Pope Benedict XVI: December 2007 Archives

Spe Salvi

|

A couple of links for you to commentary on Pope Benedict's encyclical letter Spe Salvi:

  • Archbichop Charles Chaput - On Christian Hope:
    Hope is a very different creature [than optimism]. It’s a choice–a self-imposed discipline to trust in God while judging ourselves and the world with unblinkered, unsentimental clarity. In effect, it’s a form of self-mastery inspired and reinforced by God’s grace. “The highest form of hope,” Georges Bernanos said, “is despair, overcome.” Jesus Christ was born in a filthy stable and died brutally on a cross not to make a good world even better but to save a fallen and broken world from itself at the cost of his own blood. Such is the real world, our daily world, the world of Christian hope–the world that Pope Benedict speaks to when he writes in his new encyclical that “all serious and upright human conduct is hope in action” and “the true measure of humanity is [determined by our] relationship to suffering and to the sufferer.”

  • Fr. James Schall - The Encyclical on Hope: On the "De-immanentizing" of the Christian Eschaton:

    Both these things—justice and grace—must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Evil doers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction as though nothing had happened (#44).

  • Communio on their website is running this 1985 Cardinal Ratzinger article On Hope

Bookmark and Share

More Spe Salvi

|

Father Mark, back from France, has been blogging up a storm about Pope Benedict's encyclical, Spe Salvi, will several quotes and bits of commentary, too many to link individually in fact. Just go to his December archives here.

Bookmark and Share

Bishop Gassis on St. Bakhita

|

The Pope's new encyclical,Spe Salvis discusses several saintly examples of hope lived out. One of these is St. Bakhita, the first Sudanese saint. Back in 2000 when St. Bakhita was canonized, Fides News Service spoke to Bishop Macram Max Gassis of El Obeid, Sudan, about Bahita. Bishop Gassis describes Bakhita as a sign of "hope to be freed from many forms of slavery" and "hope for those who leave their homeland."

Bookmark and Share

Pages

Mama-Lu's Etsy Shop

About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the Pope Benedict XVI category from December 2007.

Pope Benedict XVI: November 2007 is the previous archive.

Pope Benedict XVI: March 2008 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.