Defending Pope Benedict against the 'smoke of Satan'

Although not surprised at the growing assault in the media on Pope Benedict XVI, I am dismayed at the extent, spite and ferociousness of it all. Bitter and unrelenting political atheist Christopher Hitchens speaks of the 'smoke of Satan' being in the Vatican, warping and misusing the original expression of Pope Paul VI (see my previous comment). I have no doubt from where the smoke of Satan is issuing at the moment. And it is certainly not from the author of three encyclicals on 'love', all simply written but with a depth of sympathy and learning that brings something new to a papal encyclical. They are encyclicals that appeal across the Christian denominations.

The thought was clearly not only in my mind that the Pope's bitter antagonists, inside and outside the Church, could not possibly have read them and at the same time undertake a campaign that is indisputably aimed at bringing him down. There is some dark transcendent evil hovering over the combined actions of the international media. The Van Thuan Observatory has posted a much needed defence of the Holy Father.

Newsletter n.286

Verona, 22 March, 2010

LET US FOLLOW THE POPE AND PRAY FOR HIM

BENEDICT XVI CONTESTED OUTSIDE AND INSIDE THE CHURCH

The effort on the part of the mass media to involve Benedict XVI in the pedophile issue is naught but the most recent sign of the aversion so many people nourish towards the Holy Father. It is necessary to ask ourselves why this pope, despite his evangelical meekness and honesty, as well as the clarity of his words together with the depth of his thinking and teaching, generates in some circles those feelings of rancor and forms of anticlericalism deemed to belong to the past. In addition, and this just must be said, all this gives rise to all the greater astonishment and even pain when those not following the pope and denouncing his presumed errors are men of the Church, whether theologians, priests or laypersons. The outlandish and blatantly twisted accusations launched by the theologian Hans Küng against the person of Joseph Ratzinger, theologian, bishop, Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith and now Pontiff, for, in his opinion, having caused the pedophilia of some clergymen because of his theology and his teaching on celibacy leave us in a state of profound grief. Perhaps never before has the Church been attacked in such a fashion. The persecution suffered by the many Christians crucified in the literal sense of the term, and the countless efforts to uproot Christianity in once Christian societies with devastating violence perpetrated in the areas of lawmaking, education and mores that ordinary common sense is unable to explain, have now been flanked for some time by this wave of rage against this pope, whose providential greatness is there for all to see.

These attacks are amplified by those who do not listen to the pope, also among ecclesiastics, professors of theology in seminaries, priests and laypersons. Amplified by those who do not openly accuse the Holy Father, but muffle his teachings, do not read the documents of his Magisterium, write and speak out in support of exactly the opposite of what he says, launch pastoral and cultural endeavors, for example in the areas of bioethics or ecumenical dialogue, in open contrast with what he teaches. This phenomenon is most serious insofar as very widespread as well. Benedict XVI has given teachings on Vatican Council II that many Catholics openly oppose, fostering forms of counter-information and systematic parallel teaching guided my numerous ‘antipopes’; he has given teachings on “non negotiable values” that many Catholics minimize or reinterpret, and this is also done by theologians and renowned commentators with articles published in both the Catholic and the secular press; he has given teachings on the primacy of the apostolic faith in the sapiential reading of events, and many people just keep on speaking about the primacy of situations, or praxis, or the data of the human sciences; he has given teaching on conscience or on the dictatorship of relativism, but many are those who posit democracy or the Constitution well before the Gospel. For many people it’s almost as if Dominus Jesus, the Nota on Catholics in politics dating back to 2002, the lecture in Regensburg in 2006, and Caritas in Veritate had never been written.

The situation is grave indeed, because this abyss between the faithful who heed the pope and those who lend him no ear is spreading everywhere, even all the way into diocesan weeklies and institutes of religious sciences. Thus driven are two very different pastoral approaches, which by now no longer comprehend one another, almost as if they were the expression of two different Churches, and this gives rise to uncertainty and a sense of bewilderment in many faithful.

In very difficult moments like this our Observatory wishes to express its filial closeness to Benedict XVI. Let us pray for the Holy Father and continue to follow him in all fidelity.

www.vanthuanobservatory.org

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com