Pope Benedict's Apocalypse:

Benedict's Apocalypse

 

Pope Benedict this morning did something quite unusual: he spoke at  length -- about 20 minutes -- without prepared remarks. So, in his words today, Benedict spoke from his heart. But very few, at least in the English-speaking world, have understood the full importance of what he said... An attempt to remedy an oversight

By Robert Moynihan

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The Pope Againt the Powers and the Principalities

 

(Photo: Pope Benedict speaking this morning at the Synod of Bishops without any prepared text) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"We think of the great powers of the present day, of the anonymous financial interests which turn men into slaves, which are no longer human things, but are an anonymous power which men serve, by which men are tormented and even slaughtered. They [i.e., anonymous financial interests] are a destructive power, a power that menaces the world." —Pope Benedict XVI, Reflection after the reading of the office for the Third Hour this morning in the Synod Aula, Vatican City, October 11, 2010

"And then the power of the terrorist ideologies. Apparently in God's name, violence is done, but it is not God: they are false divinities, divinities that must be unmasked, that are not God." —Ibid., next sentence

 

"And then drug-trafficking, this power that, like a devouring beast, extends his hands towards every part of the earth and destroys: it is a divinity, but a false divinity, which must fall. Or also the way of life propagated by public opinion: today it is so, marriage is no longer important, chastity is no longer a virtue, and so forth. These ideologies that dominate, so much so that they impose themselves with force, are divinities. And in the suffering of the saints, in the suffering of believers, of the Mother Church of which we are a part, these divinities must fall, it must come to pass what the letters (of St. Paul) to the Colossians and to the Ephesians say: the dominations, the powers fall and become subject to the one Lord Jesus Christ." —Ibid., next sentence

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The "Lifting of the Veil"

 

It was a dramatic day in Rome.

 

This morning the Pope attempted to "lift the veil" in a rather bold way on what is now occurring in our world.

 

An apocalypse (Greek: Ἀποκάλυψις Apokálypsis; "lifting of the veil" or "revelation") is a revealing of something hidden from most of mankind in a time dominated by falsehood and misconception. 

 

In a certain sense, what Benedict spoke this morning was his "apocalypse" -- his "lifting of the veil" on the hidden truth behind the appearances and lies of our time.   

(Photo: Pope Benedict in the Synod hall in the Vatican today)

 

And what did the Pope "reveal"?

 

He "revealed" the false "gods" of our age, the hidden "divinities" of our time, and he named several of these "false gods" from whom we must free ourselves if we are to turn to the one, true God: the world's anonymous financial interests, the promoters of terrorist violence, drug-traffickers.

 

He argued that all three of these groups are in the service of "false gods" -- divinities which must be "unmasked" if God's kingdom of justice and peace, the kingdom of the true divinity, is ever to reign on this earth.

 

Still, some early press accounts in English have not mentioned the Pope's denunciation of powerful, hidden, financial interests, focusing only on the Pope's denunciation of terrorist violence and drug-trafficking, so it is important to clarify this point.

 

The Pope denounced the entire array of "false gods" that threaten and oppress men and women today, and called for the "unmasking" of all these false "divinities."

And those "false gods," the Pope said, quite explicitly, include "anonymous financial interests (capitali anonimi) which enslave man (che schiavizzano l’uomo)."

 

So this report is an attempt to present the Pope's thought -- at this time of crisis in the world's financial system -- in a comprehensive, unbiased way.

 

We will attempt to "lift the veil" on "Benedict's apocalypse." 

  

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"Arise, O God, judge the earth"

 

This morning, October 11, 2010, Pope Benedict was present to open the working sessions of the Synod on the Middle East. With him were the 185 bishops and 70 experts who will meet here for the next two weeks to discuss the challenging mission and witness of Christians in that region of the world.

 

Together with the Synod Fathers, he prayed and recited the readings of the Divine Office for the third hour.

 

One reading in this morning's office was Psalm 82. At the end of that psalm, King David calls upon God to judge the wickeness and injustice of men. "Arise, or God, judge the earth," he cries.

Here is the complete text of Psalm 82 (note: the Catholic numbering, which differs by one throughout most of the Psalms, identifies this as Psalm 81, and so the Pope cites it as Psalm 81 in his text below):

 

A Rebuke of Unjust Judgments: A Psalm of Asaph

1      God standeth in the congregation of the mighty;
            he judgeth among the gods.
2      How long will ye judge unjustly,
            and accept the persons of the wicked?
Selah.
3      Defend the poor and fatherless:
            do justice to the afflicted and needy.
4      Deliver the poor and needy:
            rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
5      They know not, neither will they understand;
            they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
6      I have said, Ye are gods (see John 10:34) 
            and all of you are children of the Most High.
7      But ye shall die like men,
            and fall like one of the princes.
8      Arise, O God, judge the earth:
            for thou shalt inherit all nations.
 

(Note: Interestingly, it is this psalm that Jesus cites in the Gospel of John, in Chapter 10, when the scribes and pharisees accuse him of blasphemy for claiming to be the son of God. Jesus cites the words in verse 6 as a defense of his own claims. Here is that passage in John: "Jesus answered them, 'Has it not been written in your Law, "I said, ye are gods"? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, "You are blaspheming," because I said, "I am the Son of God"? If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.' Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp.")

 

Pope Benedict began by reflecting on the meaning of October 11, which is the day that the Second Vatican Council began in 1962, which was at that time the Feast of the Divine Maternity of Mary.

 

He then spent some time reflecting on the doctrine of Mary as the "Mother of God," and his remarks are worth reading attentively, also in light of the fact that the question of the divinity of Jesus, and the divine maternity of Mary, is the chief objection to Christian doctrine raised by both Muslims and Jews. 

 

He suggests that God, in Christ, comes toward man, as in a sort of divine "adventure." And he discusses the meaning of this "adventure" in words that are poetic and powerful.

 

"Christ was not born as an individual among others," Benedict said. "He was born to create a body for himself: he was born -- as John says in chapter 12 of his Gospel -- to draw all things to him and in him.

 

"He was born -- as the letters to the Colossians and to the Ephesians say," Benedict continued, "to recapitulate all the world, he was born as the first-born of many brothers, he was born to reunite the cosmos in himself, such that he is the head of a great body.

 

"Where Christ is born, there begins the movement of recapitulation, the moment of the calling, of the construction of his body, of the holy Church. The Mother of 'Theós,' the Mother of God, is Mother of the Church, because she is Mother of the one who came to reunite all in his risen body."

 

Benedict then began to reflect on Psalm 82.

 

In doing so, he made clear that he believes that, in our time, spiritual "powers and principalities" are masquerading as "divinities," but that they are "false gods" which must be "unmasked" for the sake of men and women, whose hope lies with the true God.

 

He went on to say that the struggle against such forces is part of a continual struggle for the Church.

 

The Book of Revelation, he said, sheds light on this struggle against false gods, particularly in its image of the serpent who creates a river to drown a woman in flight, and of the earth that swallows up the river. 

"I think the river is easily interpreted as these currents that dominate everyone and that want to make the Church and the faith disappear," he said. "And the earth that absorbs these currents is the faith of ordinary people, which doesn't allow itself to be overcome by this river."

And this was his summation: "The faith of ordinary people is the true wisdom."

 

The faith of ordinary people, in the Pope's view, is what has always, and will always, helped to defeat the serpent.
 

No Mention of Financial Interests

 

Here is what the Pope said this morning in his original Italian, with the three main "divinities" bold-faced (these lines are the ones translated above, at the beginning of this letter):

 

"Pensiamo alle grandi potenze della storia di oggi, pensiamo ai capitali anonimi che schiavizzano l’uomo, che non sono più cosa dell’uomo, ma sono un potere anonimo al quale servono gli uomini, dal quale sono tormentati gli uomini e perfino trucidati. Sono un potere distruttivo, che minaccia il mondo. E poi il potere delle ideologie terroristiche. Apparentemente in nome di Dio viene fatta violenza, ma non è Dio: sono false divinità, che devono essere smascherate, che non sono Dio. E poi la droga, questo potere che, come una bestia vorace, stende le sue mani su tutte le parti della terra e distrugge: è una divinità, ma una divinità falsa, che deve cadere. O anche il modo di vivere propagato dall’opinione pubblica: oggi si fa così, il matrimonio non conta più, la castità non è più una virtù, e così via. Queste ideologie che dominano, così che si impongono con forza, sono divinità. E nel dolore dei santi, nel dolore dei credenti, della Madre Chiesa della quale noi siamo parte, devono cadere queste divinità, deve realizzarsi quanto dicono le Lettere ai Colossesi e agli Efesini: le dominazioni, i poteri cadono e diventano sudditi dell’unico Signore Gesù Cristo."

 

Now, since the Pope, whose native language is German, was speaking without a prepared text, there are certain Italian phrases here which are just a bit awkward, and might have been revised by his advisors for a printed text.

 

One of those phrases is "capitali anonimi" the plural form of "anonymous capital (i.e., money)." In the Italian press today, the phrase was translated as "anonymous financial interests" (see, for example, the story in Corriere della Sera at: http://www.corriere.it/cronache/10_ottobre_11/papa-capitali-anonimi_22c0a39a-d51e-11df-a471-00144f02aabc.shtml).

 

This phrase, however, was translated rather unhappily in the English text sent out this evening by Italian Vaticanist Sandro Magister -- who routinely does work of high quality -- as "the anonymous capitals that enslave man" (see below), an inadequate translation, as if the Pope were referring to anonymous capitals of countries.

 

This confusions may explain in part why this passage was not noted by the AP correspondent, whose work is also generally of a high quality, in her report (also see below).]
 

Here is the text of today's AP report on the Pope's remarks, which I found at this link:http://hosted2.ap.org/WBZAM/46855e9ba0fa4865a6388add04431d4b/Article_2010-10-11-EU-Vatican-Mideast/id-c65d4dd506194a26b583fe1b7ca7ca9e

 

In this report, there is a mention of the Pope's denunciation of terrorism, and of drug-trafficking, but no mention of his denunciation of anonymous, and dangerous, financial elites.

Read the rest of this article here: http://community.icontact.com/p/insidethevatican/newsletters/christmas/posts/letter-53-2010-synod-apocalypse

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