New pope's style takes shape

menafn.com ^ | 07-17-05 | Roland Flamini

[Salvation]

Analysis: New pope's style takes shape

	UPI - Sunday, July 17, 2005

Date: Sunday, July 17, 2005 11:51:21 PM EST By ROLAND FLAMINI, Chief International Correspondent

WASHINGTON, July 17 (UPI) -- When Pope Benedict XVI left Rome for his two-week vacation in a chalet in the Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps last week he took with him a piano and three suitcases of books. This was a significant change from his more athletic predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who spent his holidays in the same location, but packed a knapsack and hiking boots.

Pope Benedict may have been chosen to provide continuity for the core beliefs of John Paul, but in his first three months in office he has shaped a style that is all his own. He has enjoyed no honeymoon from dissident theologians. Father Thomas Reese, the U.S. Jesuit whose dismissal from the editorship of the Jesuit journal America magazine was said to have been at the command of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger shortly before the latter's election, has attacked the new pope as the irreconcilable enemy of modernity.

But despite his reserve the intellectual pope "is captivating the crowds," reports Vatican expert Sandro Magister. "The same masses of the faithful that applauded the gestures or striking phrases of Pope (John Paul II), while almost completely missing what it was that he was talking about, are doing the opposite with the new pope," Magister says. "They follow Ratzinger's homilies word for word, from beginning to end."

----snip

The policies of the new papacy will emerge with greater clarity when Pope Benedict begins to nominate his own curia, or senior church government in the Vatican, beginning with the successor to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, whom the pope confirmed in his post for one year.

Also confirmed was the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls. But the Spaniard's closeness to Pope John Paul II, for whom he was virtually an alter ego, will not be replicated. For example, Navarro-Valls' responsibilities under John Paul II included publishing the pope's books. But Magister says that for his first book as pope, "Benedict's Europe in the Crisis of Cultures," Benedict XVI personally chose the publisher. The pope also personally selected 14 masterpieces of religious art to illustrate the church's new catechism.

The same traditionalist taste in European culture has led to a major change in the papal liturgies performed in St Peter's Basilica. Gone are the made-for-television folklore masses of the previous pontificate. Pope Benedict's preference is for Gregorian chant (his brother, also a priest, directs one of the best Gregorian choirs in Germany), and sacred polyphonic church music.

But he shares his predecessor's keen interest in reuniting Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has invited him to Turkey, and he would like to go. But so far the accompanying invitation from the government in Ankara has not been forthcoming; and given the pope's known opposition to Turkish aspirations to join the European Union may not come at all. The change at the Vatican seems not to have improved relations with the Russian Orthodox Church either. For years, Moscow Patriarch Alexei II had frustrated Pope John Paul's wish to visit Russia. One of the new pope's first acts was to send a senior Vatican prelate to Moscow to check out the situation, but the pope's envoy was not even able to meet with the patriarch.

---snip

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**The policies of the new papacy will emerge with greater clarity when Pope Benedict begins to nominate his own curia, or senior church government in the Vatican, beginning with the successor to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano**

More changes are coming!

[frogjerk]

He has enjoyed no honeymoon from dissident theologians. Father Thomas Reese, the U.S. Jesuit whose dismissal from the editorship of the Jesuit journal America magazine was said to have been at the command of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger shortly before the latter's election, has attacked the new pope as the irreconcilable enemy of modernity.

Modernity - the codeword for permissiveness.

[frogjerk]

The same traditionalist taste in European culture has led to a major change in the papal liturgies performed in St Peter's Basilica. Gone are the made-for-television folklore masses of the previous pontificate. Pope Benedict's preference is for Gregorian chant (his brother, also a priest, directs one of the best Gregorian choirs in Germany), and sacred polyphonic church music.

This is great to hear!

[trebb]

Modernity - the codeword for permissiveness.

Yes, but you misspelled "permissiveness"; it goes: A-P-O-S-T-A-T-E

[Salvation]

So true!

[kharaku]

I think the Moscow trip was actually very fruitful, Rome wasn't built in a day, JPII was trying for many years to get the trip to Russia to work, and it would be naive to think a new pope would make it happen so quickly. instead a plan to work together on many things was established and I think it bodes very well for the future.

[COBOL2Java]

Gone are the made-for-television folklore masses of the previous pontificate.

I for one will not miss the "Folk Mass"...

[Salvation]

Important point. We have to remember that it takes the church a long time to change. Baby steps are good.

[pgyanke]

...the new pope as the irreconcilable enemy of modernity.

Halleluiah!!!!!!

[redhead]

"I for one will not miss the "Folk Mass"..."

Around here, "folk" is "Polka," so we get the usual string of "Polka Masses" in the summer.

[ElkGroveDan]

When Pope Benedict XVI left Rome for his two-week vacation in a chalet in the Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps last week he took with him a piano and three suitcases of books.

He travels like my wife:

EGD: "OK the car's all packed, I can't get another thing in it or on that luggage rack."

MrsEGD: "I have one more thing. Can you see what you can do to make room for the piano?"

[tiki]

All I know is that I feel something every time I see a picture of him. I don't know what to call it, serenity, peace, confidence but it makes me smile every time.

[Pyro7480]

Pope Benedict XVI waves to pilgrims and tourists who gathered outside a mountaintop retreat to hear his first Sunday prayer in Les Combes, at the Valle d'Aosta in northern Italy July 17, 2005. REUTERS/Giampiero Sposito

[Schwaeky]

We can only hope one of the things changed is giving Marty Haugen/David Haas the boot...

Down down with OCP!!!

[Schwaeky]

It will probably come, it probably had more to do with Pope John Paul II being Polish, than the east west schism, because in other things the Russian Orthodox Church has broken with history.

[livius]

We can only hope one of the things changed is giving Marty Haugen/David Haas the boot...

Please make it be true!

Actually, I think the biggest change he could make would be orientation. If the priest celebrates facing the east (or at any rate, away from the people), gone is the insane, grinning grandstanding, and the other thing that will go very quickly is the "Ring Around the Rosy" music. That's where we all hold hands and dance around Father because he's such a wonderful guy and we're such wonderful PEEPUL OV GAWD.

[Schwaeky]

I'll just be happy if we say sayonara to the guitarzan mass (Mass of Creation/Mass of a Joyful heart, etc). It may not be the tridentine, but I can live with Mass in Honor of Pope Paul VI or the Danish Amen Mass.

[Schwaeky]

something I meant to say before, as for the Mass in Honor of Pope Paul VI and the more reverent versions of the Novus Ordo, the liturgical experimentation that came later (what I term the Guitarzan mass) is where my angry reaction that makes me, a person born more than fifteen years after Vatican II, willing to embrace the Tridentine Mass.