The Pope recognizes that priests need to employ new communication technologies for a fruitful priestly ministry. Knowing that “new technologies create deeper forms of relationship across greater distances”, the pope asserts that priests “are called to respond pastorally by putting the media ever more effectively at the service of the Word.”

Click here to read the full message of the pope.

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed off the mask of a false life; it is he who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”

Alma Mater, the pope’s first album, is set to be released in late November this year. Eight tracks will feature the Pope praying and singing in five different languages.  Both the Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have collaborated with the Pope in recording the album under the Geffen label.

The OLPC laptop runs the Linux operating system and currently costs 200 US dollars a piece. The price of the unit is so low because poor children living in developing countries are its target users. The laptop is envisioned to serve as a “portable school” for these impoverished children. It will be something they can use at home to connect to the outside world via the internet, to learn new things and to share knowledge. It is hoped that the laptop will bridge the gap between the information rich and the information poor. Cardinal Paul Poupard, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture, is quoted as saying “If people are to rise out of poverty and enjoy greater justice, education is key”.

The complete news report can be found here.

(The Vatican website has set aside a page wherein people can leave their birthday greetings for Pope Benedict XVI. If you want to send your greetings, please follow this link).

Image courtesy of www.vatican.va

The messages of Pope Benedict XVI for this year’s Lenten cycle are arranged in chronological order. It starts with his general statement then followed by his missive for Ash Wednesday and subsequently by his messages for each Sunday of Lent until Palm Sunday. The Holy Father’s messages for the upcoming Sundays are not yet available, so one needs to come back for the latest updates.

The Lenten Stations page gives a complete list of all stational Churches for each day of the season. The Pontifical Academy Cultorum Maryrum will soon provide a guide and story for each stational church. However this list is helpful mostly for those who live in Italy and for those who will visit the country during this liturgical season.

The Lenten music posted on the site comes from two sources: a collection from the Pontifical Chorus of the Sistine Chapel and another collection from the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. All tracks are in MP3 format and they can be dowloaded to your harddisk or straight to your portable digital audio player. You can also play them online if you have the necessary browser plug-ins. I distinctly like Signore, mostrami il tuo volto (Lord, show me your face). The feel of the music reminded me of the many liturgical celebrations I have participated in at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

There is also an online calendar of celebrations over which Pope Benedict XVI will preside. It includes links to images already taken and those still to be taken during these celebrations. They are of excellent quality and are neatly arranged as a gallery of thumbnailed images, which are clickable to reveal bigger versions.

These dedicated Lent 2007 webpages on the Vatican website are of particular use to liturgists and liturgical presiders. The ordinary faithful who want to make their celebration of the cycle of Lent more meaningful and interesting can also benefit from them.

Prayer is an essential part of our growing relationship with the Father. We can say that one of the things that we can point to as evidence that our spiritual life is in trouble is the absence of regular prayer. We can find several reasons to pray, but I think one of the most important is to be able to discern God’s will as well as to have the grace to do God’s will. The Pope himself emphasized that “true prayer consists precisely in uniting our will to the Father’s.”

The pope’s message draws inspiration from the Transfiguration story as told in the Gospel of Luke. In the story, Jesus went up the mountain to pray together with three of his disciples. Jesus’ transfiguration took place while he was praying. The Father affirmed that He was pleased with His Son.

I agree with the Pope when he said that prayer entails responsibilities. A person cannot pray and neglect others. A person cannot pray and at the same time hurt others. To pray is to be a responsive and responsible Christian. To be a prayerful person is to be a loving, forgiving, and compassionate person.

You will find the complete text of the Pope’s message here.

The document is a synthesis of a study initiated by the Pontifical Council for Culture, which in March 2004 convoked a gathering of cardinals, bishops, priests and intellectuals from all over the globe to “the study of the problem of unbelief and of religious indifference found in various forms in different cultural milieus, enquiring into the causes and the consequences for the Christian Faith.”

It is quite a long read, but both the questions raised and the answers provided are very absorbing. It delves into such complicated issues as causes of unbelief, secularization of belief, adherence to a faceless God, and the religion of the self. But it does also provide concrete proposals as to how to initiate dialogue with non-believers and how evangelization can be carried out in a culture of unbelief and indifference.

I think the challenge of unbelief and indifference offers us Christians an opportunity to reflect on our faith, to deepen it and to find creative ways of witnessing to God’s compassionate love. As has been proposed by the document we all need to look into:

• The importance of witnessing the beauty of being a person loved by God.

• The need to renew Christian apology to give an account with gentleness and respect of the hope that animates us (1 Pet 3:15).

• Reach homo urbanus through a public presence in the debates of society and put the Gospel in contact with the forces that shape culture.

• The urgency of learning to think, from school to university, and to have the courage to react, faced with the tacit acceptation of a dominant culture often marked by unbelief and religious indifference, by a new and joyous proposal of Christian culture.

• Show to the non-believers, indifferent to the question of God but open to human values, that to be truly human, is to be religious, that man finds the fullness of his humanity in Christ, true God and true man, and that Christianity is a good news for all men and women in all cultures.

But in the end, I think the most convincing argument to prove the existence of God to unbelievers is by loving them unconditionally. Only through love can unbelievers be touched at the heart of their unbelief and their indifference.

]]> http://stephencuyos.com/churchs-response-to-unbelief-and-religious-indifference-today/feed/ 3 http://stephencuyos.com/god-is-love/ http://stephencuyos.com/god-is-love/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2006 01:55:55 +0000 Fr. Stephen, MSC http://www.stephencuyos.com/?p=240 Yesterday, the Vatican published the first encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI. Entitled “Deus Caritas Est,” the encyclical begins with a quotation from 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” The Latin “Deus caritas est” translates to “God is love” in English.

Some are already considering it not only as the Holy Father’s program for his pontificate but also as the Catholic Church’s program for the third millennium. If that is so, then the third millennium should be called “The Millennium of Love.”

As the title clearly suggests, the encyclical’s theme centers on love. After explaining the linguistic as well as the philosophical difference and unity of love as “agape” and as “eros,” the Pope talks about Jesus Christ as the incarnate love of God. Then he focuses on the unbreakable link between love of God and love of neighbor. For the Pontiff, love of neighbor “consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings.”

The second part of the encyclical places accent on the Church as a “community of love” and as “God’s family in the world.” Having said earlier that love of neighbor is “a responsibility for each individual member of the faithful,” the Holy Father stresses that charity is a responsibility of the Church and that its charitable activities are a manifestation of Trinitarian love.

The relationship between justice and charity is also given ample emphasis in the encyclical. The Pope states that “the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply.” In this context, he reaffirmed John Paul II’s conviction that “the building of a better world requires Christians to speak with a united voice in working to inculcate respect for the rights and needs of everyone, especially the poor, the lowly and the defenceless.”

The encyclical has given me a glimpse into the heart of our new pope. Many people regard him as intellectual and helplessly out of touch. By choosing to focus on God as love and on the Church as a community of love, the Holy Father revealed that side of him which we all wanted to see – a father who feels, who truly loves, who cares for others, and whose feet are firmly grounded on earth. And like him, I hope that as God’s family, the Church, our Church, may become “a place where help is given and received, and at the same time, a place where people are also prepared to serve those outside her confines who are in need of help.”

The theme for this year’s World Day for Social Communications is “The Media: A Network for Communication, Communion and Cooperation.” In his message, the Pontiff recognizes that the technological advances in the media not only makes communication between people both instantaneous and direct but also presents an enormous potential for service of the common good.

The Holy Father outlined three steps to encourage both a constructive presence and a positive perception of the media in society. The first step is formation. In order to help people utilize the media both intelligently and appropriately, Pope Benedict XVI says that formation is needed in the responsible and critical use of the media.

The second step is participation. Stressing that “participation in the mass media arises from their nature as a good destined for all people,” the Pope states that “social communication requires a spirit of cooperation and co-responsibility with vigorous accountability of the use of public resources and the performance of roles of public trust.”

And the third step is dialogue. And the Holy Father points out that dialogue can be achieved “through the exchange of learning, the expression of solidarity and the espousal of peace.”