
The
Greatest Pope that should have Been

Pope Benedict died this
morning at 9:34 A.M (CET) December 31st, 2022.
Please pray for him
in the Communion of Saints in which we, as Catholics, live our lives
in Christ.
Pope Benedict was undoubtedly one of the great intellects
and luminaries of our age — a brilliant mind only exceeded by his genuine
humility. He embraced all his children ... in stark contrast
to Francis who embraces only those who find favor with him, who share
his ... ideology.
In this sense Pope Benedict XVI was a father to all his
spiritual children. Gentle, kind, and courteous in a way foreign to
this age; in this respect he was an exemplar to all of us.
This is not to say that his pontificate was flawless. On the one hand,
he gave us the motus proprio
Summorum Pontificum
that restored to us the Mass of the Ages as it had been celebrated
in Latin for 2000 years. That it had been torn from us in a fiat
by Pope Paul VI and Vatican II was, in our estimation, tantamount to
ecclesiastical suicide; if not, then at the very least a criminal and
sectarian coup by Modernists.
Summorum Pontificum
Restoring what had been illegitimately taken
from us was an act of justice. That it would later be torn from
us yet again by Bergoglio (Francis) was an unconscionable
act of pontifical pillage. It was unjust and remains unjust. But after
the madness and the almost universal desecration of all things historically
and intrinsically Catholic, it was for a brief time the restoration
of sanity to the Mass. And how it thrived! But this was to the consternation
of Francis ... who famously argued that his predecessors had failed
to vigorously implement the “effluence” (no, not influence) of
Vatican II, and that he alone “had
the humility and ambition to do so” — failing to recognize that
humility and ambition are not compatible.
The gift was great but not irrevocable.
What is more, Pope Benedict had fallen into the same ecumenical
nonsense that his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, had fallen into on
Oct. 27, 1986, as we witnessed, yet again, the pan-ecumenical scandal
in
Assisi on June 19, 2011.
Resignation
Two years later, we would be astounded to
find that Pope Benedict had tendered his resignation from the papacy
on February 11, 2013, and his subsequent — and never-before-conferred
title as “pope-emeritus” — was
both baffling
and disheartening for many, many Catholics. To further confuse the
faithful, he was still addressed as “Your Holiness,” the title reserved
for a reigning pontiff. For the first time is history since the Avignon
papacy and the Great Western Schism in the 14th century when
there were two claimants to the papacy, we apparently had two popes
living in Rome. The confusion and disappointment was compounded each
year — for 10 years — by Benedict’s remaining a “pope-emeritus;” time
he could have spent correcting the wayward course of the Church
instead of abandoning it (and her children) to what he surely must have
known would be a Modernist successor. And when that successor — Francis
—emerged from the shadows of the dark logia there was, according to
more than a few who witnessed it, an almost instinctual aversion to
what appeared.
After many, many, episodes in which Francis found himself
contradicting historical Church teaching — and Holy Scripture — and
subsequently bringing scandal upon the Church, Benedict apparently did
nothing to correct him; something many had seen as a dereliction of
duty, especially in light of Saint Paul’s example in correcting Saint
Peter when he failed to be forthright, and temporized with the Jews
in Jerusalem 1. The only other pope
in history to voluntarily abdicate the Seat of Saint Peter was Pope
Celestine V in 1294, over 700 years ago. In a word, it was unthinkable
—and apart from Pope Celestine, unheard of.
Many see it, in some sense, as “Throwing the Church to
the Lions” when she was most in need of defending. Pope Benedict certainly
had the mental acuity, and, as we have seen, the physical stamina required
by a Defensor Fidei (a Defender oif the Faith) but for reasons
unknown to us, chose drop the sword and leave the arena.
Francis and Fixation, the denouement
That his reckless successor (Francis/Jorge
Bergoglio) deliberately disdains to be called “the Vicar of Christ”
— or even the “Patriarch of the West,” says much about the concept of
the “hermeneutic of continuity” so often bandied about in today’s post-Modern
Church. Instead, Jorge chose to be listed merely as “the bishop of Rome”
(in what Cardinal Gerhard Müller, called an act of “theological barbarism.)”
in what is known as the Annuario Pontificio, as
Catholic Culture points out. He eschews every identifiably Catholic
title attached to all his predecessors, including “Successor of the
Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate
of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman province, Sovereign
of the Vatican City-State.” Why such a disdainful break with the pontifical
history of the 265 popes before him? The Vatican’s explanation is entirely
in keeping with the present papacy, and the four papacies that preceded
it? In their words, doing so “could prove useful to ecumenical dialogue.”
The much-vaunted notion of the concept of the “hermeneutic of continuity”
(which purportedly connects the Church present with the Church
past — and failed to do so) is, apparently, no longer in favor.
“The pope? Oh, you mean the guy down the street?” It has become barbaric,
indeed.
It may have been otherwise for the Church, but God in His
inscrutable wisdom — which does, in fact, exceed our understanding —
in His permissive will has allowed this. Even from a merely human perspective,
we are deserving of Francis, a man after our own hearts and minds, ever
cleaving more closely to the world ... and other things. We wanted holiness
without sacrifice, a god conformed to our image and articulated in terms
of the lowest common denominator — terms equally accessible to children
and adults with cognitive impairment. We have dumbed down even Dumb.
We wanted to sit in the pews with our arms lazily draped over the the
back of the pew (or perhaps stroking the back of a loved one) as though
only tolerating what was otherwise extraordinarily stupefying
— because it was. We wanted to wear our athletic uniforms, our team-shirts,
our shorts and “distressed” (torn-to-the-flesh) jeans to Mass because,
after all, we are not there for God, but God is there for us ... and
only at our leisure.
All this was a direct consequence of the perilous course
that Vatican II would subsequently take; a course for which — in collaboration
with the dissident theologians Rahner, Küng, Schillebeeckx, and de Lubac
— then Father Ratzinger was also responsible as an influential and “progressive”
Peritus, or Theological Consultant. Often in a business suit
and tie, in many ways he embodied the Nouvelle Theologie (new
theology) together with the failed project, Ressourcement (“a
return to the sources”) then in vogue, which attempted to “invigorate”
what all five theologians saw as a stale Church in need of “updating”.
The
Peritus as (Mr.) Ratzinger, Vatican II

(Fr.) Ratzinger and Dissident Theologian (Fr.) Karl Rahner
On the other hand, it was also entirely
consistent with Benedict’s own contribution to the replacement of the
Latin Mass during Vatican II. This may come as a surprise to many
who saw in Pope Benedict a champion of the “Tridentine Mass” and Tradition.
Regrettably, he was not. Indeed, in 1967 Ratzinger wrote the following
in his volume Problemi e risultati del Concilio Vaticano II
in the Journal of Italian Theology:
2
-
“Additions [to the
liturgy] of the late Middle Ages … was linked to a set
authority, which worked in a strictly bureaucratic way,
lacking any historic vision and considering the problem
of the liturgy from the sole viewpoint of rubrics and
ceremonies, like a problem of etiquette in a saint's
court, so to speak.”
-
“There was a complete
archeologization of the liturgy, which from the state
of a living history was changed into that of pure conservation
and, therefore, condemned to an internal death. Liturgy
became once and forever a closed construction, firmly
petrified. The more it was concerned about the integrity
of pre-existent formulas, the more it lost its connection
to concrete devotions.”
-
“The solemn baroque
mass, through the splendor of the orchestra's performance,
became a kind of sacred opera, in which the songs
of the priest had their role as did the alternating
recitals. .... On the ordinary days that did not
allow such a performance, devotions that followed
the people's mentality were often added to the mass.”
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By the time he became pope, however, and well into the aftermath of
Vatican II, he apparently glimpsed the devastation it wrought — but
by then the horse was already out of the barn; indeed, as we have recounted,
he had been instrumental, much earlier, in building the barn and opening
the door.
In many ways, Joseph Ratzinger was the surpassing and ultimately heroic
pope ... that should have been.
Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine, et lux perpetua
luceat ei.
Amen
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
________________________
1 Galatians. 2.11-15
2
https://www.queriniana.it/libro/problemi-e-risultati-del-concilio-vaticano-ii-1792 Our grateful acknowledgement to
Tradition in Action for the translation into English (https://traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_068_RatzMass.htm)

Totally
Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of Faith entrusted
to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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