BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Here's one commentary that does not ascribe negative motives to Giuliano Ferrara's now much-discussed 'suggestion' for Benedict XVI to resign even though he disagrees with it. Bordero (born 1974) has been editor of Ragionpolitica, the online journal of Silvio Berluszconi's Forza Italia, which was renamed Popolo della Liberta for Italy's most recent national elections which PDL won (although Berlusconi was forced out of office late last year by the Italian debt crisis much more than for his personal behavior and libertine lifestyle).

Ferrara's resignation scheme
is an act of love for the Pope
by Gianteo Bordero
Translated from

March 14, 2012

The long article last Saturday (March 10) dedicated by Giuliano Ferrara in Il Foglio to the possible resignation of Benedict XVI is an evident 'act of love' by a 'devout atheist' for a giant of faith and intellect.

"One cannot command the heart," Ferrara writes, who can certainly not be accused of tepidity in his uninterrupted support, first for Cardinal Ratzinger and then for Benedict XVI. One cannot forget that the day Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope, Ferrara changed the banner of his newspaper from Il Foglio (The Page) to Il Soglio (The Chair or Throne) [referring to an Italian term for the Papacy, 'Il Soglio di Pietro'] in tribute.

To reflect on the hypothesis of a renuntiatio by the Roman Pontiff is, above all, to do so out of devotion to him - it is not blasphemy. As Alessandro Gnocchi and Mario Palmaro both wrote in the same issue of Il Foglio on March 10, the Code of Canon Law itself considers this possibility, specifying that such a resignation does not need to be accepted by anyone: It is valid as long as it is 'freely done' and 'explained accordingly'.

Pope St. Clement, when sent into exile, Gnocchi and Palmaro recall, abdicated and named Evaristus his successor. Popes Pontianus, Silverius and the best-known of the Popes who resigned, Celestine V, did likewise. [I do not have the time to check out how the first two Popes 'resigned' or if they named their successors, but Celestine V certainly did not name his successor, who had been his implacable enemy during the few months that he was Pope!]

Pius XII had been prepared to do the same if he had been captured and imprisoned by the Nazis [saying they would never have the satisfaction of holding 'the Vicar of Christ' prisoner, only Eugenio Pacelli].

Rumors of resignation flew during the last years of Paul VI's life, when he seemed to be consumed with pain from the tragic scourge of the post-Conciliar years.

And John Paul II was explicitly called on by some members of the clergy to resign, using the pretext of his serious illness, to try to end a Papacy that was not to the liking of progressivist sectors as of some of the more 'conservative' circles of the Church.

And Benedict XVI? Ferrara recalls that "Benedict XVI is the oldest reigning Pontiff since Leo XIII" and that "he claims to be spiritually free to abdicate" (more precisely, in the interview-book Light of the World, he said, "“When a Pope arrives at a clear awareness that he no longer has the physical, mental, or psychological capacity to carry out the task that has been entrusted to him, then he has the right, and in some cases, even the duty to resign.” )

And yet, the editor of Il Foglio is not wishing for a papal resignation for reasons of health or spiritual weakness. Rather, he imagines a 'leaving in order to reinforce (the institution)', a 'papocentric' gesture to vigorously re-launch the Benedettian logos - namely, the irreducibility of Christianity to a religion like all the others, liturgical restoration, a comprehensive as well as incisive reading of modernity, the marriage of faith and reason, the fight in defense of 'non-negotiable principles' - in short, all the great Ratzingerian lessons of the past several years, of the past decades even, before he became Pope.

And all this in order not to "allow so-called democratization to impose itself" on the Church, through which the world (and not just the world) wishes to "annul the hieratic and sacred character" of the Church, in order to allow "the triumph of the anti-religious syndrome which has pervaded the globe for at least two centuries, if not more".

Thus, Ferrara imagines a younger and more vigorous Benedict XVI clone, with an emeritus Benedict XVI who would guide the Conclave towards "a dangerous and canonically uncertain - but historically fruitful - doubling of the papal charism". [The problem is that only the Holy Spirit acting through the Conclave has a say on who the next Pope will be, and Benedict XVI would certainly never presume to supersede the Holy Spirit or interpose himself into the action of the Holy Spirit. No, active or passive intervention by Benedict XVI in the way Ferrara proposes is just too bizarre, improbable, and not at all conceivable for the selfless Joseph Ratzinger!]

There can be no doubt that this suggestion was meant as an act of love for Papa Ratzinger and the Papacy, as I mentioned at the start. Ferrara fears, though he does not say so, that age and its ailments, as well as the weight of governing, could prevent Benedict XVI from fully carrying out, with all the energy necessary, his papal agenda - that great work towards spiritual renewal of the Church and the clergy, towards doctrinal firmness, and towards the liturgical discipline initiated by this Pope even when he was the head of the former Holy Office. [The Pope does what he can and does it to the best of his ability, after which, as Benedict XVI often says, it is up to God. But it is not for him to seek to play God in order to push and safeguard his 'agenda' - least of all in the bizarre, highly irregular, dubious and worst of all, extremely selfish way that Ferrara proposes! Perhaps Ferrara's atheism manifests itself most strongly here in the apparent conviction that human agency can 'force the hand', as it were, of the Holy Spirit.]

We cannot know how much Ferrara's fears are founded, just as we do not know if there is any basis for rumors - purveyed even in the Vatileaks documents - about the state of the Pope's health, and by inference, his more or less imminent resignation or death.

But what we see is a Pope who has so far steered the Barque of Peter, amidst tempests, towards the essential, towards the heart of the faith, towards that love of Christ which alone can save man and the Church from the abyss of evil and desperation.

This is what counts - this is the mission assigned by Jesus to his Vicar, and it is only in the light of this mission that any renuntiatio must be considered.

What should be clear, in short, is that a Pope is not called upon to assert himself or his ideas nor even to 'organize' his succession for that end. Because this, whether we like it or not, is something that is up to that mysterious tangle of humanity and divinity that has guided the Church for over 2,000 years.



Fr. Filippo Di Giacomo offers his take, with more precise historical data...

The Pope under media siege
by Filippo Di Giacomo
Translated from

March 14, 2012

It was not true, but... In 1993, while John Paul II was visiting Poland, an Italian newspaper announced peremptorily that "The end of the Wojtyla Pontificate now is a question of months or weeks". For many at the time, it seemed time to ask a blessing from Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the devil-chaser much praised by the media.

What happened, of course, was that all those who were more or less indicated at the time as probable successors to John Paul II had the destiny of having their final obsequies pronounced before the Pope they were supposed to replace.

Now, after 19 years, the game of 'Pope to resign' has resumed, with a mix of trite quasi-ecclesial notions and even more trite mediatic criteria, all being presented as desirable principles for a modern juridical ecclesiology.

In John Paul II's time, a hospital confinement sufficed for the media world to cite it as an incontrovertible argument to invoke, during recurrent news cycles between 1993 and 2005, a 'strong leader' for the Church.

But when the Polish Pope, with reasonable health and sufficient strength, continued to courageously counteract the euthanasia principle that half of European Catholics had been happily endorsing for decades, the target shifted to his closest co-workers who were blamed for the 'failures' of the Pontificate and even the by-then almost inexistent 'Roman centralism'.

Talk of a papal resignation inevitably brings everyone to recall the 'great refusal' of Celestine V. In fact, the good monk Pietro da Morrone, whom the great Dante had called 'vile' in the Divine Comedy for having resigned the Papacy, was the third Pope to have had recourse to a practice that the early Church had always accepted.

Clemente I, in 97, and Pontianus, in 235, who were both exiled by Roman emperors, were simply replaced as Bishop of Rome.

Benedict IX, an unworthy and immoral 18-year-old who became Pope thanks to maternal intrigues, accepted in 1045 to become a simple cardinal after he was promised the revenues collected as Peter's Pence.

So these were the precedents for Celestine V when in 1294, he decided he wanted to go back to being a simple Benedictine monk.

After him, in 1545, even Gregory XII returned to the humility of a Benedictine monastery so that the Council of Constance could be free to heal the great Western Schism by choosing another Pope unequivocally. For decades, the Pope in Rome had to co-exist with two anti-Popes.

Digging farther into Church history, there were 12 other times when the occupant of Peter's Chair changed even while its legitimate holder was still alive.

It is therefore not a distraction to point out that, at least according to the present Code of Canon Law, it is far easier for a Pope to resign than for him to remove a parish priest.

Indeed, while the Code dedicates only Paragraph 2 of Canon 332 to the resignation of a Pope, the procedure for removing a parish priest covers the entire Chapter 1 of Book VII, Section 2.

So simply going by the Code of Canon Law, for us Catholics today, the Roman Pontiff, Bishop of Rome, by the very nature of his function, is a pastor shared universally and not a 'governor' imposed on the Church.

Like every bishop, he carries out the fullness of his ministry by exercising three duties (munera, singular munus): to sanctify, to teach and to govern his Church.

The discussions these days substantially concern only the third pontifical function, which invests him with full ecclesial authority.

But for the Catholic base, that is the least interesting of the papal functions, because when it comes to 'commanding', it is easy to understand that the Pope is part of an institution that has been constructed over centuries to exclude the establishment of any 'regime' or any other arbitrary 'twist' by using the simplifying and very ecclesiastical logic of 'neither too much nor too little' that would be valid for all circumstances, in sickness or in health.

Reading the various speculations these days on Benedict XVI's alleged desire to resign, one only gets the usual impression that the Pope is under full media assault.

In an age when communications has the power and the importance we acknowledge about it, do not all these calls to 'resign' constitute an attempt to deprive the Roman Pontiff of his freedom to teach and sanctify his people? [Not perhaps exactly in that way, but certainly, an attempt to weaken the person and the institution, but they are picking on the wrong person and the wrong institution!]

And is it not strange that even men and women of the Church, citing reasons allegedly imposed by the mechanisms of succession and governance of the Church, should have fallen prey to this temptation?

So then, before theorizing about things that amount to nothing more than a sneeze in the context of Church history, and that only interest the 'usual circles' in Rome, why not, for a moment, imagine what it's like for the faithful?

It is for them, not for the Roman Curia [Oh yes, very much for them, too, especially those who have forgotten that they are men of God, first, before being petty power-holders!], that Benedict XVI must continue to explain the rationality of the Catholic way of life which, even in the Babel of modernity, represents a possible horizon for many.