A Commentary
Pope Benedict XVI
by John Vennari
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On April 19, 2005, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the former Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was elected the 265th Successor of Saint Peter. He chose the name Benedict XVI.
The two-day conclave was one of the shortest in history, and Cardinal Ratzinger was the favorite going in. At age 78, he is the oldest Pope to be elected since Clement XII in 1730.
The Message of Fatima adjures us to “pray a great deal for the Holy Father”. Catholics must support the new Pope with their prayers, for his good, and for the good of the Church. Saint Alphonsus Ligouri, with the stark realism of a saint, observed prior to the election of Pius VI, that if a Pope “does not have the glory of God as his sole purpose, the Lord will not help him greatly and things from the present condition will go from bad to worse.” He went on to counsel that prayer can remedy many things.
What Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy will bring remains to be seen. Forecasting a new pope’s actions is a precarious art, even when one believes he has sufficient facts. Will his pontificate be one of restoration of Tradition, or will it be yet another post-Conciliar papacy of the New Theology? His track record up to now would indicate the latter.
Numerous traditional Catholics believe that Benedict XVI will be favorable to the widespread use for the Tridentine Mass. In recent years, Cardinal Ratzinger himself has celebrated the Old Latin Mass on a few occasions. It would be a blessing if he were finally the first Pope since the Council to publicly admit the truth, that the Tridentine Mass has never been forbidden, and that all priests are free to celebrate it without the need for special permission from their bishops. Whatever overtures the new Pope makes towards traditional Catholics — if any — as well as what will be the precise nature of those overtures is anyone’s guess.
It is said that Cardinal Ratzinger, when Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, disapproved of the transformation of the Mass “into spectacles that require directors of genius and talented actors”. These harsh words, according to Italian Journalist Sandro Magister, were directed even at Pope John II’s tumultuous mass liturgies.
Cardinal Ratzinger did not go to the first pan-religious meeting at Assisi in 1986, though he attended the second one in 2002. He disapproved of Pope John Paul II’s mea culpas. Magister writes, “Many other cardinals disagreed with these (mea culpas), but said nothing in public, with the sole exception of the archbishop of Bologna, Giacomo Biffi, who set down his objections in black and white, in a pastoral letter to the faithful of his diocese. Ratzinger voiced his criticism in a different way; in a theological document that responded point by point, to the objections that he had been raised, but in which the objections were all elaborately developed, while the replies appeared tenuous and shaky.”
It would not be surprising if Pope Benedict XVI restores some outward dignity to Papal office. He seems to have neither the persona nor temperament of the actor-on-the-world-stage, as did his predecessor. He doesn’t appear to be the pep-rally type. His tastes in liturgy seem more reserved.
In this respect, it will be interesting to watch how much leeway he allows Archbishop Piero Marini, the Bugnini protege and Papal Master of Ceremonies. It was Marini who, with the Papal approval, designed John Paul II’s riotous ceremonies: the most notable being the rock’n’roll World Youth Day liturgies and Masses with pagan inculturation and Hindu rituals, as was exemplified in the beatification Mass of Mother Teresa.
Time will tell whether or not we have finally seen the last of these raucous extravaganzas, Papal or otherwise.
Nonetheless, at his first Mass as Pope, Benedict XVI gave Communion in the hand to two Cardinals, says eye-witness Michael Matt. This does not bode well. We can only pray that he halts the widespread profanation of Communion in the hand and lay “Eucharistic Ministers”. If he does not, these worldwide sacrileges will be laid at his soul, and this is a frightening thought. It is one of the many reasons he must be supported by our prayers. He also needs our prayers because he is before all else a man of Vatican II.
In the early 1980s, an editorial appeared in The Homiletic and Pastoral Review, in which Father Kenneth Baker quoted a bishop who made a shrewd observation. The bishop, who wished to remain anonymous, said that we will probably not arrive at a true appraisal of the Second Vatican Council until every bishop who was at the Council is dead. The bishop’s words equally apply to the priests and theologians who were at the Council.
The majority of those who participated at Vatican II consider it the “greatest grace of their lives”. The Council is, so to speak, their baby, and they will love, promote and defend it come what may. Never mind that the Council has been a disaster for the Church and the world. For these bishops, priests and theologians, the Council is the center of their universe. They have staked their entire ecclesiastical careers on Vatican II. They seem incapable of thinking any other way.There is no turning back.
It is probable, then, that we will not receive a true assessment of the Council under Pope Benedict XVI.
Young Father Ratzinger was a liberal peritus at Vatican II, and has said repeatedly that he has not changed since then. His track record verifies this, even though he has made some fine statements about the present ruinous state of the liturgy, the Church and the world. Whenever he makes such observations, however, his solution is never to return to Tradition, to the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX, to the anti-Modernism of Saint Pius X. Rather, he sees the solution as a return to a rediscovery of the true teaching of the Vatican II, the revolutionary Council that sparked the chaos in the first place.
It was Cardinal Ratzinger who rejoiced that certain aspects of Vatican II are a “countersyllabus” and that there can be “no return to the syllabus” of Blessed Pope Pius IX, which firmly denounced the major errors of the day. It was Cardinal Ratzinger who said he agrees with the modernist Hans Urns von Balthasar who wrote, ”the urgency of the moment is to raze the bastions of the Faith”, that is, to demolish the very defenses of the Faith itself. It was a young Father Joseph Ratzinger who rejoiced in 1966 that the “intellectual position of anti-Modernism” which he calumniated as “the old policy of exclusiveness, condemnation and defense leading to an almost neurotic denial of all that was new” was discarded at Vatican II.
Cardinal Ratzinger thus celebrated Vatican II as a countersyllabus, as a dismantling of the bastions of the Faith, as anti-anti-Modernist. These are the ideas of a progressivist, not of another Pope Pius XII. The news media that mislabels him a staunch conservative reveals itself ignorant of this truth.
Now it is true that in a sense, Cardinal Ratzinger no longer exists. He is now Pope Benedict XVI with the unique graces of his Papal office. Various Catholic writers suggest that he could undergo a conversion as did Blessed Pope Pius IX. Reportedly a liberal when elected, Pius IX underwent a change of heart and emerged an anti-liberal champion of the Faith.
It would be a stupendous grace for the Catholic Church if Pope Benedict XVI underwent such a conversion. Yet it is not wise to bank on it happening, nor to believe that this conversion has taken place already, but we just can’t see it.
The ordinary course of events is a better basis for our outlook. Recent history shows that the Cardinal who was elected Pope ended up, in effect, to be the same man who lived out his days in the Papal office. There was virtually no change.
Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was liberal before elected, and maintained his liberalism throughout his pontificate. Ecumenism and Vatican II were his legacy. Cardinal Montini was a progressivist before his papal election. He did not change afterwards. As Pope Paul VI, he presided over the initial reforms of the Second Vatican Council and the auto-demolition of the Church. Even when he realized “the smoke of satan has entered the Church”, he remained constant to the post-Conciliar reforms.
Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was likewise a progressivist before his elevation to the Papal Throne. Once elected, he did not convert to Tradition, but blazed his progressivism to the world, mixed with some old-fashioned Catholic piety. Many Catholics prayed continually for a Pius IX-style conversion that never happened.
The same may be the case with Pope Benedict XVI. Always a progressivist, always pledging first allegiance to Vatican II, he is likely to continue to be the Cardinal Ratzinger we always knew. Catholics must not forsake prayers for his return to full Catholic Tradition, but they should not factor in this conversion when they attempt a realistic forecast of his pontificate.
It is probable that Pope Benedict XVI will attempt to forge a new syntheses between Tradition and the Second Vatican Council, and when a conflict arises between the two, he will favor the Council every time.
In his first Papal homily, Benedict XVI said, “Therefore, in preparing myself also for the service that is proper to the Successor of Peter, I wish to affirm strongly my determination to continue the commitment to implement the Second Vatican Council, in the footsteps of my Predecessors and in faithful continuity with the 2,000-year tradition of the Church. “ He pledged to continue the ecumenical dialogue championed by Pope John Paul II. How the details of Benedict’s policies will compare or contrast with John Paul II’s remains an open question.
He may eventually calm some of the more riotous aspects of Pope John Paul II’s legacy. and will probably be a more stay-at-home governor. He may also be strong on certain moral issues. His Vatican already denounced in sharp words the new homosexual-union laws in Spain.
He is likely to try to reign in unwieldy bishops who have run unbridled during 40 years of lax leadership. He may be equally stern against Traditional Catholics. To grant widespread use of the Tridentine Mass is one thing, to make peace with blocks of Catholics who resist Vatican II’s new teaching is quite another. In 1988, Cardinal Ratzinger said of Traditional Catholics, “It is inadmissible; one cannot accept that there be in the Church groups of Catholics who do not follow the general way of thinking of the bishops of the world.” Yet, Catholics are bound to adhere to the truth of all time, not to the trends of the moment. Today, the “general way of thinking of the bishops of the world” defies the general way of thinking of all Popes, Saints, Doctors and millions of ordinary Catholics prior to Vatican II. How Pope Benedict XVI deals with this dilemma may reveal who the man truly is.
As we await this revelation, we can do no better than to heed Our Lord’s words, “Watch and pray”.
Reprinted
from the May 2005 edition of
Catholic
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