January 21, 2013, Monday — Pope warns of “technological prometheanism”

“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts.” —Habakkuk 2:1

 

Dear friends,

I don’t quite know how to say this, so I’ll just be blunt: Pope Benedict is saying incredible things, yet no one seems to be listening.

He did it again on Saturday, two days ago.

Benedict is “standing watch on the ramparts” of our once-Christian society, and raising an alarm about terrible dangers he sees for humanity, but he is being, for the most part, ignored.

His words, in an age filled with noise, are uttered with passion and eloquence, but fall, echo-less, into the cracks of silence between the major tv networks, which never give space on their programs to his words.

He should not be ignored. He is saying things worth taking very seriously indeed.

The Danger of “Gender Freedom” and the Need for Christian Unity

There are two main points he made in the past two days:

(1) on Saturday he spoke about the new philosophy of “gender” which views being a man or a woman as a totally changeable, individual choice; and he said this very “politically correct” theory, supported by so many in positions of power and influence today, presents a grave danger to humanity;

(2) on Friday and on Sunday (yesterday, at his noon Angelus address), he said that Christians must be more unified, that their divisions are a cause of scandal (precisely as we have been saying as we have launched our new Foundation, which I still would ask you to consider joining).

In a sense, these are the pre-eminent themes of this phase of Benedict’s pontificate: the reductionist new theory of gender as a choice, and the need for greater unity among Christians.

Why is Benedict hammering away at the issue of gender?

To put it bluntly: because he is frightened by the consequences for the human race that he sees on the horizon if this theory is not re-thought.

Ideas have consequences, and he believes strongly that the consequences of these “gender” ideas will be disastrous for mankind.

Like a watchman on the city walls, he is looking out, and he is seeing disaster approaching.

What disaster, precisely, does he see?

Benedict first refers to ideologies from past centuries which have brought much misery to man, referring to nationalism, National Socialism, Communism and also “unbridled capitalism”:

“In recent centuries, the ideologies which celebrated the cult of the nation, race, social class proved to be true idolatry, and the same can be said of unbridled capitalism with its cult of profit, with the resulting crisis, inequality and poverty,” he said.

But then he turned to a new “ideology,” the new theory of human “gender” as something not given, but chosen.

The danger, he says, includes that of a “technological prometheanism.”

The Danger of a “Technological Prometheanism”

Now, what does Benedict mean by this phrase?

What he means is that modern science, with its great and increasing technological power, together with a “Promethean” attitude toward all limits, may lead us to terrible problems.

It is a dense, unusual phrase for a Pope, a phrase with no basis in Scripture (because Prometheus, of course, is not a character in Scripture, but a character of Greek myth).

Nevertheless, despite its newness and difficulty of interpretation, this may come to be seen as a “signature phrase” for this Pope, and for his diagnosis of our present predicament.

So what does Benedict mean when he warns of “technological prometheanism”?

Scientific Knowledge and Spiritual Knowledge

In the Western classical tradition, the Greek mythological character Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven to give to mankind and then was punished for his theft by Zeus and bound forever to a mountaintop in the Caucasus by unbreakable chains, became a figure who represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge.

Over time, and especially in the Romantic era, Prometheus was seen as the archetype of the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence also could result in tragedy.

This is why British novelist Mary Shelley chose as the subtitle for her novel Frankenstein (1818) “The Modern Prometheus” — because there is a certain equivalence here between Prometheus and… Dr. Frankenstein.

The “modern Prometheus” is, in this sense, Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, who tries to go beyond the bounds of nature to create a creature different from any ever created by God — and ends up creating his monster: Frankenstein’s monster.

In the 1700s and 1800s, Prometheus came to be seen as the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny, epitomized by the pagan High God, Zeus — the Church, the monarch, patriarchal society.

Indeed, the Romantics drew comparisons between the Greek Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution… and between Prometheus and the Satan of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Yes, in this, restricted analogy, Prometheus, to be Promethean, was to be Satanic, Luciferian.

In short, Prometheus was the one who, rebelling against God, went beyond all the bounds set by God, seeking limitless freedom.

It is striking, however, that many of us (perhaps all of us?), have a certain sympathy for Prometheus. As the person who desires to surpass all limits in a search for total freedom, he seems, somehow, admirable. Because most humans, perhaps all humans, wish to be as free as possible; freedom is something desirable, something good; its antithesis, slavery, something abhorrent, something evil.

But, as Christ said, “the truth shall set you free” — the difficulty is to grasp, to comprehend, the truth. For humans, our wonderful intellects darkened by passion and sin, to seek, to find, to grasp, to embrace the truth is often a difficult task, filled with pitfalls. We often do not know our own truth. And this can mean that, in a desire to be free, we embrace false paths, untrue paths, that lead us to sorrow.

And that is precisely what Benedict warned on Saturday.

The danger is that we have an untrue anthropology, and so an untrue understanding of what it means to be human, and so also of… what it means to be free.

“From the union between a materialistic view of man and the great development of technology an anthropology that is essentially atheist has emerged,” Benedict said (emphasis added). “It presupposes that the man is reduced to autonomous functions, the mind to the brain, human history to a destiny of self-realization.”

Here Benedict is warning about reductionism (“the man is reduced…”).

Reductionism is always in some sense “untrue” because it “reduces” the complexity of phenomena in order to “simplify” and so “comprehend” the phenomena.

It may seem as if the mind may be reduced to the brain, to the cells, to the electronic pulses of cells, it may seem that we can trace one emotion to the front of the brain and another to the back, but will the dissection of every single brain cell — Benedict is asking — ever finally locate “me”?

There is something in personhood which trascends, which cannot be reduced to, the material.

But, our modern “science” (which is reductionist) denies that it cannot find “the person.” It says we simply haven’t yet the tools to go into every cell, to discover those cells where “the person” is hidden. Our “science” (and the Pope in a moment will call this science “Promethean”) mock a man as a stubborn know-nothing if he claims he in his essence is somehow not material; that, science says, is to be excluded, for all things are material…

(This is what it means to live in an age when the dominant ideology is materialism.)

The Pope goes on:

“In the perspective of a man deprived of his soul and therefore a personal relationship with the Creator, what is technically possible becomes licit, each experiment is acceptable, any population policy permitted, any manipulation legitimized. The most dangerous pitfall of this line of thinking is in fact the absolute good of man: man wants to be ab-solutus, freed from every bond and every natural constitution.”

These words are stunningly powerful. Benedict is saying that it is when man wishes to be “absolute” (without God, without anyone telling him anything at all) that he finds himself at a total dead end and faces loneliness and… despair.

This, he said, “is a radical negation of man’s created and filial being, which results in a dramatic solitude.”

And Benedict warned “we must never close our eyes to these serious ideologies… It is in fact a negative pitfall for man, even if disguised by good sentiment in the name of an alleged progress, or alleged rights, or an alleged humanism.”

These are just a few reflections, offered as a possible help to readers of the Pope’s words. His words are so dense and rich that they deserve many more pages of reflection. But here is what the Pope said. I will let his words speak for themselves.

 

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The Pope’s Complete Address to “Cor Unum”

Saturday, January 19, Rome

By Pope Benedict XVI

Dear friends,

I welcome you all with great affection and joy on the occasion of the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. I thank the President, Cardinal Robert Sarah, for his words and I address my cordial greeting to each of you, ideally extending to all those who work in the Church’s charity service.

With the recent Motu Proprio Intima Ecclesiae natura I wanted to stress the ecclesial sense of your activity. Your testimony can open the door of faith to so many people who are looking for the love of Christ. So, in this Year of Faith, the theme of “Charity, new ethics and Christian anthropology,” that you are discussing, reflects the strict link between love and truth, or, if you wish, faith and charity. All Christian ethos in fact receives its meaning from faith as an “encounter” with the love of Christ, who offers a new horizon and gives a decisive direction to life (cf. Enc. Deus caritas est, 1).

Christian love is grounded and formed in faith. Encountering God and experiencing His love, we learn “to live no longer for ourselves but for Him, and with Him, for others” (ibid., 33).

From this dynamic relationship between faith and charity, I would like to reflect on one point that I would call the prophetic dimension that faith instils in charity. Belief in the Gospel impresses charity with a distinctively Christian form and constitutes the principle of discernment. Christians, especially those who work in charitable organizations, need to be directed by the principles of faith, by which we adhere to the “point of view of God,” to His project for us (cf. Enc. Caritas in Veritate, 1). This new view of the world and mankind offered by faith also provides the correct criteria for evaluating expressions of charity, in the current context.

In every age, when man failed to pursue this project, he became the victim of cultural temptations that ended up enslaving him.

In recent centuries, the ideologies which celebrated the cult of the nation, race, social class proved to be true idolatry, and the same can be said of unbridled capitalism with its cult of profit, with the resulting crisis, inequality and poverty. Today we increasingly share a common feeling regarding the inalienable dignity of every human being and our mutual co-responsibility towards it, and this is to the advantage of true civilization, the civilization of love.

On the other hand, unfortunately, our time is experiencing shadows that obscure God’s plan. I refer in particular to a tragic anthropological reduction that re-proposes the ancient hedonistic materialism, added to which, however, is a “technological prometheanism.”

From the union between a materialistic view of man and the great development of technology an anthropology that is essentially atheist has emerged.

It presupposes that the man is reduced to autonomous functions, the mind to the brain, human history to a destiny of self-realization. Everything detached from God, the spiritual dimension and eternal horizon.

In the perspective of a man deprived of his soul and therefore a personal relationship with the Creator, what is technically possible becomes licit, each experiment is acceptable, any population policy permitted, any manipulation legitimized.

The most dangerous pitfall of this line of thinking is in fact the absolute good of man: man wants to be ab-solutus, freed from every bond and every natural constitution. He claims to be independent and thinks his happiness lies only in his self-assertion. “Man calls his nature into question… From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be” (Address to the Roman Curia, 21 December 2012).

It is a radical negation of man’s created and filial being, which results in a dramatic solitude.

Faith and a healthy Christian discernment lead us therefore to pay prophetic attention to this ethical problem and its underlying mentality.

In a just collaboration with international bodies in the field of development and human promotion, we must never close our eyes to these serious ideologies, and the pastors of the Church – who are “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:15) – have a duty to warn both Catholic faithful and all people of good will and right reason against these pitfalls.

It is in fact a negative pitfall for man, even if disguised by good sentiment in the name of an alleged progress, or alleged rights, or an alleged humanism.

Faced with this anthropological reduction, what is the task of every Christian, and especially those of you who are engaged in charitable activities, and therefore in a direct relationship with so many other social actors?

Of course we have to exercise a critical vigilance and, at times, refuse funding and partnerships that directly or indirectly promote actions or projects in contrast with Christian anthropology. But positively the Church has always been committed to promoting man according to God’s plan, in his integral dignity, in accordance with his dual vertical and horizontal dimensions. The development of ecclesial bodies also tends in this direction.

The Christian vision of man is a great yes to the dignity of the person called to intimate communion with God, a filial, humble and confident communion. The human being is neither a stand-alone individual nor a separate anonymous element in a collectivity, but a singular and unique person, intrinsically ordered as a relational and social being.

Therefore, the Church reaffirms its great yes to the dignity and beauty of marriage as an expression of the faithful and fruitful alliance between man and woman, and its no to philosophies, such as that of gender, is motivated by the fact that the reciprocity between men and women is an expression of natural beauty of the Creator.

Dear friends, thank you for your commitment in favor of man, faithful to his true dignity. Faced with these epochal challenges, we know that the answer is the encounter with Christ. In him, man can fully realize his personal good and the common good. I encourage you to continue with a joyful and generous soul, and I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing.

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The Need for Greater Unity among Christians

The next day, during his Sunday noon Angelus, the Pope said divisions between Christians “disfigure the face of the Church.”

Benedict said: “One of the most serious sins that disfigures the face of the Church is its visible lack of unity, especially the historical divisions that have separated Christians and which have not yet been completely resolved.”

For more than 100 years, the week from January18 to 25 has been celebrated as a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

“The Church,” said the Pope, “is the bride of Christ, who makes her holy and beautiful with His grace. However this bride, made up of human beings, is always in need of purification.”

Before the Marian prayer, the Pope added: “Dear friends, as well as praying for Christian unity I would once again ask you to pray for peace… For both these intentions, we invoke the intercession of Mary Most Holy, Mediatrix of Grace.”

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Our New Foundation

In this context, our new Foundation, the “Urbi et Orbi Foundation,” intends to work for Christian unity worldwide, and also for peace.

We hope to build an alliance between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, with whom we share so much, and especially with the Russian Orthodox, the largest of the Orthodox Churches.

Please, consider whether this effort might not be something that you might wish to support. (All contributions are tax-deductible under US law; we will send a receipt from our 501(c)3 non-profit to be used for your tax filing purposes.)

May God bless you and your loved ones,

Dr. Robert Moynihan

Editor, Inside the Vatican magazine

Urbi et Orbi Foundation • 326 North Royal Ave • Front Royal, Virginia • 22630 • USA • Phone: 1-202-905-0433 • Toll-free line: 1-800-789-9494

January 18, 2013, Friday — In the face of persecution

Yesterday, on the Feast of St. Anthony of Egypt, we announced the launch of a new Foundation, called the Urbi et Orbi Foundation, to seek greater unity among Christians, and, in particular, to forge a “strategic alliance” between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, in order to face together the great challenges to the faith in our time. During the day today, we received nearly $20,000 in support of this effort, bringing our total in the past two weeks to about $40,000. Our goal is $250,000. We need that initial amount so that we can act effectively in a field where governments, foundations, and wealthy private individuals have resources in the billions. We will be giving grants of 90% of this money to common projects which seek to build bridges of trust and friendship between Catholics and Orthodox. We are seeking 100 founding members to join us at $2,500 per member. We now have 16 such founding members.

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In Defense of the Faith: Toward and Alliance of Eastern and Western Christians

Benedict on Christian Unity from his First Homily as Pope

“With full awareness, therefore, at the beginning of his ministry in the Church of Rome which Peter bathed in his blood, Peter’s current Successor takes on as his primary task the duty to work tirelessly to rebuild the full and visible unity of all Christ’s followers. This is his ambition, his impelling duty.” —Benedict XVI, his first message as Pope, April 20, 2005 (emphasis added)

January 18, 2013

Dear friends,

Today was an exciting day. We received significant support for the new “Urbi et Orbi Foundation” we announced in a newsflash yesterday.

Still, we are very far from our goal.

Therefore, I am writing again to try to offer persuasive reasons why support for this effort is not only important, but crucial, for the future of the Christian faith in the modern world.

Some years ago, I asked a Roman cardinal what he thought of the Russians (he is a cardinal from eastern Europe who knew Pope John Paul II well). I had traveled several times to Russia, sometimes in connection with the story of the icon of Kazan, known popularly as “the protection of Russia,” which returned to Russia in 2004, just before John Paul’s death. So I visited with him, and asked him whether he thought we Westerners could “trust” the Russians.

“What do you think of the Russians?” I asked him.

“They suffered a lot,” he said to me. “They have good hearts.”

“What about us Americans?” I asked.

“Your hearts are not so good,” he said. “Your humanity has suffered from your affluence.”

I was profoundly shocked — as you may be as I relate this conversation.

I disagreed with the cardinal.

But I remembered his words, and meditated on them.

I continued to travel to Russia, visiting churches and monasteries, but also hospitals and orphanages, talking to bishops, priests and nuns, but also to government officials, students, taxi drivers. On one occasion, I spoke with a young Russian Orthodox layman who said this to me: “Here in Russia, the communist regime, from 1918 to 1991, for 73 years, attempted to suppress religious belief through direct attacks: restrictive laws, arrests, imprisonment; in a word, persecution. But somehow, the faith survived. It suffered greatly, but survived. In the West, the faith did not face such a direct persecution. It was legally permitted to exist. But a certain diminishment of the faith occurred precisely because your society was so open. Worldliness and pleasure were praised, spirituality and mysticism, often, mocked. In the end, I think, it may well turn out that the more effective persecution of the faith occurred in your country, not ours.”

Again, I was astonished — as you may be. His argument turned upside down much that I had long believed.

Over time, bit by bit, as I visited Catholic and Orthodox churches and shrines in the East, many filled with young people, and especially when I saw the Orthodox faithful in prayer, and heard them sing in their powerful way, and witnessed them bending down and placing their foreheads against the very pavement stones of their churches, I wondered: Where in the West have I seen such faith?

And the idea was born in me that we needed the East as much as the East needed us — perhaps more.

The longing for the transcendent is intrinsic to the human spirit. It is that “spark” which flies up toward the eternal which is “in the image and likeness of God.”

The desire for the infinite, for God, hidden though He may be — or glimpsed in the natural world around us, or sensed in the quiet of our hearts — is as innate to self-conscious minds, that is, to human minds, as the turning of leaves toward the sun is innate to living plants.

But this innate longing can be suppressed; can even, it seems, be completely eliminated. (This is what Dante meant when he wrote “so low had they fallen that they no longer considered themselves creatures worthy even of being damned.”)

And when this longing is eliminated it is, in my view, a colossal tragedy.

It is the loss of what is best in human beings. It is the loss of our highest identity, our distinctive, special nature. (I hesitate to say it is the loss of the soul, but it could also be that. And the combination of this loss in many souls constitutes the loss of the highest identity of a society, of the “better angels of our nature.” Of our society’s soul.)

This elimination of the longing for God can occur in two ways: (1) by direct persecution, until longing for God can become so painful and costly that a believer, even against his will, abandons the longing for what he knows, deep down, is his heart’s desire; or (2) by temptation, by the replacement of that pure and high longing with other longings, less high, less pure, beginning perhaps first with relatively harmless ones, like the longing to be healthy, and well-off, and well-thought of in society, but slowly, bit by bit, with a longing to satiate every desire, until a person desires, in the end, to forget about the transcendent altogether, to forsake it, as something that impedes the satisfaction of less sublime, more tangible desires. (Hence the Christian tradition of asceticism; not so much to reject the world, but to protect the delicate interior longing which would be diminished and finally extinguished by the world.)

In this second path to loss of faith, it is one’s own choice to leave the faith, and then to offer excuses for one’s abandonment (“it was something I believed in as a child, but I have now put away childish things”; “it was something I thought would give me joy, but it ended up preventing so many joys, so many pleasures, that I had to reject it, for my own happiness”; “it was a conviction based on myths and fables, now I see everything so much more clearly, and want only to have a quiet life free of spiritual struggle”).

Christ said that he came to cast a fire on the earth; the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles as tongues of fire; Moses saw a burning bush that burned, and was not consumed.

This very fire is what worldliness cools, dampens, douses. In the end, the faith flickers out.

This brings us to some reflections on where we are today, and a preliminary diagnosis of our predicament.

In our increasingly “globalized” world, we have a public culture based too much on “spin” rather than truth, on surface appearance rather than deeper reality, on the superficial rather than the profound.

Thus we have a need for a profound cultural renewal, a deepening across the board, a greater wisdom (I would say “a wisdom from on high” except that there is no direction in the spiritual realm, so it would be just as true to speak of “a wisdom from within”). Without this renewal, we will not be able to deal effectively, justly, humanely, lovingly, with the great challenges facing us: socially, politically, economically, technologically, environmentally.

But such a renewal can only occur if those operating in the culture are animated (literally, “breathed into”) by a profound wisdom, a profound understanding of human nature, of human weakness and sin, of human strength and nobility.

The great religious traditions of the world offer elements of this wisdom, and one of the tragedies of our age is that all of the great spiritual traditions of mankind have tended to be marginalized and abandoned as “archaic baggage” in this “brave new (technological) world” we find ourselves in.

All of mankind’s great religious traditions contain “elements” of the truth about human nature (as Vatican II notes), and the widespread abandonment of those “elements” has left humanity in many places “deracinated,” disconnected from ancient roots, and so subject to superficial winds of doctrine which circle the globe in this age of satellite news and the internet.

The ancient traditions, Christians believe, pointed toward and, as it were, “desired” the coming of Mary, of Jesus, and so also of all that unfolded, including the salvation accomplished in the death and resurrection of Christ. And a “Cristo-centric” view of cosmology holds that in that history, in those real events, something “cosmic” occurred which broke through the veil of frustration within which humanity stumbled gropingly, bereft of ultimate meaning and ultimate hope.

In the events of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, in the faith in the significance of these events, Christians find the culmination of human hopes, of “man’s search for meaning.”

There is no motive here for any sort of triumphalism. No motive for any sort of cultural imperialism. There is only a motive to be renewed not only in one’s longing for the divine — which is to be renewed in one’s innate humanness — but in the conviction that this longing responds to a reality, to the reality, to the central reality of the universe.

And it is not an accident that all of this came forth, in historical terms, starting with Abraham and then flourishing with Moses and the Exodus, then continuing with the prophets up through John the Baptist (who called on the people to repent and be renewed), that all this came forth from the people of Israel.

The spread of this “good news,” this “news” that hope had entered into the world, become incarnate in the world, to definitively overcome the frustration of the “saeculum,” the seculaer, by giving the secular an eternal horizon, was rapid, but also opposed, and harshly.

It was opposed by the imperial power of Rome, and by many Greek philosophers, and often by a part of Israel, as well as by many of the various pagan priesthoods.

But the coming, on Epiphany, of the Magi, the three Wise Men, from the East, to do Him homage, was an early sign of a universal destiny for this teaching, this faith, this news, which was not intended to shatter and destroy the spiritual traditions and longings of mankind, but to complement and complete them.

In the life of St. Anthony of Egypt, whose feast day we celebrated yesterday — the day we announced the launch of our new Foundation — we see all the elements of the conflict that this new faith provoked.

But the battle was less between cultural institutions than it was one within individual human souls. And so it will be today, and tomorrow.

Terry Matz, on the Catholic.org website, has this to say about St. Anthony:

“Two Greek philosophers ventured out into the Egyptian desert to the mountain where Anthony lived. When they got there, Anthony asked them why they had come to talk to such a foolish man? He had reason to say that — they saw before them a man who wore a skin, who refused to bathe, who lived on bread and water. They were Greek, the world’s most admired civilization, and Anthony was Egyptian, a member of a conquered nation. They were philosophers, educated in languages and rhetoric. Anthony had not even attended school as a boy and he needed an interpreter to speak to them. In their eyes, he would have seemed very foolish.

“But the Greek philosophers had heard the stories of Anthony. They had heard how disciples came from all over to learn from him, how his intercession had brought about miraculous healings, how his words comforted the suffering. They assured him that they had come to him because he was a wise man.

“Anthony guessed what they wanted. They lived by words and arguments. They wanted to hear his words and his arguments on the truth of Christianity and the value of ascetism. But he refused to play their game. He told them, ‘If you think me wise, become what I am, for we ought to imitate the good. Had I gone to you, I should have imitated you, but, since you have come to me, become what I am, for I am a Christian.’

“Anthony’s whole life was not one of observing, but of becoming…

“Saint Athanasius, who knew Anthony and wrote his biography, said, ‘Anthony was not known for his writings nor for his worldly wisdom, nor for any art, but simply for his reverence toward God.’

“Prayer: Saint Anthony, you spoke of the importance of persevering in our faith and our practice. Help us to wake up each day with new zeal for the Christian life and a desire to take the next challenge instead of just sitting still. Amen.”

And at the heart of the Orthodox monastic tradition, and of Orthodox ascetic spirituality, is this type of reverence for God, which we in the West need if we are to heal our wounded society and world.

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The Anniversary of the Edict of Milan

In the year 313, the Roman Emperor Constantine issued an Edict from Milan making the Christian faith legal in the Roman Empire. Prior to that year, it had been illegal, and fiercely persecuted, in large measure because it refused to recognize in worldy authorities an absolute divinity, which was reserved only to God. And this was an essential reason why, from 30 AD to 313 AD, for 283 years, Christianity was persecuted by the rulers of the empire.

This year, 2013, we celebrate the 1,700th year since that Edict of Constantine. And Constantine was born in Nis, in what is today Serbia.

And the celebration began yesterday — the day we launched our Foundation, the day of the Feast of St. Anthony.

By chance, I received an interesting letter today from my friend Peter Anderson, a Catholic lawyer from the state of Washington who was a close friend of the late Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi and who has been one of my “mentors” on these matters in recent years. Anderson writes:

“The celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan formally began last night with a major event at the National Theater in Nis (in Serbia).

“The principal speakers were Serbian Patriarch Irinej and Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic… The event was hosted by the newly-appointed Russian ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Chepurin, and the famous Sretensky Monastery Choir from Moscow sang at the event…

“The celebration of the Edict will culminate in Nis (Serbia) on October 6, 2013, in a liturgy celebrated by the patriarchs and primates of the various Local Orthodox Churches.

“It appears that representatives of other Christian churches will be invited to attend. Although Pope Benedict will presumably not be attending this celebration, the Catholic Church will have significant participation in the various celebrations. For example, the attached photo (from www.spc.rs) shows Archbishop Stanislav Hocevar, Catholic archbishop of Belgrade (on the left) and Archbishop Orlando Antonini, apostolic nuncio to Serbia (on the right) addressing the audience at last night’s event.

“Last Christmas, Archbishop Hocevar discussed the Catholic events in Serbia relating to the Edict. An interesting English-language article describes these events. http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2012&mm=12&dd=21&nav_id=83775

“Significantly, Catholics will participate in the Orthodox events, and Orthodox will participate in the Catholic events. In September, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan will lead a pilgrimage at Nis.”

Here are excerpts from the pre-Christmas article Anderson cites, with emphasis added:

Catholic archbishop in Christmas message

BELGRADE — Roman Catholic Archbishop of Belgrade Stanislav Hočevar wished on Friday a merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it on December 25.

He also extended his good wishes to those who follow the Julian calendar…

“May all be blessed by rebirth and start 2013 reborn through the Holy Spirit and spend the year as new people, witnesses of a better and different world,” the archbishop stated.

Hočevar satisfied with joint jubilee plans

Stanislav Hočevar also said on Friday that he was satisfied that the new Serbian government and presidency initiated the joint marking of 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan in 2013.

“I am glad that on my initiative, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić and Patriarch Irinej have included in that group the Roman Catholic Church, which has been the most vocal about that all these years,” Hočevar said after reading his Christmas message in the Archbishop of Belgrade.

He announced that panel discussions will be held as part of the celebrations on May 6 and 22, and a symposium on freedom from April 18-20.

The church dedicated to the ascension of the Holy Cross, which is being restored by great artists, will be consecrated in Nis on September 14, he noted.

Hočevar also announced that a pilgrimage will start from that church on September 20-21 under the leadership of Archbishop of Milan Cardinal Angelo Scola, as well as that the jubilee year will end in Belgrade with the celebration of the Feast of Christ the King.

“There will also be some other events related to the process of dialogue. After all reflections, we would like to end the next year by giving special consideration to the interpretation of history in these areas,” Hočevar said.

It has been agreed that representatives of the Roman Catholic Church will take part in the events organized by the Serbian Orthodox Church and vice versa, he added.

“It would be logical that the dialogue be fully realized at a meeting of all religious leaders, but that remains a possibility for our state in the future,” Hočevar said.

The Edict of Milan is a document issued by Constantine the Great in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance and put a stop to the persecution of Christians.

The central ceremony will be held in Niš on October 6, 2013. This southern Serbian town was the birthplace of Rome’s first Christian emperor.

Working to End the Persecution of Christians

So this year, 1,700 years after the end of the great Roman imperial persecutions of Christianity, Catholics and Orthodox will celbrate the anniversary together in Serbia. And, who knows, perhaps on the central day of the year-long celebration, Orthodox and Catholic leaders could gather in Nis to give a great, dramatic sign of Christian unity…

This would be fitting in many ways, for the faith today is again being persecuted, after so many centuries of being legal and free.

In the 20th century, millions of Christians were executed for their faith under totaltitarian regimes which brooked no opposition from man or God, in countries ranging from Mexico to Cambodia to Germany to Russia.

And in our own 21st century, Christians in places like Nigeria face persecution and death in attacks by militant Muslims, while throughout the Middle East, there is a continuing exodus of Christians who face grave threats.

Even in western nations, new legislation threatens the relisgious freedom of Christians.

In this context, our new Foundation, the “Urbi et Orbi Foundation,” a group of lay Catholics which today added members from Argentina, Tanzania, Great Britain and Canada as well as many from the United States, alongside our partner, the St. Gregory the Theologian Foundation, a Russian Orthodox Foundation based in Moscow, will work to support persecuted Christians worldwide, and the human right of religious freedom.

In this effort, the alliance we hope to build between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox with whom we share so much — and especially with the Russian Orthodox, the largest of the Orthodox Churches — could be of great significance and effectiveness.

Please, consider whether this effort might not be something that you might wish to support.

All contributions are tax-deductible under US law; we will send a receipt from our 501(c)3 non-profit to be used for your tax filing purposes. I would be grateful if you would join with me in this initiative.

May God bless and protect you and your loved ones, and may you have a happy and holy New Year,

In Christ,

Dr. Robert Moynihan
Editor, Inside the Vatican magazine

Urbi et Orbi Foundation • 326 North Royal Ave • Front Royal, Virginia • 22630 • USA • Phone: 1-202-905-0433 • Toll-free line: 1-800-789-9494

January 17, 2013, Thursday — A New Foundation

Out of a conviction that the “signs of the times” call for greater unity among Christians, and greater collaboration among all men and women of good will to build a more free and just society than the one that seems to be emerging in the “post-Christian” West, we have decided to launch a new Foundation, called the Urbi et Orbi Foundation. We are seeking 100 founding members to join with us.

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In Defense of the West: Announcing a New Foundation to Help Create a Strategic Alliance

Benedict on the role of the Pope

“Peter’s responsibility thus consists of guaranteeing the communion with Christ. Let us pray so that the primacy of Peter, entrusted to poor human beings, may always be exercised in this original sense desired by the Lord, so that it will be increasingly recognized in its true meaning by brothers who are still not in communion with us.” —Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in St. Peter’s Square on June 7, 2006

 

Metropolitan Hilarion on the Origin of the Idea of a Strategic Alliance

“The idea of a strategic alliance with the Catholics is an old idea of mine. It came to me when the Catholics were electing the new Pope.” —Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, March 24, 2011

 

January 17, 2013

Dear friend,

Greetings and best wishes in this season following Christmas and the beginning of the new year.

I am writing to invite you to become a founding member of a new Foundation dedicated to working to create a “strategic alliance” between Catholics and other Christians around the world, especially with the Orthodox, in an effort to “defend the West” by defending traditional Christian faith and values.

On Christmas Eve, we sent this same invitation by traditional mail to a select group of 1,000 prominent Catholics around the world, including a number of bishops and cardinals. We have received 30 responses and have raised nearly $50,000. But we are still far from our goal, and we need your help to reach it.

This invitation is the end result of years of work and reflection.

Our western culture, sadly, has, in so many ways, turned from the “path of life” indicated to us by the Hebrew prophets, and by all the saints down through the ages, and, above all, by Christ himself. And where are we today?

Our Church seems often hesitant, and sadly divided. And the greatest, oldest division is that between Catholics and Orthodox, West and East, Latin and Greek.

In the East, in the “heartland” of the Orthodox, in 1917, an atheist movement overthrew Orthodox Christian Russia, then spread until it conquered half of once-Christian Europe. For many of us, the images of Lenin gesticulating, Czar Nicholas and his five lovely children slumping under gunfire in a basement in Ekaterinburg, gaunt political prisoners freezing in the gulags of Siberia, are in our minds and memories… in our hearts.

And the ideas of that regime (among them, abortion, legalized in Russia, for the first time in the history of the world, in 1920) have spread everywhere.

This spectacle, this suffering of so many in Russia and Eastern Europe and also in the West over the past century, has moved us to act… in this letter, through this invitation.

In travels and conversations…

In travels and conversations with many in Rome and Russia — including with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, on several occasions — the idea of this invitation was planted, and is now germinating.

In order to build a movement, in order to help the Christians of the East and to strengthen them — and by strengthening them, to help ourselves — we need to have an agile structure, a small foundation which can act as a catalyst for progress between larger and less agile institutions.

In agreement with Dr. Daniel Schmidt, Vice President of the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Dr. Declan Murphy, Director for Aid
to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe for the US Bishops’ Conference (we have traveled to Russia many times over the past 15 years, from St. Petersburg to Moscow to Kazan to Siberia, in snow and in sun, as well as throughout Eastern Europe), I am launching, in this letter, a new foundation to be called the “Urbi et Orbi Foundation” (“To the City and to the World” Foundation).

We hope that, after reading this letter, you will choose to be a founding member, and perhaps a founding sponsor, of our new Foundation.

Our Mission: To Create a Strategic Alliance

 

The overarching mission of this new “Urbi et Orbi Foundation” will be to promote the “new evangelization” called for so urgently, first by Pope John Paul II and now by Pope Benedict XVI.

The specific mission, however, will be to fashion a “strategic alliance” among Christians, too often divided, and especially between Catholic and Orthodox Christians, in the face of increasing pressure on Christians in the West, and around the world.

The Foundation aims to defend, though the hour is now late, the “Christian West.” We believe that traditional Christian beliefs and practices built western culture. As these beliefs and practices are discarded in our “post-Christian” world, the life of all of us is impoverished. Those beliefs and practices were at the root of a culture which respected the dignity of human beings, of family life, of marriage, of the individual soul and conscience. We want to try to defend what we can of that culture, before it vanishes.

How? By uniting the up until now divided forces of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, of the West and the East, of Rome and Byzantium. By creating a “strategic alliance.”

We cannot predict…

We cannot predict what results will come from this effort, but we would like to begin, and we hope much good will come from it. And we would like your help to do this.

The new Foundation will partner with other foundations and institutions, both Catholic and Orthodox, particularly in the area of the former Soviet Union, and especially, in Russia, that country where thousands of churches were dynamited under the Communists.

In Russia, a Russian Orthodox charitable foundation based in Moscow called the “St. Gregory the Theologian Foundation,” launched two years ago by Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the Department of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate (the “foreign minister,” as it were, of the Russian Orthodox Church) and directed by Leonid Sevastianov, a Russian Orthodox layman whose father was a leader of the “Old Believer” community in Russia, has collaborated on several projects with me and would like to continue to do even more.

The St. Gregory Foundation has in the past two years received major funding support from leading Orthodox Russians, amounting to some $50 million. (The funds are being used primarily to rebuild Russian Orthodox theological academies, but a certain amount will be available for specific common projects with our new Foundation.)

We have been in correspondence with Hilarion, as well as with his superior, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, about this effort, and we have been assured of a desire on the Russian side to work together, if we are able to launch the Foundation.

In America, in conversations with former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Frank Shakespeare and the late Paul Weyrich, the leading figure of the “New Right” 30 years ago and a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, we have
been told in no uncertain terms that this project is of vital, critical importance, for our Church, for our country, for our culture. (Indeed, Weyrich, who became a deacon in the Greek Melkite rite of the Catholic Church toward the end of his life, told us there was no other foreign policy initiative more critical to the future of the United States than an effort to make contact, and build friendships, with the Orthodox of the East, and particularly with the Russian Orthodox.)

During the coming year, therefore, our first goal will be to co-sponsor with the Moscow-based St. Gregory Foundation projects in Russia and Eastern Europe. Our goal: to demonstrate that it is possible for Catholics and Orthodox to work together while not yet fully reconciled ecclesially.

Essentially, it will be an effort to build trust and friendship between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Our Ultimate Goal: Reunion, and a Time of Peace

The ultimate goal of the “Urbi et Orbi Foundation,” however, is the complete reunion of the Orthodox Churches with the Roman Catholic Church, that is, an
end to the greatest schism in Christianity, dating from 1054 A.D.

For nearly 1,000 years, Christianity has been divided into two halves, Eastern and Western, Greek and Latin, Orthodox and Catholic. My dissertation director in graduate school at Yale University, Prof. Jaroslav Pelikan, the brilliant historian of the development of Christian doctrine, now deceased, told me in 1982, 31 years ago, that if this millennial-old division were not healed, the West, which had been nourished by these two great traditions, would inevitably fall. He counseled me to work to end this division, in order to try to preserve the Christian roots of our culture.

Russia and Eastern Europe were once considered an integral part of western culture. That region of the world, largely Orthodox, suffered enormously under Communism, from 1917 to 1991, when the Soviet Union fell. Communism devastated the Orthodox world. In country after country, a state atheism sought to stamp out religious faith as “the opium of the people.” Thousands, tens of thousands, were deported, imprisoned in gulags, and executed.

But it was not Orthodox who governed these regimes. The Orthodox in each country suffered enormously.

Since 1991, religious faith has re-emerged from the catacombs in much of the East. In formerly atheist countries, the Christian faith can once again be preached openly. And this perspective opens up another possibility: that in the East, religious faith can return.

“… for we need the East”

This possibility is part of our Foundation’s vision. We wish to help the process in the East whereby religious faith can return. And in so doing, we hope to benefit in the West, for we need the East.

In this perspective, we wish to help bring about that mysterious “conversion of Russia” predicted by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. The Virgin of Fatima told the little girl, Lucy: “Russia will spread its errors throughout the world…. But in the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me; it will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world.” We would like to do our part in helping with that process, hoping that a “certain period of peace” may be granted to our world. The goal of our Foundation, in this sense, is to help, if we can, to bring a time of world peace.

A New Russian Voice Emerges

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, 46, has emerged as one of the remarkable, charismatic leaders in the Orthodox world, and particularly in Russian Orthodoxy. The Orthodox world includes 16 different national Churches
(Serbian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and so forth). But the most numerous and powerful of these Churches is the Russian Orthodox. So, working with the Russian Orthodox is critical in any effort to build bridges between Rome and eastern Europe.

And in Metropolitan Hilarion, we have a willing partner. “The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church should accept each other not as rivals, but first and foremost as allies, working to protect the rights of Christians,” Hilarion said last year, speaking at the International Christian Congress in Wurzburg, Germany.

“I am asking to act as allies, without being a single Church, without having a single administrative system or common liturgy, and while maintaining the differences on the points in which we differ.

“This is especially important in light of the common challenges that face both Orthodox and Catholic Christians,” he continued. “They are first and foremost the challenges of a godless world, which is equally hostile today to Orthodox believers and Catholics, the challenge of moral corruption, family decay, the abandonment by many people in traditionally Christian countries of the traditional family structure, liberalism in theology and morals, which is eroding the Christian community from within. We can respond to these, and a number of other challenges, together.

“I would like to stress, once more, that there are well-known doctrinal differences between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, but there are also common positions in regard to morality and social issues which, today, are not shared by many of the representatives of liberal Protestantism,” Hilarion concluded. “Therefore, cooperation is first and foremost necessary between the Orthodox and Catholic Christians — and that is what I call a strategic alliance.”

And, just five days ago, on January 12, speaking at Villanova University in Philadelphia during a visit to the United States, Hilarion repeated these same thoughts.

“The Orthodox and Catholics encounter the same challenges which modern times lay down to the traditional way of life. In this instance we are dealing not with theological problems but with the present and future of humanity. It is in this sphere that Orthodox and Catholics can interact without compromising their ecclesiastical identity. In other words, while not yet being the one Church, being separated by various theological and ecclesiological problems, we can find ways of interacting which would allow us to respond jointly to the challenges of the modern world.

“Together we can help people realize what the traditional Christian values are – the family, the worth of human life from conception to death, the upbringing of children, the integrity and indissolubility of marriage. All of these concepts in the modern secular world are subjected to a radical re-evaluation.”

Here is a link to Hilarion’s complete talk

The Vision of Pope Benedict

In Rome, the successor of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI, is now 85 years old (he will turn 86 in April). He is daily speaking beautiful, eloquent, powerful words of faith, of self-sacrifice, and of holiness at a time when many do not want to hear those words. Our magazine, Inside the Vatican, founded in 1993 (we are celebrating our 20th anniversary in 2013) is one of the strongest supporters of this Pope.

But Pope Benedict XVI is really a lonely voice in our world right now. The vast cultural transformation which has occurred in the West since the 1960s has seen a dramatic decline in the public expression of the Christian faith throughout the West. Many of the traditions, values, beliefs, which once seem sacred and invulnerable to attack or change are now under direct challenge.

One of the great themes of Pope Benedict’s pontificate has been the theme of Christian unity, especially unity between Catholics and Orthodox. Benedict has emphasized his pledge to ecumenism on many occasions in his almost 8-year papacy.

In his first homily as Pope, on April 20, 2005, he said his “primary” task would be to work tirelessly to unify all followers of Christ.

He repeated that pledge May 29, 2005, on his first journey as Pope, to Italy’s Adriatic seaport of Bari — a pilgrimage site for many Russian Orthodox because it was the see of their beloved St. Nicholas — and called on ordinary Catholics to also take up the ecumenical cause.

We wish to be among those “ordinary Catholics” who take up that cause.

Our Vision and Plans

The vision of our new Foundation may be summarized as: “Let us work together to defend our common beliefs.”

And so we are sending this letter, and asking for a few or you, or many of you, to step forward with us.

For those of you who wish to be members of this Foundation, all that is needed is to check “Yes, we would like to be members,” and we will enroll you. You will receive regular reports on what we are doing.

But we also need some financial support, some initial “seed money” to launch this initiative.

We are therefore seeking an initial amount of $250,000 to enable us to function for the next 12 months.

To do this, we were hoping we might find 100 “founding sponsors” of this new Foundation, each of whom will pledge $2,500, for a total initial amount of $250,000. With these funds, we will be able to launch our work to build an alliance with the Orthodox. The initial 100 donors will be enrolled as “Founding Sponsors” and invited to meetings with Catholic and Orthodox leaders ranging from Cardinal Peter Erdo of Budapest, Hungary, to Metropolitan Hilarion himself, in venues ranging from Rome to Washington to Budapest to Moscow.

Our first year’s budget includes the following items:

—Administration: $20,000 (travel, visas, general operations)

—“Family and Society” events: $50,000 (a conference or several workshops on family life and traditional family values, with media coverage, a documentary film and other forms of social media communication)

—Education: $50,000 (joint projects between Orthodox and Catholics on the formation of young people, high school through college — academic programs, after school or Saturday social service projects, religiously-inspired leadership training, summer camp programs, summer seminar series involving Orthodox and Catholic young people doing a week session with leading Catholic and Orthodox thinkers, including Vatican officials, or some European or American lay Catholic intellectual)

—Religious Formation: $20,000 (a common pilgrimage to one Orthodox and one Catholic site)

—Children’s programs: $15,000 (a common effort to work with children, in Russia, Ukraine, or Eastern Europe, perhaps with the L’Arche Community, which is well known for its work with the disabled and orphans)

—Elderly programs: $15,000 (retirement homes, meal programs, social and spiritual activities)

—A Catholic/Orthodox Forum: $25,000 (modeled on the 2006 Catholic-Orthodox conference in Vienna, Austria, at which Catholic and Orthodox leaders began to talk openly with one another about how to “give a
soul to Europe”)

—Joint cultural programs, concerts: $50,000 (modeled on concerts in 2007 in Rome, Moscow, New York, Washington and Boston, and in 2010 in the Vatican, which led to deeper appreciation the common elements of our cultural tradition)

January 16, 2013, Wednesday — Top Ten People of 2102

Each year, Inside the Vatican magazine chooses 10 people we believe are examples of great courage, fidelity to the Church and heroic Christian charity. Our choice for “Person of the Year”: Pope Benedict XVI. He passed through the crucible of the “Vatileaks” scandal and continued to preach the Gospel, in season and out of season…

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Our “Man of the Year”: Benedict

Our true “man of the year” is not on our list of “Top Ten People” of 2012. He is Pope Benedict XVI himself. His eloquent words, his courage in speaking the truth during this difficult year, have been an inspiration.

Each year, Inside the Vatican magazine selects 10 people from around the world whom we feel are worthy of praise for their courage, their steadiness under difficulties, their fidelity to the Church and to the faith, their holiness.

This year, we decided to focus more than usual on the Holy See and the leadership of the Church in Rome and in other places, because it seemed to us that 2012 was in some ways an “annus horribilis” (“year of horrors”) for the Church, when the Church’s central government was brought into serious question by the “Vatileaks” scandal. At the center of it all was Pope Benedict, betrayed by his own butler.

Some thought we should name the Pope as our “Man of the Year” because he has come through it all with “flying colors,” continuing to teach and preach in an astonishingly effective and profound way for those who have “ears to hear,” finishing his third book on Jesus, naming young and energetic new cardinals from around the world, traveling to Mexico and Cuba and Lebanon, launching the Year of Faith…

No Pope has ever been listed among our “Top Ten” because, in a sense, we have taken it for granted that the Pope is inevitably at the center of the struggle for the faith in the world today. That was true during the years when John Paul II was Pope, and it has been true during Benedict’s nearly 8-year pontificate.
But in the past year, Benedict has taken very serious blows — above all, his butler’s betrayal of his trust.

This not only brought sorrow to the Pope, it threatened to destabilize the government of the universal Church (what bishop would not think twice about communicating with Rome knowing his communications might be published worldwide?).

The “Vatileaks” scandal rocked the Barque of Peter in 2012 in a way that threatened to puncture large holes in the hull of the boat.

Now that storm has subsided, and the Pope has battened down the hatches for the final phase of his pontificate. He has begun to preach even more eloquently (see our “Lead Story”) about the great issues facing mankind in every age, but especially in our own time.

For steering the Church through this crisis, for continuing to keep up a grueling schedule which would exhaust most men half his age, for preaching the Gospel “in season and out of season,” Pope Benedict XVI is our choice for “Man of the Year” in 2012.

But the Pope is not the only one who is fighting to keep the Church on course, preaching, doing works of mercy, bearing witness to Christ. There are many others, and we have chosen ten of them.

In China, the bishop of Shanghai is a figure of enormous bravery and fidelity to Rome in spite of fear and oppression. Gerry O’Connell, our expert on Asian Church affairs, has given us a profile of Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin.

In Rome, there is a Spanish cardinal, a theologian so in line with the thought of Pope Benedict that he is called “little Ratzinger” (he is also shorter than the Pope) who has now stepped out in support of the old Mass, or rather, the “eternal Mass,” as one of our letter-writers in this issue persuasively argues. He is Cardinal Antonio Cañizares. And in Rome there is right now one person whom the Pope trusts more than anyone else, someone who prays the rosary with him daily and who works with him from dawn to dusk and far into the night: his German private secretary, the new prefect of the Pontifical Household, Archbishop Georg Gän­swein.

In the Middle East, where the Christian community is under such pressure, a cardinal from Lebanon is the incarnation of the Pope’s concern for the plight of the Christians of that region. He is the leader of the ancient Maronite Church, an Eastern-rite Church, so he also represents the universality of the Church. He is Patriarch Bechera Boutros Rai.

In Africa, a new cardinal, from Nigeria, is fighting daily for his people against the pressure of militant Islam. He is a peacemaker, seeking ways to promote dialogue and understanding. This brave man is Cardinal John Olurunfemi Onaiyekan.

In Asia, in Pakistan, there is a woman who has been in prison for three years due to false charges of blasphemy. This “prisoner of faith” is the mother of five children. Her name is Asia Bibi.

In the United States, no voice in the past year has been more prominent than that of the cardinal archbishop of New York in speaking out against government infringements of religious freedom. He is Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

In Europe, a Church leader in France is building a coalition for traditional values that is completely unexpected, given France’s secular nature. He is the cardinal archbishop of Paris, André Vingt-Trois.

All over the world, mothers and fathers sacrifice themselves daily for their children, but one Spanish woman sacrificed her life: she chose not to have chemotherapy to treat a cancer while pregnant, and died that her child might live. Her name: Barbara Castro Garcia.

Finally, there is one of the key assistants to Cardinal Ratzinger from his years at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a man who, under the Pope’s orders, has courageously toiled to “purify the Church” by investigating cases of priestly sexual abuse. This courageous man is Bishop Charles Scicluna of Malta.

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The Top Ten in Summary

Msgr. Charles Scicluna — The Vatican’s chief prosecutor of clerical sexual abuse. On October 6, he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Malta and Titular Bishop of San Leone

Barbara Castro Garcia — Spanish mother dies after postponing cancer treatments to save baby

Cardinal André Vingt-Trois — Archbishop of Paris and President of the French Bishops’ Conference builds coalition in opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage

Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan — Archbishop of New York and President of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference leads a defense of unborn life and Christian marriage and values in society

Asia Bibi — Pakistani Christian woman arrested and sentenced to death for blaspheming against Islam in 2009. Her case received worldwide attention. The Pope called for clemency for Asia

Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan — Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, he has spoken out against military dictatorship and violence, and urged dialogue with Muslims

Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai — Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, he is one of the key leaders of the Christian communities in the Middle East

Archbishop Georg Gänswein — The Pope’s private secretary, named Prefect of the Papal Household and Archbishop of Urbs Salvia

Cardinal Antonio Cañizares — Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, has supported the faithful application of Summorum Pontificum

Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin — This Auxiliary Bishop of Shanghai, China, has been under house arrest since July 7, 2012, following his courageous actions at his episcopal ordination

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1. Bishop Charles Scicluna

His friends and family speak of his warmth, his hard work and dedication to justice, his sense of humor and of the safety they felt while in his presence. His colleagues and mentors note that he is someone who knows how to be around others and to respect all people. Almost everyone speaks of him with love and admiration for his courage, loyalty, faithfulness and hard work. He is the newly-ordained Auxiliary Bishop of Malta, His Excellency Charles J. Scicluna, 53, one of the key figures in the past decade in the Church’s effort — called for so strongly by Pope Benedict XVI — of self-purification.
Scicluna marked the 25th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood in July 2011, and celebrated his tenth year as Promoter of Justice in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in October 2012. He then returned to his native Malta to be ordained to the episcopate on November 24.
In the days immediately following his ordination, though he has now left Rome and his Vatican post, he was assigned to be a judge in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; he will now act as advisor and sit with the two dozen cardinals and bishops who judge the abuse cases that come before the CDF, his old office.
His parents, Emanuel and Maria Carmela (née Falzon) lived to celebrate the ordination to the episcopate of the eldest of their four children.
Charles Jude Scicluna was born in Toronto, Canada, on May 15, 1959. The following year the Scicluna family moved to Malta, where he attended school and grew up, surrounded by a large extended family.
Scicluna attended Saint Edward’s College in Cottonera, Malta, and he entered the law course at the University of Malta in 1976; he graduated as a Doctor of Laws in 1984. After completing his seminary studies and earning a licentiate in pastoral theology, he was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood by the Archbishop of Malta, Monsignor Joseph Mercieca, on July 11, 1986. Scicluna was sent to study canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and obtained his doctorate in canon law with a specialization in jurisprudence in 1991, when he returned to Malta. In 1995 he was called to the Vatican to work on the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura as Substitute Promoter of Justice.
In 1996, he was appointed postulator for the cause of beatification and canonization of St. George Preca, popularly known as the “Second Apostle of Malta” after St. Paul. (In Maltese he is known as Dun Ġorġ Preca. He lived from 1880 to 1962, founded the Society of Christian Doctrine, a group of lay catechists, and was canonized by Pope Benedict on June 3, 2007.)
Scicluna is best known to the world’s media for his work in prosecuting the most serious crimes committed by priests. Quietly doing the work of a dozen individuals, he oversaw the cases leading to the removal of hundreds of pederast priests, including the late Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ.
In addition to the ongoing pastoral responsibilities he has had since his ordination as a priest in 1986, he has lectured, written, taught, and faithfully served the Church he loves.
He also served as defender of the bond and promoter of justice at the Metropolitan Court of Malta and professor of pastoral theology and canon law and vice-rector of the major seminary of the archdiocese there.
In 2010, Scicluna drafted the universal norms which extended the Church’s statutes of limitations on reporting cases as well as extended the list of ecclesial crimes to include the possession of child pornography, among other things.
Also in 2010, he presided at a prayer service of reparation for priests in St. Peter’s Basilica, where he courageously stated the harsh truth regarding those who have misused the priesthood: “How many are the sins in the Church for arrogance, for insatiable ambition, the tyranny and injustice of those who take advantage of ministry to advance their careers, to show off, for futile and miserable reasons of vanity!”
Intense and focused attention was as much his signature characteristic as his loyalty to his friends and unswerving adherence to Church law.
His colleagues at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith came in force to his ordination in Malta on November 24. Monsignor John Kennedy was one of those. He had worked with Monsignor Scicluna for ten years and remarked, “He would give you his complete attention and focus irrespective of the mountains of papers in front of him or the issues he was dealing with from all over the world… He gave 100 percent to everybody, on every occasion, on every day.”
And mountains of papers were his unenviable challenge every day of the ten years that he acted as Promoter of Justice, a post which had been in existence but was not functional until he was given the appointment in 2002.
On one occasion in 2006, when he was already inundated with global cases of sexual abuse, a courier from America handed him several hundred pages of testimonials; he accepted the heavy satchel with grace and humor, requesting of those who had created the dossier to be patient and “save the trees” for awhile so that he could attend carefully to what had just been given to him.
A note of congratulations to Scicluna from Paul Lennon, founder of the Regain Network and a former priest with the Legionaries of Christ, said: “I wish you peace and fortitude as you assume your new post. I will never forget the kind and respectful, while firm and professional, way you treated me… in New York in April 2005. You are in my prayers.”
Scicluna replied immediately: “Dear Paul, Let us walk humbly with the Lord who has His own plans for each one of us and will never fail to hear the cry of those who suffer. I am very happy to be back with my people, and I have promised them to lay down my life for them. I know that is what Our Lord expects of a shepherd of souls… Every bishop is called to share the concerns of the Holy Father for victims of injustice and abuse. Indeed the episcopacy is a sacramental title for such concern and cooperation. I have now moved from [headquarters] to the front line. The war against sin and crime indeed continues. Non praevalebunt.”
Before addressing a Vatican-planned conference on abuse entitled “To­wards Heal­ing and Renewal” held in February 2012 at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Scicluna again asked for prayers from his friends, one of whom sent the message that he should remember the hymn of St. Patrick’s Breastplate; Scicluna wrote back, “Thanks for that inspired prayer.” The following day, February 8, he shocked the 140 representatives from the world’s bishops’ conferences and the 30 from religious orders when he compared the ecclesiastical cover-up of sexual abuse to the Mafia’s code of silence, omertà. Such a word had never been used in such a setting.
He continued: “The teaching of Blessed John Paul II that truth is at the basis of justice explains why a deadly culture of silence or ‘omertà’ is in itself wrong and unjust.” He added, “Other enemies of the truth are the deliberate denial of known facts and the misplaced concern that the good name of the institution should somehow enjoy absolute priority to the detriment of disclosure.”
Everyone who has accepted the hand of Truth has enemies. Those who do not love Scicluna may be among those whom he was rebuking in his “Words of Fire” interview on August 23, 2010, with FOX news reporter, Greg Burke, now the Vatican’s communications consultant. Scicluna, referring to Jesus Christ, said: “He had words of fire against people who would scandalize the young. And if we stick to His words and are loyal to His teaching, we are on very good ground; we are not alone. [In abuse] there is a sacred trust which has been violated. The priest is ordained to be an icon, an image, a living image of Jesus Christ. He is another Christ at the altar, when he preaches. Now, when he abuses, he shatters that icon. The image for which he has been ordained is not there. It becomes a mockery of his vocation. It is a great tragedy for the individual, for the victim, for the Church. And we have to face Truth, even if it is not nice. Truth will set us free. There is no other way out of this situation except facing the truth of the matter.”
Scicluna looks to St. George Preca, Malta’s first saint, as his guide for priestly humility and holiness. Paul Cardona, who also studied the life of St. George Preca, claims that the Maltese saint is a model for Scicluna. “Like [St. George], he (Scicluna) listens to everyone, and does not make any distinction between role, age or status,” Cardona said. “Without wanting to, you just have to love him.” Cardona added that Scicluna could be described in the same way that St. George Preca spoke of St. Paul: small in stature but big in spirit.
Indeed, even the official mandate from the Holy See, which was read aloud in the Co-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Valletta, Malta, on the day of Monsignor Scicluna’s ordination to the episcopate, opened with an unmistakable note of sincere affection amidst the official language: “Benedict Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, to Our beloved Son, Charles Jude Scicluna… who, endowed as you are with the requisite gifts of mind and heart and being an expert, among others, in things ecclesial, as we know so well, have worked in a laudable way in the Apostolic See of Peter on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith… Make sure, beloved Son, that, following the example of holiness of St. Paul and St. George Preca…you may be able to be a worthy Servant of Christ who is ‘Faithful and True’” (Rev. 19:11).
We honor Bishop Scicluna and remember his good work as he continues “Fidelis et Verax” — the words of his episcopal motto — “Faithful and True.”

—Inside the Vatican Staff

2. Barbara Castro Garcia

This Spanish woman died after postponing cancer treatments to save the baby she was carrying in her womb, who was born healthy. She died on July 13, 2012. This profile was published by the pro-life website LifeSiteNews (LifeSiteNews.com)

One day early in 2010, newlyweds Ignacio Cabezas and Barbara Castro Garcia were sitting in a café eating breakfast. The couple both had smiles on their faces that, in the words of Ignacio, were “impossible to erase.”
After 11 years of dating, the couple had gotten married several months before, and now they had just found out they were expecting their first child.
“We were crazy about getting married and once married, we wanted very much to be parents,” Ignacio remembers.
Little did they know that this pregnancy, which had already brought them so much joy, was also the beginning of a saga that would test their faith to the limit — and ultimately take the life of the young mother.
Four months into the pregnancy, Barbara took a trip to the dentist complaining of a sore in her mouth. The dentist sent her on to a specialist, who on July 15, 2010, diagnosed her with mouth cancer.
The couple was presented with a conundrum: Barbara urgently needed life-saving treatment, but the treatment had the potential to harm their unborn child.
Bolstered by her Catholic faith, Barbara, who worked as a journalist in the communications office of the Catholic diocese of Cordoba, made the difficult decision to forego all treatments except for a surgical procedure that left her in immense pain.
But Ignacio says that throughout the ordeal, Barbara remained strong. “My wife said from the beginning that our daughter would be born the day that God wanted, not one day earlier,” he says.
A statement on the diocese of Cordoba’s website remembers Barbara’s faith at this time: “Anchored in the heart of Christ, the inexhaustible source of love, Barbara opted first for the life of her daughter,” the diocese says. “At all times she has maintained an unwavering faith, and has been the encouragement and hope for all who have surrounded her during this long and painful illness.”
Their child, Barbarita, was born just over two years ago on November 1, 2010 — a healthy baby and the source of much consolation to the couple.
But within days, the pains of Barbara’s cancer were flaring up, and the couple went to Madrid to see a surgeon.
The news wasn’t good. The surgeon told Barbara that there was little hope, and that he was amazed she had even survived as long as she had. Thus began the grueling rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments that left her without a tongue and part of her jaw, rendering her incapable of speaking or eating. She had to be fed through a tube.
Ultimately the cancer would get the upper hand, and on July 4, Barbara died, after having sacrificed everything for her child.
The Spanish publication La Gaceta reports that it spoke to Ignacio the day after Barbara’s death, and that he seemed “serene.”
He told the paper that he felt “a strength of faith that I had never felt before.”
“I feel invincible,” he said. “God is holding on to me and he doesn’t want to let me go.”
In part of a letter from Ignacio to his wife, quoted by La Gaceta, Ignacio wrote: “I sensed we were going to suffer a lot, that it would be very hard and probably very long, but I also assured you that, no matter how hard it was, afterwards I would make sure you were the happiest person in the world, that all the effort was worth it, that we would enjoy our daughter and that we would have to prepare ourselves for an uncertain and horrible period.”
The statement on the Cordoba diocese’s website concludes: “The Good Father, Lord of Charity, who embraced [Barbara] tenderly in her lifetime, today opened the doors of Paradise. The angels have come to her and the Blessed Virgin gave her the crown of victory, because she, better than anyone, knows what it takes to give her life for love.”
Ignacio said that Barbara gave her life out of love “for her daughter, for me and for God,” and that he wants to now “honor her as she deserves.”
“We will win, my love, we will win! Now we have to face the most difficult part: finding meaning to everything that has happened,” he wrote.
The story of Barbara’s heroism closely parallels that of Chiara Corbella, an Italian woman who also died this summer after foregoing cancer treatment to save the life of her unborn baby.

 

3. Cardinal ANDRÉ VINGT-TROIS

One of the world’s most secularized societies is that of France. And yet, this year an unlikely coalition in defense of traditional marriage has emerged from within that society, led by the cardinal archbishop of Paris and president of the French bishops’ conference, André Vingt-Trois. Because of this almost miraculous development, we are honoring Vingt-Trois as one of the “Top Ten” people of 2012.
France’s new president, the Socialist Party leader François Hollande, during the 2012 presidential campaign, promised to “reform” France’s family law by making it legal for homosexual couples to marry and, especially, to adopt children. He also promised the legalization of euthanasia — the “mercy killing” of aged and infirm people. Both of these proposals are seen as harmful to human dignity by the Church’s moral teaching.
But how is one to explain that harm to the members of a society so secularized that they no longer see the harm, but rather something to be made legal? That has been the great problem facing Vingt-Trois and other Catholic leaders around the world.
Vingt-Trois decided to build a coalition.
And he decided to base his arguments on a point on which people of many faiths, or of none, might agree: the good of children.
Patiently, reaching out to all of French society, Vingt-Trois began to argue his case. In late summer, he wrote a special prayer called A Prayer for France, and sent it to all the dioceses to be read on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption. The national prayer for France is a very old custom. In 1638, King Louis XIII decreed that churches should pray for “the good of the country” on August 15 to mark the Feast of the Assumption. The annual practice fell into disuse after the Second World War, but Vingt-Trois decided to revive it.
In his prayer, Vingt-Trois asked churchgoers to pray for France’s “newly-elected leaders” to put their “sense of common good over the pressure to meet particular demands.” This was a key point, as he argued also on another occasion: that the legislation “is not for all citizens, but only for a few.”
Something extraordinary happened. Since the summer, French religious leaders, most of them Catholic, but also a number of Jews, Muslims, Protestants and Orthodox, as well as conservative politicians of no particular religious faith, have begun to mobilize against the proposed law, especially against the provision allowing homosexual couples to adopt children.
The campaign found a way to use against the law the very logic and arguments of the proponents of the law. Proponents of the law argued that it was a matter of “civil rights” — of “human rights” — to allow homosexuals the same rights to marriage and parenthood as heterosexuals. But the opponents of the law began to argue that, yes, it was a matter of “civil rights,” of “human rights,” but not of the civil rights of the parents, but of the children. Children have rights, too, and among those rights is the right to have a mother and a father, not just a father and a father or a mother and a mother. Passing a bill legalizing same-sex marriage and allowing homosexual couples to adopt children would not be in the best interest of children, and would, in fact, “discriminate” against children, as well as “shake the foundations of our society,” Vingt-Trois argued at the autumn plenary meeting of French prelates at Lourdes.
The campaign then began to argue that the consequence of the new law was not merely to grant a denied “right” to a class of people who desired that right, but to shake the entire social structure, and so to affect everyone. “Far from simply opening marriage to new categories, the bill on same-sex marriage would involve such changes as would affect everyone,” Vingt-Trois said. “Such radical transformations require a national debate, and not simply unreliable opinion polls or the strong pressure of some lobbies.”
Vingt-Trois then developed a third argument: that the government was focusing on this marriage and parenthood legislation in order to avoid dealing with the tough economic problems of the country which were affecting every citizen’s quality of life. “We regret that the government’s choice focuses public attention so much on an issue that’s actually secondary,” he said. “The priority concerns plaguing our fellow citizens are the consequences of the economic and financial crisis — closing factories, rising unemployment, growing uncertainty for the poorest families.” Vingt-Trois urged Catholics to show their opposition to the planned reform by writing to their representatives and taking part in protest marches.
On November 19, Vingt-Trois held a press conference at the Saint Louis de France Centre in Rome. Demonstrations against the law on the previous weekend had drawn “more people than expected,” he said. Why? Because many Catholics have begun to see the need for “public witness,” but also because “believers of other religions or agnostics, people of every political orientation” have begun to have “substantial questions about the reform.”
For his courageous witness to Catholic moral principles, and for his staunch defense of the rights of children, we are pleased to honor Cardinal Vingt-Trois as one of our “Top Ten” of 2012.

—Micaela Biferali

4. Cardinal Timothy Dolan

During the past year, he has consistently, eloquently, spoken out in defense of the unborn and traditional marriage, led the American bishops and been a much-loved pastor to the ordinary faithful in one of the world’s largest and most important cities. For these reasons, we have selected Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of the US bishops’ conference, to be among our “Top Ten People” of 2012.

Sometimes referred to affectionately as “the Pope of the US,” Cardinal Dolan is known first of all as a pastor. He is committed to watching over the members of his flock, the ordinary faithful seeking God’s presence and help in their lives, and answers for the many difficulties they face. Dolan is known for being always ready with a kind word and a blessing. And Americans in Rome who have known Dolan since his days as rector of the North American College in the 1990s note that, despite his rapid rise in the hierarchy of the Church, he has retained his humble simplicity and warm good humor.
But if he is a good shepherd to those entrusted to him, he is also a lion in defense of Church teaching. Dolan, living in one of the world’s greatest “media markets,” has steadily, courageously, effectively defended the Church’s teaching against many attacks. Not afraid of debating complex and controversial issues openly, he has been strikingly effective in presenting the Catholic position, and the reasons for it, when that position has been criticized and condemned.
A good example was a public letter he released at the beginning of the year after a troubling conversation he and other bishops had with top White House officials about the controversial and unprecedented new federal health insurance law, mandating that private health plans include coverage for things not in keeping with Catholic moral teaching, like sterilization, contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.
The government’s decision to pass a law containing these provisions means that thousands of religious institutions and private companies are being compelled to offer coverage for medical “services” they believe in conscience are harmful to human dignity and against the moral law. This is a clear violation of their right to freedom of conscience, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and by many federal laws.
“We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans,” Dolan wrote at the time. “We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”
Dolan stressed that the US bishops “will continue to accept invitations to meet with and to voice our concerns to anyone of any party — for this is hardly partisan — who is willing to correct the infringements on religious freedom that we are now under. But as we do so, we cannot rely on off-the-record promises of fixes without deadlines and without assurances of proposals that will concretely address the concerns in a manner that does not conflict with our principles and teaching.”
During 2012, Dolan also said it was “deeply saddening” that President Obama had taken a public stand in favor of a redefinition of the unique meaning of marriage. “We cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society,” he said. “The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better.”
At mid-year, Dolan was criticized in some quarters for accepting an invitation to offer the closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention. But he showed his courage once again on that occasion, speaking out strongly against abortion and same-sex marriage in front of a largely hostile audience.
“Help us to see that a society’s greatness is found above all in the respect it shows for the weakest and neediest among us,” Dolan prayed. “We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected. Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community.”
Dolan also accepted an invitation to pray at the Republican National Convention this summer: “We ask your benediction upon those yet to be born, and on those who are about to see you at the end of this life,” he prayed. “May we know the truth of your creation, respecting the laws of nature and nature’s God, and not seek to replace it with idols of our own making.”
For speaking out fearlessly on behalf of the unborn, for bearing witness to the truth even before those who disagree sharply with him, for his generosity and faithfulness as a diligent pastor, we are proud to honor His Eminence Cardinal Dolan as one of our “Top Ten” of 2012.

—Anna Artymiak

 

5. Asia Bibi
Asia Bibi, 41, a Pakistani Catholic woman, the mother of five children, has been held in solitary confinement in a Pakistani jail for the last three years on charges of blasphemy against Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Her cell is bare; it does not even have a latrine bucket.
On June 14, 2009, Asia, a Catholic farm worker from a remote Punjabi village, was harvesting berries on the estate of a wealthy landowner with her co-workers in 100-degree heat. Thirsty, she drew water from the estate well, dipped her cup into the bucket and drank large mouthfuls. One of the other farm hands, “her eyes filled with hatred,” screamed out “Haraam!” — a term meaning “forbidden” in Islamic law. To the other workers, stirred by the commotion, she screamed: “This Christian has defiled the water from the well by drinking from our cup and by repeatedly plunging it into the well. The water is now impure. We can no longer drink it because of her.”
Asia was arrested under Section 295c of the Pakistan Penal Code, which forbids blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed, and imprisoned pending trial. In November 2010, Muhammed Iqbal, a judge at the court of Sheikhupura, sentenced her to death by hanging.
Asia later described the moment to a friend who has written a book about her case: “I cried alone, putting my head in my hands… I still hear them, the crowd who gave the judge a standing ovation, saying: ‘Kill her, kill her! Allahu akbar!’… I was then thrown like an old rubbish sack into the van… I had lost all humanity in their eyes.”
Still today, Asia languishes in an isolated wing of Sheikhupura Prison awaiting the result of her appeal against Judge Iqbal’s decision. She is under 24-hour surveillance to protect her from other prisoners and jailers tempted to collect the $6,000 reward offered by a local Muslim leader to anyone who kills her.
The reward is not just monetary. Salman Taseer, a Pakistani politician, was murdered on January 4, 2011, in Islamabad because of his public support of Asia. His assassin is now a national hero. A few weeks after Taseer’s murder at the hands of his bodyguard, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Catholic Federal Minister for Minorities’ Affairs — the only Catholic minister in the government — was gunned down for his public criticism of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Asia described hearing the news of Bhatti’s murder in these words: “I felt that someone had squeezed my heart really hard, right inside my body. I was frozen in terror. My legs no longer held me. I collapsed on my bed, breathing heavily. I saw the walls of the prison crack, then fall in on me.”
Far beyond the borders of her native Pakistan, Asia’s story has become an emblem of religious persecution.
In November 2010, Pope Benedict spoke of his spiritual closeness to her and called for her release. This was a wake-up call to Western governments and media, whose silence over the persecution of Christians worldwide adds up to a glaring moral blind spot.
In Pakistan, Asia says, Christians are like orphans in their own land. On paper, they have the same rights as everyone else. In practice, they do their best not to draw the attention of the rest of society. At home, she says, there is no cross or icon of the Holy Virgin – only a small Bible hidden under the mattress.
More than 80 percent of acts of discrimination and violence against minority groups, which are growing in a number of places around the world, are directed against Christians.
Asia pleads with readers at the end of her autobiography: “Now that you know me, tell those around you what is happening. Let them know about it. I believe this is my only chance of not dying in the pit of this dungeon. I need you! Save me!”
There are many things we can do to answer her appeal, not least to tell her story, pray for her and ask our governments to make appeals to Pakistan.
The Church in Pakistan says that all of the efforts to prevent the execution of Asia Bibi require prudence on the part of her defenders.
The director of the National Committee on Justice and Peace of the Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, Father Emannuel Yousaf Mani, has said the concern to help Bibi is understandable. “But the life of this woman is very important to us, and we will do nothing to endanger her life,” he said. “We should wait in silence for the court to hear her appeal.” A “pardon amidst a climate of contentious public opinion,” he added, “would not necessarily save the lives of Asia Bibi and her family.”
Anne-Isabelle Tollet, a French journalist and author of the book Get Me Out of Here, which tells Asia’s story, says all the members of Asia’s family “are under death threats and live in hiding, moving frequently and unable to work. The children miss their mother very much and they have stopped going to school out of safety concerns. The youngest child is only nine years old.”

—Inside the Vatican Staff

6. Cardinal John OLORUNFEMI ONAIYEKAN
Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan has been a powerful voice for peace between Muslims and Christians in his country, Nigeria, and for this reason we honor him as one of our “Top Ten” People of 2012. Pope Benedict XVI created him a cardinal at the consistory of November 24, 2012, two months ago.
In Nigeria, a bitter conflict has been taking place in recent years between Christians and Muslims. Boko Haram, a fundamentalist Islamic organization, has bombed a number of churches, often on Sundays, and killed many Christians by these attacks. Its members also seek to compel Christians by force to convert to Islam. Consequently, some Christian leaders in the area have endorsed fierce anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Christian mobs have sometimes targeted and killed Muslims, especially after the presidential elections in 2011.
But Nigerians will long remember Cardinal Onaiyekan’s visits to the homes of some eminent Muslims to break the Ramadan fast with them at the end of the fasting season. He won respect from all parties for his efforts to ease religious tensions by using his position to speak against mis-governance and to build bridges between Islam and Christianity.
Pope Benedict’s choice of Cardinal Onaiyekan to become a member of the Sacred College is a sign of his respect for Onai­yekan’s public, courageous witness to the Gospel in Nigeria.
The cardinal was nominated in 2012 for the Nobel Peace Prize alongside the Muslim Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Mu­hammed Sa’ad Abubakar III, for their roles in working for peace in the face of the Boko Haram insurgency in the north of Nigeria. (The award went to the European Union as a whole.) He was chosen as Pax Christi International’s 2012 Peace Laureate and he co-chairs the Nigeria Interreligious Council (NIREC) with the sultan.
He is a strong advocate for justice for the poor, and a sharp critic of injustice in Nigeria’s political economy. He is also a skilled debater with a good sense of humor, demonstrated also in a recent discussion with Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry on the BBC.
He is a well-known figure at the Vatican since he has participated in numerous Vatican activities and in synods of bishops.
His has been a voice that has transcended Africa’s borders, denouncing violence and urging that dialogue continue with the rest of the Muslim world despite the violence.
Christianity in Nigeria has grown rapidly. It was the religion of only 2 percent of the population a century ago. By 1960 its followers were around 30 percent. Now Christians make up more than 50 percent of the population. Nigerian Catholics claim 19 million adherents, which makes it the largest Christian denomination in the country. Nigeria has more Catholics than any other African country. But Islam is also on the rise in Nigeria, especially in the north, and this has brought conflicts.
Onaiyekan was born in 1944 in the town of Kabba, Nigeria. He attended Catholic schools in Niger­ia and completed his religious studies in Rome in 1969. He was ordained as a priest the same year. He received his licentiate in Sacred Scripture in 1973 and earned his doctorate in 1976. In his dissertation he dealt with the topic of “The Priesthood in Pre-Monarchial Ancient Israel and Among the Owe-Yoruba of Kabba: A Comparative Study.” His studies abroad were funded by the Premier of the Northern Nigeria Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, a Muslim.
Pope John Paul II in October 1980 appointed Onaiyekan to the International Theological Commission.
He was ordained as bishop in 1983, and became the Bishop of Ilorin, Kwara State. In 1990 he became Coadjutor Bishop of the Diocese of Abuja, and when the diocese became a Metropolitan See in 1994, John Onaiyekan became the Metropolitan of Abuja.
In 1987 he published a work titled The Shariah in Nigeria: A Christian View, much before the country’s present ordeal burst out.
Onaiyekan was elected to the position of Vice-President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) in 1994, and President of that organization in 2000.
Onaiyekan was appointed to serve as one of the papally-appointed Synod Fathers
for the October 2012 Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization.
During the Synod of Bishops in October, Onaiyekan told reporters at a briefing that the question of poverty in the world was a question of economic justice.
“Poverty in the world has to be dealt with by justice,” he said. “Africans from poor countries admire the Vatican and have no desire to dismantle it. The few poor people who come here have never said, ‘Oh, why don’t you sell this and give us money for food.’ They always say, ‘What a beautiful place.’ They admire it… maybe because man does not live by bread alone. There are other big buildings that need to be moved and sold — all those big structures, all those unjust financial and economic structures in the world. Those are the things to move, so that the poor can survive.”
“The irony and sadness of it is that we know what to do,” he said. “And it can be done, but we don’t have the political or spiritual will to do it.”

—Viktoria Somogyi

7. Patriarch BECHARA BOUTROS RAI

In much of the Middle East, Christians face grave difficulties. But in Lebanon, for generations a “mod­el” of religious coexistence, Christians have lived in relative security and peace. A leader in the effort to keep this so is Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai, 72, head of Lebanon’s Eastern-rite Maronite Church. For his tireless efforts to defend Lebanon’s “model” of peaceful coexistence and to assist the Christians of the Middle East, we honor Patriarch Rai as one of the “Top Ten People” of 2012.
His people love Rai as a father. He is resolute in his defense of them. But this very resoluteness has stirred controversy.
For example, Rai has said he fears an overthrow of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, even though the United States and other Western powers have supported the rebels against Assad. Assad’s overthrow could lead to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, Rai observes, bringing greater difficulties for Syrian Christians.
“All regimes in the Arab world have Islam as a state religion except for Syria,” Rai told Reuters March 4. “Syria stands out for not saying it is an Islamic state… The closest thing to democracy [in the Arab world] is Syria.”
This remark raised eyebrows throughout the world. Yet, precisely because he is blunt and outspoken, Rai is one of the key protagonists in the Middle East peace process.
One of Rai’s first initiatives after being named Patriarch on March 15, 2011, was to organize a meeting in Bkerké, seat of the Patriarchate of Beirut, at the foot of the Shrine of Our Lady of Harissa. He brought together the leaders of the main Maronite political currents: Amin Gemayel, Michel Aoun, and Samir Geagea Sleiman Frangié.
Two months later, he brought together representatives of the various faiths in Lebanon. They drafted a joint document at Bkerké and proclaimed: “At a time when many Arab countries are the scene of events of historic importance, the Lebanese formula is valued more than ever. It provides for the respect for individual and public freedoms, religious and political, and we reaffirm the importance of the commitment of all of us Lebanese to the democratic parliamentary system.”
The document reaffirmed the principle of “national unity among all Lebanese” and a “commitment to a culture of dialogue” that “respects different points of view, however radical they may be.”
The document also stressed “the importance of regulating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the key to peace, security and stability, based on the liberation of all the occupied Arab territories.” And there was an invitation to young people “to stay connected to their land and to their homeland, to preserve them from generation to generation,” remaining loyal to their faith and “open to pluralism.”
Beyond politics, however, the real task of the Patriarch is to care for his Maronite community spiritually.
In fact, it seems vocations are not lacking either among the clergy or among religious men, though there is a decline in women religious. “At Byblos, the theology students have never dropped below the number of 25,” Rai says. “Every year there are three or four ordinations. Of 80 priests, I have ordained 63.”
In the Maronite community, there is a married priesthood, and the priests have families. “In small, isolated mountain parishes,” Rai said, “married priests are very useful. They can be helped by their families.”
He added: “In everyday life, no distinction is made between married and celibate priests. We never had divorces, only in one case a separation. In addition, the priests are married before the diaconate and usually with young women already well integrated as catechists and animators in the life of the parish or Catholic associations. So they live a stable family life, basically serene, very useful for their service to the Church.”
Bechara Rai was born in 1940, and in the last consistory in November he received the cardinal’s hat, as had three of his predecessors. This was an important celebration for the Maronite faithful who still had the images of Benedict XVI’s visit to Beirut in September fresh in their memory.
During that visit, Pope Benedict met with Lebanon’s young people in the square just in front of the patriarchate.
“We have preserved all the talks and sermons that he gave when he came to Lebanon,” Rai said. “It’s really a roadmap that he has shown us, and that’s why every time we listen to him, he gives us courage and makes us understand that we should not be afraid of the challenges and difficulties that everyone knows. Yes, it’s true: we are experiencing very difficult times with the conflicts that are going on, the rise of fundamentalism, war, terrorism, political divisions… Despite all this, however, there is always trust in God and in the Church, which must always be a messenger of peace and stability. This is what the Holy Father always repeated. My commitment, and that of all my bishops, is to live up to his intentions. The key challenge is to move forward, re-create, re-build our internal unity, and then support our fellow Christians in the Middle East and create stronger relationships to the Muslims to lighten up a bit the tensions caused by the radicals and fundamentalists. These are the biggest challenges that we want to deal with.”

—Angela Ambrogetti

 

8. Archbishop GEORG Gänswein
Recently Msgr. Georg has seemed more serene. On public occasions, he has at last begun to smile again. It certainly was not easy for the Pope’s secretary to address the “Vatileaks” storm which broke in May. Now, appointed archbishop and promoted to prefect of the papal household while still remaining Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein is closer to Benedict XVI than ever. The appointment as prefect confirms that the Pope trusts Gänswein, wants him at his side, and wishes to give him still greater responsibilities.
At the time of discovery of the theft of the documents, the Pope showed his complete confidence in Gänswein, and it was the latter who handled the difficult situation. He asked to be questioned in the investigation and to testify at trial. It must not have been easy. But Msgr. Georg took his own responsibilities, and now that the major part of the story is over, everything can go back to before May 21. Benedict now wants Msgr. Georg to run his agenda, not only private but also public.
Gänswein, who over the years has managed to develop a public role although with perfect discretion, already has several tasks.
First, he is member of the Board of Directors of the Ratzinger Foundation in the Vatican. The foundation manages Benedict XVI’s copyrights and awards the Ratzinger Prize, called the “Nobel Prize for Theology.” Second, Gänswein follows the activities of the Schülerkreis, the alumni of Professor Ratzinger. Third, Gänswein is watching over the Pope’s legacy. Recently, he helped inaugurate the house-museum of Joseph Ratz­inger in Pentling, a suburb of Regensburg. The Pope had donated his old house to the Pope Benedict XVI Foundation, and a year and a half ago, the Pope’s brother handed over the keys to the curators of the small museum. Together with Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and editor of the Complete Works of Joseph Ratzinger, Msgr. Georg was at the opening.
Gänswein has edited several books: Benedict XVI Urbi et Orbi, dedicated to the Pope’s trips; Catholic: First-hand Knowledge, texts on faith and the Church; and, in March for the Pope’s 85th birthday, Benedict XVI: Famous People on the Pope, a collage of famous German personalities who tell “their” Benedict XVI stories.
In February 2011 Gänswein was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Perugia. In his talk on the Holy See’s 1929 Concordat with the Italian government — his degree is in canon law — he made interesting suggestions, including a proposal for a particular legislation for the city of Rome, city of the Pope and of Christianity.
He has a special passion for children’s literature. In addition to Why the Pope Wears Red Shoes, a book of answers to the questions put to Msgr. Georg by German school children, Gänswein wrote the pref­ace to Joseph and Chico, a children’s book in which the Ratzingers’ cat in Pentling tells the story of the Pope for children.
Recently, at the release of The Mystery of a Small Pond, an illustrated fairy tale, he spoke about himself, which is ex­tremely rare. “Twenty-eight years have passed since I was ordained a priest and became assistant pastor in a small town in the Black Forest, where I come from, in the southwest of Germany close to France,” he said. “In this small town, Oberkirch, there were many children, and for the assistant pastor it was an important task to take care of them. It also became a commitment of the heart…
“I must make a confession: it is never easy to prepare a sermon, sometimes you do it well, sometimes less well, but to prepare a homily for children is exhausting! It is difficult because the children… understand immediately if you are superficial, and they do not forgive you if you are not sincere. If you are sincere they will forgive you everything, but if you’re not honest, you will have lost them once and for all. The best aspect of preparing and giving a homily for children is that it is also for adults. I have never seen adults so attentive as when they are present at the Mass for children.”
Gänswein has been a collaborator of the Pope’s since Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Of that time he has special memories: “The Holy Father has a great sweetness. In the Congregation, I had many contacts with him in our daily work. And today, when I see how Pope Benedict XVI treats people in different circumstances, not only in audiences or on public occasions but also in private, it is evident that he always has the same attitude, and it is delicacy and sweetness. He never said: this is wrong, you are wrong. Although may­be you are. Rather, he makes a proposal: you could do this or that. It’s actually a severe criticism in principle, but ‘suavissime in modo,’ very gently conveyed. That I can testify to, and I invite you to make this experience,” Msgr. Georg said, smiling.
But how does the Pope find the time to do everything? “This is of course a secret I cannot reveal,” the new prefect said.
“One thing is clear, however,” he continued. “For many people writing is a burden, a great challenge. Pope Benedict, however, when he writes, finds freedom and force. It’s something I have observed in the last seven years with great gratitude and surprise.”

—Angela Ambrogetti

 

9. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera

My proposal to include Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, Prefect and President Emeritus of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy and the Ecclesia Dei Com­mission, respectively, among the “Top Ten People of 2009” was motivated by his exceptional apostolic zeal in serving Benedict XVI’s bid to fully restore the sacred in the Church by maximizing the implementation of the papal motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. In loyally carrying out the will of the Holy Father, he went well beyond his mandate, not limiting himself to preaching only, but also practicing what he was preaching. And what better way to preach than by example?
Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, on November 3, 2012, seemed to “take the baton” from Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, becoming the leading Vatican personality in office who is giving all his support to the application of Summorum Pontificum according to the will of the Holy Father.
On November 3, Cañizares celebrated a solemn pontifical Mass in the extraordinary rite at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica to close the November 1-3 international pilgrimage “Una Cum Papa Nostro” (“Together with Our Pope”), organized by the Coetus Internationalis pro Summorum Pontificum (a group of traditionalist Catholic organizations from many countries whose aim was to bring together all those who support Summorum Pontificum in a public gesture of support for Pope Benedict XVI during the Holy Year of Faith and for the fifth anniversary of the 2007 motu proprio).
It was the fourth pontifical Mass in the past three years to be celebrated in the extraordinary rite in St. Peter’s.
Cañizares’ decision appears all the more significant and courageous against the background of the uncertainty about who the celebrant would be even days before the event, and the rumor that a
number of senior prelates had kindly turned down the request. But the decision of Cañizares could not have been a more welcome breakthrough because of the profound symbolism attached to it.
As the entrance of the traditional faithful into St. Peter’s, in an imposing procession amid traditional prayers and hymns through the basilica’s main portal (opened especially for them) is seen as their definitive and full acceptance within the Church, the decision of the guardian of liturgical orthodoxy to be the celebrant meant the definitive, full acceptance of the old, extraordinary rite. It meant that traditional Catholics are no longer merely tolerated by Rome. They have now been recognized and welcomed as full-fledged sons of Mother Church and an integral part of the Catholic mainstream in full communion with the Roman Pontiff.
The Mass was preceded by a message in French and Italian sent by the Pope through his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. “On the occasion of the international pilgrimage to Rome for the fifth anniversary of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI conveys his cordial greetings to all the participants assuring them of his fervent prayer,” the message said. “Through this motu proprio, the Holy Father wanted to respond to the expectations of the faithful who are attached to the previous liturgical forms. In fact, as he wrote in his letter to present the motu proprio, it is good to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their rightful place, while fully recognizing the value and sanctity of the ordinary form of the Roman rite. In this year of faith promulgated at a time when the Church celebrates the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the Holy Father invites all the faithful to manifest in a special way their unity in faith. Thus they will be effective creators of the new evangelization. Entrusting all participants of the pilgrimage to Rome to the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Father wholeheartedly imparts to them the Apostolic Blessing.”
Cardinal Cañizares in his homily re­flected on the devotion to the Pope of the pilgrims gathered in the Basilica.
“We desire with all the participants in this Holy Mass, in this sacrifice of praise and communion of the whole Church, for it to truly be a thanksgiving to God for all the work that the Holy Father Benedict XVI is accomplishing, in particular for his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which is a gift for the whole Church,” he said. “We also want it to be a sign of and witness to a filial and affectionate backing and support to the Holy Father, under today’s difficult circumstances, on the part of the pilgrims gathered here, as well as a desire to participate in the movement and evangelizing impulse that the Pope, supreme pastor of the Church, wants to give to the whole Church, offering Her again the youth of the traditional liturgy.”
Asked why he agreed to celebrate the Mass, Cañizares said: “I agreed because it is a way to show people it is normal to use the 1962 missal: there are two forms of the same Rite but only one Rite, so it is normal to use it during Mass celebrations. I have already celebrated a number of Masses according to the missal introduced by the Blessed John XXIII, and I will gladly do so again.”

—Alberto Carosa

 

10. Bishop THADDEUS MA DAQIN

Within hours of his ordination as Auxiliary Bishop of Shanghai on July 7, 2012, Thaddeus Ma Daqin was taken away by some unknown men sent by the Chinese authorities, and has not been seen in public since.
This 45-year-old charismatic priest from Shanghai diocese was ordained bishop with the approval of Pope Benedict and the Chinese authorities. In the eyes of both, he was destined to succeed the 96-year old Aloysius Jin Luxian as Bishop of Shanghai.
That will not happen now. The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) and the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC) made this clear in a statement from Beijing on December 12. They announced the revocation of his letter of appointment as “coadjutor bishop,” having accused him of breaking State regulations and bishops’ conference rules at the ordination ceremony. They banned him from priestly ministry for two years, and asked the Shanghai diocese “to deal with him in a serious manner.”
They issued their verdict following an “investigation” into his alleged crimes, and after holding him under house arrest at Sheshan seminary on the outskirts of Shanghai since July 7. They had him detained there in almost total isolation from the outside world, deprived of freedom of movement and freedom of speech. They prohibited him from wearing the bishop’s insignia at Mass, and prevented the seminarians from returning to their seminary since August, lest he make contact with them and the staff.
To understand the reason for this unprecedented humiliation and ill-treatment of a newly-ordained bishop, one has to go back to the July 7 ordination.
Prior to that, the Chinese authorities proposed that an illegitimate bishop (that is, one ordained without papal approval) should participate in the ceremony. Both the elderly Bishop Jin and bishop-elect Ma said no, but the authorities imposed their will.
During the ceremony in St. Ignatius Cathedral, Bishop Jin and the two co-consecrating bishops (all three in communion with Rome) laid hands on Ma Daqin, but when the illegitimate bishop came forward with two other (legitimate) bishops to do likewise, Bishop Ma got up and embraced them, thereby preventing them from doing so. They were also prevented from receiving Communion at Mass; only Ma and the two consecrating bishops did so.
While all this made the authorities angry, Bishop Ma’s next step made them furious. In a thank-you speech at the ceremony’s end, Ma, showing great courage and leadership, announced that he was abandoning all positions of responsibility in the Patriotic Association (CPA) so as to devote himself entirely to his ministry as a bishop in the Church.
At that time, Ma was vice-chairman of Shanghai CPA and a member of the national CPA standing committee. (The CPA was established by the Communist authorities in the late 1950s to control the mainland Catholic Church, but in his 2007 Letter to Catholics in China, Pope Benedict said the CPA and the BCCCC are “incompatible” with Catholic doctrine.)
On hearing Bishop Ma announce that he was quitting the CPA, the 1,200 Catholics present in the cathedral broke into sustained, thunderous applause. It was the first time in memory — and perhaps ever — that a bishop of the “open” Church had made such an audacious statement at his ordination. Government authorities at the ceremony were stunned; they interpreted his words as a direct challenge to their 64-year-old system of control of the Church. Ma had set a precedent which they feared others might follow. He had to be punished. They confined him in Sheshan seminary and for five months sought to break his spirit and get him to recant. But he resisted with courage, and so they deposed him. He will never become bishop of Shanghai.
News of Ma’s courageous stance travelled like wildfire across China, inspiring Catholics everywhere and sparking great solidarity with him. His inspiring gesture had an extraordinary effect on Shanghai’s Catholics; it united clergy and faithful alike from both the “open” and “underground” Church communities in a way that has not happened since the early 1950s when the Communists started persecuting the Church there. At the same time, his defiant act caused consternation among the Chinese authorities and State entities that control the Church, especially the CPA, hence the harsh punishment.
Since his “house arrest,” Bishop Ma’s only way of communicating with the outside world has been through his blog.
There, on November 3, he published a truly inspiring testimony called “The Faith of a Child.” In it, he revealed that his father did not want him to become a priest, because “his father, his younger brother and he himself were all jailed because of their Catholic faith” and “he did not wish to see his beloved son suffering the same hardship.”
But when Ma insisted on entering the seminary and preparing for priesthood, his father said to him: “If you are determined to go, do not come back and do not give up when you are halfway through.” Ma said, “I did not hesitate to answer, ‘Of course!’”
Concluding his blog, Bishop Ma said: “I have kept this promise until today. I am going to keep it until the day I grow old, if God wishes me to live to an old age.”

—Gerard O’Connell

January 3, 2013, Thursday — Cardinal George’s Analysis

The Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Francis George, O.M.I., has published a clear, thoughtful, “must read” analysis of “what is at stake” in the approval by some states in the United States — in his case, in Illinois — of homosexual marriages as legal. Here below is the text of his column, published in the January 6-19 issue of Catholic New World, the newspaper of the archdiocese of Chicago.

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“Religious teaching based on natural truths will now be considered evidence of illegal discrimination and will be punishable by law.” —Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I., in his just-published column “Legislation creating ‘same-sex’ marriage: What’s at stake?”

“The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.”—Pope Benedict XVI, in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia December 21, cited by Cardinal George in his column
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The Cardinal’s Column

By Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. (photo)

January 6, 2013 – January 19, 2013

Legislation creating “same-sex” marriage: What’s at stake?

At the beginning of the New Year, 2013, a law is being proposed in the General Assembly [of the state of Illinois] to change the legal definition of marriage in Illinois to accommodate those of the same sex who wish to “marry” one another.

In this discussion, the Church will be portrayed as “anti-gay,” which is a difficult position to be in, particularly when families and the Church herself love those of their members who are same-sex oriented.

What’s at stake in this legislative proposal and in the Church’s teaching on marriage?

Basically, the nature of marriage is not a religious question. Marriage comes to us from nature. Christ sanctifies marriage as a sacrament for the baptized, giving it significance beyond its natural reality; the State protects marriage because it is essential to family and to the common good of society. But neither Church nor State invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.

Nature and Nature’s God, to use the expression in the Declaration of Independence of our country, give the human species two mutually complementary sexes, able to transmit life through what the law has hitherto recognized as a marital union. Consummated sexual relations between a man and a woman are ideally based on mutual love and must always be based on mutual consent, if they are genuinely human actions.

But no matter how strong a friendship or deep a love between persons of the same sex might be, it is physically impossible for two men, or two women, to consummate a marital union.

Even in civil law, non-consummation of a marriage is reason for annulment.

Sexual relations between a man and a woman are naturally and necessarily different from sexual relations between same-sex partners. This truth is part of the common sense of the human race.

It was true before the existence of either Church or State, and it will continue to be true when there is no State of Illinois and no United States of America.

A proposal to change this truth about marriage in civil law is less a threat to religion than it is an affront to human reason and the common good of society.

It means we are all to pretend to accept something we know is physically impossible. The Legislature might just as well repeal the law of gravity.

What is, then, at stake in this proposed legislation?

What is certainly at stake is the natural relationship between parents and children.

Children, even if they are loved and raised by those who are not their biological parents, want to know who their parents are, who are their natural family. The fascination with genealogical tables and the opening of adoption records are evidence of this desire to find oneself in a biological succession of generations.

No honest “study” has disproved what we all know. Stable marriage between a husband and wife has safeguarded their children, surrounding them with familial love and creating the secure foundation for human flourishing.

This natural desire, already weakened in a seemingly more and more promiscuous society, will no longer be privileged in civil law. It will be no more “normal” than any other “family” arrangement.

If the nature of marriage is destroyed in civil law, the natural family goes with it.

As well, those who know the difference between marriage and same-sex arrangements will be regarded as bigots. This is where the religious question does come into play.

Including “religious freedom” in the title of the proposed law recognizes that religious teaching based on natural truths will now be considered evidence of illegal discrimination and will be punishable by law.

The title of the law is ironic if not disingenuous. Those who know that marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the sake of family will carry a social opprobrium that will make them unwelcome on most university faculties and on the editorial boards of major newspapers. They will be excluded from the entertainment industry. Their children and grandchildren will be taught in the government schools that their parents are unenlightened, the equivalent of misguided racists.

Laws teach; they express accepted social values and most people go along with societal trends, even when majority opinion espouses immoral causes.

The legalization of abortion is a good example of how an immoral procedure that kills babies in their mother’s womb is first permitted legally in limited circumstances as a necessary evil and then moves in forty years to become a condition of human freedom, necessary to be preserved at all costs, an essential part of “reproductive health care.”

We are on the same trajectory with marriage.

Model laws creating same-sex unions as civil marriage have been part of legal education for decades. The media have engaged in a campaign on this issue for almost as long a time, desensitizing people to accept as normal something that had previously been recognized as problematic. We are at the end of a tremendous propaganda effort by those secure in their conviction that they are at the cutting edge of human development.

But what we’re seeing is not particularly new. Two thousand years ago, the Church was born in a society with the values now being advanced as necessary for a fair society today.

Why this law? Since all the strictly legal consequences of natural marriage are already given to same-sex partners in civil unions, what is now at stake in this question for some homosexually oriented people is self-respect and full societal acceptance of their sexual activities. Because fair-minded people cannot approve of hatred or disdain of others, “same-sex marriage” becomes for many a well-intentioned and good-hearted response to help others be happy.

But marriage is a public commitment with a responsibility that involves more than the personal happiness of two adults. Inventing “civil rights” that contradict natural rights does not solve a problem of personal unhappiness.

Some religious people have framed their acceptance of this proposed law as an exemplification of compassion, justice and inclusion. As attitudes, these sentiments have been used to justify everything from eugenics to euthanasia.

If religion is to be more than sentiment, the moral content of these words has to be filled in from the truths of what human reason understands and God has revealed. Same-sex unions are incompatible with the teaching that has kept the Church united to her Lord for two thousand years.

The Catholic Church in this Archdiocese has consistently condemned violence or hatred of homosexually oriented men and women. Good pastoral practice encourages families to accept their children, no matter their sexual orientation, and not break relationships with them. The Archdiocese offers Mass and other spiritual help to those who live their homosexuality anonymously (Courage groups) and also to those who want to be publicly part of the gay community (AGLO, which celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this year). People live out their sexual identity in different fashions, but the Church consistently offers the means to live chastely in all circumstances, as the love of God both obliges and makes possible.

Finally, what is at stake in this proposed legislation was the subject of a few sentences in our Holy Father’s recent end of year address to his co-workers in Rome. Citing the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, who recently spoke to the impact of the “philosophy of gender” as it affects proposed marriage laws in France, Pope Benedict commented: “The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and women in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Rabbi Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of right, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.”

That is what’s at stake now. Despite the seeming inevitability of “same-sex marriage” legislation, each responsible citizen should consider what he or she must now do, as a lame duck legislature, many of whose members are no longer accountable to their constituents, prepares to make a decision that will have enormous consequences for everyone. God bless you.

© 2012 New World Publications
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