Such claims, expressed in recent articles, were described by the Vatican as "pure inventions" and "absolutely untrue".

The claims relate to when the Pope emeritus was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican said Benedict "confirms decisively" that "the publication of the Third Secret of Fatima is complete".

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This was on the condition that a couple's second union was based on a solid bond that had stood the test of time.

The couple had to respect its moral obligations towards their children and actively practice the faith.

Admission to the Eucharist would be through extrajudicial means, with the parish priest and members of the community as witnesses.

According to Ratzinger, this solution was backed by tradition.

The future Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and future Pope expressed these thoughts in a scientific essay that has been published in a collection of Christological reflections (pp. 35-56 of Zur Frage nach der Unauflöslichkeit der Ehe. Bemerkungen zum dogmengeschichtlichen Befund und zu seiner gegenwärtigen Bedeutung; in: Ehe und Ehescheidung. Diskussion unter Christen, edited by F. Henrich and V. Eid, published by Münchener Akademie-Schriften 59, Munich 1972).

Now this essay has has been publsihed again in Ratzinger's Opera Omnia, published by Herder and edited by Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller.

But having carried out a thorough review of the text, Ratzinger has decided to make significant changes to the conclusion, removing the bits in which he took an open approach toward remarried divorcees back in 1972: it is important to remember that as Prefect of the former Holy Office, with John Paul II's approval, Ratzinger rejected the possibility of readmission proposed in a pastoral letter he received from three German bishops, one of them being the future cardinal Walter Kasper.

The volume of the Opera Omnia that contains the new version of the essay is about to go on sale in German bookstores.

Meanwile, German magazine Herder Korrespondenz has published an article quoting key passages from both texts. Continue reading

Sources

• Vatican Insider
• Image: The Benedict Forum

It is a mixed and somewhat arbitrary selection of reading that has formed my ideas about life and literature.

Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I don't mind joining half the world in nominating LOTR one of the great reads of my life and among the most influential, though I was late coming to it.

There are few things more pleasurable than a gripping story which is also very long, since we never want a really great tale to end.

Tolkien's epic "fairy story" also reawakened in me a childish delight in imaginary worlds and creatures, where, at the same time, familiar struggles and victories are played out in a way completely plausible to, and instructive for real humans.

Thanks to Tolkien's profound intelligence, love for Creation and teeming imagination, I fell in love again with creative fantasy.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (The Oxford Authors) Ed. Catherine Phillips, (OUP 1986).

This collection of the 19th century English poet's work includes letters and other prose pieces, but it is his highly original poetic style that opened my eyes to nature and the "dearest freshness deep down things" as a teenager at secondary school.

I struggled to understand some of the few poems we studied then until I heard them on a recording.

I am still not sure that I fully grasp the meaning of "sprung rhythm" or follow all his imagery, but I will never forget lines such as:

Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!...

Introduction to Christianity, by Joseph Ratzinger (1968). Continue reading

• Carolyn Moynihan in MercatorNet

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

From what comes across my desk in theological literature there is still a lot of life in the Virtual Council, though it is true that it holds no enchantment for young seminarians or members of new ecclesial movements. Thus, the Church of the future, as a matter of demography, will be more closely oriented to the documents of the Real Council.

The end of the "Virtual Council"

When Blessed John Paul II lay dying he said to the youth who had travelled to Rome to offer their prayerful support: "I have searched for you, and now you have come to me, and I thank you." Less irenically he might have said, "I have tried to get through to you, notwithstanding layers and layers of deaf and dumb bureaucrats, and now that I am dying, the fact that you are here means that at least some of you understood, and this is my consolation." Similarly, Benedict seemed to be saying to the clergy of Rome, notwithstanding all the banality, all the pathetic liturgies, all the congregationalist ecclesiology, the Virtual Council of the Media has lost its dynamism. It is no longer potent. It no longer sets the course of human lives; it no longer inspires rebellion. It too has become boring and sterile. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Catholic in Brooklyn

Sources

• Leonardo Boff
• Image: UCA News

Leonardo Boff was one of the initiators of liberation theology, and lectures in the fields of theology, philosophy, ethics, spirituality and ecology.