“Benedict XVI’s thought and magisterium are and always will remain fruitful because he knew how to focus on the fundamental references of our Christian life: first of all, the person and the word of Jesus Christ, as well as the theological virtues, namely charity, hope and faith,” the Pope wrote in the introduction to a new book.

The Vatican publishing house described the book “Dio è Sempre Nuovo”, (“God is Ever-New”), as a collection of the “spiritual thoughts” of the late pope, “an anthology of the principal themes of the Christian faith in the words of Pope Benedict XVI”.

The book was edited by Luca Caruso, communications officer for the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation, and was scheduled for release on January 14. The Vatican published Pope Francis’ introduction on January 4.

Pope Francis’ highest praise for theologians always has been that they “do theology on their knees” in prayer and with love for the Church.

“Benedict XVI did theology on his knees”, the pope wrote in the book’s introduction. “His explanation of the faith was carried out with the devotion of a man who has surrendered all of himself to God and who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, sought an ever-greater participation in the mystery of that Jesus who had fascinated him from his youth.”

The new book’s title, Pope Francis said, “expresses one of the most characteristic aspects of my predecessor’s magisterium and vision of faith: yes, God is always new because he is the source and reason for beauty, grace and truth”.

“God is never repetitive, God surprises us, God brings newness,” the pope wrote, and the “spiritual freshness” of the late pope’s writings confirms those affirmations “with intensity”.

Pope Benedict, he said, offered all Christians a model showing how “heart and reason, thought and affection, rationality and emotion interact” in both living and explaining the power of the Gospel.

The selected quotations, Pope Francis said, offer “a sort of ‘spiritual synthesis’ of Benedict XVI’s writings”, and demonstrate “his ability to show the depth of the Christian faith ever anew”.

Quoting just six words of the late pope – “God is an event of love” – is enough to do “full justice to a theology that always shows the harmony between reason and affection”, the Pope said.

Another book about the late pope also was scheduled for release in January.

The Italian publisher Piemme announced it would publish on January 12 a book, “Nient’altro che la Verità” (“Nothing but the Truth”) by the late pope’s longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein.

Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, said on January 4 that he had not spoken to the archbishop about the book so could not say if the publisher’s description was hype or reflected the contents of the book.

Piemme had said that with the death of Pope Benedict, “the time has come” for the archbishop “to tell the truth about the blatant calumnies and dark manoeuvres that tried in vain to cast shadows on the German Pontiff’s magisterium and actions.”

Photo: Retired Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis exchange greetings at the conclusion of a consistory at which Pope Francis created 20 new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Feb. 14, 2015. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis’ plans to visit the central Italian city of L’Aquila and its basilica on August 28 fuelled speculation of a possible announcement of his resignation, which he has firmly denied.

L’Aquila’s basilica is the burial place of St Celestine V, who issued a decree declaring the right of a pope to voluntarily resign, and then he did so in 1294. It was also where – on top of Pope Celestine’s glass casket – then-Pope Benedict XVI left his woollen pallium he had worn during his installation Mass – a gesture many wondered had been a sign of his resignation to come four years later.

In the more than 700 years that have passed since St Celestine established this legal precedent, the right of a pope to resign remains ensured in Church law.

The law is not very detailed, saying only that the decision must be made freely and “duly manifested”, and no one needs to formally accept a pope’s resignation for it to be valid.

That means nothing in canon law covers the legal status of the bishop of Rome who resigns from his office: What is his title, name, place of residence and means of support? What is his relationship with his successor, his role, responsibilities and powers in the Church? And how is his funeral and burial to be carried out? These are just some of the questions canon lawyers would like answers to as part of their task of avoiding confusion, promoting unity and protecting the dignity and rights of a retired pope in the wings.

One canon lawyer and consultor of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts said the “obvious symbolism” of visiting L’Aquila would be the perfect opportunity for the pope to finally promulgate legislation needed to fill many gaps regarding a pope who resigns.

The canonist, Geraldina Boni, told the Catholic News Service, “It is no longer inconceivable for a pope to resign, with this door having been ‘opened,’ as Francis himself has said several times”.

However, “this situation must be regulated”, along with what to do when a pope is unable to govern the universal Church when he is completely, permanently and irreversibly impeded or impaired because of a debilitating illness or other conditions, she said in an email response to questions in early August.

Boni is a professor of canon law at the University of Bologna’s prestigious “Alma Mater Studiorum”. She and other canonists launched a project in 2021 to draft legislative proposals that could be studied and discussed on an online platform with the aim of presenting the suggestions to “the supreme legislator”, the pope, for his consideration.

The proposed norms can be found at progettocanonicosederomana.com with a proposed “apostolic constitution” to regulate an entirely impeded Roman See, and one on the legal status or “canonical condition of the bishop of Rome who resigned his office”.

The Church owes tremendous gratitude to the shepherd who, “moved by faith and love for Jesus Christ, decided to accept and carry out, maybe for many years, the hard and difficult burden of the Roman pontificate”, the proposal on resignations says.

Therefore, it says, “rather than binding prescriptions drawn out of the canonical legislation, these provisions mainly include some appropriate orientations that will have to be applied with caution”, and they are intended to be “especially respectful of the personal dignity” of the retired pope.

Many of the suggestions mirror the approaches most often taken by retired Pope Benedict, who had to trailblaze a path forward when he stepped down.

For example, the proposal says “the manifestation of the resignation must preferably be put into writing and ordinarily presented in a consistory of the College of Cardinals or in another way that makes it publicly knowable”.

Also, “the name of the one who resigned can be the same that he used during his office”, he “may use the white cassock that Roman pontiffs usually wear”, and he may reside where he chooses, including Vatican City. The papal “fisherman’s ring” and the seal used to issue papal documents must also be destroyed, the proposal says.

But the biggest departure in the proposal from what Pope Benedict has done regards the retired pope’s title.

Instead of “pope emeritus”, the proposal says the retired pontiff “receives the title of bishop emeritus of Rome”, and he “uses the ring that every bishop must wear”. Some photos of the retired pope show him wearing his gold cardinal’s ring.

“The bishop emeritus of Rome does not assume or regain the dignity of cardinal nor the functions that are attached to it,” the proposal says, adding, “however, in liturgical and canonical matters the bishop emeritus of Rome has the privileges and faculties attributed to cardinals”.

The title, “pope emeritus”, has been a point of debate for some canonists, including Cardinal-designate Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a Jesuit theologian and canon lawyer who will be one of four new cardinals aged 80 or over Pope Francis will elevate on August 27 as a symbolic honour to thank him for his service to the Church.

At a two-day congress on the historical and canonical aspects of a papal resignation, held in L’Aquila last December, Cardinal-designate Ghirlanda said, “Having two people with the title of ‘pope’, even if one added ’emeritus’, it cannot be said that this might not generate confusion in public opinion.”

The idea of more than one pope at one time “dangerously mixes up the precise meaning of the Petrine ministry, which is that of being a sign of unity of the Church, therefore, one sign of unity of the Church”, he said in his talk.

He said retired Pope Benedict has a “deeply spiritual and mystical” understanding of his papal election in that one may resign from the office and continue to “carry out a function that is also part of the Petrine ministry”, such as a dedication to prayer.

Even though he believes the retired pope did not intend to be making some kind of “dogmatic or canonical” statement with his title, the cardinal-designate said a canon lawyer has to look at “the practical consequences of a theoretical statement: What does this imply? What really happens?”

Theoretical assertions “cannot be valid”, he said, if they contradict “the purpose for which one has an institution in the Church, particularly institutions of divine right”, he said. Such assertions “must be corrected or at least interpreted in such a way that they do not create misunderstandings and misinterpretations with serious repercussions for the life of the Church”.

“The title ‘former Roman pontiff’ or ‘former supreme pontiff’ could also have been given” to indicate the person who resigned is no longer pope, he said.

Boni told CNS, “We will see if the work done by us university professors has been considered – even in criticising it or departing from it – by the eventual drafters of any papal legislation”.

“Certainly the wide debate that has built up on the issue has helped dismantle a taboo that had no reason to exist,” she said.

Photo: Pope Benedict XVI views the casket of St Celestine V, a 13th-century pope who resigned, during his visit to the earthquake-damaged Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio in L’Aquila, Italy, in this April 28, 2009, file photo. Pope Benedict retired in 2013. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

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“Even though, as I look back on my long life, I can have great reason for fear and trembling, I am nonetheless of good cheer, for I trust firmly that the Lord is not only the just judge, but also the friend and brother who himself has already suffered for my shortcomings, and is thus also my advocate,” he said.

In response on February 8 to a recent report on sexual abuse cases in the German Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Pope Benedict also confirmed that an error in the testimony written on his behalf had been an oversight, and “was not intentionally willed and I hope may be excused”.

“To me it proved deeply hurtful that this oversight was used to cast doubt on my truthfulness, and even to label me a liar,” he said in a letter released by the Vatican on February 8.

However, the retired Pope, who headed the Munich Archdiocese from 1977 to 1982, emphasised his feelings of great shame and sorrow for the abuse of minors and made a request for forgiveness to all victims of sexual abuse.

“I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate,” Pope Benedict wrote.

“Each individual case of sexual abuse is appalling and irreparable,” he said. “The victims of sexual abuse have my deepest sympathy, and I feel great sorrow for each individual case.”

The letter comes after a German law firm released a report in late January on how abuse cases were handled in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

The report, compiled at the request of the archdiocese, faulted retired Pope Benedict, with lawyers accusing him of misconduct in four cases during his tenure in Munich. Lawyer Martin Pusch of the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl said the retired Pope had denied wrongdoing in all cases.

The Munich investigation followed two years of research and covered the period from 1945 to 2019, centring on who knew what about sexual abuse and when, and what action they took, if any. The report – made up of four volumes with almost 1900 pages – identified at least 497 victims and 235 abusers.

Pope Benedict had submitted an 82-page written statement to the panel conducting the investigation, and, in it, the former Pope had said he did not take part in a meeting in 1980 on the case of the repeat offender Peter H., who came to Munich from Essen.

The retired Pope amended that statement after the report came out, saying he was present at the 1980 meeting, but the meeting focused only on finding housing for Peter H. while he underwent therapy; the priest’s abusive history was not discussed, he said.

That statement, issued on January 24 on Pope Benedict’s behalf by his secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, said the error of incorrectly stating the retired pope had not been at the meeting “was not done out of bad faith, but was the result of an oversight in the editing of his statement”.

In his February 8 response, the retired Pope said there was a “small group of friends who selflessly compiled on my behalf my 82-page testimony for the Munich law firm, which I would have been unable to write by myself”.

“In addition to responding to the questions posed by the law firm, this also demanded reading and analysing almost 8000 pages of documents in digital format. These assistants then helped me to study and analyse the almost 2000 pages of expert opinions,” he wrote, adding that those results were published as an appendix to his letter.

He said that during this “massive” amount of work in establishing his position, “an oversight occurred regarding my participation in the chancery meeting of 15 January 1980. This error, which regrettably was verified, was not intentionally willed, and I hope may be excused”.

This error should not “detract from the care and diligence” with which his friends helped formulate his response, he said.

And while it was “deeply hurtful” for the oversight to have been used to cast doubt on him, Pope Benedict wrote, “I have been greatly moved by the varied expressions of trust, the heartfelt testimonies and the moving letters of encouragement sent to me by so many persons”.

He dedicated the rest of his two-page letter to the importance of “confession”, noting that each day at the beginning of Mass “we publicly implore the living God to forgive” the sins committed through “our fault, through our most grievous fault”.

“It is clear to me that the words ‘most grievous’ do not apply each day and to every person in the same way,” he wrote. “They tell me with consolation that, however great my fault may be today, the Lord forgives me, if I sincerely allow myself to be examined by him and am really prepared to change.”

He said that he has “come to understand that we ourselves are drawn into this grievous fault whenever we neglect it or fail to confront it with the necessary decisiveness and responsibility, as too often happened and continues to happen”.

“Once again I can only express to all the victims of sexual abuse my profound shame, my deep sorrow and my heartfelt request for forgiveness,” he said.

Together with the Pope’s letter, the Vatican published an “analysis” of the Munich report’s assessment that then-Cardinal Ratzinger allegedly mishandled abuse allegations on four occasions when he led the German archdiocese. The analysis was compiled by a small team of canon lawyers and other experts who had helped craft the original 82-page response during the initial phase of the investigation.

This team’s response focused primarily on the case of “priest X”, the serial abuser also known as Peter H. It said the Munich report’s assessment did “not correspond to the truth”, because the now-retired pontiff “was neither aware that priest X was an abuser, nor that he was included in pastoral activity”.

According to the Munich report, then-Cardinal Ratzinger “employed this priest in pastoral activity, even though he was aware of the abuses committed by him, and thus would have covered up his sexual abuses”.

However, records of the key 1980 meeting indicated that sexual abuse committed by the priest was not discussed, the team said, and the reason for accommodating priest X in Munich for therapy there “was not mentioned”.

Pope Benedict did not knowingly perjure himself, as the Munich report claimed, when he initially denied being present at the 1980 meeting, the team said.

It had been a “transcription error” and Pope Benedict “did not notice” it given the time constraints, it said. The minutes of the 1980 meeting were included in statements made by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, so it would make no sense “for him to intentionally deny his presence at the meeting.”

There is also no evidence behind the report’s “allegation of misconduct or conspiracy in any cover-up,” the team said. “As an archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up of acts of abuse.”

Photo: Pope Benedict XVI is pictured during his final general audience in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican in 2013 (CNS Photo)

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“He did attend the meeting on January 15, 1980,” said a statement issued on Pope Benedict’s behalf by his secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein.

“The statement to the contrary was therefore objectively incorrect. He would like to emphasise that this was not done out of bad faith but was the result of an oversight in the editing of his statement,” the archbishop said on January 24.

The 94-year-old Pope Benedict, he said, is still going through an almost 1900-page report, which was released on January 20, and looked at the handling of cases in the archdiocese between 1945 and 2019. The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Munich Archdiocese from 1977 to 1982.

The report identified 497 victims and 235 abusers, but the lawyers who conducted the study say they’re convinced the real numbers are much higher. In the report, the lawyers said that, on four occasions, then-Cardinal Ratzinger mishandled abuse allegations.

Particularly regarding the case of repeat offender Peter H., a priest sent to Munich from Essen in 1980, lawyer Ulrich Wastl described Pope Benedict’s statements as “not very credible”.

The law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, conducted the investigation for the archdiocese; the retired Pope had sent an 82-page statement to the investigators while they were doing the investigation.

In the statement, the former Pope had said he did not take part in a decisive meeting on the case of Peter H. But, at the news conference where the legal report was presented, Wastl read out the minutes of that meeting. In it, then-Archbishop Ratzinger is mentioned in several places as a rapporteur on other topics.

Once the retired Pope has had the time to thoroughly read the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl report, Archbishop Ganswein said, “he will explain” how the editing error occurred.

“He is very sorry for this mistake and asks pardon,” the archbishop said.

At the same time, Archbishop Ganswein said, the retired Pope’s assertion that “in this meeting no decision was made about a pastoral assignment of the priest in question” remains “objectively correct”.

The 1980 meeting, he said, dealt only with “the request to provide him (Peter H.) with accommodation during his therapeutic treatment in Munich”, a request that was granted. Later the priest was assigned to provide pastoral care in Bavaria and continued to sexually abuse minors.

Archbishop Ganswein assured the people of the archdiocese of Pope Benedict’s closeness, “especially in these days”, and his support of efforts “to clarify the situation”.

“He is thinking especially of the victims who have experienced sexual abuse and indifference,” he said.

Photo: St John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ride in the popemobile during a visit to Germany in 1980. The cardinal – now retired Pope Benedict XVI – headed the Archdiocese of Munich 1977-1981. (CNS photo)

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Pope Francis highlighted retired Pope Benedict XVI’s insistence that Europe’s renewal comes through its respect for every human life.

The Pope’s remarks were part of an introduction he wrote for a new book, “The True Europe. Identity and Mission”, which compiles selected texts by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI on the theme of Europe. The book, currently in Italian, is one of a series of “selected texts” being published by Cantagalli press, and coincides with the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the European Union.

Vatican News republished a copy of the introduction on September 12.

“Beyond the many words and grandiose proclamations, today, the idea of respect for every human life is increasingly lost in Europe, starting with the loss of awareness of its sacredness, that is, precisely from the obfuscation of the awareness that we are creatures of God,” Pope Francis wrote.

“Benedict XVI has not been afraid over the years of denouncing with great courage and far-sightedness the many manifestations of this dramatic renunciation of the idea of creation” and its consequences, he wrote.

And yet, the retired pope also showed his hope and faith in knowing humanity will always be restless until they find God and discover his truth, Pope Francis wrote. He added that the volume clearly explains the current reality, but without leaving the reader feeling pessimistic or sad.

On the contrary, Pope Francis said Pope Benedict explains the reasons for his hope, saying the desire and search for God is profoundly inscribed in each human soul and cannot disappear.

“Certainly, we can forget God for a time, lay him aside and concern ourselves with other things, but God never disappears,” Pope Benedict said in a 2012 interview, published in the book. “St Augustine’s words are true: We men are restless until we have found God. This restlessness also exists today and is an expression of the hope that man may, ever and anew, even today, start to journey toward this God.”

Pope Francis wrote this was the secret for how to have hope during these difficult times, and “Pope Benedict XVI shows us the path to take for Europe’s renewal”.

Photo: Pope Francis greets retired Pope Benedict XVI at the retired pope’s residence during a visit with new cardinals after a consistory at the Vatican on November 28, 2020. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

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After praying the Angelus prayer with pilgrims gathered in St Peter’s Square on June 29, the feast of Sts Peter and Paul, the Pope led the faithful in applauding his predecessor on what he said was “an anniversary that touches all of our hearts”.

“Our affection, our gratitude and our closeness go to you, Benedict, dear father and brother,” he said.

Born in 1927 in the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn, Joseph Ratzinger was ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 1951, for the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. Before his election as pope in 2005, succeeding St John Paul II, he served for 24 years as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

After retiring from the papacy in 2013, the retired pontiff chose to live in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery at the Vatican, along with Archbishop Georg Ganswein, his personal secretary, and a group of consecrated women.

Pope Francis said that although the monastery was meant to house contemplative communities of nuns, the monastery has made Pope Benedict “the contemplative of the Vatican who spends his life praying for the Church and for the diocese of Rome, of which he is emeritus bishop”.

Before leading pilgrims in a prolonged applause, the Pope thanked Pope Benedict for his years of service to the Church and his witness of faith.

“Thank you, Benedict, dear father and brother,” the Pope said. “Thank you for your credible witness. Thank you for your continuous gaze toward the horizon of God. Thank you.”

Photo: Father Joseph Ratzinger, chaplain in the parish of St Martin in the Moosach district of Munich, celebrates Mass in a mountainous area near Ruhpolding in July, 1951, after having been ordained a priest June 29, 1951. (CNS Photo)

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Father Küng was one of the most outspoken Roman Catholic theologians and one of the sharpest critics of St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. He had worked with and studied with Pope Benedict, then-Father Joseph Ratzinger, in Tübingen in the 1960s.

Along with Father Ratzinger, Father Küng was one of the youngest theological experts advising bishops at the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65, but not long after the council he stirred controversy with his views on papal infallibility.

Because of this he had his “missio canonica”, the license needed to teach Roman Catholic theology, withdrawn in 1979 and was no longer allowed to teach as a Catholic theologian at Catholic universities. Thereafter, he became professor of ecumenical theology in Tübingen, until his retirement in 1996. Father Küng remained a Catholic priest.

In 2019, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of having his “mission canonica” withdrawn, Father Küng told KNA, the German Catholic news agency, that after an exchange of letters with Pope Francis he saw himself as “quasi-informally” rehabilitated ecclesiastically. He spoke about a “handwritten, fraternal letter” and insisted that a public rehabilitation by the Church was “not so important” to him. What matters, he said, is that things move forward for the people and for the Church.

After his retirement in 2011, he co-founded the Global Ethic Foundation at the University of Tübingen, “not least because my years are numbered and I would like my life’s work to be continued after my death”, Father Küng told KNA at the time. Behind the project was his conviction that, without peace among religions, there can be no peace among nations.

In the decades after Vatican II, he frequently criticised mandatory priestly celibacy, the loss of the Church’s credibility, the ban on women priests and the “Kremlin”-like Roman Curia. He expressed support for the demands of grassroots organisations calling for more democracy in the Church.

Yet in 2005, just a few months after Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope, he and Father Küng spent several hours together at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. The papal spokesman at the time said Pope Benedict and Father Küng “agreed that in the space of this meeting it made no sense to enter into an argument about the doctrinal questions remaining between Hans Küng and the magisterium of the Church”.

Instead, the spokesman continued, they focused on two topics of Father Küng’s recent work: the possibility of developing a “global ethic” drawing from all religious traditions and the dialogue between Christian faith and science.

But on the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict’s papacy, he published an open letter to bishops in several newspapers around the globe in which he listed the opportunities that the new pope missed, like long-term reconciliation with Jews, dialogue with Muslims and helping the people of Africa fight HIV. He said he was motivated by his “profound concern for our Church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation”.

The criticism of Pope Benedict was nothing new. In 2009, Father Küng criticised the pope as isolated and unable to take creative steps to deal with a series of internal Church questions, including priestly celibacy and birth control.

He published a book in 2011 and spoke of clergy sexual abuse, saying the Catholic Church was seriously, possibly terminally ill, and only an honest diagnosis and radical therapy could cure it.

In “Can the Church Still Be Saved?” he argued that the malady of the Church went beyond sexual abuse scandals and included resistance to reform, its secrecy, lack of transparency and misogyny.

Speaking at a book launch in Munich in 2011, he said that at the time the Catholic Church in the United States had lost one-third of its membership. “The American Catholic church never asked why,” he said. “Any other institution that has lost a third of its members would want to know why.”

He also said that at the time, 80 per cent of German bishops would welcome reforms.

He said it was not possible for Pope Benedict to reform. In an interview with Ecumenical News International, when asked why, Father Küng recalled how, as a young student after World War II, he had travelled through Europe to explore, while the young pope “did not want to travel. He is, in essence, a person for medieval liturgy, theology and a medieval Church constitution”.

Referring to the celibacy debate that arose after the sexual abuse cases, Father Küng said, “The Roman Catholic Church survived for the first thousand years without celibacy.” He remained strongly in favour of allowing priests and bishops to marry.

Father Küng, who was born March 19, 1928, in Sursee, Switzerland, was a prolific writer and wrote several bestsellers that were translated into more than 30 languages.

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The “self-isolation guidance” issued by the Ministry of Health makes many recommendations about how to protect people from the spread of this disease and others. There is one section labelled “taking care of your well-being”.

It states that it is normal to feel stressed and lonely when self-isolating. But there are steps that can be done to help — such as reaching out to friends and family, talking about how one feels and sticking to a regular routine in terms of meals, sleep and exercise. Trained counsellors are available by phone to offer support with grief, anxiety, distress or mental well-being.

This is all happening in the season of Lent. The 40 days of Lent recall the 40 days and nights that Jesus spent in the desert in a type of self-isolation, except that he had been led there by the Holy Spirit after his baptism in the River Jordan.

Benedict XVI, in a 2013 general audience, said that the desert is many things. On the negative side, it can be a place of death, because there is little water. It is a place of silence and poverty, a place of solitude where “man feels temptation more acutely”. But it is also a place where the human person is driven to the “essential” and “for this very reason can more easily encounter God”.

In his Ash Wednesday homily in 2010, Benedict said that, for Jesus, “that long period of silence and fasting” in the desert “was a complete abandonment of himself to the Father and to his plan of love. The time was a ‘baptism’ in itself, that is, an ‘immersion’ in God’s will and, in this sense, a foretaste of the Passion and of the Cross”.

Jesus’ 40 days in the desert demonstrated “the dramatic reality of the kenosis, the self-emptying of Christ, who had stripped himself of the form of God (see Phil 2: 6-7) . . . “, Benedict said in an Angelus address in 2006.

“He who never sinned and cannot sin submits to being tested and can therefore sympathise with our weaknesses (see Hebrews 4:15). He lets himself be tempted by Satan, the enemy, who has been opposed to God’s saving plan for humankind from the outset,” Benedict said.

“What is the essence of the three temptations to which Jesus is subjected?” Benedict asked in a 2012 Ash Wednesday audience.

“It is the proposal to exploit God, to use him for one’s own interests, for one’s own glory and for one’s own success. And therefore, essentially, to put oneself in God’s place, removing him from one’s own existence and making him seem superfluous. Each one of us must therefore ask him- or herself: what place does God have in my life? Is he the Lord or am I?”

And it is only by looking at the figure of Jesus dead on the cross, Benedict wrote in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (2012), that a fundamental truth can be known and contemplated: “God is love” (I John 4: 8,16).

“In this contemplation, the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move” (no. 12).

But at the same time as we look at the crucified Christ, we feel looked at by the Risen Christ, Benedict noted elsewhere. “He whom we have pierced with our faults never tires of pouring out upon the world an inexhaustible torrent of merciful love.”

Returning to the 2010 homily, Benedict wrote that salvation is . . . a gift; “it is the grace of God, but in order for it to make an impact on my life, it requires my assent, an acceptance that is demonstrated in my actions — in other words, the will to live like Jesus, to follow him”.

It is to be hoped that those who follow Jesus in 2020 in New Zealand act sensibly with regard to COVID-19, love their sick neighbour if it comes to that, offer prayers for those who are ill and for those working to find a cure and generally be good citizens at this time and always.

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The December 1 edition of NZ Catholic had an interesting article reporting on an address given by Bishop Robert Barron to the Fall 2019 meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Bishop Barron is well known as the presenter of the “Catholicism” programme and for informative YouTube videos.

He is well aware of the numbers of people leaving the Church in the United States through the rising number who enter “none” to the census question
asking about religious affiliation. He is of the firm belief that the Church needs to embark on a vigorous programme of evangelisation to bring these people back into the fold.

I suspect that the situation in New Zealand is not much different; people drift away or leave as they are disillusioned at the revelations of sexual abuse and inept handling of this scourge. Bishop Barron outlines his strategy: (i). Getting young people involved in social justice work should be an attractive starting point for them. (Agreed, but I am surprised that he did not mention that care for the environment would also be attractive to young people.) (ii). He recommends that the Church encourages its artists and writers. (Pope Benedict said some time back that looking at the lives
of saints and work of great artists reveals much about Christianity.) (iii). Bishop Barron says we have to stop dumbing down the faith. (I am not sure to what extent practice in the US relates to NZ.) (iv). He also says our parishes need to be seen as mission grounds. (An important point as parishioners might need evangelising to keep them within the fold.) These four are clearly worthy suggestions.

I have recently participated in viewing the bishop’s “Catholicism” programme. Bishop Barron is the narrator in a series of visually and musically engaging videos shot on location in many parts of the world. The programmes present the past glories of the Church and leave one wondering where to next; but his thrust is that an important strength of Catholicism is the intellectual manner in which faith has come to be
understood. My take on this is that the “Catholicism” programme is directed more at providing “head” knowledge than “heart” knowledge.

If I ask myself, a cradle Catholic, why I am still with the Church, I have to respond by saying that what keeps me here is not a system of intellectual assent, but something deeper.

At the beginning of Pope Benedict’s 2005 encyclical God is Love he states: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

Searching the writings of Pope St John Paul II unearths several similar comments. Pope Francis also refers frequently to the importance of our personal relationship with Jesus.

The Leaders Manual for Life in the Spirit Seminars (1971 – 1978) gives, as the first goal of the seminars, “to establish or re-establish or deepen a personal relationship with Christ”. So what Popes St John Paul II, Benedict, and Francis emphasise has been with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal since shortly after the closing of the Second Vatican Council.

The question is — how are we to develop this personal relationship? It is very clear from Pope Francis in Christ is Alive that God seeks human beings with a passionate love; Bishop Barron makes the same point in the “Catholicism” episode on “Prayer and the Life of the Spirit”.

Pope Francis in his 2013 document The Joy of the Gospel emphasises that the initiative lies with us. In paragraph 264, he says: “The primary reason for evangelising is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known? If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence . . . .”

Perhaps we can say that the personal relationship with Jesus, discussed by the three popes, develops “heart” knowledge and complements the head knowledge of the “Catholicism” programme.

Would people drift away from the Church if they had developed this personal relationship with Jesus?

Pope Francis spells out the content of the first steps of evangelisation
in Christ is Alive; what he presents is simple and not dependent on intellectual gifts.

At core there are just three statements: A God who is love; Christ saves you; and He is alive. (The explanatory text is in paragraphs 112, 118 and 124 of the document.)

Fr Ken Barker, of Brisbane, in his 2018 book “Go set the world on fire” also promotes the above three-step approach to evangelisation.

Comments on the Synod for the Amazon, held in Rome in October last year, from Cardinal Kurt Koch, the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, were reported in UK Catholic weekly The Tablet (November 9). He noted that many of those at the synod explained that the rapidly growing Pentecostal communities in the Amazon region were attracting converts from Catholicism. (The situation in New Zealand is similar.) He said: “We must ask ourselves where we have gone wrong and what we can learn from the Pentecostals . . . faith is far more spontaneous in Pentecostal communities and quite naturally a part of life, which means that the Holy Spirit is directly experienced, whereas our Western mentality is somewhat highbrow, too overly intellectual.”

With more than one approach to evangelisation, and there are more than the two above, it is a matter of choice. Personally, I think Cardinal Koch’s observation is telling.

Professor Michael Pender is a professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Auckland. He is a member of St Michael’s parish, Remuera.

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One extract on the calendar caught my eye a couple of weeks ago: “Today, the word
‘love’ is so spoiled, worn out and abused that one almost fears to pronounce it,” he
said in 2006, picking up on themes from his first encyclical.

“And yet, it is a fundamental word . . . We cannot simply abandon it, but we must take it up again, purify it and bring it to its original splendour, so that it can illumine our life and guide it on the right path.”

I set out to write a piece for this issue about a song from the current New Zealand singles chart. Dipping into the music listed there was to see Benedict’s point written in flashing neon.

The tunes I sampled from the top of the chart were “love songs”: sickly and sleazy by turns, the music thin and processed, the lyrics threadbare and clunky. “Don’t you give up, nah-nah-nah / I won’t give up, nah-nah-nah / Let me love you / Let me love you / Oh baby, baby”, goes DJ Snake’s Let Me Love You.

Surely this is  one of the most banal love lyrics — spoiled, worn out and abused — ever written. Some of the others were slightly better, but only in the way a sewerage pond smells slightly better than a public toilet.

Here’s Major Lazer’s Cold Water, featuring, like DJ Snake’s tune, the wispy vocals of Justin Bieber: “I won’t let go / I’ll be your lifeline tonight / . . . I will jump right over / Into cold, cold water for you”. Cold water? Woah. That’s commitment.

But commitment at least: Ariana Grande and Nikki Minaj have no need for that concept on their Side to Side. “Feeling like I wanna rock with your body / And we
don’t gotta think ’bout nothin’,” it sneers, all swagger, strangled vocals and tinny beats.

All that matters to these two is that they “let them hoes know” that “a bad reputation / Doesn’t matter, ’cause you give me temptation” to which they will gleefully submit.

And so on and on they go, these songs whose slivers of honesty and truth are buried by pop-by-numbers trashiness.

Further down the chart, the real music begins to appear, but I still wanted to write about a high-charting song so I went in search of other lists and ended up on the website of radio station RDU.

Their Te Ahi Top 10 is a chart chosen by listeners from a playlist of exclusively Kiwi tunes. Sitting at number one was Stef Animal with a song called Be My Baby, the title of which sounded familiar.

I clicked through to the video and of course it was familiar — Stef Animal’s song was a cover of the Ronettes’ classic from 1963. You know it: the distinctive drumbeat in the opening bars, the upbeat vocals, the danceable melody. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has called this song “the greatest record ever produced”.

It was one of the tunes on which legendary producer Phil Spector developed his famed “wall of sound”: a range of instrumentation, including a full orchestra, built up track by track and blended into a lush and layered final sound.

It’s also a love song, sure, but one in which the love seems transactional rather than reciprocal: “So won’t you say you love me, / I’ll make you so proud of me / . . . For every kiss you give me I’ll give you three”.

It’s also more than a little obsessive and in its refrain it even seems to seek to infantilise the object of affection: “Be my little baby”.

Stef Animal’s version is lush and elaborate too, but has none of the joy and energy of the original. The tone of the song and its accompanying video is one of weariness, even despair. It is slowed right down, and instead of that wide range of instruments, Stef Animal has used just voice and synthesiser, looped and layered.

In the video a screen glows behind the performer with lyrics flicking past in cold green digital capitals. An insert shows people falling, objects breaking, and the whole looks worn and washed out.

In this version Stef Animal subverts the original and captures something of what many people seem to be experiencing today when it comes to love: a weariness and pessimism, but still a longing for intimacy.

In that unquenched longing lie the seeds of hope that modern humanity can recover a truly human view and experience of romantic love — love as a gift, both given and received, and as “the icon of the relationship between God and his people”, as Benedict describes it — and live a life lit up by its splendour.

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