Thanks to Beatrice and her site
www.benoit-et-moi.fr
for this unusual document, quite unlike anything written by Anglophone journalists, say, who bend over backwards to find something 'negative' to say about their subject - as though saying something negative were proof of objectivity. Abbe Barthes (born 1947) has written books about religion but he has particularly studied Vatican II and its aftermath. His familiarity with the Vatican has given him a reputation as an armchair Vaticanista who is often more informed and reliable than actual Vaticanistas... In this article, which I consider a first approximation to the objective expressed by the article title, Barthes marshals the 'evidence' to support his daring reference to the Ratzinger 'pre-Pontificate' exercised, in the felicitous phrase Italian use, with John Paul reigning.
The meaning of
Benedict XVI's election
by Abbé Claude Barthe
Translated from
April 24, 2010
On April 24, 2005, at St. Peter’s Square in Rome, Joseph Ratzinger was formally installed as the Successor of St. Peter. Those who had closely followed the events that preceded his election on April 19 were not at all surprised by the choice made by the cardinal electors. Well known to most of them, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seemed to be the only one who could save the Barque of Peter which was taking in water from all sides.
“Now and then, on returning from Rome, I found the mood in the Church and among theologians, to be quite agitated. The impression grew steadily that nothing was now stable in the Church , that everything was open to revision,” recalls Joseph Ratzinger of the time he was the theological consultant to Cardinal Frings, Archbishop of Colonge, one of the leading voices in the Second Vatican Council.
It was within the debates held among the dominant majority of the Council that the future Benedict XVI – then a young German theologian who was starting to gain a reputation - made himself heard as a voice of prudence, soon made uneasy, although he was in favor of certain reforms.
Cardinal Frings was able to have his young consultant named a peritus (expert) from the end of the first session in 1962. He was not at all of the Roman school – Pius XII’s theological people – but although he was from the ‘new world’ of theology, it wasa always with the nuance of ‘Yes, but…’
He would soon express this ‘but’ in his own way, through his lectures as a theology professor. He raised the first alarms in Muenster, in 1963, over what he called ‘the false and the true renewal of the Church’; but above all, in a 1966 lecture in Bamberg on the occasion of the Katholikentag [Catholic Day], expressing such alarm over the directions of a new theology and a new liturgy, that from then on, he was suspected of being conservative rather than progressive.
In 1969, when he was a Professor in Regensburg, he was named to the International Theological Commission, at about the time he became part of a group that launched the international theological journal
Communio, with his like-minded friends from the Council – Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Bouyer, Medina, Le Guillou...
These two circumstances – the Commission and
Communio – which are very distinct in themselves, but in reality very close, at least at the start, would serve as a dam against ‘wrong interpretation’ of the Council. This battle against the ‘false spirit of the Council’ would from then on become the essential battle, the substantial one, for Joseph Ratzinger as a theologian, as a cardinal, and now as Pope.
It is also quite important to remember that through Von Balthasar, he came to know from its beginning one of the many movements which, under different aspects, would represent a reaction to the crisis of the Church - the movement Comunione e Librazione, founded by the Italian priest don Luigi Giussani.
He became close to C&L but also to German friends who were even more traditional, such as the philosopher Robert Spaemann. In Regensburg, along with Mons. Klaus Gamber, he endured the liturgical reform of Paul VI quite badly. “The old building was demolished, and another was built,” he would write in his memoir.
It was this Joseph Ratzinger, one of the personalities who most left his mark, and was himself marked, by the positions represented by the magazine
Communio, who was named by Paul VI to become Archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977. Consecrated bishop on May 28, he became a cardinal on June 27, in what would be Paul VI’s last consistory (he would die in August 1968).
At the Council, he had met the then auxiliary bishop, later Archbishop of Cracow, Karol Wojtyla, another personality who left his mark on the Council and who shared his positions.
[NB: By all accounts, the two did not meet during the Council – only later when Ratzinger had become Archbishop of Munich.]
In the first Conclave of 1978, Cardinal Ratzinger was thought to have been part of the group that promoted the ‘Wojtyla hypothesis’, along with Cardinal Koenig of Vienna and Cardinal Hoeffner of Cologne – the idea that the Polish cardinal was the right person for the times. They served it up again successfully in the second Conclave.
It was natural, therefore, that John Paul II would call on the German cardinal who had become his friend to work with him in Rome. On November 25, 1981, he named him to the most significant of the Curial positions, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
[Barthes omits to say that as early as 1979, John Paul II had offered Ratzinger the post of Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, but he declined it because he felt he owed it to Munich to serve longer.]
Since February 1982, when he actually assumed the position, and for almost a quarter century, this Prefect – through the force of his personality and because of the dense doctrinal fog that was engulfing the Church – became the virtual number-2 man in the Roman Church, with far greater moral importance than the men who served as John Paul II’s Secretary of State.
He would orchestrate, John Paul reigning (and participating, especially in the moral domain), a colossal attempt to establish the ‘right interpretation’ of Vatican II. In the moral field, with the instruction
Donum vitae of February 22, 1987; the encyclical
Veritatis splendor of August 6, 1993, on the foundations of Catholic morality; the encyclical
Evangelium vitae, of March 25, 1995. In ecumenism, with the encyclical
Ut unum sint, of May 25, 1995; but also the encyclical
Fides et Ratio, of Sept. 14, 1998; and the encyclical
Ecclesia de Eucharistia, of April 17, 2003.
Not to mention a series of ‘restorative’ instructions from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or in collaboration with other congregations, such as the instruction on diocesan synods (1997), the instruction on “some questions regarding the collaboration of the lay faithful in the ministry of priests’”(1997), and the motu proprio
Apostolos suos, on the theological and juridical nature of Episcopal conferences (May 21, 1998).
He was at the frontlines of the doctrinal battle – because there was also a ‘political’ one - against liberation theology, which from 1968 to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, was very virulent in Latin America (
Instruction on some aspects of liberation theology, of August 6, 1984; and
Instruction on Christian freedom and libration, of March 22, 1986).
And of course, in the war of attrition with ultra-liberalist elements advocating a democratic structure for the Church, the ordination of women, moral liberalization, punctuated now and then by ‘new style’ sanctions – quite benign – against dissident theologians like Drewermann, Curran, Knitter, Guindon, Schillebeeckx, etc. Which led to the Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity (Feb. 25, 1989), the
Instruction on the ecclesial vocation of the Ttheologian (May 21, 1990), and the Apostolic Letter
Ad tuendam fidem (1998) to insert into the Code of Canon Law specifications regarding the authority of Magisterial acts.
The peak of this attempt – utopian in the best sense – to restore order in the Church was represented by the Apostolic Letter
Ordinatio scaredotalis, of May 22, 1994, reiterating that priestly ordination is exclusively for men only; the
Cathechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated on October 11, 1992; and the instruction
Dominus Iesus, on the uniqueness asnd salvific universality of Jesus Christ and his Church, from Sept. 6, 2999.
In the face of such a mass of documents, whose dominant note is undoubtedly the intention to pin down the interpretation of Vatican II, one can even speak of a Ratzingerian pre-Pontificate!
But it was
The Ratzinger Report in 1985, which began the path that would lead directly to his election in 2005: “If by restoration, one refers to the search for a new equilibrium, after the too assertive interpretations of an agnostic and atheistic world, then yes, a restoration understood in that sense – as a new equilibrium of orientations and values within the entire Catholic world – is very much to be hoped for”. This work was the concrete vector for a project of ‘renewing from the inside’ according to a very Ratzingerian expression.
Which, would rely on – and in turn be relied upon by – the traditionalist world, heirs of the minority in the Council whose rejection of its liberalizations would crystallize at the end of the 1960s in a rejection of Paul VI’s new liturgy. (This sympathy for the traditionalists distinguished Ratzinger from De Lubac and Von Balthasar).
We now know that in 1983, the new Prefect of the CDF called a meeting at the Sant’Uffizio ‘on liturgical questions’, which dealt with both the liturgical issue in itself, as well as the Lefebvrian issue. At this meeting, Cardinal Ratzinger obtained an affirmation from all the participants – Cardinal Baggio, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops; Cardinal Baum, Archbishop of Washington; Cardinal Casaroli, Secretary of State; Cardinal Oddi, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy; Mons. Casoria, pro-Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship) – that the ‘old’ Roman Missal should be ‘accepted by the Holy See throughout all the universal Church for Masses said in Latin.
[NB: This mention of Cardinal Baum gives far greater meaning to his presence at the Traditional Mass offered in Washington DC on April 24 to mark the fifth anniversary of Benedict XVI’s formal installation as Pope. A Mass which the current Archbishop of Washington did not attend, and which he obviously either did not want to celebrate himself, or feels himself unable to celebrate it – so that the sponsors had to call on the Bishop of Tulsa to take the place of Cardinal Castrillon after the latter got caught up inadvertently in the sex-abuse ‘scandals’.]
All this, 25 years before his Motu Proprio
Summorum Pontificum: quite a while to reach his goal, but it has all been Joseph Ratzinger’s work.
What followed with respect to the traditional liturgy and its practitioners, the two open issues, is well known. On the one hand, the circular letter
Quattuor ab-hinc annos, of the Congregation for Divine Worship, otherwise known as the ‘indult’ of October 3, 1984, which allowed the celebration of the traditional Mass under certain conditions. It would be followed in 1988 by the motu proprio
Ecclesia Dei which would amplify that indult.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Ratzinger and Mons. Lefebvre had arrived at an agreement on May 5, 1988, which was then rejected by Mons. Lefebvre who proceeded to autonomously consecrate four bishops in Econe on June 30, 1988, which carried with it automatic excommunication.
Actually, since 1988, it was the Prefect of the CDF who supervised the Ecclesia Dei Commission which was created to take charge of dealing with the traditionalists, but less directly after 2000, when John Paul II agreed to name Ratzinger’s good friend, the very pro-active Cardinal Castrillon, then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, to be President of Ecclesia Dei.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Ratzinger’s more or less head-on criticism of the new liturgy multiplied, with at least four books on the subject:
A celebration of faith; his memoir
Milestones;
The spirit of the liturgy; and
Sing a new song for the Lord.
In fact, the totality of his positions on Catholicism, summarized in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, as well as his critique of liturgical abuse and even of abusive liturgy - would earn Cardinal Ratzinger a popularity that would grow far beyond just the traditionalist circles, in France, in Gemany, in the United States, in the rest of the world.
Thus, in Paris, he attracted a crowd at the Institut de France when he was installed as a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, at the initiative of Jean Foyer. And when he came back in January 1995 to give a lecture at the Institut on ‘The theology of the Covenant in the New Testament’ – a subject that has been well trod before but which remained very academic – Jean Guitton summed up the surprising emotion felt by him and his colleagues: “Nunc dimittis – Now you can let me go… This was the most beautiful day of my life!”
In Italy, where there was no traditionalist movement in the strict sense, the cardinal showed up at the meetings of Comunione e Liberazione. I will cite two particularly intense moments of the growing adhesion around the Prefect of the CDF.
On September 1, 1990, before a crowd that was white-hot with enthusiasm, Joseph Ratzinger delivered a stunning ‘programmatic speech’ on ‘The ever-reforming Church’, in which, without once mentioning Vatican II, he spoke about reform, not as reform to be continued, or to be applied, or to reactivate, but the reform to be done, and even ‘to rediscover’, while stigmatizing ‘useless reform’ – but rather, follow his drift – a reform that would integrate the model of freedom such as there was in the Enlightenment and where liturgy would be contnually remade by living communities, etc.
[As it happens, that address, 'Compagnia semper reformanda' was the first text I translated and posted in the thread TEXTS BY JOSEPH RATZINGER’…]
The other great moment was the funeral service in the Cathedral of Milan for Don Giussani on February 24, 2005, not long before the death of John Paul II (April 2). Cardinal Ratzinger presided, alongside Cardinal Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan. It just so happens that at that time, they were both considered the two leading papabili. Each one delivered a homily. Ratzinger literally brought the house down - the congregation of ‘ciellini’ (C&L members) - who acclaimed him wildly, but were left cold by Tettamanzi.
Meanwhile, I had the privilege of assisting, from the first row, at a lecture given by the Prefect of the CDF on December 15, 1998, in the John Paul II amphitheater of the Pontifical Lateran University on ‘the end of the world’. The subject was certainly interesting, but it does not explain that the Aula Paolo VI at the Vatican was filled to the rafters, with theu audience following a lecture that was televised on closed circuit, as well as broadcast direct to Chile, Argentina and Spain.
The wildly applauded lecture was followed by an indescribable hustle and bustle as each one sought to kiss the cardinal’s ring or at least touch his cassock, the ultimate Catholic tribute…. Which explains why, when welcoming me to the Sant’Uffizio inNovember 2000, when I came to interview him for Spectacle du Monde, he warned me with a smile: “Monsieur l’Abbe, we are not going to speak about ‘programs for a Pontificate”!” (The subject of one of my articles in the magazine
Catholica had been that unlike Cardinal Martini, Ratinzgerians never propose a ‘program for a pontificate’). He then added, “Our program is the Magisterium!”
At the end of the interview, when asking him the last question (very journalistic, I must admit), “You know, Eminence, that you are a very popular cardinal: in a recent Internet survey, out of 1,700 responses, 28% had a favorable impression…”, I committed an unwitting slip of the tongue, saying instead, “You know, Eminence, that you are a very popular candidate…”
And the cardinal/candidate burst out laughing, but his anwer was that of a man who was ready, quite humbly, to respond to God’s call:
“As far as these surveys and these so-called candidacies, I find it all ridiculous: We have a Pope, and the Lord will decide everything – the when and the how. It is true that to be a pastor in the Church today demands great courage. With all our weakness – and I am a weak man - we can and should take risks in carrying out our duty as pastors. Because it is the Lord who acts - he told the Apostles that at the hour of confrontation, they should not reflect uneasily what to say and how to act, because the Spirit will tell them what to do. I find this very realistic. Even with my scarce strength – and I would say, because of it - the Lord can do with me what he wants.“
Five years would pass, or almost. The Curial prelate who once envisioned an election almost by acclamation – a Cardinal would rise at the Conclave to say, “I prppose we elevate Cardinal Ratzinger to the throne of Peter” – no longer thought so. Neither, it seemed, did his faithful secretary, Mons. Josef Clemens, who asked for another post in preparation for the cardinal’s definitive retirement.
Moreover, the approval of all the faithful who profess and live by their orthodox Catholic identity does not suffice to make a Pope. Pontifical elections require two-thirds of the votes of the cardinal electors (all who have not reached age 80), and like all elections in the world, the one held in the Sistine Chapel is determined by the center. The center among the cardinals, to be sure, had considerably swung ‘right’ during the Pontificate of John Paul II. And the significance of the papal election had changed.
That of 1963 (Paul VI), those of 1978 (John Paul I and John Paul II), saw three opposing tendencies: the traditionalists who were the minority in Vatican II (Cardinal Siri in 1963 and again in 1978); the center-left (represented by Lercaro in 1963 and Pignedoli in 1978); and the center-right which had won all those elections (Montini in 1963, Luciani, and then Wojtyla in 1978, who prevailed after a checkmate on the conservative Benelli.
In oher words, in order to save the ‘true’ Council against the ‘progressivists’ as well as against the ‘traditionalists’, the center-right cardinals have chosen candidates who were increasingly conservative (Montini, Luciani, Wojtyla). But in 2005, when traditionalism (Siri, Oddi, Palazzini, etc) was no longer represented in the Sacred College, and the ‘progressives’ had negligible weight, what the cardinals wished to avoid was the shattering of the Church itself, no longer just the Council.
On Saturday, April 16, two days before the Conclave opening, before lunch, I stood in line to greet the cardinal dean of the Sacred College, Joseph Ratzinger, as he returned to his residence, with a police escort worthy of a chief of state.
I wanted to ‘take the temperatire’ of those around him at the Vatican. Various ecclesiastic staff assistants were jubilant because all their counting and recounting of possible votes gave Ratzinger a large advantage (it is said that the austere Cardinal Ruini, Ratzinger’s principal ‘great elector’, was practically dancing as he went home to his apartment at the Lateran that day).
The tension that persisted was because his supporters knew that unless the election was quickly concluded, Joseph Ratzinger would not accept, because such indecision would make the Church even more ungovernable than it already was.
It was therefore necessary that in the first few ballotings, his supporters get the 77 they needed to win. It was not ruled out that those against Ratzinger could fashion a so-called ‘minority block’ (39 would suffice in this Conclave) that would force Ratzinger’s supporters to agree on a compromise candidate, as for instance, Cardinal Antonelli, Archbishop of Florence.
The Ratzingerians’ strength was in the ‘restorative’ personalities gathered round the Prefect of the CDF – Ruini, cardinal vicar of Rome; Scola, Patriarch of Venice; Biffi, emeritus Archbishop of Bologna; Bertone of Genoa; Herranz of Opus Dei, who was assigned to ‘launch’ Ratzingeer’s candidacy, etc; to which were added potential ‘great electors’ outside the ‘restorationist’ circle, like Cardinal Lustiger of Paris and Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna
Against them, the liberals (very moderate liberals, but they had the support of the ‘left’, particularly that of Cardinal Silvestrini, who was past the voting age but still had great influence) who were caught flatfooted by the ascendancy of Ratzinger, or more exactly, because the Jesuit Cardinal Martini, former Archbishop of Milan, had become too sick to be considered for Pope.
His replacements far from pulled any weight at all: Dionigi Tettamanzi, Archbishop of the world’s largest diocese, Milan, who had made it no secret that he wanted to be Pope; Angelo Sodano, 77, John Paul II’s Secretary of State, who was more conservative than Tettamanzi and who curiously thought that he would be a popular candidate; Giovanni Battista Re, 71, who first as deputy secretary for internal affaris (the Sostituto) to Sodano, and then as prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, had established himself (along with Cardinal Sepe, of Propaganda Fide) as one of the indispensable and inescapable personalities towards the end of John Paul II’s Pontificate – they could make or break bishops, nuncios and cardinals.
During this time, the millions of pilgrims who had come to Rome to venerate the mortal remains of John Paul II had indicated their own choice by acclamation – the dean of the College of Cardinals who presided at the funeral.
Aided by the emotional climate, he seemed to be the only possible choice - the only one who seemed liekly to ‘clean house’ even as the cardinal electors considered alarming reports on the state of the priesthood, which crystallized into a formidable and very legitimate concern.
At the Via Crucis in Rome’s Colosseum that preceded the death of John Paul II – on March 25, 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger had exclaimed, “How much filth there is in the Church, particularly among those in the priesthood who should belong entirely to you! How much pride, now much self-sufficiency!”(Meditation, 9th Station)
He was the only one who seemed capable of taking by the hand
a drained and spent Church, which despite the formidable charisma of John Paul II, was witnessing an accelerated collapse of Western Catholicism (in vocations, number of faithful, catechisms).
Again, from the Via Crucis on March 25: “Lord, your Church seems to us a boat that is about to sink, that is taking in water from all sides. And on its field, we see more chaff than good grain. The soiled garments and the face of your Church are frightening. But it is we ourselves who have done this” (Prayer at the 9th Station).
Only he, it seemed, had a chance to redress the moral and ecclesial image of the priest in America, in Africa, in the Philippines, and perhaps, to warm up somehow the frozen faith of the West. “Entirely as though there had been no other conceivable candidate!”, as the anonymous cardinal would say in Oliver le Gendre’s
Confession d’un Cardinal. [9)
In fact, the anti-Ratzinger votes would go to the Jesuit Cardinal Bergoglio, Archbshop of Buenos Aires – much more ‘progressivist’ than he appears to be ,and a veritable ‘extension’ of Cardinal Martini – not to any of the Italians who were swept out after the first balloting. Bergoglio’s votes would reach 40 by the third ballot but Joseph Ratzinger was already past 70 votes. On the afternoon of the second day, April 19, on the fourth vote, when at 5:30 p.m., the ballot-reader’ read ‘Ratzinger’ for the 77th time, the assembly, tense as a bowstring, broke into applause which lasted until the end of the tally, which gave the elected one 84 votes.
Not long after, white smoke came out from the right-hand side of St. Peter’s Square and the great bronze bell of the Arch of Bells started to peal. ‘We have a Pope’.
Can we attempt to imagine, five years later, the judgments that future historians will have? In 2005, they said a ‘transitional Pope’ had been elected, as they did in 1958 with John XXIII, not only because of the advanced age of both, but also because in both cases, there was a sense that an important evolution was coming but not with them.
In the inverse sense this time? Without a doubt the context was inverse. In 1958, the Church was entering a sort of optimistic bubble within which it would stay until 1968 – despite the numerous portentous signs of a mountign wave of secularization with its most serious internal consequences for the Church.
In 2005 – and more so, now – the context, especially in the West, is that of a continuing pastoral, priestly, catechetical decline (memorable the socialists would also say), to which no one really knows what response to make. The black hole of inexistent catechetical instruction, or what amounts to that, following Vatican II, indicates that this tendency will not be reversible for a long time.
A point of convergence beteen Roncalli and Ratzinger nonetheless amazes. Cardinal Roncalli had been elected more or less because a part of the cardinals wished to pause from ‘too much doctrine’ during the Pius XII years. Now, Papa Ratzinger, who already had behind him an avalanche of ‘restoration’ texts by the time he was elevated to Supreme Pontiff, seemed to censor himself: Since his election, practically no more texts of that kind have been published (an encyclical on love, another on hope, a third on the most elevated principles of ‘social doctrine’).
But in this kind of ‘great silence’ – relatively speaking, of course – there have been some texts and some actions of apparent modesty, but nonetheless possibly ‘prophetic’ of important future shocks and developments.
Among them: his address to the Roman Curia of December 22, 2005, which although it affirmed an interpretation of Vatican II (the hermeneutic of continuity) officially made only then, 40 years after it ended, the significance of Vatican–II continues to be open to debate; the Regensburg lecture on Sept. 12, 2006, which ahook up what were once held to be certainties in inter-religious dialog; the motu proprio
Summorum Pontificum of July 7, 2007, whose significance likewise surpasses its specific objective (to affirm that the traditional Mass had not been abolished) in its push to remodel worship at the parish level; and finally, the opening of a ‘uniate’ process for the Anglicans which has shuffled the cards in ecumenism.
Basically, the principal act of John XXIII’s Pontificate was his announcement of Vatican II, making his reign a ‘prealable’ to the formidable mutation that that assembly would generate under his successor.
Will Benedict XVI’s historical initiative be the coming ‘end’ to the unwanted consequences of Vatican II?
Abbé Claude BARTHE
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/04/2010 14:58]