No matter the question, pontiff has the answers

Here are Pope Benedict's responses to inquiries by children and priests

Shortly after his election, Pope Benedict XVI adopted a unique way to encounter various groups in the Church that had been started by his predecessor: a dialogue in the form of question-and-answer sessions. Here are some excerpts from sessions held from 2005 to 2007 with groups of children who had recently made their first Communion and priests ("Questions and Answers," OSV, $14.95).

With children

Question: Dear pope, what are your memories of your first Communion?

Answer: I remember my first Communion day very well. It was a lovely Sunday in March 1936. It was a sunny day, the church looked very beautiful, there was music. ... There were about 30 of us, boys and girls from my village of no more than 500 inhabitants.

But at the heart of my joyful and beautiful memories is this one: I understood that Jesus had entered my heart, he had actually visited me. And with Jesus, God himself was with me. And I realized that this is a gift of love that is truly worth more than all the other things that life can give.

So on that day I was really filled with great joy because Jesus came to me, and I realized that a new stage in my life was beginning -- I was 9 years old -- and that it was henceforth important to stay faithful to that encounter, to that communion. I promised the Lord as best I could: "I always was to stay with you," and I prayed to him, "but above all, stay with me."

Question: Do I have to go to confession every time I receive Communion? Because I always commit the same sins.

Answer: It is true: Our sins are always the same, but we clean our homes, our rooms, at least once a week, even if the dirt is always the same; in order to live in cleanliness, in order to start again. Otherwise, the dirt might not be seen, but it builds up. Something similar can be said about the soul, for me myself: If I never go to confession, my soul is neglected and, in the end, I am always pleased with myself and no longer understand that I must always work hard to improve, that I must make progress. And this cleansing of the soul that Jesus in the Sacrament of Confession helps us to make our consciences more alert, more open, and hence, it also helps us to mature spiritually and as human persons.

Question: How is Jesus present in the Eucharist? I can't see him!

Answer: We do not see the very deepest things, those that really sustain life and the word, but we can see and feel their effects. This is also true for electricity; we do not see the electrical current, but we see the light.

So it is with the risen Lord: We do not see him with our eyes, but we see that wherever Jesus is, people change, they improve.

With priests

Question: I suggest that there be Perpetual Adoration of the Eucharist in each of the five sectors of the Diocese of Rome.

Answer: Thanks be to God that after the (Second Vatican) Council, after a period in which the sense of eucharistic adoration was somewhat lacking, the joy of this adoration was reborn everywhere in the Church, as we saw and heard at the Synod on the Eucharist.

We have now discovered that without adoration as an act consequent to Communion received, this center that the Lord gave to us -- that is, the possibility of celebrating his sacrifice and this of entering into a sacramental, almost corporeal, communion with him -- loses its depth as well as its human richness.

Question: How do we help lay people grasp a practical, lively effective faith?

Answer: Faith, ultimately is a gift. Consequently, the first condition is to let ourselves be given something, not to be self-sufficient or do everything by ourselves -- because we cannot -- but to open ourselves in the awareness that the Lord truly gives.

We do not "have" faith, in the sense that it is primarily God who gives it to us. Nor do we "have" it either, in the sense that it must not be invented by us. We must let ourselves fall, so to speak, into the communion of faith, of the Church. Believing is in itself a Catholic act. It is participation in this great certainty, which is present in the Church as a living subject.

Question: Women should have a greater role in governing the Church.

Answer: The Church has a great debt of gratitude to women. At a charismatic level, women do so much, I would dare to say, for the government of the Church.

The priestly ministry of the Lord, as we know, is reserved to men, since the priestly ministry is government in the deep sense, which, in short, means it is the Sacrament [of Holy Orders] that governs the Church.

That is the crucial point. It is not the man who does something, but the priest governs, faithful to his mission, in the sense that it is the sacrament -- that is, through the sacrament it is Christ himself who governs, both through the Eucharist and in the other sacraments, and thus Christ always presides.

However, it is right to ask whether in ministerial service it might be possible to make more room, to give more offices of responsibility to women.