The reformers' vernacularisation went far, far beyond what the bishops of Vatican II had intended. It was still the intention, I seem to remember reading (in Father Hunwicke I think it was), to retain most of the Mass in Latin. I believe Archbishop Fulton Sheen, hardly a liberal, favoured a degree of vernacularisation. It seems quite possible that an 'organic development' of limited vernacular usage might not have proved a failure. As we now know, the extra-conciliar wreckers, when presented with an inch, unceremoniously grabbed a mile.
If one reads the documents that the signers of Vatican II signed about the changes in the Mass they agreed to and the Mass we got they are two separate things entirely. Essentially the original signers agreed only to change some parts into the vernacular so the people could follow along, but many parts were to stay in Latin. They also recognized that Gregorian chant was intrinsically linked to the Latin Rite and must stay as the music of the Mass. So in essence the Mass would stay just as it was with a few parts transcribed into local languages. This is how the Mass had always developed. Slowly and over time with few changes to it. Does that sound at all like what we got? Methinks not.
Are you saying that the songs "sing to the mountains" and "sing in a new church" did not come out of VII?
Dolours Maybe, having the Mass retain some traditional Latin language, was intended, but I must say, I am glad for the full vernacular (with some exceptions Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Pater Noster). In fact when the Our Father is prayed, I mentally say the Pater Noster. Indeed I would love if those prayers were sung in Latin (Missa de Angelis) I find an enormous change when I can immediately understand he prayers being said at Mass; it is just so awesome! God Bless
Pope Francis Has Launched a New Renaissance — in the Borgia Sense of the Word By John Zmirak Published on March 7, 2018 Management gurus tell us, “Personnel is policy.” Southern mothers say it differently. “You can tell everything about someone from his friends.” Historians will look at the men Pope Francis promoted. They will draw interesting conclusions. Meet one of the pope’s closest aides. Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga. He faces appalling charges of financial corruption. They keep getting worse. Maradiaga’s handpicked deputy stands accused of sex abuse. Maradiaga seems to have more in common with Marxist politicians than we thought. In socialist systems from Venezuela to Soviet Russia, the oligarchs might sound like ascetics. But in fact they live like Tsars. The only lubricant that can make a system as inhuman and pseudo-rational as socialism function at all is corruption. We will deep-dive into the latest scoop about the “Red cardinal.” But first let’s review some other men Francis boosted. (Be sure to click on the links for more.) Pope Francis’s Renaissance Cardinals and Advisors Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium. Pope John Paul II criticized him publicly. The reason? For allowing the complete collapse of faith in his country. Danneels waved on the legalization of abortion. And same sex marriage. He retired in disgrace. Danneels had bullied into silence a young man abused by a bishop. (The bullying turned up on audiotape.) The coverup led Belgian police to pry open a dead bishop’s coffin. Why? To see if Daneels had hidden documents there. Pope Francis plucked Danneels out of obscurity. He asked him to address the 2014 Synod on the Family. (Fair’s fair. Danneels had pushed Francis for pope in 2005.) Bishop Marcel Sorondo. In 2015 he vaunted Pope Francis’ statements on climate change. He claimed they’re of equal weight to the Church’s 2000-year stance on abortion. He recently praised church-smashing Red China. As a better example of “Catholic social teaching” than the U.S. Sorondo serves Pope Francis as the highest church spokesman on both natural and social sciences. Fr. Antonio Spadaro. He edits the quasi-official Vatican magazine La Civilta Cattolica. In 2016, he denounced Catholic pro-lifers and their Protestant allies. How? As advocates of “theocracy.” He also smeared the Christian Right. He claimed it opposes civil rights for minorities. Archbishop Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández. He’s widely cited as the “ghostwriter” for Francis’ Amoris Laetitiae. (A part of the baffling statement apparently reverses 2,000 years of Catholic practice on divorce.) Fernández also wrote Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing. As Andrew Guernsey wrote, “This book, filled with erotic poetry and images, and written by a priest, now an archbishop, who took a vow of celibacy, provides disconcerting insights into the bizarre mind of one of the world’s most powerful theologians.” Father James Martin, SJ, a gadfly media courtesan. He works to obscure the 6,000 year-old teaching on homosexual activity. Martin praised same-sex couples kissing during Mass. Martin encouraged priests to get ready for same-sex marriage prep. He called for bishops to condemn doctrinally faithful Catholic laymen for what they write online. Martin also twisted the teaching of his own order’s founder, Ignatius of Loyola. The goal? To claim that Jesus “wants” priests to apostasize in the face of persecution. Pope Francis made Martin a special adviser on communications to the Vatican. Help us champion truth, freedom, limited government and human dignity. Support The Stream » The Court of the Red Cardinal Now to the Red Cardinal. Many have called Maradiaga the “vice-pope.” He was widely seen as a new broom. He would clean out decades-old financial corruption at places like the Vatican bank. Certainly, his frequently Leninist rhetoric fits someone driving out the money-changers. In a vaunting address at the University of Dallas, Maradiaga quoted Fidel Castro fanboy Jean Ziegler. Maradiaga denounced the “world dictatorship of finance capital. … The lords of financial capital wield over billions of human beings a power of life and death. Through their investment strategies, their stock market speculations, their alliances, they decide day to day who has the right to live on this planet and who is doomed to die.” Speaking for himself, Maradiaga dismissed systems like America’s. He damned “neoliberal dictatorships that rule democracies.” He warned, “To change the system, it would be necessary to destroy the power of the new feudal lords.” But Maradiaga seems to have more in common with Marxist politicians than we thought. In socialist systems from Venezuela to Soviet Russia, the oligarchs might sound like ascetics. But in fact they live like Tsars. The only lubricant that can make a system as inhuman and pseudo-rational as socialism function at all is corruption. As socialists seek absolute power, they get corrupted absolutely. Or maybe a certain kind of envy-ridden, ruthless person craves socialism in the first place. So his palm is primed for grease. The healing balm of hidden cash has been flowing. The centrist outlet Catholic News Agency cited Italian magazine L’Espresso. Apparently: Maradiaga may have been involved in mismanaging Church funds, and may also have accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Catholic University of Tegucigalpa. The article said that Maradiaga is being accused of investing more than $1.2 million in some London financial companies, including Leman Wealth Management. Some of that money has now vanished, it said. Casaretto’s report was based on accounts from more than 50 witnesses, including diocesan staff members and priests, L’Espresso said. That magazine kept digging. It turned up Martha Alegria Reichmann. She and her husband were longtime friends of the cardinal. She accuses him of fleecing her and her family of their savings. As Google translates the Italian text of that piece, Reichmann said of Maradiaga: “In 2012, he pushed me and my husband to invest a lot of money into a London investment fund. Managed by a Muslim friend, Youssry Henien, who then disappeared into nothing with our money. more..........
continued..... We realized we were cheated. We did investigations, and found that this financier was already finished in the past in similar situations. I tried to contact Maradiaga, but was denied for months and months. I went to the Tegucigalpa cathedral when he celebrated mass, and I managed to exchange a few words. He told me that he was an injured party like us, that he too had lost money from the diocese, but he asked me for discretion.” Molested Seminarians Then there’s Juan José Pineda Fasquelle. Maradiaga handpicked him to manage his home archdiocese in Honduras. He’s also now accused of molesting his own seminarians. The eminently mainstream National Catholic Register reports: According to the first former seminarian’s testimony to Bishop Casaretto, Bishop Pineda “attempted to have sexual relations … without my authorization, during the period I was in service with him. In the night he came close to me and touched my intimate parts and chest. I tried to stop him. …” The second former archdiocesan seminarian testified that he witnessed firsthand an improper relationship between Bishop Pineda and a third seminarian, during a period when all three men were undertaking pastoral work together. … Subsequently, according to the second former seminarian’s testimony, Bishop Pineda undertook a series of punitive actions against him that defamed his reputation and culminated with his expulsion from the archdiocesan seminary. A Jewish Plot These alleged events occurred under Maradiaga’s nose. However, the Cardinal denied that a sexual abuse scandal even exists in the church. As Alan Dershowitz pointed out, in 2002 Maradiaga dismissed the epidemic of sex-abuse cover-ups. How? As the invention of Jews in the media. They allegedly targeted the church because of its advocacy for the Palestinians. Pope Francis seems to have launched a new Renaissance in the Vatican. It has all the corruption, hubris, sodomy and worldliness of the original. But none of the art.
Vatican Specialists: An Attack on Celibacy is Next Maike Hickson March 9, 2018 Considering the upcoming 2018 Youth Synod, as well as the 2019 Pan-Amazonian Synod, we may now learn more from two Vatican specialists who predict that the real theme of these synods will be priestly celibacy, and its step-by-step process of attenuation. The two journalists – Edward Pentin and Julius Müller-Meiningen – have quite different backgrounds, but they come to the same well-reasoned conclusion. Let us start with the German journalist first. Müller-Meiningen, writing for the German newspaper Die Zeit in its 8 March religion section Christ&Welt, speaks about the fifth anniversary of Francis’ papacy and about how he tries to change the Church. As the German journalist says, Francis chooses to change the Church, not with the help of a shock-and-awe method, but, rather, in a slow process, by “starting processes” and letting the Church herself make the steps, thereby supposedly “holding the Church together.” Pope Francis has introduced into the Church “an element with revolutionary potential,” whereby the pope seemingly does not make decisions “top down,” but, rather, lets the Church herself decide. This, says Müller-Meiningen, becomes clear when looking at the moral teaching of the pope. First, there is the new approach to the “remarried” divorcee question, then, says the journalist, there is “the attack on celibacy.” Describing the pope as a “shrewd tactician” who abolishes “absolute moral norms,” and allowing now for a laxening of doctrine, Müller-Meiningen says that the pope also employed in the case of marriage, “the trick” to have the bishops on the family synods present to him on a “silver plate” the result of allowing Holy Communion for the “remarried.” Here, Müller-Meiningen says some important words: “Thus, the course for the future was set.” This new principle, that a norm does not need to be applied any more to each individual case, can now be applied to the homosexual couples, to contraception, as well as to female priests,as the journalist explains. He describes “the attack on celibacy” as the “dominant theme of the second part of this papacy.” Here, the journalist refers first to the Die Zeit interview in which Pope Francis, in 2017, had already opened up to the possibility of ordaining married, but “proven,” men (“viri probati”). But more than that; according to the well-informed Müller-Meiningen, “the preparations for it are not at all vague, but, rather, follow a concrete timetable. As he says, there are already questionnaires being sent out throughout the world in preparation of the upcoming Youth Synod which will also discuss the matter of vocations. “Among these questions is also the question whether one has to be married or celibate for the priestly service.” The journalist continues, saying that the “main debate could then take place at the Pan-Amazonian Synod to be conducted in the Vatican.” The remote Amazon region “could turn into an experimental region for the whole Church, explains Müller-Meiningen, since that region currently has very few priests. In addition to this description of the upcoming agenda, the German journalist also gives other hints why one can expect this topic to come up. First, he refers to the recent comments by Cardinal Beniamino Stella, Prefect of the Congregtion for the Clergy, indicating a possible opening toward the broader recruitment and admittance of married priests. Second, he mentions the important role of Cardinal Cláudio Hummes who made, already in 2016, some critical remarks on priestly celibacy. As Müller-Meiningen points out, it is that same cardinal who helped Francis find his papal name (“Francis”) and stood next to him on the loggia of St. Peter’s at the day of Bergoglio’s election; he is also now the President of Repam, the Amazon network of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference, and himself the main inspiration of the upcoming Pan-Amazonian Synod. Our second source, Edward Pentin, argues in a way similar to Müller-Meiningen. In an 8 March article for the National Catholic Register, he asks: “Will Pan-Amazonian Synod Result in End to Clerical Celibacy?” He reports that the Vatican has now announced the members of the upcoming pre-synodal council which is to prepare the Pan-Amazonian Synod itself. He says: Also announced was the theme of the October 2019 synod: Amazonia: new pathways for the Church and for an integral ecology. Of particular, though not unexpected, interest are the appointments of Cardinal Claudio Hummes and retired Bishop Erwin Kräutler to the council. Both have advocated a change in discipline to allow married clergy in the Latin rite, and the Pan Amazonian synod is expected to provide a forum to at least discuss the matter. Bishop Kräutler, as we have ourselves repeatedly reported, is a strong promoter of married priests. According to an October 2017 report, this bishop is said to have already prepared a document for the pope to sign. Kräutler himself has also said that the pope has encouraged him to make “bold proposals” with regard to the question of the shortage of priests. Important to note, in this context, is that, according to Pentin, Pope Francis has wanted to introduce a synod on this issue, but it was voted down by the “the majority of members on the ordinary council of the Synod of Bishops, the body charged with drawing up the theme.” One of the ways to approach a laxening of clerical celibacy might be, according to Pentin, the allowance to be given to widowed deacons to remarry. So far, married deacons can not remarry, once their wives had died. The “status of unmarried and widowed deacons” was a topic at one of the C9 (Council of Nine Cardinals) meeting in June of 2016. more....
continued...... Earlier in his papacy, in 2014, Pope Francis also made the move to allow Eastern-Catholic bishops in the U.S. and in Canada to ordain married men, something that had been forbidden for the last 85 years. This decision might also be seen in light of the upcoming discussions about celibacy. As a National Catholic Register report says: According to the decree, Eastern-Catholic bishops all over the world may “ordain the Eastern-married candidates who come from their jurisdiction.” It adds they have the “obligation to inform beforehand” the local Latin-rite bishop in writing “in order to have his opinion regarding any useful information.” The article explicitly says that, formerly, these ordinations in the West – outside of the Eastern Catholic patriarchs – were suppressed, because the Latin bishops in North American “believed Eastern married clergy posed a ‘grave scandal’ to their faithful” and would thus confuse them. According to a 2014 Los Angeles Times report, entitled: “Number of Married Priests May Grow,” the original 1929 decree forbade married priests in North America: “In 1929 the Vatican promulgated a decree saying that Greek Catholic priests ‘who wish to go to the United States of North America and stay there, must be celibates.’” The article also adds the following words: “As Francis recently acknowledged, celibacy for Latin Rite priests is ‘not a dogma of faith.’ Therefore, he said, ‘the door is always open’ to change.” As an additional important piece of news, there now comes to us a report about some words recently spoken by the pope himself to rectors of German-speaking seminaries – which of course are known for their lack of seminarians. He stressed on 8 March that “the vocations, we cannot create” and added: As human persons and as priests we trust in the heritage of our experiences. At the same time, however, we must recognize that [there] are springing up new and different cultural forms that do not fit in the models known to us. We must strip ourselves of some habits we are attached to, and work with what is still unknown. In the following weeks, we shall present some additional articles dealing with this matter of priestly celibacy in a more fundamental way in order to prepare ourselves better for the upcoming discussions.
What I mean by "understanding" isn't about the words or language used. I'm talking about people's understanding of what the Mass is. I believe that pre-Vatican 11 people understood that the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary for our redemption; and that they had faith in the real presence in the Eucharist. Nearly all the older people I knew in pre-Vatican 11 days (almost all have since passed on) didn't know any Latin other than the hymns sung at Mass (and for many it would have been a kind of pidgin Latin) but they did understand the meaning of Mass and the Eucharist. Ordinary Catholics, not particularly pious or saintly, they displayed complete reverence for the Blessed Eucharist. Maybe they day-dreamed during Mass because they didn't understand the words. I don't know - one or two prayed the rosary and very few had missals - but you could hear a pin drop during the consecration so evidently they understood that something sacred and profound was happening on the altar. That they didn't all just troop up, row by row, to receive Communion irrespective of whether they had been to Confession or observed the fast showed that they didn't consider the Blessed Eucharist to be merely a wafer they were entitled to as a reward for showing up. Absolutely nobody entered or left the church without genuflecting towards the tabernacle. Neither did they chatter among themselves before or after Mass. Outside Mass times, people dropped in to visit the Blessed Sacrament and pray. They believed that Jesus was really and truly present in the tabernacle. Now everybody knows and understands the words and if they don't they have a leaflet to help them but I see no indication that knowing and understanding the words has contributed to a greater understanding of the Mass. On the contrary, there appears to be greater ignorance of the true meaning of the Mass and the Eucharist. Many mumble or rattle off the words (those who bother). It's just as easy to daydream while rattling off words you know by heart as it is to daydream while listening to prayers in an unfamiliar language. I'm not saying this to be judgmental. I have been guilty of all of the above and I know that my own laxity was fed by an atmosphere of irreverence which gradually crept into celebration of Mass post-Vatican 11. I think that the priest facing the people was as much a factor in that atmosphere of irreverence as the language change. That said, I agree with you that it's good to know and understand the prayers. One significant benefit from Vatican 11 was having the Scripture readings in English. It isn't beyond the capabilities of the Church to teach children the basic prayers in Latin but people need to hear the readings in a language they understand.
Having trouble viewing this email? | Email preferences A Message from the Editor Dear readers, We are delighted that Cardinal Sarah, one of the true, faithful stalwarts of the Catholic Church, will be speaking this Monday at the University of Toronto. The event will be live-streamed online. Details about the talk, and links to the live-stream are included in the story below. I hope that you will consider tuning in, as well as spreading the word about the talk. God bless! Livestream of Cardinal Sarah speaking in Toronto Monday at 7 p.m. EST By Steve Jalsevac The demand for tickets to the event have been so high that the venue has been moved off the U of T campus and into Toronto’s St. Michael’s cathedra
Analysis: Overturning Humanae Vitae's teaching, a 'crime against the Church' Card. Gerhard Ludwig Mueller. Credit: Daniel Iba?n?ez / CNA. By Andrea Gagliarducci Vatican City, Mar 9, 2018 / 04:16 pm (CNA).- Speaking at a presentation of a book on Humanae Vitae, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stressed Wednesday that attempts to change the Church’s teaching are “a crime against the Church.” “The current attempt,” he said, “to put in contrast the last three pontificates, with the pretext of imposing an heterodox teaching to the faithful is a crime against the Church and a betrayal of her mission and mandate, whose final task is that of preserving the faith authentically inherited by the apostles.” Cardinal Mueller spoke at the Lateran University, presenting the new book “Karol Wojtyla and Humanae Vitae,” by Pawel Galuska. The book traces Cardinal Wojtyla’s contribution to the drafting of Humanae Vitae. Cardinal Mueller’s remarks referred in particular to the article “Re-read Humanae Vitae in light of Amoris Laetitia” by the Italian theologian Maurizio Chiodi, who was recently appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. The article, published at the end of January in the Italian Bishop Conference’s outlet Avvenire - is drawn from a lecture Chiodi gave at the Pontifical Gregorian University, as part of a series of conferences organized by the Jesuit university in Rome to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bl. Paul VI’s encyclical. In his lecture, Fr. Chiodi said that “there are circumstances that require the use of contraception,” because in these cases the “technical intervention does not deny the responsibility of procreative relationships.” He also stressed that “the insistence of the Church’s Magisterium on natural methods cannot be interpreted, in my opinion, as a norm which is an end in itself, nor as a mere conformity with biological laws, because the norm points to an anthropology, to the good of marital responsibility.” In the end, Fr. Chiodi said, “an artificial method for the regulation of birth could be recognized as an act of responsibility that is carried out, not in order to radically reject the gift of a child but because in those situations, responsibility calls the couple and the family to other forms of welcome and hospitality.” By targeting Chiodi’s article, Cardinal Mueller was in fact targeting any attempt to change or “reinterpret” the teaching of Humanae Vitae. Professor Gilberto Marengo of the Pontifical Lateran University is presently heading a study group to trace back the genesis of the encyclical, and dismissed with CNA any attempt to change the teaching of Humanae Vitae. However, Cardinal Mueller described it as a secret commission, and said that this commission “will lead to no modification of the Catholic teaching.” Cardinal Mueller also stressed that the discussion is now “only based on dualism, and this will make a bad service to the Church.” Speaking about Humanae Vitae, Cardinal Mueller said that the encyclical “goes beyond the sterile polarization between artificial and natural birth regulation.” He also said that the encyclical is still current, as “the same questions are in place today.” Cardinal Mueller underscored that “secularization dupes men, depriving them of God,” saying secularization “does not imply any step forward in the path toward perfection. It is rather an anthropological deficit, as it abandons men to despair and uselessness. The paradigm of secularization is nihilism.” Humanae Vitae, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith maintained, “has a positive message, as it looks at men in their entirety.” The book by Galuska contains a report drafted by a group of scholars in Krakow around Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, constituting Wojtyla’s participation in Paul VI’s contraception study commission. The cardinal sent the report because he was not able to get a visa from the Soviet regime and personally present it in Rome. More importantly, the book publishes a letter Cardinal Wojtyla addressed to Paul VI in 1969. The letter praised the encyclical, noted that there were resistances and asked for a papal instruction to reiterate the message of Humanae Vitae. The book’s presentation was the occasion to debunk some “fake news” about the encyclical. Amidst a media campaign trying to dilute Humanae Vitae’s teaching, Cardinal Wojtyla’s 1969 letter was often characterized as an attempt to make the interpretation of the encyclical more rigid by asking Pope Paul VI to proclaim that its teaching was a dogmatic and infallible proclamation. Msgr. Livio Melina, former president of the Pontifical Institute John Paul II for Studies on Marriage and Family, stressed that “saying that Cardinal Wojtyla asked for an instruction to reiterate the infallibility of the encyclical is just fake news.” Instead, Melina said, that letter asked the Pope to explain that what Humanae Vitae said was part of the Church’s ordinary universal magisterium, and that the Church’s ordinary and universal magisterium is infallible. Msgr. Melina explained that “the letter must be read carefully. Cardinal Wojtyla did not ask Paul VI to declare that the encyclical is infallible. He just asked to reiterate that the teachings in it are part of the Church’s ordinary [universal] magisterium. And that magisterium is infallible.”
In addition to dissolving the degree of worthiness or unworthiness into a subjective abyss AL introduces, though always with unparalleled ambiguity and sophistry, the primacy of the individual conscience whenever the person’s way of life objectively and blatantly goes against the Will of God as we know it through the Church and Scripture. Which means that not only adulterers but people cohabitating, or in homosexual unions, or people ready to kill themselves through euthanasia, or people that publiclly support abortion, or people from other Christian churches, could also receive communion after an individual discernment without amending their lives. No pope or cardinal has the right or power to change the discipline in a way that dissolves and makes the Teaching a mere ideal, a mere decorative pillar, because they themselves are also bound by it in their daily lives, just like we all are, and for our own good.
David, I disagree with the author's appraisal that such infrequent reception can be considered virtuous. The Jansenist heresy which exaggerated the unworthiness of the communicant was the prime culprit, I believe. Though this 17th century heresy was valiantly resisted by saints such as Louis de Montfort, its influence penetrated well into the 2oth century. Now JoeJerk has flipped-flopped to the other extreme with the advancement of modernism. Never a dull moment! I do find the thought that vigil Masses prompted the relaxation of fasting rules intriguing. Thank you. Safe in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
I liked the article However I wonder if he is inaccurate The Communion fast in 1963 was three hours for food and 1 hour for liquids I think he contradicted himself at the end of the article Plus I was unaware of Vigil Masses prior to Vat II That is not saying there were none, but I sure didn’t know of any Just commenting
Vatican Seeks to ‘Change the Narrative’ on Immigration by Emphasizing the Positive The Vatican is looking to change people’s perspective on mass migration by highlighting positive stories to replace the negative accounts that dominate the media. Jesuit Father Michael Czerny, the co-secretary of the Vatican’s department for migrants and refugees, said that the Church needs to “change the narrative” on immigration, because “the public view is negative” in an address to members of the International Catholic Migration Commission on March 7. ...... The pro-immigration, George Soros-funded lobby group Carta di Roma lamented that the word “migrant” appeared 2,455 times in headlines, stoking people’s fears of immigration when they should be embracing it. The group also inadvertently noted that the crime rate has fallen off significantly as the number of immigrant arrivals has dropped. The group has been working to purge journalistic language of all references to migrants that could carry a negative connotation, including such terms as “illegal immigrants.” http://www.breitbart.com/london/201...e-narrative-immigration-emphasizing-positive/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/p...-prejudice-to-question-pope-francis-theologic Pope Benedict says it’s ‘foolish prejudice’ to question Pope Francis’ theological formation VATICAN, March 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) -- The newly-formed Vatican news agency is reporting that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written a letter saying there is an “interior continuity between the two pontificates” – that of Pope Francis and his own. Moreover, the letter speaks of the “foolish prejudice” of those who view Francis as lacking in theological and philosophical formation and Benedict as out of touch with concrete realities. The letter came, the Vatican says, after Pope Benedict was presented with a Vatican-published series of 11 books entitled “The Theology of Pope Francis.” “I applaud this initiative,” says the letter. “It contradicts the foolish prejudice of those who see Pope Francis as someone who lacks a particular theological and philosophical formation, while I would have been solely a theorist of theology with little understanding of the concrete lives of today’s Christian." The books, he says, “reasonably demonstrate that Pope Francis is a man with profound philosophical and theological formation and are helpful to see the interior continuity between the two pontificates, even with all the differences in style and temperament.” Watch Vatican News explain the letter:
