BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Speaking of the apparent perfidy lately of some prominent pundits who used to be among Benedict XVI's consistent admirers, consider this article one year ago by Andrea Tornielli commenting on the provocative stance taken by one of them, Giuliano Ferrara, who this time last year urged the Pope to resign not for any valid reason but for wild Macchiavellian motivations...






Undermining Peter

Sometimes intellectuals can get too clever for their own good - to the detriment of the hapless target towards they may be directing their intellect for the moment. For the second time in a row, Giuliano Ferrara, self-proclaimed 'devout atheist' and otherwise an avowed, literate and compelling advocate of Benedict XVI and his Pontificate, has gone and done something perplexing to say the least, that is outrageous in many ways.

Not content by writing in Panorama recently that this Pontificate has been 'interrupted' by the Vatileaks story and its various consequences, now Ferrara is postulating a possible resignation of Benedict XVI not for reasons of health or the Pope's own perception that he may no longer be up to the job, but for a most selfish reason - in order that he may be able to influence the choice of his successor to insure that his Magisterium is continued and not deviated, while at the same time being able to retire and live out his remaining years in study as Joseph Ratzinger had always wanted to...

Do we really need such idle speculative exercises? There is no way they could possibly help the Pope - they just portray him to the world as being prey to extremely unflattering speculation even by intellectuals who profess to be his admirers. First, Antonio Socci last September peddled his speculation that Benedict XVI might resign when he turns 85 - for no reason other than reaching a milestone age! And now this??? All talk of a papal resignation is really most cruel - it was with John Paul II, it is now with Benedict XVI. Fortunately, Andrea Tornielli responded promptly to Ferrara as follows:

Much ado about the prospect
of Benedict XVI resigning;
now Giuliano Ferrara joins in
by ANDREA TORNIELLI
March 10, 2012

VATICAN CITY - The editor of the daily newspaper Il Foglio today dedicated a lengthy article to considering the resignation of Benedict. This is the reasoning of Ferrara, who has never hidden his admiration of Joseph Ratzinger.

"A Pope who resigns," he wrote, "because he considers it his spIritual duty to support a renewal and a relaunching that will not cancel out his own Magisterium, would indirectly have the possibility to influence his succession in a better capacity (given the times, he would also offer a great and terrible sign of the extraordinary life of his Church!).

"He would also realize a personal dream of his: more study and the production of theological light in his personal capacity and not as the universal Pastor. He would certainly 'disorient' the traditional certainties of centuries, and would promote a new papal reign that would make the People of God united within the Church less ungovernable; and would take way any slowness, fatigue or defensiveness in the Roman house of Peter".

[Everything in the thought process of the above is wrong. First, it assumes that Joseph Ratzinger would actually be capable of thinking so selfishly. Second, it assumes that a 'retired Pope' - a first in the history of the Church (Celestine V was a special case that is not comparable at all) - would truly be able to influence a Conclave to choose his successor. The world being what it is, the moment he retires, he would revert instantly to being a near non-entity! Third, it assumes that the next Pope so chosen would necessarily be able to make the Church less governable and do away with the 'slowness, fatigue and defensiveness' of the Roman Curia. Which is a way of saying that Benedict XVI has been and is unable to do that himself! But then, if Ferrara thought that this Pontificate has been 'interrupted' because of malicious minds gone wild, then he probably thinks that Benedict has failed in what he set out to do when he was elected in 2005. Which is not true. He never said that among his priorities would be to make the Curia run like the best-maintained Mercedes... NO, any way you think of it, this scenario is just so improbable as to be impossible! It's not even clever; it's stupid, and certainly uncalled for.]

"The odds are daunting", Ferrara concludes, "and even the circumstances rather improbable. a Pope with spiritual strength would never renounce 'the task assigned to him', as Joseph Ratzinger himself says. But who knows if one day the Pope may consider it a doubling of his spiritual strength to make the sovereign 'papocentric' gesture of resigning". [It would not be 'papocentric' at all, but most egocentric.]

Ferrara's article is written with elegance and intelligence - he discusses a papal resignation not on the basis of adverse news, much less gossip, (Rumors insisting on a possible papal resignation in April have been dismissed by the Vatican several times), but on the basis of the simple and direct way Benedict XVI himself spoke to Peter Seewald in the 2010 interview-book Light of the World on this question.

Papa Ratzinger answered: "When a Pope arrives at a clear awareness that he is no longer physically, mentally and spiritually able to carry out the task assigned to him, then he has the right, and in some circumstances, even the duty to resign".

What emerges from Ferrara's article - which cites in passing the Vatileaks episode and the negative Curial picture it produced, without dwelling on the matter - is the possibility of a sensational and 'papocentric' resignation prompted not so much by 'the clear awareness' that he is no longer able to carry out his ministry, but rather the decision to 'relaunch his own Magisterium' and to guide the choice of his successor.

The necessary distinctions being made, it seems that the basis for Ferrara's reasoning is a concern about the [perceived, supposed] weakness of the Ratzinger Pontificate. [Obviously, or he would not consider this Papacy 'interrupted' all because of malicious gossip about matters that really do not amount to a can of beans except to those hellbent on denigrating a papacy that, short of calling an ecumenical council as John XXIII did, is already more consequential than any other Papacy in its first seven years than any in the modern era.]

This concern is not very different from that which made the political analyst Ernesto della Loggia propose earlier in the week a widening of the electoral base for the papal conclave to include all the bishops of the world, in order to make the Pope's role more 'presidential', enhancing his role and giving him more powers. [The Pope already has great powers - what would he do with more? I do not dismiss the proposal out of hand, and I have not really thought it through, but my initial reaction is that it sounds most impractical and undermines the very logic for naming cardinals - a recognition of ecclesiastical and personal merit that earns the title-bearer the right to vote for the Pope. ]

It is true Ferraea says he does not share the analyses of those who affirm the weakness of Benedict XVI's Pontificate [I suppose Tornielli means commentators like Marco Politi, and to a elsser degree, John Allen, who has chimed in with his "Me too' in reviewing Politi's recent book purporting to show 'The Crisis of A Papacy', in which the facts are selectively negative and the analysis of such 'facts' is necessarily tendentious]
and prefers, he says, to note its vitality in the long term. {Well, that does not square with his Panorama article on an 'interrupted' Papacy.]

But his conclusion, with the resignation hypothesis presented as an occasion for a 'relaunch', ends up conceding to those who have been wishing for a healthy shake-up at the Vatican.

It is striking that personalities and intellectuals who had greeted the election of Joseph Ratzinger with great satisfaction - seeing him as the possible realization of a great papal project to reinforce the identity of the Church - now seem to be almost disillusioned by the ways that this Pontificate has taken, which is now being defined as 'a penitential Papacy". [And yet, a 'oenitential papacy - which the Church needs today - does not exclude that it is also a vital Papacy, in which the Church can nourish itself from the graces gained by true penitence which is conversion, or metanoia, in the New Testament sense. Hasn't Benedict XVI been fairly consistent and insistent on, first, properly forming that identity, and then, affirming that identity to the world in terms of witnessing to Christ and his message by the very lives that Catholics lead!]

Of course, others also see that in this Benedettian line, Benedict XVI manifests his prophetic power in the world today.

Papa Ratzinger has said with great simplicity and frankness that he considers resignation a possibility. He did so with the humble attitude that distinguishes him, as he seeks to show, even in this circumstance, that the important thing is not about the pro-activism of the person who is Pope, but rather the opportunity to bring forth the true protagonist, the true guide, the true Rock of the Church, who its founder, of whom the Bishop of Rome is but the vicar.

No one doubts that Benedict XVI, if he faced an invalidating illness o or became aware of any physical, mental and/or spiritual incapacity to continue his service, would choose to resign. He has said so himself.

But to hypothesize that he would do, that thnking to 'relaunch' his own Magisterium in that way, or even to influence his own succession (a suggestion to this effect, we must remember, was contained in the anonymous memorandum about a supposed plot to kill the Pope), and thus 'realize' his personal dream of returning to his studies, would mean placing papal protagonism front and center.

But a gesture like that - rightly called by Ferrara 'Papocentric' - appears most remote indeed, both from Papa Ratzinger's own sensibility, and from what Tradition believes and teaches about the role of the Bishop of Rome with respect to the universal Church.

Since Il Foglio has a paywall, unless Ferrara's article gets reprinted elsewhere, I will not be able to read it. Not that I have any eager desire to do that just now.