Pope to Church: Stop the Insanity

Judging by the look on Cardinal Ruini's face, you'd think he's just been told who his successor will be.

And he doesn't look terribly happy about it, either.

The photo comes from the opening of Rome's Diocesan Convocation, held yesterday at the Urb's Cathedral, St John Lateran. The gathering, which runs until Thursday, is on the theme: "The Joy of Faith and the Education of New Generations."

Gioia, dici? C'e' un posto per la, la gioia nella practica della fede tuttavia? Dica questo agli statiunitensi.

(Translation: Joy? Joy's still a part of faith? Somebody tell the Americans.)

Nota Bene-dict:

“Educating new generations in the faith is a great and fundamentally important task that involves the entire Christian community,” one that has become “particularly difficult” today and, hence, is “even more important and urgent,” the Pope said.

According to the Pontiff, the new generations must experience that the Church “is a company of friends, one that is truly trustworthy and remains close in all the moments and circumstances of life and that will never abandon us even in death, because it carries in itself the promise of eternity.”

Young people and adolescents, the Pope went on, “must be disabused of the widespread prejudice that Christianity, with its commandments and its prohibitions, places too many obstacles to the joy of love, and in particular that it prevents the full enjoyment of the happiness that man and woman find in their mutual love.”

“The Ten Commandments are not a series of 'No', but a big 'Yes' to love and to life,” the Pontiff stated.

Yet again, Benedict had to repeat this because, of course, only American Catholics could make truth and freedom seem more prohibitive and anxiety-inducing than a bomb-proof straitjacket. And, of course, in the modern US context, far too often will they know that they are Catholics by their anger, regardless of what the Pope has to say on the topic.

And out there in the hills and the ghettoes, the (self-anointed) leaders of the faithful kept on, cannibalizing their own and discarding their young.

After all, Benedict's only the Pope when he tickles their ears.


PHOTO: AP/Plinio Lepri

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