ON THE EVE OF VATICAN II'S GOLDEN JUBILEE BENEDICT XVI SPEAKS OF THE COUNCIL............

At his weekly General Audience in Vatican City today, His Holiness Pope Benedict XV1, spoke on the eve of the 50th Anniversary of the convening of the Second Vatican Council, of how the Ecumenical Council posed then, what he said is the, "question of God", to the secular World; just as it does now.  Quoting Pope Paul VI, who in 1965 at the culmination of the four sessions over three years gathering known asVatican II, the 21st Ecumenical Council in the History of the Catholic-Christian Church, Benedict XVI said today, "man is orientated towards the conquest of the kingdom of earth rather than that of heaven; a time at which the forgetfulness of God has become habitual, and seems quite wrongly, to be prompted by the progress of science; a time at which the fundamental act of the human person, more conscious now of himself and his liberty, tends to pronounce in favor of his of his own absolute autonomy, in emanicipation from every transccendent law; a time in which secularism seems the legitimate consequence of modern thought and the highest wisdom in the temporal ordering of society".  Pope Benedict spoke to some 25,000 people in St. Peter's presenting his remembrances as a college professor priest, who attended the Council as a theological consultant to Archbishop Frings of Cologne, Germany.  "I was a young professor of fundamental theology at the University of Bonn at that time, and it was the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Frings, a human and priestly point of reference for me, who took me with him to be his consultant theologian, later I was appointed a Council expert".   Describing the Vatican II Council, "like a giant fresco painted in its great diversity and variety of elements, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit", the Pope said we return to it now as a moment of grace, just as we do great works of art, and stated it is an event, "particularly rich even today", and speaking of the Council's 16 Documents said, "we must return to free them from a mass of publications that often instead of making them known, have hidden them".   For the past thirty years I have personally and pastorally made the point that every Catholic-Christian should read and become familiar with the Documents of Vatican II, as the pertinent focus for our understanding and practice of the Faith and the Church in the World of the post conciliar, 3rd Millennium era of Catholic-Christianity .  At the invitation and with the encouragement of Monsignor Robert Walton, of Sacred Heart Parish, here in East Sacramento, parishioner Rita Spillane and I, will be teaming up to present a series of seminars on some of the chief Documents of the Second Vatican.  More about that here on my blog, as it develops.  In coming days I will also be blogging further on the 50th Anniversary of the start of Vatican II, and the influence and impact it has had and continues to have, on the reform and renewal of the Church in today's World............tdp