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Joseph Ratzinger’s 2013 resignation led to a situation entirely unprecedented in the history of the Church. For virtually the next decade in Vatican City, 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.”
Surely this inspires the question over whether there can be two “Popes” at the same time. In fact, as I detail in my book The Third Secret of Fatima and the Synodal Church, a small but growing number of experts now believe Benedict’s renunciation was invalid.
In Last Testament: In His Own Words, Benedict was asked by Peter Seewald, whether a “slowdown in the ability to perform [was] reason enough to climb down from the chair of Peter.”
Benedict 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.”[1]
He 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.”
It appears that Benedict believed that when he became Pope in 2005, he received a sacramental munus—not simply a juridical office—but a munus to teach, sanctify, and govern, as Vatican II teaches each bishop receives when sacramentally consecrated. A bishop does not lose these munera when he becomes bishop emeritus. And for Ratzinger, neither does a Pope when he becomes “pope emeritus.”
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According to Cardinal Peter Erdo:
…as in the [Second Vatican] Council, even in the new Code [of Canon Law] ‘munus’…not infrequently also…[has] a special, theological meaning of the three munera [gifts] of Christ (can. 204 § 1) and of the Church…passages in which the legislator speaks of the “munus” of Peter (can. 331) or the Roman Pontiff (can. 332 § 2, 333 §§ 1-2, 334) are connected with this sense [of gift]. [2]
In his February 11th Declaratio, Benedict mentioned the Petrine munus, but never renounced it.
Contrary to Ratzinger and Erdo, however, pre-Vatican II Cardinal Billot explains that a proper papal resignation means there is no gift or munus—nothing of “Pope-ness” remaining:
there is absolutely no doubt that pontifical power in the line of Peter can come to an end …just as this person first began to be legitimate when he accepted his election as Supreme Pontiff, so he ceases to be as soon as by resignation he destroys the effect of the election in himself…it plainly follows from the very fact of abdication that he is free of the pontificate. [3]
According to Professor Carlo Fantappiè, the discrepancy of views between Seewald and Ratzinger arises from two rival conceptions of the papacy: “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 [like Ratzinger] have countered with the primariness of the sacramental dimension of the episcopate, from which derive the other specific functions of the bishop of Rome.”[4]
For centuries, the papacy was understood as an office with supreme legal powers over the Church. Yet, for the gravest of reasons, the office could be relinquished. Conciliar theologians, however, argue that since the Pope is, after all, the bishop of Rome, his office is not merely juridical, but sacramental. And sacramental power cannot be rescinded. 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 Code of Canon 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 administrative duties, but nevertheless, remain papal, then according to the canonists his resignation was invalid. Thus, the conclave that elected Francis would likewise be invalid, as I cover in my upcoming series: Conclave/Antipope.
READ: Prominent Catholic theologian: Francis may no longer be regarded as legitimate due to heresy
ENDNOTES
- Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words, (New York: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2016), Kindle Edition.
- Peter Erdö, “Ministerium, munus et officium in codice Iuris canonici,” Periodica 1 de re morali canonica liturgica, vol. 78, no. 4 (1989), pp. 411-436; 428.
- Cardinal Louis Billot, S.J., Tractatus De Ecclesia Christi 5th Edition, (Gregorian Pontifical University, 1927), pp. 623-636.
- Carlo Fantappiè, Ecclesiologia e Canonistica, (Venezia: Marcianum Press, 2015), p. 391. Author’s translation from the Italian.
Dr. Edmund J. Mazza is a former Full Professor of History at Azusa Pacific University in Los Angeles. For 14 years he taught Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance and Reformation History. Mazza is the author of The Scholastics and the Jews: Coexistence, Conversion and the Medieval Origins of Tolerance published by Angelico Press.