The Is-Pope-Francis-The-Pope Debate Continues. Two Views from Edmund J Mazza and Steven O’Reilly
This won’t interest everybody, but it’s still worth considering given the woke revolution taking place inside the Catholic Church. Which will, in due time, be overthrown. Though not without many casualties.
This revolution has taken a particularly vicious turn of late (and will again this October), which leads some to wonder in the man in charge really is the man in charge. I side with O’Reilly here, and believe he is (also see Ed Feser on the topic). But I side with Mazza in wishing he was not.
Edmund J Mazza
His website is edmundmazza.com. He has courses available starting next week there.
His book is The Third Secret of Fatima & The Synodal Church: VOL. I Pope Benedict’s Resignation.
Pope, Antipope, & Pope Emeritus
“…It was icy cold and raining sheets. When the storm started, I thought that lightning might strike…so I decided it was worth seeing whether – if it DID strike – I could get the shot at exactly the right moment.” That’s how French Press Agency 1 photographer, Filippo Monteforte, described the surreal scene in St. Peter’s Square on the eerie evening of February 11, 2013, when two tremendous bolts of lightning, one after the other, struck the dome of the iconic Basilica. As another reporter put it: “As the sky was lit up by the huge bolt, it led to speculation as to whether Benedict XVI’s boss was less than happy…the apparent divine intervention came as the 85-year-old pontiff sent shockwaves through the Church on Monday after announcing his retirement, the first pope to do so in 700 years.”
Joseph Ratzinger’s resignation then led, in turn, to a situation entirely unprecedented in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. For virtually the next decade in the Vatican City State, two men wore the signature white papal cassock, two men bestowed apostolic blessings on the faithful, and two men were formally addressed as “His Holiness.” The novelty of this state of affairs even provided the genesis for an HBO film, The Two Popes (2019).
Surely this begs the question, however, whether there can be two Popes at the same time?
As the Church marks the eleventh anniversary of Pope Benedict’s abdication and transformation into “Pope Emeritus,” a minority (but growing number) of canonists and historians are coming to the conclusion that his renunciation might just have been invalid. (Perhaps that lightning strike was intentional after all?)
Msgr. Nicola Bux, one of Ratzinger’s closest curial colleagues, in a 2018 interview stated that the Church ought to study more accurately the question concerning the juridical validity of Pope Benedict XVI’s renunciation, i.e., whether it was full or partial (“halfway,” as some have said) or doubtful, since the idea of a sort of collegiate papacy seems to me decidedly against the Gospel text. In fact, Jesus did not say “Tibi dabo claves…” [“I will give to you the keys”] turning to Peter and Andrew, but he only told Peter! That’s why I say that, perhaps, a thorough study of the resignation could be more useful and profitable, as well as helping to overcome problems that today seem insurmountable to us.
In the 2016 book, Last Testament: In His Own Words, Benedict was asked by author Peter Seewald, whether a slowdown in the ability to perform [was] reason enough to climb down from the chair of Peter?”
The Pope Emeritus gave a puzzling reply: “One can of course make that accusation, but it would be a functional misunderstanding. The follower of Peter is not merely bound to a function; the office enters into your very being. In this regard, fulfilling a function is not the only criterion.”
To which Benedict added: “…a father does not stop being a father, but he is relieved of concrete responsibility. He remains a father in a deep, inward sense, in a particular relationship which has responsibility, but not with day-to-day tasks as such…If he steps down, he remains in an inner sense within the responsibility he took on, but not in the function.”
Or put another way, a Pope Emeritus is just that: a man who remains a Pope, but relieved of “day-to-day tasks” or “functions.” Afterall, according to Benedict, “fulfilling a function is not the only criterion” of being a Pope.
Understood in this light, Seewald’s asking if a slowdown in the ability to perform was reason enough to step down, is truly an “accusation” or “misunderstanding” of the nature of the papacy.
According to Carlo Fantappiè, Law Faculty of the University of Roma Tre, this discrepancy arises from two rival conceptions of the office of the Roman Pontiff: “Against the prevailing juridical consideration of the canonists, who placed the power of jurisdiction at the center of the papal figure, as the origin of all the others in the Church, the conciliar theologians have countered with the primariness of the sacramental dimension of the episcopate, from which derive the other specific functions of the bishop of Rome.”
For centuries, the papacy was understood as an office with supreme legal powers over the rest of the Catholic body. Yet for all its supremacy, for the gravest of reasons the office could be relinquished and taken up by another. Some of the most prominent theologians associated with the Second Vatican Council, however, have argued that since the Pope is, after all, the bishop of Rome, his office is not merely juridical, but sacramental. And sacramental power in Catholic theology “enters into your very being” and therefore cannot be rescinded. Such was the view of Karl Rahner, the most celebrated theologian of the post-conciliar Church. A view which Fantappiè argues, when applied “to the Petrine ministry…makes the primacy a sort of personal charism, giving rise to inconsistencies or misunderstandings, such as the coexistence of two [actual] popes, even if one reigning and one emeritus.”
It matters whether or not Seewald and the canonical tradition have the correct account of the papal office or whether Benedict and the new theologians do. According to Canon 126 of the Church’s code of law, “An act placed out of ignorance or out of error concerning something which constitutes its substance…is invalid.” If Benedict believed he could resign the administrative duties of a pontiff, but nevertheless, remain papal, then according to the view of the canonists, his resignation was null and void. And this would mean Ratzinger remained Pope—not Pope Emeritus—up until his death on New Year’s Eve 2022. And if this were true, it would have catastrophic consequences for the Catholic Church, for it would mean that Pope Francis would turn out to be an antipope. Indeed, many Catholics are coming to this conclusion for less prosaic reasons. They already consider his pontificate a catastrophe.
Steven O’Reilly
My book Valid? The Resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, my blog Roma Locuta Est, and a video series respond in detail to the key Benapapist claims (e.g., munus vs ministerium, wearing white, apostolic blessings, etc). Here, I will touch on claims found in Dr. Mazza’s recent article.
Dr. Mazza reads his theory into the evidence
All the Benedict quotes from Seewald above, especially when read in full and in context, can be easily and naturally read in a manner perfectly consistent with a valid resignation. There is no evident reason to prefer the controversial interpretation proposed by Dr. Mazza as the more probable one; and Dr. Mazza certainly gives no reason a more innocent one is unlikely.
Benedict was accused of secularizing the papacy by resigning it due to a lack of strength, as a corporate CEO might do. Thus, he defends the papacy from this accusation, saying it is more than a ‘function,’ more than what a secular job is. Indeed so! Thus, elsewhere in this and other Seewald interviews, Benedict speaks in terms of a pope’s or bishop’s role of being a “father” — of having a “relationship” with his flock. Entering this ‘fatherhood’ and this ‘relationship’ is what Benedict means by the ‘office entering you very being.’
Now, Dr. Mazza forgets that ‘all analogies limp,’ i.e., they cannot be stretched or interpreted to the breaking point, which he does in his analysis of Benedict’s analogy. Benedict’s point is certainly not that ‘a father does not stop being a father, so therefore a pope, even after resigning, is always a pope in some way.’ Not at all. Rather, Benedict’s point is to say only that the ‘inner responsibility’ arising from this relationship as a father to the flock, this bond of charity, persists even after a resignation. You simply do not forget those you loved when you leave office. Hence, Benedict said “stopping is a functionalization or secularization.”
Dr. Mazza does not tell his readers that immediately following the line he cites above ending in “criterion,” Benedict XVI’s answer continued as follows:
“Then again, the pope must do concrete things, must keep the whole situation in his sights, must know which priorities to set, and so on. This ranges from receiving heads of state, receiving bishops – with whom one must be able to enter a deeply intimate conversation – to the decisions which come each day. Even if you say a few of these things can be struck off, there remain so many things which remain essential, that, if the capability to do them is no longer there – for me anyway; someone else might see it otherwise – now’s the time to free up the chair.”
We see this broader context does not bear out Dr. Mazza’s claims. The point Benedict XVI is making is that ‘yes the papacy is more than a job’ but, even so, there are so many things ‘which remain essential,’ that if you can’t do them, in his opinion, “now’s the time to free up the chair.” That is, time to step down from the Chair of Peter! Time to resign from the office.
During an interview (A Life: Vol II), Seewald asked about Benedict’s use of the honorific title “emeritus.” Benedict replied: “In this formula both things are implied: no actual legal authority any longer, but a relationship which remains even if it is invisible.” Furthermore, Benedict told Seewald explicitly this “legal-spiritual formula avoids any idea of there being two popes at the same time: a bishopric can only have one incumbent. But the formula also expresses a spiritual link, which cannot ever be taken away.”
So, what remained for Benedict after “freeing up the chair” was an ‘invisible relationship,’ i.e., a bond of charity towards his “sons and daughters.” The ‘inner responsibility’ arising from this two-way bond of charity led him to devote his remaining years as a former pope, “pope emeritus,” to the service of prayer for the Church, just as he said in his Declaratio and his Last Audience (see discussion).
Thus, there is no grounds to introduce the notion of a ‘sacramental papacy’ into Benedict’s thought here. There is no reason Benedict should think he would need to remain pope in some way to pray for the Church. Indeed, it is clear from a letter to Cardinal Brandmuller that Benedict felt he was like other resigned popes, who were also “pope emeritus” in fact, if not explicitly in name.
Dr. Mazza Exchanges Clarity for Obscurity
Dr. Mazza appeals to what Carlo Fantappiè says about “two rival conceptions of the office of the Roman Pontiff,” and to what Karl Rahner and other “prominent theologians” may have thought about the papacy being ‘sacramental,’ etc.
However, these appeals obscure an important fact. Dr. Mazza cannot provide any clear statement by Ratzinger, either as theologian, pope, or pope emeritus wherein he affirms the concept of the papacy which Dr. Mazza ascribes to him. In fact, Dr. Mazza once claimed to have found such a statement, but it was demonstrated he grossly misread the source material (see HERE). In short, Ratzinger did not say what Dr. Mazza claimed.
It is a curious thing. Benepapists either ignore the clear words of Benedict, or seek to read a “code” into them for the desired result. For example, even setting aside the munus vs. ministerium debate, Benedict clearly said he resigned in such a way that the ‘See of Rome, the See of Peter would be vacant,’ resulting in the need for a conclave to elect a “a new supreme pontiff.” Thus, we perfectly understand why, on the effective date of his resignation, Benedict said that as of 8pm that evening “I am no longer supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church.”
Such statements contradict the claim Benedict intended to remain Supreme Pontiff, either fully or in some partial way. Given this clear evidence, and the absence of clear statements by Benedict to the contrary, there simply is no credible basis for Dr. Mazza to appeal to either canon 126 or 188 to invalidate Benedict’s resignation.
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What do we know with certainty on Faith?:
- The conclave chooses the pope, hopefully with Guidance from the Holy Spirit.
- The word "surprise" does not exist in the Divine Vocabulary. (God is Never "surprised".)
- Jesus is on earth in the Holy Eucharist and It's His Church.
- We all have, even the Pope -free will. Judas was a bishop! Peter errored badly and was corrected "to his face".
Possible:
- The semi Ultramontanism of today was not always so, could this be a correction to a man made tradition?
- Did Benedict step down at the Christ's request? Francis was oddly held somewhat in check while Benedict was alive, only recently has he really gone completely haywire with blessings on sin.
- Was Francis's election valid?
- Might the Lord be using the subtle Francis catastrophe to bring down the homo progressive element in the Church?
- Francis in many ways seems to be like Denethor the last steward king of Gondor. Those familiar with the story will note that soon after his perishing, the True King Returned.
Thanks for hosting and posting this.
I think that, the largest thing to do as Catholics, is to respond to each other with Charity. While I certainly am with O'Reilly as well, I can understand the confusion. Ultimately, our enemy wants us divided. Let's not do the work for him! Give each other understanding that, while we try to correct each other, not come to the ridiculous, but far too common, trad Catholic position of shooting each other in the great purification game.