Pope Benedict Rattles the Italian Bishops Concerning the Liturgy

“The Pope to the Italian Bishops”

ROME, November 12, 2010 – The last two popes, on numerous occasions, have pointed to the Italian Church and its episcopate as a “model” for other nations.

There is one field, however, in which the Italian Church does not shine. It is that of the liturgy.

This was made clear by the severe lesson that Benedict XVI gave to the Italian bishops gathered in Assisi for their general assembly from November 8-11, an assembly centered on an examination of the new translation of the Roman

Missal.

In the message that he addressed to the bishops on the eve of the assembly, pope Joseph Ratzinger did not limit himself to greetings and good wishes. He was the one to dictate the criteria of a “true” liturgical reform.

“Every true reformer,” he wrote, “is obedient to the faith: he does not act in an arbitrary manner, he does not appropriate any discretion over the rite; he is not the owner, but the custodian of the treasury instituted by the Lord

and entrusted to us. The whole Church is present in every liturgy: adhering to its form is a condition of authenticity for what is celebrated.”

The pope gave as an example of genuine liturgical reform the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which put into the hands of the priests the “Breviary” with the liturgy of the hours, and reinforced the belief in the real presence of Christ

in the Eucharistic bread and wine.

Those were the times of Saint Francis of Assisi. And Benedict XVI dedicated a good part of his message to illustrating for the Italian bishops the spirit with which that great saint obeyed that liturgical reform, and made his friars obey it.

Saint Francis, as is known, is one of the most popular and universally admired saints. He is a model also for those Catholics who want a Church that is more spiritual and “prophetic,” instead of institutional and ritual. In the liturgical

field, they are pushing for more creativity and freedom.

But Benedict XVI showed, in the message, that the real Saint Francis was of a completely different bent. He was profoundly convinced that Christian worship should correspond to the “rule of faith” that has been received, and in this

way give form to the Church. The priests, first of all, must base their holiness of life on the “holy things” of the liturgy.

*

Curiously, the Italian bishops to whom the pope addressed this lesson had gathered this time in none other than Assisi, the city of  St. Francis.

And the bishop of Assisi is Domenico Sorrentino, an expert on the liturgy, but not of an approach like that of Ratzinger.

In 2003, Archbishop Sorrentino was appointed secretary of the Vatican congregation for divine worship. But he lasted only two years. Shortly after he became pope, Ratzinger transferred him to Assisi, and replaced him with someone extremely faithful to him in liturgical matters, Malcolm Ranjith of Sri Lanka, today archbishop of Colombo and soon to be named a cardinal.

Before 2003, for five years, the secretary of the congregation for divine worship had been another Italian expert on the liturgy, Francesco Pio Tamburrino, a Benedictine monk. But his stance was also contrary to that of the cardinal prefect of the congregation at the time, the “Ratzingerian” Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez. And in fact, he was also removed and transferred to a diocese, that of Foggia.

Sorrentino and Tamburrino are two prominent figures of the commission for the liturgy of the Italian episcopal conference. But also on this commission, until a short time ago, was Luca Brandolini, bishop of Sora, who distinguished himself by proclaiming a sort of protest “bereavement” when in 2007 Benedict XVI issued the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum,” which liberalized the use of the ancient rite of the Mass.

In electing the members of the commission for the liturgy, the Italian bishops have always given preference to their colleagues of this tendency, whose inspiration comes from the architects of the liturgical reform following Vatican

Council II, in particular Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro and the main conceptualizer and executor of that reform, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini.

The negative results of that reform are what Benedict XVI is working against. But Paul VI had already seen its abuses, and was so pained by them that in 1975 he removed Bugnini and sent him into exile in Iran as the apostolic nuncio

there.

But the sentiment of the majority of the Italian bishops and clergy continues to be influenced by the “Bugnini line.” The excesses seen in other European Churches are rare in Italy, but the predominant style of celebration is

more “assembly-focused” than “turned toward the Lord,” as pope Ratzinger wants it to be.

The Italian episcopal conference is a special case, compared with all the others. It has a direct connection to the bishop of Rome. And in fact, its president is not elected, but appointed by the pope.

Introducing the work of the episcopal conference in Assisi on November 8, the current president, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, cited a comment by Ratzinger on the fact that Vatican Council II dedicated its first session precisely to the

liturgy:

“By starting with the subject of the liturgy, it unequivocally put in the spotlight the primacy of God, the absolute priority of the topic ‘God’. Before everything, God: this is what starting with the liturgy says. Wherever attention to God is not the deciding factor, everything else loses its orientation.”

But in order to understand more deeply the meaning of the “reform of the reform” desired by pope Ratzinger, the following is what he wrote to the Italian bishops about the liturgy.

____________________

“EVERY TRUE REFORMER IS OBEDIENT TO THE FAITH”

From Benedict XVI’s message to the Italian bishops gathered for their general assembly

[…] 1. In these days you have gathered in Assisi, the city in which “a sun was born to the world” (Dante, Paradiso, Canto XI), proclaimed patron of Italy by venerable Pius XII: Saint Francis, who preserves intact his freshness and his

relevance – the saints never fade away! – due to his being conformed totally to Christ, of whom he was a living icon.

Like our own, the time in which Saint Francis lived was also marked by profound cultural transformations, fostered by the birth of the universities, by the rise of the townships and by the spread of new religious experiences.

Precisely in that season, thanks to the work of Pope Innocence III – the same from whom the Poverello of Assisi obtained his first canonical recognition – the Church undertook a profound liturgical reform.

Its highest expression is the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which numbers among its fruits the “Breviary.” This book of prayer incorporated the richness of the theological reflection and prayer experience of the previous millennium. By

adopting it, Saint Francis and his friars made their own the liturgical prayer of the supreme pontiff: in this way, the saint assiduously listened to and meditated on the Word of God, to the point of making it his own and then transposing it into the prayers he authored, and into all of his writings in general.

The Fourth Lateran Council itself, devoting particular attention to the sacrament of the altar, inserted into the profession of faith the term “transubstantiation,” to affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic sacrifice: “His body and his blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar, under the species of the bread and wine,

because the bread is transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power” (DS, 802).

From attending holy Mass and receiving holy communion with devotion arose the evangelical life of Saint Francis and his vocation to retrace the steps of Christ Crucified: “The Lord,” we read in the Testament of 1226, “gave me such

faith in churches that I would simply pray and say: We adore you, Lord Jesus, in all of your churches in the whole world, and we bless you, because with your holy cross you have redeemed the world” (Fonti Francescane, no. 111).

This experience also gave rise to the great deference that he showed for priests, and his orders to the friars to respect them always and no matter what, “because I see nothing bodily of the Most High Son of God in this world, if not his

Most Holy Body and Blood that they alone consecrate, and they alone administer at the altars” (Fonti Francescane, no. 113).

Before such a gift, dear brothers, what responsibility of life follows for each one of us! “Be mindful of your dignity, brother priests,” Francis moreover urged, “and be holy, because he is holy!” (Letter to the General Chapter and to all

of the friars, in Fonti Francescane, no. 220). Yes, the holiness of the Eucharist demands that one celebrate and adore this mystery mindful of its greatness, importance, and efficacy for Christian life, but it also demands purity,

consistency, and holiness of life from each one of us, in order to be living witnesses of Christ’s one sacrifice of love.

The saint of Assisi never stopped contemplating how “the Lord of the universe, God and Son of God, is so humble as to conceal himself, for our salvation, in the paltry appearance of bread” (ibid, no 221), and vehemently asked his

friars: “I beg you, more than if I were doing it for myself, that you humbly beseech the priests that they venerate above all things the Most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the holy names and the words written of him

that consecrate the body” (Letter to all the Custodians, in Fonti Francescane, no. 241).

The authentic believer, in every time, experiences in the liturgy the presence, the primacy, and the work of God. It is “veritatis splendor” (Sacramentum Caritatis, 35), nuptial event, foretaste of the new and definitive city and

participation in it; it is the bond between creation and redemption, heaven open to the earth of men, passage from the world to God; it is Pascha, in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ; it is the soul of the Christian life, call to follow, reconciliation that moves to fraternal charity.

Dear brothers in the episcopate, your coming together places at the center of the work of the assembly an examination of the Italian translation of the third standard edition of the Roman Missal. The correspondence of the prayer of the Church (lex orandi) and the rule of faith (lex credendi) shapes the thought and sentiment of the Christian community, giving form to the Church, the body of Christ and temple of the Spirit. Human expression can never stand completely outside of its time, even when, as in the case of the liturgy, it constitutes a window that opens to what is beyond time. Giving expression to a perennially valid reality therefore demands a wise balancing of continuity and newness, of tradition and revitalization.

The Missal itself takes its place within this process. Every true reformer, in fact, is obedient to the faith: he does not act in an arbitrary manner, he does not appropriate any discretion over the rite; he is not the owner, but the custodian

of the treasury instituted by the Lord and entrusted to us. The whole Church is present in every liturgy: adhering to its form is a condition of authenticity for what is celebrated. […]

From the Vatican, November 4, 2010

William Oddie on the Legionaries of Christ — http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2010/11/05/the-superiors-of-the-legion-of-christ-are-opposing-change-%E2%80%93-why-not-sack-the-lot/

The superiors of the Legion of Christ are opposing change – why not sack the lot?

They are supposed to believe in obedience to the pope: then let them obey

By William Oddie on Friday, 5 November 2010

Legionaries of Christ seminarians lead the recessional during a Mass in Rome (Photo: CNS) 

What is the point, after everything that has happened, of the continued existence of the Legion of Christ? I just can’t get a handle on it: perhaps my readers can explain to me what the great secret is.

The Legion has been supported wholeheartedly by nearly every pope back to Pius XII (though I can’t find evidence of support from John XXIII), and especially by Pope John Paul II. According to Wikipedia, the first paragraph of whose extensive article on the Legion (as far as I can see, objectively written, but what do I know?) sums up the problem, here is an enormously successful, and formerly thriving, institution within the Catholic Church which is now in crisis, for quite astonishing reasons:

“The Legion of Christ is a Roman Catholic congregation established in 1941 within the Catholic Church in Mexico and directed until 2004 by disgraced Fr Marcial Maciel. It enjoyed the favour of Pope John Paul II. It has priests working in 22 countries, and had 800 priests and over 2,500 seminarians as members by 2010… Its lay movement Regnum Christi has approximately 70,000 members. It operates centers of education (minor seminaries, seminaries, schools and/or universities) in Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Ireland, France, Germany, Canada, the United States, and the Philippines. In 2009, the Vatican ordered an apostolic visitation of the institutions of the Legionaries of Christ following disclosures of sexual impropriety by the order’s late founder, Fr Marcial Maciel.”

The trouble is first that the entire spirituality of the Legion is based to a quite extreme extent on the supposed heroic sanctity of its founder. According to a former Legionary priest, Fr Stephen Fichter: “Maciel was this mythical hero who was put on a pedestal and had all the answers. When you become a Legionary, you have to read every letter Fr Maciel ever wrote, like 15 or 16 volumes. To hear he’s been having this double life on the side, I just don’t see how they’re going to continue.”

And what a double life. Sex abuse of minors. Six illegitimate children. Mistresses housed in luxury apartments bought with the Legion’s money. The list goes on.

Fr Fichter, once the chief financial officer for the order, said he informed the Vatican three years ago that every time Fr Maciel left Rome, “I always had to give him $10,000 in cash – $5,000 in American dollars and $5,000 in the currency of wherever he was going”. Fr Fichter added: “As Legionaries, we were taught a very strict poverty; if I went out of town and bought a Bic pen and a chocolate bar, I would have to turn in the receipts. And yet for Fr Maciel there was never any accounting. It was always cash, never any paper trail. And because he was this incredible hero to us, we never even questioned it for a second.”

Pope Benedict first ordered an Apostolic Visitation of the congregation, and then appointed Cardinal-designate Velasio De Paolis to set about reforming it. You would think, would you not, that this troubled body would want to co-operate with him, and get everything sorted out: but no. Cardinal De Paolis has come to the conclusion that there has to be major change, and that this has to begin at the top. The trouble is, according to the leading Vaticanologist, Sandro Magister, “the superiors of the congregation, the most powerful of which is vicar general Luís Garza Medina, are by no means giving up on the idea of remaining in their positions of command, now and always.

“In mid-September, De Paolis asked Garza to give up the main offices that he holds, at least those of territorial director for Italy, supervisor of consecrated virgins of the movement Regnum Christi, general prefect of studies and head of the financial holding company Integer [the legion is immensely wealthy]. But Garza said no.”

Why not simply sack the lot, and start again? The reason probably has a great deal to do with the gentle pastoral style of Pope Benedict. As Cardinal De Paolis has made clear, “for now, neither he nor the Vatican authorities intend to remove the superiors of the Legion by executive fiat”. The reason, he explains, is that  “if we get caught up in the desire to prevail, and to impose our own ideas on the others, disaster is certain”.

Very admirable, no doubt. But the disaster, surely, has already happened. The Pope has to prevail. Here is an institution which vaunts itself on its obedience to papal authority: then let its superiors obey. Then the big clean up can really begin.

The problem for me, though, is still this: why not, after everything that has happened, simply close the whole thing down? That’s a genuine question: I would like someone to explain.

“It Won’t Go Away!” : Response to Denver Opponents of Canon 277 http://diaconate-form.blogspot.com/

“One of my dear departed mentors said that we have wonderful doctrine transmitted at times by flawed documents. Although he was speaking then about his work on the doctrine of the angels as promulgated by the Fourth Lateran Council, I think we can say the same thing about other aspects of Sacred Tradition in our aggressively secularized environment. Too often, what used to be an instinct of grace is now reduced to legalism, whereupon its impoverished laws are not enforced. We have something like this situation with Levitical continence versus apostolic continence for those in Holy Orders. It used to be obvious — now it is outrageous to say — that a man must be of one wife, and that wife is the Church. The Russian Orthodox theologian Aleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov (Алексей Степанович Хомяков, 1804-1860) claimed that the Roman Church was guilty of “extrinsic” imposition of authority whereas the Eastern Churches relied on the “intrinsic” hold of the authority of Sacred Tradition as binding on believers. In other words, it seems that if some mid-level bureaucrat of the Roman Curia today declared that there are no longer three persons in the trinity, but rather four, Latin Catholics would, I fear, adopt en masse the novel doctrine. Here, documents from the Congregation of the Clergy, “Basic Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons,” and from the Congregation for Education, “Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons,” which pivot upon the interdicasterial letter (No. 4092.629) of February 27, 1997, written by the Cardinal Secretary of State, precisely as dicasterial, can have no doctrinal significance. They remind me of the words of my mentor in discussing the texts of Lateran Four. The upshot is that Sacred Tradition can’t and won’t go away any more than the Holy Spirit who formed that Tradition will go away. It will continue to be a very large elephant standing in a very small ecclesiastical living room.”

Rev. Brian Van Hove, S.J.

[* = apostolic continence]

“The Fall of the Gods” by Father James V. Schall, S.J.

James V. Schall, S. J.

Georgetown University, DC, 20057-1200

“THE FALL OF THE GODS”

“In this Psalm (81), in a great concentration, in a prophetic vision, we can see the power taken from the gods. Those that seemed gods are not gods, lose their divine characteristics, and fall to earth. Diis estis et moriemini sicut homine (“You are gods, but you shall die like man,” cf. 81: 6-7): the weakness of power, the fall of the divinities. This process that is achieved along the path of faith of Israel, and which is summed here in one vision, is the true process of the history of religion, the fall of the gods.”

–Benedict XVI, Opening Address to Synod of Bishops for the Middle East.[1]

I.

In an extraordinary address to the opening of the Near East Synod, the Holy Father recalled that the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. defined Mary as the Theotókos, the Mother of God. Fifteen hundred years later, Pius XI established “Mary, the Mother of God,” as a feast in the Church. When John XXIII opened Vatican II on October 11, 1962, he put it under the patronage of Mary, the Mother of God. At the end of the Council, Paul VI added the patronage for the subsequent work and effects of the Council to “Mary, the Mother of the Church.” Benedict adds that these two titles refer to the same mother. The present Synod of Bishops on the Near East, that cradle of Christianity, now no longer in Christian hands, likewise began on October 11. Coincidences!

The Church has memory. We might even say that “the Church is memory.” The essential things do not pass away, only heaven and earth will pass away, not God’s Word. In the Mass, after the Consecration, what do we do but remember? “We recall His, passion, resurrection from the dead, and His glorious ascension….” We make them present, or, perhaps better, these events are present in Christ’s eternal now, in the Body and Blood of Christ, which the words help us to remember and realize. But why does Benedict bring in Mary and the famous definition of some four hundred years after Christ? Why is the title, “Mother of God,” so significant? And what’s its relation to “the “Mother of the Church”?

This pope always speaks with the greatest profundity. He recalls the most remarkable things. Here, he begins by reminding us that the very idea of God having “mother” was and remains shocking to almost all religious minds. As Msgr. Sokolowski has often and eloquently pointed out, the great and abiding opposition to Christian revelation is not that “God is God,” but that “God became man.” Is not this contradictory? The explanation of why it is not is at the very foundation of the Catholic mind. Almost the whole history of theology is bound up with the defense of this latter proposition and the reality of what it signifies. All other religions minds and traditions cannot or will not accept the fact that Christ was both God and man. (See Christian Faith & Human Understanding, 69-85).

II.

It is extremely interesting that Benedict XVI would choose this seemingly irrelevant topic for a Synod on the Near East. Why isn’t he talking of Islam, or Israel, or peace treaties, or relativism, anything “useful”? The fact is: he is. Until our minds are clear, our politics will be muddled. The first step, as Benedict always intimates, is mind clearing, not “mind-cleansing.” Catholicism does not really begin its theologically explanatory mission until it thinks clearly. Not all theologians do this, of course. Revelation is also directed to mind, to philosophy. We should not doubt it.

What’s the connection between the Theotókos and current events? The core issue is whether we still worship “false gods,” even when we do not call them such? But no one in the ancient world (and few today) could see how the eternal God had a mother, even though there were all kinds of cavorting among the classical Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. In spite of the “god is Mother” crowd, it just does not work. Christ was God. He is the Second Person within the Godhead. He is also man. He had a mother. But He never called his Father “Mother.” He called Him “Father.” He told us to do the same. Christ told us to use the words “Our Father.” He told us to do the same. But Christ Himself always spoke of and to “My Father.” The word “Father” means something. The word “mother” means something too, but something else.

“Mother” is what Christ called Mary. That is what she was. He probably called her “Mary” once in a while. Yet, the “Mother of God” is what the Council of Ephesus defined. The infant born of her was true man, true God, one Person, two natures that are distinct. Mary is designated as “the Mother of God” because her Son was true God. What else could we call her? The Church ever since has firmly held this teaching as central in the understanding of the particular revelation that it has received. It did  not just make it up, but heard it, and figured its meaning out in as clear and exact philosophical terms as possible. The Church passes it on for us to believe and know; it thinks about it, but it does not change it. God did have a mother, one Mary, of whom we read in the New Testament. There is no doubt that she is there. She was not a goddess, though she was “blessed.”

Now this fact that Mary was not a goddess is where Benedict takes up the intriguing issue of “the fall of the gods.” This is such a striking theme in this address to the Synod. I presume the good bishops noted it. What gods have fallen because of Mary? The Old Testament is full of idols of stone and wood that the Hebrews come across in their neighbors. They were warned: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy, 6:4). The first Commandment seems to be designed to protect against the most subtle of the temptations of man, the temptation to worship false gods, including himself and his ideologies. Invariably, the worship of false gods results in a false understanding of man, for man is made to love and worship the true God. It is in his being.

“The man Jesus is God.” He did not just have “something to do with God.” He was not just a prophet, or a good guy, or a revolutionary, though He probably had a touch of these too.  God indeed “became” man, but He was already and still is God. That did not change. Indeed, we might better say that, as a result of God “descending” to be man, He really took us up to the divinity. This is really what the Resurrection is about. We do not become “gods.” We remain ourselves, body and soul. But we are invited to live at a lever higher than our nature. We can do this because Christ was true man and God. He did it. He invited us into the society formed by Him on the basis that man, after his own possibilities, is invited into the inner life of the Godhead as his ultimate end and good. The only other thing available to him is the rejection of this offer.

III.

The fact that Mary was a woman, a human being, but also the Mother of God meant, logically, that the ancient concepts of the gods could no longer stand. It had to fall. Something greater had occurred in her motherhood. The “Mother of God” and the “Mother of the Church” are “intrinsically” linked. Mary is present at the moment of Christ’s Incarnation and birth, as she is also present in Acts at the beginning of the Church from whence the Apostles are now directed to “the whole world.” Christ unites “the cosmos” in Himself. He is the “Head of a great body, or the Great Church” directed by the Holy Spirit. Mary is the “heart” of the Church.

Between the birth of Christ and the birth of the Church lies the life, the Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Lord. This tells us how God went about making His presence known in the world. These events, with His words, indicated who Christ was, what He was about in this world, that of our salvation. “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son….”

To emphasize what he is driving at, the Pope turns to Psalm 81. Here God is still among “gods.” With the announcement of the Incarnation, “we can see power taken from the gods.” This removal is because God did not “incarnate” Himself in a spirit or a neighborhood god. He chose the Virgin in Nazareth, a real creature, a human person of the species man. The whole divine enterprise evidently depended on her “fiat.” Now, “those that seemed to be gods are not gods.” How could they compare with Mary’s Son?

The “fall of the gods” followed Israel and proceeded into the Church. Something else was being prepared by God with respect to the gods, something even the Hebrew leaders did not anticipate. This plan is the “true process of history of religion.” What goes on in history is the preparation of our kind to enter the Kingdom of God, to participate in the divine life.  Such is what is really happening in the places and times we can identify, including our own times. The center of this new history is the Incarnation. On the human side, it is the consent of the Virgin, without which it could not take place in the way that it did. The “problem” of the history of religion is precisely “the fall of the gods.” That is, what undermined the gods that we see even in the Old Testament? The answer is that something greater has come to pass to overshadow the shadowy gods.

Aristotle’s First Mover, Benedict maintains, does not “go out” to the world. He draws nothing to himself. But the God of the Hebrews, in Christ, does go out of Himself. The initiative is not on man’s side. God intervenes within history in a human way, that is, by becoming man Himself in the Word made flesh. Christ does not cease to be Word or God. That is what He is as the Second Person to whom the Father has eternally generated but not outside of Himself. Christ, the “redeem of man,” as John Paul II called Him, is the reflection of the Father as received. Christ, in turn, with the Father, sends the Spirit. This divine intervention comes to us not as necessity but as gift.

IV.

Like Aristotle’s god, God need not create, but can. It is not altogether certain to me that had Aristotle known revelation that his philosophy could not have accepted it. In fact, I think it could have without becoming a totally different philosophy. It would have simply have been an improved philosophy, as Aquinas suspected. Aristotle’s isolated god was not totally illogical, granted what he knew. He did not know revelation. We only know that the One God created because He did and told us He did. That is why we think about it to show that it is not unreasonable. In the book of Revelation, we also read of “the fall of the angels.” Not all fell, but some did. The fall of the angels and the gods that needed to fall may not be totally unrelated, especially when we see what Benedict calls modern “divinities.”

But Benedict speaks here of those who are not “truly angels.” He is speaking of the gods, spirits, ideas that deflect us from our final end. They are more familiar than we perhaps like to admit. These false gods too occur all through history. They are idols. We have martyrs to prove their danger and constant presence, even today, perhaps especially today. “The fall is not only the knowledge that they are not God; it is the process of the transformation of the world, which costs blood, causes the suffering of the witnesses of Christ.” We can, if we look, see this going on, this continued persecution by false gods. We do not like to know about it.

“Let us remember the great powers of history today,” Benedict tells us. The pope adds something quite provocative: “Let us remember the anonymous capital that enslaves man which is no longer in man’s possession but is an anonymous power served by men, by which men are  tormented, even killed.” Something strange, pervasive exists in the culture, “the culture of death,” as John Paul II called it. The individuals who bear and promote it often seem like unthinking zombies or automata. They refuse to admit the results of ideas they think popular and powerful. They blind themselves.

Benedict next gives examples of “powers” that do these horrid things. First he mentions the “power of terroristic ideologies.” “Violent deeds are apparently made in the name of God, but this is not God; they are false divinities that have to be unmasked; they are not God.” Again, this remark is but a recapitulation of both the First Commandment and the daily news. Who is Benedict talking about here? He does not explicitly say. But, as far as I know, the only groups who do violence “in the name of God” are those claiming Islamic origins. Benedict next lists “drugs” as another anonymous but all pervasive presence and power. Finally, he cites the prevalence of “public opinions,” those many groups and laws that deny, or make difficult, marriage and chastity.

Benedict calls these ideologies of today “divinities” in the more classic sense of false gods or idols. Such “divinities” must fall. But they are powers that “can destroy the world.” The pope does not exaggerate. They can and are. The pope returns to book 12 of Revelation, about the fleeing woman and the flowing river. “I think that the river is easily interpreted: these are the currents that dominate all and wish to make faith in the Church disappear, the Church that seems no longer to have a place in the face of the force of these currents that impose themselves as only rationality, as the only way to live.” What suffers the force of these aberrant currents is the “face of the people.” The greatest aberrations thus also propose themselves as reason. For this reason alone we need to philosophize to see why it is nos.

In the end, it is the ordinary human being and family who bear the brunt of the ideologies, now increasingly put into law and practice, the scourges of divorce, abortion, homosexuality, and the plans of those who would make human nature and life unrecognizable in the name of improving our lot, things dealt with in Spe Salvi. The pope is right to see this extraordinary lecture on “fall of the gods” to be an aspect of what Theotókos really means throughout the history of dogma and the Church. Mary was the “Mother of God.” We only know and can know God through her Son. She, a mother, stands for the fact that God did become man, again the most difficult and most consoling of all doctrines that really touch our lives, our ordinary lives and the lives that we are called to lead, the inner life of the Trinity itself, something we are first given, should we choose it. All the false divinities and ideologies are but desperate efforts to escape the truth that Mary is the Mother of God and what flows from this fact.

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[1] Benedict XVI, October 11, 2010, L’Osservatore Romano, October 13, 2010.