Here is the essay posted yesterday by Timothy
Flanders (link):
A Trad Perspective on Benedict XVI (link)
By T. S. Flanders
January 3, 2023
“I’m sorry about Benedict.”
I turned from my dog to my daughter.
“Did he die?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Who died?” said my six-year-old son.
“Pope Benedict, the former pope.”
I was taking it in. It wasn’t hitting me yet.
I said to my son: “Now he goes to judgment. We pray that he
may get into purgatory and go to heaven!”
My son went back to colouring.
I went back to tending the dog.
I had just spent over a week on a Christmas retreat from work
and my phone. I hadn’t checked my email or social media in eight days. It
was Saturday, December 31st at around 9am in the morning. The news struck
me slowly. I remember seeing the Pope Emeritus in recent photos. He
certainly looked elderly. A few days prior my friend had told me the Pope
Emeritus was in poor health. My mind was in retreat mode, far from the
politics and drama of the Vatican that I work in daily. In my heart I felt
a peace and a sadness. There’s a peace when an old man dies in the
Sacraments of Holy Church.
We can have a reasonable hope that he was welcomed into
purgatory.
When an old man is graced with a Catholic death it is a peace
because he has left this valley of tears and we hope that he has entered
true life.
And I felt a sadness. The sadness that millions of faithful
feel today, for whom Benedict was their spiritual Holy Father. But for me
and for Trads, this loss may be felt somewhat differently.
From Orthodox
to Rome
Years ago when I was Eastern Orthodox, I first encountered
Joseph Ratzinger in his comments regarding the Eastern schisms and the
east-west dialogue. To my mind, these comments showed the amount of
erudition necessary to overcome centuries of bad blood and
misunderstanding. I was also struck by his criticisms of the Protestant
Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory (which Orthodox criticise) and his
work for Biblical and Patristic models of atonement.
These sentiments made my Eastern Orthodox mind become more
open to the claims of Rome. It was in particular his statements regarding
the Papacy that struck a chord with me.
At the time I was dialoguing with a Roman Catholic and
disputing with him about Orthodox critiques against Rome. I had in my mind
the hyperpapalist view of the Papacy, which (then and now) seemed wholly
contrary to the Patristic phronema on the episcopacy and
the see of Rome. This Roman Catholic patiently explained to me that this
hyperpapalist view was in error, and that “there was really only one
authority in the Church: Tradition.”
That made sense to me.
If the Papacy were really in service to Tradition as its
guardian, not its master, then I could accept Roman dogmas.
At the time I did not realise just how much this view was both
articulated and embodied by Joseph Ratzinger. But let me
return to that in a moment.
Benedict’s
Resignation
I remember hearing the news about the resignation in early
2013. I was still Orthodox then, but spending my final Lent outside of
communion with Rome. My close Catholic friends mourned the loss of Benedict
as Pope, but for me I was never impacted closely by any modern pope in my
conversion to Rome. Frankly I found the constant dwelling of Catholics on the
person of the pope rather odd.
I would later find out how much Ratzinger/Benedict sought to
place the focus on the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, and stand out of
the way to let the Faith speak. Again, he had already been articulating the
things that I had come to believe in Rome for my salvation.
That spring the western Lent was about a month earlier than
the Orthodox Lent. I remembered attending my local Tenebrae service in
which Allegri’s Miserere Mei was chanted. I was moved in
my heart and knew my home was Rome. Again, unbeknownst to me this sacred
music had been preserved directly and indirectly by Ratzinger/Benedict.
Looking back, I see that I owe a lot to him, even if I didn’t
know it at the time. For that I am thankful for his work in the Church. It
was because of these things and others that I was later received into
communion with Rome in May of 2013, shortly after Pope Francis was elected.
After spending my whole Catholic life under Pope Francis, I still don’t regret this decision.
I never have. And I’ve come to appreciate more over the years what Benedict
did for the Church.
Ratzinger
against Hyperpapalism
This, I think, is one of the enduring contributions of
Ratzinger to the crisis of the 20th century. I would learn later that the
basic articulation of the authority in the Church by my Roman Catholic
interlocutor had been expressing Ratzinger’s words and deeds in his career.
Years later I would learn the many examples of this:
In 1960 Ratzinger castigated Hans Küng who wanted to make the
Council (Vatican II) into a parliament for changing doctrine. An ecumenical
council, even if promulgated by the pope, was always at the service of the
Tradition.
In the 1970s Ratzinger – who was then a world famous celebrity
priest theologian – openly criticised the liturgical reform and the banning
of the Latin Mass by Paul VI. Clearly he was not a hyperpapalist, who felt
the need to blindly accept the Novus Ordo and all its implementation even
though the pope signed it.
In the 1980s and 90s, Joseph Ratzinger slowly reintegrated the
Latin Mass back into the liturgical life of the Church, putting into action
his words under Paul VI.
With Summorum Pontificum, he articulated this
principle of Tradition, this “hermeneutic of continuity,” that the pope was
not above the liturgical tradition, but was its guardian and “gardener.”[1]
Thus I could see a consistency in Ratzinger the priest and
pope – a constant return to Tradition as the one authority in the Church.
Coming from Eastern Orthodoxy, this vision of the Papacy was one that I
could accept because I knew it accorded with the First Millennium Papacy
and all the oaths and confessions of Faith of popes and bishops.
Guard the Tradition.
That’s your job as pope.
Father of Trads
Joseph Ratzinger was not a Trad. His school of thought
was Communio, “ressourcement,” and he joined with the
opponents of the Trad godfathers at the Council.
Because of this, he accepted and defended various novelties and ambiguities
promulgated by the Council.
Nevertheless, he acted as a father to Trads.
In the 1970s he was willing to stand (with Trads) on the
principle of Tradition in opposition to the papal positivism that would
command blind obedience to the Novus Ordo. His subsequent actions show (at
least) that he agreed with this fundamental principle of Tradition which
would cause him to liberalise the Latin Mass out of faithfulness to
Tradition. It was a subordination of the Papacy itself to Tradition. These
various liturgical acts were acts of a true traditionis custos.
For more on this, read the compilation by Kwasniewski at New Liturgical
Movement “Best Quotes on the Liturgy by
Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI.”
For this, as a Trad, I thank Benedict for acting on this
eternal principle of Holy Church.
Of course, he can receive justified criticism for any errors
or imperfections in his statements, judgments or decisions. But the Church
is still mourning the death of the pontiff, and this is not the time for
those criticisms. And I believe that the whole Trad movement owes a debt of
gratitude to this body of work in which the man helped establish the
liturgical tradition as Trads have argued for decades. Ratzinger helped the
fundamental principle argued by Trads to become truly a mainstream
proposition, not a fringe theory.
Ratzinger Down
the Memory Hole
And so it seems that the new regime of iconoclasm under Traditionis
Custodes seeks to send these fundamental Ratzingerian doctrines
down the memory hole. As I wrote a year
ago on this:
The entire justification given in Traditionis Custodes was explicitly proposed to
Benedict XVI after Summorum Pontificum. Peter Seewald told Benedict in
2017 what Francis would say about Benedict’s work in 2021. How
did Benedict respond?
[Peter Seewald:] The reauthorization of the Tridentine Mass is
often interpreted primarily as a concession to the Society of St Pius X.
[Benedict XVI Emeritus:] That is just absolutely
false! It was important for me that the Church
is one with herself inwardly, with her own past; that what was
previously holy to her is not somehow wrong now. The rite must develop. In
that sense reform is appropriate. But the continuity must not be ruptured.
The Society of St Pius X is based on the fact that people felt the Church
was renouncing itself. That must not be. But as I said, my
intentions were not of a tactical nature, they were about the substance of
the matter itself. Of course it is also the case that, the moment
one sees a Church schism looming, the Pope is obliged to do whatever is
possible to prevent it happening. This also includes the attempt to lead
these people back into unity with the Church, if possible.[2]
[My comments]: It is fallacious to claim, as Pope Francis did,
that Summorum Ponitificum was “primarily” about the
SSPX. Benedict says clearly “this is just absolutely false!” It is, rather,
“about the substance of the matter itself.” It is quite clear to anyone who
studies Ratzinger’s thought that he condemned Paul VI’s suppression of the
Latin Mass in 1969, without any consideration of what the SSPX was
or was not doing.[3] That’s why His Eminence Cardinal
Sarah, the greatest living exponent of Ratzinger’s thought (whom Benedict appointed to implement
his “reform of the reform”) condemned Traditionis
Custodes on the basis of the reform itself, regardless
of the SSPX. (His Eminence’s text is also found in From Benedict’s
Peace to Francis’s War, pp. 295-297.[4] Reconciling with
the SSPX, as Benedict says above, was of secondary importance. In other
words, Summorum Pontificum would have been necessary
even if SSPX never existed.
It was about the substance of the matter itself.
This is the type of doctrine from Ratzinger that our enemies
fear. They fear it because as Kwasniewski recently said regarding Vatican II,
this is not some fringe theologian talking. I believe that Trads need to
appreciate this aspect of Benedict. He is in some sense a “hostile witness”
for the Trad movement. He himself is not a Trad, yet he articulates in
numerous places important talking points for Trads to raise. It seems that
one of the tactics of our enemies is to label us as “fringe” and
“dissenters” who are more or less crazy.
It seems Benedict was the Katechon of 2 Thess 2. "St. Michael the Archangel gives us a very broad vision of the panorama that humanity is facing with the return to the Father’s House of the one who was upholding the Church with his prayer and his silence - our beloved Benedict XVI, and we pray to the Divine Will that he would continue to intercede for us (info=revelaciones.com)
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