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On that twofold 'foolish prejudice':
The complete text of Benedict XVI's letter
March 13, 2018
The press office did not release the complete text of the letter sent by Benedict XVI last February 7 to the prefect of the Secretariat for Communications, Monsignor Dario Edoardo Viganò.
Viganò however, read it on the occasion of the presentation to the press of the series “The theology of Pope Francis,” published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana and made up of eleven booklets, by different authors, on various aspects of the written and oral magisterium of the current pontiff.
The letter bears the date of February 7 and is in response to a previous letter from Viganò of January 12. But given that it was made known on the evening of March 12, just in time for the fifth anniversary of the election as pope of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, it was received as if it were a sort of “vote,” more than just good, given by Benedict to his successor, at the end of his first five years as pope.
This interpretation has also been fostered by the press release sent out for the occasion by Viganò himself, which cited only the second and third paragraphs of the letter.
In which, however, Benedict XVI rejects not one, but a twofold “foolish prejudice”: one, that Francis would be “only a practical man devoid of particular theological or philosophical formation,” and two, that he himself, Joseph Ratzinger, would be “solely a theoretician of theology who could understand little of the concrete life of a Christian today.”
Further, the letter says that Benedict recognizes his successor's 'profound formation' in theology and philosophy, as well as an “interior continuity” between their pontificates, where the adjective “interior” applies at least as much as the substantive “continuity,” given “all the differences of style and temperament.”
But there is a final paragraph, omitted in the press release, in which Ratzinger, in all candor, manifests his gift for irony. It’s all there for the reading. And he who wishes to understand, let him understand.
Benedictus XVI
Papa Emeritus
The Most Reverend
Mons. Dario Edoardo Viganò
Prefect of the
Secretariat for Communication
Vatican City
February 7, 2018
Most Reverend Monsignor,
I thank you for your courteous letter of January 12 and for the attached gift of the eleven small books edited by Roberto Repole.
I applaud this initiative which is intended to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice according to which Pope Francis would be only a practical man devoid of particular theological or philosophical formation, while I would be only a theoretician of theology who could understand little of the concrete life of a Christian today.
The booklets demonstrate, rightly so, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help in seeing the interior continuity between the two pontificates, albeit with all the differences of style and temperament.
Nonetheless, I do not feel that I can write a brief and dense theological page about them because throughout my life, it has always been clear that I would write and express myself only on books that I had truly read. Unfortunately, even if only for physical reasons, I am not able to read the eleven little volumes in the near future, all the more so in that I am under other obligations to which I have already agreed.
I am sure that you will understand, and I extend to you my cordial greeting.
Yours,
Benedict XVI
It seems to be the consensus of those sympathetic to Benedict XVI that the second and third paragraphs of the letter could not have been written by him, if only in terms of style and the very language used. But nonetheless they come in the same letter as the fourth paragraph which, I agree with Magister, are candid words which also drip with irony. However it was that those laudatory words cited by Mons. Vigano and the Vatican news report came to be written, Benedict XVI would surely have been aware that any such words would be used and publicized as an endorsement of Bergoglio.
Yet the letter would have accomplished its purpose - i.e., declining a request from Mons. Vigano to write something about the booklets (obviously in the hope of using that something as an authoritative Foreword for the series) - without the second and third paragraphs. How did Mons Gaenswein allow this travesty (which it is, with the second and third paragraphs) to be sent at all? I assume he would have known about Vigano's request and that the emeritus pope would answer and decline the request. Anyway, here's Antonio Socci on the letter, using his commentary to introduce an essay he had written on the fifth anniversary of the Bergoglio Pontificate.
Five years of Bergoglio:
Notes on a shipwreck
Translated from
March 13, 2018
I wrote this hastily Monday night as soon as the Vatican spread the news of Benedict XVI’s lettr which seemed, at first glance, to be an enthusiastic expression of approval for Bergoglio on the fifth anniversary of his election as pope.
My first question was: Why did the Vatican not release the text of the entire letter and only choose to extrapolate what they did?
Now it is all clear. The ever-excellent Sandro Magister, in less than 24 hours, has published the entire text which the Vatican did not provide to newsmen last night, and we find out that Benedict XVI makes it clear how we should interpret the toll he had to pay in terms of the preceding two paragraphs.
The emeritus Pope simply says he has no time to write a commentary on the theological thinking of Bergoglio (as he was obviously asked to do) nor has he even the time to read ‘the eleven booklets” by various authors who seek in these booklets to display the range of Bergoglian wisdom. Benedict XVI makes it clear he has not read the booklets nor does he intend to read them because he has other commitments to attend to! Is the antiphon clear? It seems to me that nothing more needs to be said to those who can understand these few lines (which I find to be an elegant and sublime mockery).
To understand this last paragraph better, one must remember that recently, the Emeritus Pope wrote, on his own initiative, a very beuatiful theological appreciation of Cardinal Sarah’s book, ‘The Power of Silence’, subsequently used by publishers as a Foreword for new editions and translations of the book. Perhaps this prompted the Vatican to ask him for a similar commentary on Bergoglio. But Benedict XI replies that he has other things t do (‘commitments I have already made’). Masterful irony!
[I shall translate Socci's essay on 5 years of Bergoglio later... Marco Tosatti wrote his commentary before he saw the text of the full letter.
Benedict XVI’s message:
‘Foolish’ is really a strange word not in his vocabulary, or
Reflections outside the Hosannah chorus from the Bergoglian court
Translated from
March 13, 2018
The official Vatican News, whose head received the letter of Benedict XVI, presented it this way:
We have seen and heard how the musicians of the Bergoglio court made haste to use a letter by the Emeritus Pope as an all-out endorsement of the current pope by his retired predecessor, as though by this letter, Benedict XVI has extended a blanket guarantee for anything said or done by Bergoglio, and as if he wished to ‘defend’ him from criticisms and attacks, increasingly more frequent, against the governance of the Church and for the magisterial confusion which many at all levels have noted and denounced.
Allow me some observations about the letter which is very curious for all its brevity. My first observation: the use of the adjective ‘foolish’ of 'stupid' [stolto, in Italian]*. I did a concordance word search of all the writings of Benedict XVI without finding a single instance in which Joseph Ratzinger used the word. Or rather, apart from his apostolic letter on the Blessed (now Saint) Andre Bessette which was written only in Latin, in which Benedict XVI quotes St Paul (1 Cor 1,27-29). (The passage starts with the words “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise…”)
A second observation. The media, in reporting the letter, have underscored a re-valuation of Bergoglio from the philosophical and theological standpoint. Yet it is not as if Bergoglio has written any important philosophical and theological work, especially since he never even got around to writing his doctoral thesis in theology. The books in the new Vatican ‘series’ – booklets, as Benedict’s letter refers to them – were not written by Bergoglio but by others writing about him.
It would be wrong to think of Benedict’s letter as a form of courteous flattery. Besides, I leave it to the reader to decide if the flattery is credible. Rather, that it was something necessary in view of what seemed to bea defense of himself from the charge that he has only been a theoretical theologian, something which has circulated for decades.
[In this, Tosatti is less insightful (and I believe, wrong) than one of his readers who points out:
“It is so unlikely that Benedict XVI would defend himself by saying, in effect: ‘I am better than what all you foolish people think I am’, which amounts to self-praise. I don’t think he would ever do this. The ‘defense’ [that Tosatti refers to] are the words of an impatient and capricious egocentric. Someone like him, a holy man close to God, would not need to affirm himself to the world and boast of the qualities not recognized in him by us, poor sinners. And even if he might have wanted to correct the wrong impression about him - why would he, after all this time – I don’t think he would have said so in those terms, on the level of “I am really better than what you all think of me, nyah-nyahnyahnyahnyah!”. That is not the style of Benedict XVI, nor of any saint.[/dim
One last observation. About ‘continuity’. The letter refers to ‘internal continuity’. Internal or interior is used for things that have to do with the spiritual. But a pontificate is not just interiorness. It is above all, governance and magisterium. That is why I find the specific and rather limiting use of the term ‘continuity’ in Benedict’s letter to Mons. Vigano significant. In which not even kindness, or a sense of responsibility for defending the institution of the Papacy, would push him to say things beyond the reality that is visible, evident, and under the eyes of all.
*Father Z's first reaction to what he read in the Italian newspapers was similar:
What I find so odd is that phrase, that it’s a, “stupid (stolto… foolish, moronic, idiotic) prejudice by which Pope Francis would be only a practical man, without specific theological or philosophical formation, whereas I would merely a theoretician of theology who would little understand the concrete life of a Christian today.”
First, the style of the language is … how to put this… looser than what one might expect from Ratzinger. Second, it is self-referential… which anyone who has read Ratzinger over the years will recognize as something which he would vigorously avoid. As a matter of fact, there is a full doctoral thesis available on the topic of “self-referentiality in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger”. He abhors it!...In the past, I would have opined that he would avoid such a self-defensive reference.
Comboxes can be a mine of great good sense, as in the ff additional comments I picked up from Tosatti's blog:
Another Tosatti reader sees a Benedettian irony in the words describing the reigning pope as "a man of profound philosophical and theological formation”: “If he is so well-prepared, theologically and philosophically, all the more reason to say that the crud he writes and says is not just casual but studied and intended.”
Then there’s ‘Cesare Baronio’, himself a blog writer and thought to be a Roman monsignor, who offers this interesting fact that may explain the words used in Benedict XVI’s unfortunate second and third paragraphs:
It is usual that the presentation of a book in written form is not done by whoever signs it but by the person who requests such a written presentation. For practical reasons: it saves the signer from having to read the book he is supposed to endorse, so he can write what he has to say without losing time and without having to make any major changes. Because people who write forewords for books usually get tons of requests to do so, and it would be unreasonable to expect him to be able to read all these books… So it is possible that this presentation [as it reads in the second and third paragraphs of Benedict’s letter] was suggested by the person who asked for it…
Another Tosatti reader commented:
It would be interesting to see the text of the letter to which Benedict XV responded, because I am sure we will find in it expressions like ‘foolish prejudice’ and the other laudatory words about the present occupant of the See of Rome. I think this is what happened: Mons. Vigano asked the Emeritus Pope to write a Preface for the ridiculous ‘series’ of booklets on the ‘philosophy’ of Bergoglio, telling him that it would serve to counteract the ‘foolish prejudice’ of those who think that he, Benedict XVI, was not a practical man, in the same way that Francis is not theoretical. So Benedict replies, as diplomatically as he can, that he applauds the initiative but that he has no time to read the pathetic booklets and does not intend to do so. The Vatican should ask Mons. Galantino at CEI to write the preface they want, given the level of thinking in these booklets. Indeed, a philosophical book series on Bergoglio reminds me of the publication by the wife of [former Romanian dictator] Ceausescu of books about the chemistry of polymers.
And another reader shows the contradictions inherent in what Benedict writes about the books and his clear statement that he has not read them nor does he intend to read them:
Who told him that these booklets ‘demonstrate, and rightly so, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation’ – against all the evidence that the reigning pope is someone who is anything but that! How can Benedict XVI know, not having read the books, what they show? And especially, not having read them, that what they show is right?... This has got to be the fake news par excellence of the first Bergoglio quinquennial!
Look how 3 of Italy's leading newspapers played up what amounts to fake news, even if textually it is not. Ratzinger's 'endorsement' of Bergoglio took precedence
in importance over the fact that March 13 was the anniversary of Bergoglio's election. The bylines of those who have made a mountain out of a molehill are the
newspapers' respective big guns: Massimo Franco for Corriere, Enzo Bianchi for Repubblica, and Andrea Tornielli for Stampa. One wonders what it is they had to add
or amplify in the brief letter that entitled them to a bylined article!
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, HOLY FATHER, BENEDICT XVI, STOP GIVING THEM AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLOIT YOU IN THIS WAY! I UNDERSTAND
YOU CANNOT 'CONDEMN' YOUR SUCCESSOR FOR ALL THE WRONG THINGS HE SAYS AND DOES - OUT OF WHAT IN THE CIVILIAN WORLD ONE WOULD
CALL 'PROFESSIONAL COURTESY' - BUT AT LEAST, DON'T WRITE OR SAY THINGS THAT MISREPRESENT REALITY, BECAUSE THAT IS DOING EXACTLY
WHAT BERGOGLIO USUALLY DOES. IN SHORT, IT IS DISHONESTY. IT IS PLAIN AND SIMPLE LYING FOR WHICH THERE CAN BE NO EXCUSE.
EXCUSE MY BLUNTNESS, AND KNOW HOW MUCH PAIN AND ANGUISH IT IS FOR ME TO HAVE TO THINK THIS ABOUT YOU. BECAUSE TO THINK OTHERWISE -
THAT YOU REALLY DO ENDORSE HIM - IS EVEN WORSE. IT WOULD BE AS IF EVERYTHING I BELIEVED ABOUT YOU IS FALSE AND HAS TURNED TO DUST.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/03/2018 10:10] |