The first question: during the preparation for this journey there have been contrary discussions and positions. The country has a past tradition of a strong anti-Catholic position. Are you concerned about how you will be received?

Pope Benedict: Firstly, good day to you all and I wish you a good journey. I must say that I’m not worried, because when I went to France I was told: “This will be a most anticlerical country with strong anticlerical currents and with a minimum of faithful.” When I went to the Czech Republic it was said: “This is the most non-religious country in Europe and even the most anti-clerical”. So Western countries, all have, each in their own specific way, according to their own history, strong anticlerical or anti-Catholic currents, but they always also have a strong presence of faith. So in France and the Czech Republic I saw and experienced a warm welcome by the Catholic community, a strong attention from agnostics, who, however, are searching, who want to know, to find the values that advance humanity and they were very careful to see if they could hear something from me in this respect, and tolerance and respect for those who are anti-Catholic. Of course Britain has its own history of anti-Catholicism, this is obvious, but is also a country with a great history of tolerance. And so I’m sure on the one hand, there will be a positive reception from Catholics, from believers in general, and attention from those who seek as we move forward in our time, mutual respect and tolerance. Where there is anti-Catholicism I will go forward with great courage and joy.

Q. – The UK, like many other Western countries – there is an issue that you have already touched on in the first answer –it is considered a secular country. There is a strong atheist movement, even for cultural reasons. However, there are also signs that religious faith, particularly in Jesus Christ, is still alive on a personal level. What can this mean for Catholics and Anglicans? Can anything be done to make the Church as an institution, more credible and attractive to everyone?

Pope Benedict: I would say that a Church that seeks to be particularly attractive is already on the wrong path, because the Church does not work for her own ends, she does not work to increase numbers and thus power. The Church is at the service of another: she serves, not for herself, not to be a strong body, rather she serves to make the proclamation of Jesus Christ accessible, the great truths and great forces of love, reconciling love that appeared in this figure and that always comes from the presence of Jesus Christ. In this regard, the Church does not seek to be attractive in and of herself, but must be transparent for Jesus Christ and to the extent that she is not out for herself, as a strong and powerful body in the world, that wants power, but is simply the voice of another, she becomes truly transparent for the great figure of Christ and the great truth that he has brought to humanity. The power of love, in this moment one listens, one accepts. The Church should not consider herself, but help to consider the other and she herself must see and speak of the other. In this sense, I think, both Anglicans and Catholics have the same simple task, the same direction to take. If both Anglicans and Catholics see that the other is not out for themselves but are tools of Christ, children of the Bridegroom, as Saint John says, if both carry out the priorities of Christ and not their own, they will come together, because at that time the priority of Christ unites them and they are no longer competitors seeking the greatest numbers, but are united in our commitment to the truth of Christ who comes into this world and so they find each other in a genuine and fruitful ecumenism.

Q. – Thank you Your Holiness. A third question. As is well known and as was also highlighted by recent surveys, the sexual abuse scandal has shaken the confidence of the faithful in the Church. How do you think you can help restore that trust?

Pope Benedict: First, I must say that these revelations have been a shock for me, not only a great sadness. It is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly ministry was possible. The priest at the time of ordination, after having prepared for this moment for years, says yes to Christ, to be his voice, his mouth, his hands and serve Him with his whole life, so that the Good Shepherd who loves and helps and guides to the truth is present in the world. How a man who has done this and said this may also fall into this perversion is difficult to understand. It is a great sadness, a sadness that even the authority of the Church has not been sufficiently vigilant and not fast or decided enough in taking the necessary measures. Because of all of this, we are in a time of repentance, humility, and renewed sincerity. As I wrote to the Irish bishops, I think we now realize its a time of penance, a time to renew and relearn humility with complete sincerity. Regarding the victims, I would say there are three important things. Our first interest is for the victims: how can we repair the damage done? What can we do to help these people overcome this trauma, to regain their life and rediscover confidence in the message of Christ? Care, commitment to victims is the first priority, with material, psychological, spiritual aid. Second, the problem of the guilty persons. The just punishment is exclusion from all possibilities of access to young people because we know that this is a disease and free will does not work where there is disease. So we have to protect these people against themselves and find ways to help them, protect them against themselves and exclude them from any access to young people. The third point is prevention in education, in the choice of candidates for the priesthood to be so careful that, as much as humanly possible, we exclude future cases. And I would now also like to thank the British Bishops for their attention and cooperation with both the See of St. Peter and with public bodies. It seems to me that the British Bishops have done a great job in their attention to the sensitivity of the victims and the law and I am very grateful to them for this.

Q. – Your Holiness, the figure of Cardinal Newman is obviously very significant: you have made an exception for Cardinal Newman to preside over the beatification. Do you think that his memory will help to overcome divisions between Anglicans and Catholics? What are the aspects of his personality which you would like to give stronger emphasis to?

Pope Benedict: Cardinal Newman is mainly, on the one hand, a modern man, who took on all of the problems of modernity, he experienced the problem of agnosticism, the impossibility of knowing God, of believing; a man who throughout his life was on a journey, a journey to let himself be transformed by the truth, in a search of great sincerity and great willingness, to learn more, to find and to accept the path to true life. This modernity of his inner-being and life points to the modernity of his faith: it is not a faith in the formulas of a bygone age, it is a most personal form of faith, lived, suffered, found through a long process of renewal and conversion. He is a man of great culture who on the one hand participates in our skeptical culture of today, in the question: “Can we understand something certain about the truth of man, of the human being, or not? And how can we arrive at the convergence of the verisimilitude? “. A man who, on the other hand, with a great knowledge of the culture of the Church Fathers, he studied and renewed the internal genesis of the faith, thus acknowledging his figure and his inner constitution, he is a man of great spirituality, a great humanism, a man of prayer, of a deep relationship with God and a relationship with himself, and therefore also of a deep relationship with the other men of his and our time. So I would say these three elements: the modernity of his existence, with all the doubts and problems of our existence today, his great culture, knowledge of the great cultural treasures of mankind, his constant quest for the truth, continuous renewal and spirituality: spiritual life, life with God, give this man an exceptional greatness for our time. Therefore, it is a figure of Doctor of the Church for us, for all and also a bridge between Anglicans and Catholics.

Q. – And one last question, this visit is considered a state visit – this is how it has been qualified. What does this mean for relations between the Holy See and the United Kingdom? Are there are major points of common accord, particularly given the great challenges of today’s world?

Pope Benedict: I am very grateful to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, who wanted to give this visit the rank of a state visit and who expressed the public nature of this visit and also the common responsibility of politics and religion for the future of continent, for the future of humanity: the large, shared responsibility so that the values that create justice and politics and which come from religion, share the journey in our time. Of course, the fact that legally it is a state visit, does not make this visit a political matter, because if the Pope is head of state, this is just an instrument to ensure the independence of his message and public nature of his work as pastor.
In this sense, the State visit is substantially and essentially a pastoral visit, a visit in the responsibility of the faith for which the Supreme Pontiff, the Pope, exists. Of course, the character of a state visit focuses attention on the converging interests of politics and religion. Politics is essentially designed to ensure justice and with justice, freedom, but justice is a moral value, a religious value, and so faith, the proclamation of the Gospel connects with politics in justice and here common interests are also born. Britain has a great experience and a great record in combating the evils of this time, misery, poverty, disease, drugs and all these fights against misery, poverty, slavery, abuse of man, drugs … are also the goals of the faith, because they are the aims of the humanization of man, so that the image of God be restored against the destruction and devastation. Another common task is the commitment to world peace and the ability to live peace, peace education and establish the virtues that make man capable of peace. And, finally, an essential element of peace is the dialogue of religions, tolerance, openness to one another and this is a deep aim both of Britain, as a society, and of the Catholic faith: to be open to the outside world, open to dialogue, in this way to open to truth and the common path of humanity and to rediscovering the values that are the foundation of our humanism!

[Brief note: If you would like to travel with us for several days in Italy and Vatican City during the next year, we are still taking requests for our Fall 2010 (to attend the upcoming Consistory on or about November 20, just before Thanksgiving) and Spring 2011 pilgrimages, one to Rome in April, and one to Russia in July. Space on all three trips is limited, with just a few spots open. If you would like information about these trips, email us at: pilgrimage@insidethevatican.com]

The post-Vatican II era of Christian ecumenism — 45 years old this year now — has been marked by increasingly warm relations between many Christian denominations despite prior centuries of doctrinal strife.

Starting at the Council (1962-65), age-old divisions between Christian communions began to seem, to many, less insurmountable.

The vision was this: that all Christians might eventually, after working through their doctrinal differences, join together into one, united Church, and so fulfill the final prayer of Jesus on the evening of the Last Supper (he asked that all of his followers might be united — “ut unum sint” (“that they might be one,” John 17:21), words which are also the title of a 1995 encyclical on the same matter by Pope John Paul II.)

And so in the decade of the 1960s, a powerful ecumenical tide came in.

A tide of hope, but also of naivete.

Unity was the goal.

Divisions were often downplayed.

Countless theological meetings were held to thrash out doctrinal differences.

Inter-denominational prayer meeetings grew ever more common.

Then something happened.

The process seemed to slow and stall.

Then to grind to a complete halt.

Why?

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Hilarion Minces No Words

Four days ago in England, Hilarion Alfeyev, a leading Russian Orthodox archbishop — the “foreign minister” of the Russian Orthodox Church, as the head of the Department of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, a post the present Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill, held previously — delivered a speech that has many onlookers saying only one word: “Wow.”

It is one of the clearest and boldest ecumenical addresses in decades.

The text merits a close reading.

Here below is the complete text. It is archived at this link: http://www.mospat.ru/en/2010/09/10/news25819/

The September 9, 2010 speech, in which Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev sets forth his view of the status of Orthodox-Anglican dialogue.

Metropolitan Hilarion Addresses Annual Nicean Club Dinner at Lambeth Palace

Your Grace, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests,

At the outset, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to His Grace Archbishop Rowan Williams for inviting me to address the members of the Nicean Club. Your Grace, we highly value your personal contribution to inter-Christian dialogue and your commitment to keep the Anglican Communion unified. We know your love of the Russian Orthodox Church, of its saints and great theologians, of its spiritual tradition. We assure you of our continual support and prayers.

We also highly appreciate the work of the Nicean Club which aims to strengthen relations and to stimulate beneficial co-operation between the churches of the Anglican Communion and other Christian confessions.

The name of the Club — Nicean — takes us back to that blessed era when Christians throughout the world, both in the East and in the West, were united. At the same time, however, that was a period of bitter struggle with heresies and many Church schisms. Thanks to the unanimity both of the Western and Eastern Fathers in understanding Church teaching and in standing together with steadfast faith, the Universal Church at its Council in 325 renounced and condemned a heresy that undermined the very foundations of Christian doctrine.

At the same time the Church was able to formulate that faith in the Holy Trinity which has survived throughout subsequent centuries. Archbishop Rowan Williams, in his Arius: Heresy and Tradition, has provided us with a profound analysis of Arianism from historical, theological and philosophical perspectives. He describes Arianism as an “archetypal Christian deviation,” which tends to rise again and again under various names.

In 325, the Christian Church, which had latterly emerged from a three-century-long period of persecution, proved itself to be strong and mature enough to discern in Arianism a dangerous digression from Orthodox doctrine. By adopting the Nicean Creed the Church did not introduce anything new to her teaching but rather formulated with clarity what she had believed in from the very beginning of her existence. Subsequent Ecumenical Councils continued to clarify Church truth without introducing anything fundamentally new to that confession of faith which sprouted from Christ himself and from his apostles.

Why do the Churches, both East and West, still remember the Fathers of the Nicean and later Ecumenical Councils with such gratitude? Why are the great theologians of the past, the opponents of heresy, revered in the East as ‘great universal teachers and saints’ and in the West as “Doctors of the Church”?

Because throughout the ages the Church believed it to be her principal task to safeguard the truth. Her foremost heroes were those confessors of the faith who asserted Orthodox doctrine and countered heresies in the face of new trends and theological and political innovations.

Almost 1700 years have elapsed since the Council of Nicaea, but the criteria that were used by the Church to distinguish truth from heresy have not changed. And the notion of church truth remains as relevant today as it did seventeen centuries ago. Today the notion of heresy, while present in church vocabulary, is manifestly absent from the vocabulary of contemporary politically-correct theology — a theology that prefers to refer to “pluralism” and to speak of admissible and legitimate differences.

Indeed, St Paul himself wrote that “there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval” (1 Cor. 11:19). But what kind of differences was he referring to? Certainly not those which concerned the essence of faith, Church order or Christian morals. For, in these matters, there is only one truth and any deviation from it is none other than heresy.

At the time of the Council of Nicaea, the Church was united in East and West. But at the present time, there is a multitude of communities each of which claims to be a Church even though approaches to doctrinal, ecclesiological and ethical issues among them often differ radically.

Nowadays it is increasingly difficult to speak of “Christianity” as a unified scale of spiritual and moral values, universally adopted by all Christians. It is more appropriate, rather, to speak of “Christianities,” that is, different versions of Christianity espoused by diverse communities.

All current versions of Christianity can be very conditionally divided into two major groups — traditional and liberal. The abyss that exists today divides not so much the Orthodox from the Catholics or the Catholics from the Protestants as it does the “traditionalists” from the “liberals.”

Some Christian leaders, for example, tell us that marriage between a man and a woman is no longer the only way of building a Christian family: there are other models and the Church should become appropriately “inclusive” to recognize alternative behavioural standards and give them official blessing.

Some try to persuade us that human life is no longer an absolute value; that it can be terminated in a mother’s womb or that one can terminate one’s life at will. Christian “traditionalists” are being asked to reconsider their views under the slogan of keeping abreast with modernity.

Regrettably, it has to be admitted that the Orthodox Church and many in the Anglican Church have today found themselves on the opposite sides of the abyss that divides traditional Christians from Christians of liberal trend.

Certainly, inside the Anglican Community there remain many “traditionalists,” especially in the South and the East, but the liberal trend is also quite noticeable, especially in the West and in the North.

Protests against liberalism continue to be heard among Anglicans, as at the 2nd All African Bishops’ Conference held in late August. The Conference’s final document stated in particular, “We affirm the Biblical standard of the family as having marriage between a man and a woman as its foundation. One of the purposes of marriage is procreation of children some of whom grow to become the leaders of tomorrow.”

Among the vivid indications of disagreement within the Anglican Community (I am reluctant to say “schism”) is the fact that almost 200 Anglican bishops refused to attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference. I was there as an observer from the Russian Orthodox Church and could see various manifestations of deep and painful differences among the Anglicans.

Today the Orthodox-Anglican Dialogue itself has come under threat.

It is especially lamentable because this dialogue has had a long and rich history, beginning with the numerous talks at various levels held between Orthodox and Anglicans from the 17th century. In the 19th century, after the Anglicans founded the bishoprics of Jerusalem in 1841 and Gibraltar in 1842, meetings took place and relations were established between representatives of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in America and the Orthodox Church. The first official message came in a letter of Archbishop Howley of Canterbury (1828-1848) to the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1840, assuring Orthodox hierarchs that the Anglicans would never engage themselves in proselytism and calling for co-operation in a spirit of Christian love.

In 1868, the first Lambeth Conference was held. Acting on behalf of Archbishop Tait of Canterbury, this Conference sent a message, written in a spirit of Christian love and friendship, to the patriarchs and bishops of the Orthodox Church. That same year, at the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Patriarch Gregory VI of Constantinople permitted the Orthodox clergy to administer the rite of burial to Anglicans if a priest of the Church of England were not available.

The second such agreement was made in 1874 when Patriarch Joachim II of Constantinople gave permission to the Orthodox clergy to baptize and marry Anglicans. These agreements were exceptional developments in the history of relations between the Churches of East and West.

Between 1874 and 1875, representatives of the Orthodox Church, Anglicans and Old Catholics met for the first time at the Bonn Conferences to discuss issues such as the Filioque, the authority of the Ecumenical Councils and the validity of Anglican priesthood. In 1898, Bishop Wordsworth of Salisbury, in pursuance of a resolution of the 4th Lambeth Conference in 1887 on the need to intensify relations with the Orthodox Church and to set up a special committee for it, visited Patriarch Constantine V of Constantinople and other hierarchs. Patriarch Constantine appointed a special commission for studying the Anglican confession. In the years that followed, Frederick Temple and Constantine V initiated regular correspondence.

At the 1930 Lambeth Conference, after the Anglicans essentially agreed to the Orthodox affirmation that communion in the Sacraments should be preceded by unity in doctrine, it was decided to set up an Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission, which included representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Church of England. The commission began working in 1931. The 1948 Lambeth Conference gave unanimous support to the further development of relations with the Orthodox.

After World War II, dialogue between our Churches was resumed in 1965. The modern stage in the Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue was opened by a visit of Archbishop Michael Ramsey to Patriarch Athenagoras (Spirou) of Constantinople in 1962. The heads of the two Churches came to an agreement on the need to restore the Joint Theological Commission for studying the doctrinal differences which blocked progress towards unity that had begun in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries.

In November 1964, the 3rd Pan-Orthodox Conference on Rhodes discussed, among other things, relations with Western Churches. The question of establishing relations with Canterbury did not raise any difficulties. It was unanimously agreed that “an inter-Orthodox theological commission be established immediately, consisting of theological experts from each Orthodox Church.” After preliminary meetings and talks, a dialogue began in 1976. A regular session of the dialogue completed its work only a few days ago.

We are concerned about the fate of this dialogue. We appreciate the proposal Archbishop Rowan Williams made this year to exclude from the dialogue those Anglican churches which failed to observe the moratorium on the ordination of open homosexuals. But we regard this proposal as not quite sufficient to save the dialogue from an approaching collapse.

The dialogue is doomed to closure if the unrestrained liberalization of Christian values continues in many communities of the Anglican world.

We are equally concerned about the fate of bilateral relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Church of England. Contacts between the Russian Church and the Anglican Church began as far back as the 19th century. In 1912, the Sacred Governing Synod adopted the statute of a Society of Zealots of Unity between the Eastern Orthodox and the Anglican Churches. In 1914, a Synodal Commission was established for considering interrelations with the Anglican Church. In May 1922, when Patriarch Tikhon was imprisoned, Archbishop Randall Davidson of Canterbury protested to the Soviet government against the persecution of the Church. The archbishop raised this matter twice in the parliament and urged the British government to apply pressure on the Soviet authorities (Kerson’s Note).

The relations between the Russian Church and the Church of England were strengthened by the visit of the Archbishop Cyril Garbett of York to Moscow in 1943. After the end of World War II relations between our Churches intensified and contacts became regular.

The first difficulties in relation to the Church of England emerged in 1992 when its General Synod agreed to ordain women to the priesthood. The Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church came out with an official statement expressing regret and concern over this decision as contradicting the tradition of the Early Church.

One might ask why our Church should have concerned itself at all with this matter? By the early 90s the Protestant world had already ordained many women pastors and even women bishops.

But the unique point here was that the Anglican Community had long sought rapprochement with the Orthodox Church. Many Orthodox Christians recognized the existence of apostolic continuity in Anglicanism. From the 19th century, Anglican members of the Association of Eastern Churches sought “mutual recognition” with the Orthodox Church and its members believed that “both Churches preserved the apostolic continuity and true faith in the Saviour and should accept each other in the full communion of prayers and sacraments.”

Much has changed since. The introduction of the female priesthood in the Church of England was followed by discussions on the female episcopate. In response to the positive decision made by the Church of England’s General Synod on this issue, the Department for External Church Relations published a new statement saying that this decision “has considerably complicated dialogue with the Anglicans for Orthodox Christians” and “has taken Anglicanism farther away from the Orthodox Church and contributed to further division in Christendom as a whole.”

We have studied the preparatory documents for the decision on female episcopate and were struck by the conviction expressed in them that even if the female episcopate were introduced, ecumenical contacts with the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches would not come to an end. What made the authors of these documents so certain?

There was a second controversial statement. The same document argued that despite a possible cooling down in relations with Catholics and Orthodox, the Church of England would strengthen and broaden its relations with the Methodist Church and the Lutheran Churches in Norway and Sweden. In other words, the introduction of the female episcopate “will bring both gains and losses.”

The question arises: Is not the cost of these losses too high? I can say with certainty that the introduction of the female episcopate excludes even a theoretical possibility for the Orthodox to recognize the apostolic continuity of the Anglican hierarchy.

We are also extremely concerned and disappointed by other processes that are manifesting themselves in churches of the Anglican Communion. Some Protestant and Anglican churches have repudiated basic Christian moral values by giving a public blessing to same-sex unions and ordaining homosexuals as priests and bishops. Many Protestant and Anglican communities refuse to preach Christian moral values in secular society and prefer to adjust to worldly standards.

Our Church must sever its relations with those churches and communities that trample on the principles of Christian ethics and traditional morals. Here we uphold a firm stand based on Holy Scripture.

In 2003, the Russian Orthodox Church had to suspend contact with the Episcopal Church in the USA due to the fact that this Church consecrated a self-acclaimed homosexual, Jim Robertson, as bishop. The Department for External Church Relations made a special statement deploring this fact as anti-Christian and blasphemous. Moreover, the Holy Synod of our Church decided to suspend the work of the Joint Coordinating Committee for Cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Episcopal Church in the USA, which had worked very successfully for many years. The situation was aggravated when a woman bishop was installed as head of the Episcopal Church in the USA in 2006 and a lesbian was placed on the bishop’s chair of Los Angeles in 2010.

Similar reasons were behind the rupture of our relations with the Church of Sweden in 2005 when this Church made a decision to bless same-sex “marriages.” And recently the lesbian Eva Brunne has become the “bishop” of Stockholm.

What can these churches say to their faithful and to secular society? What kind of light do they shine upon the world (cf. Mt. 5:14)? What is their “salt”? I am afraid the words of Christ can be applied to them: If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men (Mt. 5:13).

We are aware of the arguments used by proponents of the above-mentioned liberal innovations. Tradition is no authority for them. They believe that to make the words of Holy Scripture applicable to modernity they have to be “actualized,” that is, reviewed and interpreted in an appropriate, “modern” spirit. Holy Tradition is understood as an opportunity for the Church to be continually reformed and renewed and to think critically.

The Orthodox, however, have a different understanding of Holy Tradition. It is aptly expressed in the words of Vladimir Lossky: “Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church — the life giving to every member of the Body of Christ the ability to hear, accept and know the Truth in its inherent shining, not in the natural light of human reason.”

It is impossible to pass silently by the liberalism and relativism which have become so characteristic of today’s Anglican theology. From the time of Archbishop Michael Ramsay of Canterbury, the Church of England saw the emergence of so-called modernism which rejected the very foundations of Christianity as a God-revealed religion.

Among its most eloquent representatives was the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, Dr. I. A. T. Robinson, the author of the sensational book Honest to God. The Bishop of Woolwich’s worldview can be described as “Christian atheism.” Indeed, he rejected the existence of a personal God, of the Creator of the world and of Providence. He also denied the existence of the spiritual world in general and of the future life in particular. It should be admitted that these views provoked protests on the part of some Anglican bishops, led by Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury.

It is appropriate to recall here the words of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia at the Bishops’ Conference in February 2010. Concerning the liberal novelties introduced by some Protestant communities, he stated: “What has happened reveals only too clearly a fundamental difference between Orthodoxy and Protestantism. The principal problem lying at the basis of this difference is that Orthodoxy safeguards the norm of apostolic faith and order as fixed in the Holy Tradition of the Church and sees as its task to actualize this norm continually for the fulfilment of pastoral and missionary tasks. On the other hand, in Protestantism the same task allows for a theological development that can remodel this same norm. Clearly, the search for doctrinal consensus, as was the case with regard to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry in the multilateral dialogue initiated by the World Council of Churches, has lost its meaning precisely because any consensus may come under threat or may be destroyed by innovation or interpretation that will challenge the very meaning of these agreements.”

Regrettably, what His Holiness the Patriarch says about Protestantism can be applied equally to many Anglican communities. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Orthodox communities discussed seriously the recognition of Anglican priesthood based on its recognized apostolic continuity. Now we are very far from this. And the gap between the liberal Anglicans and the Orthodox keeps growing.

One of the priorities in the work of the Russian Church today is to bear witness to the eternal significance of Christian spiritual and moral values in the life of modern society. In 2000 our Church already made a considerable contribution to the systematization of Orthodox tradition in this area by adopting a Basic Social Concept and, in 2008, a Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights. Today the Church is engaged in major work to compile a Catechesis which will give a clear exposition of Christian doctrine, on the one hand, and will respond to the burning problems of today on the other.

“Certainly, we seek allies in opposing the destruction of Christianity”

We are not alone in our concern for the preservation of Christian values. Liberal tendencies in Protestant and Anglican communities present a challenge to those Christians and churches that have remained faithful to Gospel principles in doctrine, church order and morality.

Certainly, we seek and find allies in opposing the destruction of the very essence of Christianity. One of the major tasks in our inter-Christian work today is to unite the efforts of Christians for building a system of solidarity on the basis of Gospel morality in Europe and throughout the world.

Our positions are shared by the Roman Catholic Church, with which we have held numerous meetings and conferences. Together we are considering the possibility of establishing an Orthodox-Catholic alliance in Europe for defending the traditional values of Christianity. The primary aim of this alliance would be to restore a Christian soul to Europe. We should be engaged in common defence of Christian values against secularism and relativism.

Today, European countries as never before need to reinforce moral education, since its absence leads to dire consequences such as accelerating extremism, a decline in the birth rate, environmental pollution and violence. The principles of moral responsibility and of freedom should be consistently implemented in all spheres of human life — politics, economics, education, science, culture and the mass media.

We should not remain silent and look with indifference at a world that is gradually deteriorating. Rather, we should proclaim Christian morality and teach it openly not only in our churches, but also in public spaces including secular schools, universities and in the arena of the mass media. We do not presume to impose our views on anybody but we wish that our voice be heard by those who want to hear it. Unfortunately, we cannot convert the whole world to God, but we should at least make people think about the meaning of life and the existence of absolute spiritual and moral values. We are obliged to bear witness to the true faith always and everywhere so that at least some may be saved (1 Cor. 9:22).

Summing up, I wish to assert that today we have new divisions in Christendom, not only theological but also ethical. Regrettably, many Christian communities, which once maintained fraternal relations with the Orthodox Church for many years and were in dialogue with it, have shown themselves to be incapable or unwilling to assume obligations stemming from our dialogue.

We accompany our reactions to these developments with assurances of respect for the right of all churches and communities to make decisions which they deem to be necessary.

Yet, at the same time, we state with sadness that neither the official dialogue nor the most valuable relations and contacts in the past have kept some of our Anglican brothers and sisters from steps which have taken them even farther away from our common Christian Church Tradition.

On behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church I would like to stress that we continue to be fully committed to the dialogue with the Anglican Church and will do our utmost to keep this dialogue going. We do not betray our commitment to the dialogue.

However, we feel that many of our Anglican brothers and sisters betray our common witness by departing from traditional Christian values and replacing them by contemporary secular standards.

I very much hope that the official position of the Anglican Church on theological, ecclesiological and moral issues will be in tune with the tradition of the Ancient Undivided Church and that the Anglican leadership will not surrender to the pressure coming from liberals.

Our faithful cherish the memory of the visit made by the Church of England’s delegation led by Archbishop Cyril Garbett to Moscow in 1943. Then Patriarch Sergiy, who had been enthroned a few days earlier, remarked, ‘The English have come defying the dangers of travelling at a time of war and the entire insidiousness of the enemy’. Addressing himself to Archbishop Garbett, he said, “The old archbishop teaches us by his example to forget one’s own interests and conveniences and one’s own life when the truth of Christ and the welfare of our neighbours… call us to serve higher values.”

Today, too, we do not abandon Christian love for our Anglican brothers and sisters. We do not abandon the hope that they, who once defied every danger during the hard years of war, will share with us that trust in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which rests on the solid foundation of the faith of holy apostles, the Fathers of the Nicean Council and the tradition of the Undivided Church.

–Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk is Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations

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Best-Seller: A Talk by Dr. Robert Moynihan about the “Old Mass” on CD

Unexpectedly, this little talk has become a minor “best-seller.”

We have now produced more than 5,000 of these CDs, and they are still running out every few days.

It is called: “The Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now?”

— Does the motu proprio overcome some of the liturgical confusion since Vatican II?
— Who was Annibale Bugnini?

— The mind of Pope Benedict: How can the Church restore the sense of the presence of God in the liturgy?

Click here to order

They are hammering, hammering, hammering on this point.

They are building a frame for the trip, and they think that frame will compel Benedict to change the focus of his remarks — to change his message.

I know this, because I was just invited to speak on Sky News … and then on CNN International [this week]. The second segment focused entirely on the new allegations of abuse from Belgium, and whether Benedict will address the suffering of the victims and the prosecution of the perpetrators during his upcoming trip. There was no chance to speak of other issues.

But the entire West is in flames.

Western culture faces a general collapse of moral values, a loss of confidence in its own identity and historical purpose, a demographic winter which threatens to actually bring Western culture to a quiet, childless close.

Certainly, the sexual abuse crimes are horrible and shocking and must be addressed.

But the overall collapse of our Western moral universe must also be addressed, and even more urgently.

The fate of our culture hangs in the balance.

In this context, the media’s framing of Pope Benedict’s trip as a sort of side-show to the sexual abuse crisis is actually tragic.

Because we need to hear the whole Gospel preached at this crossroads in our history — we, the British, the West, the world.

True, horrible crimes have been committed. Somehow “filth” (“sporcizia,” as Benedict referred to it in his famous Subiaco speech in 2005, just before his election as Pope), has entered into the Church.

And Benedict has fought and is fighting to cleanse the Church.

But a certain “filth” has also entered into the public life of all the Western countries, of all the world, through a pervasive, almost “amoral” culture (I say this because “right” and “wrong” are not even questions for this culture, only “expedient” and “not expedient”). It has become a culture in which hedonism and consumption, not sacrifice and frugality, are praised, and this has led to the almost universal embrace of things which prior generations considered “wrong”: contraception, abortion, pornography, greed (the motto of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street was “greed is good”).

And so I hope that the “framing” of Benedict’s trip in terms of the sexual abuse scandal can be “un-framed,” and that deeper and wider truths can bubble to the surface of the public discourse, despite the astonishing power of the mainstream media to set the terms of the debate.

Because I think Benedict’s voice needs to be heard.

And this framing that is underway is aimed at silencing him, in some fundamental way.

And if that succeeds, our culture, our world, will be the loser.

Second Trip

This is not Benedict’s first trip to Great Britain.

He gave a lecture at Cambridge in 1988, 22 years ago, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

How was his voice heard at that time?

Father Vincent Twomey, the leading Irish theologian, recalled that lecture in the latest issue of Inside the Vatican: “On his first visit to Britain, in January 1988, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger gave a public lecture in Cambridge hosted jointly by the Catholic Chaplaincy to the University and the University’s Faculty of Divinity. The lecture, entitled “Consumer Materialism and Christian Hope,” was about the threat of contemporary nihilism. He received a standing ovation. The Times said afterwards that ‘it may have been the best attended theological lecture ever given in Britain.’”

Will Benedict’s four days in Scotland and England repeat this experience? Will the nation be moved by his words, and applaud them?

Some in the media certainly do not want that to happen.

And they may be able to ensure that it does not.

The way the media frames the Pope’s message will have much to do with determing the answer to that question.

But, if the Pope breaks out of this frame, his words may fall on ears which will receive them with gratitude, for they will carry the message of Christ, a message of meaning and of hope, which all of us need to hear.

Here is the complete text of that brilliant, and almost unknown, 1988 lecture at Cambridge University. It was published in 2002 by the Bishops of England and Wales as part of a collection of English-related Catholic talks and essays in a book titled “Teachers of Faith.”

It is a long lecture, and some may find it difficult to get through. But if you take it bit by bit, you will find nuggets of insight and truth which are quite startling. I was especially struck by the Pope’s analysis of drug use and of terrorism, phenomena which have only grown more important, and troubling, in the past two decades since this talk was given. There is also a profound discussion of the consequences of the doctrine of evolution.

The discussion of heaven, seen as a “phantom goal” by the secular humanist, is also remarkable for its clarity, directness and honesty.

The man revealed in this lecture is a man who knows what the doubts are; he understands how modern men and women can question all traditional religious beliefs. And he has an answer to these questions. An answer that should be heard.

CONSUMER MATERIALISM AND CHRISTIAN HOPE

By Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1988)

In modern literature, the graphic arts, cinema and theatre, a predominantly gloomy picture of man is the fashion. What is sublime and noble is suspect from the start; it has to be yanked off its pedestal and seen for what it is. Morality is only hypocrisy, happiness no more than self-deception. Suspicion is the authentically moral stance; unmasking deception is its greatest achievement. Criticising society is a duty; indeed the dangers which threaten us cannot be shown with sufficient cruelty and violence.

It is true that this disposition towards the negative is not without limits. There is also a duty at the same time to optimism which cannot be offended without paying the price.

Should anyone, for example, venture the opinion that not everything in the spiritual development of modernity may be correct, that in some essential areas it may be necessary to return and reflect upon the common wisdom of the great cultures, obviously he has chosen the wrong kind of criticism. For he finds himself confronted all at once by a determined defence of the fundamental judgements of modernity, namely that the basic line of historical development is progress and thus the good lies in the future, nowhere else; and not all the delight in negativity may seriously call this into question.

The particular discord within modern social criticism clearly becomes manifest in the radically contradictory responses with which prevailing opinion reacted to the two events which were perceived last year as being the starkest moral challenges to our society.

The first was the misfortune of Chernobyl. Those who would be considered enlightened could not describe the danger of these events in terms drastic enough. They had to see a colossal menace looming over all living things and only the complete abandonment of atomic energy could be the right answer to it.

The other event was the rapid advance of the new viral disease, AIDS. There is no doubt that many more people will become sick and die from AIDS than have already died in the wake of Chernobyl, and that the danger posed by this new scourge of mankind stands nearer the door of each individual than does the peril presented by nuclear power plants. Nonetheless, whoever dares to say that mankind ought to refrain from that inordinate sexual licence which gives AIDS its effective power is put on the sidelines as a hopeless obscurantist because of his public attitude. Such an idea can only be deplored and passed over in silence by the enlightened of today.

From all of this, it is apparent that there are today permissible and forbidden types of social criticism. The permissible kind, however, goes no further than to the threshold of society’s fundamental judgements which may not be put into question.

The moral problems of our time — an attempt at diagnosis

The topic which I have chosen certainly requires the kind of reflection which will not be intimidated by such a taboo.

To be sure, it would be an incorrect turn-around to view our society, and its moral situation all told, in shades of darkest grey alone. We should not allow ourselves to be influenced by the superficial duty to optimism imposed by certain trends. But even less should we succumb to the temptation to ignore the positive elements in the make-up of our time.

Naturally, it cannot be our purpose here to give an exhaustive account of the moral figure cast by our age. Our reflection intends to locate that which is supportive and healing, that basic guideline by which one can live through the present and thus unlock the door to the future.

We are inquiring about the characteristic elements of our time so we can learn what hinders access to the right way and what helps it.

And so, I am not speaking in this first part of my analysis about defects or virtues, which there have always been and probably always will be. We are dealing rather with the characteristic signs of our time.

On the negative side, two elements catch our eye, elements which do not belong to other epochs in the same way: terrorism and drugs. In a positive vein, there is a strong moral consciousness exerting its influence, a consciousness which focuses essentially upon values in the social sphere: freedom for the downtrodden, solidarity with the poor and the disadvantaged, peace and reconciliation.

The problem of drugs

Let us try to consider these phenomena with a closer look. I remember an argument which I had with several friends in Ernst Bloch’s home.The discussion had come by chance to the problem of drugs which then — the late 1960s — was first beginning to make its appearance.

Someone asked how it could be that this temptation should suddenly crop up and why, for example, it apparently did not arise in the Middle Ages. Everybody was agreed that it would not be sufficient to answer that the areas of cultivation then were just too far removed.

Phenomena like the appearance of drug abuse are not to be explained by such superficial circumstances.They originate from deeper needs or wants upon which depends the further problem of providing for them too.

And so I ventured the thesis that there was obviously not that spiritual emptiness then which one seeks to fill with drugs; or, in other words, the thirst of the heart, of the inner man, found an answer then which made drugs unnecessary.

I still remember the shocked indignation with which Mrs Bloch reacted to this suggested solution. From the vision of history which dialectical materialism had given, it was next to sacrilege for her to think that bygone ages might have been superior to our own in matters of more than little consequence. In the Middle Ages, which were a time of oppression and religious prejudices, it was impossible that the deprived masses lived happier lives of interior harmony than in our time which has already advanced some distance along the road of liberation.

The whole logic of “liberation” would thus collapse. How then is the process to be explained? The question remained without an answer that evening.

Considering that I do not subscribe to the worldview of materialism, I maintain that my thesis from that time on has been ever more vindicated. But it does have to be concretised.

In this regard, the thought of Ernst Bloch could ever offer a helpful start. For Bloch, the world of fact is evil. The hope principle means that man energetically opposes facts. He recognises himself as obliged to overcome the evil world of facts in order to create a better world.

I would say that drug abuse is a form of protest against facts.The one who resorts to drugs refuses to come to terms with the world of facts. He looks for a better world. Drugs are the result of despairing of a world which is experienced as a prison built of facts in which man cannot long endure.

Naturally many other things enter here as well: the search for adventure, going along with the crowd, what others do, the enterprise of pushers and so on. But the heart of it still is the revolt against a reality perceived as a prison.

The grand “trip” which people look for in drugs is a perversion of mysticism, the warping of the human desire for immortality, the “no” to the impossibility of overcoming the immanent, and the attempt to enfold the limits of one’s own being in the eternal.

The patient and humble adventure of asceticism, which, step by step, climbs nearer to the God who is coming down to meet man, finds itself replaced by the power of magic — that is, the magic key of drugs — the moral and religious path is set aside for that of technology.

Drugs are the pseudomysticism of a world which no longer believes but which cannot for all that shake off the yearning of the soul for paradise.

Drugs are therefore a warning signal with deep reverberations: they not only reveal the vacuum in our society which its instruments cannot remedy; they point to an interior longing in man which breaks out in perverted form if it does not find its true satisfaction.

Terrorism as a moral problem

The point of departure for terrorism is closely related to that of drugs. Here too we find initially a protest against the world as it is and the demand for a better one.

Terrorism is in its roots a kind of “moralism,” to be sure a misdirected moralism which turns into a cruel parody of the true aims and methods of the moral person. It is no accident that terrorism has had its beginnings in the universities and among young people drawing fresh, heightened inspiration from religious thought, here again, in the context of modern theology.

Terrorism was, in the first instance, a religious enthusiasm diverted to earthly concerns, a messianic expectation translated into political fanaticism. Belief in the hereafter had been shattered or in any case had become irrelevant. The yardstick of other-worldly hope, however, was not given up. It was applied instead to the present world. God was no longer looked upon as one really acting in history; but, as in the past and indeed from the beginning, the fulfilment of his promises was still sought after.

“God has no other arms than our own” — that meant that now the redemption of these promises can and must be taken care of by ourselves. Loathing for the spiritual and emotional emptiness in our society, longing for the wholly-other, the claim to an unconditional salvation without limits or restrictions — this is the religious component, in a manner of speaking, within the phenomenon of terrorism.

It is this religious component which gave terrorism the momentum of a passion which goes to any length, which gave it its uncompromising stance and its pretence to the idealistic.

All this becomes quite dangerous based as it is upon the decisive worldliness of its messianic hope: the unconditional is required from what is contingent, the eternal from what is finite. This internal contradiction points out the real tragedy of the phenomenon in which the sublime vocation of human beings is transformed into an instrument of the great deception, the “big lie.”

The lie within the promise of terrorism, however, was hidden from its average participant because of the alliance between religious expectation and the spirit of the modern intellectual. This consists first of all in the halting of all traditional norms of morality before the tribunal of positivist reason, getting to the bottom of them and proving them to be unfounded. Morality does not lie in present existence but in the future. Man has to fashion himself. The only moral value there is lies in the future of society when we will get everything we do not have now. Morality in the present consists in working for the sake of this future society.

The new standard of morality says, then: whatever serves the bringing about of this new society is moral. And what serves it can be determined by the scientific methods of political strategy, psychology, and sociology.

The “moral” becomes the “scientific”: morality no longer has a “phantom” goal — heaven — but a realisable phenomenon, the new age. In this way the moral and the religious have become realistic and “scientific.”

What more does one want? Is it any wonder that sincerely idealistic young people have felt themselves challenged by such promises? Only from this closer perspective can one see the devil’s foot upon the whole business and hear the sneer of Mephistopheles: “The future creates what is moral.”

By this standard even murder can be “moral”; on the way to humanity even the inhuman has to serve.

This is basically the same logic which states that for “really top-notch scientific results” even embryos may sometimes be sacrificed.

And it is the same concept of freedom which lectures us that it ought to lie within the realm of woman’s personal choice to destroy a child who stands in the way of her self-fulfilment.

Thus, terrorism proceeds undiminished upon somewhat more sublime battlefields today with the full blessing of science and the enlightened spirit. True, the brutal terrorism of those who would change society has been condemned in western countries: it has too greatly threatened the habits of life in these societies and the immorality of its morality has become all too conspicuous. But a real prevention of its root causes has not yet taken place. One can even look at it in such a way as to remain untroubled by its outbreak in the faraway lands of the third world which lie at a safe remove from us.

And still, as before, it is practically immoral not to recommend the typical slogans for the third world, even if one might not gladly see them applied in one’s own circumstances. Partisanship for militant liberationist ideologies appears as a kind of moral compromise in the sense that one allows things to go well for oneself and would like to see nothing essential changed. The practice of terrorism, thank goodness, has been extensively reduced in Europe once more. Its spiritual foundations, however, have not been overturned, and, as long as this is so, it can erupt anew at any time.

The new turning towards morality and religion

And so the question comes to be framed in a positive way: what is the true converse to those spiritual foundations which we have outlined so briefly? Where exactly does the defect lie?

Before we get to the bottom of this question, however, we have to complete our stock-taking of present day society. We said that there were two outstanding negative phenomena, the advancement of drug abuse and the threat of terrorism, and that there was, on the other hand, a positive phenomenon as well, an intense, new desire for moral values like freedom, justice, and peace. Can an answer to the menace of our age possibly come forth from this?

First of all, we have to determine whether these values, out of all those on the horizon, are largely identical with the values which the champions of the movements of violence have proclaimed and hail as their goals. Abuse, of course, does not discredit the value as such.

What is new among numbers of young people today is that these goals are now projected upon the plane of concrete political and social action, and thus they are stripped of their irrational and violent character. Ideologies have been cast aside and so one can directly recognise what is good once more.

In point of fact, this may be welcomed as an element of hope: God’s profound message can be smothered and distorted in man. Nonetheless, it is constantly bursting forth anew, working a way out for itself.

Also pertinent in this context is the fact that a new yearning for recollection, for contemplation, for the truly sacred, indeed for contact with God, is becoming evident. To this extent energies have been coming forth which permit us to have hope.

But just as the source has to be tapped so that its waters do not simply ooze away, so the impulses of purification and order are required so that these energies come to have their true effect.

The new religious aspiration can easily be deflected into the esoteric. It can evaporate in sheer romanticism. There are two ever-present hurdles difficult for it to get over: it seems hard to take on the continuity of a permanent discipline, a straight way, which does not allow itself a detour from the primary road of the will and intellect for a quick gratification of one’s feelings.

Even harder than this appears the channelling of such desire into the communion of life of an “institution” of faith, in which religion as faith has become the way and the form of a community. Where this double hurdle is not overcome, though, religion degenerates into a pleasurable escape and exhibits no community and no moral power which obliges the individual. Reason and will quit its service; all that is left, then, is feeling, and that is too little.

These new moral impulses are likewise threatened in the same way. Their exposed flank is the widespread defect in the values of individualistic ethics. The vision is directed towards the large scale and the totality. Certainly it should be recognised that the turning to fringe groups is often an expression of a personal willingness to help which discharges the desire to serve and be of assistance in wondrously worthy ways.

On the whole, however, this is to be viewed rather as a weakness in one’s personal and motivational make up. It is easier to demonstrate for the rights and freedom of one’s own group than to practise in everyday life the discipline of freedom and the patience of love for those who suffer, or to bind oneself for all of life to such service with the sacrifice of the greater part of one’s individual freedoms. It is astonishing that the desire to serve has been visibly and decisively weakened in the Church too: religious communities, dedicated to the care of the sick and elderly, attract hardly any new vocations. The preference is to engage in more ambitious “pastoral” ministries. But what is really more “pastoral” than an unpretentious life lived in service to those who are suffering?

For these kinds of service, though, there is an important professional credential required — without a deep moral and religious foundation, they get frozen into mere technical procedures and no longer perform what is crucial for the human being.

The weak side of the present moral starting point lies first of all in the feebleness of individual ethics’ ability to motivate. Something deeper lies behind this: moral values have lost their evidence in a technological society and, as a result, any compelling claim they may have had as well.

They are everyone’s objectives for which one may be enthusiastic, even passionate. But it is not reasonable that they place an obligation on me, if the effect on me would be negative, if my own freedom and personal happiness are thereby threatened. These objectives therefore are generally ineffective and the public élan with which they are given prominence and steadfastly defended in various speeches is probably compensation for the failure to realise them in the concrete.

And so we have come back once more to the question we posed as to where exactly the defect begins in that type of moralism which ends up in terrorism. Because this defect is also the real root to almost all the other problems of our time, its implications reach far beyond the areas haunted by terrorists.

Elements of a response

The essence of morality

Let us try to make our way gradually towards the facts of the case. I said that what is moral has lost its evidence.

Only a small number of people in modern society will believe in the existence of commandments come from God; and still fewer are convinced that these commandments — if there are such — are handed down without error through the Church, through the religious community. The idea that another’s will, the Creator’s will, has a call upon us and that our being becomes as it should be through the harmony of our will with his will is a concept foreign to a great part of mankind. In any case, the function of having put the ‘big bang’ into operation remains odd for God. The idea of his being active in our midst or of man being under his will seems to most to be a naïvely anthropomorphic image of the divine by which man himself is over-rated.

Now the concept of a personal relationship between God and Creator and each individual person is certainly not missing from the religious and moral history of humanity; but it is limited in its pure form to the realm of biblical religion.

What was first of all common to all of premodern mankind, however, lies really along the self-same line: the conviction that in man’s being there lies an imperative, the conviction that man does not devise morality itself by calculating expediencies; rather he comes upon it in the being of things. Long before the outbreak of terrorism and the invasion of drugs, the English author and philosopher, C S Lewis, called attention to the grievous danger of the abolition of man which lies in the collapse of the foundations of morality. He thus gave stress to humankind’s justification upon which the continuance of man as man depends.

Lewis shows the continuance of this justification with a glance at all the great civilisations. He refers not only to the moral heritage of the Greeks and its particular articulation by Plato, Aristotle and the Stoa.

These intended to lead man to an awareness of reason in his being and from that to insist upon the cultivation of “his kinship of being with reason.”

Lewis also recalls the idea of the Rta in early Hinduism, which asserts the harmony of the cosmic order, the moral virtues and the temple rituals. He underscores in a special way the Chinese doctrine of the Tao: “It is nature, it is the way, the road. It is the way in which the universe goes on. … It is also the way in which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar” (The Abolition of Man).

Lewis refers as well to the law of Israel, which unites cosmos and history and intends above all to be the expression of the truth about man as much as the truth about the world.

An appreciation of the great civilisations discloses differences in detail, but starker by far than these differences is the great common strain which reveals itself as early evidence of the human business of living: the teaching of objective values which are manifest in the being of the world; the belief that there are attitudes which are true in accord with the message of the “All,” and therefore good, and that there are other attitudes as well which are contrary to being and thus are wrong for good and for all.

Modern mankind has been persuaded that human moral values are radically opposed one to another in the same way that religious are. In both cases the simple conclusion is drawn that all of these are human inventions whose absurdity we can finally detect and replace with reasonable knowledge. This diagnosis, though, is extremely superficial. It hooks on to a series of details which are set up in random fashion, one next to the other, and so it arrives at the banality of its superior insight.

The reality is that the fundamental intuition concerning the moral character of being itself and the necessity for harmony between human existence and the message of nature is common to all the great civilisations; and thus the great moral imperatives are also a possession held in common. C S Lewis expressed this emphatically when he said: “This thing, which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call natural law, or traditional morality, or the first principle of practical reason, or the first platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and to raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory.”

The creation of pseudo-science: the abolition of man

The problem of modernity, the moral problem of our time, consists in the fact that it has separated itself from this primeval testimony. In order truly to understand the process, we have to describe it in yet greater detail.

It is characteristic of the scientific mind to create an abyss between the world of feelings and the world of facts. Feelings are subjective, facts are objective. “Facts,” i.e. those things which can be determined outside of ourselves, are still and all just “facts,” bareboned details.

To add to the atom over and above its mathematical determinations some further properties of, let us say, a moral or aesthetic nature is looked upon as imagination simply gone wild.

This reduction of nature to demonstrable and thus pliable facts has consequences: no moral message outside of ourselves can reach us any more. The moral, just as much as the religious, belongs to the realm of the subjective; it has no place in the objective. If it is subjective, it is the composition of man. It does not precede us; we precede it and create it. This movement of “objectification,” which “gets to the bottom” of things and renders them manageable, recognises no limit to its being.

A Comte had already put forth a principle for a kind of physics of human beings. Little by little the most difficult object of nature should become understandable to science, that is, be subjected to scientific knowledge — this most difficult object being man. Man will then be as well understood as matter already is. Psychoanalysis and sociology are the fundamental tools for making good this postulate.

One can now (so it appears) explain the mechanisms by which man came to the belief that nature might express a moral law. It is true: the completely transparent man is no longer a man at all. By the nature of such perception he can only be a mere detail; “To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see,” Lewis noted.

The theories of evolution crafted upon an all-embracing worldview seal the fate of this kind of vision and also try to compensate for it. Of course, as they say, there is no logic to anything or, more correctly, everything is the way it is because of the simple logic of facts. One can even reconstruct now the purely mechanical course of the world’s development in the perfect doctrine of evolution with its theories of chance and necessity.

“Evolution” makes the inference that imitation of its successes should be the new morality: the goal of evolution is survival and the perfection of the species. The optimal survival for the species “man,” then, would be the basic moral value; and the rules one makes accordingly to achieve this would be the only moral system. It is only apparent that this represents a return to eavesdropping upon the moral wisdom of nature. In reality, God’s dominion is now meaningless, for evolution coming forth from itself is meaningless. It is the calculus of probabilities and power which are now in control. Morality has been eroded and man as human being has worn away with it. It is no longer prudent to ask why one should hold fast to this kind of survival.

Once more I would like to have C S Lewis put in a word. He saw this process already in 1943 and described it with keen accuracy. He discerns in it the old compact with the magician: “Give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up the power thus conferred will not belong to us. … It is in man’s power to treat himself as a mere ‘natural object’…. The real objection is that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere nature, in the person of his dehumanised conditioners.”

Lewis raised this warning during the Second World War because he saw how, with the destruction of morality, the very capacity to defend his nation against the onslaught of barbarism was imperiled. He was objective enough, though, to add the following: “I am not here thinking solely, perhaps not even chiefly, of those who are our public enemies at the moment. The process which, if not checked, will abolish man, goes on apace among communists and democrats, no less than among fascists.”

This seems to me to be a comment of great import: the opposing worldviews of today, have a common starting point in the rejection of the natural moral law and the reduction of the world to “mere” acts.

The measure with which they illogically hold on to the old values differs, but, at their core, they are threatened with the same peril. The real falsehood in that worldview, for which drugs and terrorism are but the symptoms, consists in its reduction of the world to facts and in the narrowing of reason to quantitative perception. The essential in man is shoved off into the subjective and so into the unreal.

The “abolition of man” which follows from making absolute one method of coming to knowledge is the clear distortion of this worldview as well.

We have man; and whoever feels compelled, on the basis of some theory he has, to pull him off into the realm of transparent, prefabricated devices, lives with a narrowed perception which what is essential hastens to oppose. If science aims for the most comprehensive knowledge in accord with reality possible, then to make absolute one method is the opposite of science.

This means, in other words, that practical reason too, upon which true moral knowledge depends, is a real form of reason and not merely the expression of subjective feelings not worth knowing.

We have to learn how to appreciate once again that the great moral insights of mankind are just as reasonable and true, indeed truer, than experimental findings in the realm of science and technology.

They are truer because they touch more deeply upon the reality of being and they are more crucial for the existence of humanity.

The reason of morality and the reason of faith

Two conclusions emerge from this. The first is that the moral imperative is not man’s imprisonment from which he must make his escape in order finally to be able to do as he wants. The moral imperative constitutes man’s dignity and if he gets rid of it he does not become freer. Rather, he has stepped back into the world of mere devices, of things. If there is no longer an imperative to which he can and should respond in freedom, then actually there is no range for freedom any more.

Moral knowledge is the true content of human dignity; but one does not come to this knowledge without at the same time experiencing it as an obligation upon one’s freedom.

Morality is not man’s prison; it is rather the divine in him.

To illustrate the second conclusion, we have to recall once more the fundamental insight we came to previously: practical (or moral) reason is reason in its highest sense, for it delves deeper into the true mystery or reality than does experimental reason. This means, however, that Christian faith is not a limitation or a handicap for reason. Instead it liberates it at the very start for its own work.

Practical reason also needs the guarantee of an experiment, but a greater kind of experiment than can be conducted in the laboratory. It requires the experiment of successful human existence which can come only with subsequent history itself. For this reason, practical reason was always ordered towards the grand enterprise of experiencing and testing the collective visions of ethics and religion.

Just as science, on one hand, depends upon the brilliant breakthroughs of great individuals, so, on the other hand, the construction of a systematic ethic depends upon the particular vision of individuals who were given a glimpse of the whole. The grand ethical developments of Greece and of the Near and Far East, about which we spoke a moment ago, have forfeited nothing in terms of the validity which lies at the heart of their assertions.We may look upon them now, however, as tributaries, which flow towards the grand river of Christianity and its explanation of reality.

Actually, the moral vision of Christian faith is not something particularly Christian; it is rather the synthesis of the great moral intuitions of humanity from a new centre which holds them all together. This concurrence of ethical wisdom is raised many times today as an argument against the binding force of the commandments delivered by God in the scriptures. One can see, so the argument goes, that the Bible does not really possess a moral wisdom, but that from time to time it adopted as its own the moral insights of the world around it.

Therefore, the authority in morality would be just that which at some time in a particular age was recognised as reasonable. One has come already, then, to the cramming of morality into a simple calculus, that is, to the abolition of the moral in the real sense of the term. It is just the opposite which is correct: the inner coherence of morality’s fundamental direction, which has gradually been purified as it develops, is the best proof of its validity — the best proof, that it is discovered, not devised.

Discovered — how?

Here the realms of revelation and reason mesh closely with one another. These insights are discovered by some, as we said, through particular figures who made it possible to see more deeply.

We call such seeing, which goes above and beyond one’s own acquisition of knowledge, revelation.

What is seen in the ethical realm, however, is essentially that same moral message which lies in creation itself. For nature is not, as science in an ivory tower would have it, a kind of montage put together by chance and the laws of probability; rather, it is creation.

In nature the creator Spirit expresses himself. For this reason, there are not only natural laws in the sense of physical functions; there is the actual law of nature which is a moral law.

Creation itself teaches us how we can be human beings in the proper way. The Christian faith, which helps us to recognise creation as creation, is not a handicap for reason. It gives practical reason room for growth and development. The moral law which the Church teaches is not a special burden for Christians but man’s defence against the attempt to reduce him to nothing.

If morality — as we say — is not the enslavement but the liberation of man,then the Christian faith is the outpost of human freedom.

Man needs ethos in order to be himself. Ethos, however, requires belief in creation and immortality: that is, it requires the objectivity of the imperative and its ultimate redemption by responsibility and fulfilment.

The impossibility of a human existence cut off from this is indirect proof for the truth of the Christian faith and its hope. This hope is a saving hope for human beings, even still today. The Christian may be happy in his faith; without the glad tidings of faith, mankind cannot endure in the long run.

The joy of faith is its responsibility: we should lay hold of it with fresh courage in this moment of our history.

But there was cloud cover, including from a previous incendiary attack.

Nagasaki was the backup site, not because of civilian population, which was on the south side of the city, but because of the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works north of that, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works even further north.

Decades after the attacks, there is a saying in Japan about the reporting on the anniversaries of the events: “sakebi Hiroshima, inori no Nagasaki” — “shouting Hiroshima, praying Nagasaki.”

Why praying Nagasaki?

Because there is a directly religious connection which emerged after the Nagasaki bombing.

At the last moment in the clouds over Nagasaki, intending to drop the much more complex plutonium bomb, “Fat Man,” on a radar fix, the bombardier caught a brief glimpse of land and dropped Fat Man.

Intended for the Mitsubishi arsenal targets, the bomb missed by over a mile and hit squarely over the Catholic suburb of Uragami.

The Uragami cathedral, which could hold 5,000 Catholics, burst into flames at  midnight that night and was consumed.

Urakami was where secret Christians had historically assembled, but were discovered in the 1860s and jailed. US President Ulysses S. Grant demanded these Christians be released for a simple reason — that a nation that did not respect religious freedom could not be considered “enlightened.” The freed farmers then built Urakami Cathedral.

But how did Nagasaki become “inori no Nagasaki,” “praying Nagasaki”? The book A Song for Nagasaki tells us.

In a testimonial on the back cover, Shusako Endo, himself a Catholic convert from atheism, writes, “Christians and non-Christians alike were deeply moved by [Dr. Takashi] Nagai’s faith in Christ that made him like Job of the Scriptures: in the midst of the nuclear wilderness he kept his heart in tranquility and peace, neither bearing resentment against any man nor cursing God.’ ”

Nagai was a physician, the head of radiology at a hospital, and already weak and suffering from radiation exposure. At his hospital the morning of the bomb, he was spared. Returning to his home, he found the ashes of his wife. His children had left for a distant point in the mountains and were spared.  He continued his work at his own peril, gradually declining, then bed-ridden, where he continued his writing. His book The Bells of Nagasaki is well known in Japan, and the movie that followed. The praying memorial in Nagasaki is taken from the influence of Dr. Nagai.

Here is what he once delivered in a speech to his fellow residents, taken from A Song for Nagasaki:

“I have heard that the atom bomb… was destined for another city. Heavy clouds rendered that target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Then a mechanical problem arose, and the bomb was dropped further north than planned and burst right above the cathedral…  It was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb. God’s Providence chose Urakami and carried the bomb right above our homes. Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?

“We are inheritors of Adam’s sin… of Cain’s sin. He killed his brother. Yes, we have forgotten we are God’s children. We have turned to idols and forgotten love. Hating one another, killing one another, joyfully killing one another! At last the evil and horrific conflict came to an end,  but mere repentance was not enough for peace…  We had to offer a stupendous sacrifice…  Cities had been leveled. But even that was no enough… Only this hansai [holocaust] on His altar… so that many millions of lives might be saved.

“How noble, how splendid, was that holocaust of midnight August 9, when flames soared up from the cathedral, dispelling darkness and bringing the light of peace [the emperor is said to have given his agreement in Tokyo for peace at the exact time the Urakami cathedral burst into flames]. In the very depths of our grief, we were able to gaze up to something beautiful, pure, and sublime.

“Happy are those who weep; they shall be comforted. We must walk the way of reparation… ridiculed, whipped, punished for our crimes, sweaty and bloody.  But we can turn our minds to Jesus carrying his Cross up the hill to Calvary… The Lord has given; the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice! Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was granted to the world and religious freedom to Japan.”

The Nagai museum now stands beside the bare one-room hut, named Nyokodo, where Nagai was moved in the spring of 1948. He was known as the Ghandi of Nyokodo.

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The Priests Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

My attention has also been drawn to an interesting report by Donal Anthony Foley in England’s Catholic Herald on August 5, which recounts the remarkable survival of the Jesuit Fathers in Hiroshima and which connects the bombing with the story of Fatima. Here are excerpts:

By Donal Anthony Foley on Thursday, 5 August 2010

This Friday, August 6, will see the Feast of the Transfiguration celebrated in the Church. It commemorates the occasion when Christ, accompanied by Peter, James, and John, went up a high mountain – traditionally identified with Mount Tabor in Galilee – and was there “transfigured” before them, so that “his face shone like the sun, and his garments became as white as light” (Mt 17:2).

The Greek word for transfiguration is metemorphothe, from which we get the word “metamorphosis”. So the Transfiguration was a complete and stunning change in the appearance of Jesus… Its purpose was to prepare them for the reality of the crucifixion, so that having once seen – in some sense – his divinity, they would be strengthened in their faith.

August 6 is also an important date in world history: the fateful day on which the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. On that day, a Monday, at 8.15 in the morning, an American B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, dropped its bomb “Little Boy”, which… vaporised practically everything and everyone within a radius of about a mile of the point of impact…

But in the midst of this terrible carnage, something quite remarkable happened: there was a small community of Jesuit Fathers living in a presbytery near the parish church, which was situated less than a mile away from detonation point, well within the radius of total devastation. And all eight members of this community escaped virtually unscathed from the effects of the bomb. Their presbytery remained standing, while the buildings all around, virtually as far as the eye could see, were flattened.

Fr Hubert Schiffer, a German Jesuit, was one of these survivors, aged 30 at the time of the explosion, and who lived to the age of 63 in good health. In later years he travelled to speak of his experience, and this is his testimony as recorded in 1976, when all eight of the Jesuits were still alive. On August 6 1945, after saying Mass, he had just sat down to breakfast when there was a bright flash of light.

Since Hiroshima had military facilities, he assumed there must have been some sort of explosion at the harbour, but almost immediately he recounted: “A terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunderstroke. An invisible force lifted me from the chair, hurled me through the air, shook me, battered me [and] whirled me round and round…” He raised himself from the ground and looked around, but could see nothing in any direction. Everything had been devastated.

He had a few quite minor injuries, but nothing serious, and indeed later examinations at the hands of American army doctors and scientists showed that neither he nor his companions had suffered ill-effects from radiation damage or the bomb. Along with his fellow Jesuits, Fr Schiffer believed “that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the rosary daily in that home”…

After this first bombing, the Japanese government refused to surrender unconditionally, and so a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki three days later on August 9. Nagasaki had actually been the secondary target, but cloud cover over the primary target, Kokura, saved it from obliteration on the day. The supreme irony is that Nagasaki was the city where two-thirds of the Catholics in Japan were concentrated, and so after centuries of persecution they suffered this terrible blow right at the end of the war.

But in a strange parallel to what happened at Hiroshima, the Franciscan Friary established by St Maximilian Kolbe in Nagasaki before the war was likewise unaffected by the bomb which fell there. St Maximilian, who was well-known for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin, had decided to go against the advice he had been given to build his friary in a certain location. When the bomb was dropped, the friary was protected from the force of the bomb by an intervening mountain. So both at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we can see Mary’s protective hand at work.

The apparitions at Fatima in Portugal took place in 1917, when from May to October three young children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, saw the Blessed Virgin six times, culminating in the “miracle of the sun” on October 13, when 70,000 people saw the sun spin in the sky and change colour successively, before falling to the earth in a terrifying manner. Many of those present thought it was the end of the world, but the sun reassumed its place in the sky to great cries of relief.

The essence of the Fatima message concerns conversion from sin and a return to God, and involves reparation for one’s own sins and the sins of others, as well as the offering up of one’s daily sufferings and trials. There was also a focus on prayer and the Eucharist at Fatima, and particularly the rosary, as well as the Five First Saturdays devotion, which involves Confession, Holy Communion, the rosary and meditation, for five consecutive months with the intention of making reparation to Our Lady (for more details visit Theotokos.org.uk).

It’s interesting to reflect, then, on the theme of “transfiguration” which links these various events. Christ’s face shone like the sun on Mount Tabor, and at Fatima, Our Lady worked the great miracle of the sun to convince the huge crowd which had gathered there that the message she was giving to mankind was authentic. Consider, too, that the poor people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered as man-made “suns” exploded in their midst causing horrific devastation. But at Hiroshima the eight Jesuits, who were living the message of Fatima, and particularly the daily rosary, were somehow “transfigured,” protected by God’s divine power, from the terrible effects of the bomb.

Surely there is a message here for all of us, that living the message of Fatima, in a world which grows ever more dangerous, and which is still threatened by nuclear war, is as profound a necessity for us as it was for Fr Schiffer and his companions.

In this regard, I feel it is important to make two points.

First, conflict.

Benedict is one of the most intelligent and eloquent and poetic defenders in the world today of a vision of human life in which there is a dimension which transcends the purely material, the purely utilitarian.

Great Britain is the home of utilitarianism, of a pragmatic, problem-solving, technological view of human affairs.

This would suggest that there could be a “clash of world views” during this visit.

And I hope it will be so.

I hope the Pope lays out, in the most intelligent, eloquent and poetic way, the case for a view of human affairs in which holiness plays a part, and not just profit, in which justice and generosity have a central space, not just a peripheral one, as if they were “secondary” to “the main business” of life, which, in the utilitarian view, is business.

So, I expect a conflict of world views, because I expect Benedict to express, eloquently, the Christian conviction that man has incalculable dignity — a dignity beyond financial calculation, a dignity which overturns all the calculations of every actuarial table humans can fashion.

Second, a surprising “cathartic moment.”

I expect this “conflict” to take Great Britain by surprise. I expect that the image of this small, white-haired man, preaching that human beings have a transcendent dignity, that they were made for love, not profit, will be so striking that some, unexpectedly, will be drawn to the message, and to the man presenting the message, in a way they do not anticipate now.

They may even find in this message something precious for their own lives, and for the life of the British nation: a call to return to ideals and beliefs that were once fervently held, and shaped the culture, customs and laws of the beautiful islands across the channel from France, but which are now increasingly being rejected.

And so I foresee a cathartic moment for Britain, when, amid all the shouting, all the vilification — and there may be a lot of this — Benedict’s words are heard, and are felt to be a reminder of what many in Britain, deep down, also believe, or wish they could believe.

And in this catharsis, true patriots, true lovers of Britain, may find that, in this little professor from Bavaria, via Rome, they hear a call to return to the beliefs and traditions and customs and laws that made England “great,” and also “merry.”

This is the background for the remarks that I have just published in the August-September “Special Issue” of Inside the Vatican previewing the Pope’s trip to Great Britain, as my editorial. Here below is that text. I would urge readers to order extra copies of this issue, especially in Great Britain, as I think it provides a balanced, comprehensive view of all the chief issues the Pope will confront during his visit. (To order extra copies, write: editor@insidethevatican.com)

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The following is the text of the editorial of the August-September “Special Issue” of Inside the Vatican, now at the printers.

Why Is Benedict XVI Going to England?

Benedict XVI is going to Great Britain to preach the Gospel, to call the British back to the faith which once shaped their culture, their law, their art and architecture, their hopes and aspirations — faith in Christ, and in his cross….

“Many might be tempted to ask why we Christians celebrate an instrument of torture, a sign of suffering, defeat and failure. It is true that the Cross expresses all these things. And yet, because of him who was lifted up on the Cross for our salvation, it also represents the definitive triumph of God’s love over all the evil in the world… The Cross, then, is something far greater and more mysterious than it at first appears.” —Pope Benedict XVI, June 5, 2010, Cyprus

There have been many surmises about why Benedict has chosen to visit Great Britain. Some of the analysis has been informed, much uninformed, and some motivated by plain bigotry. The media has exploited the confusion created by this mix to play its role of generating controversies, creating suspicions, finding villains, even to reporting Ian Paisley’s predictable indictment that the Pope is the Antichrist and should not be allowed to enter the country.

Benedict’s reasons for going to Great Britain are quite clear, though obscured by those unwilling to accept his word. His reasons are not only simple, but touch on the essence of his faith and the faith of the Church.

What is immediately clear is that he wishes personally to beatify the remarkable 19th century Christian scholar and convert to Catholicism, John Henry Cardinal Newman — a man he has studied and admired for nearly 60 years. And, around that beatification, he wishes to visit his Scottish and English flocks in hopes of strengthening them in their faith.

In the eyes of some observers, the legitimacy of these pastoral purposes is compromised by Benedict’s stated concern for those “high church” Anglicans who have openly asked to be received as a body into the Catholic Church.

How, these critics ask, will it be possible to maintain cordial relations between Rome and Canterbury if a large group of Anglicans, with the Pope’s encouragement, breaks away from the Church of England and enters the Catholic Church?

Benedict’s answer, in a sense, will be to encourage the conversion and simultaneously stress the common baptismal bond shared by all Christians. He will do this by a highly symbolic joint prayer service with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Then there are the liberal Christians, accusatory secularists and militant atheists who have depicted Benedict as visiting England and Scotland to campaign against human rights, specifically, against new British laws that reject Christian teachings on marriage and promote same-sex relationships.

These accusers are so fired up at the prospect of the Pope’s presence in Great Britain that they have openly called for his arrest and deportation as a human rights offender and a man criminally responsible for the sexual crimes of priests. (British officials have taken steps to ensure that the militant secularists do publicly try to arrest and pillory Benedict.)

Such conflicting views of Benedict’s presence in Great Britain threaten to turn a religious pilgrimage into a political free-for-all.

Let’s state as clearly as possible what has moved Benedict to visit Scotland and England. Yes, Newman’s beatification, yes, the situation of British Catholics, yes, Anglicans longing to join the Catholic Church, yes, the hope of maintaining ties with Anglicanism.

But at the heart of Benedict’s journey is the belief that God is in charge of His world, that nothing happens without a purpose, that men can take part in God’s plan for the world.

Like his predecessors, he believes there are no accidents in history, only events we cannot fully grasp or  explain convincingly, but events God will one day allow us to understand.

Over and over Joseph Ratzinger has said that divine providence rules the world.

He believes that the Gospel’s encounter with Greek thought providentially determined the way the Church developed. He holds that, though we can never predict in advance how things will turn out, things which seem to be harmful to the spread of the Gospel may eventually be seen even as a blessing.

His initial attraction to Newman may have been to Newman’s theological writing, but his strongest attachment to him is surely to the man of faith, a man who could say of himself: “I understood… that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable, Scripture was an allegory, pagan literature, philosophy and mythology, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel. The Greek poets and sages were, in a sense, prophets.”

Benedict wants to be in England not because theologians are of crucial importance, but because saints are absolutely essential to the growth, purification and existence of the Church.

Benedict wants to be in England because a new paganism has triumphed in Western society, articulately in England. In many ways he is motivated by what he said in God and the World: “Whenever a person or society refuses to take God’s business seriously, some way or the other, the fate of Gomorrah overtakes them again… Whenever any society turns away from fellowship with the living God, it cuts the root of its social cohesion. We see such retribution at work even today.”

He is in England to point out the “narrow way” that leads away from the dead end and desolation of “Gomorrah” — the “narrow way” taken by More, Fisher, Newman, and countless thousands of others.

The militant advocates of Sodom recognize the danger Benedict presents to their program, so they describe the Pope’s English visit as a mission to promote superstition and the implicit evil of traditional Christianity.

But it is something else altogether.

It is a mission to dispel superstition and lies, and to call the British back to the truth which many still recall, deep down: that men and women have an eternal destiny, that this fallen world has been redeemed, and that that redemption frees men from fear and frustration, even from their own self-loathing.

It is a message of hope, and he will preach it fearlessly, though the prophets of perdition would silence him and caricature his message as anything but what it is.

They will attempt to drown out his call, but he will issue it anyway, to all with ears to hear: that it is not too late to change course, that there is still time for a new direction, still time to embrace the path that leads not to death, but to life, and true joy.

Note: Pilgrimage with special meetings inside the Vatican. We are now beginning to take preliminary requests for our Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 pilgrimages, which will include visits to Assisi, Norcia, Rome and the Vatican. If you would like information about these trips, email us at: pilgrimage@insidethevatican.com