As appalled as I was by what I have come to think of as a ZENIT reporter's invention of statements he attributes to Benedict XVI - implausible because IT'S JUST SO OUT OF CHARACTER! the emeritus Pope would be the last person in the world to articulate anything so private and personal as a 'mystical experience', much less to a 'recent guest' who then goes on to blab about it to a reporter - I am even more appalled at the absurd havoc wrought by that invention. To the point that even the lead priest-commentator of the UK Catholic Herald apparently buys into the 'truth' of the story, without even questioning the circumstances - because if he does not buy the story, then the entire article in today's CH is completely gratuitous and unnecessary.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/08/22/benedict-xvis-mystical-experience-was-nothing-out-of-the-ordinary-all-catholics-can-discover-gods-will-in-prayer/
To seek to explain what B16's 'mystical experience' is or might have been is to accept that he told someone he resigned the papacy because God told him to do so, as the ZENIT tall tale goes. From which the whole world extrapolates that God did want Benedict XVI to leave in order that Cardinal Bergoglio could become Pope... And contrary to Fr. Smith's assumption, secular media is not 'excited' about whether B16 had a mystical experience or not - what matters to them is that now they can use the ZENIT invention as the ultimate 'divinely inspired' endorsement of the new Pope...I thought of just making do with the link to Fr. Smith's article, but for the record, here it is, in minor mode, so to speak...
Benedict XVI’s ‘mystical experience’
was nothing out of the ordinary
Despite the excitement of the secular media,
the Pope went through the same process as
any other Christian faced with a major decision
By FR ALEXANDER LUCIE-SMITH
Thursday, 22 August 2013
Talk of Pope Benedict’s mystical experience of God telling him to resign the Papacy seems to have struck a chord with the secular media. The Guardian has the story here and the Telegraph has it here. And yet, if ever there was a non-story, this it is.
Let me try and explain. There is a very good old joke that goes the rounds of preachers (all the best jokes are old, by the way) and which I heard, if I remember right, from Nicky Gumbel, the rector of Holy Trinity Brompton. A young Londoner was in love with two girls, as sometimes happens, and had given the impression he was interested in marrying both of them, which again sometimes happens. But he really could not choose between them: one was called Claire and the other Maria. So he went to Church and knelt down in front of the altar, and prayed to the Almighty. He prayed really hard, and he asked for a sign: “Dear Lord,” said the young cockney, “Please tell me, ’oo shall I ’ave? Shall I ’ave Claire or shall it be the other one?” And he looked up, hoping for an answer, and there over the altar in large letters was God’s reply: AVE MARIA.
Mystical experience? Of course not. Neither for that matter was there anything mystical about the way Charles I consulted the sortes virgilianae. God does speak to people, Popes included, but he does so in rather a different way.
Essentially what happened to Pope Benedict is that he became convinced in prayer that it was the will of God that he should lay down the burden of office. He must have been thinking about this matter, and he prayed about it, and the conviction came, through long hours of prayer, that this was the right thing to do. And this would be the same process that any other Christian would go through when faced with a major decision; so that is why I call this a non-story, in that the story does not reveal anything specially privileged about being Pope, but points to the privileges that all the baptised and confirmed share. Each one of us can pray, and can take dilemmas to God, and the peace of mind that follows a decision is often the providential sign that this is the decision that God wants us to make.
The Pope, while he does have special powers vested in him by virtue of his office, presiding as he does over the Universal Church, at the same time approaches the throne of God just like you and me. Years ago, Catholics were told that Pope Pius XII had a vision of Our Blessed Lord when he was gravely ill in 1954. I remember reading about this as a child; but since then the Church has steered away from portraying the Pope as somehow more spiritually privileged than the rest of us.
Indeed the contemporary picture is the Pope as co-pilgrim with other members of the Church, which I think is the right emphasis. In other words, the holiness and saintliness of the Pope is a holiness and saintliness to which we are all called and in which we can all share. Benedict’s story of conversation with God in prayer is a reminder that all of us are called to speak to God in prayer, and all of us can discover his will for us in prayer.
More to the point is this reaction by Peter Seewald, who also calls the allegations in ZENIT 'invention':
Peter Seewald on the ZENIT tale:
'All twaddle and invention'
Translated from
MUINCH, August 22, 2013 (kath.net) - "I can only say that it is all twaddle and invention", Peter Seewald, who has published three interview books with Joseph Ratzinger, the third of them while he was Pope, told kath.net on Thursday.
He was asked about the now widely-disseminated report by the Rome-based agency ZENIT harking back to Benedict XVI's renunciation of the Papacy, a story which he called nonsense.
[kath.net then goes on to summarize the ZENIT story.]
Seewald, who has known the emeritus Pope since 1992 and has since met him often, told kath.net: "Even if all the media have fallen for this moonshine, I can only refer to the best source. I myself visited Benedict XVI recently, and we spoke about his resignation. He never expressed himself in any way in such a direction".
If Benedict XVI were not in retreat from the world, one would hope for a statement, say, through Mons. Gaenswein, that "The Emeritus Pope regrets to say that, contrary to reports, he has never claimed to anyone that his decision was the result of a mystical experience...", or words to that effect.
Another German writer, Armin Schwibach, a veteran Vatican correspondent, wrote a piece for kath.net revolving around the ZENIT tale and hown during an August when the Pope has no public events other than the Sunday Angelus, news from the Vatican has been so scant that the media have to make up for it, and ZENIT gave everyone the much-needed push.
His article is entitled "Here's news: The (ex-)Pope is Catholic - he prays and seeks to discern the will of God in order to act. The search for a 'scoop' at any cost". I really must try to translate Schwibach's article because in it, he goes into a most relevant reference to Benedict XVI's last great catechetical cycle on Christian prayer and what it tells us about him indirectly.]
CNS at least showed healthy skepticism about the ZENIT tale, citing 'Vatican officials', alas unnamed, who are skeptical not about the report per se, but about the 'mystical experience' supposedly claimed by Benedict XVI - when the report itself should be questioned. It cites an anonymous source who claims to have been told by this very private Pope of a very personal experience that is not meant for public broadcast, and then promptly divulges it to a reporter! Gimme a break!... Yet no one said, "It's not at all like Benedict XVI to exploit his own personal spiritual experience, whatever it was!", because that is the basic implausibility of this invention...
Vatican officials dubious
of 'mystical experience'
attributed to Benedict XVI
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY, Aug. 21, 2013 (CNS) -- When Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation in February, he made it very clear that he had done so only after intense prayer and that he intended to live the rest of his life praying and studying.
Vatican officials and Vatican watchers were surprised recently when a report circulated that Pope Benedict had told an anonymous visitor that his decision was the result of some form of extraordinary "mystical experience" rather than a decision made after long and careful thought and deep prayer. Catholics traditionally would consider that kind of intense prayer a "mystical experience," although not something extraordinary.
Those skeptical of the report, carried in the Italian service of the Zenit news agency, quoted Pope Benedict's explanation in his own announcement Feb. 11: "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry."
He also told the cardinals that he wanted to dedicate the rest of his life to serving the church through his prayers.
Since stepping down Feb. 28, retired Pope Benedict has led a very quiet life, far from the public eye, although he did accept Pope Francis's invitation to be present July 5 for the dedication of a statue in the Vatican Gardens.
Living in a remodeled monastery in the Vatican Gardens, he occasionally welcomes visitors, especially friends, former students and small groups accompanying former students. The meetings are private and rarely reported in the news.
In a report Aug. 19, Zenit said someone who had visited Pope Benedict "a few weeks ago" had asked him why he resigned.
"God told me to," the retired pope was quoted as responding before "immediately clarifying that it was not any kind of apparition of phenomenon of that kind, but rather 'a mystical experience' in which the Lord gave rise in his heart to an 'absolute desire' to remain alone with him in prayer." [EEEWWWW!!! Even just re-reading those statements attributed to B16 makes me recoil. In what distorted universe would Joseph Ratzinger.Benedict XVI be so self-referentially sanctimoniously goody-Godly!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/08/2015 23:26]