What Does The Prayer Really Say?
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Here are the texts of the questions in Italian about abortion and excommunication:

I am leaving them in Italian because I don’t have the energy now to translate them. I would note that the second question was put by Marco Politi.

FIRST:

Domanda: Santità, in Brasile c’è una proposta di referendum sul tema dell’aborto; a Città del Messico due settimane fa è stato depenalizzato l’aborto. Cosa può fare la Chiesa per arginare questa tendenza, affinché non si estenda ad altri Paesi Latinoamericani, tenendo presente che in Messico il Papa è stato accusato perfino di ingerenza per avere appoggiato i Vescovi? Ed è d’accordo con la Chiesa messicana che i parlamentari che approvano queste leggi che va contro i valori di Dio devono essere scomunicati?

Papa: C’è questa grande lotta della Chiesa per la vita. Voi sapete che Papa Giovanni Paolo II ne ha fatto un punto fondamentale di tutto il suo pontificato. Ha scritto una grande Enciclica sul Vangelo della vita. Andiamo naturalmente avanti con questo messaggio che la vita è un dono e la vita non è una minaccia. Mi sembra che alla radice di queste legislazioni ci sia da una parte un certo egoismo e dall’altra parte anche un dubbio sul valore della vita, sulla bellezza della vita ed anche un dubbio sul futuro. E la Chiesa risponde soprattutto a questi dubbi: la vita è bella, non è una cosa dubbia, ma è un dono ed anche in condizioni difficili la vita rimane sempre un dono. Quindi ricreare questa coscienza della bellezza del dono della vita. E poi l’altra cosa, il dubbio sul futuro: naturalmente ci sono tante minacce nel mondo, ma la fede ci dà la certezza che Dio è sempre più forte e rimane presente nella storia e quindi possiamo, con fiducia, anche dare la vita a nuovi essere umani. Con la consapevolezza che la fede ci da circa la bellezza della vita e circa la presenza provvida di Dio nel nostro futuro possiamo resistere a queste paure che sono alla radice di queste legislazioni.

....

SECOND:

[Marco] POLITI Domanda: Santità nel suo discorso di arrivo Lei dice che si tratta di formare cristiani dando indicazioni morali, poi loro decidono liberamente e coscientemente. Lei condivide la scomunica data ai deputati di Città del Messico sulla questione dell’aborto?

Papa: La scomunica non è una cosa arbitraria, ma è prevista dal Codice (n.d.r. codice di diritto canonico). Quindi sta semplicemente nel Diritto Canonico che l’uccisione di un bambino innocente è incompatibile con l’andare alla comunione in cui si riceve il Corpo di Cristo. Non si è quindi inventato qualcosa di nuovo, di sorprendente o di arbitrario. È stato solo ricordato pubblicamente quanto è previsto dal Diritto della Chiesa, da un Diritto che è basato sulla dottrina e sulla fede della Chiesa, sul nostro apprezzamento per la vita e per la individualità umana, sin dal primo momento.

I am really irritated about the fate of Valle Adurni, a very good blog of an English priest.  Here is the entry that has made my angry and sad (my emphases).

Requiem 

With the greatest sorrow, I have deleted my whole blog.

This is entirely due to the malicious action of a priest, who represented several posts and comments in the most destructive light possible in conversations with my parishioners, and has in this way—and others—poisoned relations with several of them. I will not give him further ammunition to hinder my work here in the Adur Valley, the spiritual good of whose people I am utterly committed to, and whom I commend to your prayers.

I am relieved to write that most of the parishioners who took the trouble to check out the veracity of this priest’s comments discovered them to be unfounded. More damage has been done among those without access to the internet, and among those who were led to see the posts in the light presented to them.

To all my friends (80.000+!) who have accompanied me over the last months, I thank you most warmly and will offer Mass for your intentions.

I also ask your prayers for myself, and of course for the priest concerned.

Postscript; Perhaps I should add that the deletion of this blog has nothing whatever to do with ICEL!

Posted by Pastor in Valle at 5:43 AM 39 comments

There is an old somewhat macaronic Latin adage based on the proverb Homo homini lupus … "Man is a wolf to man" or "Man treats other men as if he were a wolf, attacking, biting, etc.".   They say here in Rome:

Homo homini lupus
Mulier mulieri lupior (Woman is more wolflike to other women.)
Sacerdos sacerdoti lupissimus  (Priests are most wolflike of all to other priests)

Of course nouns like lupus can’t correctly have comparative forms, but you get the drift.

Some of the worst suffering I have endured in life was caused by stupid, narrow minded and false priests.   Priests are members of the fallen human race like everyone else.  They also are subject to far more savage and subtle attacks from the Enemy.  When they fall, their fall is terrible: corruptio optimi pessima. 

I applaud the priest of Valle Adurni, whose name I won’t place here.  At the same time, I cannot say I am happy about his deleting his blog content.  I disagree with that decision, but I support him in his intention to cauterize the wounds caused by that clerical ficanaso.

Today is the feast of St. Job.  The Roman Martyrology gives us this terse entry.

1. Commemoratio sancti Iob, admirandae patientiae viri in terra Hus.

I will let one of you do this!  (Those of you who are very stong with Latin, how ‘bout leaving it so someone else?) 

Some of the Italian journalists  "covering" the papal trip to Brazil could use a workshop on Church law and making distinctions.

One of the key points in the news these days rests in the distinction between excommunication and exclusion from Communion. These are not the same.  

Looking at a a few stories in the Italian press we can see very different attitudes about the story and how the journalists shaped the story, for good or ill.

Luigi Accatoli of Corriere della Sera (10 May) more or less presented the proper distinctions about excommunication and exclusion from Communion.  "It seems one can conclude that the excommunication foreseen in the Code of Canon Law remains reserved for one who is involved in the abortive act (both the woman and the doctor) whereas for permissive legislators pertains the appeal to ‘self-exclusion’ from Communion."  We can debate about how involved in abortion you have to be in order to incur the excommunication, but Accatoli basically gets it right.

Marco Tosatti of La Stampa (10 May) adds the interesting note that the Pope seems to have tried to elude the initial question of whether or not he "shared the excommunication".   Tosatti goes into the situation in Mexico City and how Card. Rivera Carrera had to himself make some corrections to statements of his "bellicose spokesman" in the diocese.  He says that, on the papal airplane, Card. Bertone, Secretary of State, also clarified that "excommunication" is not the correct term to be using.  Tosatti also says that while the question was being put to the Pope by a journalist, you could see by the expression on Card. Bertone’s face that he had a problem with the way it was framed. Tosatti also makes sure to contextualize this dust up by explaining Benedict’s wider focus on "life, family, abortion, and laicality (the exclusion of religion from the public square and policy)".

The slithery Marco Politi of La Repubblica (10 May) focused on what he sees as the Pope’s "ok" for what he sees as the Mexican bishops excommunication of pro-abortion politicians.  The problem is that the Pope didn’t "ok" that.  He goes on: "Nevertheless the papal OK for the extremist ‘made in Mexico’ line is destined to stir up polemics".  And Mr. Politi will help make sure it does.  About the papal spokesman’s clarification about excommunication and self-exclusion from Communion, Politi blithely continues "But the thunderbolt that strikes the politicians remains."

Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale (10 May) states accurately that the politicians who voted to decriminalize abortion in the district of Mexico City were told not to present themselves for Communion.  He cut to the chase: "One of the questions, however, directly mentioned the presumed excommunication (in reality never officially declared and therefore non-existent) of Catholic pro-abortion politicians."  Being told you can’t come to Communion is not the same as the censure of excommunication.  He reports that Benedict XVI spoke about the excommunication incurred by those who participate in abortion, but does not say he applied it to the Mexican politicians.  Tornielli identified the improper attribution of the Pope also declaring an excommunication as a "misunderstanding".  Then he cites words of the papal spokesman explaining what the Cardinal Archbishop of Mexico City wrote in his document.

Antonio Socci of Libero editorializes the most (10 May) but he gets it right.  Socci, author of a strongly critical book, Il quarto segreto di Fatima, arguing that the third secret has been purposely buried by the Holy See) leads off with strength: "These words are going to cost [the Pope], because the press and laicist intellectuals, who expect to impede Catholics from speaking about public matters, then dare to open their traps about the internal laws of the Church (excommunications, funerals, the sacrament of holy orders, marriage, and so forth).  It is evident that the Church has every right to provide itself with norms which regulate ecclesial membership."  He digs into the pertinent canons of the Code and cites Evangelium vitae and Sacramentum caritatis.  Socci raises the good question, taken up by the last Synod and by Sacramentum caritatis, of the difference between a terrified impoverished woman who has an abortion and a cold, calculating politician who knows what he is doing and purposefully does it anyway.  Socci frames the issue in South America reminding the reader that in Europe and the USA the Church hasn’t censured pro-abortion politicians with excommunication.  He then cites the statistics of the number of abortions and reminds us that the Soviets and Nazis legalized it too.  Socci’s coverage drips with disdain for the "laicist" intellectual position which would exclude the Church from the public square.  He seems by implication disgruntled about Churchmen who don’t fight back.

Caterina Maniaci of Il Foglio (10 May) gets it right about the Mexican pols: "whoever favors abortion risks the excommunication and cannot receive Communion".  She goes on actually to cite can. 1398 of the Code!  She goes on to cover what the Pope said concerning life when he hit the ground in Brazil: "promoting respect for human life from the moment of conception until its natural decline, as the proper demand of human nature, will create also for the promotion of the human person an axis of solidarity, above all with the poor and abandoned".  In sum, she gets it right and provides also a deeper view of Benedict’s objectives in going to Brazil at all.

Remember that the Holy Father’s recent book Jesus of Nazareth will be released on 15 May in English.

There is still time to pre-order at real savings: $14.97 instead of $24.95