How to get everyone’s attention

Talk clearly, courageously, charitably, and don’t compromise the truth. Address the truth about things in positive, noble terms, as the attractive alternative to the deceit behind the lure of lies. People will pay attention, and they will be captivated.

That happens everywhere Pope Benedict goes, even if it’s right outside in St. Peter’s Square. It happened when he gave the infamous Regensburg Address. It’s been happening this past week in Latin America, and it is fascinating. Sandro Magister has an excellent analysis of that region’s expectations before the Pope arrived, and what he said when he got there.

Among the twelve speeches, homilies, messages, and greetings pronounced by Benedict XVI during his four-day trip to Brazil, the one most keenly awaited was the inaugural address for the fifth conference of the bishops’ conference of Latin American and the Caribbean, in Aparecida.

But the discourse that will be remembered in the future as the one most revealing of the pope’s objectives was another. It was the one he delivered to the bishops of Brazil in the cathedral of Sao Paolo, at the end of Vespers on Friday, May 11…

The pope begins it with words “sharper than a sword”: the words of the New Testament on perfect obedience to the Father of Jesus, the savior of all precisely because he was obedient in everything, even to the cross. The bishops, he asserts, are simply “bound” to this obedience: their mission is that of preaching the truth, baptizing, “saving souls one by one” in the name of Jesus.

“This, and nothing else, is the purpose of the Church,” Benedict XVI emphasizes. Therefore, where the truth of the Christian faith is hidden, and where the sacraments are not celebrated, “the essential is also lacking for the solution of urgent social and political problems.”

The Church’s members in different regions has strayed, and some people expect scolding or hardline criticism. Not going to happen with Benedict, nor should it happen that way.

All of the instructions that the pope gave to the Brazilian bishops following the address descend from this foundation. Benedict XVI’s clear intention is that of reestablishing Jesus, true God and true man, as the center of the Latin American Church: a Church that, in his judgment, has in recent decades strayed too far into political territory, under the influence of liberation theology.

For Benedict XVI, a strong effort of evangelization is the real response to the attacks against the family, to the crimes against life, to the abandoning of Catholicism in favor of the new “evangelical” and Pentecostal sects. And priestly celibacy also weakens when “the structure of total consecration to God begins to lose its deepest meaning.” And the poor must also be offered “the divine balm of the faith, without overlooking material bread.”

How much more powerful can the message be than that?

It is easy to intuit the situations that prompted each of these instructions given by Benedict XVI to the bishops of Brazil: from unbridled liturgical spontaneity to the widespread violation of priestly celibacy. The pope did not give himself over to describing these situations. Exactly as he did not say a single explicit word – contrary to the expectations of many – about liberation theology. He gave only the slightest outlines of an analysis of the success of the Pentecostal sects. And he did not meet with any of the leaders of these sects, not even in the brief encounter scheduled for Sao Paolo with the heads of other Christian confessions and other religions.

Instead, Benedict XVI centered all of his preaching on the foundation from which he began in his address to the bishops: Jesus. That is, he carried out the same work of concentrating on the essential that characterizes his encyclical “Deus Caritas Est” and his book “Jesus of Nazareth.”

And here’s another key point…

This is a message that Benedict XVI addresses, not only to Brazil or to Latin America, but to the Church all over the world.

Sandro has the text of Benedict’s address at his site, along with some of the best analysis out there on what else the Pope has said, why, and what it means for the modern world.