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."

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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

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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

- Adrian Pabst
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 April 2010 10.00 BST
- larger | smaller
- Article history

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.