Pope Francis' address to media: March 16, 2013

Anyone who's paid a minute's attention to the news following the election of Pope Francis knows that he is very much a different kind of pope.  At first glance, he seems to be a simple, reserved man who prefers the "low church" rather than the pomp and circumstance for which the Church is known.  Time will tell how accurate an analysis that is, and how far he goes to implement that vision.

Although we are seeing him behave very differently than a Papa Burke would have been, don't hold your breath expecting him to support gay marriage, abortion, or other pet issues of the left.  It's not going to happen.

Below is a transcript of his address to the media on March 16, 2013.  Francis is mindful that he is addressing many who are unchurched or unbelievers.  His words are carefully crafted to that audience.

I have bolded comments I wish to emphasize, and my comments are in red.

Address of the Holy Father

To Representatives of the Communications Media

Saturday, 16 March 2013

By Pope Francis

Dear Friends,

        

At the beginning of my ministry in the See of Peter, I am pleased to meet all of you who have worked here in Rome throughout this intense period which began with the unexpected announcement made by my venerable Predecessor Benedict XVI on 11 February last. To each of you I offer a cordial greeting.

        

The role of the mass media has expanded immensely in these years, so much so that they are an essential means of informing the world about the events of contemporary history.

I would like, then, to thank you in a special way for the professional coverage which you provided during these days – you really worked, didn’t you? – when the eyes of the whole world, and not just those of Catholics, were turned to the Eternal City and particularly to this place which has as its heart the tomb of Saint Peter. [What an elaborate way to refer to Rome.  He is reminding the reporters of the sacredness of the city.] Over the past few weeks, you have had to provide information about the Holy See and about the Church, her rituals and traditions, her faith and above all the role of the Pope and his ministry. [The reporters, unwittingly, have been engaged in some form of evangelism.]

I am particularly grateful to those who viewed and presented these events of the Church’s history in a way which was sensitive to the right context in which they need to be read, namely that of faith. [compared to those who have an agenda against the Church] Historical events almost always demand a nuanced interpretation which at times can also take into account the dimension of faith. Ecclesial events are certainly no more intricate than political or economic events!

But they do have one particular underlying feature: they follow a pattern which does not readily correspond to the “worldly” categories which we are accustomed to use, and so it is not easy to interpret and communicate them to a wider and more varied public. [And everyone wants to pigeon-hole the Church into their categories.]

The Church is certainly a human and historical institution with all that that entails,[I can hear the traditionalists screaming and rending their garments.  Don't mistake what he is saying here.  The Church is human, but it is not merely human.] yet her nature is not essentially political but spiritual: the Church is the People of God, the Holy People of God making its way to encounter Jesus Christ [the Church is divine, as well]. Only from this perspective can a satisfactory account be given of the Church’s life and activity.

Christ is the Church’s Pastor, but his presence in history passes through the freedom of human beings; from their midst one is chosen to serve as his Vicar, the Successor of the Apostle Peter. 

Yet Christ remains the centre, not the Successor of Peter: Christ, Christ is the centre. [This is important considering the audience.  In a sceptical world, the Church is wrongly accused of putting the focus on herself rather than Christ.  I fear that this statement might be misinterpreted by liberals and traditionalists that he's signalling he would like to abolish the papacy.  That neither will nor can happen.  Rather, he is reminding us (as he explains below) that the Church means nothing without Christ.  Recall the words of St. John the Baptist (Jn. 3:30), "He must increase, but I must decrease."]

Christ is the fundamental point of reference, the heart of the Church. Without him, Peter and the Church would not exist or have reason to exist. 

As Benedict XVI frequently reminded us, Christ is present in Church and guides her. In everything that has occurred, the principal agent has been, in the final analysis, the Holy Spirit. [Despite changes, he's indicating continuity with Benedict.]

He prompted the decision of Benedict XVI for the good of the Church; he guided the Cardinals in prayer and in the election.

It is important, dear friends, to take into due account this way of looking at things, this hermeneutic, in order to bring into proper focus what really happened in these days.

All of this leads me to thank you once more for your work in these particularly demanding days, but also to ask you to try to understand more fully the true nature of the Church, as well as her journey in this world, with her virtues and her sins, and to know the spiritual concerns which guide her and are the most genuine way to understand her. Be assured that the Church, for her part, highly esteems your important work. At your disposal you have the means to hear and to give voice to people’s expectations and demands, and to provide for an analysis and interpretation of current events. Your work calls for careful preparation, sensitivity and experience, like so many other professions, but it also demands a particular concern for what is true, good and beautiful. 

This is something which we have in common, since the Church exists to communicate precisely this: Truth, Goodness and Beauty “in person.” It should be apparent that all of us are called not to communicate ourselves, but this existential triad made up of truth, beauty and goodness.

Some people wanted to know why the Bishop of Rome wished to be called Francis. Some thought of Francis Xavier, Francis De Sales, and also Francis of Assisi. I will tell you the story.

During the election, I was seated next to the Archbishop Emeritus of São Paolo and Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Claudio Hummes: a good friend, a good friend!  When things were looking dangerous, he encouraged me.  

And when the votes reached two thirds, there was the usual applause, because the Pope had been elected.  

And he gave me a hug and a kiss, and said: “Don't forget the poor!” 

And those words came to me: the poor, the poor.  

Then, right away, thinking of the poor, I thought of Francis of Assisi.  

Then I thought of all the wars, as the votes were still being counted, till the end. Francis is also the man of peace. That is how the name came into my heart: Francis of Assisi.  

For me, he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation; these days we do not have a very good relationship with creation, do we?  He is the man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man … How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!

Afterwards, people were joking with me. “But you should call yourself Hadrian, because Hadrian VI was the reformer, we need a reform…” And someone else said to me: “No, no: your name should be Clement.” “But why?” “Clement XV: thus you pay back Clement XIV who suppressed the Society of Jesus!” These were jokes.  

I love all of you very much, I thank you for everything you have done. I pray that your work will always be serene and fruitful, and that you will come to know ever better the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the rich reality of the Church’s life. I commend you to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of Evangelization, [I think every action he's taking is for the cause of evangelization to the world. St. Francis is (wrongly) quoted as saying, "Preach always; use words when necessary."  The maxim that we should preach with our action as well as our words is a good one, even if St. Francis never said it.  Pope Francis, it is clear, is doing both.] and with cordial good wishes for you and your families, each of your families. I cordially impart to all of you my blessing. Thank you.

(In Spanish)

I told you I was cordially imparting my blessing.  Since many of you are not members of the Catholic Church, and others are not believers, I cordially give this blessing silently, to each of you, respecting the conscience of each, but in the knowledge that each of you is a child of God. May God bless you!

Robert Moynihan reflects on the "silent blessing."

And then Francis did something which surprised everyone, pleased many, and shocked a few.

The moment had come for him to impart to all of us his Apostolic Blessing, but he did not do this in the usual way.

In fact, he made no exterior gesture at all. He did not lift his hand, he did not move it in the form of a blessing, and he did not speak "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" out loud.

He said, in Italian: "I cordially impart to all of you my blessing. Thank you." And then, in Spanish, he explained as follows: "I told you I was cordially imparting my blessing. Since many of you are not members of the Catholic Church, and others are not believers, I cordially give this blessing silently, to each of you, respecting the conscience of each, but in the knowledge that each of you is a child of God. May God bless you!"

And with that, he turned and left.

One of my colleagues turned to me and said, "Where was the papal blessing?"

"He gave it silently," I said. "He blessed us silently, without presupposing anything. He was trying to be respectful of individual consciences. This is not a purely religious gathering."

"But it still seems like something is missing," my friend said. "No blessing!"

"But there was a blessing," I said. "We just could not see it. It is like what Ratzinger used to say, that in heaven, in the presence of God, there will no longer be any external rites or rituals to signify our worship, all those things will pass away, because the perfect will have come..."

"But are we already in heaven?" my friend replied.

"No," I said. "But can't we believe we are on the way?"

But my friend still was not satisfied. "I would have liked to have received a blessing from him," he said.

"You did," I said.

There will be more time in the future to reflect more deeply on these questions, which of course also have a relation to the liturgy. For the moment, it is enough to say that Pope Francis, also in this matter of giving a silent, not a public blessing to the journalists, did something without recent precedent, which is providing all of us with cause for meditation and inward conversion.

And that is what should be our thought at this time, just as Cardinal Hummes told Pope Francis as the vote total rose: "never forget the poor." We should never forget our own need for conversion. We should be converted to Christ. We are ever in need of deeper conversion.

This is what Pope Francis is calling us to, if we can but hear him...

The Seal of Confession

One thing that keeps people from returning to the Church is confession. And it is also true that many people who go to Mass weekly (or more frequently) rarely ever go to confession.  This may be for many reasons, but it is usually not due to a lack of sins being committed. Most often, the prospective penitent is afraid to go. The various rationalizations against going dance around this issue.

There are two fears that a person usually has. First, the fear of the priest judging you. I have been to confession to dozens of different priests all around the country. I have only encountered 1 or 2 that I felt were "judgmental," and in all truth, that was the kind of priest I needed at the time. Sometimes I need the priest to tell me I'm being too hard on myself, but sometimes I need him to tell me I'm being too easy on myself. That being said, if you get a priest who is overly rude or yells at you, there is nothing wrong with leaving and going to a different priest.

The second fear is of a priest breaking the seal of confessional. I think this fear is largely unwarranted.  First, priests hear dozens of confessions each week, and most priests forget what they've heard by the time they're finished hearing confessions. Second, your sins are not unique; don't flatter yourself. Furthermore, most priests are very busy and have better things to do than gossip about your confession. Fourth, you probably don't worry about your doctor sharing your medical secrets with anyone and everyone, and yet they keep written records, whereas the priest does not.

The confessional is protected by a stronger seal than that of doctor-patient confidentiality. Canon law 983 says that "the sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason." In other words, although the seal is generally respected by civil authorities, a priest is instructed to defy civil authorities if necessary, even to the loss of his own life. St. John Nepomucene of Prague was the confessor to Queen Johanna of Bohemia. King Wenceslaus IV desired to know the content of the queen's confession. When St. John refused to tell it, he imprisoned him and killed him by throwing him in the river Moldau. St. John Nepomucene is called the "Martyr of the Confessional" and his image often shows him with his finger over his mouth, indicating his silence.
Although not all priests have the courage to be martyred like St. John, there are ways to assuage both fears about going to confession. First, go anonymously. Almost every parish has the option to go behind the screen, where the priest cannot see your face. Second, go to a parish that has long lines (experience has taught me that parishes with high Hispanic populations tend to have longer lines). If you don't want to wait long, get there early to be at the front of the line. If you do both of these, not only will the priest not be able to see you (and therefore not know who is confessing and not be able to judge you outside the confessional) but there will be many others confessing which decreases the likelihood that he'll remember your particular confession.

If it has been a long time since your last confession, make a plan to go at the next available time!  Remember you can always call your local parish and schedule an appointment.  You don't have to wait for the allotted time.  Don't delay!  That never solves anything!

Links:

Fr. Z's 20 tips for making a good confession
Examination of Conscience

The Sun of Justice being now risen

"And very early in the morning, the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen and Mary the mother of James and Salome came to the sepulchre, the sun being now risen.  And entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed with a white robe: and they were astonished.  Who saith to them: Be not affrighted.  You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He is risen: he is not here." - Mark 16: 2, 5-6

"Knowing that Christ, rising again from the dead, dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over him.  But now being made free from sin and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life everlasting." - Romans 6:9, 22

New "Science and Faith" Foundation

Monsignor Georges Lemaître, priest and physicist
and Albert Einstein, 1933

Religion and science are two approaches to the truths of the universe that should not be set against each other. There is nothing inherent in science that opposes religion, and nothing in true religion that opposes science.

Unfortunately, representatives of certain factions of each discipline have done their best to set the two against each other.

Science and religion seek to answer two different questions of the universe.  Imagine that someone throws a rock at you.  You ask, "who threw the rock at me?"  I answer by giving the force in Newtons that the rock hit you, and explain that I calculated this by multiplying the mass of the rock times its rate of acceleration.  You would say, "Hey, I asked who hit me, not how the rock hit me!"  -- "Oh, well it was the guy on that grassy knoll who threw the rock!"

The question, "Who threw the rock at me?" is a religious question.  All of the religions of the world are, to some extent, concerned with supernatural explanations of the events of the world with respect to a person who caused it.  Thus Zeus is not lightning itself, but the god (person) who sends the lightning bolts to earth.

The question, "How was the rock thrown at me?" or "How did the lightning bolt come to earth?" seeks a scientific explanation involving Newton's Second Law of Motion or the relationship between positive and negative charges in the atmosphere.  "But," the agnostic replies, "now that we have a scientific explanation, we don't need the religious one."

That response commits a logical fallacy known as begging the question, in other words, assuming what you're trying to prove, that is, the agnostic is assuming that there is no need for a god in trying to prove there is no need for one.

The story above explains that a scientific explanation does not replace a religious one.  The fact that we can explain the mechanics of how the world works does not imply that there is not some person or persons causing those events.  Just as it would be absurd for us to do that in our day-to-day life when we get hit by rocks, it is absurd to conclude that there is no god, or no need for a god, because we understand the broader mechanics of the natural world.

Unlike religious fundamentalists, the Catholic Church has always embraced scientific studies. Many people point to one case in the 2000-year history of the Church - that of Galileo - to disprove my point.  That is a topic for another post, but suffice it to say that one incident does not cancel out two millenia of progress.

As Zenit reports, the support of science continues to the modern day:

Benedict XVI established a new "Science and Faith" Foundation, which will be under the guidance of the Pontifical Council for Culture and several pontifical universities.

......

 Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, promoted the foundation. In doing so, he was seconding the requests of several Roman pontifical universities. The foundation will give continuity to the "Science, Theology and Ontological Quest Project," known by its English acronym as the STOQ Project.

This Project, which resulted from the studies of the Galileo Galilei Commission, was created by John Paul II in 2003. During its existence it has promoted dialogue between theology, philosophy and the natural sciences, through cultural study, research and public activities. It has been supported by various institutions, including the John Templeton Foundation.

.

Article on art in the Catholic faith

Excerpt, by Brad Miner from The Catholic Thing:

What’s often missing from modern art is the context of faith that so characterized art between Creation and about 1700. You’ll search in vain for it in Picasso, by birth a Catholic; you’ll find it in Rockwell, although his soft Episcopalianism never much affected his painting, and such religiosity one sees in his work, as for instance the folks at prayer in his “Freedom of Worship” (1943), is actually Americanism.
...
At a Catholic church in New Jersey (Christ the King in New Vernon), there is a recently installed Stations of the Cross that evoke the power of faith in the way they do in the great cathedrals of Europe. The fourteen paintings are the work of Leonard Porter and garnered for him the 2011 Merit Design Award from the American Institute of Architects’ Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, and Architecture.

Here’s XII, Where Christ Dies upon the Cross:

...
Mr. Porter is a member of The Foundation for Sacred Arts, a Catholic nonprofit organization founded “to stimulate a vibrant renewal in the patronage and production of Christian sacred arts (art, architecture, and music); and to advance the pursuit of excellence in conformity with truth, goodness, and beauty in these arts; for the glory of God, the life of His Church, and the transformation of culture.”

Other groups, such as New Liturgical Movement, are undertaking similar efforts to bring back to the Church (yes, it is in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, “an act of recovery”) the majestic beauty of Catholic art and worship. It is a massive undertaking, at least as measured by where some Catholic churches are today and where they ought to be.

The Prophet Balaam

"Like a gloomy, bulky, over-sized statue the figure of the prophet in the garb of a philosopher looms before us.  Beneath the star which the Wise Men also followed, the visionary-with big dark eyes, the iris in sharp contrast to the white of the eye-sees the Virgin Mother and the Child: "There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel."  Does the artist describe the Mother with the Child so strangely because of the great lapse of time lying between the prophet's vision and its realization? Or does this strangeness lie in the fact that in the catacombs the painter is using an antique heathen form-language to describe a Christian event?" - from The Year of Our Lord, Number 34 in the Herder Art Series

Prophet Balaam. Catacomb painting (c. 250).  Rome, Catacomb of St. Priscilla.

Requiescat in Pace

Burial service of Russian Orthodox priest.

"Отпевание" (Burial service) Copyright © 2008  "Иерей Максим Массалитин." Some rights reserved. Used with permission through Creative Commons.