Pope Benedict XVI baptizes a baby during a Mass in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican Jan. 13. The pope baptized 20 babies as he celebrated the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The pope told parents that baptism would bring their children into a “personal relationship with Jesus” that would give their lives meaning.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Sistine Chapel sounded a bit like a nursery Jan. 14, as Pope Benedict XVI baptized 20 babies, whose crying provided a constant accompaniment to the two-hour Mass on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

Referring to the day’s reading from the Gospel St. Luke, which recounts the baptism of Jesus by St. John the Baptist, Pope Benedict said that in choosing to receive the sacrament, Jesus showed he “was really immersed in our human condition; he lived it to the utmost – although without sin – and in such a way that he understands weakness and fragility.”

The pope told the parents that their children’s baptism would bring them into a “personal relationship with Jesus” that would give their lives meaning: “Only in this friendship is the great potential of the human condition truly revealed and we can experience what is beautiful and what is free.”

Reminding the godparents of their duty to assist parents in raising their godchildren in the faith, Pope Benedict noted that “it is not easy to demonstrate what you believe in openly and without compromise, especially in the context in which we live, in the face of a society that often considers those who live by faith in Jesus to be old-fashioned and out of date.”

by Father John Cush

Last April, I was asked by Bishop DiMarzio to begin studies for the doctorate in Sacred Theology in Rome, beginning this September. This came as a big surprise! I had been a student at the North American College as a seminarian and as a newly ordained priest and I had earned my baccalaureate and licentiate at the Gregorian University in Rome. After many years on the other side of the desk as a teacher at Cathedral Prep Seminary, Elmhurst, the Pastoral Institute, the Diaconate Formation Program and other places, this was quite daunting! To move behind the desk at the Angelicum and pick up notebook and pen again was terrifying!

One of the many pleasurable aspects of life in Rome is the opportunity to take advantage of the papal events. In addition to the great theological studies in fine universities like the Angelicum and the Gregorian, the prime teacher while in Rome, is Rome itself. To walk the streets where apostles, martyrs, saints and popes tread is, in itself, an invaluable education. While our professors may be the finest among Dominican friars, Jesuit priests and Benedictine monks, among others, the main teacher is the history, the story, the very faith that cries out from every cobblestone in the Eternal City.

To be a student-priest in Rome during the Year of Faith is a blessing in itself. I had the good fortune of distributing Holy Communion at the Mass of the opening of the World Synod of Bishops and at the Mass beginning the Year of Faith, in which was commemorated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

The World Synod of Bishops, called by the Holy Father, is a tremendous undertaking. It is one step, among many, for the Church to further dialogue with the world. We, as Christians, are in the world, and yet not of the world. However, each of us must use the best possible ways to communicate the faith to the world today.

The Year of Faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI could not come at a better time. The world is longing for truth that will set us free from the secularism, the narcissism, the violence to self and others which can, unfortunately, at times, distinguish our contemporary world. As Pilate asked the Lord (John 18:38), “What is Truth?” We, as the Bride of Christ in the world today can proclaim the only truth is He who is Christ Jesus.

As we witnessed at the Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 11, as was done 50 years prior, after the proclamation of the Gospel, the Gospel Book was enshrined by the altar, reminding us that we are led and fed by Sacred Scripture and bask in the living stream that is Sacred Tradition.

The emphasis on knowing the authentic teaching of our Church, as expressed in those two fonts of Revelation, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and clearly taught in the Magisterium, most especially the documents of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is key for this Year of Faith.

ROME (CNS) – Biblical scholars are putting little credence in the authenticity of a newly published text containing a reference to Jesus’ “wife.”

But the tiny papyrus fragment, purportedly dating to the fourth century A.D., is being used to stir a debate about the Church’s attitudes toward marriage, sex and the role of women.

The fragment of papyrus with eight lines of Egyptian Coptic writing is the “only extant ancient text which explicitly portrays Jesus as referring to a wife,” wrote Karen L. King, historian of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, in an academic paper she delivered Sept. 18 at an international Coptic studies conference in Rome.

“It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married,” she wrote, “given the late date of the fragment and the probable date of original composition,” at the end of the second century.

The best source of evidence giving an account of Jesus’ life and ministry is still the Gospels in the New Testament, King told reporters the next day, “and they are silent about his marital status.”

But she said the fragment is “direct evidence” that early Christians started debating in the second century whether Jesus could have been married or not.

Father Juan Chapa, a New Testament scholar at the University of Navarra in Spain, told Catholic News Service that the “Gospels don’t mention marriage, not because they wanted to hide something, but because it was clear that Jesus did not get married, and it’s consistent in the church’s tradition.”

He also noted that the gnostic gospel genre to which the fragment evidently belongs is one of the stories about Jesus that mainly take place after the resurrection, using language that is heavily allegorical. Thus, he said, the fragment’s relevant words — “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife’” — were likely not meant as a literal assertion about the life of the historical Jesus.

King said that the significance of the fragment lies in the light it might shed on debates in the early church over the necessity of celibacy to living a holy life.

According to Michael Peppard, a professor of theology and Coptic language at Fordham University, a belief in asceticism saw rapid development in the second to fourth centuries, especially in Egypt where Christian monasticism was born.

Some bishops at the time “were saying that the highest ideal was asceticism,” which included renouncing “all the trappings and worries of material life,” including marriage.

But Peppard said other bishops in the same period “were figuring out how to give everyone their space,” and letting it be known it was all right for Christians to live in the world.

The new text published by King may be a sign of early Christians “pushing back” against asceticism and moving closer to mainstream Jewish attitudes “of blessing sex and procreation,” Peppard said.

Catholic teaching, Father Chapa said, holds that “Jesus’ celibacy, by differentiating him from other rabbis, underlines his unique mission to fulfill the kingdom of God, and shows how he embodied the love of God” by renouncing conjugal love.

King said the reference to Jesus’ wife could just be a symbol of the Church, akin to the Gospel allegory of Jesus as bridegroom of the Church.

“What if what’s missing is saying, ‘My wife is the church?’”King said.

But both Peppard and King argue that the word does refer to a real person, since the line just below it includes the words: “…she will be able to be my disciple…”

The “wife” in question could be a “spiritual wife,” Peppard said. Other texts from the same period uphold “the image of an unconsummated spiritual marriage where the best kind of husband and wife live celibately,” he said.

King acknowledged that there would be continued debate over the authenticity of the fragment, whose paper trail goes back only to the 1980s.

“I would say it’s a forgery,” Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg who was attending the conference with King, told the Associated Press. “The script doesn’t look authentic” compared to other fourth-century Coptic papyri.

But Roger Bagnall, a papyrologist and director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, studied the handwriting, the grammar and how the ink was absorbed by the plant fibers, and he concluded it was likely to date from the period between 350 and 400 A.D.

“We can’t ever know or be 100 percent sure if it’s authentic or a forgery,” Peppard said.

by Francis X. Rocca

ROME (CNS) – On the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Obama administration’s health care law, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore warned an audience in Rome about what he characterized as the law’s threat to religious freedom.

The archbishop, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom, addressed a group called the Observatory on Religious Liberty, recently established by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the city of Rome.

Archbishop Lori, who spoke several hours before the announcement of the court’s decision, singled out the health care law’s planned “HHS mandate,” which would require the private health insurance plans of most Catholic institutions to cover surgical sterilization procedures and artificial birth control, in violation of the church’s moral doctrines.

“Embedded in the HHS mandate is an extremely narrow definition of religion put there as a litmus test to determine which religious organizations are religious enough – by the government’s definition – to deserve an exemption from providing services contrary to their teachings,” he said.

The archbishop described the administration’s effort in this case as part of a broader trend.

“Unless we stop it now, this narrow, governmental definition of what a church is will likely spread throughout our nation’s laws and policies,” he said.

“Something fundamental is being lost in American culture and law,” he said. “And this loss of freedom does not and will not serve the common good of our nation or other nations where bloody religious persecutions are under way.”

Archbishop Lori also told the group about the U.S. bishops’ “fortnight for freedom” campaign, a two-week period of prayer, education and action, which ended in Washington July 4 with Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

In response to a reporter’s question after his speech, the archbishop dismissed suggestions that the U.S. bishops’ campaign amounts to an inappropriate intrusion by religious leaders in election-year politics. He stressed that the bishops have long supported universal health care, as long as it provides for conscientious objection and does not spend federal money for abortions.

“We did everything we could well in advance of this election to head off this train wreck,” he said. “We didn’t choose the timing; we didn’t choose the fight. It happens to occur in an election year, and just because it’s happening in an election year imposes no responsibility on us to remain silent.”

Archbishop Lori was in Rome to receive the pallium, a lamb’s wool stole that symbolize his leadership of an archdiocese, from Pope Benedict XVI at a June 29 ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Pope Benedict XVI kneels in prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament during the Corpus Christi procession in Rome.  At Corpus Christi Mass, the Pope said a misunderstanding of the Second Vatican Council has led some Catholics to think that Eucharistic adoration and Corpus Christi processions are pietistic practices that pale in importance to the celebration of Mass outside Rome’s Basilica of St. John Lateran.  “A unilateral interpretation of the Second Vatican Council has penalized this dimension” of Catholic faith, which is to recognize Jesus truly present in the Eucharist and worthy of adoration, the pope said June 7 during a Mass marking the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.  The Pope said that if Christ is seen as present in the Eucharist only during Mass, “this imbalance has repercussions on the spiritual life of the faithful,” who need to be aware of “the constant presence of Jesus among us and with us.”

His Eminence Timothy Dolan, who is a longtime Cardinals fan, is now a member of the team. And it’s only natural that we shared in the joy of the archdiocese as Archbishop Timothy Dolan became a cardinal last weekend.

The Diocese of Brooklyn is unique in that it shares the city with the Archdiocese of New York. Most Catholics in the city live in Brooklyn or Queens but they go to Manhattan every day to work, to play and to be.

Many from this side of the river travelled to Rome to be with the city’s new Prince of the Church. Our own Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio and Auxiliary Bishop Frank Caggiano were among the 1,000 people from New York who were in the Eternal City for the red-hat festivities.

And our new communications agency, the DeSales Media Group, worked overtime as we broadcast live on TV the installation to the entire city, as well as beyond, via Internet stream.

Some of tech people worked through the night. Others were on call last Saturday at 3 a.m. at The NET’s studios in Park Slope on the day of the installation. Engineers were preparing for the feed from Vatican TV and commentary from Vatican Radio. I was at the anchor desk with Father John Cush, spiritual director of Cathedral Prep Seminary, Elmhurst, awaiting the red line that signalled we were on the air. At 4:30 a.m., the countdown ended and the light went on. In spite of the hectic pre-show preparations, the operation proceeded like a well-oiled machine, guided by Mike Geoghan, project manager of the event.

Father Cush, a last-minute replacement, was masterful as he brought expert commentary that relied on his days studying at North American College in Rome. He talked personally about Cardinal Dolan, who was rector of NAC while he was a student there. Cardinal Edwin O’Brien, a Bronx boy, was the outgoing rector, so he also could relate stories about the man who now serves as head of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher.

Father Cush also remembered new Cardinals Josef Becker and Prosper Grech, who taught him at NAC. Great theologians, demanding professors, he recalled.

In Rome, The NET’s new Currents’ anchor Liz Faublas was sending back packages for broadcast and they were shown following the ceremony along with an exclusive interview with Cardinal Dolan that had been taped in New York by Msgr. Kieran Harrington, our Vicar for Communications.

While it was technically a holiday weekend, Tablet staffers were busy compiling photos and copy from correspondents in Rome as we rushed toward our Tuesday deadline. The results are in your hands at this moment.

Kudos to everyone at DeSales for making the weekend such a success that it was. The names are too numerous to mention but special mention must be made of Ryan Stewart, the new program director for NET and director for the installation event, who spent most of the week making things happen behind the scenes in Rome.

This weekend, NET will bring you live coverage of the prayer service which Cardinal Dolan will celebrate at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Saturday, Feb. 25, at 10:30 a.m.

No, it may not exactly be a local story about our diocese, but it is our city, our church, and our story.