(LifeSiteNews) — In his article “Why Pope Benedict’s Resignation Was Valid,” Steven O’Reilly accused me of “a vain attempt at mind-reading” because I maintain that Pope Benedict believed in a sacramental munus attached to the Papacy. Let’s let Benedict speak for himself:
I think we should be honest enough to admit the temptation of mammon in the history of the Church and to recognize to what extent it was a real power that worked to the distortion and corruption of both Church and theology, even to their inmost core. The separation of office as jurisdiction from office as rite was continued for reasons of prestige and financial benefits.[1]
No mind reading required: Ratzinger was on record as saying there is no such thing in the Catholic Church as an office of jurisdiction separated from an office as rite: “We have no right to speak of a quasi-profane ruling power, neatly separated from the sacramental ministry.”[2]
This is ultimately why Benedict chose to become “Pope” Emeritus instead of “Bishop” Emeritus.
As Dr. Roberto de Mattei asserts, if the pope who resigns nevertheless takes the title of “emeritus, that means that to some extent he remains pope. It is clear, in fact, that in the definition the noun [pope] prevails over the adjective [emeritus].” And de Mattei concludes that this can only be due to an indelible character received at election and not lost at resignation:
The abdication would presuppose in this case the cessation of the exercise of power, but not the disappearance of the pontifical character. This indelible character attributed to the pope could be explained in its turn only by an ecclesiological vision that would subordinate the juridical dimension [potestas iurisdictionis] of the pontificate to the sacramental [potestas ordinis].[3]
No less a witness than Pope Francis himself testifies:
For some theologians, the papacy is a sacrament. It’s a sacrament. The Germans are very creative with these kinds of things. I don’t believe that, but what I want to say is that there’s something special.[4]
O’Reilly also alleges that munus and ministerium mean the same thing—at least in Benedict’s mind. (Who’s doing the mind-reading now, I wonder?) Again, let’s let Benedict speak for himself for, fortunately, in addition to Benedict’s Declaratio, we do possess a document wherein he admits of a distinction between munus and ministerium: between the transcendent gift and the functional use of it. In the early 1980s, Ratzinger expresses his approval of the reform of the rite of ordination carried out in 1947:
Pius XII defines as the central words those spoken at the consecration by the bishop: “Send forth upon him, O Lord, we beseech thee, the Holy Spirit, by whom may he (the ordained) be strengthened to perform faithfully the work of thy service with the help of thy sevenfold gift” “Emitte in eum, quaesumus, Domine, Spiritum Sanctum, quo in opus ministerii tui fideliter exsequendi septiformis gratiae tuae munere roboretur.”
Accordingly, the key word now is ministerium or munus: service and gift.”[5] (Emphasis mine.)
Ratzinger remarks that the “medieval rite is formed on the pattern of investiture in a secular office. Its key word is ‘potestas’ [power], the key words now are “munus,” the divine gift which allows “ministerium,” the service (active or passive) to God and His People.
RELATED: Why Pope Benedict’s resignation was valid: a response to Dr. Mazza
In giving up the “office as jurisdiction,” in this case, the administration of the diocese of Rome—and the universal Church—Benedict was not parting with the “office as rite.”[6] This is why he explicitly renounced the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, but not the munus of the Bishop of Rome
To return to being “Cardinal Ratzinger” would have been tantamount to denying the interpenetration of the functional and the sacramental. Thus, he remained “pope” in the sense that a bishop remains a “bishop” even without a diocese to run. In his words:
This word “emerito” meant that he was no longer the active holder of the episcopal see, but that he had the special relationship of a former bishop to his see. In this respect, on the one hand, the need to define his office [as rite] in relation to a real diocese without making him a second bishop of his diocese was taken into account. The word “emerito” meant that he had fully relinquished his office [as jurisdiction], but the spiritual attachment [office as rite] to his previous see was now also recognized as a legal quality…This relationship to a preceding see, which had hitherto been real, but which was seen as outside the realm of law is the new meaning of “emerito” formed after Vatican II…Precisely this [now] legal-spiritual form [office as rite] avoids any thought of a coexistence of two [reigning] popes: a bishop’s see can have only one holder. At the same time, a spiritual bond is expressed that cannot be taken away under any circumstances.[7]
To Benedict’s mind, the situation was not a “coexistence of two [reigning] popes: a bishop’s see can have only one holder.” That is, he defines “Pope,” conventionally speaking as the “Bishop of Rome,” the active holder of the diocese of Rome. In that sense, both Benedict and Gänswein considered Francis “the Pope.” (This is why I cannot subscribe to the “Ratzinger Code” thesis of Andrea Cionci.)
RELATED: Patrick Coffin: Pope Benedict left us clues that he did not validly resign
We have the added testimony of Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s “right hand” (and ultimately caregiver) for two decades. In a 2016 speech at the Gregorianum, Gänswein said that, unlike the resignation of Pope St. Celestine which changed him back into the humble monk Pietro Morrone, in the case of the resignation of Pope Benedict, “the papal ministry is…no longer what it was before”:
I was present when…he [Benedict] decided not to give up the name he had chosen, as Pope Celestine V had done when, on December 13, 1294, a few months after the start of his ministry, he again became Pietro dal Morrone.
Since February 2013, the papal ministry is therefore no longer what it was before. It is and remains the foundation of the Catholic Church; and yet it is a foundation which Benedict XVI has profoundly and permanently transformed during his exceptional pontificate (Ausnahmepontifikat)…
The “exceptional pontificate” Gänswein is here speaking of is that which Benedict exercised AFTER his “resignation.” He adds:
[Benedict] has been daring enough to open the door to a new phase, to that historical turning point which no one…could have ever imagined. Since then, we live in an historic era which in the 2,000-year history of the Church is without precedent. Many people even today continue to see this new situation as a kind of exceptional (not regular) state of the divinely instituted office of Peter (eine Art göttlichen Ausnahmezustandes) …
But in the history of the Church, it shall remain true that, in the year 2013, the famous theologian on the throne of Peter became history’s first “pope emeritus.” Since then, his role—allow me to repeat it once again—is entirely different from that, for example, of the holy Pope Celestine V.[8]
The only way the papacy itself could have changed, the only way Benedict could be entirely different from Celestine, is if he still considered himself ontologically or “passively” papal. If, however, he thought he could hold onto the papacy in any shape or form—“remain in the precincts of St. Peter”—then he was in error, substantially so.
And one final note. One wishes that Mr. O’Reilly (and others) would once and for all stop labeling fellow Catholics and insinuating that those who seek answers concerning Benedict and Bergoglio are “confusing” others and leading them down the primrose path to “schism.” Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, OP, in his Commentary on the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, clearly teaches:
If someone, for a reasonable motive, holds the person of the Pope in suspicion and refuses his presence, even his jurisdiction, he does not commit the delect of schism nor any other whatsoever, provided…he be ready to accept the Pope were he not held in suspicion.[9]
And Fr. Franz Wernz and Fr. Pedro Vidal in their monumental commentary on canon law declare:
…they cannot be numbered among the schismatics, who refuse to obey the Roman Pontiff because they consider [him]… suspect or doubtfully elected on account of rumors in circulation.[10]
These subjects and more will be covered in greater detail in my Advent series, Conclave/Antipope.
RELATED: Doctor Edmund Mazza: Here’s why I believe the Bergoglian pontificate is invalid
[1] Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. M.F. McCarthy, (Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 254.
[2] J. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, (New York/Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1966), p. 128.
[3] Roberto de Mattei, One and One Alone is Pope, quoted in Reigning and ‘Emeritus’. The Enigma of the Two Popes (cf. Chiesa Espresso [Sandro Magister’s Blog], September 15, 2014. https://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350868bdc4.html?eng=y).
[4] Valentina Alazraki, “Francis Interviewed by Mexican Media Company Televisa,” L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 3 April 2015, p. 13.
[5] J. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 241.
[6] One may retire from the active or “Martha” dimension of the Petrine Ministry, but not the “Mary.” dimension, which in the end, “is the one thing necessary.” Cf. Lk 10:38-42.
[7] Peter Seewald, Benedikt XVI.: Ein Leben, “Letzte Fragen an Benedikt XVI,” (Munich: Droemer, 2020); My translation from the German.
[8] https://aleteia.org/2016/05/30/complete-english-text-archbishop-georg-gansweins-expanded-petrine-office-speech/
[9] Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, OP, Commentary on the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas; entry 186 on “schism”; https://archive.org/details/operaomniaiussui08thom/page/308/mode/2up
[10] Fr. Franz Wernz and Fr. Pedro Vidal, Ius Canonicum, 7, p. 398.