August 2005 Archives

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger delivered this lecture in Italian at the VIII International Church Music Congress in Rome, November 17, 1985. It was printed Sacred Music 112 (1986, pp. 13-22), and also in A New Song for the Lord (NY: Crossroad, 1995). Here is an excerpt:

I would like to conclude my remarks with a fine quotation from Mahatma Gandhi which I recently, found in a calendar. Gandhi mentions the three “living areas� of the cosmos and notes that each of these involves a specific manner of existing. Fish live in the sea, and they are silent. Animals on earth below, bark and bray. But the birds who inhabit the heavens sing. Silence is proper to the sea, braying is proper to the earth, and singing belongs to heaven. But man has a share in all three, for within himself he bears the depths of the sea, the burden of the earth and the heights of heaven. Hence he possesses all three properties: silence, bellowing and singing.

Today, I would like to add, we see that for man deprived of transcendence there remains only braying, because he desires to be earth arid nothing more, indeed tries to make the heavens and the ocean deep to be his earth. True liturgy, the liturgy of the communion of saints, gives man once again his completeness. It instructs him once again in silence and in singing by opening for him the depths of the sea and by teaching him to fly—the existence of the angels. By “lifting up the heart;� true liturgy allows the buried song to resound in man once again. Indeed, we could now actually say that true liturgy can be recognized by the fact that it liberates from everyday activity and restores to us both the depths and the heights: silence and singing. True liturgy is recognizable because it is cosmic and not limited to a group. True liturgy sings with the angels, and true liturgy is silent with the expectant depths of the universe. And thus true liturgy redeems the earth.

[Via St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum]

By now, you've all heard about how Jason Torres kept his wife alive, just long enough to deliver a healthy baby girl. Well, this part, you probably have not heard. On the night of Susan's collapse, both Jason and his father, Sonny Torres, were awoken, in their respective homes, at 4:15am, to the sound of a woman's voice:

“You and others will tell the world of a fight to save a precious life, not to change hardened hearts, but to give hope to those who believe, so that they know that there is more than what they see and hear. Let them come and see for themselves.�

In this interview of Oriana Fallaci, by Tunku Varadarajan, we read her assessment of a creeping Islamic world domination.

Speaking of the West, in general, and Europe, in particular, Ms. Fallaci offers her diagnosis: "The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period."

Although she has many enemies, she is not alone in her dire asessment: "I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." [Tunku Varadarajan] asked Ms. Fallaci whether there was any contemporary leader she admired, and Pope Benedict XVI was evidently a man in whom she reposed some trust. "I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."

"Ecco!" she says. A man after her own heart. "Ecco!"