After what has been labelled as a significant address, discussion took place against the backdrop of the dicastery's annual plenary assembly.

The assembly focused on enhancing the liturgical formation for clergy and laity in line with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the Pope's recent reflections.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Council's foundational document on the liturgy, which set the stage for sweeping reforms intended to make the Church's rituals more accessible and meaningful to the faithful worldwide.

Pope Francis used this occasion to reiterate that genuine reform of the Church is impossible without a reinvigoration of its liturgical life.

"Without liturgical reform, there is no reform of the Church" declared the Pope. He outlined a vision of a Church that engages actively with its people's spiritual and pastoral needs, bridges divisions among Christians and proclaims the Gospel with renewed vigour.

During the address, Francis spoke passionately about the importance of priests' fidelity and their relationship with the Church.

Keen to animate the Church's mission in the modern world, Francis urged the Dicastery for Divine Worship to proceed in close cooperation with other Vatican bodies, such as the Dicastery for Culture and Education.

In affirming the centrality of the liturgy to the life of the Church and as a way of encountering Christ, he says the Dicastery's focus is to ensure the liturgical life of the Church is vibrant and a unifying force for Catholics around the globe.

Liturgy and church life a single coherent unity

"At its most profound level, Sacrosanctum Concilium articulates a renewed understanding of the Church, where the liturgy of the church and the life of the baptised form a single coherent unity.

"Sacrosanctum Concilium was the first Constitution issued by the Council, not only because of the decades-long research that preceded it and the liturgical reforms of Pope St Pius X and Pope Pius XII but, most importantly, according to Pope Benedict XVI, because the liturgical life of the Church is central to the very existence of the Church.

"2,147 bishops at the Council overwhelmingly approved Sacrosanctum Concilium" Dr Joe Grayland told CathNews recently.

Source

• CNA
• CathNews

Sixty years hence, we can reflect on the impact of this document on New Zealand's theological landscape and liturgical practices.

Sacrosanctum Concilium is the cornerstone of Vatican II because it addresses more than just ritual adjustments to the 1962 rites.

At its most profound level, it articulates a renewed understanding of the Church, where the liturgy of the church and the life of the baptised form a single coherent unity.

Sacrosanctum Concilium was the first Constitution issued by the Council, not only because of the decades-long research that preceded it and the liturgical reforms of Pope St Pius X and Pope Pius XII but, most importantly, according to Pope Benedict XVI, because the liturgical life of the Church is central to the very existence of the Church.

2,147 bishops at the Council overwhelmingly approved Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Only four voted against the Church's cornerstone document and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was promulgated by Pope St Paul VI on December 4, 1963.

Historical Snapshot

The journey of implementation unfolded gradually in New Zealand.

The bishops, cognizant of the sweeping changes, decided not to alter liturgical practices until the publication of the first Instruction on February 5, 1964.

Throughout 1964, New Zealanders, were kept abreast of liturgical developments through publications like Tablet and Zealandia, while the bishops prepared to implement the Mass in English.

On May 16, 1964, the decree permitting the use of English and Maori (vernacular) in the Mass reached New Zealand, outlining its application in parish Masses, Religious community Masses, and special occasions such as requiem and nuptial Masses.

A circular letter from the New Zealand bishops, dated July 10, 1964, further authorised changes in the Mass and extended permission for English in sacraments and funeral rites.

The final form of the New Mass was introduced on the First Sunday of Advent, 1970.

Throughout the late 1960s, religious women had been very prominent in the liturgical changes.

At the same time, they were exploring their original charisms under the guidance of Perfectæ Caritatis, the Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life (28 October 1965).

In New Zealand's four dioceses, some diocesan priests gave practical leadership to the reforms, many of whom used French, German, and English sources.

Most of these priests were associated with the St Paul's group at the National Seminary, Holy Cross during the 1950s which had been foundered by Basil Meeking, later Bishop of Christchurch, one of New Zealand's greatest advocates for the new Order of Mass (Novus Ordo).

In Christchurch, Bishop Brian Ashby displayed a nuanced approach to reform and emphasised practical ecumenism.

He established two commissions for Liturgy and Music with Fr Basil Meeking, playing a central role.

Indeed, Meeking was sometimes too Avant guarde in his approach.

There is much anecdotal evidence of his parish church resounding to the sounds of modern music long before this practice became popular.

And much to the horror and bewilderment of the majority of parishioners there was also the sight of liturgical dance.

In Auckland, Auxiliary Bishop, Reginald Delargey, emerged as the one who seamlessly embraced the reforms of Vatican II.

Delargey's enthusiasm came from his involvement with the Catholic Action or Cardijn movement.

Lay Catholic involvement was strong during this period of reform, especially from those involved in Catholic Action and the Young Christian Worker Movements.

Delargy's emphasis on the lay apostolate in theology and liturgy set him apart from Archbishop Listen (Auckland), Cardinal McKeefry and Bishop Sneddon (Wellington), and Bishop Kavanagh (Dunedin).

The Clergy and Laity

Both clergy and laity faced challenges transitioning from a rigid ritual practice of worship to one where the liturgy itself was seen as the principal way the Church does its pastoral work.

In short, the advent of Pastoral Liturgy.

Priests, accustomed to meticulous liturgical manuals, grappled with adaptability and laity, used to non-participatory forms of worship now had to adapt to praying the Mass and the sacramental rites with the priest.

Celebrating the Mass to the people (missa cum populo) for the priests meant facing the congregation and for the congregants, it meant seeing the priest presiding.

Consequently, altars had to be repositioned and lecterns introduced because previously the priest had read the epistle and Gospel at the altar.

Using our vernacular languages (English and Maori) was not new, but it was different, and new texts for shared proclamation had to be written and learned.

Although the "Dialogue Mass" with bi-lingual missals in Latin and English had been introduced in 1939, and Maori congregations had participated in the Roman Canon's prayers for the dead, these changes to language, posture and inclusion were significant.

As an example, our language changed from "going to hear mass" on Sundays to "celebrating the liturgy", or "celebrating the Eucharist" on Sundays.

"Liturgy", became a new word that, also, unfortunately, covered a multitude of mistakes as well.

Contemporary Context

Since the Council the voices for the reinstatement of the 1962 Roman Missal and the rites before 1962 became more strident, creating the so-called "liturgical wars", which as Pope Francis wrote in Traditiones Custodes, has led to a division in the church through their rejection of the Second Vatican Council as the Church's highest teaching authority.

Given this division, Pope Francis, guided by the bishops of the Church, abrogated the pre-Vatican rites and reserved permission to use them to the Holy See.

He did this to preserve the unity of the Church, through the use of the liturgical rites promulgated by Saints Paul IV and John Paul II.

Pope Francis has also offered Bishops' Conferences the opportunity to adapt liturgical rites further to local culture, language, and use.

This allows for the revision of many prayers in the current 2010 translation, excluding the Eucharistic Prayer.

The biggest danger to the New Zealand Church at present is the loss of 60 years of work towards a Church that is pastorally focused through liturgical prayer and responsive to the Signs of the Times.

Without this, the "self-revealing God" of the Scriptures and Tradition is replaced with devotionalism.

Many parish communities are endangered by laity and clergy who disenfranchise local communities through clerical structures and mentalities that belong more to the past than they do to the present.

Marking 60 years of Sacrosanctum Concilium is an opportunity to consider what the New Zealand Church has been through, tell the story, and ask those joining the Church to respond to this history in positive and life-giving ways.

• Dr Joe Grayland is a Liturgical Theologian and is currently a visiting professor at the University of Tübingen (Germany). He has been a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North for nearly thirty years. His latest book is: Catholics. Prayer, Belief and Diversity in a Secular Context (Te Hepara Pai, 2021).

Spanning multiple decades and contentious geopolitical eras, Kissinger's interactions with the Vatican reveal a tapestry of discussions and alliances.

In a notable instance in 1975, Kissinger was involved in a four-way conversation with Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Agostino Casaroli and US President Gerald Ford.

Kissinger, then the US Secretary of State, held a pivotal presence as the group discussed multifaceted issues ranging from the Middle East conflicts to European politics.

Records from the conversation shed light on Kissinger's rapport with the Vatican.

Paul VI referred to him as an "old friend," hinting at previous encounters that rose above mere diplomatic formalities.

Counsellor to popes

While Kissinger is best known for having the ear of presidents, he was also often a counsellor to popes.

His first meeting with Pope John Paul II came during a private audience in 1979. However, the meeting didn't occur under the most favourable of circumstances. Kissinger opined the choice of a Polish pope was a provocation to Moscow and might not be "good for humanity".

Despite initial reservations about Pope John Paul II's election, Kissinger's relationship with the pontiff blossomed. It led to frequent interactions over a quarter-century.

Kissinger's interactions with subsequent popes, including Benedict XVI, further underlined the depth of his engagement with the Vatican.

The German pontiff and the German-born Henry Kissinger had a very strong relationship. Such was their understanding that Benedict reportedly asked Kissinger to serve on an unofficial council of foreign policy advisors. The Vatican subsequently denied the rumour.

Kissinger AI warning

"The German philosopher Emmanuel Kant wrote an essay in the eighteenth century in which he said someday there will be universal peace. The only issue is whether it will come about by human insight or by catastrophes of such a magnitude that we have no choice" Kissinger told a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in 2007.

"He was right then, and he is right today, although some of us may add that it may take some divine guidance and not just insight to solve the problem" Henry Kissinger said.

Until his passing, Kissinger stayed abreast of global developments. His insights remained sought after, delving into contemporary topics like the advent of Artificial Intelligence. He cautioned against its potential for catastrophic peril, emphasising the grave dangers it could pose.

Sources

Crux Now

CathNews New Zealand

That headline appeared in the October 6, 1972 issue of the National Catholic Reporter.

"If insiders' reports are accurate, Pope Paul is faced with a threatened palace revolt over proposed changes in the procedures used to elect a pope," wrote Desmond O'Grady, the now-deceased Australian who was NCR's very first Rome correspondent.

O'Grady identified the three men who warned they would resign as Cardinal Franjo Seper, the Yugoslavian who was then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and two Italians — Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri (head of the Congregation for Bishops) and Cardinal Giuseppe Siri (archbishop of Genoa).

He said these three senior clerics feared Paul VI would cave into demands to substantially alter who could participate in the conclave that elects the Roman Pontiff.

The new plan evidently was to allow the presidents of national episcopal conferences to be part of the electoral body and to restrict the vote of the cardinals to only those who were in charge of Vatican offices or local dioceses at the time of the "sede vacante" (i.e. at the death or resignation of the pope).

Episcopal collegiality in the spirit of Vatican II

The proposal had been around for some time. One of its most vocal advocates was Cardinal Michele Pellegrino of Turin in Northern Italy.

Almost immediately after Paul VI named him bishop in September 1965, just a month before the start of the fourth and final session of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Pellegrino began clamouring for changes to the conclave's membership.

His views found substantial support among a good number of Council Fathers, but also stiff opposition from several heavyweights who were fixtures of the Roman Curia's old guard.

The opponents claimed any change in the papal electoral system could undermine the Bishop of Rome's standing as the Vicar of Christ and would reduce the pope to a sort of president of the combined local Churches.

But those who supported Cardinal Pellegrino's proposal — and they exist even to this day — believed that a conclave restricted to cardinals, which the Roman Pontiff chooses independently and at his own discretion, was not in line with the principle of episcopal collegiality in the spirit of Vatican II.

One of the most outspoken on this point was Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels (Belgium).

Pope Francis converges with Cardinal Suenens

In a long and carefully worded interview published in May 1969 in the French periodical Informations Catholiques Internationales, he argued — as he did in a book written several months earlier — for practical changes that would better foster co-responsibility at all levels of the Church.

Suenens' interview, which stretched over fifteen pages, was extremely important at the time of its publication, which was just a little more than three years after the Council.

Revisiting it today, some 53 years later, it is striking to see how the main topics he dealt with in that conversation are among the issues that Francis has made priorities in his pontificate.

They include rebalancing the relationship between the centre and the peripheries, papal primacy and collegiality, the bishop and his people, life and law, and the pope and the Roman Curia. And they also entail the status and mission of papal nuncios and, of course, the role of the College of Cardinals.

The current pope has given much attention to addressing these issues, save the last one.

His practice of giving the red hat to men in countries, dioceses and offices that have never before been headed by a cardinal does not address the issues that most concerned reformers like Cardinals Pellegrino and Suenens.

Paul VI takes another look

The problem is not just geographics. As the late Primate of Belgium pointed out in his 1969 interview, the College of Cardinals does not offer a "faithful image of (the Church's) diversity".

And the way its members are selected (arbitrarily and by the pope alone) does nothing to change that substantially. In fact, Suenens argued that it smacked of absolute monarchy and risked conveying who is in favour with the pope and who is not.

He also believed that lay people had to have some sort of role in helping select those in higher office, including the Roman Pontiff.

But Pope Paul, who was a close friend of Suenens', moved carefully on the issue. During a consistory to name new cardinals in early March 1973, he announced that he was looking into a different proposal to allow Eastern Church Patriarchs and the fifteen members of the Synod of Bishops' permanent council to participate in the conclave.

A few weeks later, he repeated this to officials in the Synod's secretariat. But, in the end, he did nothing.

That did not end the debate, however.

"A special enclave within the College of Bishops"

John R. Quinn, the late archbishop of San Francisco, offered a number of "possibilities" for changing the way the Roman Pontiff is elected in his 1999 book The Reform of the Papacy: the Costly Call to Christian Unity.

He acknowledged that the College of Cardinals was a "distinguished body" and that it "has performed great service to the popes and to the whole Church" during its thousand-year history.

But he said there were "three problems" that necessitated its reform — it is "a special enclave within the College of Bishops"; it's awkward relationship to the Eastern Churches; and its exclusive role in the election of the pope.

Quinn noted that the manner in which the Bishop of Rome is elected has changed over the course of the centuries. And while history shows that some of the earlier "procedures... were open to great abuse, it has also shown that the exclusive role of the cardinals in this process has also been open to abuse".

And while "confining the election to 120 cardinals at the most creates a manageable electoral body", he argued that this college "does not relate directly or structurally to the episcopal conferences".

Quinn insisted that "at least some of the presidents of conferences" merited a vote in the conclave. He also suggested representatives from religious orders and the laity "could be invited to express their view on the more important qualities they would like to see in the next pope".

The late archbishop admitted that it would be tricky to decide exactly who might be invited to do this, but said, "Whatever the problems involved, careful consideration should be given to how lay persons could be included."

Synodality and how bishops (and popes) are selected

All this sounds very much in sync with the synodal process that Pope Francis has been trying to make a constituent part of the Roman Catholic Church's communal life and decision-making process.

He has brought synodality — which includes the participation, in various ways, of all the People of God, ordained, lay and vowed religious — to bear on almost all areas of the Church, including the Roman Curia.

But he has done little to extend this to the selection and appointment of bishops and nothing to make it part of the election of the Roman Pontiff.

Francis has made scant use of the College of Cardinals as a consultative body.

But he is summoning all its members (both cardinal-electors and the men over 80 who have lost their vote in the conclave) to two days of meetings at end of August, only the third time he's held such a red-hatted summit in over nine years.

The stated reason is to "reflect on the new apostolic constitution Praedicate evangelium", the document he published on March 19 to put in place his reform of the Curia. Three months later, and despite the fact that the constitution went into effect on June 5, the text exists only in Italian.

What will happen in August?

A large number of cardinals, maybe more than half of them, do not have sufficient facility in Italian to read — let alone reflect on — this document. In any case, what will they be reflecting on? The reform is done.

It's now up to the pope to begin replacing the numerous Curia officials who are beyond retirement age or have worked many years at the Vatican, with new people who are willing to implement the reform energetically, collaboratively and according to the spirit with which it was written.

As for the meeting of cardinals in August, it's already been suggested here that it could be "the occasion and forum for Francis to make an important announcement about the future of his pontificate and when the cardinal-electors will have to exercise the one function reserved to them alone — elect the Bishop of Rome".

Of course, that is just a conjecture, but...

If Francis is planning to announce a date for his resignation, he may want to do it before all the world's cardinals.

It is not likely that he would step down immediately and probably not even in a few weeks' time, as Benedict did. What if, instead, he were to initiate a lengthier period of discernmentlasting several months or more?

Such discernment, if it is to include the participation of all the People of God, would require some concrete changes to at least the procedures the College of Cardinals follows.

It would be quite unusual if Francis were to do nothing

The 85-year-old pope has recently been keeping his cards to his chest more than usual, so we have no indication if he is actually even considering any significant changes to the conclave.

One might think it is a far too ambitious project for an elderly man who is currently giving so much of his energy to other major initiatives, most of them still in their infant stages.

But every pope in the last hundred years or so (at least those who have lived more than 33 days) has at least tweaked the apostolic constitution regulating the sede vacante and election of the Roman Pontiff.

It would be quite unusual if Francis, who has been revising or updating almost everything in the Church, were to do absolutely nothing.

Beware the ghosts of Pellegrino, Suenens and Quinn...

• Robert Mickens is LCI Editor in Chief.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Who would have predicted it?

Who would have imagined on Feb. 23, 1977, the day of his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador, that the highly conservative Oscar Romero - who was suspicious of the Catholic Church's involvement in political activism - would die a martyr's death for courageously defending his people against the murderous assaults of the Salvadoran government, military and right-wing death squads?

Romero's appointment was welcomed by the government, but many priests were not happy.

They suspected their new archbishop would insist they cut all ties to liberation theology's defense of the poor.

However, as Romero started getting to know the poor and how they were oppressed by the government and rich coffee plantation owners, his conscience seemed to gradually awaken.

But the most important event affecting Romero's decision to wholeheartedly stand with the poor and oppressed was the assassination of his close friend Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande; who was promoting land reform, worker unions, and organizing communities to have a greater voice regarding their own lives.

Romero, who was deeply inspired by Grande said, "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘if they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.' "

In a letter to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Romero warned that continued U.S. military aid to the government of El Salvador "will surely increase injustices here and sharpen the repression." Romero asked Carter to stop all military assistance to the Salvadoran government.

Carter ignored Romero. And later, President Ronald Reagan greatly increased military aid.

During his March 23, 1980 Sunday national radio homily, Romero said, "I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army … You kill your own campesino brothers and sisters … The law of God must prevail that says: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God … In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people … I beg you … I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!"

The next day while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the hospital compound where he lived, Saint Romero's loving heart was pierced with an assassin's bullet.

With numerous armed conflicts raging in various parts of the world, and the Vietnam War worsening, Pope Paul VI on Oct. 4, 1965 proclaimed before the U.N. General Assembly: "No more war, war never again.

It is peace, peace which must guide the destinies of peoples and of all mankind."

Unfortunately, in 1965 the world did not heed Paul VI's prophetic words. And sadly, it has not heeded them since.

Saint Paul VI in his prophetic encyclical letter Populorum Progressio ("On the Development of Peoples") wisely said, "When we fight poverty and oppose the unfair conditions of the present, we are not just promoting human well-being; we are also furthering man's spiritual and moral development, and hence we are benefiting the whole human race.

For peace is not simply the absence of warfare, based on a precarious balance of power; it is fashioned by efforts directed day after day toward the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God, with a more perfect form of justice among men."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

It reiterated the condemnation of artificial contraception for spouses.

Many in the Catholic world had been hoping for a change in the papal teaching based on the newer approaches of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the call to change the teaching that was in the "Majority Report" of the papal commission studying the issue, which had been leaked the year before.

But rumors began circulating in the spring of 1968 that the pope was going to issue an encyclical reaffirming the contraception ban.

Humanae Vitae raised two different issues — the teaching on contraception and sexuality, and how the church goes about its authoritative teaching role.

The second issue is more extensive and important and is the subject matter of this essay.

The authoritative teaching on contraception, as explained at the Vatican press conference releasing the encyclical, involves authoritative, noninfallible church teaching.

Defenders of dissent from such teaching, including myself, proposed three basic reasons to justify such dissent. (The day after Humanae Vitae was released, I was the spokesperson and leader of a group of theologians who issued a public statement saying that Catholics could dissent in theory and in practice from the teaching of Humanae Vitae on artificial contraception and still consider themselves to be loyal Roman Catholics. More than 600 Catholic scholars ultimately signed this statement.)

First, history shows that the church has changed its teaching on a number of significant moral teachings over the years, such as slavery, the right of the defendant to remain silent, democracy, human rights, religious liberty, and the role of love and pleasure in marital sexual relations.

Second, noninfallible teaching by its very nature is fallible.

Noninfallible is a subterfuge to avoid using the word fallible.

Third, the primary teacher in the church is the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Spirit speaks through the hierarchical magisterium, but the role of the Spirit is broader than the role of the hierarchical magisterium.

Through baptism all Christians share in the teaching and prophetic role of Jesus.

The strongest argument against the legitimacy of such dissent insists that the Holy Spirit guides the church and would never allow church teaching to be wrong in a matter affecting so many people in their daily lives.

Instead of helping people live the Christian life, would the Spirit allow the Church to lead them astray?

The strongest rebuttal is that slavery was a much more significant and important issue than contraception for spouses.

Immediately following Humanae Vitae, a firestorm of debate arose over dissent and its legitimacy, but as time went on, the debate has greatly subsided.

Catholic spouses are fundamentally no different from Protestant spouses in their use of artificial contraception in marriage.

The vast majority of Catholic theologians, but by no means all of them, recognize the legitimacy of dissent in the case of contraception.

Popes and bishops have continued to strenuously support the teaching opposing contraception, have never explicitly recognized the legitimacy of dissent and have punished some theologians defending such dissent, but they have not disturbed the consciences of those spouses using contraception.

Fifty years after Humanae Vitae, there is little or no discussion about this issue. Catholic couples long ago have made up their conscience on the issue of contraception.

Priests and confessors have overwhelmingly accepted in practice the legitimacy of such dissent.

Today, one could maintain that the present situation in the total church has justified the legitimacy of such dissent.

But there are problems with this present solution. Continue reading

• Image: The Catholic Thing

Gianluigi Nuzzi faced court over his last book (Vatican SpA) for leaking confidential Vatican documents.

His new book is called Original Sin: Secret Accounts, Hidden Truths, Blackmail and the Forces Blocking Pope Francis's Revolution.

The book will be released in Italy and France on 9 November.

Some of the documents reproduced in the book are said to come from the Vatican bank archives and the Institute for Religious Works.

The book is said to cover the period from Pope Paul VI in the 1960s to Pope Francis.

Nuzzi and fellow journalist Emmanuele Fittipaldi were tried in a Vatican court in 2015 after they published books based on leaked documents.

The documents exposed greed, mismanagement and corruption among the Church's senior clergy.

After an eight-month trial, the Vatican's criminal court said it had no jurisdiction to prosecute them.

It convicted Monsignor Angel Lucio Vallejo Balda, who was sentenced to 18 months, and public relations consultant Francesca Chaouqui, who was sentenced to 10 months.

Balda and Chaouqui were members of a dismantled Vatican commission set up to look into the Vatican's finances.

Chaouqui received a suspended sentence, while Vallejo Balda was granted "conditional freedom" by Pope Francis shortly before Christmas 2016.

Source

• Crux
• The Salt Lake Tribune
• Image: Chiarelettere

Paul VI issued his encyclical in 1968 after a commission of theologians and experts spent four years meeting to study in-depth whether the Church could be open to the contraceptive pill or other artificial forms of birth control.

In his encyclical, Pope Paul VI reaffirmed that sexual relations cannot be detached from fecundity. The event was a watershed moment in the Church.

The event was a watershed moment in the Church.

A study group from the Rome-based John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family aims to produce a paper on the development of the encyclical. The group is led by cultural anthropology professor Monsignor Gilfredo Marengo, who teaches at the institute.

Professor Marengo told Vatican Radio July 25 that the commission in the end "was not able to give Bl. Paul VI what he needed to draft the encyclical," and so the Pope "had almost had to start again."

He underscored that Bl. Paul VI's work was made even more difficult by the fact that "public opinion in the Church was very much polarized, not only between in favour and in opposition to the contraceptive pill but also among theologians, who presented the same polarized counter-position."

While the discussion was still ongoing, a document favourable to Catholic approval of the birth control pill was published simultaneously in April 1967 in the French newspaper Le Monde, the English magazine The Tablet, and the American newspaper the National Catholic Reporter.

The report emphasized that 70 members of the Pontifical Commission were favourable to the pill, but in fact, the document was "just one of the 12 reports presented to the Holy Father."

Those are the words of Bernardo Colombo, a professor of demographics and a member of the commission, writing in the March 2003 issue of "Teologia," the journal of the theological faculty of Milan and Northern Italy.

When Paul VI published Humanae Vitae, public opinion was thus already oriented against the Church's principles which the pontiff reaffirmed, and the Church's teaching was strongly targeted.

Prof. Marengo told Vatican Radio that "Humanae Vitae" deserved an in-depth study.

The professor's first impression is that when the study group's research is complete "it will be possible to set aside many partisan readings of the text" and will be easier to "grasp the intentions and worries that moved Paul VI to solve the issue the way he did."

The story of the encyclical dates back to 1963 when St. John XXIII established the commission to study the topics of marriage, family, and regulation of birth.

Pope Paul VI later enlarged the commission's membership from six to twelve people. Then he further increased its numbers to 75 members, plus a president, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and two deputies, Cardinals Julius Doepfner and John Heenan.

Then he further increased its numbers to 75 members, plus a president, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and two deputies, Cardinals Julius Doepfner and John Heenan.

After the end of the works of the commission, Paul VI asked a restricted group of theologians to give a further examination of the topic.

Pope Francis has shown great appreciation for Bl. Paul VI and for "Humanae Vitae" several times, such as in an interview March 5, 2014, with the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, ahead of two synods on the family.

Asked if the Church was going to take up again the theme of birth control, the Pope responded: that "all of this depends on how 'Humanae Vitae' is interpreted. Paul VI himself, at the end, recommended to confessors much mercy, and attention to concrete situations." Continue reading

Beatification puts Paul one step shy of formal sainthood.

The move might seem out of step with Francis' pastoral approach given that Paul's birth control ruling, in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, set the stage for the culture wars that overtook Catholicism after Paul died in 1978.

A wide swath of Catholics, especially in the U.S. and Europe, were furious over Paul's decision.

They were convinced that the ban would be lifted and that Paul was shutting down the reforms that had begun a few years earlier with momentous changes adopted by the Second Vatican Council.

Many conservatives, on the other hand, hailed Humanae Vitae for reasserting traditional doctrine, and the division foreshadowed the deep splits that have played out even in this month's high-level synod in Rome—a polarization that Francis says he wants to overcome.

Yet Francis is trying to accomplish that goal by focusing not so much on Humanae Vitae but on Paul VI's many other groundbreaking, though often overlooked, contributions:

1. Refomer

Chief among them was Paul's call for a more missionary church that would be open to the world and one that would dialogue with other Christians and other believers, and with nonbelievers, too.

"For us, Paul VI was the great light," Francis said in an interview in June, referring to his years as a young priest.

In addition, like Francis, Paul was a vocal champion of the church's social justice teachings, and he sought to embed those concepts as foundation stones of Catholic doctrine.

He also implemented a system of regular meetings of bishops, called synods, to promote a more collaborative, horizontal church.

That's a legacy Francis built on this month when he convened a free-wheeling synod of bishops deliberately modeled on Paul's vision. Continue reading

Sources

• U.S.Catholic
• Image: Catholic in Brooklyn

Frenchman Fr Louis Bouyer, who died in 2004, was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the Concilium which worked on the revised order of the Mass.

The priest's "Memoires" were published in French earlier this year.

They formed the basis for a commentary by Vatican scribe Sandro Magister last month, in a blog for the Italian publication l'Espresso.

The memoirs were particularly scathing of the role played by Concilium secretary Annibile Bugnini, who Fr Bouyer described as "contemptible".

Magister wrote how, according to Fr Bouyer's memoirs, Fr Bugnini would dismiss other committee members' concerns about certain changes by saying, "The Pope wants it so".

Following the reforms, Fr Bouyer wrote, he was discussing one in particular with Paul VI "which the Pope had found himself approving without being in any way more content with it than I was".

Fr Bouyer told Paul VI that he had been involved in the reform because he was told the Pope himself desired it.

But the Pope responded in turn, "but is it possible? He [Bugnini] told me that you were unanimous in approving it . . .".

Among the incidents recalled by Fr Bouyer is the composition of Eucharistic Prayer II.

"It was Bouyer who had to fix in extremis a horrible formula of the new Second Eucharistic Prayer, from which Bugnini wished to expunge even the 'Sanctus'," Magister wrote.

"And one evening, on the table of a trattoria in Trastevere, he had to rewrite the text of the new canon which is read today at Mass, together with the Benedictine liturgist Bernard Botte, with the added worry of having to deliver the whole thing by the following morning."

Pope Paul VI will be beatified by Pope Francis on October 19.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: PrayTell Blog

The Vatican announced that Francis has approved a decree attributing a miracle to the intercession of the Italian pope, and his beatification will take place at the conclusion of the bishops' synod on the family.

On May 6, the Italian news agency, ANSA, reported that the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints had attributed to Pope Paul's intercession the healing of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness.

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The miracle was the healing in the United States of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness.

Doctors forecast the baby would die in the womb, or be born with severely damaged kidneys.

Abortion was offered to the mother, but she refused.

Instead, she took advice given from a nun who was a friend of the family and who had met Giovanni Battista Montini (Paul VI).

The mother prayed for Paul VI's intercession, placing a fragment of his vestments and an image of him on her stomach.

Ten weeks later, medical tests showed a substantial improvement in the baby's health.

The eventual birth was by Caesarean section.

Witnesses agree the case cannot be explained scientifically.

Andrea Tornielli, writing for La Stampa, forecast that Pope Paul's beatification will be in October, at the end of the extraordinary synod on the family.

He predicted Pope Francis would promulgate a decree on the miracle soon.

It was Paul VI who established the synod of bishops in 1965, in response to a request from Vatican II fathers.

He was pope from 1963 to 1978.

Paul VI presided over key reforms from the Second Vatican Council, as well as surviving an assassination attempt at Manila airport in 1970 by a Bolivian surrealist painter.

Pope Paul promulgated a new Roman Missal in 1969.

The year before, he published an apostolic constitution reforming the Roman Curia

The late pope was praised for his efforts to seek closer ties with other Christian denominations, but his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae banning artificial contraception was controversial.

Pope Benedict XVI promulgated Paul VI's heroic virtues in 2012, bestowing on him the title "Venerable".

Sources

• The Telegraph
• UCA News
• US Catholic
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Salt and Light TV

Writing in L'Espresso, Sandro Magister noted there is growing pressure for a change in Church teaching on Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.

"There was similarly massive pressure for change in the 1960s, when the Pope had to decide on the legitimacy of contraceptives, with many theologians, bishops, and cardinals siding in favour," Magister continued.

"But in 1968 Paul VI decided against, with the encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae'."

This encyclical met with "bitter contestation" from entire groups of bishops and was disobeyed by "countless faithful", Magister explained.

But Pope Francis has said that he wants to take Humane Vitae as his own frame of reference, he added.

Magister cited Pope Francis's March 5 interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Pope Francis noted that, in Humanae Vitae, Paul VI urged confessors to be "very merciful and pay attention to concrete situations".

The Pope also said Paul VI had a "prophetic" genius and had "the courage to take a stand against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to exercise a cultural restraint, to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism".

"The question is not that of changing doctrine, but of digging deep and making sure that pastoral care takes into account situations and what it is possible for persons to do," Pope Francis had said.

Magister said that one "can truly expect anything" from Pope Francis, including a decision "against the majority" that reconfirms the indissolubility of marriage.

But this is "tempered by the mercy of pastors of souls in the face of concrete situations".

He noted reports of Pope Francis' phone call with a divorced and remarried Catholic in Argentina recently, in which the Pope allegedly said she could receive Communion.

While the contents of the call have been contested, such reports have the effect of creating a "driving crescendo of anticipations of change".

However, Magister suggested that the Pope could defy these expectations.

"As expert as he is in cultivating public opinion, Pope Francis is not the kind to be let himself become its prisoner."
Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Our Sunday Visitor

Experts at the Congregation for Saints Causes have recognised the healing of an unborn child through the intercession of the late Roman pontiff.

This is another step on the path to possible canonisation as a saint for Paul VI, who was one of the popes at the Second Vatican Council.

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Recalling that Thursday was the 45th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae makes me cringe. In fact, I am pained whenever the 1968 papal decree comes up for discussion. I feel like a person who has witnessed a tragic event and made an intense effort to turn over a key piece of evidence — the "smoking gun" — that would make the truth known only to see lawyers either misplace the evidence or fail to use it effectively. I contend the evidence I am talking about would have been climactic — making it virtually impossible for Pope Paul to ignore changing the church's current birth control policy, or conversely, if used today, make it relatively easy for Pope Francis to correct the church's second "Galileo affair."

For readers not around 45 years ago when Pope Paul promulgated the decree that renewed the Catholic church's ban on all artificial forms of birth control, it may be helpful to offer a brief review of that history. Pope Pius XI first imposed the ban in 1930, six months after the Anglican Lambeth Conference allowed its church's married couples to decide the issue by themselves. In October 1964, several Catholic bishops raised the issue of birth control during a discussion of marriage and the family at the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels pleaded with his brother bishops to study the issue and "avoid another Galileo affair. One [failure of the church to keep abreast of scientific advances] is enough." Continue reading

Sources

• Frank Maurovich in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Patheos

Frank Maurovich, founding editor of The Catholic Voice, left priestly ministry in 1977.

"Increasingly the institution of marriage is being replaced by simply living together, which has followed upon the sundering of the link between sex and fertility. This is not just a revolution in the area of moral norms; it reaches much deeper, into the very definition of man. If the drive which is innate in man as a physiological being conflicts with the optimum condition that we call a human way of life (sufficient food, good living conditions, women's rights), and therefore has to be cheated with the help of science, then the rest of our firmly held convictions about what is natural behaviour and what is unnatural fall by the wayside."

Milosz - who is buried in the basilica at Skalka in Krakow, traditionally held to be the site of the martyrdom of St. Stanislaus - had a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church. He was not a man who automatically accepted ecclesiastical dicta on the basis of religious authority. Thus his insight into the cultural consequences of cheap, effective and readily available contraception is all the more striking, in that it runs in close parallel to what Paul VI wrote in Humanae Vitae: an encyclical that was not so much rejected (pace the utterly predictable 45th-anniversary commentary) as it was unread, untaught, ill-considered - and thus unappreciated. Continue reading

Sources

• George Weigel in ABC Religion & Ethics
• Image: Letters to the Editor, etc

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

The meeting of Athenagoras and Paul VI in Jerusalem led to the rescinding of the excommunications of 1054 which formalised the Great Schism between the churches of East and West.

Bartholomew I also invited Pope Francis to Constantinople for the feast day of St Andrew on November 30.

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In the late evening of Aug. 6, 1978, a heavy iron chain was pulled across the door of the papal summer palace. All the lights in the area were turned off, and the flag was set at half-mast. The fountain on the village square in front of the palace ran dry, and the bells of the nearby church began to ring. These symbolic signs marked the end of Pope Paul VI's term in office. He had died at his summer residence at 9:40 p.m., a few hours after having a massive heart attack.

Just like his predecessors, Pope Paul had withdrawn from the Vatican when the hot summer months began, heading to Castel Gandolfo to enjoy the cool climate and relax during long strolls through the gardens at the almost 400-year-old papal palace.

At 8 p.m. on Feb. 28, 2013, the third papacy in the history of the Catholic Church will come to an end at this history-rich location in the Alban Hills, where Pope Benedict XVI will go while a conclave is held to choose his successor. It's a striking place, and not just because of its long history. It was here that Emperor Domitian (AD 81-96) once ordered the bloody persecution of early Christians. Roman emperors had come to appreciate the climate it offered at 426 meters (1,400 feet) above sea level, and Domitian had a palace erected here. Around 1200, the Gandolfi family from Genoa, which Castel Gandolfi would later be named after, built a villa here. Since 1596, the main part of what is now the papal summer residence has been owned by the Vatican.

Italian Occupiers

Urban VIII (1623-1649) had the massive summer palace built and was the first pope to vacation here. German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited the town in 1787, while on his famous Italian journey, and gushingly praised its idyllic location on the deep-blue Lake Albano. The popes held it in equal esteem, and almost all of them would make annual pilgrimages to the site. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Hello Daily News

Two steps are necessary before a date for his beatification is announced — a decree from Pope Benedict XVI and the recognition of a miracle attributable to Paul VI after his death.

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