No Plans to Convert Russia to Catholicism

Interfax has a short article on comments made by the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture clarifying (yet again) that the Vatican has no plans or desires to "convert" Russia to Catholicism.

2007-06-18 14:09:00

Vatican has no plans to convert Russia to Catholicism - cardinal Poupard

Moscow, June 18, Interfax - The Vatican does not want to convert Russia to Catholicism, and relations with the Moscow Patriarchate are improving, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture Cardinal Paul Poupard told students of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University on Monday.

Poupard said the Vatican never wanted to make Russia a Catholic country. The Holy See is praying for a Christian Russia and further preaching by Orthodox and Catholic disciples, he said.

The cardinal admitted differences between Orthodox and Catholic clerics as members of one and the same family.

The two churches want to speak about their belief, he said, adding that at the meeting he was wearing a cross he had received from Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II.

The atmosphere of inter-church relations has changed, Apostolic Nuncio to Russia Archbishop Antonio Mennini said. He said they could affirm Christian values together and be friends.

The Russian Orthodox Church feels that it is respected by the Holy See, the archbishop said. The Vatican regards the Russian Orthodox Church as the national church and welcomes the opportunity to meet and learn about the Russian religious tradition, he said.

May it please God to soften the hearts and open the minds of the Patriarchate of Moscow to understand the beauty of the Unity of the Faith!

And may the Orthodox also come to terms with the reality of our Eastern Catholic Churches. Accusations that we are mere dupes or saboteurs hoping to "Romanize" the Orthodox would be laughable if not that so many seem genuinely to believe them. It is irrational to demand that we Eastern Catholics cease to exist before the Orthodox agree to enter serious dialogues with Rome towards Reunification.

O Most Holy Trinity: Make the divisions of the Churches to cease!

Litany of Fervent Supplication from the Divine Liturgy

This short YouTube piece features the late Bishop Sleiman Hajjar of blessed memory. Sayidna was a wonderful bishop and holy man who died too young in a swimming accident. May his memory be eternal!

The Pope and the Eastern Churches

On Saturday, the Holy Father visited the Sacred Congregation for Oriental ("Eastern") Churches. During his visit he accepted the resignation (due to age) of the congregation's prefect His Eminence Ignace Cardinal Daoud and appointed Archbishop Leonardo Sandri as his successor.

The Congregation is charged with overseeing the non-Latin Churches of the Catholic Church. Its goal is to preserve and promote the equality of these Churches with the great Church of Rome. Thus the congregation serves to ensure that 'Latinizations", the oft-mentioned fear of Eastern Churches not in communion with Rome, does not happen and that the all churches within the Catholic Church flourish.

ZENIT has published a summary account of the Holy Father's visit. Below are a few snippets.

He said: "Today the Pope gives thanks to Eastern Christians for their fidelity at the price of the shedding of blood -- admirable accounts which fill the pages of history even to the present-day martyrology!"...

Benedict XVI said he took the name of a "Pope who dearly loved the East" because he wants his pontificate to be "a pilgrimage to the heart of the East."

The Holy Father told Eastern Christians that "he wants to stay by their side."

He reiterated "his profound appreciation for the Eastern Catholic Churches for their particular role as living witnesses of the origins."...

Benedict XVI added: "In a particular way, the Eastern Churches guard the echo of the first announcement of the Gospel; the most ancient memories of the signs performed by the Lord; the first beams of the paschal light, and the reverberations of the unquenchable Pentecost fire."...

When the whole speech is available in English, I will add a link.

For the whole article, click here.

More on Jesus of Nazareth from Sandro Magister

Over at Chiesa On Line, Sandro Magister features an article by the Rabbi Pope Benedict references in Jesus of Nazareth. It is a quite insightful piece and worth reading. Below are a couple of paragraphs from Sandro's introduction:

This author is an observant Jew and a rabbi, Jacob Neusner. He lives in the United States, and teaches history and theology at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In 1993, he published a book that had a great impact on the then-cardinal Ratzinger: “A Rabbi Talks with Jesus.”

In “Jesus of Nazareth,” the pope explains why this book made such a positive impression on him. In it, “the author takes his place among the crowds of Jesus‘ disciples on the ‘mount’ in Galilee. He listens to Jesus [...] and he speaks with Jesus himself. He is touched by the greatness and the purity of what is said, and yet at the same time he is troubled by the ultimate incompatibility that he finds at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount [...] again and again he talks with him. But in the end, he decides not to follow Jesus. He remains – as he himself puts it – with the ‘eternal Israel’.”

The central issue that prevents the rabbi from believing in Jesus is his revealing himself as God: the same scandal that led Jesus to his death. In Ratzinger’s judgment, it is precisely here that the value of Neusner’s book lies. The imaginary conversation between the Jewish rabbi and Jesus “highlights the differences in all their sharpness, but it also takes place in great love. The rabbi accepts the otherness of Jesus’ message, and takes his leave free of any rancor; this parting, accomplished in the rigor of truth, is ever mindful of the reconciling power of love.”

For Benedict XVI, this is the path of true dialogue between Jews and Christians. Not to conceal their respective claims to truth, but to bring these to light in reciprocal understanding and respect.

And from the article itself:

Disputation went out of style when religions lost their confidence in the power of reason to establish theological truth. Then, as in Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," religions were made to affirm a truth in common, and the differences between religions were dismissed as trivial and unimportant. An American president was quoted as saying, "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're a good man." Then disputations between religions lost their urgency. The heritage of the Enlightenment with its indifference to the truth-claims of religion fostered religious toleration and reciprocal respect in place of religious confrontation and claims to know God. Religions emerged as obstacles to the good order of society....

But now His Holiness has taken a step further and has answered my critique in a creative exercise of exegesis and theology. In his “Jesus of Nazareth” the Judeo-Christian disputation enters a new age. We are able to meet one another in a forthright exercise of reason and criticism. The challenges of Sinai bring us together for the renewal of a 2,000 year old tradition of religious debate in the service of God's truth....

For the entire piece, click here.

The Sad Saga of Paris

This evening I came across a news report about Paris Hilton. Forgive me if my knowledge of her is somewhat scant. However, I understand that she is incredibly wealthy and what used to be called a “personality.”

I gather that she had been sentenced to a short stint in jail, but the sheriff had attempted to let her serve her time under house arrest. Apparently, there was an almighty palaver that led to her return to the court today and being sent back to jail.

What struck me was several ‘news’ photos of her crying and the reports of her being overwrought at the prospects of serving her time. The reports noted that she cried out that it was not fair and called to her “Mommy” while being led away to the gaol. The report also noted that she was shaking during the hearing and kept looking at her parents mouthing “I love you.”

It is obvious that this young woman has not developed full emotional maturity, and probably intellectual maturity. What is also apparent is that she has the misfortune of both having never before had to deal seriously with the untoward consequences of her life choices and also now having her first real experience of the hard realities of life being documented in the cold glare of public scrutiny.

My concern about this is to ask, who will save her? Who will speak words of comfort to her in the gaol -- true words of comfort that help her realize her errors, the need to repent, the necessity of changing her life? Will there be anyone who will with Christian love confront her and help her see the vacuity of her lifestyle and the benefits of living in the true freedom that respects limits?

Or will she die in the gaol? Will we soon discover an addiction that her wealth and the perks of fame has heretofore hidden from public view, which her time in confinement will reveal? Or will she do her time, and return to the sycophants who tell her she should be above such mundane punishments. Will her misguided loved ones, who believe that giving a person everything they want without moderation, consideration of others, or reference to the dignity of her personhood, which was not manifest up till now, continue to encourage her on that same path?

If so, I fear we will all too soon be reading about her unfortunate death. Perhaps it will be drugs; maybe it will be alcohol or some accident. It seems clear she is adrift and no one seems really to care to help her.

But I guess that doesn’t matter as long as people buy the newspapers, watch the gossip shows, read the celebrity blogs, and everyone can walk away from her ruined life and rotting corpse feeling better about themselves because they have never been tempted as has she.

(A recommended book for the not faint of heart: Click here, and don’t dismiss the suggestion too quickly! May Ms Hilton also find a copy of it to read while in the gaol.)

PS No, this is someone about whom I never once thought I would write.

When Reason is Used Unreasonably

MercatorNet features an article by Canandian ethicist Margaret Somerville which notes contradictions and flaws in the arguments of the currently fashionable anti-theist arguments.

A few highlights are reproduced below. For the whole article, click here.

Dawkins confuses religion and the use of religion – I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt intellectually and assume he does so deliberately -- in order to promote his thesis that religion is evil. Religion itself is not evil – just as science is not evil – but it can be used for evil purposes, just as science can....

The primary "way of knowing" in science is reason and reason is fundamental to the scientific method that produces scientific knowledge. Dawkins’ mistake is that he sees reason (and probably science) as the only valid way of human knowing and, consequently, as the only appropriate tool to explore non-scientific questions, such as profound ethical issues....

We have multiple ways of human knowing in addition to reason, all of which are essential to ethics. They include history (human memory) -- this is beautifully encapsulated in aboriginal people’s practice in making ethical decisions of looking back seven generations. Imagination and creativity – looking forward seven generations to try to assess the ethical acceptability of the impact of what we plan to do on future generations. Intuition -- especially moral intuition. Common sense. Experiential knowledge – including what we can know, as the gym teachers tell us, by listening to our bodies. And "examined" emotions, to name just some....

In short Dawkins – who is a fundamentalist atheist (atheism is a secular religion) and religious fundamentalists are similar in an important respect: They take an either/or approach to everything: my beliefs or yours; religion or science; reason or Faith; and so on. They then seek to reconcile what they see as the conflicts between the two elements that make up each of these pairings, by dropping one or the other of them. Dawkins’ call for the elimination of religion demonstrates such a choice on his part. But it is an extremely dangerous proposal and likely to escalate the culture clashes and "religious wars" we are seeing....

Retired Bishop Reviews Jesus of Nazareth

Retired Bishop Basil Meeking has written a very nice review of Pope Benedict's book Jesus of Nazareth. For anyone still uncertain whether to read it, Bishop Meeking's analysis of the contents should remove lingering doubts. A few highlights are presented below.

Jesus of Nazareth is not in the first place devotional reading but a closely argued exposition written in a spirit of faith with the hope of eliciting rational reflection. But the thoughtful reader may well be led to prayer as well. To read the book is to experience the highly cultivated thinking of a clear and sharp mind, one that can present theological questions and insights in contemporary style. It abuses no one but is the civilised discourse that has its source in the Catholic culture of Europe.

The Sermon on the Mount shows that "being human is essentially about relationship with God". Integral to this relationship is the speaking and listening to God which is prayer. Jesus gave the Lord's Prayer, the prayer of the community and of the believer. Jesus of Nazareth is worthwhile if only for the light it throws on the meaning of the Our Father and the nature of prayer. It is the prayer of Jesus, the prayer to be said with him as he leads us from the primacy of God to the right way of being human. It shows us from heaven what we human begins (sic) can and should be like.

When he points out that the Scripture experts of Jesus' day, those professionally concerned with the sacred writings, do not recognise Jesus for what he is because they are too taken up with the intricacies of their detailed knowledge, Benedict has an eye to the present. He does not hesitate to uphold the place of historical criticism in Biblical exegesis, while being equally firm about its limits and the excesses which have led some exegetes to opinions that "destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle faith".

Read the whole review here.