by Francis X. Rocca

Father Joseph Ratzinger, right, talks with an unidentified prelate in this photo taken in 1962 during the Second Vatican Council. The future Pope Benedict XVI attended all four sessions of the council as a theological adviser to German Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published a short reminiscence of the council by Pope Benedict XVI.

In the essay, the pope recalls his presence at the opening of Vatican II, which he attended as a theological adviser. He both praises and criticizes some of the council’s most consequential documents, regarding religious liberty and the Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions and the modern world.

The essay is the introduction to a forthcoming collection of previously unpublished council-era writings by then-Father Joseph Ratzinger. The collection will be published in German this November.

“It was a moment of extraordinary expectation,” the pope writes of the procession of more than 2,000 bishops into St. Peter’s Basilica Oct. 11, 1962. “Great things were about to happen.”

“Christianity, which had built and formed the Western world, seemed more and more to be losing its power to shape society,” he writes. “So that it might once again be a force to shape the future, (Blessed) John XXIII had convoked the council without indicating to it any specific problems or programs. This was the greatness and at the same time the difficulty of that task that was set before the ecclesial assembly.”

A crucial question for the council fathers, Pope Benedict writes, was the “relationship between the church and the modern world.”

“From the 19th century onward,” the Church had “visibly entered into a negative relationship with the modern era,” he writes. “Did it have to remain so?”

Pope Benedict concludes that one of the council’s best-known documents, “Gaudium et Spes,” the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, failed to offer an adequate definition of the “essential features that constitute the modern era.”

Minor Documents of Great Importance

Instead, he writes, the “encounter with the great themes of the modern epoch” happened in “two minor documents, whose importance has only gradually come to light.”

The Declaration on Religious Liberty, “urgently requested, and also drafted, by the American bishops in particular,” clarified the Church’s affirmation of the “freedom to choose and practice religion and the freedom to change it, as fundamental human rights and freedoms,” he writes.

That declaration lent itself to troubling interpretations, the pope writes, since it might seem to imply the “inaccessibility of the truth to man,” which would make religion a merely subjective matter. But he writes that the 1978 election of Blessed John Paul II, from a country where the state denied religious freedom, revealed the “inner orientation of the faith toward the theme of freedom, and especially freedom of religion and worship.”

The pope also praises “Nostra Aetate,” the council’s declaration that the “spiritual, moral, and socio-cultural values (of non-Christian religions) were to be respected, protected and encouraged.”

But the pope writes that a “weakness of this otherwise extraordinary text has gradually emerged: It speaks of religion solely in a positive way, and it disregards the sick and distorted forms of religion.”

In conclusion, Pope Benedict reiterates one of his most prominent teachings about Vatican II: that it must be interpreted in continuity with the Church’s millennial traditions, not as a radical break with the past.

“The council fathers neither could nor wished to create a new or different church. They had neither the authority nor the mandate to do so,” he writes. “That is why a hermeneutic of rupture is so absurd and is contrary to the spirit and the will of the council fathers.”

Bishops leave St. Peter’s Basilica after a meeting of the Second Vatican Council in 1962.

by Francis X. Rocca

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Benedict XVI has approved the heroic virtues of U.S. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the Vatican announced June 28, clearing the way for the advancement of his sainthood cause.

Memorial Masses are scheduled worldwide Dec. 9 for Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s sainthood cause. The famed radio and television host and author is pictured in an undated file photo. (CNS file photo)

Among the others honored in decrees announced the same day were first prelate of Opus Dei, the Canadian and Irish-American founders of two orders of religious women, a priest murdered by the Sicilian Mafia and 154 martyrs killed during the Spanish Civil War.

Archbishop Sheen heroically lived Christian virtues and should be considered “venerable,” said a decree issued by the Congregation for Saints’ Causes and signed by Pope Benedict. Before the archbishop can be beatified, the Vatican must recognize that a miracle has occurred through his intercession.

The decree came just more than 13 months after Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria, Ill., presented Pope Benedict with two thick volumes about the life of Archbishop Sheen, whose home diocese was Peoria.

Archbishop Sheen, who was born in Illinois in 1895 and died in New York in 1979, was an Emmy-winning televangelist. His program, “Life is Worth Living,” aired in the United States from 1951 to 1957.

Last September, a tribunal of inquiry was sworn in to investigate the allegedly miraculous healing of a newborn whose parents had prayed to the archbishop’s intercession.

The Vatican also announced papal decrees approving the beatification of 158 men and women, including 156 martyrs, all but two of them Spaniards, killed during their country’s 1936-39 Civil War.

Father Giuseppe Puglisi, a Sicilian priest and activist against organized crime who was killed by the Mafia in 1993, was another of the martyrs recognized.

Martyrs do not need a miracle attributed to their intercession in order to be beatified. However, miracles must be recognized by the Vatican in order for martyrs to be canonized.

Also Venerable

Other decrees recognized the heroic virtues of eight men and women, including:

• Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, the first prelate of Opus Dei.

• Mother Marie-Josephte Fitzbach, founder of the Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec.

• Mother Mary Angeline Teresa McCrory, the Irish-born founder of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, who died in New York state in 1984.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The global financial crisis and the worldwide recession it triggered have demonstrated that allowing financial markets to self-regulate does not serve national interests and the good of the international community, a Vatican official said.
“The international community cannot let the financial system continue being a source of global economic instability; it must urgently take measures to prevent the outbreak of other financial crises in the future,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to U.N. agencies based in Geneva.
The archbishop made his comments during a top-level meeting of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, which was being held in Doha, Qatar.
The 2008 financial crisis “marked a turning point for the world economy,” Archbishop Tomasi said. “In particular, the subsequent global economic recession has eliminated at least 30 million jobs around the world,” according to statistics from the International Labor Organization.
“The enjoyment of fundamental economic and social rights by countless persons has been compromised, including the right to food, water, decent work, education and health,” he said.
The financial crisis and the global recession have taught both rich and poor countries that they could face “serious social, political and economic costs if the financial markets are left to regulate themselves,” he said.
The good of the human person must be at the center of economic activity and economic policy, he said. And for that to happen, development must be “employment oriented.”
Archbishop Tomasi questioned the practical benefits for nations and individuals of what was known as “jobless growth” in the economies of the world’s richest countries.
Work is not just an activity that produces a product or service and earns a person wages, the archbishop said; it is essential to human dignity because it gives a person a sense of worth and allows people to contribute to the good of their families and societies.
Efforts to promote development also must recognize the central role of education, he said. “If young minds, the future of our society, are not sufficiently prepared, millions will not be able to enter the labor market of tomorrow.”
Education also is the key to giving an individual an awareness of his or her responsibility and potential for contributing to a healthy, sustainable, ethical economy, he said.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Vatican officials are at an advanced stage in studying the possibility of a papal trip to Mexico and Cuba in the spring of 2012, the Vatican spokesman said.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the spokesman, told reporters Nov. 10 that the nuncios to Mexico and Cuba have been told to inform those governments that “the pope is studying a concrete plan to visit the two countries.”

by John Thavis

Pope Benedict XVI meets with a group of Australian bishops at the apostolic palace Oct. 20 during their “ad limina” visits. In place of one-on-one meetings, the pope now usually holds more freewheeling sessions with groups of seven-10 bishops at a time.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In a quiet modification of a traditional format, the Vatican has dropped most of the individual private meetings between Pope Benedict XVI and bishops making their “ad limina” visits to Rome.  (Bishop DiMarzio will lead the Brooklyn delegation on an “ad limina” visit during Thanksgiving week.)

The unannounced change was instituted earlier this year, apparently in an effort to reduce the scheduling burden on the 84-year-old pope and to help cut through the backlog of “ad limina” visits, which are supposed to be made every five years by heads of dioceses.

In place of one-on-one meetings, the pope now usually holds more freewheeling sessions with groups of seven-10 bishops at a time, lasting about an hour. That is expected to be the format for U.S. bishops when they begin their “ad limina” visits in early November.

Several bishops who have recently come through Rome on “ad limina” visits had good things to say about the new practice.

“The Holy Father welcomed us, he sat down and made us comfortable, at home and he chatted with us. He said, ‘Now tell me,’ and he listened very attentively and made a comment here or there. At the end, he summed up beautifully what was said,” said Archbishop Felix Machado of Vasai, India, who met the pope with a group of eight others in early September.

“It was very spontaneous, a heart-to-heart talk. And that’s what it should be. It was a real sharing between him and us,” the archbishop said.

Australians making their “ad limina” visits in October were also pleased with the format, saying it means the pope does not have to cover the same ground with each bishop.

“The response of the bishops has been universally positive. As a matter of fact, they’ve come back from those meetings really excited by the nature of it and by what’s happened. They think it’s a terrific initiative. And everyone would agree it’s a very good use of the Holy Father’s time,” said Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide.
Archbishop Wilson, as president of the Australian bishops’ conference, did have a one-on-one encounter with Pope Benedict. Some cardinals and archbishops in “ad limina” groups have also met individually with the pope. The new policy has not been spelled out, and officials at the Congregation for Bishops declined comment.

One official involved in setting up papal appointments put it this way: “When the possibility exists, the personal audience is maintained. When instead there are a great number of bishops, they are grouped together in such a way that the pope can see them all.”

Traditionally, the bishop’s private meeting with the pope has been a key moment of the “ad limina” visit. The Vatican’s directory for the pastoral ministry of bishops, for example, emphasizes that while bishops may come to Rome as a group, it is “always the individual bishop” who makes the visit on behalf of his diocese.

“It is the individual bishop who meets the successor of Peter personally and retains the right and the duty to communicate directly with him and the heads of dicasteries (Roman Curia agencies) on all questions concerning his diocesan ministry,” the directory states.

Blessed John Paul II intensified interaction with the bishops during the “ad limina” visits. In addition to the group meeting and individual audiences lasting about 15 minutes each, the late pope celebrated Mass with the bishops in his private chapel and hosted them for lunch, a dozen at a time. Toward the end of his pontificate, the ailing pope had to cut back on those activities and the pace of the visits slowed.

Pope Benedict did not continue the practice of working lunches and private Masses with the visiting bishops, but during the first five years of his pontificate he met personally with individual bishops.

Meanwhile, the backlog of “ad limina” appointments kept growing. One reason is that the number of bishops in the world has doubled over the last 50 years; the pope would have to meet about 600 bishops each year to put “ad limina” visits back on a five-year track, and Vatican officials have said that’s not going to happen.

As a result, most “ad limina” visits are now made every seven or eight years. U.S. bishops, who will make theirs in 2011-2012, last came in 2004, for example.

This year’s visits have featured countries with large episcopates, including the Philippines and India. So far in 2011, Pope Benedict has met with nearly 300 bishops making “ad limina” visits, either individually or in groups.
The name of the visits comes from the Latin phrase “ad limina apostolorum” (to the thresholds of the Apostles), a reference to the pilgrimage to the tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul that the bishops are required to make.