"We know that after the Second Vatican Council some people were convinced that everything was new, that there was a new church, that the pre-conciliar church was finished and that we would have a completely different church," the pope said during his general audience March 10.

Their vision would have led to "a utopian anarchy," he said, but the wise guidance of Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II "defended the new things brought by the council, while affirming the oneness and continuity of the church."

The pope's made his remarks about reactions to the Second Vatican Council during an audience talk focused on St. Bonaventure's attempts in the mid-1200s to balance enthusiasm for the new form of religious life introduced by St. Francis of Assisi with continued fidelity to the hierarchal church.

St. Bonaventure taught the early Franciscans and continues to teach Catholics today that living the faith requires "discernment, sober realism and openness to new gifts" given to the church by the Holy Spirit, the pope said.

St. Bonaventure was superior of the Franciscans at a time when a large group of friars embraced the teaching of Joachim of Fiore, who taught that history followed a "Trinitarian rhythm," in which the Old Testament age was the time of God the father, a time of severity; the New Testament and the first millennium of the church was the time of Jesus Christ and the "relative freedom" that came from no longer being bound to many of the Jewish laws; and the age of the Holy Spirit was to be a time "of complete freedom," the pope said.

The group of Franciscans who saw St. Francis as initiating the age of the Holy Spirit believed it would be a time when "the hierarchical church was left behind in order to give birth to the new church of the Holy Spirit, no longer tied to the old structures," the pope said.

"There was, therefore, a risk of a very serious misunderstanding of St. Francis' message and of his humble fidelity to the Gospel and to the church," the pope said.

After studying Joachim of Fiore in depth, St. Bonaventure presented his own theology of history, affirming that history is a progressive movement, but that it is directed by God, who is one and who has fully revealed himself to humanity in Jesus Christ, the pope said.

The Gospel is God's final revelation to humanity and the church is where God wants people to live their faith, the pope said.

"This does not mean that the church is immobile, fixed in the past and that there can never be anything new in it," the pope said, because as St. Bonaventure taught, "the works of Christ do not go backward, but progress."

Greeting English speakers at the audience, Pope Benedict spoke of the "promising sign of hope" coming from the Northern Ireland Assembly's vote March 9 to move oversight of the police and of the courts from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, furthering the process toward full local governance.

The pope said he prayed the move would "help consolidate the future of peace desired by all."

And, at the end of the audience, the pope also expressed his condolences to the people of eastern Turkey where an earthquake March 8 left more than 50 people dead and left thousands homeless.

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Editor's Note: The text of the pope's audience remarks in English will be posted online at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100310_en.html.

The text of the pope's audience remarks in Spanish will be posted online at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100310_sp.html.

Meeting in Orlando, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America voted to seek entry into the Catholic Church under the guidelines established in Pope Benedict XVI's apostolic constitution "Anglicanorum Coetibus" ("Groups of Anglicans"), said a March 3 statement.

The Anglican Church in America is part of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a group of churches which separated from the worldwide Anglican Communion in 1991. The Traditional Anglican Communion claims 400,000 members worldwide.

The request means the 100 Anglican Church in America parishes will ask for group reception into the Catholic Church in a "personal ordinariate," a structure similar to dioceses for former Anglicans who become Catholic.

Churches under the personal ordinariate can retain their Anglican character and much of their liturgy and practices — including married priests — while being in communion with the Catholic Church.

Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, and Father Christopher Phillips of Our Lady of the Atonement Parish, an Anglican-use Catholic church in San Antonio, attended the meeting, according to the statement.

The Anglican Church in America is the third group of Anglican churches to respond positively to the Vatican's invitation.

The first was the United Kingdom branch of the Traditional Anglican Communion, which comprises about 20 small parishes and which in October began the process of joining the Catholic Church under the apostolic constitution.

The second was the Australian branch of Forward in Faith, a traditionalist group which is in communion with mainstream Anglican churches. In February Forward in Faith directed its governing council to take the steps needed for 16 parishes to join the Catholic Church.

The United Kingdom branch of Forward in Faith also is considering making a request for an ordinariate. A final decision is not expected before July.

Anglican Bishop John Broadhurst estimated that about 200 Anglican parishes will seek to join the Catholic Church if Forward in Faith decides to ask for an ordinariate.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales have established a commission to prepare for the group reception of Anglican parishes. Headed by four bishops working with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the commission is examining issues such as church ownership, the advantages and disadvantages of church sharing and long-term leases of some Anglican parishes.

Celebrating Mass March 7 at the Rome parish of St. John of the Cross and reciting the Angelus at the Vatican afterward, the pope focused on the day's Gospel story in which Jesus tells his followers they must convert or they will perish.

At the parish, which was founded in 1989, the pope said Lent is "an invitation to the conversion of our lives and to doing appropriate acts of penitence."

The crowd Jesus was addressing in the day's Gospel story thought that people who met a sudden and violent death were sinners, while the fact that members of Jesus' audience were still alive meant they had nothing to worry about, the pope said.

But Jesus warned them that by not recognizing their own sins and not setting out on the path to conversion, they would not be saved, he said.

"During Lent, each one of us is called by God to make a change, thinking and living according to the Gospel, correcting things in our way of praying, acting, working and relating to others," he said.

"Jesus makes this appeal to us not with an aim of severity, but because he is concerned for our welfare, our happiness and our salvation," the pope said.

Reciting the Angelus later with visitors in St. Peter's Square, the pope said the Gospel story teaches Christians not to look for fault among the victims of disasters, but to recognize how much they need God in their own lives and to ask for the strength to convert.

"In the face of sin, God reveals himself to be full of mercy and does not hesitate to call sinners to avoid evil, to grow in his love and to concretely help their neighbors in need so they can live in the joy of grace and not face eternal death," the pope said.

Within a few days, however, the city and the archdiocese worked out a compromise that allowed employees to designate "legally domiciled" members of their households — a dependent parent, child or sibling, for example, or an unmarried heterosexual or homosexual partner — for spousal equivalent benefits, without requiring the church to recognize the "partners" as married.

Nine years later, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston was forced to drop out of the adoption business when it could not get an exemption from Massachusetts regulations requiring agencies contracting with the state not to discriminate against same-sex couples who seek to adopt children.

Although then-Gov. Mitt Romney called it "a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children" and vowed to seek legislation allowing religious agencies to provide adoption services without violating their religious tenets, no such law ever materialized.

Now the issue of same-sex marriage has hit the nation's capital, where in recent days Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington has had to hand off its adoption and foster care services to another agency and announce that spousal benefits will no longer be provided to new employees or to current employees who want to add a spouse to their coverage after March 1.

Problems with same-sex marriage also threaten to spill over into neighboring Maryland, where the law states that "only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid in the state" but Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler issued an opinion Feb. 24 that same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions could be recognized as legal.

The archbishops of Baltimore and Washington and the bishop of Wilmington, Del., whose dioceses each include parts of Maryland, immediately took exception to the opinion, which is not legally binding.

"The attorney general's opinion demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the nature and purpose of marriage and its impact on society, as well as for the expressed will of the legislature and previous attorney general opinions," they said.

So why have there been different church responses to similar dilemmas posed by same-sex marriage? It's all in the wording of the laws and in "shifting the debate," as Archbishop Levada put it in a 1997 article for First Things magazine on "The San Francisco Solution."

The church teaches that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and supports traditional marriage as the building block of society and the best way to nurture and protect children.

The new law in the District of Columbia, where same-sex couples began receiving marriage licenses March 3 and would be eligible to marry the following week, says no religious leader will be compelled to participate in a same-sex marriage ceremony and religious organizations "shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, facilities or goods" for such a ceremony if it violates their religious beliefs.

But officials in the Archdiocese of Washington had sought a wider religious exemption, similar to the one contained in Vermont's same-sex marriage law.

Vermont's "Act to Protect Religious Freedom and Recognize Equality in Civil Marriage" adds "advantages" and "privileges" to the list of things that religious organizations cannot be required to extend.

It also adds: "This subsection shall not be construed to limit a religious organization, association or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization from selectively providing services, accommodations, facilities, goods or privileges to some individuals with respect to the solemnization or celebration of a marriage but not to others."

"That's three times in one subsection" that the Vermont law specifically excludes religious organizations, noted Helen Alvare, an associate professor of law at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va.

The District of Columbia law provides little protection for religious organizations beyond what is already guaranteed in the First Amendment, said Alvare, who formerly worked as a law professor at The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law and as pro-life spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But a religious exemption, like that in the Vermont law, "says you're going to get a break from a law of general applicability because you are a religious organization," she added.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco, where the battle was fought first, got a lot of criticism from both sides for its compromise solution.

But Archbishop Levada, now a cardinal and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, said in First Things that the solution "changes the focus from domestic partners and thus removes the primary purpose of the original legislation for many of those who promoted it."

In its place, the archbishop substituted a focus on an issue that remains in the public eye today.

"I am in favor of increasing benefits, especially health coverage, for anyone," he wrote. "I would welcome the opportunity to work with city officials to find ways to overcome what I believe is a national shame, the fact that many Americans have no health coverage at all."

Under what was then the new plan, "we would know no more or no less about the employee's relationship" with the person covered by his or his health insurance "than we typically know about a designated life insurance beneficiary," Archbishop Levada wrote.

"What we have done is to prohibit local government from forcing our Catholic agencies to create internal policies that recognize domestic partnerships as a category equivalent to marriage," he added. "I agree with moral theologians like William May who see no compromise of Catholic moral principle in this practice."

In a Feb. 19 letter to senators, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace, called for passage of the Renewing Hope for Haiti Act, S. 2978, which would renew existing trade protections set to expire in September.

Passage of the bill, introduced Feb. 2 by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., will help the Haitian economy create much needed jobs and reduce poverty, Bishop Hubbard wrote.

Jobs especially are needed in Haiti following the massive Jan. 12 earthquake, which struck a large portion of the poor Caribbean nation, killing at least 220,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, Bishop Hubbard told the senators.

Citing the long-standing support from the U.S. bishops for protections for Haitian goods from taxes and other trade barriers, Bishop Hubbard said passage of the bill can help rebuild the country's economy and encourage exporters to reconstruct damaged or destroyed factories more quickly.

"Down the road it will be important to adopt broader preferential treatment for Haitian goods, but immediately extending the existing preferences will be important to the sustainable development of Haiti," Bishop Hubbard wrote.

On another economic front, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade March 4 approved a bill that would cancel all international debt Haiti owes.

The bill, known as the Jubilee Act, H.R. 4405, also has won the support of the U.S. bishops. It could come up for a vote in the House of Representatives next week.

Haiti owes $1.5 billion to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other international banking institutions.