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That unforgettable letter
from Benedict XVI written
amidst a raging media tempest
in which he was left alone
Translated from
April 30, 2013
This Thursday, Benedict XVI returns to 'the paddock of St. Peter' where he has freely decided to stay to the end of his earthly pilgrimage.
It is impossible not to think of the last words he said in public as Pope: "I am not returning to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, lectures, etc. I am not abandoning the Cross but I will continue to be close to the Crucified Lord in a new way. I no longer have the authority of office to govern the Church, but I will remain in her service, so to speak, close to St. Peter".
Those words, said with the crystalline brevity characteristic of him, became the object of misunderstandings and truculent imaginings in some quarters. And we can be sure that they will cause much reflection among canonists and theologians in the immediate future.
"To love the Church also means to have the courage to make difficult decisions, even agonizing ones, always keeping in mind the good of the Church, and not one's own interests".
Difficult decisions... It was not about the well-deserved rest of an old man who has reached the limit of his physical strengths, but a conscious act of sacrifice by one who understands that the Lord will open a new chapter in the history of the Church of which he has always been a simple (and sweatful) vineyard worker.
The truth is that Joseph Ratzinger has always explained, with patience and humility, every important step he has taken without taking refuge behind the symbols and structures of office, and knowing quite well that the office of the Lord''s Fisher of Men has nothing to do with arbitrariness or arrogance.
The form of the calm 'dialog' that he undertook with the faithful at his last General Audience in St. Peter's Square, marked by a realism that nonetheless exuded hope and gratitude, made me think of another dialog, a dramatic one, that was perhaps unique in the history of the Papacy. I refer to the open letter he wrote on March 10, 2010, to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, after he had lifted the excommunication of the four bishops illegally consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988.
Perhaps the months of February and March 2009 were the most bitter ones in his Pontificate. [More bitter ones would follow in the spring and summer of 2010, starting with his equally historic pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland.]
After a decision intended to help heal a wound in the body of the Church that had been festering for more than 20 years, and to pave the way for the return to Rome of the Lefebvrians, the Pope experienced in the flesh what is the ultimate solitude of a Pope. It was also the solitude of one who had been left alone by those who ought to have protected him, by their cowardice, by the calumny and calculated nastiness of many within and outside the Church.
"...Even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility". Nor did he hesitate to evoke the reproach St. Paul made to the Galatians when he warned them against biting and devouring each other.
Thus, without any worldly defenses, did the Pastor of the universal Church, nailed to the pillory in those days, accused of betraying the Second Vatican Council, of insulting the Jews and fracturing a Church for whose unity he had always been ready to give his life.
His letter to all the bishops of the world made me think of Blessed John Henry Newman's Apologia pro vita sua, though that genius who converted to Catholicism could hardly be said to be harnessed to the Holy See. The following lines to the bishops express the power of reason as used by Joseph Ratzinger, as well as his passionate love for Christ and the Church.
"Was it and is it really a mistake to go forth and meet a brother who 'has complaints against you' and find reconciliation?...Could it be totally wrong to commit oneself to dissolve all rigidities and restrictions in order to make room for whatever is positive and recoverable for all sides?... Can we simply exclude them, as a radical marginal group, from the search for reconciliation and unity? And what will become of them afterwards?" We know how these brothers (the FSSPX) have responded... But that is another story.
The dramatic tension in those pages written by Benedict XVI in the midst of a raging tempest reflects more than just a legitimate unburdening or a merited admonition.
This unique letter reveals a dimension that mysteriously invests those who receive the responsibility of putting on the shoes of the Fisherman: the dimension of martyrdom. Peter must hold out his hands in order to be bound and led to where he would not have wished to go.
But above all, we find here an urgent warning calling attention to the priorities of the Church at the start of the 21st century, when in vast regions of the world, the faith is in danger of being extinguished and mankind is afflicted by a disorientation whose destructive effects are increasingly made manifest.
There is no priority above that of making God present in the world and opening access to God for man - not just to any god, but the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ who died and rose again.
It is for this priority that Benedict XVI gave (and consumed) himself. For this priority, he has chosen to remain hidden from the world, bound to the Cross of his Lord in the 'paddock of St. Peter', in the gentle peace of one who knows that "God guides his Church, he sustains it always, even and, above all, in difficult times - that is the only true view of the Church's journey in the world".
As usual, I am grateful to Mr. Restan for bringing up a topic (the March 2009 letter to the bishops) whose relevance is not always immediately apparent to the newspeg for his essay (Benedict XVI's return to the Vatican). The letter is truly unique and unforgettable to any Catholic who can read it - I have come to think of it as Benedict XVI's Pauline epistle. It is never out of place or inopportune to cite it. So here is the full letter, which I would have posted last March 10, on its fourth anniversary, except that then, we were still in the Sede Vacante period.
The two photos used to illustrate the post were of Benedict XVI giving a lectio divina on a passage from St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians on February 29, 2009.
LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
concerning the remission of the excommunication
of the four Bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre
The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time.
Many Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing the Church today.
Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope’s concern for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in our time.
Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment.
I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church.
An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church’s path.
A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council – steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support.
That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore.
I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news.
I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility.
Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust which – as in the days of Pope John Paul II – has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God, continues to exist.
Another mistake, which I deeply regret, is the fact that the extent and limits of the provision of 21 January 2009 were not clearly and adequately explained at the moment of its publication.
The excommunication affects individuals, not institutions. An episcopal ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism, since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope.
Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe punishment – excommunication – with the aim of calling those thus punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained.
The remission of the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely, to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to the authority of the Council.
Here I return to the distinction between individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties.
This disciplinary level needs to be distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons.
As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved.
In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.
In light of this situation, it is my intention henceforth to join the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei" – the body which has been competent since 1988 for those communities and persons who, coming from the Society of Saint Pius X or from similar groups, wish to return to full communion with the Pope – to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar Magisterium of the Popes.
The collegial bodies with which the Congregation studies questions which arise (especially the ordinary Wednesday meeting of Cardinals and the annual or biennial Plenary Session) ensure the involvement of the Prefects of the different Roman Congregations and representatives from the world’s Bishops in the process of decision-making.
The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 – this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church.
Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life.
I hope, dear Brothers, that this serves to clarify the positive significance and also the limits of the provision of 21 January 2009.
But the question still remains: Was this measure needed? Was it really a priority? Aren’t other things perhaps more important?
Of course there are more important and urgent matters. I believe that I set forth clearly the priorities of my pontificate in the addresses which I gave at its beginning. Everything that I said then continues unchanged as my plan of action.
The first priority for the Successor of Peter was laid down by the Lord in the Upper Room in the clearest of terms: "You… strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22:32). Peter himself formulated this priority anew in his first Letter: "Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet 3:15).
In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God.
Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses "to the end" (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.
The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.
Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time.
A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith – ecumenism – is part of the supreme priority.
Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light – this is inter-religious dialogue.
Whoever proclaims that God is Love "to the end" has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity – this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est.
So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small.
That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept.
But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who "has something against you" (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation?
Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents – to the extent possible – in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences?
Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole?
I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole.
Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful?
Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim him and, with him, the living God.
Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?
Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things – arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc.
Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart.
But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her?
Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas?
And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles?
At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.
Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15.
I was surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another."
I am always tempted to see these words as another of the rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some extent that may also be the case.
But sad to say, this "biting and devouring" also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly understood freedom.
Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love?
The day I spoke about this at the Major Seminary, the feast of Our Lady of Trust was being celebrated in Rome. And so it is: Mary teaches us trust. She leads us to her Son, in whom all of us can put our trust. He will be our guide – even in turbulent times.
And so I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all the many Bishops who have lately offered me touching tokens of trust and affection, and above all assured me of their prayers.
My thanks also go to all the faithful who in these days have given me testimony of their constant fidelity to the Successor of Saint Peter.
May the Lord protect all of us and guide our steps along the way of peace. This is the prayer that rises up instinctively from my heart at the beginning of this Lent, a liturgical season particularly suited to interior purification, one which invites all of us to look with renewed hope to the light which awaits us at Easter.
With a special Apostolic Blessing, I remain
Yours in the Lord,
From the Vatican, 10 March 2009
2013 P.S. You will excuse my self-indulgence in re-posting as well my first impressions after the text of the letter was made public in 2009. Because my original reaction already contains much of what I have been carping about, against the high-and-mighty cardinals and bishops who seemed unanimously to make a full denunciation of Benedict XVI's Pontificate the moment there was a new Pope - making it appear that they had no part at all in that Pontificate, when many of them delighted in obstructing him and flaunting their dissent with him!
March 11, 2009
It would be very instructive to make a point-to-point confrontation between the Pope's letter and the sanctimonious, censorious statements released by the bishops' conferences of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, on this issue.
In tone and substance, and above all, in the fundamental attribute of Christian charity, the contrast could not be greater. How sad for the Pope that it is the bishops of the German-speaking countries that have shown themselves most ignominious in this whole affair, the most disobedient, rebellious and disrespectful of the Successor of Peter. [I think of Cardinal Kasper's old dispute with Cardinal Ratzinger over Kasper's contention that, in effect, the local Church takes precedence over the universal Church. It is interesting to note the perverse paths that German theology - outside Ratzinger- has taken.]
One can better appreciate now the prompt support of Benedict XVI in this brouhaha by the bishops of France, who had, in the past, been among the most acerbic dissenters to the Successor of Peter. And the beautiful letter of support from the Spanish bishops' conference. (I have to check back, but for once, I think Cardinal Bagnasco's CEI was not as up front in this as it has usually been on other matters.)
The fact that only a few bishops' conferences saw fit to send a message of support to the Holy Father (although many individual bishops did) only goes to show their erroneous interpretation of Vatican-II and its ideas on 'collegiality' - which led to the establishment of the national bishops' conferences - fostered this apparently widespread arrogance among the bishops of the Catholic Church who now think themselves the equal of the Successor of Peter and therefore free to defy him openly as they started to do with Summorum Pontificum and demonstrated far more directly in the case of the FSSPX.
Don't bishops have daily examinations of conscience like we simple faithful are taught to do? Don't they go to confession at all? Because if they did, they would see daily where they have gone so dreadfully wrong. What kind of faithful are they breeding if they themselves are so willfully erroneous?
Any layman's reading of Vatican-II documents on the function of bishops and their relationship to the Supreme Pontiff leaves no doubt whatsoever of the supremacy of the Pope over individual bishops (or bishops' conferences for that matter).
But one must believe the defiant bishops have not bothered to check back what Vatican-II really says, probably not since the heady days immediately following Vatican-II and the establishment of the bishops' conferences - they seem to have taken that as the equivalent of Jesus handing over the Keys of the Kingdom to Peter, in which each of them is Peter.
In their eyes, Vatican-II - their ultimate authority, it seems, above anything else in the Magisterium, as it is of all liberal dissidents who want to change the Church to suit their ideas - handed them the Keys of the Kingdom, to which they feel as entitled as the one and only Successor of Peter! How else does one explain their arrogance?
(A review of writings by advocates of the 'spirit of Vatican II' would probably show they cite Vatican-II far more overwhelmingly than they do anything from Scripture, or directly from Jesus himself! 'Spirit of Vatican II' has become their only Magisterium, their 'Sacred Scripture', their 'Holy Spirit', their virtual Lord and master. How can they not see what a parody they have made of their faith?]]
So it has come to this: that the Holy Father needs to remind bishops of the Catholic Church of certain basic facts about excommunication, and unity in the Church, and a Church that functions in love and charity, and that the Church has to set an example of such love and charity to a world without God, instead of the bickering and exclusionism that characterized their reaction to the Pope's move towards the FSSPX.
The letter is Benedict XVI at his best and most personal, as he is when he takes questions directly, speaking his heart, which is a heart that thinks, and not just speaking his mind as most intellectuals do.
It is the Benedict of that extemporaneous lectio divina to the Roman seminarians on February 29 [less than two weeks before the date on the letter to the bishops) that so struck me with its simplicity and lack of artifice, and of course, his fortuitous choice of the passage from Galatians that he cites anew in the letter, and the spontaneous (and oh-so-timely) commentary it merited from him.
At the time, few commentators even commented on the lectio divina (perhaps because it wasn't widely reported, either). To have him reveal now that his commentary gave him the idea to write the letter is one of the many wonders of this letter which I insist has to be a most historic one.
Thank God we have Benedict XVI for our Pope today.
BENEDICTUS QUI VENIT IN NOMINE DOMINI!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/05/2013 07:06] |