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POPE-PRIESTS Sep-1-2006 (610 words) xxxi
Pope urges priests to take heart in church's history of survival
By Catholic News Service
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI said parish priests discouraged by a decline in religious practice should take heart in the fact that the church has survived centuries of persecutions and trials.
Not even the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler could destroy Catholicism, although he wanted to, the pope said.
The pope made the comments in a question-and-answer session Aug. 31 with priests of the Diocese of Albano. The encounter took place at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, which is part of the Albano Diocese.
Most of the questions touched on pastoral problems common across Italy, including the challenge of getting Catholics to Mass on Sunday and attracting young people to church activities.
The pope said it was important for pastors to draw encouragement from the church's long history. The church's early flowering in North Africa and Asia Minor, for example, has long disappeared, but Catholicism has gained new strength and vigor in the rest of Africa and other parts of the world, he said.
"The faith is stronger than all the currents that come and go," he said.
He said Hitler was convinced that he had been chosen by providence to destroy Catholicism and was sure he finally had the means to do so. Likewise, he said, Marxist ideologies were certain the church was a thing of the past.
"The church in the end proved stronger. It is the hope that doesn't end," he said.
The pope noted that to reach young people one local church was sponsoring a program based on St. Francis of Assisi. He said it was a good idea, but cautioned that the figure of St. Francis was sometimes "abused."
"He was not merely an environmentalist or a pacifist, but he was above all a man who converted," he said. As a young man in a wealthy family, St. Francis enjoyed the privileged life of medieval nobility before dedicating his life to God.
"At first, he was a type of 'playboy,'" the pope said, using the English word. "But then he understood that this was not enough."
In discussing how the church can better communicate its teachings on marriage, the pope advised priests to learn from married couples about the meaning of sacrifice.
"Often we think that only celibacy is a sacrifice. But we can learn by understanding the sacrifices of married couples, including those with children, and all the problems that arise -- the fears, the sufferings, illnesses, rebellions, even the problems of the first years, when there are sleepless nights with a crying child," he said.
The pope encouraged priests to use the celebration of marriage to explain the meaning of the sacrament to a wider audience than they normally see at Sunday Mass. In that way, he said, people may better understand why the church says Catholics who have divorced and remarried without an annulment may not receive the Eucharist.
"They want to go to Communion and they don't see why it's not possible," he said. These same people probably didn't realize that when they said "I do" they were committing themselves in a sacramental way, he said.
Speaking of the need for respectful liturgies, the pope said that when the church speaks of the art of celebrating Mass, it does not imply a type of theater or spectacle. Priests are not actors, he said.
The first thing a priest should be able to communicate in the liturgy is that he has entered into a dialogue with God, he said. The congregation will sense whether that is happening, or whether the priest is celebrating in a superficial way, he said.
END
Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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