Crux Vaticana is restored to former glory

Here’s a nice story to end the week. From the New York Times:

A treasure of the Vatican’s collection of religious art, a sixth-century reliquary containing what are revered as fragments of the cross on which Christ was crucified, has been restored. The Vatican unveiled the restored Crux Vaticana, left, a 16-inch-high, jewel-encrusted golden cross containing what tradition holds are shards of the cross. Churches in various countries have what are said to be fragments of Christ’s cross, but the Crux Vaticana is considered the oldest reliquary of the cross.

Photo: The front of the restored Crux Vaticana (AP Photo/Ku.Ra Comunicazione)

Is this the world’s most bizarre computer game?

“Now you can go to church every day without leaving your home…” I’m not sure that Pope Benedict would approve of Mass: We Pray.

Update: The mystery of whether the game is genuine has been solved by @caio_capelari. When you click “pre-order now” you are invited to watch a trailer for the forthcoming game Dante’s Inferno. Those clever viral marketers.

Hat tip: Father Z

Pope Benedict XVI and artists: a preview

Sandro Magister previews Pope Benedict XVI’s hotly anticipated meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel tomorrow:

It has become routine to think about Benedict XVI as the pope of the ‘Logos’. His critics accuse him of rationalism. But in reality, he is convinced that Christianity’s ‘proof of truth’ does not come solely by rational means. For him, ‘art and the saints are the greatest apologia of our faith’.

Mixed reactions to Dr Williams’s Rome speech

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, delivered an impassioned, far-reaching and controversial speech in Rome yesterday on the future of Anglican-Catholic relations. Not surprisingly, it’s generated a great deal of equally impassioned comment. Here’s a selection:

Carl Olson of Ignatius Insight:

Dr Williams seems to be concerned more about arranging deck chairs than dealing with the massive holes in the hull of the Anglican ship. And that, of course, is his business. It’s understandable he might be feeling a bit concerned about the shaking and splintering of the ship beneath him. But why does he think the Catholic Church would ever consider climbing aboard to accept his sad offer of weak tea and stale cookies?

“Spirit of Vatican II”, an anonymous writer who left a comment on the Thinking Anglicans blog:

Rowan Williams’ speech is a glorious statement – majestically mature theology that shows up the pettiness of curial obsessions, without using a single ungracious word. At long last Anglicanism has given its reply to years of petty carping from the Vatican. The reply is just common sense at one level: ‘Cannot we agree to disagree fraternally about minor matters?’ On another level it reflects the full tide of ecumenical dialogue over the last century and the mind of one steeped in New Testament ideals and praxis of koinonia.

Is anyone in the Vatican, even Cardinal Kasper, capable of responding to this with equal breadth and wholeness of vision?

Fr Dwight Longenecker, author of the Standing on My Head blog:

What is really revealed is the depth of his blindness about the real situation between the churches. Can it be that even now he is defending women’s ordination and therefore women’s elevation to the episcopate? He may defend it in his own backyard, but is it possible that he really thinks the Catholic church has not decided on this? Does he honestly think the Pope is going to say, ‘Errm. I guess we flubbed on that one. For you guys it is obviously working really well. I mean your church is going from glory to glory. Is it too late to jump on the bandwagon?’

Blogger and Anglican Bishop Alan Wilson:

Rowan Williams’ lecture in Rome marks an interesting reframing of ecumenical futures. There is, of course, the conventional RC model. The Church achieves the Unity for which Jesus prayed when every Christian in the world submits to it as a Divinely sanctioned Imperium. Or try the Protestant version. Structural and organisational convergence will somehow produce a complex multiplanar hybrid. Everyone trades in their old but coherent structural and accountability models to the shining new one. Unity remains a future goal, and we all have to make it happen.

Blogger and ex-Anglican Fr Jeffrey Steel:

What stands out to me as most frustrating is that this speech seems to want to dismiss with the wave of the hand something that Rowan and Anglican ecclesiology (if there is such a definable thing!) often forgets, which is that what he/Anglicans sees as ‘secondary’ issues cannot within Catholic theology as a whole be disregarded as secondary.

The blogger Anglican Samizdat:

Where has Rowan been for the last three years? The Anglican communion is proof that the church can’t stay together once internal differences become as stark as they are now. I understand that once Rowan has convinced the Pope of the benefits of women bishops he will be travelling to Saudi Arabia to plead the case for women imams.

Andrew Brown of the Guardian:

The nearest I could get to his message to the pope is ‘Forgive us our women, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ but that can’t be right. For one thing the church of Rome is not about to forgive women priests.

Orthodox Christian blogger Ad Orientum:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has effectively told Pope Benedict XVI where to put his proposed Anglican Ordinariate… I am going to take an educated guess that this is not going to go over well in the Vatican. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when he meets the Pope in private.

Catholic apologist Patrick Madrid:

In related news, a junior-high science teacher in Dismal Seepage, Illinois, is urging the dean of the MIT science department to change his mind about the law of gravity.

Tom Heneghan of Reuters:

His argument seemed unlikely to convince the Vatican, which sees the disarray among Anglicans as proof that churches need clear doctrines and firm leadership.

You can watch part of Dr Williams’s speech here and read the full text here.

Archbishop Nichols ‘The Mass gets us beyond the divisions’

The Tablet has an interview with Archbishop Vincent Nichols, marking six months since his installation as Archbishop of Westminster.

Here’s a taster:

And what of other divisions – between Catholics of a more traditional bent and those who are more progressive – a division made more marked today by disputes over liturgy and by ill-tempered blogs? Do they concern the archbishop?

“Variation and change are not a bad thing,” he says, urging people to be more understanding. “There is something unusual about a Catholic Mass,” he adds, “celebrated within a group of like-minded people. Celebration of the Mass gets us beyond the divisions.”