The power and fruitfulness of humility. The following is our translation of the French article that appeared in the “Figaro Magazine” on 15 February 2013, entitled “The Encyclical Not Written By Benedict XVI”.
“Should it happen that the Roman Pontiff resigns from his office, it is required for validity that the resignation be freely made & properly manifested, but it is not necessary that it be accepted by anyone.” (Canon 332, §2)
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, 70, began the spiritual reflections Feb. 17 by describing Pope Benedict’s future role in the Church after his resignation as being a presence “like that of Moses, who climbs the hill to pray for the people of Israel.”
Perhaps God is mature enough to not ask for, or want, our conscious attention most of the time. Perhaps God wants us to enjoy our time here, to enjoy the experience of love and friendship, of family and friends, of eating and drinking, and of (at least occasionally) seeing our favorite teams win a championship.
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.”
In celebrating the lives of her saints, rarely does the Church bestow more than one feast day on the same person. Even more rarely does she celebrate specific events in the lives of those saints other than the day of their birth into eternal life (the die natale). Therefore, today's celebration – the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle – is one that deserves our contemplation.
Nicholas Lash, in a deeply insightful essay on God and unbelief, suggests that the God that atheists reject is often simply an idol of their own imaginations. God is ineffable, unimaginable, and beyond conception and language.
I praised God for the Church’s lookout for the uns — the un-documented, un-employed, un-housed, un-fed, un-healthy, un-born, un-wanted, misunderstood, un-justly treated — and prayed that our beloved country might work for a culture where that dreaded prefix — un — might be no longer.
We are no longer the voice of a presumed majority, but rather the voice of one minority among many. Our right to practise what we believe is, understandably, being weighed up against the rights of those who don’t agree with us – with a slight bias towards the latter. It’s Christianity versus modernity, and modernity is winning.
In virtually all of his novels, Milan Kundera, manifests a strong impatience with every kind of ideology, hype, or fad that makes for group-think or crowd-hysteria. He is suspicious of slogans, demonstrations, and marches of all kinds, no matter the cause. He calls all these the great march and, to his mind, they invariably lead to violence, all of them.
The battle has been almost universally one way as the rights of Christians, in terms of the ability to practise their faith in the public sphere, have been eroded to the point where they have virtually no protection. The cases that I have been instructed in are alarming- and it’s not just the “little people”: health workers or junior civil servants.
As a practising Catholic and a feminist there are two refrains I have heard from friends over the years. One goes something like this, and tends to be a question asked by my feminist friends: ‘why on earth would you remain a Catholic?'
Research has suggested "spiritual" people may suffer worse mental health than conventionally religious, agnostic or atheist people. But what exactly do people mean when they describe themselves as "spiritual, but not religious"?
My perception as I get older is that there are no bad years. There are years of hard learning and others like a break, but they are not bad. I firmly believe that the way a year should be evaluated would have more to do with how we were able to love, to forgive, to laugh, to learn new things, having challenged our egos and our attachments.
A new book that draws on documents in the Vatican Secret Archive tries to debunk some of the darkest stories about the much-maligned Borgias. They have become a byword for incest, corruption and decadence, the subject of dozens of books, plays, films and an acclaimed television series.
"Bishop Ma's suppression is a blight for all citizens", writes Shi Feng from Shanghai, China. I witnessed the historic moment on July 7 when Auxiliary Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin of Shanghai pledged to defend his faith.
That daring young woman Mary is often thought by contemporary writers to be pliant and submissive to God, writes Sally Read. But from the start of her pregnancy, she showed courage akin to a tightrope walker. Perhaps it is impossible to imagine how it would feel to be carrying the Son of God as a pregnant virgin.
With Spain facing its toughest economic crisis for decades, this Christmas will be difficult for many families. But the festive season has inspired a certain wistfulness for simpler times and traditions, including the Catholic family of old. And with nearly two million seeking help from the Church, Catholic organisations are what stand between many people and destitution.
In his Christmas message, the Pope said, “The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have."
God, our neighbour and ourselves: if there is one thing of which we certainly all have need in our daily life, it is forgiveness. God's pardon, the pardon of our neighbour, and pardoning ourselves – It is a restorative, a reinvigorating honey.
