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Morning Catholic must-reads: 03/09/12

A daily guide to what’s happening in the Catholic Church

By Luke Coppen on Monday, 3 September 2012

Benedict XVI greets the faithful during yesterday's Angelus (AP)

Benedict XVI greets the faithful during yesterday's Angelus (AP)

Catholics should not allow their faith to be reduced to “practices of a secondary custom“, Benedict XVI said at the Angelus yesterday (full text of English remarks, video).

In the final interview before his death last Friday Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini argued that “the Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops” (full text, video).

Authorities in Pakistan have remanded an imam in custody for allegedly planting pages of the Koran on a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy.

American Archbishop Henry Mansell of Hartford has rebuked a priest for taking part in a same-sex marriage ceremony.

Police in England have obtained a European Arrest Warrant for Lawrence Soper, a former priest accused of sex offences who failed to answer bail.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ suggests that Cardinal Martini will serve as an inspiration for the new evangelisation.

Agnostic Anglican Harry Mount applauds the Catholic Church for saving Latin from extinction once again.

And organisers have invited sprinter Usain Bolt to speak at a TEDx conference on religious freedom at the Vatican.

For updates throughout the day follow me on Twitter @lukecoppen

Nat_ons

(In the final interview before his death last Friday Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini argued that “the Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops”)

‘Martini’s final message to Pope Benedict was to begin a shake up of the Catholic church without delay.’

Indeed so, just as he has done for us from the start; yet perhaps not quite as Martini (and the ‘progressives’ linked to him) might have welcomed. While I have the greatest appreciation of Cardinal Martini’s scholarship, pastoral intention, and understanding of the engagement with ‘modernity’ initiated by Pius XII and John XXIII, his methods left a lot to be desired. However, as with the new Prefect of the CDoF, Mueller, and even Leonardo Boff, concerns over their commitment to a sense of continuity in church doctrine (rather than its rupture) can only be seen in the legacy they may leave; if glowing with Benedixt XVI’s understanding that Vatican II was not a destruction of the past but a plea for the better fulfilment of Sacred Tradition in the modern world their legacy may form part of the whole .. if Martini, Boff and Mueller (and those who follow them) sink into individualistic ‘progressivist’ ideology of ‘our time’, they will show themselves as but one more fruitless offshoot on the Tree of Life.