I've been waiting for a transcript of B-16's meeting with the priests of Rome on Ash Wednesday. He had no prepared remarks beyond a commentary on the readings of the day --just took their questions. There's no English transcript yet (but there is Italian), but here are excerpts. He covers everything: the role of women in the Church, the future of Africa, the difference between the Koran & the Bible, the problem with historicism, interesting comments on relations with the Orthodox. It's too much to choose from, so go find your own favorite part, but I liked this especially:
While reflecting, it came to mind that the great defection from Christianity that has taken place in the West over the last hundred years was set in motion precisely in the name of opting for life. It has been said – I am thinking of Nietzsche, but of many others as well – that Christianity is a decision against life: with the cross, with all the commandments, with all of the “no”s that it proposes to us, it closes the door of life against us. But we want to have life, and we choose, we opt, finally, for life by liberating ourselves from the cross, by liberating ourselves from all these commandments and from all these “no”s; we want to have life in abundance, and nothing other than life.
Paradoxically, however, as the Gospel says, whoever seeks his life shall lose it and whoever loses his life shall find it. Notice, too, in his conclusion, how Islam is ever-present in his mind these days. He hardly ever talks about God without alluding to it.
It doesn’t please us at first glance, but this is the way: the option for life and the option for God are identical. The Lord says this in the Gospel of John: “This is eternal life: that they know you” (Jn. 17:3). […] To choose God, then: this is essential. A world void of God, a world that has forgotten God, loses life and falls into a culture of death. […] Precisely in wanting to have life, one says “no” to a child, because he would take away some part of my life; one says “no” to the future, in order to have all of the present; one says “no” to both unborn and suffering life. This seeming culture of life becomes the anti-culture of death, where God is absent, where there is an absence of that God who does not order hatred, but overcomes hatred. It is here that we make the real choice for life. All is connected: the deepest option for Christ crucified and the most complete option for life.
