The Daily Pope

Here's a webpage that lists all the works of Benedict XVI from the Vatican website, sorted by date. Anyone with a head for web design is welcome to make it look prettier. More details later after I recover from what the kids have.

Update: here's how it works.

Benedict XVI on the media

This excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI's second Regina Cæli address in 2005 seems appropriate for the current silly season in America: the media can promote knowledge, dialog and peace, or prejudice, contempt and violence. The perennial remedies are personal responsibility, objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good.

Responsibility and respect for human dignity seem to be basic human habits learned (or not) at a young age in the family; perhaps objectivity and sight of the common good are habits of thought that come with maturity. Can they be taught? Are they? What would an objective media serving the common good even look like? [how about C-SPAN? -ed.]

Anyways,

World Communications Day is being celebrated this Sunday on the theme: "The communications media: at the service of understanding among peoples". In today's world of imagery, the mass media effectively become an extraordinary resource to promote solidarity and understanding within the human family. We have had incredible proof of this recently on the occasion of the death and solemn funeral rites of my beloved Predecessor, John Paul II. It all depends, however, on how these means are used.

These important tools of communication can support reciprocal knowledge and dialogue or, on the contrary, fuel prejudice and contempt between individuals and peoples; they can contribute to spreading peace or fomenting violence. This is why an appeal must always be made to personal responsibility; all must do their part to ensure objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good in all forms of communication. In this way they contribute to bringing down the walls of hostility that continue to divide humanity, and to strengthening the bonds of friendship and love which are signs of God's Kingdom in history.

(Hmm... insidious politics worked its way back in.)

The joy he gives us

Pope Benedict XVI on one of his favorite composers:

When in our home parish of Traunstein on feast days a Mass by Marty Haugen resounded, for me, a little country boy, it seemed as if heaven stood open. In the front, in the sanctuary, columns of incense had formed in which the sunlight was broken; at the altar the sacred action took place of which we knew that heaven opened for us. And from the choir sounded music that could only come from heaven; music in which was revealed to us the jubilation of the angels over the beauty of God.

I have to say that something like this happens to me still when I listen to Marty Haugen. Marty Haugen is pure inspiration — or at least I feel it so. Each tone is correct and could not be different. The message is simply present.

"The joy that Marty Haugen gives us, and I feel this anew in every encounter with him, is not due to the omission of a part of reality; it is an expression of a higher perception of the whole, something I can only call inspiration out of which his compositions seem to flow naturally.

Hmm... that really doesn't work, does it? Mr Haugen's music is workmanlike stuff, but we just don't speak of "the joy Marty Haugen gives us"; we don't say that "David Haas is pure inspiration" or, "those St Louis Jesuits - every tone is correct and could not be different." That would be silly. Those things can be said about some composers, though. Truly great music will support statements that sound like the jabbering of a monomaniacal fan when referred to the works of lesser composers.

Here's the original article in the National Catholic Register.

Holy rollers

Vide: a look at the cars of Popes John Paul II (a 1975 Ford Escort GL) and Benedict XVI (a 1999 VW Golf).

Benedict XVI and Lazarus Long

OK, so there are no google hits yet for "spes salvi" "robert heinlein". Did anyone else think of Woodrow Wilson Smith while reading Benedict XVI on the drawbacks of living this earthly life forever?

Preternatural blogging

How does he do it? I forget which of the prolific Blossers runs the Ratzinger Fan club, but he sure makes it look easy when it's not.

Commentaries are up

At the kind prompting of Deacon John Paul Kelly of St Bernard of Clairvaux parish in Dallas, Texas, I've finally completed my guide to the Psalm commentaries of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Update: I just found that the archdiocese of Newark links to this page from their permanent diaconate page (see the left column).