Popery
Here's the Pope's Message for Lent, all about justice and how to be restored to it.
Of course he intends it primarily for personal meditation as Christians journey through Lent and our annual period of repentance, but it's a pretty good summary of his mentor's City of God as well, in that he reiterates what Christians have to offer the political order (and what the political order can't, by its very nature, offer anybody).
The ultimate teaching is that Christ brings justice. How is a lovely meditation which can't be done...justice... in an excerpt, but here goes anyway:
Conversion to Christ, believing in the Gospel, ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need – the need of others and God, the need of His forgiveness and His friendship. So we understand how faith is altogether different from a natural, good-feeling, obvious fact: humility is required to accept that I need Another to free me from “what is mine,” to give me gratuitously “what is His.” This happens especially in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Thanks to Christ’s action, we may enter into the “greatest” justice, which is that of love (cf. Rm 13, 8-10), the justice that recognises itself in every case more a debtor than a creditor, because it has received more than could ever have been expected. Strengthened by this very experience, the Christian is moved to contribute to creating just societies, where all receive what is necessary to live according to the dignity proper to the human person and where justice is enlivened by love.Archbishop Chaput is doing a series of reflections on the Pope's letter. First installment here.
Someone apparently has given posting texts up for Lent, because neither his homily for this morning's Mass nor the full text of his audience are available yet. There's video, though (here and here, respectively). [Update: here's the Audience: "abandon superficiality," he counsels. Upperdate: Here's the homily]
- Address on natural law to the Pontifical Academy for Life:
History has shown us how dangerous and deleterious a state can be that proceeds to legislate on questions that touch the person and society while pretending itself to be the source and principle of ethics.
- Address at the Caritas shelter in Rome:
Man does not only need to be fed materially or helped to overcome moments of difficulty, but also has the necessity of knowing who he is and knowing the truth about himself, about his dignity. As I recalled in the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate," "without truth, charity becomes sentimentalism.
- Hey, the Pope's going to visit Doug Kmiec in April!
- Lent: resource round-up here; Archb. Dolan says get thee to Confession; 24 hours of Confession in NYC; Wed. evening confessions, every parish in DC. Possible penances. Three weapons you need for Lent; Spiritual Exercises on-line for Lent; Sr. Mary Martha doesn't approve of your penances.
- Algeria: prelate calls for religious freedom, state not happy, Samil Khalil Samil elaborates.
- Australia: traditional Anglicans vote to "pope." (Yay!)
- China: three bishops imprisoned, two priests released.
- Great Britain: Catholic bishops not making it easy on poping Anglicans, urge faithful to go on Lenten "carbon fast"; retiring Card. Murphy O'C urges Catholics to be brave;Tony Blair: Catholic ban "ridiculous."
- Iraq: fourth Christian this week shot in Mosul today.
- Ireland: This week the Holy Father had a two-day confab w/ the Irish bishops about the terrible abuse scandals there. Here's the Vatican's official statement about that meeting. Register story.
- Italy: The Shroud's going on tour again.
- Lebanon: bishop of Tyre on life for Christians there.
- US: thank to bigoted City Council, Archdiocese of Washington out of the foster care biz; Bishop Vasa cuts Church's ties with hospital performing sterilizations; renegade Phoenix priest laicized. First Extraordinary Form mass in years to be celebrated at National Shrine, celebrated by Card. Hoyos. And we're fighting about it. CA's bishops also urging carbon fast; was going to mock them, but they got the idea from DC. Petition for Mother Teresa stamp. Olympian becomes a nun; Controversy: should Catholic supporters of waterboarding be denied communion?; George Weigel's eulogy for his son-in-law.
