Religion

Bergoglio, a Revolutionary His Own Way

Debatt

Skrivet av Sandro Magister

maj202013

Bergoglio Liberation theologians extol him, but between him and them there is a chasm. The progressives enlist him, but he keeps himself far from them. The true Francis is very different from the one that some imagine 

In an ongoing honeymoon with public opinion, Pope Francis has also gained the praise of the most revolutionary of the Franciscan theologians, the Brazilian Leonardo Boff: "Francis will teach a lesson to the Church. We are coming out of a bitter and gloomy winter. With him comes the spring.”

Boff set aside his religious habit some time ago, got married, and replaced his love for Marx with an environmentalist's fondness for mother earth and brother sun. But he is still the most famous and most frequently cited of the liberation theologians.

When, just three days after his election as pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio called for “a Church that is poor and for the poor,” his admission among the ranks of the revolutionaries seemed like a done deal.

In reality, there is a chasm between the vision of the Latin American liberation theologians and the vision of this Argentine pope.

Bergoglio is not a prolific author of books, but what he has left in writing is more than enough in order to understand what he has in mind with his insistent mingling with the "people."

Chains and terror

Debatt

Skrivet av Ioan Ploscaru

apr292013

Ioan PloscaruTo all of us, the Greek-Catholic priests and bishops, freedom was offered in exchange for switching to the Orthodox Church. To me personally they proposed this exchange a number of times beginning with my first arrest. But one cannot compromise with one's conscience. If I had given in, it would have been a great disaster for my conscience and a source of confusion for those among whom I was living.

In the memoirs I have written you will not find grave lamentations, much less desperate states of mind, because in offering all of these sufferings to God they become bearable. But I would not have been able to bear them alone, if Jesus had not been always beside me and all of us.

I considered our jailers as “instruments,” and against none of them do I make any accusation: on the contrary, I desire for those inquisitors true conversion to God and true and clear repentance for all that they have done.

I was in prison for 15 years, 4 of them in isolation. Freed in 1964, I was still monitored, shadowed, pursued. Even in the years afterward I have continued, at times, to be afraid. 

For all of the sufferings that I have had to bear, may God be praised unto the ages of ages.

AT THE "SECURITATE" OF TIMOSOARA

My cell was in the basement. The windows were broken, and the cell was very cold. I remained there for the whole month of December until January of 1950. The cold was torture for me. I was often taken to the interrogators at night. They would send me back and, after half an hour, I would be woken up again for another interrogation. The cold of the frozen cell consumed me. I slept very little, always with the urge to wake up again and move around. The chill came in through the broken window, leaving traces of frost on my beard and clothing. In three weeks I lost a great deal of weight. I prayed and offered all of the cold and all of the trials to the Savior.

Few Surprises. Francis Is Just That Way

Debatt

Skrivet av Sandro Magister

apr072013

FrancisThe first actions of the new pope reviewed in the light of his autobiography. The reasons for his silence on issues that most set the Church against worldly powers: birth, death, family, religious freedom

Outside of Argentina, very little had been published about Jorge Mario Bergoglio before his election as pope.

But now the translations of his writings, speeches, interviews are multiplying rapidly. And they are helping to make less surprising the actions of Pope Francis.

The following are some of these “surprises" small and large, which however no longer appear as such in the light of his autobiography, published in 2010 in Argentina in the book-length interview by Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti, entitled "El Jesuita," now on sale in other countries as well, including Italy.

Maktlöshet, väntan, överlåtelse. En påskaftonsbetraktelse

Debatt

Skrivet av Mikael Löwegren

mar312013

Omne vivum ex ovo

Död och uppståndelse

Debatt

Skrivet av Kristian Pella

mar292013

Et resurrexit tertia die secundum Scripturas

Påsken är både död och uppståndelse. Uppgivenhet och hopp. Julen är ett senare påfund då ingen vet när Jesus var född. Påsken är uppgivenhet, förväntan och underverk. I en äldre bibelöversättning kan man läsa:

 Vi gingo alla vilse såsom får, var och en av oss ville vandra sin egen väg; men Herren lät allas vår missgärning drabba honom. Han blev plågad, fastän han ödmjukade sig och icke öppnade sin mun, lik ett lamm som föres bort att slaktas, och lik ett får som är tyst inför dem som klippa det - ja, han öppnade inte sin mun (Profeten Jesaja).

 Påsken har inom europeisk tradition varit och är fortfarande en viktig familjehögtid. Under de år som jag levt i Japan är detta en aspekt som jag saknat – och ibland en tid då jag känner sorg. Kanske har påsken genom min uppväxt kommit att få en viktigare innebörd än julen för mig. Kanske också därför att den belyser en djupare dimension av livet som Kyrkan traditionellt har förmedlat genom kyrkoåret, med fastan, förberedelsetiden och glädjehögtiden. Årstiderna och livets växlingar. Pingst och Trefaldighetstid: då sommaren är som vackrast.

 Påsken är ett mysterium där troende kan kastas från sorg till glädje, från uppgivenhet till hopp. Det har denna funktion därför att det hos många speglar livet. Den stilla veckan kan vara en tid för kontemplation. Då man kanske väljer att avstå från något, eller på annat sätt betrakta det annars självklara med en viss självdistans.

Påve Bergoglio var inte en juntans man

Debatt

Skrivet av Mikael Löwegren

mar272013

Påven BergoglioDen massmediala logiken närmast krävde det. Efter glädje över en påve från tredje världen måste det komma kritiska röster. Men kritiken var varken särskilt välunderbyggd eller precis.

Två dagar efter det att argentinaren Jorge Mario Bergoglio blivit utsedd till påve och antagit namnet Franciskus publicerade Jon Weman ett inlägg i Aftonbladet och Ameriva Vera-Zavala ett i DN (15/3). Båda skrev svepande om den argentinska militärjuntans illdåd och de nu famösa anklagelserna om Bergoglios inblandning, under sin tid som jesuitprovinsial, i kidnappningen av två progressiva jesuiter 1976. Weman hävdar dessutom -- utan att ange någon källa -- att Bergoglio förfalskat kyrkliga protokoll från juntatiden och att han varit direkt inblandad i stöld av spädbarn. Såväl Weman som Vera-Zavala lyckas också komma in på frågan om homoäktenskap och homosexuellas rätt att adoptera barn.

Argentina var det land i Sydamerika där den Katolska kyrkan var minst oppositionell under juntatiden. Här finns mycket som ännu inte dragits fram i ljuset. De mörka åren hänger ännu över en kyrka som gick långt i medlöperi.

Över hela kontinenten fanns dock en skala av präster: från de som direkt stödde juntaregimerna, till sådana som mer eller mindre öppet stödde socialistrebellerna. De flesta agerade någonstans där emellan. Så vitt vi kan se, har det inte gått att hitta några belägg för att Bergoglio skulle varit en , än mindre inblandad i kidnappningen.

Såväl befrielseteologen Leonardo Boff som den argentinske fredspristagaren och människorättsaktivisten Adolfo Pérez Esquivel har -- enligt Kathpress 15/3 -- avvisat Horacio Verbitskys version av händelserna 1976. Och hade det funnit hållbara bevis skulle vi nog ha sett dem vid det här laget, när all världens medier nagelfar Bergoglio på jakt efter lik i garderoben. Hade han å andra sidan varit en motståndsman skulle det också ha kommit fram vid det här laget -- och åberopats till hans fördel. Allt tyder istället på att han var en mittenmänniska, som försökte hålla låg profil i en diktatur.

Pope, Bishops, Curia. The Reforms That Are Coming

Debatt

Skrivet av Sandro Magister

mar242013

Pope BergoglioA "council of the crown" around the pope, with cardinals from the five continents. A drastictrimming of offices. A shakeup for the IOR. Novelties and unknowns of the pontificate of Francis

John XXIII appointed his new secretary of state on the very evening of his election as pope. And he was the great diplomat Domenico Tardini, at the time an ordinary priest, not yet bishop or cardinal.

But that is prehistory, compared to the earthquake of today.

Pope Francis has arrived in Rome “from the ends of the earth,” and he is innovating the manner of governing the Church from on high, starting with himself. The reform of the curia will come. And many other things will come as well. But after “a certain time,” he has cautioned.

Meanwhile, he has told all of the heads of the curia whose mandates ended with the resignation of his predecessor to get back to work. “Temporarily,” and “donec aliter provideatur," until he, the new pope, decides. Since March 13 the Vatican curia has been a tremulous army of functionaries without a certain future.

At his first appearance on the loggia of the basilica of St. Peter, the newly elect Jorge Mario Bergoglio wanted two cardinals at his side. At his right his vicar for the diocese of Rome, Agostino Vallini, and at his left his Brazilian friend Cláudio Hummes, a Franciscan. A pair that personifies his program.

The new pope wants to be the bishop of Rome for all intents and purposes, as he implied immediately on the first Sunday of his pontificate, with the Mass celebrated in the parish of St. Ann on the border of the Vatican and the Borgo, amid a rejoicing crowd. He will go from church to church, he will visit center and periphery, “for the evangelization of this city that is so beautiful.” In direct contact with the people of the diocese which now is his “bride.”

Above all, Pope Francis loves to call himself “bishop of Rome.” But he also holds firm, and said so immediately, that “the Church of Rome is that which presides in charity over all the Churches.”

Toward the Conclave. The Pressure on the Cardinals

Debatt

Skrivet av Sandro Magister

mar032013

the CardinalsYesterday the vetoes of the governments. Today the onslaught of the media. The turbulent run-up to the election of the new pope 

The chair of Peter is empty. Joseph Ratzinger has left it with a clean break, and has left the future governance of the Church to a successor who is unknown to him, just as he is still unknown to the very cardinals who will elect him.

One cannot recall, in the last century, a previous conclave so much in the dark and so vulnerable to external and internal pressure.

But today it is the “fourth power,” that of the media, that is granting no truce to the cardinals called to conclave.

One of them has already fallen, the Scottish Keith Michael Patrick O'Brien. In one of his last acts as pope Benedict XVI expedited his resignation as archbishop of Edinburg, and he himself has announced that he will not go to Rome for the election of the new pontiff.

Another is former archbishop of Los Angeles Roger Mahony, censured by his own successor, José Horacio Gómez.

A third is former archbishop of Brussels Godfried Danneels. 

The indelible sign left by that pope

Debatt

Skrivet av Sara Magister

feb272013

Julius IIWe are following the trail of a voyager of five hundred years ago. Even to his faraway country had come the fame of the garden of ancient statues created in the Vatican by Pope Julius II (1503-1513). Having traveled across Italy, he had crossed the Tiber at the Milvio bridge, which still resounded with the echoes of epic battles. His destination was preceded by a vast and solitary area green with the lawns that covered it. And there it was, at the top of the Vatican hill, the crenelated and austere outline of the Villa Belvedere.

Beside it was, in a monolithic tower, the entrance ordered by Pope Julius to permit visits to his collection without his being disturbed in his pontifical apartments. There was nothing there to give a hint of the wonders inside, but once one crossed the threshold of the tower, there was the first surprise: its square base turned into the unexpected circle of the helical staircase designed by Bramante, the pope’s architect. One must have been struck even more by the breezy classicism of the columns that delineated its ascent, and by the unprecedented dynamism of the structure. From the loggia open at the top, then, the sensation must truly have been that of dominating with one’s gaze the entire city of Rome.

Here was the level expanse of the garden, but its view was still hidden by the entryway, at the top of which was a severe inscription taken from the Aeneid by Virgil (VI, 258): “Procul este prophani,” stay away, O profane ones! They were the words spoken by the Sibyl to Aeneas, at his entrance into the netherworld, and for Pope Julius II they meant that only the one who listened and moved with respect, as in a sacred place, could proceed further.

How to read the new "signs of the times"

Debatt

Skrivet av Francesco Arzillo

jan012013

marriageThe recent news according to which in northern Italy the number of civil marriages has surpassed that of religious marriages contributes to keeping attention alive on the issue of secularization and on the pastoral strategies most suited to addressing it, even in a country with a widespread presence of the Church.

It is easy to imagine that a statistic like this could be used – on the part of representatives of the ecclesial and media positions most polarized in the “traditionalist” direction or in the “progressive” direction – to bring into dispute the wager that has inspired the official pastoral stance of the Italian Church since the time of the presidency of Cardinal Camillo Ruini: a wager in favor of harnessing the historical and cultural idiosyncrasies of that which appears to be a real and proper “Italian exception” in the apparently irreversible trend of the process of European secularization.

At bottom, the two lines of thought mentioned – which disagree about almost everything – appear to agree in denouncing an excessive emphasis by the hierarchy of the Church on questions of bioethics and culture, to the detriment of attention to the foundation of the faith. Even if the traditionalists and progressives then give to this foundation interpretations inspired by antithetical perspectives, although essentially agreeing in attributing to Vatican Council II a role of substantial rupture with respect to the past.

It is worthwhile, instead, to continue to “sperare contra spem,” and to work as a result in the direction undertaken several decades ago.