Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 305

Fr. Robert Barron on the "Pledge of Allegiance" controversy; meaning of Sabbath

Many excellent points made by the director of the Word on Fire apostolate:

And then there is this recent story, from the very town I've lived in for many years now:

An Oregon town's City Council voted down a proposal to say the Pledge of Allegiance before every council meeting, but later passed a compromise that seemed to make no one happy.

The approved measure allows the pledge to be recited at just four Eugene City Council meetings a year, those closest to the Fourth of July, Veterans Day, Memorial Day and Flag Day.

It was supposed to be simple, but Councilman Mike Clark soon found out when you're dealing with God and country, nothing in Eugene is easy.

Clark says all he wanted to do was unite the council and show his more conservative constituents that in this city where diversity is celebrated, their more traditional values also are important.

"It's a little ironic to see those who have championed the idea of tolerance be less tolerant on this question," Clark said. Mayor Kitty Piercy called the Pledge of Allegiance divisive. "If there's one thing the flag stands for," Piercy says, "it's that people don't have to be compelled to say the Pledge of Allegiance or anything else."

Ah, I am [sarcasm alert!] soooooo proud of the mayor! Standing up the puritanical, close-minded right-wingers who want to force her to say the Pledge of Allegiance at city council meetings in the United States!  Oddly enough, Piercy is a huge supporter of public schools, which compel children to say and do things every school day, including learning about how wonderful it is to be "queer" and "trans-gendered". Piercy is also big on taking "non-divisive" stances for abortion—she has worked in the past for both Planned Barrenhood and NARAL—medical pot, "same-sex marriage", public restrooms for transgendered folks, and so forth (pick an ultra-leftist stance; she holds it). So this really has nothing to do with being divisive at all; that's just a typical leftist smokescreen.

What, exactly, is "divisive" about saying the Pledge of Allegiance? Is it too patriotic? Too idealistic? Too religious? The Fox News articles claims, rather unconvincingly, that it has little to do with religious issues (that is, saying "under God"):

In Eugene, the opposition was less about religion than anti-establishment.

Resident Anita Sullivan summed up a common viewpoint: "So you say I pledge allegiance and right there I don't care for that language," Sullivan says. "It sort of means loyalty to your country; well, I feel loyalty to the entire world."

Brilliant, Anita, brilliant. Recite the following: "I pledge allegiance to the firmament of the entire world, and to the global village for which it stands, one planet in outer space, very divided, with liberty for a few and justice for a few others." Take it to the streets, sister, starting in Iraq and Iran, then moving on to Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Hurry along!

How long before President Obama officially endorses "gay marriage"?

George Neumayr, editor of Catholic World Report, on President Obama's approach to "gay marriage":

Obama's hesitancy to change his position formally suggests that the confident pronouncement from gay marriage supporters that the American public is ahead of the "political class" on this issue is overstated. Were that the case, Obama would change his position immediately. He is hesitating because he can see that members of the left-wing political and judicial class are still more liberal than the country on this issue. Gay marriage has passed a handful of times judicially and legislatively but never directly by the people. Referendums have failed everywhere they have been tried, and it is not even clear that a gay marriage referendum in New York would have succeeded.

Of course, if Obama escapes into the safety of a second term, his purported moral reflections on gay marriage will speed up and rapidly turn into a formal endorsement of it. And then we will hear him talk again about his "transformative" presidency and the sweeping historical changes he has bravely engineered. The spread of gay marriage in America will be cast as another glorious milestone of "progress" for his administration.

Read the entire column, "Evolutions in Obama's America", at Spectator.org. For more on the President's thinly veiled support of all things "gay", see my June 30, 2009, post, "A couple of thoughts about Obama's 'Hey, You're Gay, Hurray!' Day".

Often persecuted, sometimes martyred, and accused of incest, cannibalism, "atheism"

On this, the Feast of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome, some historical background from "Early Christian Martyrs of the Roman Empire", the opening chapter of Fr. Charles P. Connor's Defenders of the Faith in Word and Deed (Ignatius Press, 2003):

 It is true that Christians lived in a somewhat tense atmosphere for the first three centuries of the Church's life. It is not true that persecution was unceasing; rather, it was intermittent, sometimes limited to the city of Rome, sometimes extending throughout the Empire. A popular legend evolved through the centuries about when anti-Christian hostility became intense, believers would hide from Roman officials in the catacombs, underground burial places on the outskirts of the city. These were not secret hiding places; in fact, they were well marked on city maps. It so happened that the soft turf of the region could be easily excavated and developed into a large network of subterranean tunnels, which could be utilized for several purposes, burial among them. Christians (and, for that matter, Jews as well) found the system of underground burial ideal in a city where space was at a premium. In addition, the catacombs provided a space for gathering for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist and for Christian artists to leave for posterity a fascinating record of a vibrant faith.

This is not to minimize persecutions. They occurred with ferocity, and many martyrs and defenders of the faith came forth. They were martyrs because they died under some excruciating form of torture; they were defenders of the faith because of their witness to Christ as their only Lord, to the exclusion of all others, including the emperor. We know of their persecutions and martyrdoms from three principal sources: the accounts of non-Christian historians, the minutes of their trials (known as the Acts of the Martyrs), and eyewitness accounts.

The earliest persecutions seemed to have occurred under the Emperor Nero (54- 68) and may well have been an attempt to turn the attention of Rome's citizens away from the Emperor's own burning of the city. It was a persecution limited to Rome itself, and both Peter and Paul are believed to have been victims of it. Tacitus, a Roman historian, pictures it vividly:

First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts' skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed, were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man. [Tacitus, Annals, bk. 15, chap. 44]

"Incest" and "cannibalism" are hardly terms to be thrown about lightly. They were, however, among the most common accusations made against Christians. Even more curious was the charge of atheism. It was assumed that since Christians did not practice the religion of the state, the worship of the pagan gods, that they had no religion. If this persisted, the gods would become angry and inflict all sorts of wrath on Roman society.

Related Ignatius Insight Excerpts and Articles:

• Studying The Early Christians: The Introduction to We Look For the Kingdom | Carl J. Sommer
• The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians | An interview with Carl J. Sommers
• Church and State in Early Christianity | Hugo Rahner, S.J.
• His Story and the History of the Church | An Interview with Dr. Glenn W. Olsen
• Are We at The End or The Beginning? | Dr. Glenn Olson
• A Short Guide to Ancient Heresies | Kenneth D. Whitehead

"What is man? What is his nature, his meaning, his duty, his destiny?"

From a very good essay by Dr. Robert Moynihan, founder and editor of Inside Vatican magazine:

What is man? What is his nature, his meaning, his duty, his destiny?

Scripture tells us that man is a being mysteriously, almost paradoxically, endowed with a double nature: one physical, and so transient, doomed to the vicissitudes of change and then to pass away; and one spiritual, immortal, destined for eternity.

But the modern world has, for the most part, denied this definition or understanding of man.

The modern world has, for the most part, embraced a reductionist view of man, viewing man as a physical being only, moved by chemical reactions and hormonal drives, condemned by the haphazardness of an essentially meaningless universe to create himself and his own meaning according to his own desires, without any transcendent reference of any type, not to mention the reality signified by the word "God," which only arouses polite snickers in elite circles.

Pope Benedict has often made this point -- that our age suffers from the absence of God.

We were made essentially for meaning, for a personal meaning, to have a name, to be named, and to name, and, in the process, of being persons with names, persons able to love, and to sacrifice.

All the problems humans face, whether in law, or in science, or in economics -- and I refer obliquely to the recent vote in favor of homosexual marriage in New York, and to the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan, and to the riots today in debt-suffocated Greece -- are only able to be truly analyzed and solved with logos, with reason, with meaning -- true meaning, not superficial meaning.

This is the reason why Christians, why John Paul II in his time and Benedict now, are crying out to the world: "Return to meaning, return to reason, return to true science -- return, yes, to Christ, the true man, who is logos incarnate," in order to avoid tragedy, cruelty, bloodshed, and the hopelessness of life without logos, without meaning.

This is the "new evangelization" the Pope is calling for, in our troubled "modern" age.

This is the new witness he is calling on Christians to make in the face of a world anxious to create a "new species" out of the human genetic material... in the face of a world wishing to redefine men and women as ultimately interchangeable and indistiguishable... in the face of a world which claims to have science, but which is marred by a massive and devastating ignorance of the true processes of genetics and of life.

The end of man is to become eternally blessed, inwardly transformed into the image and likeness of God, filled with the Spirit of God, and this end is far more desirable than to live 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 years, even if the years are dense with sybaritic pleasures, on this revolving asteroid we call earth.

Read the entire essay. Then consider just one example, taken from today's edition of The New York Times, of the sort of despair and sense of meaningless that Moynihan describes, expressed by "Dan Savage, America's leading sex-advice columnist":

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can't help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.

"I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy," Savage told me, "when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted."

The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold. It feeds into the stereotype of gay men as compulsively promiscuous, and it gives ammunition to all the forces, religious and otherwise, who say that gay families will never be real families and that we had better stop them before they ruin what is left of marriage. But Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves.

Get that? It has been monogamy and the (ever-declining) expectation to live up to one's marital vows that have been destroying marriage and families these past few decades. Right. The list of actual culprits is fairly long but Moynihan, drawing upon John Paul II, is absolutely right in saying the root lies in false understandings of man and false sources of meaning. Modern man, unable to make sense of himself and his place in the cosmos, essentially decides that moral norms and traditiaonal social institutions are senseless.

One of my first encounters with this "Savage" perspective—that is, do what feels right, not what is right—was at art school back in the late 1980s. One of my intructors, a modestly talented ego-manaic who fancied himself both brilliant and dashing, openly complained about the restrictions of being married to one woman. He had been married just a few years, and his wife had recently given birth to twins. On several occasions he openly lectured on the evils of monogamy and once said, with assured smugness, "I'm too good for just one woman." I thought this was remarkably infantile for a deeply insecure and vacuous man in his thirties, but perhaps I misunderstood. Could it have been that he, aware of his inability to fight his healthy "urges", was merely engaging in the sort of joyful honesty that Savage finds so essential to a "successful marriage"? I don't know. Nor do I know what happened to that instructor and his marriage. But I'd bet decent money that he divorced, that he remarried once or twice, and that he is even more miserable and insufferable than he was twenty-some years ago.

Three essays on marriage, the conjugal life, and homosexuality

In light of recent, current, and ongoing events, I'm posting excerpts from three archived Ignatius Insight essays, with links to the full readings:

The tragic impasse that exists in our culture on the issue of homosexuality stems from two errors.

On the one hand, many moderns have embraced an autonomous view of reality: "I can do what I want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else." According to such relativism, homosexual acts are perfectly legitimate so long as they are between two consenting adults. In stark reaction to such subjectivism, many others embrace a moralism that easily turns venomous when it vilifies and demonizes: "Homosexuality is wrong because God said so" (and nothing more). The distinction between the homosexual condition and homosexual acts, if added at all, is added as an afterthought. This view, opposite that of autonomy, could be termed heteronomy, because God's law is understood to be extrinsically and somewhat arbitrarily placed upon man with a seeming lack of concern for actual experience of the persons involved.

Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (art. 41), distinguishes the Catholic moral outlook from these two erroneous positions. He labels the Catholic view a "participated theonomy." If for autonomy there is no law, and if for heteronomy the law is to be followed because God said so, for participated theonomy the moral law is something friendly to our being, something built for our genuine fulfillment and for our authentic freedom. The law is not true because God commanded it; rather, God commands it because it is true. When we use our free will to align our lives with this truth, we possess authentic freedom.

What does this mean for the debate on homosexuality? It means that the truth about human sexuality is something that ultimately offers genuine freedom to the homosexual person, helping him to escape the slavery to his passions that resulted from the misuse of his free will. This is a truth that, with true compassion, reaches out to the homosexual person in his desperation. Although that person may not be aware of it, he is crying out for the truth. When the response from our culture is heteronomous and mean-spirited, he recoils, and takes false comfort in a worldview that espouses autonomy. The Church and society must offer the truth, and offer it in the right way, the way of participatory theonomy.

Read the entire essay, "Authentic Freedom and the Homosexual Person", by Dr. Mark Lowery.

Next:

There is nothing wrong with desiring sex without conception, but the Church nevertheless emphasizes the impossibility of separating the two goals. Although there are many ways by which husband and wife can express their desire for unity, the sex act offers a uniquely profound way of achieving intimacy and expressing love. Lovers desire to become one flesh and in sexual intercourse they can fulfill that desire in a way that is more than merely figurative. First, it is impossible for two people to physically unite more completely than while making love to each other. The man desires to enter the woman's body while she invites him to do so. Second, as Bishop Cahal B. Daly observes in Morals, Law and Life, in conceiving a new human life, husband and wife each contribute twenty-three chromosomes, uniting them biologically in the child. They are united dynamically because their relation as husband and wife cannot properly be understood apart from their relation to the child and their relation to the child cannot properly be understood apart from their relation to each other. Finally, the couple are united eternally by virtue of procreating a new human being who possesses an immortal soul--an incarnation of their unity that will continue for all eternity.

Conversely, the inability of same-sex intercourse to produce children explains why homosexuals cannot achieve the unity that is possible for heterosexuals. Their default response is mimicry, the imitation of a heterosexual union, replete with hijacked terms like "husband," "wife," "marriage," etc. A frequently heard objection from advocates of same-sex unions is that if childless heterosexual couples deserve the status of marriage, then homosexuals should be accorded that same status. But the answer to this is that heterosexual couples who are unable to have children can remain open to the procreation of new human life, to achieve the aim of marital unity, albeit not as perfectly as do those who have children. Nevertheless, they remain open, both in intention and action, to the possibility of their love-making resulting in procreation. Homosexuals cannot, in principle, procreate and their attempts at marital union will inevitably be frustrated by the brute fact that members of the same sex cannot complement each other to attain the kind of unity possible for heterosexuals.

To reiterate, whereas the physical and psychological realities of homosexuals render them incapable of the unity that an openness to procreation allows, heterosexual couples using contraception suffer the same incapacity by virtue of their choice to separate formally sex and procreation. By that choice, they have de facto neutered themselves by making their maleness and femaleness irrelevant. The realities of biology will not be flouted.

Read the entire essay, "Contraception and Homosexuality", by Dr. Raymond Dennehy.

And:

As a consequence of the Church's multi-faceted approach to the conjugal life of husband and wife, her theology of marriage considers this sacred relationship from three principal perspectives: marriage as a natural institution, marriage as an intimate friendship, and marriage as a sacrament. As a natural institution, marriage possesses a specific content in terms of its structure, purposes, blessings, and laws. The institution of marriage finds its origin in God, in the very creation of man as male and female, ordering masculinity and femininity to marriage. The institution of marriage bestows certain rights on husband and wife while also imposing obligations on them toward each other and toward God the Creator. The conjugal friendship "gives life" to the institution of marriage, confirming it as a loving personal communion. As an intimate friendship that embraces the good of the whole person, marriage demands the personal energy and emotion of the spouses as well as their firm commitment and selfless sacrifice. For its part, the institution of marriage protects and promotes spousal love, directing husband and wife to the goods upon which their personal communion is based. The sacramental dimension of marriage enables the relationship of husband and wife to share in and signify the mystery of God's love for humanity and Christ's love for the Church. Thus, marriage acquires a sacred role or purpose in the world insofar as the relationship of husband and wife should announce and manifest God's covenantal love. Moreover, because spouses fulfill this sacred role only when the essence of marriage as an institution and a loving communion remains intact, husband and wife discover in the sacramental dimension of marriage a serious motivation for conforming their daily life to God's plan for the conjugal life.

The Church's theology of the conjugal act emerges from this multi-faceted theology of marriage and relates intimately to each dimension of marriage as an institution, an intimate friendship, and a sacrament. These various dimensions of marriage harmoniously converge in the conjugal act, just as they do in the whole of conjugal life. Therefore, the conjugal act cannot be reduced to an obligation of the institution or to an expression of love. Instead, the conjugal act embraces each of these dimensions as the consummation of marital consent and the embodiment of conjugal love, sharing the sacramental signification of the conjugal covenant. It does so through a specific use of human freedom that relies upon the potential of human sexuality. Consequently, the Church's theology of the conjugal act advances along with greater insights into Christian anthropology, insights that clarify the nature of human freedom and the place of sexuality in the human body/soul composite. The Church's vision of the human person provides the necessary theological framework for the concept of an act that embraces the various dimensions of marriage and also supports the Church's broader teachings on marriage itself.

On the foundations of the Church's teaching on marriage and within the framework of Christian anthropology, a theology of the conjugal act emerges in which sexual intercourse between husband and wife is a particular human act (issuing from reason and will), a symbolic act (expressing love in the language of the body), and a sacramental act (sharing in the sacramentality of the conjugal covenant). Each of these various dimensions of the conjugal act confirms the conjugal act as a personal act, an act that depends upon the specifically personal characteristics of man and woman and that allows them to fulfill their fundamental vocation to love and communion. Thus, the Church's view of the conjugal act far surpasses the level of momentary erotic pleasure or the satisfaction of an urge. The Church's theology of the conjugal act affirms the wealth of significance and beauty inherent in the sexual relationship of husband and wife. The Church's theology of the conjugal act imbues the act with the dignity proper to husband and wife as persons and also exhorts husband and wife to preserve the dignity and beauty of their love by approaching the marital embrace precisely as a personal act.

Read "Human Sexuality and the Catholic Church", the  Introduction to The Conjugal Act as a Personal Act, by Donald P. Asci.

"Sixty years on from the day of my priestly ordination, I hear once again...

... deep within me these words of Jesus that were addressed to us new priests at the end of the ordination ceremony by the Archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber, in his slightly frail yet firm voice. According to the liturgical practice of that time, these words conferred on the newly-ordained priests the authority to forgive sins. "No longer servants, but friends": at that moment I knew deep down that these words were no mere formality, nor were they simply a quotation from Scripture. I knew that, at that moment, the Lord himself was speaking to me in a very personal way. In baptism and confirmation he had already drawn us close to him, he had already received us into God's family. But what was taking place now was something greater still. He calls me his friend. He welcomes me into the circle of those he had spoken to in the Upper Room, into the circle of those whom he knows in a very special way, and who thereby come to know him in a very special way. He grants me the almost frightening faculty to do what only he, the Son of God, can legitimately say and do: I forgive you your sins. He wants me – with his authority – to be able to speak, in his name ("I" forgive), words that are not merely words, but an action, changing something at the deepest level of being. I know that behind these words lies his suffering for us and on account of us. I know that forgiveness comes at a price: in his Passion he went deep down into the sordid darkness of our sins. He went down into the night of our guilt, for only thus can it be transformed. And by giving me authority to forgive sins, he lets me look down into the abyss of man, into the immensity of his suffering for us men, and this enables me to sense the immensity of his love. He confides in me: "No longer servants, but friends". He entrusts to me the words of consecration in the Eucharist. He trusts me to proclaim his word, to explain it aright and to bring it to the people of today. He entrusts himself to me. "You are no longer servants, but friends": these words bring great inner joy, but at the same time, they are so awe-inspiring that one can feel daunted as the decades go by amid so many experiences of one's own frailty and his inexhaustible goodness.

"No longer servants, but friends": this saying contains within itself the entire programme of a priestly life. What is friendship? Idem velle, idem nolle – wanting the same things, rejecting the same things: this was how it was expressed in antiquity. Friendship is a communion of thinking and willing. The Lord says the same thing to us most insistently: "I know my own and my own know me" (Jn 10:14). The Shepherd calls his own by name (cf. Jn 10:3). He knows me by name. I am not just some nameless being in the infinity of the universe. He knows me personally. Do I know him? The friendship that he bestows upon me can only mean that I too try to know him better; that in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in prayer, in the communion of saints, in the people who come to me, sent by him, I try to come to know the Lord himself more and more. Friendship is not just about knowing someone, it is above all a communion of the will. It means that my will grows into ever greater conformity with his will. For his will is not something external and foreign to me, something to which I more or less willingly submit or else refuse to submit. No, in friendship, my will grows together with his will, and his will becomes mine: this is how I become truly myself. Over and above communion of thinking and willing, the Lord mentions a third, new element: he gives his life for us (cf. Jn 15:13; 10:15). Lord, help me to come to know you more and more. Help me to be ever more at one with your will. Help me to live my life not for myself, but in union with you to live it for others. Help me to become ever more your friend.

Read the Holy Father's entire homily, given on June 29th, the 60th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood and the Solemnity of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

• Pope Benedict XVI's Rookie Year As a Priest | An excerpt from Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977

Will someone please remind me again why I find militant secularism ...

... so condescending, shallow, dull, insulting, intellectually-lacking, obnoxious, boring, and adolescent? Ah, Herb Silverman, Founder and President of the Secular Coalition for America, has agreed to help jog my memory. Over to you, Herb:

Thank you, Bishop DiMarzio, for inadvertently reminding the apathetic public why separating religion from government is so critically important. In trying to become more politically relevant, I hope the latest pronouncement of the Catholic Church will make that church even less relevant. As far as I can tell, the Catholic Church is on the wrong side of all issues pertaining to sex.

Let's see if I have this right. The Church wants heterosexual couples to remain celibate until marriage and then to have as many children as nature (excuse me, "God") provides, whether they want or can afford them. The exception is for priests and nuns who must remain celibate their entire lives because …. (Fill in the blank, since the reasons have changed over centuries.) It's bad for straight couples to cohabitate, but good if they commit to a monogamous marriage; it's bad for gay couples to cohabitate, and even worse if they commit to a monogamous marriage. Don't anyone even think of the sin of masturbation, which is safe sex for pleasure only. And I—

Okay, okay. That's enough. I remember now. Thanks. Apparently Silverman and Victor Stenger are having some sort of dubious contest. Good effort on Silverman's part, but I think Stenger has a solid lead...

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June 29, 2011, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, marks the 60th anniversary...

...  of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI's ordination to the priesthood. Here is a selection from his book, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, about that joyful occasion.



Before he was Benedict XVI, or Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope was a young Bavarian seminarian. In his autobiography, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, Joseph Ratzinger recounts his ordination on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in Freising, Germany, in 1951, and his first years as a parish priest and then completing his doctorate while teaching at the seminary.

We were more than forty candidates, who, at the solemn call on that radiant summer day, which I remember as the high point of my life, responded "Adsum", Here I am. We should not be superstitious; but, at that moment when the elderly archbishop laid his hands on me, a little bird—perhaps a lark—flew up from the high altar in the cathedral and trilled a little joyful song. And I could not but see in this a reassurance from on high, as if I heard the words "This is good, you are on the right way." There then followed four summer weeks that were like an unending feast. On the day of our first Holy Mass, our parish church of Saint Oswald gleamed in all its splendor, and the joy that almost palpably filled the whole place drew everyone there into the most living mode of "active participation" in the sacred event, but this did not require any external busyness. We were invited to bring the first blessing into people's homes, and everywhere we were received even by total strangers with a warmth and affection I had not thought possible until that day. In this way I learned firsthand how earnestly people wait for a priest, how much they long for the blessing that flows from the power of the sacrament. The point was not my own or my brother's person. What could we two young men represent all by ourselves to the many people we were now meeting? In us they saw persons who had been touched by Christ's mission and had been empowered to bring his nearness to men. Precisely because we ourselves were not the point, a friendly human relationship could develop very quickly.

Made strong by the experience of these weeks, on August 1 I began my ministry as assistant pastor in the parish of the Precious Blood in Munich. The greater portion of the parish lay in a residential suburb in which intellectuals, artists, and high government officials lived; but there were also rows of houses belonging to employees and people who worked in small shops, as well as butlers and maids, who in those days belonged to wealthier households. The rectory had been built by a famous architect. It was homey but too small, and the great number of people who came to help out in various functions often created a hectic atmosphere. But the important thing was my encounter with the pastor, good Father Blumschein, who not only said to others that a priest had to "glow" but was himself a person who glowed within. To his last breath he desired with every fiber of his being to offer priestly service. He died, in fact, bringing the sacraments to a dying person. His kindness and inner fervor for his priestly mission were what gave a special character to this rectory. What at first glance could appear to be hectic activity was in reality the expression of a continually lived readiness to serve.

I surely was in need of such a model, because the load of tasks assigned to me was great. I had to give sixteen hours of religious instruction at five different levels, which obviously required much preparation. Every Sunday I had to celebrate at least two Masses and give two different sermons. Every morning, I sat in the confessional from six to seven, and on Saturday afternoons for four hours. Every week there were several burials in the various cemeteries of the city. I was totally responsible for youth ministry, and to this I had to add extracurricular obligations like baptisms, weddings, and so on. Since the pastor did not spare himself, neither did I want to, nor could I spare myself. Because of my scant practical training, I had at first some difficulty with these duties. But soon the work with the children in the school, and the resulting association with their parents, became a great joy to me, and the encounter with different groups of Catholic youth also quickly generated a good feeling of community. To be sure, it also became evident how far removed the world of the life and thinking of many children was from the realities of faith and how little our religious instruction coincided with the actual lives and thinking of our families. Nor could I overlook the fact that the form of youth work, which was simply a continuation of methods developed between the two World Wars, would not be able to deal with the changing circumstances of the world we now lived in: we simply had to look for new forms. Some of the insights that came to me as I experienced these changed conditions I gathered up some years later in my essay "The New Pagans and the Church", which at that time triggered a lively discussion.

My assignment to the seminary at Freising, which my superiors decided would begin on October 1, 1952, aroused various reactions in me. On the one hand, this was the solution I had desired, the one that would enable me to return to my theological work, which I loved so much. On the other hand, I suffered a great deal, especially in the first year, from the loss of all the human contacts and experiences afforded me by the pastoral ministry. In fact, I even began to think I would have done better to remain in parish work. The feeling of being needed and of accomplishing an important service had helped me to give all I could, and this gave me a joy in the priesthood that I did not experience in so direct a manner in my new assignment. I now had to give a series of lectures to the last-year students on the pastoral aspects of the sacraments, and, although the experience I could draw on was rather limited, at least it was recent and fresh in my mind. To this was added work in the cathedral—liturgical services and hours in the confessional—as well as the responsibility of a youth group started by my predecessor. Above all I had to complete my doctorate, which at that time was no mean proposition: in each of eight subjects I had to pass a one-hour oral examination and complete a written examination, and the process culminated in an open debate for which I had to prepare theses from all theological disciplines. Especially for Father and Mother, it was a great joy when, in July 1953, I walked across the stage and received the cap as doctor of theology.

• Biography of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI
• Jesus of Nazareth (Part 2) available March 10, 2011
• Other Recent Books by Pope Benedict XVI
• All books by or about Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI
• Excerpts from books by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI
• Articles about Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI

On Saints Peter and Paul

First, a short selection from the beautiful homily given by the successor of Saint Peter on June 28, 2009, marking the conclusion of Pauline Year:

Paul wants Christians to have a "responsible" and "adult faith". The words "adult faith" in recent decades have formed a widespread slogan. It is often meant in the sense of the attitude of those who no longer listen to the Church and her Pastors but autonomously choose what they want to believe and not to believe hence a do-it-yourself faith. And it is presented as a "courageous" form of self-expression against the Magisterium of the Church. In fact, however, no courage is needed for this because one may always be certain of public applause. Rather, courage is needed to adhere to the Church's faith, even if this contradicts the "logic" of the contemporary world. This is the non-conformism of faith which Paul calls an "adult faith". It is the faith that he desires. On the other hand, he describes chasing the winds and trends of the time as infantile. Thus, being committed to the inviolability of human life from its first instant, thereby radically opposing the principle of violence also precisely in the defence of the most defenceless human creatures is part of an adult faith. It is part of an adult faith to recognize marriage between a man and a woman for the whole of life as the Creator's ordering, newly re-established by Christ. Adult faith does not let itself be carried about here and there by any trend. It opposes the winds of fashion. It knows that these winds are not the breath of the Holy Spirit; it knows that the Spirit of God is expressed and manifested in communion with Jesus Christ. However, here too Paul does not stop at saying "no", but rather leads us to the great "yes". He describes the mature, truly adult faith positively with the words: "speaking the truth in love" (cf. Eph 4: 15). The new way of thinking, given to us by faith, is first and foremost a turning towards the truth. The power of evil is falsehood. The power of faith, the power of God, is the truth. The truth about the world and about ourselves becomes visible when we look to God. And God makes himself visible to us in the Face of Jesus Christ. In looking at Christ, we recognize something else: truth and love are inseparable. In God both are inseparably one; it is precisely this that is the essence of God. For Christians, therefore, truth and love go together. Love is the test of truth. We should always measure ourselves anew against this criterion, so that truth may become love and love may make us truthful.

Another important thought appears in this verse of St Paul. The Apostle tells us that by acting in accordance with truth in love, we help to ensure that all things (ta pánta) the universe may grow, striving for Christ. On the basis of his faith, Paul is not only concerned in our personal rectitude nor with the growth of the Church alone. He is interested in the universe: ta pánta. The ultimate purpose of Christ's work is the universe the transformation of the universe, of the whole human world, of all creation. Those who serve the truth in love together with Christ contribute to the true progress of the world. Yes, here it is quite clear that Paul is acquainted with the idea of progress. Christ his life, his suffering and his rising was the great leap ahead in the progress of humanity, of the world. Now, however, the universe must grow in accordance with him. Where the presence of Christ increases, therein lies the true progress of the world. There, mankind becomes new and thus the world is made new.

And this excerpt from Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar's, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church:

The bursting of all comprehensible models in the constellation around Jesus can become most perplexing to human reason. Take the seeming contradiction introduced by the call of Paul to an apostolate that ranks with that of the Twelve. He has to fight hard for it, all the more so because his vision of the Risen One, which makes him and his mission coequal with the first witnesses, is of a totally different kind. [9]  Paul is and remains supernumerary, because with the election of Matthias his place has already been filled. And yet he is legitimate, even among the "superapostles", "even though I am nothing" (2 Cor 12:11). He is indeed "nothing", for the heavenly Jerusalem remains built upon twelve foundation stones, and no provision is made for a thirteenth gate (Rev 21:14). And yet the lion's share falls to him in his apostolate and his theological grasp of the mysterium of Christ; he is associated with Luke and Mark; his exploits make up the largest part of the Acts of the Apostles.

Paul represents the "Passion of Christ" to the communities and for them, so he himself becomes a "type" as he models himself on the "type" of Christ. Not only does this introduce an unprecedented existential mediation—prelude to the great missioning of saints in Church history—but also an unheard-of clarification of what will be called office and authority in the Church. Again, the two sides are inseparable from each other. Paulinism is not only what Luther extracted as "doctrine" from the Letters to the Romans and Galatians but also that other part which deals with Church government in the Letters to the Corinthians, which sounds more authoritarian than any successor of Peter would have dared to be. (How mild the Letters of Clement sound by comparison!) This, naturally, is of more than merely antiquarian interest for the later Church: so this was the way the charismatic Church of Corinth was really ruled with the assistance of the Holy Spirit! But authority in the Church, the precise anatomy of which Paul has made plain, theologically as well as pastorally, for all ages of the Church on the basis of his own experience, is just as distinctively marked by the unique Christ-event as was the earlier Peter-John "structure": it is an authority that proceeds in harmony with the community and—using all the resources of charity, with a heartfelt and ministerial love and a trusting reference to the immanence of Christ's Spirit in the faithful (2 Cor 13:5)—strives to create communio. It threatens with a regrettable but legitimate "naked" authority only in the extreme instance when the apostle does not find in the community the proper loving obedience required by faith (2 Cor 12:20-21).

Just as Peter builds on John and John is within (and beside) Peter, the Petrine aspect perhaps appears nowhere more clearly than in Paul. Conversely, Pauline influence is unmistakable in Peter's letters, [10] which are evidently intended to transmit wholly Petrine tradition. Again, we see two striking figures (who do not in the least blur each other and who have distinct theological and ecclesiological valences) in perichoresis, nor could it be otherwise among the members of the "living Body of Christ".

Still, not every member communicates in the same way with the other. Within the manifest structure (which we stress is not definable in terms of tight distinctions) there are delicate lines of relation, most clearly drawn and represented by Luke and John. Luke portrays a family relationship between Mary and the Baptist, and, as Paul's companion, he circumspectly builds a bridge between the latter and the Gospel tradition. Luke and John both bring to light deep, hidden mariological dimensions. In the episode at the foot of the Cross, told only by John, he who in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles is always shown together with Peter becomes "son" and guardian of the Mother. Thus he is shifted into a discrete but totally indispensable central position (mediating between Peter and Mary, between the official, masculine Church and the feminine Church) that alone can give these two dimensions of the Church's mysterium their place and proportion. Only where these concrete proportions are seen, understood and meditated upon in the light of faith, can one speak to advantage about the office of Peter in the Church. Moreover, this cannot be isolated from its most intimate connection with and within the collegium of the Twelve, each of whom was explicitly called by name.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Ernst Käsemann, "Die Legitimität des Apostels", in Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 41, (1942).
[10] K. H. Schelkle, Die Petrusbriefe, der Judasbrief (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1961), 5ff.; cf. the entries under "Paulusbriefe" in the index.

Also see:

• Peter and Succession | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• "Primacy in Love": The Chair Altar of Saint Peter's in Rome | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• "We can always follow Peter" | The Introduction to Simon, Called Peter: In The Company of a Man In Search of God | Dom Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, O.Cist.
• Church Authority and the Petrine Element | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome | Stephen K. Ray | From Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church
• Unity, Plurality, and the Papacy | Hans Urs von Balthasar | From the Introduction to The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church
• "God Created Saint Paul and Then Broke the Mold": An Interview with Joseph M. Callewaert, author of The World of Saint Paul
• "In These Last Days" | Joseph M. Callewaert | The opening chapter of The World of Saint Paul .