Pope Benedict / Joaquin Navarro-Valls
Posted on 09/26/2009 12:14:02 PM PDT by NYer
.- Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who was the Vatican's official spokesman for 22 years, said in an interview that the Church currently has one of the brightest popes in history, and that one of the most unique aspects of Benedict XVI is his confidence in the rationality of individuals.
Navarro-Valls, who worked for almost two years with Benedict XVI, was interviewed by the Spanish daily El Mundo about his work at the Vatican and some aspects of the two Popes he served under.
Speaking about Benedict XVI, he said he considers him "the Pope with the largest and most brilliant personal bibliography in all of Church history. His conceptual wealth is fascinating. And I think people also outside the Catholic circles are aware of it. "
The former Vatican spokesman does not believe that the Holy Father is a cold person. "I would say the opposite. The manner in which he is moved—which is more frequent than believed—is to not react passionately in response to things,” he said.
He also found that the most unique aspect of his Pontificate is his "confidence in the rationality of people, in their ability to seek the truth," and the great obstacle he faces is, "as he himself said a few days before he was elected pope, the dictatorship of relativism."
Regarding his time with Pope John Paul II, which he has chronicled in some 600 pages of notes, Navarro-Valls said, "A year and a half ago, an American publisher offered me a $1.5 million to write that book. The problem is partly that in recent years I have accepted a number of professional commitments that have absorbed my time. I would have to set aside all of that and spend one and a half years locked in my room in order to write that book. For me it would be a moral imperative to write it, because John Paul was much loved but not entirely known,” he said.
According to Navarro-Valls, the late Pope’s “character and person were not sufficiently known.” For example, he noted, John Paul II “had a very great sense of humor. Even when we had to deal with tragic problems never lost his positive view.”
Regarding the cause of beatification of John Paul II, Navarro-Valls said that "from a strictly technical standpoint, it could be all set before the end of the year. The two steps that remain, technically speaking, are the decree on his virtues and the declaration of a miracle, several of which have been attributed to him, with one that is particularly clear. After that, everything depends on the Holy Father."
We are grateful to God for choosing this time to place him in our midst.
I guess he’s alright, I just get a funny feeling when a german guys on a balcony with thousands of people cheerin’ him on.
You wandered onto the wrong thread.
Collectivism, ftw!
Brilliant, humble man.
Viva il Papa!
Cardinal Ratzinger (now the Pope) wrote in his letter to Cardinal McCarrick back in 2004:
“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”
I think BXVI is well aware of the years left ahead of him and in the next few years we can expect a strong correction of some of the worst excesses of Vatican II. Indeed, some of these changes are already in progress like disciplining errant members of various spiritual orders.
Here’s one of then Cardinal Ratzinger’s primers:
Of course, what is essential is a correct understanding of the just autonomy of the secular order, an autonomy which cannot be divorced from God the Creator and his saving plan (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 36). Perhaps America’s brand of secularism poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God, and respects the public role of religion and the Churches, but at the same time it can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith becomes a passive acceptance that certain things “out there” are true, but without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separation of faith from life: living “as if God did not exist”. This is aggravated by an individualistic and eclectic approach to faith and religion: far from a Catholic approach to “thinking with the Church”, each person believes he or she has a right to pick and choose, maintaining external social bonds but without an integral, interior conversion to the law of Christ. Consequently, rather than being transformed and renewed in mind, Christians are easily tempted to conform themselves to the spirit of this age (cf. Rom 12:3). We have seen this emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion.
MEETING WITH THE BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
I wonder if there has been a pope so respected by the Eastern Church or in whom we have so much confidence, in the past 1200 years. I doubt it.
The right man, in the right place at the right time with his heart and mind firmly with God.
I have searched for the elusive phrase to describe the political moral vacuum that Bill O'Reilly labors disgustingly and ineffectively in....and, EUREKA.....I have found it!
Thank you, dear Pope Benedict.
Leni
In his book, Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith, it is understoodthat its' author, John L. Allen, Jr., wants us to believe that the German-born Ratzinger came to his current job carrying psycho-biographical baggage from his childhood under the Nazi regime (the cardinal was born in 1927, six years before Hitler took power). "Having seen fascism in action, Ratzinger today believes the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesiastical totalitarianism," Allen writes.
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