Paven

For noen få dager siden – 8. desember, høytiden for jomfru Marias uplettede unnfangelse – var tusenvis av menensker samlet ved de spanske trappene i Roma, for å overrekke den store Mariastatuen en blomsterkrans. Slik beskriver Catholic Herald det som skjedde:

In the late afternoon, the Pope made his traditional visit to a statue of Mary erected in the centre of Rome, near the Spanish Steps, to celebrate the official Church recognition that Mary was conceived without sin.

Thousands of Romans and tourists crowded around the statue where people had been laying flowers all day. Earlier on Rome firefighters with a truck and ladder hung a wreath of white flowers from the outstretched arms of the statue. …

… Although she was just a humble young woman from a small town, Mary’s total “yes” to God was “the most important ‘yes’ of history” and overturned Adam and Eve’s prideful “no”, which unleashed sin into the world, Pope Francis has said.

“With generosity and trust like Mary, may each of us say this personal ‘yes’ to God today,” Pope Francis prayed as he recited the Angelus prayer with visitors in St Peter’s Square on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Even when they do not say “no” to God, human beings can be experts in saying, “yes, but …” to God, the Pope said.

“To avoid saying ‘no’ outright to God, we say, ‘Sorry, but I can’t,’ ‘Not today, but maybe tomorrow,’ ‘Tomorrow I will be better, tomorrow I will pray, I’ll do good tomorrow,’” he said. But in responding that way, “we close the door to what is good and evil profits.”

Nevertheless, Pope Francis said, God keeps trying to reach out and save us. And through the “yes” of Mary, he became human, “exactly like us except for one thing, that ‘no,’ that sin. This is why he chose Mary, the only creature without sin, immaculate.”

Dette skriver John Allen i en grundig artikkel kalt No matter what anyone says, clarity on ‘Amoris’ remains elusive. Han åpner artikkelen slik:

For a document that was intended to settle the debate unleashed by two tumultuous Synods of Bishops called to discuss issues related to marriage and family life, Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’s treatise on the family, instead seems notable for how much it’s left unresolved and still-disputed.

For those who haven’t been following every twist and turn, Amoris Laetitia is a broad treatment by a tremendously pastoral pope, and it can’t be reduced to single contested point. Nevertheless, the most polarizing question during the synods was whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics could receive the sacrament of Communion under at least some circumstances, and everyone read the text with one eye to what Francis would say on that question.

In the document, Francis addressed the point only in a footnote – footnote 351 – which appeared to leave the door open for a “yes” answer, but not doing so in a way that explicitly changed either Church law or teaching. That cleared the path for bishops to interpret the implications of the pope’s ruling differently, with some taking a restrictive approach and others a more permissive line. …

Allen referer så til jesuitten Fr Antonio Spadaro som «insists that some of the attacks directed at the pope’s document reflect a “bad spirit,” and that anyone who’s sincere doesn’t need any more clarification on the Communion debate than has already been given», og til troskongregasjonens leder Kardinal Müller, som bl.a. sier at han «leaves open the possibility that Francis might commission the doctrinal congregation to create an “ad-hoc commission” to resolve the dispute. That, to be clear, is not the language of someone who believes that Amoris, and the responses to it to date, have resolved every possible doubt.»

John Allen avslutter denne artikkelen med disse to konklusjonene:

First, despite the insistence of papal allies that everything is perfectly clear about what the deal is with regard to access to Communion, there’s an important segment of the Church that just doesn’t believe that’s true. Whether they’re a minority or a majority doesn’t matter for the moment – they can’t simply be dismissed, because they include senior figures in the hierarchy.

By the way, Spadaro’s willingness to engage in an exchange with Ivereigh represents something that hadn’t been done so far, which is to respond directly to the four cardinals. In itself, that’s arguably an acknowledgment there are questions that still need to be answered.

Second, unless and until Pope Francis delivers a binding magisterial response, the forecast is for local control. We’ve already seen various bishops deliver clearly divergent responses about what the implications of Amoris will be in their dioceses, and there’s nothing to suggest that won’t continue in the absence of a clear and indisputable papal declaration.

Depending on one’s point of view, that could either be styled as a long-overdue step towards the “healthy decentralization” in Catholicism to which Francis has often referred, or as doctrinal chaos, but in any event, it clearly seems to be where we are.

En kirkerettsekspert, Ed Condon, skriver i Catholic Herald en artikkel som starter (friskt) slik:

The furore caused by Misericordia et Misera is a damning indictment of those surrounding the Pope. Pope Francis is not an expert in canon law. I do not think His Holiness would mind me putting it that bluntly. In fact I rather suspect that, given his personal style, he would happily agree. It is far from heresy to point out that a pope might not be a born canonical expert, anymore than it would be unreasonable to suggest that Donald Trump has no particular natural expertise in American constitutional law. …

Videre skriver han at paven nå har gitt alle prester noe de allerede har, nemlig myndighet til å tilgi synden provosert abort. Men med denne alvorlige synden følger også en ekstra konsekvens, nemlig automatisk ekskommunikasjon, og det er egentlig denne paven nå gir alle prester myndighet til å ta bort. Slik skriver han:

… How the faculty to hear confessions and forgive sins works, in canon law, is like this: a priest gets the “power” to forgive sins through his ordination, but to validly use this power he needs the faculty to exercise it (c. 966 §1). He gets this faculty from the law itself in some circumstances, like in danger of death for the penitent (c. 976), but the normal process is for him to be given the faculty by his bishop for use in the diocese (c. 969 §1). Once he has the faculty from his bishop to hear confessions and forgive sins in his diocese, the law then extends that faculty to apply anywhere in the world (c. 967 §2). In short: if a priest has the faculty to hear confessions and absolve any sins, he can absolve all sins, and if he has the faculty to do this somewhere he can do it anywhere.

This means that the actual effect of the Pope’s concession of the “faculty” to absolve the “sin” of abortion to all priests is to grant them a faculty which 99 per cent of them already have. The one-percenters who don’t have the faculty are those who have not already been given it by their bishop, or have had it revoked; those suspended from ministry, for example. Now it is pretty obvious that this is not what the Pope meant, even if it is what he technically said. So what did he mean to say?

What was supposed to be announced, and what would have been announced had his curial assistants done their job, was the concession of the “faculty” to “remit the censure” for the “delict/crime” of abortion.

While every canonical crime is a sin, not every sin is also a canonical crime, though some of the most serious are. Abortion is, for sure, a grave sin. It is also a delict (c. 1398) which carries the penalty of excommunication. To be clear: there is no such thing as a “reserved sin”, but there are “reserved crimes”. A reserved crime is one where only a person with particular authority can lift the penalty. In the case of abortion, only the ordinary of the territory (the diocesan bishop, for all intents and purposes) can lift the censure, in this case of excommunication. It is common practice for some bishops to give their priests this faculty by delegation, along with the faculty to hear confessions. But, since the faculty to lift the penalty is not extended by the law, as it is with absolving the sin, to cover everywhere, but is limited to the territory of the ordinary, the power to lift the censure does not travel with the priest, even if he has it at home. …

… What the Pope is actually doing, and I hope this will be clarified in the not too distant future, is giving all priests the faculty to lift the excommunication, always and everywhere and on their own. He did this first for the the Year of Mercy and is now making it permanent.

The Pope has in no way downgraded or mitigated the severity of the sin of abortion, and effectively ending the reservation of the delict is hardly the disciplinary earthquake some people are assuming it is.

Ved starten av Barhjertighetsåret hadde pave Frans gitt alle prester i SSPX myndighet til å tilgi synder i skriftemålet (noe de ikke hadde hatt på lang tid), og til alle katolske prester å tilgi synden provosert abort (som kirkeretten setter begrensninger for). I et brev som ble kunngjort i dag – MISERICORDIA ET MISERA – har han forlenget begge disse tillatelsene (på ubestemt tid). Slik kan vi lese:

12. Given this need, lest any obstacle arise between the request for reconciliation and God’s forgiveness, I henceforth grant to all priests, in virtue of their ministry, the faculty to absolve those who have committed the sin of procured abortion. The provision I had made in this regard, limited to the duration of the Extraordinary Holy Year, is hereby extended, notwithstanding anything to the contrary. I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life. In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father. May every priest, therefore, be a guide, support and comfort to penitents on this journey of special reconciliation.

For the Jubilee Year I had also granted that those faithful who, for various reasons, attend churches officiated by the priests of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, can validly and licitly receive the sacramental absolution of their sins. For the pastoral benefit of these faithful, and trusting in the good will of their priests to strive with God’s help for the recovery of full communion in the Catholic Church, I have personally decided to extend this faculty beyond the Jubilee Year, until further provisions are made, lest anyone ever be deprived of the sacramental sign of reconciliation through the Church’s pardon.

Avisa Dagen skrev i dag om dette, med en nokså uklar overskrift: «Paven vil gi syndsforlatelse til kvinner som har tatt abort».

Jeg tillot meg da skrive følgende kommentar til innlegget:

Man har (selvsagt) alltid kunnet motta tilgivelse for provosert abort i Den katolske kirke, men det har vært viss begrensninger på hvilke prester som har fått fullmakt til å gi slik tilgivelse – biskopene kan gi en slik fullmakt til noen eller alle prester. Nå har paven bestemt at tillatelsen han ga til alle prester om å gi slik tilgivelse for ett år siden, skal gjelde videre på ubestemt tid.

John Allen skriver om denne talen i det berømte universitet i Regensburg i Tyskland, at: «In the opening section of the speech, Benedict cited a 14th century dialogue between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian, in which the emperor said provocatively: “Show me just what Mohammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”»

Det ble en hel del bråk etter den talen, men Allen sier at man nok skylder pave Benedikt en unnskyldning, for: «Ten years later, there’s a mounting sense that perhaps the world owes Benedict an apology. The rise of the Islamic State, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and other extremist Islamic movements, and the continual waves of terror and barbarism they generate, has created a sense that perhaps it wasn’t Benedict who stumbled by pointing out that Islam has a problem – perhaps it’s Muslims who haven’t responded to the problem adequately.»

Men aller viktigst, skriver John Allen: «Lost in the noise, however, is the central thing to know about the Regensburg speech, to wit: It’s not really about Islam at all.» Og han fortsetter:

… In the 4,500-word address, Benedict devoted barely three paragraphs to the remark quoted above from Manuel II Paeologus, which he used to set up his reflections on the topic, which was “Faith, Reason and the University.” He was trying to make a point about the importance of religion never parting company with reason, and could just as easily have taken his cautionary tale from Hinduism, Buddhism, or, for that matter, Christianity.

Benedict’s real target in the speech is the West, identifying two worrying trends he saw (and no doubt still sees) in Western thought – one inside the Christian church, and the other in the broader culture.

He devoted a significant chunk of the Regensburg speech to tracing the history of efforts at “dehellenization,” meaning to suggest that the use of ancient Greek concepts of reason in the early Church was really just an historical accident, and there’s nothing essential about them to the Christian faith.

Benedict insists that salvation history doesn’t work that way, and that it was providential that the Biblical faith and Greek thought intersected. It marked a fundamental choice by Christianity, he believes, to recognize that reason is intrinsic to God’s nature, and that to act irrationally is therefore to break with God’s will.

Benedict was even more critical of trends in Western culture to regard only the so-called “hard sciences” as truly rational, meaning objective, and to relegate everything else – including morality – to the realm of personal preference and choice.

That’s a disaster, he argued, because it leaves no basis for moral consensus on anything, and thus makes building a real community impossible. If there’s no objective good, then what’s to stop the powerful from abusing the weak, what’s to stop a tyrannical majority from oppressing a minority, and on and on? …

Intervjuboka med pave emeritus Benedikt kan bestilles (på engelsk) på Amazon, men er ikke klar før om to måneder. Benedikt er blitt ganske skrøpelig, har hatt pacemaker siden 1997, må bruke gåstol når han beveger seg, og har mistet synet på venstre øye. Catholic Herald skriver om ham og den nyutgitte boka:

… In a book-length interview with the German author Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict said that when he resigned he had the “peace of someone who had overcome difficulty” and “could tranquilly pass the helm to the one who came next.”

The new book, Last Testament, will be released in English by Bloomsbury in November. The German and Italian editions were set for release on September 9, but some excerpts were published September 8 by the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Pope Benedict insisted once again that he was not pressured by anyone or any event to resign and he did not feel he was running away from any problem.

“My weak point perhaps is a lack of resolve in governing and making decisions,” he said. “Here, in reality, I am more a professor, one who reflects and meditates on spiritual questions. Practical governance was not my forte and this certainly was a weakness.”

Pope Francis, on the other hand, “is a man of practical reform”, the retired pope said. His personality and experience as a Jesuit provincial and archbishop have enabled him to take practical organisational steps.

The retired pope, who is 89, said he had no inkling that then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio would be elected his successor; “no one expected him.”

“When I first heard his name, I was unsure,” he said. “But when I saw how he spoke with God and with people, I truly was content. And happy.” …

John Allen skriver om den nye boka om pave Benedikt, som gis ut i dag, bl.a.:

Pope Francis is celebrated for his humility, and rightly so. This is, after all the pontiff who began his reign by kneeling and asking the crowd in St. Peter’s Square to pray for him before he delivered a formal blessing, who returned to a Rome residence to pay his own bill and pack his own bag, and who declined to live in the sumptuous papal apartments.

However, there’s also a sense in which Pope Francis is a strong personality, comfortable in command, and possessing a virtually unwavering confidence in the correctness of his own judgments. That’s far from arrogance, of course, but for those who watch him in action, there’s never any doubt about who’s in charge.

If you want a pope filled with a sense of his own limitations and imperfections – not haunted by them, but also remarkably open in acknowledging why they may have made him unsuited to lead, at least for very long – then the man you’re really looking for is Benedict XVI.

We got another reminder of the point on Thursday, with the release of excerpts from a new interview book with Benedict XVI by German journalist Peter Seewald, with whom he’s collaborated several times in the past. Titled Final Conversations, portions of the book were published Thursday in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera and German weekly Die Zeit and daily Bild.

While insisting that he was not pressured by anyone to resign the papacy in February 2013, and that it was his own free decision, Benedict concedes that the demands of running a complex religious multi-national occasionally exceeded what he perceived, anyway, as his capacities.

“My weak point perhaps is a lack of resolve in governing and making decisions,” he said. “Here, in reality, I am more a professor, one who reflects and meditates on spiritual questions. Practical governance was not my forte, and this certainly was a weakness.” ….

Jeg leste nettopp på CRUX om en bok om pave Benedikt som snart kommer ut (på italiensk), der han sier at han rett og slett var for skrøpelig til å fortsette som pave. Der står det bl.a.:

Ever since February 28, 2013, when emeritus Pope Benedict XVI unexpectedly, and in Latin, announced his resignation, theories regarding why became too numerous to count: scandals over leaked confidential documents, his health, an alleged “gay lobby” in the Vatican, and so on.

Benedict said at the time he was stepping down because he was 86 and lacked the strength to continue with his mission of leading an institution present in every corner of the world, with over 1.2 billion members.

In a recent interview he expanded on that explanation, adding more details. Among other things, he said that his March 2012 trip to Mexico and Cuba had taken such a toll that he knew he’d be incapable of making another grueling international trip. He says he agreed with his doctor it’d be better if he didn’t make such a demanding outing.

He had one looming: A July 2013 trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to lead millions of youth from around the world in a week-long festival known as World Youth Day in July 2013. Hence he saw it as his “duty” to resign from the papacy, sooner rather than later after his return from Mexico and Cuba.

That snippet was shared by the emeritus pope himself in an interview with Italian Elio Guerrero, author of the upcoming book “Servant of God and Humanity: The biography of Benedict XVI.” It’ll be released in Italian on August 30, and no date for an English publication has yet been announced.
The book includes not only a preface by Pope Francis, but also an interview Guerrero had with Benedict. …..

John Allen skriver om pave Frans’ møte de de polske biskopene for noen dager siden, og sier at pave Frans der fremhevet «vicinanza» (nærhet) heller enn konfrontasjon for å overvinne sekulariseringen:

On Tuesday the Vatican released the transcript of a July 27 question-and-answer session Pope Francis held with the bishops of Poland, in which he seemed to suggest that the right way to resist secularism isn’t to prevail in intellectual arguments, but to “out-love” the opponents of the faith. … There are several fascinating nuggets, including:

– Francis’ reflection on what he sees as a contemporary form of Gnosticism that seeks to separate the individual from the community, especially the Church.

– His fiery rejection of “ideological colonization,” especially the promotion among children of the theory that people are free to choose their own gender.

– His insistence that the roots of the contemporary refugee crisis are in wars driven by financial interests.

– The pontiff’s ringing defense of the parish as the basis of ecclesiastical life, that must not be “thrown out the window.”

– Francis’ call to treasure the elderly, the “grandpas and grandmas” of society, as the “memory of a people.”

At the big-picture level, however, perhaps what’s most fascinating is the alternative way of reading the “progressive” social and ecclesial agenda that’s been associated with Francis since the beginning of his papacy.

Clearly, Francis has shifted the focus away from the “wars of culture” in the West and open confrontation with secularism, towards a more pastoral and social action-oriented approach. In the eyes of some observers – including, it has to be said, some senior Churchmen – that’s risked confusion about Catholic doctrine and the traditional spiritual pillars of the faith, opening the door to ever-greater capitulation to secularism.

What becomes clear listening to Francis speak to the Polish bishops, however, is that seen through his eyes, the aim isn’t giving in to secularization – it’s staging the battle on a different field, away from abstract debates towards hands-on pastoral proximity – what Francis likes to call vicinanza, “closeness” – especially to people in greatest difficulty.

Though he doesn’t quite put it like this, the idea seems to be that the right way to resist secularism and to win souls isn’t to prevail in intellectual arguments, but to “out-love” the opponents of the faith and thereby draw people to the Church.

There are several places in the text where, if one hadn’t paid careful attention to the header, it would be tempting to think this was actually a transcript of Pope Benedict XVI. That’s especially true of Francis’ diagnosis of Gnosticism and Pelagianism as the most worrying contemporary heresies, and his insistence that neither God can be found without Christ nor Christ without the Church. …..

Viewed from his hometown of Wadowice, Poland, Pope John Paul II could be styled as the last and greatest expression of the Habsburg spirit, meaning a a broadly tolerant, open and cosmopolitan view of the world that saw national pride and loyalty not as a threat of imperial cohesion but one of its sources.

John Allen skriver slik om pave Johannes Paul og verdensungdomsdagen:

From the beginning, Catholicism in principle has been a universal, global faith, addressed to “the nations” in every corner of the earth. In many ways, however, it was John Paul II who made the Church truly global in practice, first by being the first non-Italian pope in 500 years, second through his staggering commitment to foreign travel – 104 foreign trips covering three-quarters of a million miles, more than three times the distance from the earth to the moon – and third, through his foundation of World Youth Day.

Because of John Paul, Catholics tend to think in more global terms about their Church, realizing that the experiences and priorities of believers in, say, Chicago and London, are not always those of Catholics in Jakarta, or Mumbai, or Riyadh.
Anyone who watched John Paul II during the eight WYD celebrations over which he presided, including Argentina, Poland, the United States, the Philippines, Spain, France, Canada and Italy, was always struck by the delight he took in seeing young people waving the flags of their countries and projecting pride in their cultures. Those instincts resonated with John Paul, because he took such fierce pride in his own Polish roots. … …

I dag er det 65 år siden den unge Joseph Ratzingers presteordinasjon. I en samling i går i Vatikanet snakket han offentlig for andre gang på over tre år, se under.

Catholic News Agency skriver om dette:

On Tuesday, Benedict XVI gave his second public speech since his final day as Pope, expressing gratitude for a lengthy priesthood and for Pope Francis’ “goodness,” which he said moves him deeply.

Speaking to Pope Francis and members of the College of Cardinals gathered inside the Vatican’s small Clementine Hall for the 65th anniversary of his priestly ordination, Benedict said the Greek word “Efkaristomen” (let us give thanks), expresses “all that there is to say” for the occasion.

“Thank you, thank you everyone! Thank you Holy Father – your goodness, from the first day of your election, every day of my life here moves me interiorly, brings me inwardly more than the Vatican Gardens.”

“Your goodness is a place in which I feel protected,” he said, and voiced his hope that Francis would be able to “move forward with all of us on this path of Divine Mercy, showing Jesus’ path to God.”

Since his resignation from the papacy in 2013, Benedict XVI has made only a handful of public appearances, speaking only at his reception of an honorary doctorate from the University of Krakow last year in Castel Gandolfo. …

Father Z skriver også om dette.