July 13, 2009
Gold, Red, Dark Blue
(Jimmy Akin)
Sorry I haven't blogged the last few days, but my old laptop died late last week. I was typing along and suddently hit the Black Screen of Death. Not the blue one, the totally black one that you can't even kinda reboot after. Since then I've been struggling with getting a new laptop, data transfer, and getting the new one set up right. (Still working on that. Can't get a couple of programs installed properly.)
Weigel has received a lot of criticism for the piece, some of it justified, some of it not.
Let me begin by saying that Weigel is certainly right and dead on the money about much of what he says.
First, this encyclical is a problem child. That's widely known and can be clearly seen just from what the Vatican has said about it publicly in the run up to its release. We knew that before it even came out.
Once it did come out, the matter was abundantly confirmed.
It's clear that the encyclical was, as Weigel indicates, intended as a 40th anniversary commemoration of Paul IV's encyclical Populorum Progressio, which means it should have come out in 2007.
But it didn't. It's two years late.
Why?
The Holy See has acknowledged that it was delayed because of the global economic crisis, but if memory served that really didn't hit, not with encyclical-delaying force, until 2008.
It also was delayed because, unlike his previous encyclical Spe Salvi, which B16 wrote all on his own with virtually nobody knowing about it, the pontiff had people from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace drafting it and, as Weigel says, he wasn't happy with the drafts and kept rejecting them.
How many drafts were rejected is unknown, but once the financial crisis happened, Pope Benedict rejected the then-current draft as simply inadequate to the world situation.
Which is quite revealing. Thank God he pulled that version! Presumably it would have been bolder, more moralizing, less nuanced, and more leftist. It would have been terribly embarassing for the Church to have such a document representing its views in the middle of a world financial crisis or to have it released just before the crisis.
All of this fits with Weigel's narrative of the previous drafts of the encyclical being filled with loopy leftist stuff from the PCJP and Benedict struggling to whip the thing into shape.
And look how long it took!
If this was meant to be in print in 2007 then, given how things work around the Vatican, it must have been in production in 2006 at the latest, and possibly 2005--the same year Benedict became pope. Agreeing to do this encyclical (plausibly, as Weigel says, at the suggestion of the PCJP) must have been something that happened very early in Benedict's reign.
What we're looking at is an encyclical that has been under construction for virtually all of Benedict XVI's four-year reign.
That's a problem child, and we should expect it to show signs of that kind of history.
And it does.
Pope Benedict's ultimate response to the drafts he was getting was to try a hybrid solution in which he drafted certain parts himself but left others alone or only modified them (notably by putting in qualifiers to tone down things the PCJP had proposed).
The result is a patchwork that, as Weigel says, can be marked "gold" where Benedict is speaking and "red" where the default positions of the PCJP are on display. Weigel is totally correct about this. Anybody with an ear for Benedict's voice (meaning a knowledge of his own distinctive theological themes) and a knowledge of the views common at PCJP, can instantly distinguish between the two voices in reading the document.
It's enough to make you think that the source critics have more going for them than you thought.
There's also another kind of passage that Weigel identifies but doesn't assign a color to, so let's use our third primary color and call it dark blue.
Why dark blue? Because these passages are very hard to undertand, even at present incomprehensible. It may be the PCJP talking, or Pope Benedict, or someone else, but whoever is talking, they're not making themselves easily understood.
Reading the encyclical I was struck over and over by passages that just left me scratching my head. They weren't Benedict's usual style, and I don't know who wrote them. Some may be so difficult precisely because they are hybridized passages with more than one hand at work.
However that may be, they're definitely there. An example is one Weigel treats well:
[A]s when the encyclical states that defeating Third World poverty and underdevelopment requires a “necessary openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion.” This may mean something interesting; it may mean something naïve or dumb. But, on its face, it is virtually impossible to know what it means.
Weigel assigns this to the red category, but on my division it's dark blue because it's just hard to tell what it means in concrete terms other than people ought to be nice to each other in some way. It seems to be an attempt at soaring rhetoric that doesn't so much uplift the reader as cause him to pop right up out of the experience of reading the text and start wondering what the text means.
Regardless of who wrote them, there are many passage in the encyclical that are just dense and hard to make sense of. (Which means they likely aren't Benedict, because he tends to be clearer.)
So far Weigel's take on the encyclical is on course. There is the kind of tension between different viewpoints at the Vatican, including the one that predominates at the PCJP, the encyclical is a fusion of ideas of Benedict's and the standard PCJP positions, and there was a big unhappy behind the scenes process for this encyclical's production.
It may even be reasonable to say that at a certain point Benedict threw up his hands and let the PCJP have its way on some things even though he wasn't entirely happy with the way they came out.
Benedict might well feel that there is still room for improvement in the encyclical, though he obviously felt it was "good enough" at this point to be released.
And that's where Weigel goes wrong.
Weigel depicts the pope as allowing the PCJP passage to stay in the encyclical just so Benedict could maintain peace inside the Vatican.
Nonsense.
Pope Benedict has no problem telling people "no" or undertaking decisions that leave others at the Vatican absolutely mortified. (Summorum Pontificum, anybody? Lifting of the Lefebvrite excommunications--even apart from the Holocaust-denying tendencies of one of the bishops?)
And then there's the fact that he's apparently been saying "no" to the PCJP about this very encyclical for the last several years.
Maybe they wore him down of a few things that he would have liked to have come out better, but he was entirely capable of saying, "You know, guys, I really appreciate the work you've done here, but given the current state of things, I think it best that we shelve this idea."
That kind of thing happens all the time at the Vatican, and Pope Benedict certainly has the wherewithal to shelve an idea that he thinks isn't working.
Also problematic is Weigel's apparent implication that the "red" passages of the encyclical do not represent Benedict's thought.
I think it's fair to say that they may not always have the same intensity in Benedict's mind as the "gold" passages that he felt needed to be in there and inserted on his own personal initiative. But even if some of them are of lesser importance to Benedict or even if he isn't happy with the precise way they ended up being worded, surely they correspond to his thought in at least a general way. (And possibly a much, much stronger way than that.)
So I think Weigel is simply mistaken with this implication.
This is not some minor speech that the pope had ghost written and that he read maybe once before he delivered it in public. In documents such as that the pope might, indeed, pass over something by accident that doesn't really reflect his thoughts.
This is an encyclical for crying out loud!
The pope--and his chosen experts--have been over every single word of this. The pope has spent years wrestling with this thing and personally critiquing the drafts from the PCJP. This thing has been scrutinized by the pope and his chosen experts so thoroughly that anything appearing in the document at this date is something Benedict has made his own.
He or may not be entirely happy with the result, but it's his now, and--to come to the last problem I want to mention with Weigel's essay--it's just insulting to the pope to suggest that the contents of numerous passages in his encyclical do not, at least in general terms, reflect his own views.
I mean, really.
The PCJP is definitely a dicastery that can be subject to legitimate and forceful critique, but Weigel simply goes too far in making them out as the villain. In the process he, certainly unintentionally, insults Pope Benedict by portraying him as a man so weak as a Vicar of Christ that he can be bullied by a mid-range dicastery into including in an encyclical (one of the most authoritative papal teaching moments) things that don't even reflect his thought.
Or so it seems from what Weigel wrote.
Perhaps he will clarify.
He's usually very insightful, and I'd love to see him interact more with this encyclical.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Benedict XVI | Permalink | Comments (41)
July 08, 2009
Early Tentative Thoughts on the New Encyclical
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
The Pope recently came out with his position on capitalism. Can you explain his position possibly better than what I have read in the papers? Also, I am hearing secular talk on the radio wondering about Papal infallibility and this economic view. On the surface what he has said appears to me to be even further left of Obama! To me that would be worse for the poor not better!
When it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. But it would be contrary to the truth, if, proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church's Magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments, or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission. In fact, the theologian, who cannot pursue his discipline well without a certain competence in history, is aware of the filtering which occurs with the passage of time. This is not to be understood in the sense of a relativization of the tenets of the faith. The theologian knows that some judgments of the Magisterium could be justified at the time in which they were made, because while the pronouncements contained true assertions and others which were not sure, both types were inextricably connected. Only time has permitted discernment and, after deeper study, the attainment of true doctrinal progress (Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian 24).
12) The most constructive course is not to rush to conclusions regarding the encyclical but to read it, meditate on it, take a willing, open perspective, and allow oneself to be challenged by what it has to say, regardless of where one is coming from.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Benedict XVI | Permalink | Comments (51)
May 11, 2009
The Pope Walks
(Jimmy Akin)
Pope Benedict XVI walked out of an ecumenical gathering prematurely in Jerusalem this evening.
Tamimi basically commandeered the microphone and launched into a heated, ten-minute tirade in Arabic.
The speech, as you would expect, was anti-Israeli.
The pope waited until the tirade was over, got up, shook Tamimi's hand, and unceremoniously left the gathering, which was not yet formally over.
Details are still sketchy, but let's look at a few questions that may arise as a result of this:
1) If the pope decided to leave the event, why did he wait until after the tirade was over? Why not walk out in the middle of it?
Several possibilities suggest themselves:
a) So far as I know, the pope does not speak Arabic, and it does not appear that realtime translation was being provided. It may not have been clear to the pope precisely what was being said and whether it justified walking out. After all, it's one thing to walk out on an impassioned and impromptu anti-Israeli tirade. It's another to walk out on an impassioned and impromptu plea for peace. Between the two are a whole host of possibilities, and the bottom line is you want to make sure that sufficiently severe line has been crossed before you walk out. The pope may well have been waiting to find out from an Arabic-speaking aide precisely what had just been said.
Also, the Jerusalem Post notes that the pope "was visibly uncomfortable with the tone of Tamimi's discourse" while it was underway.
b) If you're going to walk out, you do so knowing that your actions will likely call more attention to the incident than it would otherwise have and that they will be portrayed by some as a slap not just against the angry tirader but against the constituency he represents. Given that, if you are trying to be a peacemaker, you want to send a measured message that will make the point without further inflaming the situation. It thus could be prudent to wait until the tirade was over and thus deny pro-Tamimi people the ability to say, "The pope didn't want to hear what was being said; he walked out before the sheikh was even finished; the pope can't handle the truth." In any event, just after the tirade would be a logical point to depart for diplomatic reasons.
c) In the heat of a moment like this, it may have simply taken the pontiff time to decide what to do.
I therefore don't see serious cause from criticism regarding the timing of the pope's departure, though I have seen people in pro-Israel parts of the blogosphere acting indignant that the pope didn't take an ultra-macho stance and walk out sooner.
2) Why did the pope shake Tamimi's hand?
a) Assuming that report is accurate (and I assume it is), see answer (b), above. The pope was trying to send a measured message. He's trying to make a point by leaving but not slam the door shut on dialogue with the Muslim and Palestinian communities. Even if Tamimi has shown himself to be an unacceptable dialogue partner, simultaneously rebuffing him by leaving but also shaking his hand sends two messages to the communities he represents: This kind of behavior isn't acceptable but I'm still trying to be nice to you and want to preserve possibilities for the future.
b) See also reply (c), above, regarding the heat of the moment and trying to figure out what to do.
c) As far as I know, the pope likely also shook the hand of the rabbi who was in attendance, which would create a message of "I'm trying to show respect for both your communities here."
3) Should Tamimi have been stricken off the guest roster due to his past behavior?
I have more sympathy for criticism of the Vatican Secretariate of State on this one. A Google search reveals that Tamimi is a known advocate of terror bombing. Why the Secretariate of State would think he was an appropriate individual to appear alongside the pope, I don't know.
On the other hand, if you're trying to advance the cause of peace via negotiation, you need someone to negotiate with, and it may well be that the Palestian leadership is so dirty with respect to terrorism that there simply are no leaders--religious or secular--who haven't made positive remarks about terror bombing.
On the third hand, Tamimi has a specific history of doing precisely this kind of thing. The Jerusalem Post notes:
Tamimi staged an identical verbal attack against Israel during Pope John Paul II's visit in March 2000.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Benedict XVI | Permalink | Comments (34)
January 15, 2009
New Apparitions Document?
(Jimmy Akin)
For the last week or so, I've been following a story that has started to gain traction in the English-language press and blogosphere.
The gist of the story is this: A new document is going to be released from the Holy See governing the way in which Marian and other apparitions (or private revelation in general) is handled. This will be an updating of the guidelines privately circulated to bishops since the 1970s.
The document is reported to be a vademecum (a brief guide, not an exhaustive tome), and it's being presented as something that will create a "crack down" or a "gag order" on visionaries.
There are several reasons to be cautious about this story.
First, even assuming the basic facts of the story are true, it's being represented with an anti-apparition spin that the Holy See would not approve.
The Holy See has always been receptive to genuine apparitions, which are gifts of God's grace. As St. Paul said, we should not despise prophecies, but test everything and hold fast to that which is good. The Holy See in no way would want to send the signal that it wants to "crack down" on legitimate visionaries or put a "gag" on them.
It may well want to discourage false reports of apparitions, and it might institute disciplinary norms requiring greater circumspection on the part of those reporting apparitions (as was the case before the 1960s, when there was a liberalization of the procedures visionaries were obliged to follow in making their reported revelations public). However, the language of "crack downs" and "gag orders" and similar idioms is not the Holy See's intent.
Second, and equally fundamentally, there is a problem with the sourcing on this story.
Basically, the only source on this at present is an Italian website called Petrus.
Petrus would appear to have a source that has at least read a draft or heard a summary of the vademecum, perhaps in the CDF, but who knows?
The problem is that the Italian press is often filled with rumors about that Vatican that turn out to be completely untrue or grossly distorted. There is a lot of gossip in Rome, as there is in every city, and a lot of it isn't reliable.
Reports of a new vademecum on apparitions, especially one to be made public, must therefore be treated with caution, especially when there is such slender sourcing on the claims.
It may well be that there is a new vademecum or other document on the subject. It may be in a draft stage or a final stage. It may possibly include provisions like those described in the Petrus article. It may even be made public in the future.
But we don't know any of that at this point, and people should be cautious in how they handle the subject.
TRANSLATION OF ORIGINAL PETRUS PIECE.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Benedict XVI | Permalink | Comments (14)
April 16, 2008
A Pope for the Internet Age?
(Jimmy Akin)
Pope Benedict's trip to the United States is obviously a focus of attention right now.
I'd like to CHT the reader who e-mailed a link to THIS STORY by Peggy Noonan.
In it, she reflects on the personal styles of JP2 and B16, and offers a number of insights, among them this:
A Vatican reporter last week said John Paul was the perfect pope for the television age, "a man of images." Think of the pictures of him storm-tossed, tempest-tossed, standing somewhere and leaning into a heavy wind, his robes whipping behind him, holding on to his crosier, the staff bearing the image of a crucified Christ, with both hands, for dear life, as if consciously giving Christians a picture of what it is to be alive.
Benedict, the reporter noted, is the perfect pope for the Internet age. He is a man of the word. You download the text of what he said, print it, ponder it.
Actually, I don't print it. I have my text-to-speech engine read it to me and then ponder it, but I get the idea.
Now if the Holy See would only get the perfect web site for the Internet age.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as appreciative of B16 as Mrs. Noonan.
Stephen Prothero, the Chair of the Department of Religion for Jesuit-run Boston College, for example, ISN'T:
Young American Catholics treated John Paul II like a rock star. Yes, he was socially and theologically conservative, but at least they could relate to the guy with the "Popemobile" and the smile and the energy to travel to some 130 countries during his 26 years at the Holy See. But can they relate to Benedict XVI? And can he relate to them? What can a pope who is an academic theologian first and foremost offer young Americans, save for dogmas they don't believe in and rituals they do not understand? Is he coming to scold us? Or to hug us?
We are about to find out.
Actually, someone should scold Stephen Prothero, but it should be someone other than B16.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there's LOTS OF COVERAGE OF THE PAPAL VISIT FROM EWTN.
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April 09, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI . . . Now In English!
(Jimmy Akin)
It's really cool being able to put the pope directly on your blog, so here goes: B16 as guest blogger.
Here is a video from Pope Benedict introducing his forthcoming visit to the United States.
What's ultra cool about this, to me anyway, is that I'm hearing the pope speaking in English. I've read I don't know how many documents he's written, but there is nothing like hearing someone speaking your native language to give you a sense of them on a personal level (even if they are reading from a prepared text, as is the case here).
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December 03, 2007
Approved Translations
(Jimmy Akin)
I read Spe Salvi the first day it came out, and I'm still digesting it. It's longer by more than 3,000 words than its predecessor, Deus Caritas Est and takes more than two hours to read (unless you're speed reading, of course).
I'll try to blog some about its contents, and the first thing I thought I'd note is something that lept out at me when I was making my way through it the very first time.
You see, I'm not a big fan of the New American Bible. It's a squishy, lame, tin-eared translation. Even the people who worked on the translation (like Raymond Brown) complained about what the stylistic editors did to their work (though that applies more to the original edition than the current one).
The NAB also happens to be approved by the U.S. bishops for use in liturgy, and so occasionally I get someone who is more-bishopier-than-thou looking down his nose at me for finding fault with the translation, as if the U.S. bishops personally translated the document--as a body--under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. (Instead of approving as a conference the work of a set of interlocking committees of iconoclastic translators who were determined to desacralize the language of Scripture. Under those circumstances, an individual bishop had virtually no chance of getting substantive changes made in the document, especially in the heady atmosphere of the early 1970s, when the first edition came out.)
Well, in Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict is very diplomatic about it--in keeping with his position as pope--but he finds fault with a translation approved by the conference of bishops of his homeland, Germany.
Discussing, Hebrews, 11:1, he writes:
To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of “substance”, in the context of his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century this interpretation became prevalent—at least in Germany—in Catholic exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: Glaube aber ist: Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht sieht (faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of what one does not see). This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchos) does not have the subjective sense of “conviction” but the objective sense of “proof”. Rightly, therefore, recent Protestant exegesis has arrived at a different interpretation: “Yet there can be no question but that this classical Protestant understanding is untenable.”5 Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future (Spe Salvi 7).
Ultimately, it's about what translation best captures what's in the original, not who produced it or who approved it.
This is not to discount the importance of episcopal approval of Scripture translations. I'm not in the least suggesting we do away with that. But it is to note that even when we have episcopal approval of a translation, that doesn't mean that the translation is infallible or the best one that could have been produced.
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November 30, 2007
Spe Salvi
(Jimmy Akin)
SOME ANALYSIS FROM JOHN ALLEN.
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November 28, 2007
New Encyclical
(Jimmy Akin)
There's been a rumor for some time that B16 has been working on a new encyclical on social issues . . . perhaps globalization.
However the Holy See has confirmed that a new and different encyclical will be signed--and apparently released--this Friday.
The new encyclical--Spe Salvi ("Saved by Hope" or "Saved in Hope"; from St. Paul's phrase)--is a theological meditation on hope and a companion to B16's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, which was a meditation on love.
This signals that the pontiff means to do an encyclical on each of the theological virtues, so in a year or two we should look for one on the virtue of faith to complete the trilogy.
I especially look forward to what the Pope will have to say in the third one!
It is also notable that he is doing the theological virtues in the reverse order that they are normally given in. This may be a deliberate strategy on his part to play against the stereotype of him as a stern doctrinal enforcer.
What I'm particularly struck by, though, is the claim that the new encyclical will be signed and released the same day. To my mind, that's the way it ought to be, though so often the Holy See will sign something and then not release it for a long time. I haven't followed lately how often they've been doing that, but if there's a move to sign and release the same day, that's a good thing.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Benedict XVI | Permalink | Comments (22)
October 19, 2007
No Respect! No Respect?
(Jimmy Akin)
A few years ago on a Catholic Answers cruise we were joined by Archbishop John P. Foley, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
He was a riot!
The guy has a very open demeanor and a terrific sense of humor. He talks always had the attendees in stitches.
As the head of a relatively minor dicastery in Rome, the Archbishop described himself atone point as "the Rodney Dangerfield of the Vatican," calling to mind the late commedian's signature complaint "No respect! No respect!"
But now that's changed.
B16 has just announced that Archbishop Foley will soon become Cardinal Foley.
John Allen comments:
Benedict XVI also showed his appreciation for loyalty today by at long last naming Archbishop John Foley to the College of Cardinals. Foley served as the President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications since 1984 until he resigned in June, and during those 23 years, Foley watched eight consistories in which 214 other men became cardinals. Each time he endured speculation about why he had not been inducted into the college with good humor and without complaint. One of the most universally popular figures in the Vatican, it's not difficult to anticipate that his line of well-wishers during the receptions following the Nov. 24 consistory should be especially long.
LIST OF ALL THE NEW CARDINALS.
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