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Here is a piece in a CNA story about the "imminent" beatification of John Henry Newman

Vatican City, Jan 8, 2008 / 05:16 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Cause of the Saints, has announced that the beatification of the great British convert and scholar, Cardinal John Henry Newman, is "imminent."

In an interview to be published on Wednesday in the daily Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Saraiva said that among the most important personalities to be beatified "soon" is "the case of Cardinal Newman, a relevant intellectual, and an emblematic figure of conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism."

"Personally, I wish his beatification to happen very soon because it would be very important at this moment for the path of ecumenical dialogue,” Cardinal Martins said.

Cardinal Saraiva Martins also revealed the beatification, latter this year, of the parents of St, Therese of Lisieux, Louis Martin and Azelia Guérin. The heroic virtues of the parents of St. Therese, who is now one of the most popular saints in the Catholic Church and a Doctor of the Church, were proclaimed on March 26, 1944.

Cardinal Saraiva implied that the miracle needed to proclaim them Blessed has been approved by his congregation, and will be announced at the next Consistory.

That said, look also at this story from the AP:

VATICAN CITY (AP) – It may soon be more difficult to become a saint.

A senior cardinal said Tuesday that the Vatican has written a document setting down stricter rules for initiating the process of beatification and sainthood, saying bishops should be more rigorous when accepting requests.

In an interview with Vatican daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, who is prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said the new instructions on how to examine requests are ‘’very important innovations.’‘

‘’It is necessary to proceed with even greater caution and accuracy,’’ the cardinal said.

Beatification is the last formal step before possible sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

Saraiva Martins told the newspaper that there are more than 2,200 beatification and sainthood causes pending.

The cardinal gave no details but the newspaper said the document will be officially presented at the Vatican in the coming days.

Okay…. from this we learn that a new document may be coming from the Holy See about the process for beatification and canonization.

Meanwhile, this from CNS:

Vatican to encourage greater caution in opening sainthood causes

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS)—The Vatican is preparing to issue a set of instructions to promote "greater caution and more accuracy" in the opening of new sainthood causes by local dioceses, a top Vatican official said.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, said the instructions were needed to reflect the "new spirit introduced by Pope Benedict XVI in beatification procedures."

The cardinal spoke in an interview published Jan. 8 by the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, under the headline: "More precision will be asked in diocesan canonization processes."

Cardinal Saraiva Martins said the new document will be addressed to all resident bishops, instructing them on procedures regarding the opening and advancement of sainthood causes. It will underline how the "theology of the local church" is manifested in such causes, he said.

The cardinal said the beatification of a local member represents an intense moment of faith and joy for church communities.

"But precisely because of this new value and this additional fervor implied by such events, it is necessary to proceed with even greater caution and more accuracy," he said.

He said the new document would probably be formally presented to journalists at the Vatican press office. The congregation also intends to bring the new instructions to the attention of the hundreds of postulators who guide sainthood causes, possibly through a day of study, he said.

Asked if the new instructions would help put an end to stories about the church’s "saint factories," Cardinal Saraiva Martins said the term does not even merit a response. The church does not make saints; it merely follows procedures so that they are recognized, he said.

This tells us that there will be a formal presentation.

However, there are a couple more interesting points.  First of all, we hear of the influence of Papa Ratzinger here, who has already demonstrated in concrete deeds that he wanted changes: he did not do the beatifications.  Rather, he let deputies do them.  Also, they were celebrated in the place of the blessed, rather than Rome.   Take yourself back now to Card. Saraiva’s comments about "theology of the local church".  This might be very interesting in the face of the "local theologies" that are still dominated by either too much emphases on the local Church and not enough on unity with the Universal Church, and in some places in Latin America, the theology of "liberation".

As far as the great accuracy is concerned, remember that a cause was delayed not too long ago when new information came to light.  The process for beatification should prevent that.  Thus, I can see that there is a need to toughen the procedure, which is already very exacting. 

UPDATE: 9 Jan 07 07:00 GMT

Poco più di una ventina di pagine per raccomandare ai vescovi locali più sobrietà e maggiore rigore nell’accogliere richieste di apertura di nuovi processi diocesani per beatificazioni e canonizzazioni. È il documento che la Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi si accinge a pubblicare nei prossimi giorni, "destinato a tutti i vescovi residenti – ha detto il cardinale prefetto José Saraiva Martins nell’intervista rilasciata a "L’Osservatore Romano" – contenente alcune instructiones sul come procedere nell’esaminare l’ammissibilità di nuovi casi, e sul cosa fare in modo concreto per iniziare e portare avanti la fase diocesana del processo". Il documento dovrebbe essere presentato nella Sala Stampa della Santa Sede "perché merita ampia diffusione – ha detto il cardinale – ma anche perché intendiamo richiamare l’attenzione speciale dei postulatori sul documento stesso. Sto anche pensando ad una giornata di studio riservata proprio ai postulatori per illustrare nei dettagli il documento. Sono convinto infatti che debbano essere proprio loro i primi a conoscere perfettamete cosa i vescovi diocesani devono fare".

Perché si è resa necessaria la pubblicazione di queste "instructiones"?

Se ne è avvertita l’esigenza per meglio rispondere allo spirito nuovo introdotto da Benedetto XVI nelle procedure del rito di beatificazione. Va detto subito che si tratta di innovazioni molto importanti, capaci di sottolineare in modo efficace la teologia della Chiesa locale così come è stata riaffermata con forza dal Concilio Vaticano II. La beatificazione di un servo di Dio nella Chiesa cui appartiene è qualcosa che tutta la comunità vive in maniera compatta, in un clima di fede che si trasforma in gioia e festa ecclesiale per il fatto che uno di loro è stato elevato agli onori degli altari. Ma proprio in virtù di questa nuova valenza, di questo fervore ulteriore che connota tali eventi è necessario procedere con ancor maggiore cautela e con più accuratezza.

Sarà sufficiente secondo lei a far cadere quei tanti luoghi comuni che favoleggiano di fabbriche di santi e di inflazione di beati?

A chi parla di "fabbrica di santi" non vale nemmeno la pena rispondere se non altro perché si tratta di gente che non capisce la grandezza della santità e dunque non sa che i santi sono e non si fanno. Per quanto si riferisce alle accuse inflazionistiche di santi e beati, vorrei ricordare solo quello che Giovanni Paolo II rispondeva quando gli si faceva notare proprio questo tipo di accusa mossa alla Chiesa. Egli diceva che se c’erano tanti santi in giro bisognava chiederne conto al buon Dio, poiché suscitava tanta santità nel cuore degli uomini. La Chiesa non fa altro che prenderne atto, seguire un percorso e giungere ad una conclusione.

In questo iter che peso hanno le possibilità economiche dei proponenti?

Ecco questa è un’altra distorsione della verità da eliminare. I soldi con il riconoscimento della santità non hanno nulla a che vedere. È vero che istruire e portare a compimento un processo di beatificazione comporta delle spese. Tra quelle che più incidono, anche se si tratta di somme certamente non importanti, c’è il giusto compenso per la commissione medica chiamata a verificare, dal punto di vista scientifico, la miracolosità della guarigione che si intende portare come prova testimoniale per il processo. C’è poi l’altrettanto giusto compenso per i membri della commissione teologica chiamati ad interpretare se tale guarigione miracolosa sia attribuibile all’intercessione della persona di cui si tratta. Ma, come le ripeto, si tratta di cifre molto modeste. Altre spese da affrontare, e queste sì che sono un po’ più consistenti, sono quelle relative alla pubblicazione della positio e quelle eventualmente riferibili al rito vero e proprio:  dalla stampa dei libretti liturgici all’addobbo floreale dell’altare e via dicendo.

Ma quanto costa portare avanti sino alla fine una causa?

Non è possibile fare cifre perché dipende sempre da quale tipo di causa si tratti. Voglio dire che la spesa dipende dalla complessità della documentazione da vagliare, dalla difficoltà di giungere ad una definizione scientifica per ciò che riguarda la guarigione, da eventuali richieste di approfondimento. I processi sono tutti diversi uno dall’altro. Una cosa certa è che non è la Congregazione a determinare le spese; non interviene se non in modo indiretto. È il postulatore della causa il "cassiere", quello che raccoglie i soldi necessari e salda i conti. La Congregazione mette solo in collegamento i diversi attori del processo e nulla di più. È vero che se dietro c’è una congregazione religiosa il maggior onere delle spese se lo accolla lei, ma le assicuro che per riconoscere la santità non servono né la statua più bella né la borsa più piena:  quando c’è di mezzo un santo vero è la Chiesa popolo di Dio a mobilitarsi e quel minimo che occorre si trova sempre. Tanto è vero che io, nella mia esperienza, ho imparato che non esistono cause povere:  se una causa è "povera" vuol dire che è una povera causa, nel senso che povera è la stessa fama di santità.

Quanto influisce proprio la fama di santità nell’apertura di un processo?

Direi che è l’unica molla che fa avviare il processo. Senza fama di santità non si muove nulla. E questa è la garanzia vera, quella che dovrebbe mettere a tacere ogni scetticismo:  è la gente che addita alla Chiesa l’esemplarità di una figura. Sono i fedeli stessi che mostrano quanto questa figura sia stata capace di influire sulle loro vite, di alimentare la loro fede, di accendere in loro la fiamma della speranza, di proporsi come ancora di salvezza nelle loro personali vicende al punto di rivolgersi a loro in accorata preghiera. Non nego che ci possano anche essere altri auspici, come magari il giusto orgoglio di una famiglia religiosa nei confronti di un fondatore o di un confratello. Ma le assicuro che senza l’impulso che viene proprio dalla fama di santità è difficile avviare un processo.

Dunque non si può neppure contare su raccomandazioni per accelerare un po’ il cammino del processo.

Guardi ci sono solo due motivi che potrebbero convincere la Congregazione a derogare al rigido principio cronologico nell’espletamento dei processi. Il criterio che seguiamo nell’esaminare i documenti è quello dettato dalla precedenza degli arrivi delle pratiche. Nel dubbio, si procede all’esame di altre e così via, ma sempre rispettando l’ordine di arrivo. Le dicevo dei due motivi di deroga:  il primo era molto frequente durante il pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II. Viaggiava molto e, dunque, se avevamo all’esame una causa riferita ad un personaggio nativo del Paese nel quale il Papa stava per recarsi in visita pastorale, allora le davamo precedenza. L’idea era quella di dare la possibilità al Papa di elevare agli onori degli altari un fratello dei popoli tra i quali andava a testimoniare la forza e la vivacità del Vangelo. Il secondo motivo è sempre di natura pastorale e riguarda processi riferiti a figure esemplari di paesi che ancora non annoverano tra i loro figli un beato o un santo. L’intento è quello di offrire a quei popoli modelli di santità nati nella loro stessa terra e dare testimonianza di quello che io credo debba essere considerato il motore stesso della santità, cioè comprendere che in fondo la santità non è che la pienezza dell’umanità. Questo è anche il motivo per cui Cristo è considerato l’uomo perfetto:  egli ha incarnato la santità del Padre. Al di fuori di questi motivi non c’è altro che potrà mai influire sul percorso di una causa che si discute qui in Congregazione".

Quali potrebbero essere i motivi per la non ammissibilità di una causa?

Intanto proprio la mancanza della fama di santità, come le ho detto. Poi dipende dal giudizio della commissione scientifica:  se è negativo a noi non resta che prenderne atto e ricusare. Lo stesso avviene nel caso in cui fosse la commissione dei teologi a non riconoscere l’attribuibilità dell’intercessione.

Quali santi e beati ci riserva il 2008?

Le cause in giacenza in Congregazione sono oltre duemila e duecento. Le prime a giungere a conclusione, credo già nei primi mesi dell’anno, dovrebbero essere quelle che riguardano la canonizzazione di quattro beati:  Gaetano Errico, napoletano, fondatore di una congregazione; Berandra Bütler, una religiosa svizzera fondatrice di un ordine religioso, a lungo missionaria in Ecuador, e poi in Colombia a Cartegena; Alfonsa dell’Immacolata, una religiosa indiana del Kerala, e infine Narcisa di Gesù Martillo, laica ecuadoriana. Per i tempi effettivi resta comunque da vedere quando sarà convocato il Concistoro.

Ma il Papa potrebbe decidere di far giungere a conclusione un processo?

Certo che potrebbe farlo, ma non lo ha mai fatto, per una causa in corso. Per Giovanni Paolo II si autorizzò l’abbreviazione dei tempi previsti per l’inizio della fase diocesana, tra l’altro conclusasi il 2 aprile dello scorso anno. Ora è in svolgimento la fase romana, essendo state consegnate alla nostra Congregazione tutte le documentazioni raccolte. Attualmente si sta elaborando la positio che conterrà le parti più rilevanti e significative del processo, ordinate in maniera sistematica ed organica, necessarie alle valutazioni dei teologi, dei cardinali e vescovi membri del dicastero poi sull’esercizio delle virtù eroiche di Papa Wojtyla. Una volta redatta e stampata la positio verrà esaminata dai vari organi collegiali della Congregazione". Di tempi, per ora, non si parla.

You really must check out the insightful piece by John L. Allen Jr., the nearly ubiquitous fair-minded former Rome correspondent for the über-liberal NCR. 

Here is the piece, with my emphases and comments but you should go over the site and give the sort of traffic spike you WDTPRSers can create!

2007’s neglected story: Benedict XVI and ‘Affirmative Orthodoxy’

By John L Allen Jr

Created Jan 3 2008 – 14:51

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

As the annual glut of year-end analysis and “Top Ten/Bottom Ten” lists draws to a close, here’s one striking fact about 2007 that so far no one seems to have highlighted: In this entire 12-month period, Pope Benedict XVI finished on the front page of the New York Times exactly twice.  [Ehem… I at this point have to ask, ‘Who really cares about the New York Times?’.  Do we really care what the NYT thinks of Pope Benedict?  This is a "dog bites man" story, in a sense, but let’s see where this goes.]

The first piece came on January 8, about the resignation of his nominee as Archbishop of Warsaw amid charges of collaboration with the Communist-era secret police; the second on May 7, in a look ahead to his trip to Brazil. Otherwise, all the other major papal stories of the year, from the Latin Mass and “one true church” documents, to the Austria trip and the encyclical on hope, finished well inside.

To grasp the significance of this result, consider that 2007 was essentially Benedict’s third year as pope. By way of comparison, John Paul II in his third year finished on the front page of the Times a robust 25 times. Even setting aside the 13 pieces devoted to the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt, John Paul still outpaced Benedict as a newsmaker at a comparable point roughly six-to-one.

One could explain the contrast in terms of personality – John Paul the rock star, Benedict the professor – but I suspect the more decisive factor was Benedict’s “back to basics” message in 2007. His core focus was Christ, especially the indispensability of Christ for efforts to build a more humane world. That was the scarlet thread running through his speeches in Brazil, it was the heart of his book Jesus of Nazareth, and it surfaced repeatedly in his other writings and addresses.

Frankly, a pope preaching Christ simply comes off as “dog bites man” stuff to most news editors.

Yet beneath this veneer of familiarity, there was something original about the way Benedict presented the Christian basics in 2007, so much so that I would nominate it as perhaps the year’s most important neglected papal story. To put the story in a sound-bite, I would call it the emergence of “Affirmative Orthodoxy” as an interpretive key to Benedict’s papacy.  [He might be on to something.]

By “affirmative orthodoxy,” I mean a tenacious defense of the core elements of classic Catholic doctrine, but presented in a relentlessly positive key.  [Is this really different than what Popes Paul VI and Pope John Paul II did?  Maybe Benedict XVI does it better?] Benedict appears convinced that the gap between the faith and contemporary secular culture, which Paul VI called “the drama of our time,” has its roots in Europe dating from the Reformation, the Wars of Religion, and the Enlightenment, with a resulting tendency to see Christianity as a largely negative system of prohibitions and controls. In effect, Benedict’s project   [!  Like a "Marshall Plan"?  Rebuilding from the ground up?] is to reintroduce Christianity from the ground up, in terms of what it’s for rather than what it’s against.

This spirit of “affirmative orthodoxy” was clear in Benedict’s first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, in which the pope laid out a philosophical and spiritual basis for the church’s teaching on human love. His encouragement for the International Theological Commission to set aside the hypothesis of limbo offers another example. Without softening the traditional teaching that Christ’s grace, normally mediated through baptism, remains essential for salvation, Benedict nevertheless put the accent on hope.

Two more recent examples make the point.

In his recent encyclical, Spe Salvi, Benedict once again takes a classic Christian doctrine usually seen as foreboding and gives it a positive spin. In this case the doctrine is the Last Judgment, often presented over centuries of Christian theology, preaching and art as an implied threat – obey God’s law or face eternal damnation.  [And it is that…] Instead, Benedict presents the Last Judgment as an expression of hope – specifically, hope that justice will ultimately triumph in a world in which evil and corruption too often seem to have the upper hand.

“Faith in the Last Judgment is first and foremost hope — the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries,” Benedict wrotes.

“I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in eternal life,” the pope said. “Only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing.”

Benedict provided another illustration of affirmative orthodoxy in his annual address to the Roman Curia on Dec. 21. This time the subject was evangelization, or the missionary drive to make converts to Catholicism.

In keeping with the thrust of a recent doctrinal note from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, [Which is pretty heavily Redemptoris missio, I think.  I must ask again if the term "Affirmative Orthodoxy" can be applied also to John Paul II?] Benedict insisted that the church cannot renounce the missionary imperative. Yet he argued that the motive for doing so is not that people will otherwise be damned, but rather that only through evangelization can the Kingdom of God announced by Jesus, with its promise of reconciliation and true happiness, reach its maximum potential in history.

“St. Paul actually felt himself under a sort of ‘obligation’ to announce the Gospel, not so much out of concern for the salvation of individual non-baptized people who have not yet heard the Gospel, but rather because he was aware that history in its totality could not reach its fulfillment until all people were reached by the Gospel,” Benedict said.

“It’s so important that forces of reconciliation, peace, justice and love reach humanity today,” the pope said. “It’s so important that these forces be aroused and reinforced, in the balance of human experience, over against the feelings and realities of violence and injustice that threaten them.”

“Through the encounter with Jesus and his saints, through the encounter with God, the balance of humanity is strengthened by those forces of good without which all our projects in the social order never become reality, but, facing the extraordinary pressure of other interests contrary to peace and justice, remain solely abstract theories,” Benedict said.

The traditional argument for missionary work has been the precariousness of individual salvation without baptism and the sacraments – in other words, a largely negative concern that souls may be lost. Benedict’s point of departure is different. The motive for mission, he suggests, is rather the positive conviction that the great human dreams of justice and peace must have Christ as their foundation, or else they will remain hollow promises.

To put the point differently, Benedict subtly shifted from an individualistic argument for evangelization to the collective welfare of humanity.

Benedict XVI himself provided the logic for “affirmative orthodoxy” in a 2006 interview with German journalists ahead of his trip to Bavaria. Here’s the relevant part of the exchange, as it was recorded by the German radio outlet Deutsche Welle:

Question: A month ago you were in Valencia for the World Meeting of Families. Anyone who was listening carefully, as we tried to do at Vatican Radio, noticed how you never mentioned the words "homosexual marriage," you never spoke about abortion, or about contraception. Careful observers thought that was very interesting. Clearly your idea is to go around the world preaching the faith rather than as an “apostle of morality.” What are your comments?

Obviously, yes. Actually I should say I had only two opportunities to speak for 20 minutes. And when you have so little time you can’t say everything you want to say about “no.” Firstly you have to know what we really want, right? Christianity, Catholicism, isn’t a collection of prohibitions: it’s a positive option. It’s very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. [Not because we didn’t hear about marriage and family from Pope John Paul II.] We’ve heard so much about what is not allowed that now it’s time to say: we have a positive idea to offer, that man and woman are made for each other, that the scale of sexuality, eros, agape, indicates the level of love and it’s in this way that marriage develops, first of all, as a joyful and blessing-filled encounter between a man and a woman, and then the family, that guarantees continuity among generations and through which generations are reconciled to each other and even cultures can meet. So, firstly it’s important to stress what we want. Secondly, we can also see why we don’t want something. I believe we need to see and reflect on the fact that it’s not a Catholic invention that man and woman are made for each other, so that humanity can go on living: all cultures know this. As far as abortion is concerned, it’s part of the fifth, not the sixth, commandment: “Thou shalt not kill!” We have to presume this is obvious and always stress that the human person begins in the mother’s womb and remains a human person until his or her last breath. The human person must always be respected as a human person. But all this is clearer if you say it first in a positive way. 

Let me try to put this “Affirmative Orthodoxy” in historical perspective.

Presented with a strong challenge to one’s deepest convictions, three basic psychological possibilities present themselves: [1] rejecting the challenge through a tenacious defense of those convictions; [2] recognizing the merits of the challenge, and adjusting one’s ideas and behavior as a result; [3] recognizing the merits of the challenge, and rearticulating one’s convictions in an effort to demonstrate that they satisfy the aspirations of the challenger better than the proposed alternatives.

Applied to the collision between Catholicism and modernity, one could say in extremely broad strokes that the first possibility dominated most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the Syllabus of Errors and the anti-modernist campaigns. It was a largely defensive reaction against secularism that still has echoes in influential circles of Catholic thought. The second possibility carried the day at the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and has defined the project of Catholic liberalism ever since: the drive to reform the church to better reflect some of the core values of modernity, such as tolerance, pluralism, and democracy.  [So perhaps this "affirmative" approach is not new with Pope Benedict.]

Much of church politics in the post-Vatican II era, again painting with a very broad brush, can be understood as a clash between these two impulses. To some extent, the third possibility has remained a path not taken, which is what makes the emerging outlines of Benedict’s magisterium especially intriguing.

How persuasive “affirmative orthodoxy” will prove, or whether it ultimately does justice to the challenge presented by modernity, remains to be seen. Those who believe the Catholic Church needs significant reform in its doctrines and structures obviously won’t find it satisfying. [Indeed they won’t.  I have a felling that Mr. Allen is speaking, perhaps, to the editors of the NCR.] But the concept of “affirmative orthodoxy” at least provides a unifying structure to understand what Benedict seems to be doing in drips and drabs, in ways that can otherwise seem difficult to anticipate or understand.  [And it is likely that the those who don’t find Pope Benedict very satisfying don’t understand what he is doing.  In that case, Mr. Allen’s label of "affirmative orthodoxy" might be of help.]

On a personal level, “affirmative orthodoxy” also marks a remarkable metamorphosis for Joseph Ratzinger – once known as the Vatican’s great “Doctor No” – who now seems to be angling to become the “Pope of Hope.”

For anyone with a sense of recent Catholic history, that alone ought to qualify as a news story.

At the very end of the piece, I am left with the question of whether Mr. Allen has in mind that Papa Ratzinger himself is trying to reshape his image. 

If that is the case, and I think I will ask Mr. Allen about that, then I suggest that Pope Benedict is only reshaping himself according to the dictates of his new office.  He is not Prefect of the CDF now. He is the Vicar of Christ.  This new role requires a new style.

I don’t have a problem with the term "Affirmative Orthodoxy".  It is okay to coin these terms, or provide them as "hooks" by which a mass of material might better organized and understood.  I do sort of the same thing.  For example, is use the image of the "Marshall Plan" for what I think Pope Benedict is doing: after the devastation he is trying to rebuild something viable in these times.  At the same time, I am not sure that the "affirmative orthdoxy" of Pope Benedict is all that much different from the style of Pope John Paul, or even Paul VI in many matters.  I am thinking of Humanae vitae for example, which both affirmed and, therefore, prohibited.

On another note, it strikes me that Pope Benedict is still quite capable of involving the concept of "No!". I also have rolling around in my mind the rapidly escalating battle in Italy over things like "civil unions".  Benedict, personally and through his coworkers in the truth, for example, Card. Bagnasco of Genoa and President of the CEI, is saying "No!" about many things.  They are working to keep Italy from going the way of Zapatero’s Spain.  That involves saying "No!" with some frequency even while trying to present a vision that will really satisfy the oppositions own desires better than their own plans.

Interesting article.