Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

Pertaining to the’08 election and Catholicism:

There is head-scratching in the political marketplace over a looming contradiction. The candidates for president of the United States include a man identified as a Roman Catholic, and among the voters there are, of course, many Catholics. It would be reasonable to suppose that Candidate Giuliani would get the presumptive backing of the Catholic population.

But there are a couple of caveats.

First, is Giuliani a Catholic other than nominally? Because his name is Italian, one assumes that he subscribes to the faith associated with the Italian people. As a boy, he went to Catholic schools, and he was apparently devout; he even contemplated entering seminary. But is he a practicing Catholic now?

In 1999 the question of his religious faith was put to him directly. His reply: “I don’t attend [Catholic services] regularly, but I attend occasionally.”

Now, plop!, this raises special problems in the Catholic communion. Catholics are not only expected to attend Mass every week, they are bound to do so. In the matter of the Sabbath, you can be an easygoing Episcopalian, or Quaker, or even Reform Jew, and no rule is broken of formal consequences. But that isn’t so in the Catholic communion, because there are rules that include attendance at Mass on Sundays. If you’re a Philadelphia lawyer you might here smile a bit and say, well . . . Christians don’t always behave as Christians, so what else is new?

Ah, but that doesn’t work. Because the kind of godlessness expressed by a failure to live a life of charity, sustained by faith and hope, is, unhappily, pretty unnoticeable. Everyone excepting the saints is, under such scrutiny, “un-Christian.” But a failure to attend church on Sunday is, by Catholic standards, contumacious, an ostentatious rejection of a formal obligation. It is the equivalent of an observant Jew biting into a piece of pork. Penitence, if genuine, can minister to any infraction of the faith. But to violate systematically the Commandment that says, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy,” is systematically to reject one’s faith.

There are other problems, in the matter of Mr. Giuliani. One’s sense of things is that the religious communities are understanding in the matter of failed marriages (the divorce rate in the United States has been estimated at about fifty percent), but those who aspire to lead are quite reasonably examined more closely, and in the matter of Mr. Giuliani, there is the second and then the third wife, with ugly consequences involving children and living quarters.

Which is to say that a candidate holding out his affiliation with a religious body as a reason to presume harmonious values with other voters of the same faith has to prepare for a likelihood of resentment among coreligionists if he appears lax in the practice of his faith. Members of a club can be relaxed about the member who does not pay his dues. But there is the risk there of continued neglect gradually understood as disloyalty. The way things work in modern times, under modern pressures, more people’s attention is attracted by defiance of a protocol than by inconsistent attention given to it. The guest who neglectfully fails to bow when the queen enters the room is not especially conspicuous, but becomes so if it crosses the mind of others that he is challenging the legitimacy of the sovereign, rather than merely to being absent-minded about protocols.

There is the factor that in any political contest others are aspiring to win the voters’ approval. It is natural that candidates will call attention to the failures of their rivals, and that interested observers will join in. Gary Bauer, for instance, a longtime champion of the relevance of the Christian faith in politics, cannot be expected to be indifferent to the anomalies we speak of. James Dobson is likely to be heard from. And then — and then, there are the bishops and priests who will not wish to be thought indifferent to the indifference of others to the cosmic commitments they have made.

© 2007 Universal Press Syndicate

B XVI and the Pentecostals: (also from John Allen)

São Paulo, Brazil

Though part of the unspoken logic for Benedict XVI’s trip to Brazil is to offset Catholic losses to Pentecostalism, now estimated at almost 20 million Brazilians and growing, political realities in the country on issues such as abortion and gay marriage in some sense make the Pentecostals the pope’s best friends.

Such are the ironies of life in Latin America.

Under current Brazilian law, abortion is illegal except in cases of rape or when a woman’s life is at risk. Nevertheless, there are thought to be somewhere between a million and two million “clandestine” abortions in the country each year, and the Brazilian Minister of Health, Jose Gomes Temporao, has floated the idea of widening the scope of legal abortion.

Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a Catholic, has said that he is personally opposed to abortion, but that “the state cannot abdicate from caring for this as a public health question, because to do so would lead to the death of many young women in this country.”

On the papal plane on the way to Brazil, Benedict XVI seemed to indicate that Catholic politicians who support expanding abortion rights should be considered excommunicated under the terms of Canon Law.

During his remarks to Lula at the welcoming ceremony at the São Paulo airport, Benedict called for “respect for life from the moment of conception until natural death as an integral requirement of human nature.”

That’s where the Pentecostals come into play.

Of all the political and social forces in Brazil, it’s the Pentecostals who are most likely to be receptive to Benedict’s pro-life message. They are not an inconsiderable force in Brazil’s political galaxy; at the moment, the Pentecostal “block” in the national legislature represents about 10 percent of the total, roughly 60 members. While the Pentecostals come from different parties and hold different positions on issues such as tax policy and international relations, they are compactly in favor of conservative positions on social questions such as abortion.

While some Pentecostal legislators and ministers were damaged by corruption scandals in 2005 and 2006, they still represent a potent political force in the country.

The Vice-President of Brazil, who was Lula’s running mate in the 2002 national elections, José Alencar, is a member of the Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and is perhaps the most prominent pro-life member of the administration. It will be Alencar who will say goodbye to Benedict on the country’s behalf Sunday evening when the pope departs from São Paulo.

Thus Benedict XVI, as well as local Catholic leaders, face a dilemma in terms of how they relate to what have until recently been know, pejoratively, as “the sects.”

On the one hand, the Catholic church clearly hopes to stop the attrition towards Pentecostalism, and, if possible, recapture some lost ground. That’s part of the implied subtext whenever Benedict and other Catholic leaders call for a renewed commitment to “evangelization.”

Yet Benedict does not want to alienate the Pentecostals either, because on a range of issues, they are his best natural allies.

“It’s not just the specific question of abortion or homosexuality,” one Brazilian journalist explained today. “It’s the broader question of the ‘religiousness’ of Brazil. If the pope had to rely just on the Catholics, the country would actually be much secularized than it already is.”

How Benedict walks this tightrope – promoting healthy competition for adherents, but also fostering strong working relationships at the level of political and cultural debates – may have a great deal to say about the future of Catholic/Pentecostal relations in Latin America.

In the end, one of the ironies of the pope’s Brazil trip may turn out to be that, having come to Brazil to encourage Catholics to resist Pentecostalism, his battle against the dictatorship of relativism may actually usher in a new era of Catholic/Pentecostal “good feelings” instead.

From John Allen:

Day One: The Love/Hate Relationship between Benedict and Liberation Theology
Posted on May 9, 2007 15:24pm CST.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
São Paulo, Brazil

When Benedict headed for Turkey last November, it was in the wake of the backlash across the Muslim world stirred by his citation at the University of Regensburg of a 14th century Byzantine emperor’s views on Islam. Turkey gave the pope an opportunity to put his own “spin” on Regensburg, stressing dialogue and brotherhood, and even pausing for a moment of silent prayer in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque.

Measured against a different arc of time, Benedict’s May 9-13 trip to Brazil once again offers the pope a chance to provide his own gloss on an area of controversy where he carries some political baggage. The issue this time is not Islam, but liberation theology, and the reaction dates back not a couple of months, but a couple of decades.

Right out of the gate, Benedict argued that his crackdown on liberation theology in the 1980s was not about undermining the church’s engagement on behalf of the poor.

“The meaning of the intervention of the magisterium was not to destroy the commitment to justice,” Benedict XVI said in response to a question from NCR during an airborne news conference, “but to guide it down the right paths, including the proper distinction between political responsibility and ecclesial responsibility.”

The response was merely the latest chapter in a love/hate relationship between Joseph Ratzinger and liberation theology which has deep biographical roots.

As early as his study of Bonaventure and Joachim of Fiore in graduate school during the 1950s, Ratzinger had become wary of messianic movements or promises of a “new age” – all of which, he felt, made the mistake of trying to locate salvation inside history. Moreover, when one imparts eschatological significance to some particular political program or dream, Ratzinger felt, then all manner of excesses and barbarisms can be justified in its name.

In terms of church politics, Ratzinger’s involvement with debates over liberation theology began even before he arrived in the Vatican. While still the Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Pope John Paul I dispatched him as a papal legate to a Marian congress in Ecuador in September 1978, where Ratzinger cautioned against Marxist ideologies and the theology of liberation. Upon arriving at the Vatican, his struggles with the liberationists quickly became the stuff of ecclesiastical legend.

Ratzinger always insisted that the problem was not with the motive of liberation theologians, but with efforts to reshape or even bowdlerize the church’s traditional doctrine to make it more “relevant” for desired social outcomes. When one does that, Ratzinger argued, not only is the faith distorted, but the desired social outcomes are never reached.

Here is the most widely quoted paragraph from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1984 Instruction on Liberation Theology:

The overthrow by means of revolutionary violence of structures which generate violence is not ipso facto the beginning of a just regime. A major fact of our times ought to evoke the reflection of all those who would sincerely work for the true liberation of their brothers: Millions of our own contemporaries legitimately yearn to recover those basic freedoms of which they were deprived by totalitarian and atheistic regimes which came to power by violent and revolutionary means, precisely in the name of the liberation of the people. This shame of our time cannot be ignored: While claiming to bring them freedom, these regimes keep whole nations in conditions of servitude which are unworthy of mankind. Those who, perhaps inadvertantly, make themselves accomplices of similar enslavements betray the very poor they mean to help.

At the heart of Ratzinger’s critique of liberation were two key theological motifs, which recur time and again in his writing on other subjects.

(1) Truth: Because the liberationists argued that theological understanding should follow political commitment, Ratzinger believed they were saying that praxis is the standard for judging the rightness of doctrine. In other words, one decides which Christian teachings are “true” on the basis of how well they support political efforts for social justice. As early as 1968 in his Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger was resisting the “tyranny of the factum,” the tendency to reduce truth to what one does instead of what reality is. This mistake leads some to present Christianity as a tool for changing the world, and to “transpose belief itself to this place.” Thus all doctrine is suspect unless it is useful for social change.

Ratzinger was not simply projecting this understanding onto the liberationists; some did hold this position. Juan Luis Segundo’s famous line from Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity was: “The only truth is the truth that is efficacious for liberation.” Similarly, the Brazilian Hugo Assmann wrote in 1976: “The Bible! It doesn’t exist. The only Bible is the sociological Bible of what I see happening here and now.”

(2) Eschatology: Ratzinger’s fundamental complaint about liberation theology is that it embodies a mistaken notion of eschatology. The liberationists, Ratzinger believes, are looking for the Kingdom of God on this earth and in this order of history. This sort of utopianism is not merely wrong, Ratzinger says, it’s dangerous. Whenever a social or political movement makes absolutist claims about what it can deliver, fascism is not far down the road. It is the lesson of Nazi Germany, Ratzinger argues, and it is the lesson of Soviet Russia.

Thus the goal of Christian must be to strip politics out of eschatology. As he put in his 1987 book Church, Ecumenism and Politics: “Where there is no dualism, there is totalitarianism.”

In Ratzinger’s judgment, the consequences of liberation theology’s warped eschatology show up in at least four ways.

1. Defections from Catholicism: By promising the poor a reign of justice that never comes, Ratzinger believes, liberation theology actually estranged them from Catholicism and led many of them to seek a transcendental faith somewhere else.
2. Terror. If you allow yourself to believe that a perfect society can be the work of human hands, Ratzinger believes, those hands will end up stained with blood.
3. Dissent: Ratzinger has long believed that, inspired by liberation theology, Catholics will perceive a form of “class struggle” between those who hold ecclesial power and those excluded from it, and will thus demand “liberation” from oppressive church structures.
4. Collapse into the culture: Ultimately, what is at stake for Ratzinger is his Augustinian understanding of the distinction between church and culture. To the extent that liberation theology vests its hopes in secular political progress rather than the liberation only Christ can bring, Ratzinger felt, it lost sight of the cross.

None of this means, however, that Ratzinger has an unremittingly bleak view of liberation theology.

In a more positive 1986 document, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Ratzinger declared, “Those who are oppressed by poverty are the object of a love of preference on the part of the church, which since her origin and in spite of the failings of many of her members has not ceased to work for their relief, defense and liberation.”

So far, Benedict XVI seems determined to use the Brazil trip to demonstrate the sincerity of his social concern. On the papal plane, the pope even signaled his support for the beatification of the ultimate icon of the liberation theology movement – the late Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, assassinated in 1980 while celebrating Mass.

“That Romero as a person merits beatification, I have no doubt,” he said, while adding that he’s waiting for the decision of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Day One: Transcript of News Conference aboard the Papal Plane

By John L Allen Jr Daily

Created May 9 2007 - 13:31

Shortly after 11:00 am Rome time, roughly two hours into his flight to São Paulo, Brazil, Pope Benedict XVI came back to the press compartment of the papal plane for a brief news conference. The pope was flanked by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, who did not speak. The pope offered an opening statement, then took a total of 11 questions from reporters, including queries about the excommunication of pro-choice politicians, liberation theology, and the beatification of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. The questions had not been submitted in advance, and the pope’s replies were extemporaneous. From start to finish, the exchange lasted about 26 minutes. The following is a rush transcript of the exchange. Most questions were posed in Italian, and Benedict gave all of his replies in Italian; the following is therefore an NCR translation.

Pope Benedict XVI, Opening Remarks
Good morning aboard this plane! We’re now above the Sahara, on our way to the Continent of Hope. I’m going with great joy, with great hope, to this meeting with Latin America.
We have various important moments, first in Sao Paulo, the meeting with the youth, and then this canonization in Sao Paulo. It’s the first saint born in Brazil, and it seems to me also an important expression of the content of this trip. It’s a Franciscan saint who made real in Brazil the Franciscan charism. He is known as a saint of reconciliation and of peace. This too seems to me an important sign, a personality who knew how to create peace, and therefore also human social coherence.
Then, the visit to the Farm of Hope is also important, a place where the forces of healing which are contained in the faith become clear, to open the horizons of life. All these problems of drugs and so on are born with an absence of hope in the future. A faith which opens to the future also knows how to heal, and this force seems to me important – the force to heal, to give hope, to provide a horizon of the future, is very important.
Finally, the primary aim of this trip is the meeting with the bishops of CELAM, which is the fifth continental conference of the bishops of Latin America, which in and of itself has a content that is predominantly religious – to give life in Christ, and to make ourselves disciples of Christ.
We know that everyone wants to have life, but life is not complete if it does not have content, if it lacks a sense or an orientation about where to go. In this sense, even if the meeting in the first place responds to the religious mission of the church, it also creates the conditions for necessary solutions to the great social and political problems of Latin America. As such, the church does not practice politics, we respect the secular nature of the state. But we offer conditions in which a healthy politics, and solutions to social problems, can mature.
Thus, we want to promote Christians who are conscious of the gift of the faith, the joy of the faith, who know God and who therefore also know the ‘why’ of our life. In this way, they’ll be capable of being witnesses of Christ, and they’ll learn both the necessary personal virtues as well as social virtues, the sense of legality that is essential for the formation of society. We know the problems of Latin America, and we want to mobilize the capacity of the church, its moral strength and its religious resources, to respond to the specific mission of the church and to our universal responsibility to the human person as such, and to society as such.

First Question (from O Globo in Brazil):
Holiness, what can the church do with regard to the problem of violence, which in Brazil today has massive proportions?

Pope Benedict XVI:
Whoever has faith in Christ, whoever has faith in this God who is reconciliation and who, with the Cross, gave us the strongest possible sign against violence, is not violent and helps others to overcome violence. Thus, the best thing we can do is to educate people in faith in Christ, to learn the message of the person of Christ, to be people of faith who automatically resist violence, and who mobilize the force of the faith against violence.

Second Question (from Mexico):
Your Holiness, in Brazil there’s a proposal for a referendum on the subject of abortion. Two weeks, Mexico City decriminalized abortion. What can the church do about this tendency, to ensure that it does not extend to other Latin American countries? As you know, the church has been accused of interference in Mexico. Do you support the position of the Mexican bishops that legislators who approve these laws are excommunicated?

Pope Benedict XVI:
Well, there’s a great struggle of the church on behalf of life. You know that Pope John Paul II made this struggle a fundamental point of his entire pontificate. He wrote a great encyclical on “The Gift of Life.” Naturally, we go forward with this message. Life is a gift, life is not a threat. This seems to me important.
The roots of this legislation lie, in the first place, in a certain egoism, and on the other hand, also in doubt about life as a gift, about the beauty of life, as well as doubt about the future. The church responds to these doubts, above all by saying, ‘Life is beautiful. It’s not something doubtful, but it’s a gift. Even in difficult circumstances, a human life is a gift. Therefore, we have to recreate this awareness of the beauty of the gift of life.’
Regarding doubt about the future, obviously there are many threats in the world, but faith gives us the certainty that God is always more powerful in the reality of history. Thus, we can give life to new human beings with trust, and with the knowledge that faith guarantees the beauty of life. In the future, we can resist this egoism and these fears which stand at the roots of this legislation.

Third Question (from Brazilian television):
Your Holiness, you have spoken often about relativism in Europe, about poverty in Africa, and also the problems of the Middle East. But what’s missing a little bit is a reference to Latin America. Is this because it’s not a real concern for you, or will you say something specific about it?

Pope Benedict XVI:
No, I love Latin America very much. I’ve visited Latin America many times, I have many friends there. I know that it has great problems, but on the other hand I also know the great human resources of this continent.
Of course, recently the problems of the Middle East have been dominant, in the Holy land and Iraq and so on, which gives it a kind of immediate priority. Also, the suffering of Africa is enormous, as we know. But, I don’t think about Latin America any less. I love Latin America.
This is the largest Catholic continent, and therefore in a sense it’s the largest responsibility of the pope. For that reason, I’m happy that finally the moment has arrived when I can be in Latin America, to confirm the commitment of Paul VI and John Paul II and to continue in the same direction.
Naturally, I take to heart in a special way that the largest Catholic continent should also be an exemplary continent, where the great human problems can be resolved and where we work together with the bishops, with priests, religious and laity, so that this great Catholic continent will also be a continent of life and, really, of hope. For me, this is a primordial responsibility.

Fourth Question (from La Repubblica, Italy):
Thank you, your Holiness. In your speech upon arrival, you say that the church forms Christians, provides moral indications, so that people will make free decisions in conscience. Do you agree with the excommunication given to legislators in Mexico City on the question of abortion?

Pope Benedict XVI:
Yes, this excommunication is not something arbitrary, but it’s part of the Code [of Canon Law]. It’s based simply on the principle that the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going in communion with the Body of Christ. Thus, [the bishops] didn’t do anything new, anything surprising or arbitrary. In that light, they simply announced publicly what is contained in the law of the church, and the law of the church is based upon the doctrine and the faith of the church, which expresses our appreciation for life, that human individuality, human personality, is present from the first moment [of life].

Fifth Question (from Alex Springer Verlag, Germany):
Do you feel adequately supported by the German people? (The question was asked in German)

Pope Benedict XVI:
I’ll respond in Italian. He asked if I feel sufficiently supported by the Germans, and if I feel any nostalgia for Germany. Yes, I feel sufficiently supported. Of course, it’s normal that in a country that’s mixed Protestant/Catholic, and where there are many non-baptized persons, not everyone is going to agree with the pope. This is totally normal. But I’ve also felt a great support even from non-Catholic people in Germany. This support is beautiful, and it helps me. I love my country, but I also love Rome, and now I’m a citizen of the world. Thus, I’m at home everywhere. My country is close to my heart, like all the others.

Sixth Question (from RAI Television, Italy):
In your book Jesus of Nazareth, you referred to a dramatic crisis of faith. In Latin America, maybe what we see is not so much a crisis of faith as a landslide. Liberation theology was substituted by the theology of the Protestant sects, which promise a paradise of faith at a good price. The Catholic Church is losing faithful. How can the church stem this tide, this hemorrhage of Catholic faithful?

Pope Benedict XVI:
This is our common concern precisely in this fifth General Conference of CELAM. We want to find convincing responses. This success of the sects shows, in the first place, that there’s a thirst for God, a thirst for religion. People want to be close to God, and they seek his closeness. Naturally, they also hope for and expect solutions to their daily problems of life. We from the Catholic Church have to accept the responsibility in this fifth general conference of making the church more missionary, more dynamic in offering responses to the thirst for God. We have to be aware that all people, and especially the poor, want to have God close to them. We also must be aware that together with this response to the thirst for God, we also have to help people find the conditions for a just life, both micro-economically, in very concrete situations as they sects do, as well as macro-economically, thinking about all the exigencies of justice.

Seventh Question (from the National Catholic Reporter, United States):
Your Holiness, good morning. There are still many exponents of liberation theology in Brazil. Will you be offering a message specifically for them?

Pope Benedict XVI:
I would say that changes in the political situation have also profoundly changed the situation facing the theology of liberation. By now, it’s evident that these facile forms of millenarianism, which promised, on the basis of an imminent revolution, to produce the complete conditions for a just life, were mistaken. Today, everybody knows this.
Now, the question is exactly how the church should be present in the struggle for the necessary reforms, in the struggle for just conditions of life. On this point, naturally, theologians are divided, like sociologists and political scientists.
We, with our instructions from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sought to help to give the pope the data for the work of discernment The idea was to liberate ourselves from false forms of millenarianism, also from a mistaken confusion between the church and the political process, between faith and politics.
We wanted to demonstrate the specific mission of the church, which is precisely to respond to the thirst for God, and thus, on the one hand, also to educate people in both personal and social virtues, which are conditions for a sense of legality, and on the other hand to indicate the guidelines for a just kind of politics – a politics which we don’t create ourselves, but for which we must indicate the great principles and determining values. We can also create the human, social and psychological conditions in which such a politics can grow.
Thus, there’s space for legitimate debate over how to do this, over what’s the best way to make the social doctrine of the church effective. In this sense, some liberation theologians are pursuing this avenue, others take other positions. For example, there’s the question of indigenous persons, but obviously we can’t enter into all these details.
In any case, the meaning of the intervention of the magisterium was not to destroy the commitment to justice, but to guide it down the right paths, including the proper distinction between political responsibility and ecclesial responsibility.

Eighth Question (from Colombia):
We know that you’ve been to Colombia twice as a cardinal, and we know that it remains close to your heart. We want to know what you think about how we can go forward, especially facing this situation of internal conflict.

Pope Benedict XVI:
Naturally, I’m not an oracle that automatically has the right answer. I think the bishops are working hard to find responses. I can only confirm the fundamental line of the bishops, which is that of a strong education in the faith, which is the best guarantee against the growth of violence. Education in conscience is essential to exit from this situation.
Naturally, economic situations are also involved. Small farmers, for example, depend upon a market that can do great damage, and they live from one moment to the next. To resolve these various economic, political and ideological intersections, we can only go forward with great determination, based on a decision for the faith, which implies a sense of legality, and implies love and responsibility for others.
To me, it seems that education in the faith is the most secure illumination, also for slowly resolving these very concrete problems.

Ninth Question (from I. Media in France):
Your Holiness, we’re arriving in the continent of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Many people are talking about the process for his beatification. Can you tell us where we’re at? Is he ready for beatification? How do you see this figure?

Pope Benedict XVI:
I don’t have the latest information from the competent congregation. I know there are many cases moving through the process. I know that the cause [of Romero] is going forward very well. Bishop Paglia of Terni has written a very important biography, which clarifies many points that had been in question. [Romero] was certainly a great witness to the faith. He was a man of great Christian virtue, who was committed to peace and against the dictatorship. He was killed during the moment of consecration, therefore it was a truly incredible death, a testimony to the faith.
The problem is that some political factions wanted to claim Romero for themselves, like a banner, unjustly. As [Paglia] spotlights very well, the figure [of Romero] himself liberates us from these unjust attempts.
That Romero as a person merits beatification, I have no doubt. But we have to look at the context, and I’m waiting for what the congregation says to me.

Tenth Question (from Brazil):
What’s your understanding of cultural formation in Brazil and its relationship to politics? (The question was asked in Portugese)

Pope Benedict XVI:
I’m not sufficiently well informed to answer in depth, and I don’t want to get into politics. As far as my personal approach to Brazil, it’s the largest country of Latin America, which stretches from the Amazon all the way to Argentina, it includes so many indigenous cultures. I heard that more than 80 languages are spoken, and so on. It also has a strong presence of African-Americans, African-Brazilians. It’s fascinating to see how this people was formed, also how the Catholic faith was formed here over the course of time, with many difficulties. We know that at the end of the 18th century, the church was persecuted by liberal forces. In my own outlook, it’s important to follow these Catholic-Christians peoples of Latin America. I’m not a specialist, but that it’s here where an important part, a fundamental part, of the future of the Catholic Church will be decided, seems evident to me. I want to deepen even more my awareness of this world.

Tenth Question (from Catholic radio in Portugal):
Your Holiness, good morning. I’m from Portugal. The Portuguese are following and praying for this trip, which coincides with May 13, the 90th anniversary of the apparitions of Fatima. Do you want to offer us a word about this coincidence, also for the Portuguese people?

Pope Benedict XVI:
Yes, for me it’s really a sign of providence that my visit to Aparecida, the great Marian sanctuary of Brazil, coincides with the 90th anniversary of the apparitions of the Madonna of Fatima. In this way, we see that the same Mother, this Mother of God and Mother of the church, Our Mother, is present to the various continents, that she shows herself to be a mother to the various continents, always in the same way but with a closeness for every people. To me, this is quiet beautiful. It’s always the Mother of God, always Mary, and yet in a certain sense she’s ‘inculturated,’ with her specific face wherever she is – in Aparecida, in Fatima, in Lourdes, in all the countries of the earth. Thus, she reveals herself as a mother who is close to everyone, and everyone can come close to one another through her maternal love. This connection which the Madonna creates among the continents, among the cultures, because she’s close to every culture and yet she unites them all, seems important to me – this specificity of the cultures, all of which have their riches, yet leading to communion in the one family of God.

Eleventh Question (from Brazil):
Many Brazilians don’t necessarily want to hear the message of the church. What can you do about that? (The question was asked in Portuguese)

Pope Benedict XVI:
This is not a specific problem of Brazil. In every part of the world, there are lots of people who don’t want to listen. We hope that at least, they hear, so that if they hear, they will also be able to respond. We also seek to convince those who don’t necessarily want to hear us. Naturally, even Our Lord wasn’t able to succeed in getting everyone to listen. We don’t expect that in any given moment we’ll be able to persuade everyone. But, I’ll try, with the help of my collaborators, to speak to Brazil in this moment with the hope that many people want to listen, and that many can be convinced that this is the path to take. Of course, I’ll leave open, at the level of detail, the possibility for many different options and different opinions.

From Fr. Z (h/t: Hermit)

Legislating in mid-air? First thoughts: possible, but not likely.

UPDATE:

USA Today is now reporting “Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, later issued a statement approved by the pope clarifying the [pope's and his own] remarks. The statement said the pope did not intend to excommunicate anyone. Politicians who vote in favor of abortion should not receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, Lombardi said.” Read on, and you’ll also see that the Mexican bishops have not excommunicated anyone, and that what this event boils down to is but the CORRECT application of Canon 915, which is all some of us have been urging for a long, long time.

Am I glad the interpretation I set out below was correct? Sure, what lawyer wouldn’t be? But I am more pleased that a sound and pastorally effective reading of canon law is being promoted. Make no mistake: denial of the Eucharist is grave consequence to seriously sinful behavior; moreover, the pope’s comments leave open the possibility of escalating the canonical response to pro-abortion agitation by Catholic politicians, even to the penal level of excommunication. But we see clearly here that all of this must happen in accord with the requirements of law, the same law that seeks above all, “the salvation of souls” (1983 CIC 1752).

ORIGINAL POST:

Responding to a reporter’s question during his flight to Brazil, Pope Benedict XVI said that he supported the Mexican bishops’ threat to take canonical action against the politicians who were involved in the effort to legalize abortion. The English version of his comment reads: “Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by canon law which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving communion, which is receiving the body of Christ.”

Now, the very first thing to notice about this quotation is that, as reported, it is susceptible to the chronic confusion that wearies discussions of the ecclesiastical consequences for involvement in abortion: “excommunication” and “denial of the Eucharist” are not, not, not, the same thing and understanding the difference between the related but quite distinct institutes of “excommunication” and “withholding the Eucharist” is a prerequisite for any productive commentary on the pope’s remarks.

Excommunication is a canonical penalty, imposed for certain specific crimes, one consequence of which penalty is the denial of the right to receive the Eucharist. 1983 CIC 1331. As a penalty, excommunication can only be imposed, enforced, and lifted, in accord with a canonical process at a fairly high level of Church authority.

Denial of the Eucharist is a sacramental disciplinary norm, invoked in response to personal sins that meet certain criteria. 1983 CIC 915. As a sacramental norm, denial of the Eucharist can be invoked by ministers of the Eucharist down to at least the parish priest level, who need follow no specific process but must nevertheless verify that conditions for withholding the Eucharist have been met.

Briefly I see two things that could account for the pope’s remarks.

1. Politicians who support the legalization of abortion generally meet the conditions for denial of the Eucharist under Canon 915. Such a comment would be interesting (though to me, not surprising) in that it lends support to the position that I and some other canonists and bishops have promoted for many years. Such political behavior is objectively gravely wrong and, if engaged in obstinately, merits, in my view, withholding of the Eucharist.

2. The Mexican bishops, using particular law or precepts (1983 CIC 1315-1319), have made support for the legalization of abortion an excommunicable offense in Mexico, and the pope supports their actions. I don’t have access to the original documents, so I can’t verify whether that has happened, but if it has happened, that too would not surprise me. I have already reminded people of the ability of canon law to respond to new crises over time, and the scandal of pro-abortion Catholic politicians surely merits a strong response by the Church.

Note that interpretations 1 and 2 are not incompatible; they both could be happening.

But to be complete, there are, admittedly, two other things that could explain what is being reported today:

First, the pope’s remarks might have been misunderstood and/or misreported (gee, can that really happen today?) We know, for example, that there are reportorial ellipses in exactly the places that canonists would most want to see the pope’s exact words, as in, verbatim: “Reuters reports the Pope added, ‘They did nothing new, surprising or arbitrary. They simply announced publicly what is contained in the law of the Church . . . which expresses our appreciation for life and that human individuality, human personality is present from the first moment’.”

Or, maybe, the pope is legislating in mid-air, issuing what canonists must take as an “authentic interpretation” (1983 CIC 16) of the scope of Canon 1398 on abortion, one that dramatically extends the reach of the canon beyond what (I and virtually all other canonists suggest) is the long-accepted interpretation of this penal law (pace Canons 18, 1323, 1324, among others), and at the same time reminding the world that even papal comments to reporters’ carry the force of law in the Church whenever, that is, they are supposed to carry the force of law.

My guess: Pope Benedict XVI takes his law-making authority more seriously than that.

PS: About Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi later telling reporters that the politicians who voted for abortion had automatically excommunicated themselves by their actions, well (assuming that report is accurate), it must be simply stated that Vatican press secretaries have no authority to issue binding interpretations of canon law. None. 1983 CIC 16 and Pastor Bonus 154-158.