Sunday 15 December 2019

mass in EnglisH in Cartagena for: Anglosphere Expats, on a Med cruise, English as a second or third language, general interest , just because, cruise


Published in Laverdad newspaper in January 2019 

Question :  IF you should happen to   Know anybody in , or who will visit ,the general area of Cartagena , Spain /
Si le conoces a alguien que esta o estara en Cartagena 
{southern Murcia province ; Mazarron ,  La Manga , Mar menor, cabo palos Corvera,  Pilar de la Horodada  & Cabo Roig  (provincia de  Almeria, )Costa calida, Torre Pacheco, La manga golf and the other murcia golf resorts  etc}

a quien pueda/pudiera  interesarle asistir a santa misa en ingles 
por las razones que fuere, pues aunque sea x si acaso   todos*** los domingos A LAS 6 DE LA TARDE
who might be interested in hearing Roman Catholic Mass in English  normally ***EVERY SUNDAY , at SIX pm 
The Cartagena St Vincent de Paul /San Vicente de Paul /Parish Church 
Esquina calle Asdrubal con C/Ramon y Cajal en la zona de Cuidad Jardin , parte del  ensanche extramuros en pleno casco de Cartagena, 
a 15 minutos andando del Puerto Antiguo y el Arsenal, (amarrajes cruceros y yates,) con parada en la mismismisima puerta de autobuses de las lineas  1y 2, direccion sur, con paradas a menos de cien metros de las lineas 3, 5, 6 7, 8, y 9,  dos manzanas al sur del Corte ingles.
Muy facil , y gratis ,aparcar  muy cerca del  templo los domingos x la tarde.Para los Aficionados, el templo estara tal vez 250 metros al Oeste del Estadio Cartagonova, por el puente peatonal encima de la rambla del benipila.
Two blocks south
 of the Eastern entrance where the taxi rank is ,of the Cartagena branch of El Corte Ingles, (Spain's best known Department store chain 0, 
15 minutes' walk North from the old port  of Cartagena now used for yacht and cruise ship moorings (moorings are historicdonde hoy estan  next to the naval dockyard, the "Arsenal") 
Busstop for southbound buses 1&2   busstops for lines 3,5,6,7,8, &9 are within 200yards approx.
at 
the SVP church , a modern church building bang on the Corner of a main north-south Street :Calle Ramon and Cajal, aka Calle 18 to locals, and a minor East-west cross-street called  Calle Asdrubal (locals themselves  often mix up the crosstreets in this gridpattern part of town ) On Sunday afternoons /evenings Finding a free parking space   with nothing to pay, it being sunday, within 100 yards of the church is a dead cinch just off Ramon y Cajal street B


*** muy excepcionlmente / ***utterly exceptionally 
 AFTER/DESPUESDE
:LA ENGLISH MASS DE NAVIDAD 25/12/2019  at1800 -

UNTIL/HASTA  ENGLISH MASS DOMINGO at 1800,2 DE FEB 2020

 -no habra misas en ingles los domingos 5,12,20,26 de enero2020, 

volveremos a la normalidad de cada domingo a las 6 de la tarde en febrero2020 , dia 2  /
 -there wont be an English Sunday 1800 mass on the sundays of january 2020, thats no mass in English onJanuary 5th, nor on the 12th nor the 20th northe 26th , 
but regular sunday masses in english will start again on February the 2nd at 6pm and continue every Sunday as usual God willing.


.......SHARE THIS INFORMATION/LINKS WITH THEM .....or anyplace or anywhere
.......COMPARTE INFORMACION Y ENLACES







informacion
comprueba links:/ check out enlaces:
https://www.laverdad.es/murcia/cartagena/dios-expresa-ingles-20190130011257-ntvo.html

http://www.pqsanvicentect.org/principal.htm

Saturday 16 June 2018

Ireland .... and godsend NOT Argentina. Abortion is a domino.
Ireland is accelerating into where 50 years of legalized abortion have taken other states, other nations. Love is called hate speech and made illegal, perversion is called love, intolerance, love and tolerance. Doctors and nurses and midwives and hospitals see abortion enforced, The family taken over by the state, freespeech attacked and abolished , diversity of thought patrolled, soma in the drinking water porn at the fingertips the church ground down and bombarded....
Abortion aint where it ends,
It's where it starts .
Where nightmares come true .
One thing is a murder which is a crime against god and man ; a mortal sin is a mortal sin and every abortion is a woman's own child, a violence ripping into her personhood , into the womanhood stamped XX in every single cell of the trillions of her body and the working of every sinew, every neuron .. into ...........into .....into....
the ripples are great indeed
it's NOT a grain of sand falling into a pond.
Pause to recall the good news ,NOTHING is too much for God to forgive.
NOTHING is beyond the redemption of Jesus' sacrifice.
Christ is King
Christ is Lord,
God is truth ! God is love ! God is beauty! Praise him.
But the certain healing, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, even so may be hardish .
But WHAT then of the whole of a society , the members ,willing or willynilly, of a nation which sets up and accepts a vast STRUCTURE of sin , mills , admin, nurses, taxes, neighbours, parents children teachers judges magistrates police :
threads and knots in a overreaching overarching hierarchical network of mortal sin?
That
than a tiny pebble into a pond
is more like the fall out of the sky of that onetime massive meteor, some 60 million years ago, an asteroid, a planetoid , sending first burning hurricanes round the earth from the air squozed under it in its precipitous fall to hard by modern Yucatan ,leaving a crater,Chicxulub, so big that for years we could n't identify it, that smashed into our planet, into the sea to the seabed and further in , and further in, ,that wobbled the earth's orbit and awakened volcanoes across the globe, that in the microseconds of its explosive death-throes crushed and momentarily heated to the temperature of the surface of the sun the ocean and the very seabed, precisely at a buried home of millions of tons of the Devil's signature element ,Sulphur , hurling up and out to also hurtle round our globe open floodgates of hot muddy steamy superheated sulphuric acid that further devastated the face of the earth, as unimaginable megatsunamis hosed off all the fertile earth from the broad plains and high high into the hills and across the continents , all to the complete and utter end of the many many races and breeds and varieties of the dinosaurs, ...such is legalized abortion in society , and not as a one-off but a churning seething mill, everysecond, every minute, every hour, every day....
God gave us a still evenafteroriginalsin paradisiacal cradle....
and
we talk of fouling the nest with tuppence worth of plastic bags and some soot!
If society, if a nation and its authorities and its representatives and the flower of its minds and movers, its pharoes and their chariots and their brave men , can understand the concept of the environment it so quacks quacks quacks about
then,
if it cannot yet repent,
it should understand the concept of n
oosphere
...and tremble.

Monday 19 April 2010

tve etc on Papal visit to Malta -under consruction

Fisking in red with difficult vocab etc


Spanish TVE  tonight's nineoclock news had about  ten times  longer coverage of the POPE than has been par for decades.
BUT
V isual
About 3/4 footage( = length of a film etc) showed the  Pope in Malta ,
The remaining visual 1/4   alternated  between   theologian Hans Kung ( How Tragic!)
and  a certain Mr Luigi  "President" of"catholics for a reformed church" ( a body with "widespread support" - I ve never heard of them :perhaps they are everywhere and we just move in different circles?)
( clever camera + cutting and editing gave a visual contrast:
so that the viewer's brain retains the Pope  as a cold distant robot in public ceremonies and liturgies;  
Kung + Luigi   were both shown  close up, in comfortable living-rooms-studies,  warmly lit, and intimate, so that the viewer's brain retains an impression  of   kindly  warm human grandads )


audio:
90% voiceover on this reporrt of the Papal visit  was given by and about Kung, amd Luigi, both very critical of His Holiness, and the TVE commentator noncommitally weaselwording (Click for my post on weasel words)  AP, NYT, Times (Londonn) etc.(That is to say All the doubts raised about the pope, when cardinal, having covered up paedophile priests, ultraconservative, - the Angloshere  MSM narrative for over a month.)




The medium is the message.
The visuals + the audio say
Pope  cold and nasty


Abraham Lincoln said
You can fool some of the people all of the time, all  of the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time.

Just as well the sheerly stupid method of conversion via preaching got the big gun behind it: the Holy Spirit.


Preaching can get you stoned chained arrested flogged vilified etc with it of course, wi' shipwrecks thrown in
(which is why the Holy Father's in Malta,innit?)
But in the West, how few are trying it?
(And I can't putmyself on no pedestal thuswise neither.)
Risk factor for comfort + bodily integrity etc rather high.
rewards OTT./OOTW

TTony's translation of an article on hasn kung, hotcopied (i.e.without permission):


19 April 2010


Küng's Pathetic Call

.
Translated from Francisco José Fernández de la Cigoña's article here.

Theologian Hans Küng is a theological protester who refuses to be nothing in the Church. Aged 82, and forbidden to be a Catholic teacher, he lives in a past to which he clings, as it is the only thing he has left. Cheered on by the enemies of Catholicism and by the few contemporaries left within the Church who do not want to admit that nobody shares their youthful dreams any more, he keeps hold of the banner he once raised which has turned into tatters, faded by the passage of time.


At the end of his active life, and longing for days when he was considered to be a theological authority, he has called on the bishops to rebel against Benedict XVI. I do not know if it is because of an age-related condition or his overweening pride that he thinks that his voice is that of the Church. It is pathetic.

Not one bishop has answered his pitiful call.  Not one will, even though some of them are awful. The recent attacks on the Pope, in which Küng is a mere foot soldier, are only succeeding in making the Church close ranks in affection for the Holy Father. He is the rock upon which it is founded, without which it would not exist.
The positions taken by Küng and his followers only feed the anti-Church. The proof of this is that they are only taken up in anti-Catholic media, in which one can find some who still call themselves Catholics in spite of having sold out on the Church's Faith and Morals.

Hans Küng is one of them. He sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and is now choking, both because of his age and because even he has become bored with lentils, however hard it is for him to acknowledge the fact. Each day they taste more watery and have less substance.
He has only two choices. Either he overcomes the envy he has for his former fellow teacher, disappearing into history as in a few years he will not be remembered by anyone as he returns to the Father's house, or he ekes out the remainder of his days in a futile and pathetic protest.


Background for Malta :




ON THE ROCK WITH ST. PAUL
Contrasts in Christendom: Red Lights in Amsterdam, Neon In Malta

October 2006By Thomas Basil

Thomas Basil entered the Catholic Church in 1996. He resides in the Archdiocese of Baltimore with his wife and six children.

It is sunset in Bugibba. Small tourist hotels and shops crowd a Mediterranean boulevard teeming with holiday-minded Europeans. Most are surely unaware that their vacation spot ranks a full chapter in the New Testament, Acts 28. In A.D. 60 a shipwreck here changed this island forever. The Church of St. Paul's Bonfire now stands in the boulevard's median strip. Here a serpent tried to strike down the Apostle Paul after he was cast ashore on Malta.

Malta is a remnant speck of Christendom off the coast of a post-Christian western Europe. Malta is home to 365 Catholic churches, roughly one for every 1,000 residents. Of her 400,000 citizens, 98 percent profess Catholicism and, more significantly, 85 percent attend Sunday Mass. The national flag is the feudal eight-point Maltese cross. Malta's state university trains future doctors and engineers as well as future priests. Public schools teach Catholicism as a required subject. Political debate is not over a woman's "right" to abort, but over a couple's "right" to divorce. Malta quaintly outlaws both modern liberties.

Before arriving in Malta, my itinerary took me to Amsterdam, where liberties flourish. In her Red Light district, prostitutes in underwear pose in storefront windows in shops directly opposite an obsolete medieval cathedral. Paid by credit card, prostitutes ply their trade shielded from onlookers only by a curtain pulled across their street-level window. Their professional status is secured by a Dutch labor union for "sex workers." Other Amsterdam sights included its airport's "meditation center," which holds a Sunday "multi-religious" service in a "chapel" devoid of any cross, but with a large arrow on the floor showing the direction to pray toward Mecca; and the suburban Amsterdam parish near my hotel where an elderly nun tallied Mass attendance for me as "about 15 on Saturday night; on Sunday about 100."

Malta's equivalent to Amsterdam's Red Light district is an area known as Paceville. It too is jammed with passersby in search of a good time. But absent are store windows crammed with either prostitutes or obscene sex toys. Instead, its stores include souvenir statues of St. Padre Pio and ceramics of famous Maltese churches. Paceville's most provocative storefront has shelves filled with penis enlargement, breast enhancement, and other hedonistic potions. A neon sign blazes the shop's name: "Made in America."


You have two options:
  1. Online subscription: Subscribe now to New Oxford Review for access to all web content at newoxfordreview.org AND the monthly print edition for as low as $29 per year.
  2. Single article purchase: Purchase this article for $1.50, for viewing and printing for 48 hours.
If you're already a subscriber log-in here.




Back to October 2006 Issue


Read our posting policy Add a comment
Great read! Holland is fundamentally a conservative society, it's just Amsterdam where the craziness is evident.

I sense that Holland will politically turn to the right, as will most of Europe in the coming decades, as it deals with its demographic crisis. In othere words, it will continue to seek God substitutes and heaven on earth.
Posted by: caesium
October 20, 2006 05:57 AM EDT
C'mon, man! If Holland is a fundamentally conservative country then Islam is a fundamentally rational religion. If the Catholicism of Malta was emulated here in the US the anti-Catholics and irreligionists would do everything in their power to infiltrate it and destroy it. It would labeled intolerant,divisive, and separatist but would be a bit of heaven on earth. An example would be the anti-Catholic bias that have arisen around the orthodox Catholic community centered around Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida. Posted by: gwolak
October 22, 2006 11:15 AM EDT
If Holland is conservative...what does conservative mean? Holland is pretty much the antithesis of conservatism as I understand conservatism. It's anti-traditional, progressive, and faithless. Conservativism to me means traditional, status-quo, and religious. I don't think there is a nation in Europe besides Malta that can be called conservative. Maybe there are pockets of conservatism (Brittany in France), but not one conservative nation. Posted by: argaddini
October 22, 2006 10:57 PM EDT
Thanks for the article. I am trying to look into getting citizenship right now, in lieu of the Police states rising here. Just do not have many marketable skills and hard to move.

John Chance
catholicresistence.blogspot.com
Posted by: catholicresistence
October 27, 2006 01:10 PM EDT
As you probably already learned, you will have to get citizenship : in Malta, non-citizens are forbidden to work, because it would drive down wages to the point where, as in America, citizens cannot properly support their livelihood without highly skilled jobs, or both spouses working. It is nice to know there is still a country in the world that truly protects and serves its people. Does anyone know of another one? Posted by: Mike Ezzo
November 15, 2006 09:49 PM EST
Sorry to burst your American bubbles, but Malta is hardly going to save the world (I know because I live here in Malta). For all its good points (e.g., the proper influence of the Church on government, laws banning abortion, etc.), Malta is the equivalent of 1972 America. For example, the Church here is just realizing that its younger folk aren't going to Mass as much as their parents and grandparents. They believe the answer to this is to dumb down the liturgy in order to be more "relevant." Now where have you heard that before? Furthermore, the Catholic schools here in Malta leave a whole lot to be desired. The teachers at my daughters' school (one of the better ones, in fact) are not exactly fonts of piety or Catholic wisdom. Some aren't exactly bright lights either -- if you ask me. Another problem is that the Maltese obviously don't care much about Church teaching when it comes to contraception. Most families here have either one or two children, which makes for a whole nation of spoiled brats being reared. And finally, there is little sense of modesty in Malta. The young women and even middle age women, for example, look to Italy for their fashion queues. The result is a new generation of hoochies south of Sicily. Yes, it's true that the old ladies cross themselves as they get onto the busses and the sound of church bells ring in the air all hours of the day, but the piety ends there, I'm afraid. No puff pieces from tourists who visit for a day or a week are going to change that. I wish it were not so. Unless things change quite drastically -- and soon -- twenty years from now, Malta will be as Ireland is today. In fifty years, it will differ little from Italy or France. In 100, you might as well just visit Amersterdam. Posted by: nortemp
November 20, 2006 06:14 AM EST
...and I should also add that, contrary to Basil's article, the Maltese cross is not on Malta's national flag. It is the George cross that (controversially) appears on the Maltese flag. Malta, a former British naval base, received the George Cross from Great Britain after being bombed daily for three years by the Italians and then the Germans during World War II. In fact, the Knights of St. John were not Maltese, they were simply the rulers here in Malta for a few centuries -- and did a fine job of keeping Malta from becoming a Muslim country. The Maltese today, in fact, continue to do a fine job of that. Posted by: nortemp
November 20, 2006 06:21 AM EST
With all due respect, Mr. Nortemp, you haven't even bumped into
my bubble, let alone burst it. In fact the way you describe Malta makes it look
even better than the article did.

1. Less-than-pious priests? Surely you prefer that to homosexuals (many of whom are not celibate).

2. Girls hankering after fashion? That is universal and perennial.

3. Bad teachers? At least they are Catholics. In many American Catholic schools they aren't.

4. Two kids per family? Yes, but they are truly families, where
the children are raised by their biological parents.

5. Clergy wants to dumb down the liturgy? But they
haven't done it yet!

6. Lower Mass attendance for youngsters? Yes, but they
will almost certainly return to Mass-going when they grow up.

I don't know about 20 years from now. But right now, you are
as near paradise as it gets in the modern world. Just look at
what you DON'T have : abortion, gangs, divorce, euthanasia,
homosexual "marriage", stem cell research, bankrupt churches,
drug abuse, legal pornography, immigration problems, Christian
piety banished to the point where you can't even pray in school,
wear a cross necklace, or wish a customer "Merry Christmas".
Certainly you are glad to be free of all this. Please try to
appreciate what you have at least while you have it.
Posted by: Mike Ezzo
November 23, 2006 12:06 AM EST

Add a comment


© 2006 New Oxford Review. All Rights Reserved. October 2006, Volume LXXIII, Number 9. 
 POPE to MALTESE YOUNGSTERS:
Żgħażagħ Maltin u Għawdxin, jien kuntent ħafna li ninsab maghkom,

[Dear young people of Malta and Gozo, I am very happy to be with you,][...]Saint Paul, as a young man, had an experience that changed him for ever. As you know, he was once an enemy of the Church, and did all he could to destroy it. While he was travelling to Damascus, intending to hunt down any Christians he could find there, the Lord appeared to him in a vision. A blinding light shone around him and he heard a voice saying, "Why do you persecute me? … I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:4-5).

Paul was completely overcome by this encounter with the Lord, and his whole life was transformed. He became a disciple, and went on to be a great apostle and missionary. Here in Malta, you have particular reason to give thanks for Paul’s missionary labours, which spread the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean.
Every personal encounter with Jesus is an overwhelming experience of love. Previously, as Paul himself admits, he had "persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it" (Gal 1:13). But the hatred and anger expressed in those words was completely swept away by the power of Christ’s love. For the rest of his life, Paul had a burning desire to carry the news of that love to the ends of the earth.
Maybe some of you will say to me, Saint Paul is often severe in his writings. How can I say that he was spreading a message of love? My answer is this. God loves every one of us with a depth and intensity that we can hardly begin to imagine. And he knows us intimately, he knows all our strengths and all our faults. 

Because he loves us so much, he wants to purify us of our faults and build up our virtues so that we can have life in abundance. When he challenges us because something in our lives is displeasing to him, he is not rejecting us, but he is asking us to change and become more perfect. That is what he asked of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus. God rejects no one. And the Church rejects no one. Yet in his great love, God challenges all of us to change and to become more perfect.
Saint John tells us that perfect love casts out fear (cf. 1 Jn 4:18). And so I say to all of you, "Do not be afraid!" How many times we hear those words in the Scriptures! They are addressed by the angel to Mary at the Annunciation, by Jesus to Peter when calling him to be a disciple, and by the angel to Paul on the eve of his shipwreck. To all of you who wish to follow Christ, as married couples, as parents, as priests, as religious, as lay faithful bringing the message of the Gospel to the world, I say, do not be afraid!

You may well encounter opposition to the Gospel message. Today’s culture, like every culture, promotes ideas and values that are sometimes at variance with those lived and preached by our Lord Jesus Christ. Often they are presented with great persuasive power, reinforced by the media and by social pressure from groups hostile to the Christian faith. It is easy, when we are young and impressionable, to be swayed by our peers to accept ideas and values that we know are not what the Lord truly wants for us. That is why I say to you: do not be afraid, but rejoice in his love for you; trust him, answer his call to discipleship, and find nourishment and spiritual healing in the sacraments of the Church.
Here in Malta, you live in a society that is steeped in Christian faith and values. You should be proud that your country both defends the unborn and promotes stable family life by saying no to abortion and divorce

I urge you to maintain this courageous witness to the sanctity of life and the centrality of marriage and family life for a healthy society. In Malta and Gozo, families know how to value and care for their elderly and infirm members, and they welcome children as gifts from God. Other nations can learn from your Christian example. In the context of European society, Gospel values are once again becoming counter-cultural, just as they were at the time of Saint Paul.

In this Year for Priests I ask you to be open to the possibility that the Lord may be calling some of you to give yourselves totally to the service of his people in the priesthood or the consecrated life. Your country has given many fine priests and religious to the Church. Be inspired by their example, and recognize the profound joy that comes from dedicating one’s life to spreading the message of God’s love for all people, without exception.

I have spoken already of the need to care for the very young, and for the elderly and infirm. Yet a Christian is called to bring the healing message of the Gospel to everyone. God loves every single person in this world, indeed he loves everyone who has ever lived throughout the history of the world. In the death and Resurrection of Jesus, which is made present whenever we celebrate the Mass, he offers life in abundance to all those people. As Christians we are called to manifest God’s all-inclusive love. So we should seek out the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized; we should have a special care for those who are in distress, those suffering from depression or anxiety; we should care for the disabled, and do all we can to promote their dignity and quality of life; we should be attentive to the needs of immigrants and asylum seekers in our midst; we should extend the hand of friendship to members of all faiths and none. That is the noble vocation of love and service that we have all received. Let it inspire you to dedicate your lives to following Christ. La tibżgħux tkunu ħbieb intimi ta’ Kristu. [Do not be afraid to be intimate friends of Christ.]
Dear young people, as I take my leave of you, I want you to know that I am close to you and I remember you and your families and friends in my prayers.
"Selluli għaż-żgħażagħ Maltin u Għawdxin kollha." ["Give my greetings to all young people of Malta and Gozo."]

Surpising article in the usually very anticatholic trendy dreamy-lefty Guardian newspaper : my fisking in red

This pope is Romantic, not reactionary

Catholics like Küng fail to understand the long intellectual tradition which the pope seeks to preserve and extend
Five years after succeeding Pope John Paul II on 19 April 2005, Benedict is confronting the worst crisis of his papacy. The ongoing abuse scandal undermines(=minar, socovar) the church's credibility and reinforces all the usual stereotypes about the Vatican under his reign – a medieval theocracy ruled by an absolute autocrat who is reactionary and intolerant.

This view is not just bandied (To bandy sth about:  to spread gossip thoughtlessly or hotly )by atheists like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. Besides these usual suspects, prominent Catholics are also using the abuse scandal as a pretext to attack the pontiff.
In an open letter to all Catholic bishops published on Saturday, the Swiss theologian Hans Küng blames Benedict for the "church's worst credibility crisis since the Reformation". Essentially, Küng accuses the pope of restoring a reactionary vision of Catholicism that betrays the progressive reforms of the second Vatican council (1962-65) where both acted as periti – young theological advisors to the cardinals.

Not unlike much contemporary atheism, Küng's tirade(= rant,= a long unreasoned critical and insulting emotional angry speech or piece of writing)  owes more to ideology than to reason. His division of Catholicism (and other faith traditions) into a liberal, progressive and a conservative, reactionary wing is a modern, secular distinction that distorts the specificity of each and every religion. That's why Küng's pet project of building a "global ethos" is an abstraction from the unique character of diverse faith traditions – instrumentalising religion in the service of a dubious morality that amounts to little more than "being nice to each other".

This is a far cry from the universal ethical and other truths which all religions defend but on which they disagree with each other – for example, the status of love and the law in Judaism and Christianity.
By denying real universalism, Küng's "global ethos" is entirely compatible with modern secularism and the "dictatorship of relativism" which Pope Benedict has consistently denounced.
No wonder that Küng prefers a liberal Catholicism that emulates secular culture and in the process loses its unique, integral vision.

Worse, he also fails to understand the long, intellectual tradition which the pope seeks to preserve and extend – a kind of Romantic orthodoxy that eschews(= avoids, rejects, chooses not to include or rely on, connotation with certain disdain) much of the modern Reformation and Counter-Reformation in favour of the patristic and medieval legacy shared by Christians in east and west.
This legacy concerns the teachings on the church fathers and doctors like St Augustine, Dionysius or St Thomas Aquinas on the unity of nature and the supernatural against the modern separation of the natural universe from divine creativity and grace.
In short, Benedict rejects the modern dualism of nature and grace or faith and reason – as spelled out in his controversial 2006 Regensburg address.

The pope's argument is that these modern dualisms have paved the way for the disastrous separation of reason from faith, an opposition that underpins ( to underpin is to be a type of supporting below-ground foundation in buildings the increasingly bitter conflict between the absolute reason of extreme secularism (and atheism) and the blind faith of religious fundamentalism.
As such, Benedict's call to restore the "grandeur of reason" – whereby reason and faith require each other and are mutually augmenting – is far more radical and progressive than Küng's demand for more liberal dialogue.

In fact, the pope's intervention has already led to a much more intellectually vigorous and robust debate between Christians and Muslim – as evinced ( approximately= shown )by the permanent Catholic-Muslim forum. This was initiated in response to critiques of the pope's Regensburg address in which he linked violence in Islam to the priority of God's power and will over divine reason and intellect.

Küng blames Benedict for causing mistrust between Christians and Muslims, but the pope is right to insist that such trust is only authentic when based on a better mutual understanding of the real differences that exist between Christianity and Islam – the incarnation of God, the divine nature of Jesus and the Holy Trinity.

Nor does Benedict merely look back with nostalgia to the foundational creed and the councils of the early church. On the contrary, he links the patristic and medieval legacy to modern Romanticism with their shared emphasis on natural intimations of the divine and on human, artistic activity.

It is this Romantic tradition that has helped sustain and create the high culture which the pope champions. That's what underpins his defence of traditional liturgy (including the Tridentine mass) against the onslaught of "sacro-pop" – "parish tea party liturgies and banal 'cuddle me Jesus' pop songs", as Tracey Rowland so aptly writes in her book Ratzinger's Faith.

Beyond the liturgy, Romanticism is also key to saving secular culture from itself. By rejecting both absolute instrumental reason and blind emotional faith, the Romantic tradition outwits the contemporary convergence of soulless technological progress and an impoverished culture dominated by sexualisation and violence.

More fundamentally, it opposes the complicit collusion of boundless economic and social liberalisation that has produced laissez-faire sex and an obsession with personal choice rather than objective (yet contested) standards of truth, beauty and goodness – a concern shared by the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his seminal book Lost Icons.

Questions remain about how to translate Benedict's vision into a radical overhaul of the curia and relations between Rome and Catholic bishops. But far from being nostalgic or reactionary, this pope is an unreconstructed romantic who is bringing about an intellectual and cultural renaissance of Catholicism.

Your IP address will be logged

Latest posts

Free P&P at the Guardian bookshop

Guardian Jobs

UK

USA

  • Loading jobs...
jobs by Indeed job search
StatCounter - Free Web Tracker and Counter