The Pope’s homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a wonderful meditation of the Gothic architecture of the Cathedral itself, the constant call to conversion, and the striving for unity in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. His speaking on stained glass windows as a metaphor offers deeper reflection on a subject reflected on before by many others before. It just plain amazes me how his speeches and homilies are always fresh and so connected to circumstances at hand.
"Did anybody ever tell you that you look just like Nancy Pelosi who votes for what I call today’s greatest injustice and a crime against society?"
"The ring thing is a good idea. Jesus was kissed on his cheek by Judas."
"Wait till she looks in a mirror and realizes I put lamp black on my ring."
"Darn, I knew I should have brought my novelty ring buzzer."
"No my predecessor wrote the Gospel of Life not the Gospel of Lie."
"The one thing about politicians kissing my ring is that afterwards I have to check that the ring is still there and then count my fingers."
A fairly good article called U.N. loves the pope, and it shows starts off rather odd.
The Catholic Church may be declining in numbers in the United States, but it seems to have the broad and enthusiastic support of U.N. employees and affiliates.
Good thing they have editors to correct something like that … oh wait. Considering that the Catholic population in the U.S. has never declined and while there is a portion that leave the Church every year there is also a steady influx of new Church member via converts or immigration.
The Pope’s speech at the U.N. itself concentrated mainly on human rights in the true understanding of the term and covered a lot of ground. He addressed the false opposition between science and ethics, human dignity, rights of the person and the origin of rights, religious freedom, and the roles of countries in protecting these rights along with the role of the UN in this. These are some of the highlights from my own first reading.
…origin of the person, who remains the high-point of God’s creative design for the world and for history.
…The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security.
…Experience shows that legality often prevails over justice when the insistence upon rights makes them appear as the exclusive result of legislative enactments or normative decisions taken by the various agencies of those in power. When presented purely in terms of legality, rights risk becoming weak propositions divorced from the ethical and rational dimension which is their foundation and their goal. The Universal Declaration, rather, has reinforced the conviction that respect for human rights is principally rooted in unchanging justice, on which the binding force of international proclamations is also based.
This aspect is often overlooked when the attempt is made to deprive rights of their true function in the name of a narrowly utilitarian perspective. Since rights and the resulting duties follow naturally from human interaction, it is easy to forget that they are the fruit of a commonly held sense of justice built primarily upon solidarity among the members of society, and hence valid at all times and for all peoples.
I found the above paragraph to be a perfect expression of how so many things have become rights while actual rights given to us by God are downplayed or eliminated. These modern rights are indeed seen as legalities that can be created by legislative bodies. The new view of rights is what is given to us by the Government instead of by God and the natural law is usurped via the vote.
The Pope calls the United Nations back to a proper understanding of the Universal Declaration and to stop efforts to reinterpret it according to special interests and away from protecting human dignity.
Most of the headlines have rightly seen the Pope’s speech in the context of human rights. I found this story laughably bad "Pope says unilateral acts undermine U.N. " with the starting focus being that this speech was directed at President Bush and the invasion of Iraq. This is the template the media wanted from the beginning for the Pope’s speech so it is no surprise that they would try to interpret it in that light.
Funky Dung sent me a link to a funny poster of the Pope based on the Obama "Hope" poster. Goes perfectly with my The Audacity of Pope.
Papal coverage always elicits some fun when reporters not familiar with it report on it.
At 7:16 this morning on Good Morning America, Dan Harris reported on the upcoming Papal Mass from Nationals Park in Washington. “This is a brand new ballpark opened just two and a half weeks ago and this morning it’s been transformed into a giant outdoor church. Behind me, in the outfield, there is a 75-foot-high altar.”
I guess this is a picture of the Pope looking up at that 75 foot altar.
Slowly though I have come to know more personally the man behind the words and have only grown to love him more over time. Though seeing the Pope on a more personal level is difficult since may of the books that address him cover mainly his career with some basic details of his life before going to Rome. I was quite happy to receive Benedict of Bavaria An Intimate Portrait of the Pope and His Homeland recently and figured there was no better time to read it than during the Papal visit.
The author Brennan Pursell is a convert to the faith and covers his own conversion in the first chapter of his book and his subsequent interest in Josef Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. While the author is an American his wife is German and the book shows that he was quite able to give a perspective of the Pope and his connection to Bavaria to give you a fuller understanding of the man.
The majority of the book covers the time from Josef Ratzinger’s birth to his time at Regensburg before going to rome to head the CDF. I am really glad that he spent so much time on this part of the Pope’s life since this is the part that I am quite interested in since I have already read plenty on the later chapters of his life. The book is loaded with details and insights into how Catholic Bavaria influenced the Ratzinger family and the connection and pull it had on his life. It is no secret that the Pope desired to go back home and retire with his brother and had requested to retire a couple of times while acting as prefect of the CDF. Seeing the Pope through the lens of Bavaria is quite useful and I felt necessary in coming to a deeper understanding of the man of him as a person.
There were plenty of details I had not seen in print before and though while the book relies on what the Pope has written himself in Milestones and other places there is a good amount the author found through other sources. The book calls itself an intimate portrait and I found that to be true in showing the Pope’s family life and his later life with his brother and sister. There are some great stories in this book and I especially loved details like the nicknames given to the two brothers while in seminary. The German nicknames translate roughly to Organ-Ratz and Book-Ratz and it doesn’t take too much imagination to determine which of the brothers is Book-Ratz.
The last chapters of the book cover his years in the CDF and then finally as Pope while giving a good overview of the major milestones in what will shortly be three years of his pontificate. Again though what I enjoyed most was the little details that more showed Josef the man and it really it quite amazing that a person with such a great intellect has the humility to match it. It seems to me that these qualities are rarely matched in the same proportions. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the Pope than a more sterile biography would give.
Watching the Pope speak to Catholic educators I am amazed once again at the words of the Holy Father. There was so much ink spilled beforehand of what the Pope would say during his trip and for the most part there were as accurate as false prophets. In most cases they would have the Pope say what they wanted said on any hobby horse issue. This was especially true in what was written previously in regards this speech. A guilty conscience seemed to spark many to think that they were going to get scolded by the Pope and others hoped that they would indeed be scolded. Either perspective shows a total lack of understanding of Pope Benedict. People seemed to be shocked that the theme of the Papal Visit "Christ our Hope" is actually the theme of the Papal Visit. When the Pope did address serious issues in this speech it was not as a scold but to act as a persuader. He is able to both point out the problems and their solutions. I look forward to looking at the full text of the speech to go through it again because it was certainly one to go over again.
I did find odd the places where the audience clapped like when the Pope praised the good work of Catholic educators and this seemed rather like they were applauding themselves. No applause though when the Pope spoke about Catholic identity and how the beauty of the Church’s teaching on sexuality is reduced to risk management – those were applause moments for me.
Here is the text of the speech.
In a Senate resolution welcoming the Pope to the United States has been cleansed of some "objectionable" languague.
Whereas Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out for the weak and vulnerable, witnessing to the value of each and every human life…
So Sen. Boxer has stood up to make sure such language did not make it through. As Paul noted the opposition to this language is in reference to the Church’s opposition to abortion. I find this odd though since if she believes children in the womb are not human life than the Pope speaking out to protect human life should not be objectionable to her. It is funny that someone who believes sucking the brains out of children just before being born is not objectionable, but witnessing in favor of protecting the weak and the vulnerable is.
As you would expect their is lots of commentary on the music for the Papal Mass today. Jay Anderson reports that Fr. Neuhaus said ""An Overweening and Preening Exercise in Multicultural Exhibitionism"
Whoever wrote Archbishop Wuerl’s welcome for the Papal Mass at Nationals Stadium should resume his career as a diversity consultant.
Ditto for the liturgist. The "multicultural" music (Raymond Arroyo’s description) for the offertory and the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer simply has no place in the Mass. We’ve heard so much about "active participation" by the laity. Explain to me how anyone in attendance can hum these … pop stylings, much less sing them. (Is that a bass guitar and saxophone I hear as Communion is distributed?) Appalling.
Raymond Arroyo, commenting on the odd choices for some of the music in the liturgy at Nationals Stadium, after listening to an absolutely awful conga version of an offertory hymn (including bongos and a kettle drum) just said that "the music in this liturgy, is out of character for papal masses of late. The music has a sort of amazon flavor to it!"
I went to an Easter Vigil Mass this year where the kettle drum was quite prominent in a five minute or longer Alleluia. I thought for a bit that someone was doing a drum solo. The singing of the alleluia itself was pretty hard to describe unless you imagine Tarzan doing this – and unhappily this is not hyperbole. Though to be fair the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel’s Messiah was extraordinarily well done so there was a bit of an oasis in a liturgical dessert.
Now I realize that those involved in the musical selection surely had good intentions and in their way thought they were honoring the Pope. It seems to me though that a musical selection of this type is kind of like dedicating a Automobile Combustion Engine Museum for Al Gore with a massive tree burning demonstration afterwards.
If those involved have a copy of Cardinal’s Ratzinger’s book Spirit of the Liturgy I bet it is in mint condition totally unstained by any fingerprints. The tone deafness of the selections serve as a antithesis to everything the Pope has written about the liturgy is it is hard to fathom how this was not taking into account. If Bishop Trautman was Pope than they would of hit it out of the ballpark. In contrast the sacred music used during Vespers last night was phenomenal and the beauty of it with the Pope present brought tears to my eyes.
Amy Welborn writes quite well about the problems of critiquing the Mass in general and on this occasion and about the obvious reverence and deportment of the people at the Mass. I just think that this was despite the music and not aided by it. Visiting various parishes I really try to shut down the :Mass Reviewer" in me because it is quite destructive to entering into the prayer of the Mass. So instead of being angry I usually try to shunt off criticism into humor instead and to laugh off some of the sillier displays of liturgical silliness. As Jimmy Akin says it is not God’s will that the Mass be a source of anger for us. So while I think critiques are somewhat necessary if we are ever going to truly start a reform of the reform, we can do it in a manner that will actually lead to reform and not just bitterness.
Update: Looking at Father Z’s post on the subject he says "It is almost as if the organizers of this Mass had never read a single thing of what Joseph Ratzinger has written about sacred music and liturgy." Fr. Z will be updating this post.
NLM focuses on the postive and has many wonderful images.
Jeffrey Tucker at NLM writes:
Indeed, when Marty Haugen’s Mass of Creation finally came on at the Sanctus, it was a moment of dignity—so much so that I want to take back all my negative comments back when I thought that this Mass setting was unsuitable for a Papal Mass. I don’t think anyone knew before this what the phrase "unsuitable" could really mean.
Join Fathers Ken Brighenti & John Trigilo on a pilgrimage to Fatima and Lourdes this year starting Nov 3.
Upcoming Humane Vitae conference to celebrate the 40th year anniversary of this document with great speakers such as Archbishop Raymond Burke, Ralph McInerny, and Janet Smith.
Jennifer at "Et Tu" has a wonderful post on Reason, wonder and Pope Benedict XVI