Pope offers a way to grow in Love for Christ

This week's feast of Corpus Christi is a chance to grow in love for Jesus in the Eucharist, says Benedict XVI. The Pope spoke today of the upcoming feast -- celebrated Thursday in the Vatican and in many other countries -- when he gave his traditional greeting to the sick, the young and newlyweds before concluding the general audience in St. Peter's Square.
"The feast of Corpus Christi, which we celebrate tomorrow, offers us the occasion to go deeper in our faith and in our love for the Eucharist," he said. The Holy Father will preside over a Mass in the Basilica of St. John Lateran and then process with the Eucharist to the Basilica of St. Mary Major, where he will give benediction. The Pontiff addressed youth and children who have just made their first Communion to express his hope that "the sacrament of the Body and the Blood of Christ would be the spiritual nourishment of each day to move forward along the path to sanctity." He presented the Eucharist to the sick as their "support and consolation in trials and in suffering." And the Pope expressed his wish for newlyweds that the Eucharist be "the deep motive for your love that is expressed in your daily actions."

Source: Zenit

I often wonder why we move the feast of Corpus Christi from Thursday to a Sunday. Granted the feast might be more attended, the procession is not Mass and hence must people who attend Sunday Mass probably won't go to anything extra like a procession. Besides Thursday was the day the Sacred Eucharist was instituted by our Blessed Lord. On top of that, theres an oppurtunity to take Thursday off and make it a holy day of relaxation, fun and celebration. Americans like to take days off...heres a chance? Whats your thoughts on the laxation of feasts by moving them to Sunday? Pros? Cons?

"Culty of Casualness" in Church Dress?

The dress of people attending Mass has been deteriorating for years and now it seems, it has reached catastrophic proportions. There seems to be a "cult of casualness" in our dress.

Why do we dress up for weddings, funerals and (white collar) jobs? To honor those whom we love or those whom we serve. Love doesn't make honor and respect unnecessary, it fosters it. Most married couples know that when familiarity and comfort in a marriage crowd out honor and respect, trouble follows.

"But comfort is a good thing and we like to be comfortable." Yes, that is true but not at the expense of love and reverence. Comfort is for the self, love is for the other. We must make a choice.

In the past, dressing up often had an element of pleasing the other. Now pleasing the self has taken precedence. Our society has been called a "culture of narcissism." Those who have unconsciously bought into this philosophy will often bristle at the suggestion that they dress better for Church.

Some say God cares about the internals not the externals. But if that were the case we would not build beautiful Churches, wear beautiful vestments and listening to beautiful sacred music (ie. chant). Even the poor Cure d' Ars and the simple Francis of Assisi strove for the fine vestments and altar linens. These are all ways of showing God we acknowledge his greatness and reminding ourselves of the same. Does it make sense to spend millions building magnificent Churches and then wear jeans, shorts or T-shirts for Sacred Liturgy? When we dress this way, does not our body language to God and others say, 'The Mass is not so glorious, and neither is God?"

In Sacred Scripture the Lord says, "Worship the Lord in holy attire." (1 Chr. 16:29, Ps. 29:2) And the Cathecism of the Catholic Church states that our gestures and clothing "ought to convey the respect, solemnity, and joy of the moment when Christ becomes our guest" in Holy Communion. (CCC 1387)

Yet some object saying the Bible says, "rend your hearts not your garments." (Joel 2:12) yes but is also says, "It is love I want, not sacrifice.' (Hos 6:6) Yet we still have the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and we still find the apostles rending garments in the Acts of the Apostles. God is not saying these external things are rejected, but that they are useless without interior conversion. In fact, dressing properly for Mass, or even going to Mass, means nothing if we have no love in our hearts.

Let's battle this "cult of casualness" by dressing in our best to worship our Thrice Holy God. Let us interiorly and externally "worship the Lord in holy attire."

Pontiff warns against new theories of "Gender"

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 22, 2008 (Zenit.org).- While protecting nature is an essential mission of the Church, it's no more important than protecting the nature of the person, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope spoke today of what he termed an "ecology of man" during his traditional exchange of Christmas greetings with prelates and members of the Roman Curia.

"Given that faith in the Creator is an essential element of the Christian creed, the Church can not and should not limit itself to transmitting to the faithful only the message of salvation," he affirmed. "It also has a responsibility with creation, and it has to fulfill this responsibility in public."

The Pontiff added that while the Church needs to "defend the earth, water, air, as gifts of the creation that belongs to all of us [... ], it must also protect the human being from his own destruction."

"It is necessary that there be something such as an ecology of man, understood in the proper manner," he said.

This human ecology, he affirmed, is based on respecting the nature of the person, and the two genders of masculine and feminine.

Always current

"It is not outmoded metaphysics," Benedict XVI affirmed, "when Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected."

He said it has more to do with "faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, the contempt of which will lead to the self destruction of humanity."

The Pope warned against the manipulation that takes place in national and international forums when the term "gender" is altered.

"What is often expressed and understood by the term 'gender,' is definitively resolved in the self-emancipation of the human being from creation and the Creator," he warned. "Man wants to create himself, and to decide always and exclusively on his own about what concerns him."

The Pontiff said this is man living "against truth, against the creating Spirit."

"The rain forests certainly deserve our protection, but man as creature indeed deserves no less," he added.

Benedict XVI explained that great theologians have "qualified marriage, that is to say, the link for life between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator."

"This forms part of the announcement that the Church should offer," he concluded, "in favor of the creating Spirit present in all of nature, and in a special way in the nature of man created in the image of God."

Papal Liturgical Announcments

"The Master of Papal Liturgical Ceremonies -- Msgr Guido Marini -- has announced that Pope Benedict XVI will use a "fiddle back" chasuble for the Mass of Epiphany on 6 January.


"In an article in today's "L'Avvenire" [the daily paper of the Italian bishops], Msgr Marini also said the Pope would not wear a cope for the Urbi et Orbi blessing on Christmas Day. He said the Pope would instead wear the mozzetta and stole. Undoubtedly, this will be the ermine-trimmed winter mozzetta...."

Pope claims "I'm not a Rock Star"

This morning, B16 received the Roman Curia for the traditional exchange of Christmas greetings.

While recent years have seen the pontiff's customary address take the form of a travelogue and recap of the year's activities, it's worth recalling that, in 2005, the first of Papa Ratzi's Yuletide talks became one of his reign's landmark texts, often referred to in shorthand by its signal phrase: the "hermenutic of continuity."

This time around, the lengthy review's lead buzz-passage came in a papal analysis of World Youth Day, as Benedict reflected on this year's edition of the triennial gathering, held in Sydney in mid-July.

For context purposes, here's a rush translation of the key graf (emphases original):

"The uniquness of the [World Youth] days and the particular character of their joy, their creative force of communion, can find no explanation. Above all it's important to take into account the fact that the World Youth Days do not consist solely in just the one week where they're publicly rendered visible to the world. It is a long road, interior and exterior, that leads to them. The Cross, accompanied by the image of the Mother of the Lord, makes a pilgrimage across countries. Faith, in its way, needs to see and touch. The encounter with the cross, which comes to be touched and carried, becomes an internal encounter with the One who took up the cross and died for us. The encounter with the Cross sustains in the soul of the young the memory of that God who wanted to make himself man and suffer alongside us. And we see the woman given us as our Mother. The solemn Days are but the culmination of a long road, along which we find one another and go together to encounter Christ. Not just in Australia did the long Via Crucis cross the city and become the culminating event of these days. It likewise reflected again all that happened in the years preceding it and pointed to Him who reunites together all of us: that God who so loved us even to the Cross. So, too, the Pope is not the star around which it all unfolds. He is totally and merely the Vicar. He returns to the Other who is in our midst. Finally the solemn liturgy is the center of this togetherness, for in it comes that which we cannot realize and which, still, we are always awaiting. He is present. He enters among us. The heavens are torn and the earth is made luminous. It's this that renders life light and open and unites the many ones with others in a joy that is incomparable with the ecstasy of a rock festival. Frederich Nietzsche once said: "The ability is not in organizing a party, but in finding the people able to bring it joy." According to Scripture, joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf Gal 5:22): this fruit was abundantly perceivable in the days of Sydney. And just as a long road precedes the World Youth Days, a path following it is likewise drawn. Friendships are formed that encourage a different lifestyle and that sustain it from inside. The great days have, not an ending, but the scope of sustaining these friendships and of making places of life in the faith rise in the world where, together, hope and love can be seen.
During WYD Sydney, a leader of the Aussie branch of the Society of St Pius X -- the schismatic traditionalist group -- knocked the weeklong event as a "happy party" with "very little that is truly holy and sacred and prayerful" in it.

CDW Prefect on Altar Rails

Speaking of which, in an interview with a Spanish outlet following his recent appointment as the global church's Liturgy Czar, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares echoed the Pope's recent move -- and the stated mind of his now-lieutenant at the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments -- endorsing the value of receiving the Eucharist kneeling and on the tongue:

Q: Benedict XVI has reiterated in some instances the propriety of receiving communion kneeling and in the mouth. Is it something important, or is it a mere matter of form?

Cañizares: - No, it is not just a matter of form. What does it mean to receive communion in the mouth? What does it mean to kneel before the Most Holy Sacrament? What dies it mean to kneel during the consecration at Mass? It means adoration, it means recognizing the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; it means respect and an attitude of faith of a man who prostrates before God because he knows that everything comes from Him, and we feel speechless, dumbfounded, before the wondrousness, his goodness, and his mercy. That is why it is not the same to place the hand, and to receive communion in any fashion, than doing it in a respectful way; it is not the same to receive communion kneeling or standing up, because all these signs indicate a profound meaning. What we have to grasp is that profound attitude of the man who prostrates himself before God, and that is what the Pope wants.
The sixth congregation head named thus far by B16, with the Spaniard's long-expected move to Rome now in the can, attention is beginning to turn in earnest toward the pontiff's next round of Curial shuffling.

Three heads of the second-tier pontifical councils might be serving well past their 75th birthdays, but the primary focus rests squarely on the all-important Congregation for Bishops, where Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re will reach the retirement age on 30 January.

Head of the dicastery that recommends episcopal appointments to the Pope since 2000 -- and a masterfully-effective Sostituto in the model of his mentor Benelli prior to that -- it's been indicated in some quarters that the wait for a new prefect might be relatively brief... then again, it's no secret that, these days, more things than not are moving at a snail's pace in B16's Vatican.

At the recent rollout of the papal message for 2009's World Day of Peace (1 January), the Peace Czar Cardinal Renato Martino said that the pontiff's long-awaited, repeatedly-delayed "social encyclical" Caritas in Veritate was now being targeted for release shortly after the first of the year.

Still doing double-duty at the helm of both the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace and Migrants and Itinerants, the former UN observer himself turned 75 in November... 2007.

Pope's address to Roman Curia

So, by the looks of it, what the Pope's 2005 Christmas speech to the Curia was for the ad intra, this morning's is becoming for the world beyond.

Put bluntly, this morning's season's "greeting" has set off some Christmas crackers; a passage of the Pope's Yuletide talk -- 11 pages, all told -- drew a link between preserving the environment and the church's voice on gender issues... and, suffice it to say, controversy was had:

Pope Benedict took an unconventional approach today to stand up to what he sees as gender-bending, saying protecting heterosexuality was as important as saving the rainforest.

"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said.... "The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

The Pope stressed that the Church would defend the traditional roles of "a man and woman, and to ask that this order of creation be respected".

He turned his attention to those people who call themselves in Italian "gender" or "transgender" — a broad term that includes anyone who doesn't identify entirely with their assigned sex and can include homosexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals and others....

"What's often expressed and understood with the term 'gender', is summed up definitively in the self-emancipation of man from the created and the Creator … But in this way, he lives in opposition to truth, he lives in opposition to the Creator," the pope said....

The New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reacted promptly, saying: "In a season in which the immorality of genocide, lawless governments, lust for money and power and the destabilization of the world's economy are destroying the lives of hundreds of millions around the world, the Pope's obsessive focus on gay, lesbian and trans people who simply seek the right to live and love is out of touch with what humanity needs right now from its religious leaders."
The Italian press has likewise gone wild with the gender section -- atop the leading dailies, the wire headline repeatedly reads "Pope: No to Sex Change."

On a lighter note, late last week the Bavarian banker Thaddeus Kühnel arrived at the Vatican to deliver some of Benedict's favorite things for the season: five Christmas trees, Aachen chocolates, honey and spice biscuits, and a "practical" gift from Des Papstbruder, Msgr Georg Ratzinger, whose 85th birthday next month will be marked with a Vatican concert.