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By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Paris

On his way to Paris this morning, Pope Benedict XVI called fears his recent authorization for wider celebration of the old Latin Mass marks a rollback on reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council “absolutely unfounded.”

“There is no opposition at all between the liturgy approved by Vatican II and the liturgy celebrated according to the old rite,” the pope said.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Paris

Oddly enough, one good place to grasp the importance of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to France this weekend, at least as seen from the Vatican, is well outside French airspace – in France’s ancient rival, England.

Over the last two years, religious groups in England, above all the Catholic church, have fought a losing battle against a new law that makes it illegal for adoption agencies that take public funding to discriminate against gay couples. To date, church leaders have not succeeded in efforts to win an exemption, so some Catholic agencies have either cut their ties to the church or closed their doors.

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Paris

Pressing the case for what he called a “healthy” form of laïcité, Benedict XVI today said the time has come to reopen the debate over the relationship between church and state in France. (The concept of laïcité is usually rendered in English as “secularism.”)

Though addressed to the French, the pope's argument has far broader implications. With the exception of the United States, Benedict worries that much of the West today is in the grip of a form of secularism hostile to any public role for churches and religious believers. Privately, Vatican officials often charge that this secularism is heavily conditioned by the French model, and is spreading across the continent through various European Union treaties as well as rulings from European courts.

John Allen is covering Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Paris and Lourdes in France Sept. 12-15. There is no column today, but Allen is providing postings from France.

Throughout the weekend, read all the stories in his daily news column: John L Allen Jr Daily Column. (Paste this link into your browser: http://ncrcafe.org/blog/2682). Stories Allen has filed include:

Sept 15
• Pope in France: A lesson in 'Marian cool'

Sept 14
• Pope in France: Traditionalists deserve 'a place in the church'
• The Cross, Mary, and hope for 'new vigor' in the Churchy

Sept 13
• Pope tells shrunken church, 'Don't be afraid'
• Lourdes: Nothing says 'Catholic' like the Virgin Mary
• Explaining Benedict's discretion on Islam

Sept 12
• No reference to Muslims, but pope makes a call to resist 'disaster for humanity'
• Benedict makes a case for 'healthy secularism'
• Pope in France: Averting a secular Iron Curtain
• Pope in France: Latin Mass an 'act of tolerance'

Earlier stories
• Extracts from Sarkozy on church/state relations in France
• Cardinal Tauran on the pope's trip to France
• The Marian Papacy of Benedict XVI
• Benedict hopes to tap the 'creative minority' of French Catholics

(Editor's Note: Some stories are double posted, on NCRonline.org and on NCRcafe.org.)

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Paris

Precisely two years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a speech during a foreign trip, billed as an address to the world of culture, which fired a shot heard round the world. Speaking at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria on Sept. 12, 2006, he cited a 14th century Byzantine emperor to the effect that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, had “brought things only evil and inhuman,” triggering protest across the Islamic world.

Without confronting the moral status of the transnational corporations which are currently destroying our planet’s ecological balance, no proposal can outrun the onrushing ecological catastrophe. As Catholics, we have a powerful moral basis for taking the necessary action in the Catechism and the teachings of the Fathers. This necessary action must include expropriating natural and other resources from those corporations that are currently misusing them to degrade the creation upon which we all depend for life.