A Church Persecuted? Yes by the Sins of Her Children, Sandro Magister, Chiesa, May 14, 2010

A Church Persecuted? Yes, by the Sins of Her Children

By Sandro Magister
Chiesa
May 14, 2010

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1343307?eng=y

This is the "terrifying" relevance of the message of Fatima, according to Benedict XVI. But the last word in the story is the goodness of God. To be welcomed with penance and a spirit of conversion

ROME, May 14, 2010 – Curiously, Benedict XVI spoke the most stunning words of his four-day trip to Portugal, centered on the visit to Fatima, before he landed in Lisbon, while he was still in flight, the morning of Tuesday, April 11.

And he spoke them in response to the journalists on the airplane, apparently improvising.

In reality, the words were carefully chosen. The questions had been presented to him ahead of time by the director of the Vatican press office, Fr. Federico Lombardi. And the pope had chosen three of them, the third of which concerned the "secret" of Fatima and the scandal of pedophilia.

Here is the third question with the pope's answer, in the transcript released by the Vatican offices, typical of spoken language:

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Q: And now come to Fatima, in some way the culmination, even spiritually, of this visit. Your Holiness, what meaning do the Fatima apparitions have for us today? In June 2000, when you presented the text of the third secret in the Vatican Press Office, a number of us and our former colleagues were present. You were asked if the message could be extended, beyond the attack on John Paul II, to other sufferings on the part of the Popes. Is it possible, to your mind, to include in that vision the sufferings of the Church today for the sins involving the sexual abuse of minors?

A: Before all else, I want to say how happy I am to be going to Fatima, to pray before Our Lady of Fatima. For us, Fatima is a sign of the presence of faith, of the fact that it is precisely from the little ones that faith gains new strength, one which is not limited to the little ones but has a message for the entire world and touches history here and now, and sheds light on this history.

In 2000, in my presentation, I said that an apparition – a supernatural impulse which does not come purely from a person’s imagination but really from the Virgin Mary, from the supernatural – that such an impulse enters into a subject and is expressed according to the capacities of that subject. The subject is determined by his or her historical, personal, temperamental conditions, and so translates the great supernatural impulse into his or her own capabilities for seeing, imagining, expressing; yet these expressions, shaped by the subject, conceal a content which is greater, which goes deeper, and only in the course of history can we see the full depth, which was – let us say – “clothed” in this vision that was accessible to specific individuals.

Consequently, I would say that, here too, beyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope, which we can in the first place refer to Pope John Paul II, an indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are gradually taking shape and becoming evident. So it is true that, in addition to moment indicated in the vision, there is mention of, there is seen, the need for a passion of the Church, which naturally is reflected in the person of the Pope, yet the Pope stands for the Church and thus it is sufferings of the Church that are announced.

The Lord told us that the Church would constantly be suffering, in different ways, until the end of the world. The important thing is that the message, the response of Fatima, in substance is not directed to particular devotions, but precisely to the fundamental response, that is, to ongoing conversion, penance, prayer, and the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. Thus we see here the true, fundamental response which the Church must give – which we, every one of us, must give in this situation.

As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church, and that the Church thus has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice. Forgiveness does not replace justice. In a word, we need to relearn precisely this essential: conversion, prayer, penance and the theological virtues. This is our response, we are realists in expecting that evil always attacks, attacks from within and without, yet that the forces of good are also ever present and that, in the end, the Lord is more powerful than evil and Our Lady is for us the visible, motherly guarantee of God’s goodness, which is always the last word in history.

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These words of Benedict XVI were a twofold shock for observers.

First of all because of the interpretation that pope Joseph Ratzinger made of the so-called "secret" of Fatima. An interpretation not confined to the past, as in the standard ecclesiastical interpretations, but open to the present and the future. "We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete," he said again to the faithful gathered at the shrine.

And then because of the statement that "the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from the enemies outside, but is born from sin in the Church." Here again he contradicts the views expressed by many ecclesiastics, according to whom the Church suffers primarily from the attacks brought against it from the outside.

But in both cases, Ratzinger did nothing but confirm and enunciate views he had formulated on previous occasions.

It should be enough to recall, for example, this passage from the homily – also improvised – that he gave during the Mass celebrated last April 15 with the members of the pontifical biblical commission:

"There is a tendency in exegesis that says: Jesus in Galilee had announced a grace without condition, absolutely unconditional, therefore also without penance, grace as such, without human preconditions. But this is a false interpretation of grace. Penance is grace; it is a grace that we recognize our sin, it is a grace that we know we need renewal, change, a transformation of our being. Penance, being able to do penance, is the gift of grace. And I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word penance, it has seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speak to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is grace. And we see that it is necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is wrong in our life, open ourselves to forgiveness, prepare ourselves for forgiveness, allow ourselves to be transformed. The suffering of penance, of purification, of transformation, this suffering is grace, because it is renewal, it is the work of divine mercy."

And on March 19, in the letter to the Catholics of Ireland, he had written similar things. For example, that the scandals of pedophilia among the clergy "have obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing." And that only a journey of penance, on the part of the entire Church of that country, could open the way to purification and conversion – in a word, to grace.

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But there's more. Also in the letter to the Catholics of Ireland, Benedict XVI had written that the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by priests "has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith."

In pope Benedict's vision, the weakening of faith is the greatest danger not only for today's world, but also for the Church.

So much so that he associates with this danger what he calls the "priority" of his mission as pontiff.

He wrote this with crystalline clarity in the memorable letter that he addressed to the bishops of the whole world on March 10, 2009:

"In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses 'to the end' (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."

And he said it again, in the exact same words, on the grounds of the shrine of Fatima, the evening of May 12 this year, in blessing the torches and before the recitation of the rosary:

"In our time, in which the faith in many places seems like a light in danger of being snuffed out for ever, the highest priority is to make God visible in the world and to open to humanity a way to God. And not to any god, but to the God who had spoken on Sinai; the God whose face we recognize in the love borne to the very end (cf. Jn 13:1) in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."

Speaking to the bishops of Portugal, on the afternoon of Thursday, May 13, Benedict XVI again proposed this priority for all Catholics of that country: "Keep the prophetic dimension alive, without muzzling it, on the stage of the present world, because 'the word of God is not chained!' (2 Timothy 2:9)."

But he also cautioned them that simple speeches or moral appeals are not enough to witness to the Christian faith. Sanctity of life is necessary.

The same sanctity that this pope has long been asking for, above all from priests. Especially in the Year for Priests that he envisioned, which is about to conclude next month, at the center of which he placed as a model a humble nineteenth-century country priest, the holy Cure of Ars.

Because "precisely from the little ones is born a new power of faith. From those little ones who were also the three little shepherds of Fatima.

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All the homilies and speeches of Benedict XVI in Portugal: