Pray Very Hard for Pope Benedict XVI

by Thomas A. Droleskey

 

Habemus Papam! Eminentissimum ac Rev. Dominum, Dominum Josephum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedicti XVI.

The words that announce the election of a new Pope, last uttered by Pericle Cardinal Felici on October 16, 1978, were proclaimed yesterday by Jorge Cardinal Medina Estevez. The former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for twenty-four years, is now His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. The prayers of every Roman Catholic must be with our new spiritual father, the Successor of Saint Peter and the Vicar of Christ, as he embarks upon his apostolic mission as the Visible Head of the true Church on earth. While our hearts go out to the new Holy Father with an assurance of our filial affection, we must nevertheless remain firm in our defense of the fullness of Tradition without compromise. The signals sent by Pope Benedict XVI today, April 20, 2005, indicate a total reaffirmation of the very things that have harmed the life of the Church in the past four and one-half decades: ecumenism and the precepts of the Second Vatican Council.

While we maintain the Supernatural Virtue of Hope at all times, we cannot overlook the problems that have arisen over the years as a result of many of the former Cardinal Ratzinger's statements and actions, some of which have been explored in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos and in articles posted on this website in the past fourteen months (and in such books as Father Paul Kramer's The Devil's Final Battle). Indeed, Father Lawrence C. Smith has written an article reviewing such statements that will be posted on this site along with this revised commentary, doing so as a means of encouraging Catholics to pray for our new Holy Father as the graces of the Petrine Office now flow into his immortal soul. We need to invoke the intercession of Blessed Pope Pius IX, who had demonstrated some affinity for liberal and progressivist ideas on some occasions before being elected to the papacy in 1846, to help the new Holy Father to become as bold in an opposition to the principles of Modernity as he himself was after acceding to the Throne of Saint Peter.

Above all else at the present moment, however, we need to be on our knees before the Blessed Sacrament and to the Mother of God to ask the Holy Ghost to inspire the Chief Shepherd on earth to propagate the Catholic Faith throughout the world and to defend the Faith fully against the enemies from within, especially by a faithful fulfillment of Our Lady's Fatima Message. There would be nothing more pleasing to Catholics who have sought out the liturgical and doctrinal protection afforded by the catacombs than to arise therefrom to participate in a genuine restoration of the fullness of the Catholic Faith without compromise. Although it appears unlikely at present, we pray that Pope Benedict XVI is the shepherd sent to us by God who will lead such a restoration and who will banish the spirit of Modernism from every precinct of Catholic thought and practice. Indeed, we must remain absolutely steadfast in prayer no matter the Pope's reaffirmation of the ossified formulas that have caused so much harm to the Church in her human elements. No prayer is ever wasted. Those of us who are totally consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart are content to give her all of our prayers and penances and sacrifices freely as her consecrated slaves without looking for results, trusting that she will present them to God for His greater honor and glory and for the sanctification and salvation of human souls. Thus, we pray and we trust totally in Our Lady.

Pope Benedict XVI has already signaled the direction in which he desires to take the Church. Indeed, his own affirmation today of the tenets of his predecessor's pontificate provide a most eerie echo of the very "assurances" Pope John Paul II gave in his first homily as the Successor of Saint Peter on October 17, 1978, that he would be continuing the work of Vatican II and ecumenism that were near and dear to the heart of Pope Paul VI. I thought to myself in 1978 that the newly elected Pope John Paul II just had to pay homage to Pope Paul VI and his policies. It turned out that the former Karol Cardinal Wojtyla meant every word of what he said in praise of Pope Paul. A person would be quite foolhardy to think that the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is not absolutely sincere in his praise of his own predecessor's embrace of Vatican II and ecumenism.

Consider a few excerpts from Pope Benedict's sermon of today:

Before my eyes is, in particular, the witness of Pope John Paul II. He leaves us a Church that is more courageous, freer, younger. A Church that, according to his teaching and example, looks with serenity to the past and is not afraid of the future. With the Great Jubilee the Church was introduced into the new millennium carrying in her hands the Gospel, applied to the world through the authoritative re-reading of Vatican Council II. Pope John Paul II justly indicated the Council as a "compass" with which to orient ourselves in the vast ocean of the third millennium. Also in his spiritual testament he noted: "I am convinced that for a very long time the new generations will draw upon the riches that this council of the 20th century gave us".

I too, as I start in the service that is proper to the Successor of Peter, wish to affirm with force my decided will to pursue the commitment to enact Vatican Council II, in the wake of my predecessors and in faithful continuity with the millennia-old tradition of the Church. Precisely this year is the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of this conciliar assembly (December 8, 1965). With the passing of time, the conciliar documents have not lost their timeliness; their teachings have shown themselves to be especially pertinent to the new exigencies of the Church and the present globalized society. . . .

Theological dialogue is necessary. A profound examination of the historical reasons behind past choices is also indispensable. But even more urgent is that "purification of memory," which was so often evoked by John Paul II, and which alone can dispose souls to welcome the full truth of Christ. It is before Him, supreme Judge of all living things, that each of us must stand, in the awareness that one day we must explain to Him what we did and what we did not do for the great good that is the full and visible unity of all His disciples.

The current Successor of Peter feels himself to be personally implicated in this question and is disposed to do all in his power to promote the fundamental cause of ecumenism. In the wake of his predecessors, he is fully determined to cultivate any initiative that may seem appropriate to promote contact and agreement with representatives from the various Churches and ecclesial communities. Indeed, on this occasion too, he sends them his most cordial greetings in Christ, the one Lord of all.

The Holy Father may believe in all sincerity that the path condemned by one pope after another prior to 1958 has now been sanctioned by the Holy Ghost. The fruits, though, speak otherwise: the Catholic Church has been decimated in her human elements in the past four decades by revolutionary and cataclysmic changes in her liturgy and praxis. How can commonplace acts of desecration against the Most Blessed Sacrament be considered as consonant with an alleged "springtime" of the Church? How can it be that the episcopal consecration (by the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) of a priest (Father Bruno Forte) who had written that the Resurrection of Our Lord was a "myth" is a sign of the vibrancy of the Council? It is thus necessary to continue to remain steadfast in our commitment to the fullness of Catholic Tradition without compromise, all the while begging God through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to bring our shepherds to speak and to act as Catholic popes and bishops spoke and acted prior to the novelties and innovations of the recent past.

Although Pope Benedict XVI has given clear signals of his "continuity" with the policies of the immediate past, he knows that he, at age 78, will not have a long pontificate. It is thus reasonable to expect the new Holy Father to do at least some of the following things:

1) It is likely to be the case that Pope Benedict XVI will make some gesture towards traditional Catholics, possibly in the form of a universal indult for the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass by all Latin Rite priests of the Catholic Church and possibly in the form of some kind of canonical structure. This gesture is likely to be made on a "take it or leave it basis," leaving out the possibility of even firmer disciplinary measures than have heretofore been taken (meaning the excommunication of all of those who assist at chapels not recognized by the Holy See and/or local ordinaries). The approach he takes with His Excellency, the Most Reverend Bernard Fellay of the Society of Saint Pius X will be most instructive.

2) Pope Benedict XVI will revise the Roman Curia within a short period of time. Of special importance will be the naming of his successor as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the naming of new Secretary of State, if a new Secretary of State is to be named, that is, which in and of itself will be a very important signal.

3) Pope Benedict XVI will more carefully supervise the appointment of bishops than Pope John Paul II. Proteges of His Holiness, including one or two American priests, will likely be named to the episcopate. A number of relatively young, "conservative" American priests who have been serving in curial dicasteries will most likely also be added to the ranks of the episcopate. That having been noted, His Holiness has just today reaffirmed the innovation of Episcopal Collegiality, which is not a good sign.

4) Pope Benedict XVI will probably undertake a "reform of the reform," meaning that the ever-changable and ever-changing Novus Ordo is likely to get yet another General Instruction to guide its offering. Barring an overhaul of the inherent defects of the prayers contained within the Latin editio typica of the Novus Ordo Missae, such a reform will be principally cosmetic, stressing ceremonial dignity by the increased use of Latin worldwide and the adherence to what few non-fungible norms exist in the General Instruction to the Roman Missal. Begging to differ from those who have written that the Vatican has "rediscovered" Latin in the past few weeks since the death of Pope John Paul II, I have been present for a number of Papal Masses in Rome (including each and every Mass offered by Pope John Paul II during Holy Week in 1995) that were offered in Latin. The problem with the Novus Ordo Missae is not principally the idiom of its offering: it is the ideology of its synthetic composition. No "reform of the reform" is going to produce good results. We need a restoration of the fullness of the glories of the Mass of all ages before it was sullied by Annibale Bugnini and his henchmen in the 1950s and thereafter.

5) Pope Benedict XVI is likely to order his bishops to take disciplinary actions against dissenters in the ranks of Catholic universities and colleges. It is not unreasonable to expect His Holiness to take action against those Catholics in public life who promote contraception and abortion by their words and actions. What remains unclear, though, is his willingness to admit that those steeped in perversity and/or attracted thereto can never be ordained to the holy priesthood. He gave mixed signals on this matter while serving as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

We have not had to wait long for His Holiness to reaffirm the approaches of the recent past. It appears as though he intends to continue along the conciliarist path that has so devastated the Church in her human elements and thus made it more difficult for her to confront the world and to seek the conversion of everyone in the whole world to the one, true Church founded by Our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Our long journey in the catacombs thus continues, raising the following question: Are we truly worthy of a pope who will restore Tradition without compromise?

Pope Benedict XVI has asked for the help of the Mother of God. May Our Lady, who has said that her Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end, help our new Holy Father to lead a genuine restoration of the Church, and may she help us to support him by our prayers and our sacrifices as we recognize that the state of Holy Mother Church depends in no small measure upon the state of our own immortal souls. May she help His Holiness to fulfill her Fatima Message and to consecrate Russia to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart without delay. Nothing less than the state of the Church and thus of the world depends upon his doing so.

Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church and of Pope Benedict XVI, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

All holy popes and bishops, pray for us.

Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto. Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum ejus.