Especially new readers. With the Pope safely back in Rome and that over and done with, regular blogging will resume – which means, not very often.
It’s another busy day around here – yet more painters – so I’ll point you to Christopher Blosser’s great roundup of papal coverage and analysis links and in particular his comments on Catholic News Service’s interesting choice of “theology students” to feature in a response piece
Update: Over at the Mirror of Justice blog, there have been several posts concerning what Benedict said about academic freedom and in his speech at the UN. Well worth pondering.
From Fr. Robert Araujo, SJ’s most recent post:
The Holy Father spoke at some length on an issue that is receiving increasing attention in international legal discussions, i.e., the responsibility to protect. This responsibility has two dimensions. The more obvious one involves the rights of nations to protect their own populations from “grave and sustained violations of human rights” and from the consequences of natural and man-made humanitarian crises. However, if a State is incapable or unwilling to meet this responsibility, then the international community has an obligation to intervene. But this latter duty is not without limit for the proper sovereignty of peoples and their governments must be respected. The preferred means of addressing these needs is through diplomatic channels; however, other means, presumably including the use of necessary and proportionate force, may be considered if negotiations and diplomatic efforts fail.
It would have been surprising if the Holy Father did not address the role of the natural law that has been crucial to the growth of international legal norms. Pope Benedict began this portion of his discourse by reminding the audience of the contribution of the Dominican, Francis de Vitoria, to the foundation of international law. (I am sure that the question of time necessitated the deletion of the equally important contributions of the Jesuit, Francis Suárez!) It is within their noteworthy treatises on legal theory that both developed the idea of the “responsibility to protect” that is the product of natural reason that exists among all peoples. At the foundation of this “natural reason” is the principle that everyone bears the image of the Creator, the reality of which is at the core of human rights and the recognition of the dignity of the human person. The Holy Father lost no time in connecting this point with the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that will be celebrated later this year. Benedict emphasized that the Universal Declaration was the product of different cultural and religious traditions that were nonetheless capable of recognizing certain fundamental principles about human nature and the corresponding rights and responsibilities that were discovered through the application of natural reason, the bedrock of the natural law.
As thrilled as I was with the Papal visit, the neurotic mother in me couldn’t really rest until the Pope was safely home.
In his address to the Bishops last Wednesday, the Holy Father said
“. . . This leads me to ask how, in the twenty-first century, a bishop can best fulfill the call to “make all things new in Christ, our hope”? How can he lead his people to “an encounter with the living God”, the source of that life-transforming hope of which the Gospel speaks (cf. Spe Salvi, 4)? Perhaps he needs to begin by clearing away some of the barriers to such an encounter. . . . In an age that is saturated with information, the importance of providing sound formation in the faith cannot be overstated. . . . ”
CNS describes itself as “editorially independent and a financially self-sustaining division of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.” As a “division” (interesting word there) of the USCCB, does not their “editorial independence”, as exercised in choosing to run a story like this, actually undermine the bishops’ efforts to provide “sound formation in the faith”? Perhaps the bishops do not need to look far to begin “clearing away some of the barriers”.
For those who read Italian, Magister has several interesting posts about the Pope’s U.S. visit:
http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/
Magister quotes the Nathaniel Hawthorne passage to which Pope Benedict alluded in his St. Patrick’s homily. The passage comes from Hawthorne’s “The Marble Faun” (which, frankly, I had never heard of) and is as follows (I found the original English on the Google Books site):
“The friends left the church, and looking up, from the exterior, at the window which they had just been contemplating within, nothing was visible but the merest outline of dusky shapes. Niether the individual likeness of saint, angel, nor Savior, and far less the combined scheme and purport of the picture, could anywise be made out. That miracle of radiant art, thus viewed, was nothing better than an incomprehensible obscurity, without a gleam of beauty to induce the beholder to attempt unravelling it.
‘All this,’ thought the sculptor, ‘is a most forcible emblem of the different aspect of religious truth and sacred story, as viewed from the warm interior of belief, or from its cold and dreary outside. Christian faith is a grand Cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly immagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.’”
Pope Benedict’s homily borrows heavily from this passage (with acknowledgement):
“I would like to draw your attention to a few aspects of this beautiful structure which I think can serve as a starting point for a reflection on our particular vocations within the unity of the Mystical Body.
The first has to do with the stained glass windows, which flood the interior with mystic light. From the outside, those windows are dark, heavy, even dreary. But once one enters the church, they suddenly come alive; reflecting the light passing through them, they reveal all their splendor. Many writers – here in America we can think of Nathaniel Hawthorne – have used the image of stained glass to illustrate the mystery of the Church herself. It is only from the inside, from the experience of faith and ecclesial life, that we see the Church as she truly is: flooded with grace, resplendent in beauty, adorned by the manifold gifts of the Spirit. It follows that we, who live the life of grace within the Church’s communion, are called to draw all people into this mystery of light.”
This all makes me wonder if Chesterton’s famous quote about the Church being so much bigger when viewed from within derives from the Hawthorne passage.
Magister also has an English language site:
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/?eng=y
but I couldn’t find translations of the blog entries that are in Italian (although I didn’t look very hard).