{"id":1694,"date":"2005-10-04T08:48:16","date_gmt":"2005-10-04T08:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/magisters-return.html"},"modified":"2005-10-04T08:48:16","modified_gmt":"2005-10-04T08:48:16","slug":"magisters-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/magisters-return.html","title":{"rendered":"Magister’s return"},"content":{"rendered":"

He’s been silent for a couple of weeks, but today Sandro Magister is back – no real news, but more of a summary of the Benedict papacy so far.<\/a><\/p>\n

The gist? Benedict wants the Church to be leaven, salt, seed and light, and is interested in encounter and dialogue with the world, from a standpoint of committed faith in Christ. <\/p>\n

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He demonstrated this during his trip to Cologne, in the heart of Protestant Europe. To the heirs of Luther and Calvin, Benedict XVI offered the image of a pontiff on pilgrimage to the relics of the Magi and in adoration before the sacred host: this is as Catholic as one can get, as far as one can get from a bare faith without pope, saints, symbols, or the \u201creal presence\u201d of Christ in the Eucharist, as is the state of modern Protestantism. <\/p>\n

He told the representatives of the Protestant communities that he does not believe in an ecumenism made of negotiations on how to democratize the Churches. For the pope, the first question to put on the agenda for Christians is how to bear witness to the Word of God to the world. And the second is how to respond in unison to the \u201cgreat ethical questions posed by our time\u201d without giving way to the reigning relativistic culture. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

{snip}<\/em><\/p>\n

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Another symbolic goal that Benedict XVI has outlined among his \u201cpriorities\u201d is the Holy Land. For a long time, Ratzinger\u2019s positions on Judaism have been among the most advanced of all in the Catholic world. And he restated these on August 19 while visiting the synagogue of Cologne. <\/p>\n

For the pope, the covenant God established with Israel is still valid, even after the coming of Jesus. But the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, is convinced that Israel has been repudiated by God and replaced with the Church. On September 8, Benedict XVI placed at Sabbah\u2019s side a coadjutor closer to his own outlook who is destined to succeed the patriarch, Fouad Tawl, a Jordanian by birth, formerly the archbishop of Tunisia. <\/p>\n

On September 15, the pope received at Castel Gandolfo the two chief rabbis of Israel, Shlomo Moshe Ama, a Sephardic Jew, and Yona Metzger, an Ashkenazi, who renewed the invitation to visit Jerusalem. <\/p>\n

And in mid-November he will be visited by Moshe Katsav, in the first visit ever made to the Vatican by a president of the state of Israel. <\/p>\n

Even with the Muslim exponents he met in Cologne on August 20, pope Ratzinger acted with all his cards showing. He did not visit the mosque, as they had asked him to do; he received them at the archbishop\u2019s residence with a great crucifix behind him. He urged them to become teachers of peace, even while so many bad masters are preaching in mosques and madrassas in Europe and throughout the world. <\/p>\n

Seven days later, on August 27, he received at Castel Gandolfo the writer Oriana Fallaci, the professed atheist so incendiary in defending Christianity from Muslim attack. <\/p>\n

But this audience was no surprise, coming from a pope like Benedict XVI. He has always sought out meetings with dyed-in-the-wool secularists, from the Frankfurt philosopher J\u00fcrgen Habermas to the famous aforementioned author of the \u201cLetter to a child never born\u201d and \u201cAnger and pride.\u201d On repeated occasions, including as pope, Ratzinger has asked nonbelievers to live \u201cquasi Deus daretur,\u201d as though God existed. One main motivation is that in today\u2019s world, \u201cmoral values can stand only if God exists.\u201d And another motive is that \u201cthis would be a first step for them in drawing nearer to the faith.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He’s been silent for a couple of weeks, but today Sandro Magister is back – no real news, but more of a summary of the Benedict papacy so far. The gist? 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}