Habemus Papam!

by Father Lawrence C. Smith

 

Pope Benedict XVI should have our prayers because he is the Vicar of Christ, charity demands it, filial affection desires it, and we need to beg Our Lord and Our Lady to move the heart of His Holiness to disavow his past, namely:

A tale of two truths: [the former] Cardinal Ratzinger as a case study in oath-breaking.

Pope Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who served as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith between 1981 and 2005, was a Vatican II peritus. He is a widely published and read theologian. He is also considered a staunch defender of Catholic truth. Some of his remarks serve well to illustrate the extent of divergence from Tradition present in the postconciliar Church.

...there are decisions of the Magisterium that cannot be a last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisional disposition. Its nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times have influenced, may need further ramifications.

In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church's anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from immersion in the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they become obsolete after having fulfilled their pastoral mission at the proper moment." (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, quoted from L'Osservatore Romano, 27 June 1990)

F rom Praestantia Scripturae of Pope St. Pius X, 18 November 1907:

...After long discussions and most conscientious deliberations, certain excellent decisions have been published by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, very useful for the true advancement of Biblical studies and for directing the same by a definitive norm. Yet we notice that there are not lacking those who have not received and do not receive such decisions with the obedience which is proper, even though they are approved by the Pontiff.

Therefore, we see that it must be declared and ordered as We do now declare and expressly order, that all are bound by the duty of conscience to submit to the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, both those which have thus far been published and those which will hereafter be proclaimed, just as to the decrees of the Sacred Congregations which pertain to doctrine and have been approved by the Pontiff; and that all who impugn such decisions as these by word or in writing cannot avoid the charge of disobedience, or on this account be free of grave sin; and this besides the scandal by which they offend, and the other matters for which they can be responsible before God, especially because of other pronouncements in these matters made rashly and erroneously.

In addition to this, intending to repress the daily increasing boldness of spirit of many Modernists, who by sophisms and artifices of every kind endeavor to destroy the force and the efficacy not only of the Decree, Lamentabili Sane Exitu, which was published on the third of July of the current year, but also of Our Encyclical Letter, Pascendi Domenici Gregis, given on the eighth of September of this same year by Our Apostolic Authority, We repeat and confirm not only that Decree of the Sacred Supreme Congregation, but also that Encyclical Letter of Ours, adding the penalty of excommunication against all who contradict them; and We declare and decree this: if anyone, which may God forbid, proceeds to such a point of boldness that he defends any of the propositions, opinions, and doctrines disproved by either document mentioned above, he is ipso facto afflicted by the censure imposed in the chapter Docentes of the Constitution of the Apostolic See, first among those excommunications latae senteniae which are reserved simply to the Roman Pontiff. This excommunication, however, is to be understood with no change in the punishments, which those who have committed anything against the above mentioned documents may incur, if at any time their propositions, opinions, or doctrines are heretical; which indeed has happened more than once in the case of the adversaries of both these documents, but especially when they defend the errors of modernism, that is the refuge of all heresies. (Quoted in Denzinger, paragraphs 2113-2114)

Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2106:

Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits. This right is based on the very nature of the human person, whose dignity enables him freely to assent to the divine truth which transcends the temporal order. For this reason it continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it.

Two questions:

How does one reconcile the former Cardinal Ratzinger’s words with the words of Pope St. Pius which they contradict?

How can someone have the RIGHT to abandon an OBLIGATION???

Cardinal Ratzinger also published:

-- that Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes serve as a 'counter-syllabus’ to the Syllabus of Modern Errors of Pope Pius IX: “If one is looking for a global diagnosis of the text [of Gaudium et Spes], one could say that it (in connection with the texts on religious liberty and the world’s religions) is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter-Syllabus. As is known, Harnack interpreted the “Syllabus” of Pius IX as a challenge to its century; what is true is that it drew a line of separation before the determining forces of the nineteenth century: the scientific and political conceptions of liberalism. In the modernist controversy, this double border was once again reinforced and fortified.

Undoubtedly, many things have changed since then. The new ecclesiastical policy of Pius IX established a certain openness toward the liberal conception of State. In a silent but persevering combat, exegesis and Church history increasingly adopted the postulates of liberal science; on the other hand, liberalism was obliged, facing the great political upheavals of the twentieth century, to accept notable corrections. This happened because, first in central Europe, conditioned by the situation, the unilateral dependence in relation to the positions taken by the Church on the initiative of Pius IX and Pius X against the new period of history opened by the French Revolution was to a large extent corrected via facti; but a new, fundamental determination of relations with the world as it had been since 1789 was still lacking.

Actually, in the countries with strong Catholic minorities, the mentality that preceded the revolution still reigned; today no one denies that for a long time this no longer corresponded to reality. Likewise, almost no one can deny that this dependence on an obsolete conception of relations between Church and State was matched by similar anachronisms in the domain of education and the attitude to be taken vis-à-vis the modern historic-critical method. Only a detailed research about the several ways in which the parts of the Church welcomed the modern world could undo the complicated entanglement of causes that contributed to give shape to the pastoral constitution, and only in this way could the drama of the history of its influence be clarified. Let us content ourselves here with finding that the text plays the role of a counter-Syllabus to the degree that it represents an official attempt by the Church at reconciliation with the world as it became after 1789. On the one hand, this visualization alone clarifies the ghetto complex of which we spoke in the beginning; on the other hand, it alone permits us to understand the meaning of the strange relationship of the Church with the world: by “world” one understands, at depth, the spirit of modern times. The group consciousness in the Church felt separated from this spirit and looked for dialogue and cooperation with it after the hot war and the cold war [were over]. (Principles of Catholic Theology, 1982)

Imagine that! Not wanting to be connected with a spirit that gives us communism, homosexuality, abortion, apostasy, and blasphemy! What were those two neaderthals, Pius IX and Pius X, thinking?!?

By the way, after an initial attempt at embracing liberalism, Pius IX emphatically rejected it. The "openness" that his eminence mentions was quickly followed by a fit of coughing to expel the foul fumes that had been inhaled. Pius IX was no friend of liberalism -- as any reading of the Syllabus of Modern Errors easily shows.

Anachronisms only occur in a modernist world. Only the modernist mind sees anything that might be called an anachronism. Reality allows for that which is alive to remain so -- no matter what the clock or calendar says. It is the modernist tendency to kill the healthy in favor of preserving the disease.

A case in point is the "determination of relations with the world as it became after 1789". The Church had a definitive -- and new -- relationship with the world, and specifically the modern notion of the State, after 1789: one of enmity. Through the high Middle Ages, the Church could call the world, and especially the State, within Christendom an ally. The French Revolution was a declaration of war by the State against the Church.
It is not the Church who discovered that she had a problem with the State, but the State who decided and proclaimed that it would have NOTHING to do with the Church. While the State could be seen within the Church as part of Christendom, conflict was minimal. The modern State seeking to marginalize the Church within its confines has resulted in all-out war. This war was not started by the ancient, immemorial, changeless Church. It is a war of naked aggression begun by the ephemeral, changeable, modern nation-state.

This betrayal was a horrible and sad blow to the Church, who, nonetheless, took up the gauntlet. Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X made it quite clear where the Church stood in her relationship with the modern world. It wasn't until Vatican II that this relationship became muddled. Oddly enough, Vatican II adopting the world's view on Church-State relations has not resulted in the world accepting or embracing the Church any more than when the Church held her own views. Now, alas! not only is the world still at war with the Church, but there are those within the Church who carry the battle into the sanctuary, the chancery, and the Vatican.

Often liberals and modernists bristle at the accusation that one of their main tactics and pastimes is to rewrite history. Cardinal Ratzinger's remarks are a bald and unapologetic admission that such is very much the modernist way. Creating a "counter-Syllabus" and ignoring the massive documentation of the Church's clear response to liberalism and modernism is an ignoble attempt to make history lie.

The truth is that the Church has always accepted the State as a partner in the project of establishing the Kingdom of Heaven. At no time has the Church ever declared that the State is not legitimate and has no right to exist or to wield its authority. It is only in modern times that the State has made the extraordinary claim that it can exclude the Church altogether from her role as guardian of virtue and expositor of truth.

Modern history is not a corrective where an overweening Church is being put in her place. Modern history is a usurpation of power by a despotic State seeking to deny simple men, the Church, and God their places within the world as heirs to the Kingdom, the mistress of that Kingdom, and the Sovereign of that Kingdom. Modern history, modernism, and modernity are doomed to fail and pass away. Long after the timely has ceased, the eternal King will yet be reigning over His loyal subjects in the unchanging Church.

More from Cardinal Ratzinger’s pen:

-- that the difference between Catholic and Jewish messianic expectations at the culmination of time "consists in the fact that for us, He who will come will have the same traits of that Jesus who has already come." (remarks quoted in The Remnant, 30 April 2002, made in explanation of the Pontifical Biblical Commission document, The Jewish People and the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible [2002], for which the Cardinal wrote an introduction)

These positions are fabricated, improvised, and alien to the tenor and the letter of what the Church has taught from her beginning. It is just this kind of free-wheeling intellectualism in theology and philosophy that has allowed the liturgists to run wild through the Sacred Mysteries. Cardinal Ratzinger seems disingenuous at best when he decries the wanton abuses in the liturgy, but then makes corollary assaults on truth in matters of doctrine. "Disingenuous" is the best that one might call it. Edmund Burke feared that another sentiment might be at work: "malignity of disposition".

The former Cardinal Ratzinger on the ambiguities inherent in the Vatican II documents:

“The Preliminary Note [to Part III of Lumen Gentium], as it is known, has helped to give a somewhat bitter flavor to the final journeys, filled with bold hopes, of the Council’s third session. We would go too far if we wanted to analyze here in a precise fashion this very complicated text. Its result – to which we will limit ourselves – would be the recognition that this does not create a substantially new situation, but in principle continues the same dialectics.

“The resulting ambiguity, as far as the actual competence of the episcopal college is concerned, is already inserted in the conciliar text itself. Undoubtedly, this dialectics was later aggravated in favor of the pole for the primacy. But the text, under the impulse of this tendency in each enunciation, reintroduces on the side another enunciation and reestablishes the equilibrium, making it possible to interpret the whole both in the sense of the ‘primacy’ and in relation to the principle of collegiality. Therefore, one can easily speak of a certain intrinsic disharmony in the Note’s text, which reflects the disharmony among those who wrote it and attempted to reconcile conflicting tendencies. If the resulting text gives an impression of disharmony, this is a sign that a complete harmonization was not attained, nor was it possible.” from Problemi e risultati del Vaticano II (1967), quoted in In the Murky Waters of Vatican II, by A. Sinke Guimaraes

Lest anyone think the former Cardinal’s views have changed:

“If someone were to cast into doubt Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s affiliation with the progressivist current, he could find the prelate’s own acquiescence to this designation in the book-interview in which journalist Vittorio Messori calls him a ‘balanced progressivist’ and points to him as one of the founders of the magazine Concilium, a meeting place for the so-called ‘progressivist wing’ of theology.” (Ratzinger Report, 1985)

“Ratzinger’s statements to the same journalist, published by the magazine Jesus, are even clearer. He thus presents the Cardinal: ‘Perhaps what is most annoying is the fact that the supposed “guardian of the faith” in reality has not only the stature of a great theologian…but also of an open, modern theologian, open to the signs of the times. A perito of the German episcopate at Vatican II, he is later found among the founders of Concilium, an international magazine that brings together the so-called “progressivist wing” of Catholic theology.

‘”Was it a sin of youth, your Eminence, this engagement with Concilium,” I ask him, joshing. “Absolutely not,” he answered. “I did not change; they changed.’” (1984)

“During a visit to Brazil in 1990, the Cardinal spoke to the press about the same subject: Question: ‘What are the most marked differences between the Ratzinger of Council Vatican II and the Ratzinger of today? Who has changed more, you or the Church?’ Answer: ‘I do not see a real, profound difference between my work in Vatican Council II and my present work. On preparing this course for bishops, I reviewed a course of ecclesiology that I gave for the first time in 1956. Naturally, I found elements that need to be analyzed. But with respect to the fundamental vision, I found a profound identity, and what I proposed to the bishops in Rio de Janeiro was the same fundamental vision that I put together then.’”

“Answering a journalist’s question, the Cardinal confirms: ‘In my history as theologian I see no fracture, but a development.’” (1994)

“A renowned protestant theologian bears testimony about the position of the Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He says: Question: ‘How do you explain this dialogue with a personality who many Catholics see as reactionary and an enemy of ecumenical dialogue?’ Answer: ‘I do not understand. It is an erroneous opinion. I met Ratzinger thirty years ago, at Vatican Council II. He was the best of the co-called expert theologians, or peritii, with a reputation for being a radical progressivist.’” (Oscar Cullmann, 1993). The above six quotes all come from Guimaraes

From the Papal Oath of Office (Quoted from The Great Façade, by Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E.Woods, Jr.)

I vow to change nothing of the received Tradition, and nothing thereof I have found before me guarded by my God-pleasing predecessors, to encroach upon, to alter, or to permit any innovation therein;

To the contrary: with glowing affection as her truly faithful student and successor, to safeguard reverently the passed-on good, with my whole strength and utmost effort;

To cleanse all that is in contradiction to the canonical order, should such appear;

To guard the Holy Canons and Decrees of our Popes as if they were the Divine ordinances of Heaven, because I am conscious of Thee, whose place I take through the Grace of God, whose Vicarship I possess with Thy support, being subject to the severest accounting before Thy Divine Tribunal over all that I shall confess;

I swear to God Almighty and Savior Jesus Christ that I will keep whatever has been revealed through Christ and His successors and whatever the first councils and my predecessors have defined and declared.

I will keep without sacrifice to itself the discipline and the rite of the Church. I will put outside the Church whoever dares to go against this oath, may it be somebody else or I.

If I should undertake to act in anything of contrary sense, or should permit that it will be executed, Thou willst not be merciful to me on the dreadful Day of Divine Justice.

Accordingly, without exclusion, We subject to severest excommunication anyone – be it ourselves or be it another – who would dare to undertake anything new in contradiction to this constituted evangelic Tradition and the purity of the Orthodox Faith and the Christian Religion, or would seek to change anything by his opposing efforts, or would agree with those who undertake such a blasphemous venture.

And here is my response, in 2002, to a query from a friend in the aftermath of the then Cardinal Ratzinger's explanation of the Third Secret of Fatima:

Cardinal Ratzinger's remarks are problematic in several ways:

1) The Blessed Virgin speaks in the future tense, the Cardinal speaks of the past. One would imagine that the sinless Mother of God would be better able to make herself clear. If she were merely referring to the Annunciation, would she not have said something to the effect of, "My Immaculate Heart has triumphed!"? The Message of Fatima is one of Hope, not so much one of Faith (although, of course, the Faith is implied). Our Lady's words are to spur us on to a future victory, not a summation of a triumph already temporally complete.

2) No, evil does not have the last word. But it certainly can be the final choice of unrepentant men. Merely because Jesus overcame sin and death is no guarantee that any individual man will choose likewise. The Cardinal's words smack of universal salvation and indifferentism. It is enough for the divine will that Jesus obeyed unto death. It is not sufficient for any given man that He accomplished the Cross; it is necessary that each man choose the Cross with Christ, and thus win the victory with Him. The triumph of our Lady's Immaculate Heart is not ours unless and until we -- at sometime in the FUTURE -- are judged to have given ourselves wholly to her Son. As marvelous as the Annunciation and the Incarnation are, they do not in themselves redeem. They are the conditions of redemption. Redemption itself is won ONLY on the Cross. Even now we are making up in ourselves what is lacking in the Cross of Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church...or not.

3) "The freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word" is simply an erroneous statement. The only freedom lies in NOT choosing evil. They who choose evil have made their last statement on the subject -- they are eternally incapable of choice. There is NO freedom in choosing evil. The only freedom is in choosing the will of God. Insofar as any on earth are making a choice for evil, for sin, for the enemies of the ONE and ONLY FAITH, they are forfeiting all freedom. Those in sin of themselves have no choice but to sin.

Prior to death, freedom resides only in those in a state of grace, who alone are capable of choice -- either the good or the evil. The Cross makes it possible for sinners to choose grace (their only choice), and for the faithful to persevere in grace, although they yet may forfeit freedom and die in sin. Any who fail to make the choice of the Cross while in this life on earth simply have no choice but hell. Put another way, satan can only sin, whereas the Blessed Virgin Mary at every time in her life on earth chose freely to refuse to forsake the will of God and to embrace His will for her. He forfeited all choice forever by rejecting the will of God; she preserved her power to choose forever by embracing His will: Fiat mihi secundum Verbum! He chose an everlastingly impotent will; she chose the eternally omnipotent will.

Choosing God, His grace, the Cross of His Son, is not the last word, it is not the first word, it is choosing the WORD who was made man, who took on flesh, who indeed told us, "Do not fear the world, for I have overcome the world." By the way, you will note that He made no mention of opening the windows of the Church to the world, of dialoguing with the world, of speaking to the world on its own terms, or of learning from the wisdom of the world. Such verbiage had to wait until nearly two thousand years after the Ascension, until Vatican II, until anyone pretended -- lied -- that Jesus had ever implied such nonsense.

Before the Cross there was no choice, only eternal damnation due to sin. After the Cross, or for our Lady at the Immaculate Conception, there is not all choice, but the choice of all, the power to make the choice of God. Before the Cross man has no power to choose, only to languish in sin. With the Cross man has the power to respond to Christ who tells us, "It is not you who chose me, but I who chose you to bear much fruit." Ultimately the power to choose is divine. God has chosen to redeem us ONLY in Christ. Ours is either to deny this, as did satan, the fallen angels, and all unrepentant sinners; or to acknowledge the divine will, as do the Blessed Mother, the angels, and the saints. Choice, freedom, and power (and the honor and glory and sovereignty) belong to God and to God alone. In His gracious mercy he has deigned to share them with those who believe in the Cross of His Son.

Anyway, that's as much as the scales over my eyes let me see.

LCS.
7/30/02

Hence, we pray. We yet hope. But we do not delude ourselves. We know the situation as it has stood lo these last fifty and five hundred years. We know the record since the Council. We know the theological bent of the new Pope. All of this is cause for concern, but not for despair. Faith prompts us to that much more reliance on the power of God. Prayer moves God to make possible that which for man is impossible. This is not cautious optimism, but simple Catholicism.

God bless you,
Father Smith.