UPDATED
The Wednesday Audience used to be fairly dull, especially have having been to a few. This Pope, however, is getting more an more interesting.
Today there was an attack on the Pope’s person. I know the Holy See is saying it wasn’t an attack. However, I apply the "Duck Argument": the guy was clearly shouting menacing things so that a Vatican cop lined up across from him before he jumped, it took several men to get him down, and one of the Swiss went to the hospital. And the Holy See says it wasn’t an attack. Riiiiiiiight.
However, there were fireworks in the Pope’s address today, which focused on St. Cyprian of Carthage.
You are going to love this one, folks, when it comes out in English.
Among the highlights I enjoyed is this. Read this and think about the Pope’s motives for the upcoming Motu Proprio (my translation and emphases):
[Cyprian] distinguishes between the Church visible, hierarchical, and the Church invisibile, mystical, but affirms with force that the Church is one only, founded on Peter. He does not weary of repeating that "who abandons the cathedra of Peter, on whom the Church was founded, deludes himself that he has remained in the Church" (Unity of the Catholic Church, 4). Cyprian knows well, and formulated it with forceful words, that "outside the Church there is no salvation" (ep. 4,4 and 73,21) and that "whoever does not have the Church as mother cannot have God as Father" (Unity of the Catholic Church, 4). An inalienable characteristic of the Church is unity, symbolized by Christ’s seamless garment (ibid, 7): the unity of which he says finds its foundation in Peter (ibid, 4) and its perfect realization in the Eucharist (ep. 63,13). "There is only one God, only one Christ", Cyprian admonishes, "only one is His Church, only one faith, only one Christian people, close in stable unity in the cement of concord: and you cannot separate that which is one in its nature (Unity of the Catholic Church, 23).
The Fathers of the Church were uniformly horrified by schism.
This Pope is steeped in the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, another North African who like Cyprian fought schism.
Notice the reference to Eucharistic unity.
Think about the SSPX and the Motu Proprio.
Then there is this. Quoting Cyprian the Pope continues:
"And when we gather together as one with the brethren and we celebrate the divine sacrifices with the priest of God, we must remember reverential fear and discipline, not to throw our prayers here and there to the wind with unseemly words, nor hurl with bombastic verbosity demands that ought to be commended to God with moderation, because God is the listeners not of the voice but of the heart (non vocis sed cordis auditor est)" (3-4). This concerns words that remain valid also today and which help us to celebrate the Holy Liturgy well.
