“Even less information than you get from USA today!”

______________________

Democratic Rep. Andrea Boland, a Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cellphones to carry warnings that the devices can cause brain cancer.

Andrea, use two tin cans and a string. Leave those of us who can read alone.

______________________

A University of Utah study has determined that texting while driving increases the danger of crashing.

No shit? Who ever would have thought that driving with your head down while trying to push little buttons would increase the chances of crashing? Amazing  what these scientists can discover, given proper government funding.

But the real study that needs doing is to determine whether you are more likely to die, while texting,  from brain cancer or crashing.

______________________

A reader wants to know if it’s safe to fly on budget airlines overseas.

Yes, but stay off of Russian-made aircraft operated by African airlines. If the plane makes it to its destination (a 50/50 chance), you’ll be mugged at the baggage carrel.

______________________

Pope Benedict plans to hold a “beatification ceremony” to move Pope Pius XII closer to sainthood. Pius XII was the guy who kept his mouth shut while the Nazis exterminated 6 or so million Jews. Jews, and plenty of others, are complaining.

Benny, don’t let the riff-raff get you down. Sure, Pius could have done more for the Jews but at least he excommunicated Hitler. (Er, what’s that? The Roman Catholic church never excommunicated Hitler? Really?) Benny, tell ya what. Make it a double ceremony: Beatify Pius and excommunicate Hitler at the same time. What a show, and just in time for Hanukkah. I tell ya the Jews will love it!

______________________

And speaking of der Fuhrer, police in Poland have recovered the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign, which hung over the gate at Auschwitz until it was stolen a few days ago. Five men in their 20s and 30s have been arrested.

Good news for our American readers. We thought all the stupid, insensitive, fuckhead thieves lived here!

______________________

The U.S. prison population will decline for the first time in decades. No cause for celebration. They’re letting prisoners out early because of the bad economy. The states can’t afford to keep them locked up.

Sure, put ‘em back on the streets. They can support themselves just as they did before they went to jail—stealing from us. Be sure to let them out before Christmas. There’ll be lots of extra swag around.

______________________

Brain Damage Linked to Hockey

Never mind. I misread that headline. I thought it said “Brain Damage Linked to Watching Hockey.

______________________

The Hamas administration on Wednesday issued a smoking ban in public places in the Gaza Strip.

Now would that be smoking, as in you just lit up a Marlboro or smoking, as in you just got napalmed?

______________________

The death toll from an explosion in the central Pakistani city of Dera Ghazi Khan climbed to at least 25 on Wednesday, a senior government official said.

But, on the other hand, the bomb is said to have made at least $3 million worth of improvements to the neighborhood.

______________________

Woods’ Wife in Negotiations With Puma

Shouldn’t she be in negotiation with Cougars?

______________________

Democrats ridiculed Mr. Bush as “the most fiscally irresponsible President in history.” Then they took an $800 billion deficit and made it $1.4 trillion in 2009.

Good going guys. Don’t let a fucking Republican outdo you when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility. I mean, what’s this country coming to when a Republican can piss away more money than a Democrat?

______________________

And let’s not be so hard on the Republicans. After all, aren’t they still the party of “family values?”

Yes, they are. Rock solid.  My favorite family values are incest and wife beating.

______________________

The real reason that the developing world is in Copenhagen in the first place is they see climate change as a potential foreign-aid bonanza. They are at the table to leverage massive transfers of wealth from the West.

No! You mean this whole thing is about money? I’m devastated. I thought it was about bees and flowers and blue sky and sunshine and saving endangered species like the spike-nosed fart beetle.

______________________

A Washington DC police officer drew a gun after he and his car were hit by snowballs.

Harkins, how many times do I have to tell you “Don’t bring a gun to a snowball fight!”

In anticipation of Pope Benedict’s meeting with artists on November 21, His Holiness has been presented with an appeal for a return to authentically Catholic sacred art and architecture. It is a must read for all Catholic artists. Here are some excerpts:

“The work of art and architecture, unlike the liturgy, continues even after the liturgy. It therefore has the additional task of being an echo of the liturgy”

“Loyalty to the Incarnation and fidelity to the liturgy are therefore the cornerstones of sacred Catholic art.”

“both priests and the liturgists have within in their Christian and Catholic identity the clear responsibility for sacred art. It is they who must assist the artist who starts from his technical vocation to reach a Christian and liturgical vocation: the only vocation that can enable him to create a sacred art. This secures sacred art from any cultural relativism and also serves to enhance local cultures and local devotional identities.”

“Consequently the artist must acquire knowledge of liturgy and Scripture, and be willing to work within the continuity with tradition and with the Magisterium of two millennia of the Church. The Christian artist does not work alone but in communion with the Church community of all times. A contemporary church cannot be isolated from the forms established by tradition, but rather must always innovate and develop them within.”

“The freedom of art does not mean license, but free adherence to the obliging needs of the faith.”

“The recourse to historical styles, classical and “sacramental” architecture does not pose any obstacle to the creative architectural process, but rather it directs the process to communicate the shared objectivity that is the core symbol structure by which we understand the message of truth that the Church must spread. The message of Jesus Christ and the Gospels cannot be interpreted by subjectivity: they are established as truths of faith.  Abstractions, reminiscences, interpretations that aim to bypass the sensorial representation of reality, symbolical evocations, understood as the cornerstones of modern art in general cannot belong to the Church as an institution, and much less to the church as building that should accommodate and embody the certainty, truth and beauty of the real and objective presence of God.”

The entire text may be downloaded here.

At Pope Benedict’s Wednesday general audience he spoke on the architecture of Romanesque cathedrals and touched on important points for the Christian artist to remember.

Here’s an excerpt”

Dear brothers and sisters, I now wish to underline two elements of Romanesque and Gothic art, which are also useful for us.
The first: the works of art born in Europe in past centuries are incomprehensible if one does not take into account the religious soul that inspired them. Marc Chagall, an artist who has always given testimony of the encounter between aesthetics and faith, wrote that “for centuries painters have dyed their brush in that colored alphabet that is the Bible.” When faith, celebrated in a particular way in the liturgy, encounters art, a profound synchrony is created, because both can and want to praise God, making the Invisible visible. I would like to share this in the meeting with artists on Nov. 21, renewing that proposal of friendship between Christian spirituality and art, desired by my venerated predecessors, in particular by the Servants of God Paul VI and John Paul II.

The second element: the force of the Romanesque style and the splendor of the Gothic cathedrals remind us that the via pilchritudinis, the way of beauty, is a privileged and fascinating way to approach the Mystery of God. What is beauty, which writers, poets, musicians, and artists contemplate and translate into their language, if not the reflection of the splendor of the Eternal Word made flesh?

The entire text is now available in English.

His Holiness seems to be preparing for his upcoming meeting with artists on November 21.

For the correct formation of the liturgical conscience, it is important to stop condemning the liturgical form as it was known up to 1970. Those, who at this moment defend the validity of the traditional liturgy or its continued use, are treated like lepers: all tolerance for them ceases to exist. In the whole history of the Church we have never before seen such intolerance manifested! This stance shows a contempt and scorn for the whole history of the Church.

How can we ever trust the Church, with such a point of departure? I have never been able to understand why so many bishops, with no plausible reason, have given themselves over to this law of intolerance and thereby work against the needed reconciliation within the Church.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: “God and the world” (2002)

Eggs Benedict, a fancy name for poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce. If you are wondering where the recipe for poached eggs are or how to poach an egg, you might want to see my other blog on poached eggs.

Here’s the recipe:

Eggs Benedict

Poached Eggs

3 large egg yolks

1/2 cup clarified butter

1 tbsp and 1 tsp of lemon juice

1/8 tsp salt

Heat butter in a heavy saucepan until hot and foamy, but not browned. In a small bowl, whisk or beat egg yolks with lemon juice, and salt. Gradually beat in butter, then water. Return mixture to saucepan and beat over very low heat until mixture is slightly thickened. Serve immediately or let stand over warm water for up to 30 minutes.
Makes about 2/3 cup of hollandaise sauce.

August, Edward, Dominic, Henry, Julian, George, Broderick, Dashiell, Quinn, Rowan, Atticus, Barnaby, Benedict, Cato, Darwin, Emerson, Fergus, Harvey, Lucian, Lewis, Malachy, Micah, Maxwell, Oakley, Orlando, Phineas, Rupert, Rex, Sullivan, Solomon, Steven, Willoughby, Winston & West.

Carmen, Daisy, Aurelia, Daphne, Delphi, Eurielle, Flora, Geneva, Hazel, Hermione, Ivy, Linnea, Maddalen, Mirabelle, Nola, Olympia, Olive, Polly, Romilly, Ramona, Rosemary, Sally, Simona, Ursula, Valentina, Violet, Clara, Eulalie, Seraphia, Seraphina, Silvana, Adele, Amabel & Leora.

I see failed priest Nicholas Lash is foaming at the mouth in the latest issue of The Tablet. I won’t bother with a link as I see no reason to increase traffic to their site but predictably he is suffering a grand mal seizure brought on by the details of the Apostolic Constitution for Anglicans being announced.

There is no doubt the liberals don’t like genuine ecumenical movement. Thank God for the Pope of Christian Unity.

Yep, you read that right. Check it out:

Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

“The questions of life’s origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration,” said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises “many philosophical and theological implications” but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

The article continues:

The Roman Catholic Church’s relationship with science has come a long way since Galileo was tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant his finding that the Earth revolves around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

Today top clergy, including Funes, openly endorse scientific ideas like the Big Bang theory as a reasonable explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

Earlier this year, the Vatican also sponsored a conference on evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.”

The event snubbed proponents of alternative theories, like creationism and intelligent design, which see a higher being rather than the undirected process of natural selection behind the evolution of species.

Read the full story here.

Few things surprise me these days, but this … well, it does. Sounds like someone’s watched a few too many episodes of The X-Files.

I don’t buy the Theory of Evolution or the Big Bang (too many glaring holes in both), so I suppose I’m a bit skeptical when it comes to any other theories branching out of it.

“Sufferers’ Land.”
The “Firelands.”

These evocative and descriptive phrases refer to a region in Northern Ohio set aside by the state of Connecticut for “Sufferers” who were burned out of their homes by the British in the Revolution. Part of the Western Reserve, it covers present-day Huron and Erie counties.

After the War of 1812, a flood of emigration erupted out of crowded New England, the result of a pent up desire for new land that had been held in check by the threat of Native Americans defending their homes and the spur of economic hardship engendered by the catastrophic “Year without Summer” of 1816. Most of these pioneers were bound for the Firelands.

Thus began one of the great migrations of American history; a flood of humanity that poured out of New England and settled lands stretching along the southern shores of the Great Lakes from upstate New York to Illinois and across the Mississippi River into Iowa.

These settlers greatly impacted the history of the United States. In the 1850’s, some of them entered Kansas and clashed with the leading edge of another great migration that had settled the South — a tragic foreshadowing of the Civil War. The grandchildren of the settlers of the Old Northwest formed the backbone of the Union Army of the West during that war and made possible the Republican majority that ruled the nation the remainder of the century.

This website presents histories of the Firelands and genealogies of families that settled there.

1. The Sufferers’ Land is a history of the settlement of the Firelands from the founding of the town of Norwalk in 1817 by Platt Benedict to the final Pioneers Reunion and founding of The Firelands Historical Society in 1857. This story may be read from the beginning starting at the Prologue, or by selecting any of the 53 episodes in the Index of Posts.

2. A genealogy of families who settled in the Firelands is also included on this website. These include the Benedict, Wickham, Preston, Taylor, Buckingham, Christian, DeForest, Deaver, Walker, Shaon, Smith, Bradford, Talcott, Farrar, French, Lovewell, Hassell, Converse, Blanchard, Wanton, Winthrop, Dudley, and Sutton families.

3. Little Doctor on the Black Horse is a memoir of Doctor David DeForest Benedict of Norwalk, Ohio, a Union Surgeon during the Civil War. It was written by his granddaughter Harriott Benedict Wickham, who included in the story excerpts of letters he wrote to his wife from the field and from Libby Prison, where he was a prisoner of war. An episode of the story is posted every Monday, with the most recent installment immediately below this post. See the Index of Posts to read the entire memoir.

I would appreciate any comment you may have about this post. Please click on the comments button below, or contact me by email at dawbarton@aol.com. Thank you.

© 2009 by David W. Barton. All rights reserved

Huevos Benedictinos

Do you like Eggs Benedict? If you do, you will love this one; I’ve given the traditional recipe a Mexican twist. Instead of English muffins, I used puff pastry shells. I’ve replaced the bacon and hollandaise sauce with chorizo and creamy salsa.

Ingredients
6 Pepperidge Farm puff pastry shells
Prepared Chorizo
Creamy salsa
Queso Fresco

I will break down the process for each layer. Here’s how:

For the chorizo:
10 oz Mexican chorizo (pork or beef will work)
½ cp onion, finely diced
1 small potato, finely cubed (about ½ cp)
2 tbsp salsa
3 tbsp water

Place a medium-sized skillet over medium high heat, add the chorizo and stir to break it up. Once it begins to render its fat, stir in the onions and cook until they begin to turn translucent. Add the potatoes, salsa and water. Stir it all in, lower the heat to medium low and cover with a lid. Stir it occasionally until the potatoes are fork tender. Set aside, but keep warm.

For the salsa:
This step is optional, if you don’t want to make your own salsa, just add cream to your favorite brand.

 8 Roma tomatoes, halved and seeded
2 – 3 serrano peppers, halved
2 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
½ medium onion, quartered
½ cp cilantro, coarsely chopped
½ tsp cumin powder
½ tsp sugar
¾ tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Add 1 tbsp of the oil to a skillet and place over high heat. When it begins to smoke, add the tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onion. You want to char and smoke the vegetables, but keep a close watch on them or they’ll burn. Try to get some color on both sides, then remove from the heat and put it all into your blender. Add the rest of the ingredients and puree until all veggies are a mush.

Pour the salsa back into your skillet—you can add about ½ cp water to the blender to remove all the salsa bits—allow the salsa to cook over medium low temperature for about 10 minutes. This will yield about 3 cps of salsa, it will keep in the fridge for about a month.

Measure out ¾ cp of the salsa (you can also use your favorite salsa instead of making it yourself) and add ¼ cp of crema fresca or whipping cream. Stir it in and keep it warm. Set aside.

For the puff pastry:

Preheat oven to 400 and bake shells according to package instructions. Once baked, removed the tops and set aside.

For the poached eggs:
6 eggs, at room temperature
6-7 cps water
1 tsp salt
1 ½ tsp vinegar (I used sherry vinegar)
12” deep saucepan
Slotted spoon

I watched this video and realized I needed not fear the poaching process; this was the best video I watched.

Add the water, salt and vinegar to the pan and bring it to a boil. Once it boils, reduce heat so that the water is at a low simmer. Break the eggs and put each one into a small container, like a cup (one egg per cup).

Now is time to play with your water. Using that slotted spoon, create a swirl in the water. The centrifugal force will help the egg whites swirl onto themselves and make your eggs pretty. Now quickly drop one egg at a time right in the center of the water funnel. The whites will wrap around the yolk and will begin to float as the yolk is done. Here’s the thing. I measured the water temp to about 170-175 and I do like my yolks soft, it took about 5-6 minutes to get them just right. You can cook them longer if you’d rather have a harder yolk. Use the spoon to remove the eggs from the water, let some of that excess water fall off and clean off the eggy tentacles. Set the eggs aside until you’re ready to assemble the dish.

Assembly time!

Take a shell and drop about 2 tbsp of the chorizo, then top the shell with an egg. Top the egg with the creamy salsa, and then sprinkle some of the cheese. Repeat and serve.

And this is what I did with the leftovers!

VATICAN CITY, Dec 19, 2009 (AFP) – Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday declared his predecessor John Paul II “venerable,” moving the long-serving Polish-born pope closer to sainthood, the Vatican said.

This file picture taken on June 14, 1987 shows Pope John Paul II (R) accompanied by Polish Premier General Wojciech Jaruzelski while listening to the Polish anthem at Warsaw`s Okecie airport at the end of the Pope third visit to Poland (AFP photo)

The decree bestowing the title is the first step towards beatification and eventual sainthood for the charismatic Pole who headed the Roman Catholic Church for nearly three decades.

Pope Benedict launched the lengthy process — which can take decades if not centuries — just two months after the death in 2005 of John Paul II, whose funeral was marked by calls of “Santo Subito” (Saint Now).

The final stage for beatification is providing evidence of a miracle, usually a medical cure with no scientific explanation which is reviewed by several commissions.

In John Paul II’s case, the miracle under consideration — and subject to another papal decree — involves a French nun who was cured of Parkinson’s disease in 2005.

Vatican watchers expect Benedict to approve the beatification, which could be celebrated next year, either on the April 2 anniversary of his death or in October on the anniversary of the start of John Paul II’s papacy in 1978.

Bookmark & Share

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is the third book of the Mysterious Benedict Society.  Once again Reynie Muldoon, Sticky Washington, Kate Wetherall, and Constance Contraire are working to prevent Mr. Curtin and the Ten Men from gaining control of the whisper.   

While I am still working my way through the book (and I wouldn’t want to give anything away anyway) this book is as good as the others in the series.  There is adventure, riddles, puzzles, and of course Mr. Benedict falling asleep.  

Anyone interested should check out the site there are games and further information on the book: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/features/mysteriousbenedictsociety/index.html

Enjoy!

Sleep late. Swedish pancakes. Pajamas. Baking. Mini muffins. Baby bisquits and gravy. Miniscule Mimosas. Quishe. Fruit. Chicken & waffles. Eggs Benedict.

The original can be found by clicking here. The parts in bold are my emphasis.

LATIN MASS APPEAL

By KENNETH J. WOLFE

Published: November 28, 2009

WALKING into church 40 years ago on this first Sunday of Advent, many Roman Catholics might have wondered where they were. The priest not only spoke English rather than Latin, but he faced the congregation instead of the tabernacle; laymen took on duties previously reserved for priests; folk music filled the air. The great changes of Vatican II had hit home.

All this was a radical break from the traditional Latin Mass, codified in the 16th century at the Council of Trent. For centuries, that Mass served as a structured sacrifice with directives, called “rubrics,” that were not optional. This is how it is done, said the book. As recently as 1947, Pope Pius XII had issued an encyclical on liturgy that scoffed at modernization; he said that the idea of changes to the traditional Latin Mass “pained” him “grievously.”

Paradoxically, however, it was Pius himself who was largely responsible for the momentous changes of 1969. It was he who appointed the chief architect of the new Mass, Annibale Bugnini, to the Vatican’s liturgical commission in 1948.

Bugnini was born in 1912 and ordained a Vincentian priest in 1936. Though Bugnini had barely a decade of parish work, Pius XII made him secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform. In the 1950s, Bugnini led a major revision of the liturgies of Holy Week. As a result, on Good Friday of 1955, congregations for the first time joined the priest in reciting the Pater Noster, and the priest faced the congregation for some of the liturgy.

The next pope, John XXIII, named Bugnini secretary to the Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy of Vatican II, in which position he worked with Catholic clergymen and, surprisingly, some Protestant ministers on liturgical reforms. In 1962 he wrote what would eventually become the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the document that gave the form of the new Mass.

Many of Bugnini’s reforms were aimed at appeasing non-Catholics, and changes emulating Protestant services were made, including placing altars to face the people instead of a sacrifice toward the liturgical east. As he put it, “We must strip from our … Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants.” (Paradoxically, the Anglicans who will join the Catholic Church as a result of the current pope’s outreach will use a liturgy that often features the priest facing in the same direction as the congregation.)

How was Bugnini able to make such sweeping changes? In part because none of the popes he served were liturgists. Bugnini changed so many things that John’s successor, Paul VI, sometimes did not know the latest directives. The pope once questioned the vestments set out for him by his staff, saying they were the wrong color, only to be told he had eliminated the week-long celebration of Pentecost and could not wear the corresponding red garments for Mass. The pope’s master of ceremonies then witnessed Paul VI break down in tears.

Bugnini fell from grace in the 1970s. Rumors spread in the Italian press that he was a Freemason, which if true would have merited excommunication. The Vatican never denied the claims, and in 1976 Bugnini, by then an archbishop, was exiled to a ceremonial post in Iran. He died, largely forgotten, in 1982.

But his legacy lived on. Pope John Paul II continued the liberalizations of Mass, allowing females to serve in place of altar boys and to permit unordained men and women to distribute communion in the hands of standing recipients. Even conservative organizations like Opus Dei adopted the liberal liturgical reforms.

But Bugnini may have finally met his match in Benedict XVI, a noted liturgist himself who is no fan of the past 40 years of change. Chanting Latin, wearing antique vestments and distributing communion only on the tongues (rather than into the hands) of kneeling Catholics, Benedict has slowly reversed the innovations of his predecessors. And the Latin Mass is back, at least on a limited basis, in places like Arlington, Va., where one in five parishes offer the old liturgy.

Benedict understands that his younger priests and seminarians — most born after Vatican II — are helping lead a counterrevolution. They value the beauty of the solemn high Mass and its accompanying chant, incense and ceremony. Priests in cassocks and sisters in habits are again common; traditionalist societies like the Institute of Christ the King are expanding.

At the beginning of this decade, Benedict (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) wrote: “The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself.” He was right: 40 years of the new Mass have brought chaos and banality into the most visible and outward sign of the church. Benedict XVI wants a return to order and meaning. So, it seems, does the next generation of Catholics.

We have decided over a few Eggs Benedict Saturdays in Sydney,  that it would be a good idea to critique our many Cafes in Sydney who provide us with our weekly Eggs Benedict fix!
Scoring from 1 to 10

The Vatican has just completed a five day conference astrobiology where scientists convened to discuss the detection and implications of extraterrestrial life. A major driving force behind the conference was the Director of the Vatican Observatory, the Jesuit priest Father Jose Gabriel Funes. In May 2008, Funes gave an interview to the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper saying that the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials posed no problems to Catholic theology. The conference itself was officially convened by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, chaired by its religious leader Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, and was held on private Vatican grounds from November 6-10. Together with Funes’ 2008 interview and subsequent public comments by him, the conference demonstrates a welcome openness by the Vatican on the possibility and implications of extraterrestrial life.  The Vatican’s openness to discussion of extraterrestrial life is no accident. It is part of an openness policy secretly adopted by the United Nations in February 2008. In fact, the Vatican is playing a leading role in preparing the world for extraterrestrial disclosure….More

Today, November 21, 2009, in the Sistine chapel:

Dear Cardinals,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Distinguished Artists,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

With great joy I welcome you to this solemn place, so rich in art and in history. I cordially greet each and every one of you and I thank you for accepting my invitation. At this gathering I wish to express and renew the Church’s friendship with the world of art, a friendship that has been strengthened over time; indeed Christianity from its earliest days has recognized the value of the arts and has made wise use of their varied language to express her unvarying message of salvation. This friendship must be continually promoted and supported so that it may be authentic and fruitful, adapted to different historical periods and attentive to social and cultural variations. Indeed, this is the reason for our meeting here today. I am deeply grateful to Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture and of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church, and likewise to his officials, for promoting and organizing this meeting, and I thank him for the words he has just addressed to me. I greet the Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests and the various distinguished personalities present. I also thank the Sistine Chapel Choir for their contribution to this gathering. Today’s event is focused on you, dear and illustrious artists, from different countries, cultures and religions, some of you perhaps remote from the practice of religion, but interested nevertheless in maintaining communication with the Catholic Church, in not reducing the horizons of existence to mere material realities, to a reductive and trivializing vision. You represent the varied world of the arts and so, through you, I would like to convey to all artists my invitation to friendship, dialogue and cooperation.

Some significant anniversaries occur around this time. It is ten years since the Letter to Artists by my venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II. For the first time, on the eve of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Pope, who was an artist himself, wrote a Letter to artists, combining the solemnity of a pontifical document with the friendly tone of a conversation among all who, as we read in the initial salutation, “are passionately dedicated to the search for new ‘epiphanies’ of beauty”. Twenty-five years ago the same Pope proclaimed Blessed Fra Angelico the patron of artists, presenting him as a model of perfect harmony between faith and art. I also recall how on 7 May 1964, forty-five years ago, in this very place, an historic event took place, at the express wish of Pope Paul VI, to confirm the friendship between the Church and the arts. The words that he spoke on that occasion resound once more today under the vault of the Sistine Chapel and touch our hearts and our minds. “We need you,” he said. “We need your collaboration in order to carry out our ministry, which consists, as you know, in preaching and rendering accessible and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our people the things of the spirit, the invisible, the ineffable, the things of God himself. And in this activity … you are masters. It is your task, your mission, and your art consists in grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and clothing them in words, colours, forms – making them accessible.” So great was Paul VI’s esteem for artists that he was moved to use daring expressions. “And if we were deprived of your assistance,” he added, “our ministry would become faltering and uncertain, and a special effort would be needed, one might say, to make it artistic, even prophetic. In order to scale the heights of lyrical expression of intuitive beauty, priesthood would have to coincide with art.” On that occasion Paul VI made a commitment to “re-establish the friendship between the Church and artists”, and he invited artists to make a similar, shared commitment, analyzing seriously and objectively the factors that disturbed this relationship, and assuming individual responsibility, courageously and passionately, for a newer and deeper journey in mutual acquaintance and dialogue in order to arrive at an authentic “renaissance” of art in the context of a new humanism.

That historic encounter, as I mentioned, took place here in this sanctuary of faith and human creativity. So it is not by chance that we come together in this place, esteemed for its architecture and its symbolism, and above all for the frescoes that make it unique, from the masterpieces of Perugino and Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and others, to the Genesis scenes and the Last Judgement of Michelangelo Buonarroti, who has given us here one of the most extraordinary creations in the entire history of art. The universal language of music has often been heard here, thanks to the genius of great musicians who have placed their art at the service of the liturgy, assisting the spirit in its ascent towards God. At the same time, the Sistine Chapel is remarkably vibrant with history, since it is the solemn and austere setting of events that mark the history of the Church and of mankind. Here as you know, the College of Cardinals elects the Pope; here it was that I myself, with trepidation but also with absolute trust in the Lord, experienced the privileged moment of my election as Successor of the Apostle Peter.

Dear friends, let us allow these frescoes to speak to us today, drawing us towards the ultimate goal of human history. The Last Judgement, which you see behind me, reminds us that human history is movement and ascent, a continuing tension towards fullness, towards human happiness, towards a horizon that always transcends the present moment even as the two coincide. Yet the dramatic scene portrayed in this fresco also places before our eyes the risk of man’s definitive fall, a risk that threatens to engulf him whenever he allows himself to be led astray by the forces of evil. So the fresco issues a strong prophetic cry against evil, against every form of injustice. For believers, though, the Risen Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. For his faithful followers, he is the Door through which we are brought to that “face-to-face” vision of God from which limitless, full and definitive happiness flows. Thus Michelangelo presents to our gaze the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of history, and he invites us to walk the path of life with joy, courage and hope. The dramatic beauty of Michelangelo’s painting, its colours and forms, becomes a proclamation of hope, an invitation to raise our gaze to the ultimate horizon. The profound bond between beauty and hope was the essential content of the evocative Message that Paul VI addressed to artists at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on 8 December 1965: “To all of you,” he proclaimed solemnly, “the Church of the Council declares through our lips: if you are friends of true art, you are our friends!” And he added: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands . . . Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world.”

Unfortunately, the present time is marked, not only by negative elements in the social and economic sphere, but also by a weakening of hope, by a certain lack of confidence in human relationships, which gives rise to increasing signs of resignation, aggression and despair. The world in which we live runs the risk of being altered beyond recognition because of unwise human actions which, instead of cultivating its beauty, unscrupulously exploit its resources for the advantage of a few and not infrequently disfigure the marvels of nature. What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation – if not beauty? Dear friends, as artists you know well that the experience of beauty, beauty that is authentic, not merely transient or artificial, is by no means a supplementary or secondary factor in our search for meaning and happiness; the experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful.

Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy “shock”, it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it “reawakens” him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky’s words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: “Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here.” The painter Georges Braque echoes this sentiment: “Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.” Beauty pulls us up short, but in so doing it reminds us of our final destiny, it sets us back on our path, fills us with new hope, gives us the courage to live to the full the unique gift of life. The quest for beauty that I am describing here is clearly not about escaping into the irrational or into mere aestheticism.

Too often, though, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed; instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy. It is a seductive but hypocritical beauty that rekindles desire, the will to power, to possess, and to dominate others, it is a beauty which soon turns into its opposite, taking on the guise of indecency, transgression or gratuitous provocation. Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the Mystery of which we are part; from this Mystery we can draw fullness, happiness, the passion to engage with it every day. In this regard, Pope John Paul II, in his Letter to Artists, quotes the following verse from a Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid: “Beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up” (no. 3). And later he adds: “In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, the artist gives voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption” (no. 10). And in conclusion he states: “Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence” (no. 16).

These ideas impel us to take a further step in our reflection. Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God. Art, in all its forms, at the point where it encounters the great questions of our existence, the fundamental themes that give life its meaning, can take on a religious quality, thereby turning into a path of profound inner reflection and spirituality. This close proximity, this harmony between the journey of faith and the artist’s path is attested by countless artworks that are based upon the personalities, the stories, the symbols of that immense deposit of “figures” – in the broad sense – namely the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures. The great biblical narratives, themes, images and parables have inspired innumerable masterpieces in every sector of the arts, just as they have spoken to the hearts of believers in every generation through the works of craftsmanship and folk art, that are no less eloquent and evocative.

In this regard, one may speak of a via pulchritudinis, a path of beauty which is at the same time an artistic and aesthetic journey, a journey of faith, of theological enquiry. The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar begins his great work entitled The Glory of the Lord – a Theological Aesthetics with these telling observations: “Beauty is the word with which we shall begin. Beauty is the last word that the thinking intellect dares to speak, because it simply forms a halo, an untouchable crown around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.” He then adds: “Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness. It is no longer loved or fostered even by religion.” And he concludes: “We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past – whether he admits it or not – can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.” The way of beauty leads us, then, to grasp the Whole in the fragment, the Infinite in the finite, God in the history of humanity. Simone Weil wrote in this regard: “In all that awakens within us the pure and authentic sentiment of beauty, there, truly, is the presence of God. There is a kind of incarnation of God in the world, of which beauty is the sign. Beauty is the experimental proof that incarnation is possible. For this reason all art of the first order is, by its nature, religious.” Hermann Hesse makes the point even more graphically: “Art means: revealing God in everything that exists.” Echoing the words of Pope Paul VI, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II restated the Church’s desire to renew dialogue and cooperation with artists: “In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art” (no. 12); but he immediately went on to ask: “Does art need the Church?” – thereby inviting artists to rediscover a source of fresh and well-founded inspiration in religious experience, in Christian revelation and in the “great codex” that is the Bible.

Dear artists, as I draw to a conclusion, I too would like to make a cordial, friendly and impassioned appeal to you, as did my Predecessor. You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. Be grateful, then, for the gifts you have received and be fully conscious of your great responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and through beauty! Through your art, you yourselves are to be heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity! And do not be afraid to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves, consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history towards infinite Beauty! Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them, it encourages them to cross the threshold and to contemplate with fascination and emotion the ultimate and definitive goal, the sun that does not set, the sun that illumines this present moment and makes it beautiful.

Saint Augustine, who fell in love with beauty and sang its praises, wrote these words as he reflected on man’s ultimate destiny, commenting almost ante litteram on the Judgement scene before your eyes today: “Therefore we are to see a certain vision, my brethren, that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived: a vision surpassing all earthly beauty, whether it be that of gold and silver, woods and fields, sea and sky, sun and moon, or stars and angels. The reason is this: it is the source of all other beauty” (In 1 Ioannis, 4:5). My wish for all of you, dear artists, is that you may carry this vision in your eyes, in your hands, and in your heart, that it may bring you joy and continue to inspire your fine works. From my heart I bless you and, like Paul VI, I greet you with a single word: arrivederci!

Source: Vatican News Service