VATICAN CITY — The cardinals and bishops who attended Pope Benedict XVI’s last big public appearance made sure to show him their love and respect, but it was a hard moment as well.
“There was a touch of sadness, as when one sees a person for the very last time,” said Archbishop Rino Fisichella after the Pope’s last general audience.
“Bishops and cardinals have shown a lot of respect, love and affection towards him here today,” he said.
Around 200,000 people from all over the world came to St. Peter’s Square to see Pope Benedict for the last time before he steps down as pope tomorrow evening.
Archbishop Fisichella, who is president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, said that the audience was important in two ways.
“The first is the great humanity of the Holy Father, because he has spoken about his suffering in taking this decision, but it has also been a big experience of faith,” the archbishop said.
“The living Church embraces the Holy Father and manifests its love, but it’s an experience of faith,” he said. “We have the certainty that the Holy Spirit is with us, and so is the Holy Father with his resignation; but he is present among us with his prayer and his presence.”
Archbishop Fisichella believes Pope Benedict has given “a testimony of faith and big hope to the whole Church” during his papacy. “With his testimony and his teaching, which has a very rich deepness, and with his presence, prayer and silence — which talks about true prayer that we need to give to God — he will continue to help the Year of Faith.”
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While not being optimistic about this, I am hoping against hope for real change being brought about by the next pope. Someone who will realize that the march back to the Middle Ages needs to stop and that the RCC needs to engage with the world with a 21st century perspective, not a 9th century perspective. Hans Kung today talked about his hope for a “Vatican Spring” and I could not agree more.
Lisa Kaizer: “Someone who will realize that the march back to the Middle Ages needs to stop and that the RCC needs to engage with the world with a 21st century perspective, not a 9th century perspective” “ Hans Kung today talked…I could not agree more.”
The Roman Catholic Church is built on Jesus Christ Who left us a Magisterium and Tradition handed down through HIS Apostles that is over 2,000 years.
All Catholics are called to evangelize by their life and example in obedience to Mother Church.
Especially her priests are called to uncompromisingly preach the unadulterated Gospel that Jesus commanded them to preach:
“Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”
It is most appropriate to recall at this time, what Pope St. Pius X, of happy memory, teaches us in his inspired Encyclical on Modernists for both laity and priests.
One would do well to study the: ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis_en.html
Also the Catechism on Modernists explaining this Encyclical http://archive.org/stream/catechismonmoder00lemiuoft/catechismonmoder00lemiuoft_djvu.txt
As for your agreement with Hans Kung the dissident heretic, you should follow him where ever he sets up his church. That will not be the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church which Pope St. Pius X speaks of nor will it be the Church that Jesus said: “The gates of hell will not prevail against…”.
TRUTH NEVER CHANGES. TRUTH IS ABSOLUTE.
We pray to God the Holy Spirit to enlighten the cardinals in their daunting task of choosing the next pope as Supreme Pontiff over the One, Holy and Catholic Church. It is timely for us the laity to hear what this pope had to say on the main and only duty of the pope…
‘The main and only duty of the pope is” the office divinely committed to Us of feeding the Lord’s flock has especially this duty assigned to it by Christ, namely, to guard with the greatest vigilance the deposit of the faith delivered to the saints, rejecting the profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called.
“there have never been lacking “men speaking perverse things” (Acts xx. 30), “vain talkers and seducers” (Tit. i. 10), “erring and driving into error” (2 Tim. iii. 13). Still it must be confessed that the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ has in these last days increased exceedingly, who are striving, by arts, entirely new and full of subtlety, to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and, if they can, to overthrow utterly Christ’s kingdom itself…”
“…partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; they lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they appear.
We allude, …to many who belong to the Catholic laity, nay, and this is far more lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, feigning a love for the Church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology…thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church…” and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they reduce to a simple, mere man.
3. We number such men among the enemies of the Church,… the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. …they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her.
Moreover they lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt.
Further, none is more skilful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious arts; for they double the parts of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error;… with pertinacity and assurance…
to deceive souls, …they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for the strictest morality. Finally, and this almost destroys all hope of cure, their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.
“…writings infected with Modernism or favourable to it…of this kind must ever be permitted to seminarists or university students. The injury to them would be equal to that caused by immoral reading - nay, it would be greater for such writings poison Christian life at its very fount. The same decision is to be taken concerning the writings of some Catholics, who, though not badly disposed themselves but ill-instructed in theological studies and imbued with modern philosophy, strive to make this harmonize with the faith, and, as they say, to turn it to the account of the faith. The name and reputation of these authors cause them to be read without suspicion, and they are, therefore, all the more dangerous in preparing the way for Modernism.”
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_x/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis_en.html
We see, hear and experience the result of this poison that has spread throughout the Church. One has only to listen to some of her priests, bishops, cardinals, nuns and even the laity.
May God protect His Church as He promised that “the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.”
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