Antiquitopia

The NYTimes reports that American Bishops and the Vatican take diverging approaches to President Obama. While American Bishops have been vocally adversarial (particularly on abortion rights), the Vatican has sought common ground on issues of the poor, redistribution of wealth, and so forth. These are the issues emphasized in the newest encyclical Caritas in Veritate, something which might highlight the differences between the Vatican and American Catholic leaders. July 10, 2009 U.S. Bishops and Vatican View Obama Differently By LAURIE GOODSTEIN Ever since he took office, President Obama has been given a cold reception by some Roman Catholic bishops in the United States who have repeatedly emphasized their church’s differences with him on abortion, birth control and stem cell research. But Mr. Obama is likely to receive a much warmer reception in the Vatican on Friday when he meets Pope Benedict XVI for the first time, experts on the church say. Both the pope and the president recogni...

I am usually somewhat repelled when Pope Benedict XVI makes an official statement, but I am intrigued by the new encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) recently released. In it, he basically softens anti-abortion language and calls for more socialized programs (medical, etc.) and redistribution of wealth. Someone has been reading the Gospel of Luke ! There are some responses to it here and here . Here are some snippets of comments from Thomas Reese, S.J. (the first link above): Pope Benedict's long awaited encyclical calls for a radical rethinking of economics so that it is guided not simply by profits but by "an ethics which is people-centered." "Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end," he writes in Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth), but "once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty." .... ...

The recently reinstated Holocaust-denying bishop has been asked to recant by the Pope. The Vatican, it seems, is responding to international pressure, especially in the Pope's native Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the Pope's recently stated positions on the Holocaust were not sufficiently clear or just weren't sufficient. The NYTimes reports: February 5, 2009 Vatican Demands Holocaust Denier Publicly Recant By RACHEL DONADIO ROME — Responding to global outrage, especially in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, the Vatican for the first time on Wednesday called on a recently rehabilitated bishop to take back his statements denying the Holocaust. Late last month, the pope revoked the excommunication of four schismatic bishops, including British-born Richard Williamson, who in an interview broadcast last month denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers. A statement issued on Wednesday by the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “mu...

I recently commented on the reinstatement of a Holocaust- (and 9/11-) denying bishop by the Vatican. Now the Vatican has issued a statement that says that the reinstatement does not mean that it agrees with the bishop's views. For text and commentary, see Rebecca Lesses at Mystical Politics .

It seems the Vatican is making a lot of news waves lately. The Pope's baffling and absurd statements about homosexuality about a month ago, and then the Pope establishing his own channel on YouTube to control his image yesterday. Then there are two recent stories relating to Judaism and the Vatican. One relating to antiquity and medieval issues and the other much more modern; the first regarding the many Hebrew manuscripts the Vatican houses and preserves, and the other, the Holocaust or the Shoah. Let's take the MSS first: Vatican catalogs its Hebrew manuscripts January 21, 2009 ROME (JTA) -- With the help of Israeli scholars, the Vatican has published a catalog of the Hebrew manuscripts kept in its library. Publication of the work, a Vatican communique said, "represents a significant example of co-operation between the cultural institutions of the Holy See and of Israel." The book, edited by the technical staff of the National Library of Israel, will be formally ...

According to Newsweek , the Pope is following in Barack Obama's footsteps and is launching his own channel on YouTube. B16 is entering the digital world...a world without boundaries. It has actually proven effective for a great deal of people: politicians and religious leaders. Evangelicals love YouTube--decentralized information networks as a means to disseminate their religious views, a tool of proselytization. But, ironically, it is also a tool of control: The Vatican said it was launching the channel to broaden Benedict's audience while also giving the Holy See better control over the papal image online. Why do they need to control his image? You might think they need to do spin control on the Papal or Vatican positions and how they are taken by the rest of the world: on birth control, homosexuality, etc. But they mean this quite literally: the actual visual image of the pope: "It's undeniable that certain images are already circulating," Celli said. Wh...

Ok...so I thought that Rick Warren's analogy between gay marriage and brother-sister marriage was bizarre. I also thought his analogy between homosexuality and pedophilia ridiculous--unless he is stuck in Periclean Athens. But the award for the strangest homosexuality analogy goes to Pope Benedict XVI: VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction. "(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration. "The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less." The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality "a d...

According to Reuters, Pope B16 has an open invitation to visit Iraq and help interreligious dialogue between the dominant Muslim population and the minority Christian population, much of which fled the country during the U.S. invasion. There has been some violence against the Iraqi Christians, particularly the targeting of clergy and churches by Sunni militants. One might recall that last February the Archbishop of Mosul of the largest of Iraq's Christian denominations--the Chaldean Catholics--was kidnapped and found dead two weeks later. Maliki thinks that the Pope's presence could help interreligious understanding, which is necessary for Iraq's future. See the full article here .