Paven

Som vanlig snakket pave Benedikt om sin siste reise på første onsdagsaudiens etter at var tilbake i Roma, og om besøket i Storbritannia sa han følgende:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today I would like to speak about my apostolic journey to the United Kingdom, which God enabled me to carry out over the past few days. It was an official visit and, at the same time, a pilgrimage to the heart of the history and the present of a people rich in culture and faith, as the British are. It was a historic event, which marked a new important phase in the long and complex history of relations between those peoples and the Holy See.

The main objective of the visit was to beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, one of the greatest Englishmen of recent times, an outstanding theologian and man of the Church. In fact, the beatification ceremony represented the climax of my apostolic journey, the theme of which was inspired in the motto of Blessed Newman’s cardinal insignia: «Heart Speaks Unto Heart.» And in the four intense and very beautiful days spent in that noble land, I had the great joy of speaking to the heart of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, and they spoke to mine, especially with their presence and the testimony of their faith. I was able to see how the Christian heritage is still strong and also active in all strata of social life. …

Les resten her.

Cardinal John Henry Newman er nå offisielt erklært salig, og i dagens saligkåringsmesse sa pave Benedikt bl.a.:

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». 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. …

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. … …

Les hele prekenen her.

På flyet på vei til Edinburgh i går fikk pave Benedikt også et spørsmål om kardinal Newman, som han svarte på svært klart og utfyllende – og viste oss hvordan Newman er en viktig person for vår tid:

Q. – Your Holiness, the figure of Cardinal Newman is obviously very significant: you have made an acception 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?

A. – 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 sceptical 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.

Her kan man lese alt som ble sagt uden pressekonferansen på flyet.

Fr. Finigan skriver begeistret om den første dagen av pave Benedikts besøk:

At the end of a long day, it is a great pleasure to look back over the glorious success of the first stage of the visit of the Holy Father to Britain. I was premature in thinking that the negative coverage would cease last night. It continued well on into the morning but the tide has now turned. 125,000 Scots turned out to cheer and wave flags as the Holy Father drove along Princes Street in Edinburgh. (In the interests of balance, I should note that there were about 60 protesters.) There were another 70,000 at the Mass at Bellahouston Park, near Glasgow. They had to get there early so must be counted in addition to those lining the streets of Edinburgh. ….

A Vatican insider to whom I spoke last week was nervous about the visit (and particularly about the lack of enthusiasm of some Catholics who should know better.) He said to me that the first day would be crucial. I agree with him – and thankfully the first day has been a roaring success.

I did make some negative comments about some aspects of the liturgy at Bellahouston Park. These need to be kept in perspective. Whilst it is right to push for a better celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, we should not lose sight of the tremendous success of today: and you are in for a rare liturgical treat at the Papal Mass at Westminster on Saturday morning. The arrangements for that are superb and will stand as a model for the celebration of the usus recentior. ….

Han skriver også om at den tyske paven (som hadde blitt tvangsinnmeldt i Hitler Jugens i ungdommen, og sendt ut som soldat mot slutten av krigen) som takker Storbritannia for å ha stått imot nazismen:

Earlier today, we witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a German who had been dragooned into the Hitler Youth and then conscripted into the army, visit Britain as Pope, and praise our country for standing up to Nazism.

He also spoke of how atheist extremists give us sobering lessons and how the exclusion of God from public life adversely affects how we view the human person. Yes, the Pope is indeed a Catholic. Here is the relevant text:

«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 20th 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).»

Slik skriver Aftenposten om pave Benedikts første dag i Storbritannia:

Kampen mot det han tidligere på dagen kalte en «aggressiv verdslighet» ser ut til å bli et viktig tema under pavens fire dager lange besøk i Storbritannia.

Det er mange fristelser som kommer i deres vei hver dag: narkotika, penger, sex, pornografi, alkohol, som verden sier vil gi dere lykke, men som er ødeleggende og splittende, sa paven under messen i Bellahouston Park i Glasgow. Han advarte også mot det han mener er en tendens til å utelukke religiøs tro fra den offentlige debatten.

Ifølge nyhetsbyrået DPA var det 65.000 mennesker til stede. ….

Dronning Elizabeth og hennes mann, hertugen av Edinburgh, var på plass for å hilse paven velkommen da han kom ut av Alitalia-flyet i Edinburgh.

Det er andre gang siden Henrik VIII brøt med pavekirken og dannet den anglikanske kirke i 1534 at en katolsk pave besøker Storbritannia. Benedikts forgjenger Johannes Paul var på besøk i 1982. Det var imidlertid ikke et statsbesøk, men i regi av Kirken. Denne gangen brukes det millioner av britiske skattepenger på besøket.

Paven må trå en fin balanse i England og Skottland etter at han i fjor tilbød å gjøre det lettere for anglikanere å konvertere, selv om de er uenige i kirkens syn på kvinnelige og homofile prester. …

Jeg leser mye om det, men har ikke tenkt å skrive så mye selv om pave Benedikts besøk i Skottland og England. Les gjerne hva Luke Coppen skriver, og katolsk.no har også sin egen dekning av besøket.

Bildet over er tatt fra BBC, som også skriver om besøket bl.a.:

Papal visit: Pope to begin historic UK trip
The first state visit by a Pope to the UK gets under way later when Benedict XVI flies into Edinburgh. He will meet the Queen at Holyrood House and parade through the city before an open-air Mass in Glasgow. Tens of thousands of people are set to line the streets to greet him, although some protests are also planned.

… The visit is the first to the UK by a Pontiff since John Paul II in 1982. Vatican officials say Pope Benedict will highlight the importance of the role of faith for everyone in contemporary Britain, not just Catholics and Anglicans.

En britisk journalist, Mark Dowd , brukte flere hundre timer på å foreberede et program om pave Benedikt, nå før besøket i England og Skottland. I prosessen har han fått et nytt syn på paven (lese hele artikkelen her):

The making of this film has been something of a voyage of discovery for me. I can’t be the only Catholic in the world who had major apprehensions on April 19 2005 as the conclave made its decisive choice to elect the first German pope since the 11th century (I don’t count Adrian VI, born in Utrecht in 1459, part of the Holy Roman Empire). I was worried about whether the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith might be just a little too polarising. I am no expert of conclave arithmetic, but my hunch was that he simply had too many doubters inside the College of Cardinals to get the required votes. Wrong. And I have been wrong about him, too. It is not that he has changed radically since taking up the papacy; it is simply that when you have to make a one-hour programme on one of the most clever and gifted people on the planet you have to look behind the headlines and the angry rants on the blogosphere. In short, you have to do justice to the man as best as you can.

Something similar is going on with Pope Benedict at the moment as has been occurring with John Henry Newman in recent months. Recognising the brilliant intellectual acumen of an individual often leads to wings, sections of the Church, staking their claim. They want to possess them as “their own”. I can understand why. But there are occasionally rare moments when these drives towards colonising the output of a gifted mind simply fail on account of the sheer dynamism and multi-facetedness of the individual concerned. So Pope Benedict’s uncompromising language on homosexuality, his disciplining of liberation theologians and 2007 Motu Proprio on the Old Rite of the Roman liturgy all have conservatives ticking their boxes and approving. But how then to deal with some rather contradictory evidence, not least of all his championing of workers’ rights in Caritas in Veritate and his uncompromising critique of neo-liberal economics?:

“I would like to remind everyone, especially everyone engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity” …

But the real delight for me has been in engaging with the writings of this 83-year-old man. The encyclicals have been given deserved space and attention. Yet you have to go back to 1968 for his classic, Introduction to Christianity, a work in which it becomes abundantly clear that, for this gentle and determined Bavarian, that man does not create his own truth through effort and endeavour, but, as he writes: “To believe as a Christian means in fact entrusting oneself to the meaning that upholds me and the world, taking it as the firm ground on which I can stand fearlessly… to believe as a Christian means understanding our existence as a response to the word, the logos, that upholds and maintains all things.” ….

… The predictions of an inflexible Vicar of Rome, “God’s Rottweiler”, in 2005 have been misplaced. Many of us got it wrong and I am happy to say so unambiguously. ….

Pave Benedikt kommer til England og Skottland i midten av september, og det har vært mye skriverier om besøket de siste månedene. Katolsk.no har en egen side med informasjon, Damian Thompson har vært svært kritisk til planlegginga, videoen over (fra Rome Reports) er svært positiv, det fins et eget nettsted for besøket, og innlegget under lurer på om katolikker virkelig vil slutte opp om besøket:

Francis Campbell, the British Ambassador to the Holy See, spoke to the US Catholic News Service this week about the Pope’s trip. Talking about hostility in the media, he mentioned that he preferred antagonism to indifference, “because it means you’re relevant”.

The media, certainly, are not indifferent to the Pope’s trip. But are Catholics? Rumours suggest that the Mass at Cofton Park and the vigil in Hyde Park are actually undersubscribed, and that the Church is struggling to fill the space.

Some say a lack of interest was spread by the papal visit organisers when they announced that not everyone could see the Pope and that most people would have to watch him on television. Others argue that Pope Benedict XVI is not as popular among English Catholics as John Paul II was.

Still others add that Cardinal Newman does not have a broad appeal among Catholics; he is known as a brilliant writer, but few people have read his books.

On the other hand, when Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Britain, his goodness and gentleness will be evident for all to see. Many Catholics love Pope Benedict, and their voice certainly has not been heard in the run-up to his visit. ….

Professor Ratzingers ca 40 tidligere doktorgradsstudenter samles hvert år sammen med sin tidligere professor (nå pave) for å samtale om et viktig tema. I år valgte pave Benedikt å invitere den nye lederen av vatikanets enhetsråd, erkebiskop Kurt Koch, til å forelese om «Vatican II Between Tradition and Innovation» og om «Sacrosanctum concilium and the reform of the liturgy.»

Les mer om dette hos zenit.org.

I går var det siste onsdagsaudiens på Petersplassen (rettere sagt; i Paul VIs auditorium i Vatikanet) før pave Benedikts sommeropphold på Castel Gandolfo.

Fra RomeReports:

Benedict XVI dedicated his general audience to the Franciscan theologian Blessed John Duns Scotus. Much of his work attempts to reconcile classical philosophy with medieval Christianity. The pope pointed to three ideas for which Duns Scotus is best known: That the Incarnation was part of God’s original plan of creation; that Mary’s preservation from original sin was granted in view of Jesus’ redemptive passion and death; and for his ideas on human freedom and its relationship with will and intellect.