Wednesday, May 11, 2016

New book says Vatican II key to understanding Pope Francis

book cover 2



Good reporters are always intrigued by paradoxes, and my friend Giacomo Galeazzi of Italy’s La Stampa newspaper is unquestionably a talented reporter. Thus it’s no surprise that his new book, Il Concilio di Papa Francesco: La Nuova Primavera della Chiesa, pivots on a paradox.
(In English, the title is, “The Council of Pope Francis: The New Spring of the Church.”)
The paradox is this: Francis is the first pope since St. John XXIII who had no role whatsoever in the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), yet Vatican II arguably is the foundation of his entire papacy. As Galeazzi puts it, “Francis’ program is the council … the realization and actualization of the conciliar spring.”
To explain that seeming conundrum, Galeazzi argues that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future pope, came of age as a leader in the Catholic Church in the period immediately following the council. He served as a Jesuit superior in Argentina from 1973 to 1979, when implementing the council’s directives was every religious order’s top priority.
He also moved in the world of CELAM, the Latin American Episcopal Conference, at a time when that body was working out its own continental vision about what Vatican II meant, and how it should reshape the life and mission of the Church.
According to Galeazzi, Francis took away two convictions from that experience: That Vatican II was absolutely fundamental for the future, and that, to a great extent, its vision today remains not fully implemented and lived.

Yes, Francis is a pope of continuity, but it’s continuity with a council that itself represented a significant departure – a radical return to the sources of Christianity, which, Galeazzi says, Francis believes is still to be achieved.
To be sure, as Galeazzi thoroughly documents, Francis’ vision of Vatican II is a distinctly Latin American one.
For many European and North American Catholics, the primary “cash value” of Vatican II was in the liturgy, especially the use of vernacular languages and the transition to the priest facing the people in the Mass. That’s why to this day, it’s almost impossible to have a conversation about liturgical practice in the West that doesn’t immediately get swept up into charged debates over “turning back the clock” on the council.
Culturally, Vatican II intersected with the Western sexual revolution of the late 1960s, which made the primary lens for evaluating the impact of the council the extent to which it would prompt revisions in Catholic teaching on sexual ethics and women’s emancipation – a narrative that still dominates Western media coverage.
In Latin America, however, the most significant wave unleashed by Vatican II was the “option for the poor,” which flowered in various forms of liberation theology, and more basically, in a decision by many Catholics to upend the Church’s traditional dependence on social elites and instead to embrace the broad mass of ordinary people, especially the marginalized.

As Galeazzi shows, this had nothing to do with Marxism –  for Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his like-minded Latin American pastors, it was a practical strategy of evangelization, taking account of the sobering reality that a tight union between throne and altar in Latin America over the centuries had distanced the Church from the people.
In that sense, Galeazzi’s book helps American readers make sense of another seeming paradox about Francis: He claims to be a man of Vatican II, yet he’s not adopted the ecclesiastical reform agenda that many Americans associate with the council, such as women priests or changes in teaching on birth control, abortion or homosexuality.
In part, it’s because that wasn’t the Vatican II Bergoglio experienced in Latin America. The key insight here is not that he hasn’t upended Church teaching, which was always unrealistic, but that these aren’t even the issues he naturally connects to “the spirit of Vatican II.”
The Council of Pope Francis carries forewords by Bishop Nunzio Galantino, Francis’ hand-picked secretary of the powerful Italian bishops’ conference (CEI), and by Galeazzi’s colleague at La Stampa, the eminent Vatican writer Andrea Tornielli.
The book will be presented on Thursday in Turin, where La Stampa is based. At the moment there are no plans for an English translation, but let’s hope a publisher steps in soon, because The Council of Pope Francis offers perspectives that American readers in particular could benefit from considering.
John L. Allen Jr., the editor of Crux, specializes in coverage of the Vatican.

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Monday, May 9, 2016

Don't lock up the Holy Spirit in your heart, Pope Francis says




.- The Holy Spirit seems to be a “luxury prisoner” in many Christians’ hearts: someone who is welcomed to stay, but not allowed to act or move us forward, the Pope said during his homily at Mass on Monday.


“We keep the Holy Spirit as a ‘luxury prisoner’ in our hearts: we do not allow the Spirit to push us forward, to move us. The Spirit does everything, knows everything, reminds us what Jesus said, can explain all about Jesus,” the Holy Father said May 9 during his Mass at the chapel of Casa Santa Marta  in the Vatican.
In the day's reading, when St. Paul speaks with the disciples in Ephesus (Acts 19: 1-8), Pope Francis pointed out that they had “not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”


Likewise, while Christians today have a knowledge of the Holy Spirit as part of the Holy Trinity, they do not know what the Spirit’s role is in the Church.


“The Holy Spirit is the one who moves the Church, the one who works in the Church and in our hearts,” the Roman Pontiff said.
The Third Person of the Trinity is “the protagonist of the Living Church,” he said, while cautioning against simply reducing the Christian life to a code of “morals and ethics.”
The faith, the Pope said, is something more. It “is not just an ethical life: it is an encounter with Jesus Christ.”
The Holy Spirit “frees us from the ‘orphan-like’ condition which the spirit of the world wants to put us in.”

“The Holy Spirit is the one who “moves us to praise God, to pray to the Lord” and who “teaches us to see the Father and call him ‘Father.’”


There is one thing the Holy Spirit “can’t do” the Pope said: “The Holy Spirit cannot make us ‘virtual’ Christians who are not virtuous.” Instead, “The Holy Spirit makes real Christians. The Spirit takes life and prophetically reads the signs of the times pushing us forward.”
Ahead of Pentecost Sunday the Holy Father invited Christians to prepare by opening up our hearts to the Holy Spirit.


“This is what we must do this week: think of the Spirit and talk to him.”


Pope Francis also greeted the Vincentian Sisters of Charity who work in Casa Santa Marta. Today they are celebrating the feast of St. Louise de Marillac who, along with St. Vincent de Paul, founded their order.


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Taken from: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/dont-lock-up-the-holy-spirit-in-your-heart-pope-francis-says-11868/