Little things can mean big things,
Papa Ratzinger used vestments and other gear from the Vatican storehouses to emphasise that he was successor of popes from both before and after 'the Council'; and the fact that the Church, both before and after 'the Council', was the same Church.
Papa Bergoglio found it hard to resist the temptation to emphasise himself and to bang the drum for rupture. "Look at me ... I'm not dressed in the usual way ... I'm not sharing a name with any previous pope ... I'm persecuting people who respect the Old Things ... I'm different."
Benedict may have got some things wrong, and Francis may have got some things right.
But Benedict looked to Tradition ... while Francis pointed to himself ... Me and Me and Me and Me.
And Tradition is the living Word of th Living Lord among his people.
Holy Father, Pray for us. The wolves are at large. Protect us.
Be our strong advocate.
Sad as it is that Benedict XVI died (any death is sad, because we were not made for death, but for life), at last we can pray TO him and not just FOR him.
ReplyDeleteBenedicte papa, ora pro nobis.
Sadly our beloved Pope Benedict died this morning at 9.34 am. Requiescat in Pace
ReplyDeleteL'église c'est moi. Isn't that PF's papal motto?
ReplyDeleteBenedict has now passed into eternity, and, we pray, to his heavenly reward. "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master."
ReplyDeleteSad for us, perhaps, a reminder that our lives too are slowly passing away, but may it be glorious for Benedict, that holy and penetrating teacher of God's truth.
Oremus pro Summo Pontifice nostro Benedicto. Requiescat in pace.
ReplyDeleteWell said sir!
ReplyDeleteDear Father. It is both sad and true that Ratzinger was not about continuity...
ReplyDeletehttps://culturewars.com/news/ratzinger-and-the-german-problem
RIP former Pope.
Now that Pope Benedict has passed from this life, with many prayers offered for the surely happy repose of his soul, I hope His Humbleness (dear Pope Francis) the present office holder will not make the funeral about him and the Spirit of V2, and as a means of point scoring. I hope the send off for the great German pontiff will be worthy of his fine and subtle mind, his efforts to weave together both old and new.
ReplyDeleteAmen indeed!
DeleteAmen.
ReplyDeleteSo many of us owe so much, under God, to his servant Pope Benedict, that our sorrow at his passing must be filled with beyond-usual gratitude. May he now be our advocate in heaven.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much hurry the Bergolians will be in to canonise the the last Pope actually to have attended the V2 council!?
Habemus Papam?
ReplyDeleteMick Jagger, the comment by Stephen Volk on Jones' article seems balanced. Men often mature from youthful folly. This seems to have happened with Ratzinger...no sign of it yet with his successor.
ReplyDeleteAmen!!
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Leahy. I ought not to have posted that but I happened to have read it earlier in the day and so it was fresh in my mind.
ReplyDeleteTo not speak bad onfthe dead is a tradition I broke.
I apologise to you and to all.
I believe there is so much we don't know about Benedict's time on the throne that it is best just to pray for and to him for the restoration of Tradition, which, in his way, with perhaps too much caution, he tried all his life to do.
ReplyDeleteI also think the key to these mysteries lies in Fatima.
The pattern that Fr Hunwicke detects applies to more than vestments. The most cursory inspection of the footnotes to Benedict's encyclicals shows a wide and deep learning in the great tradition of the Church and an intelligent use of modern scholarship. PF's, by contrast, have reverted to the 1950s pattern of citing mostly recent curial documents - i. e. himself. When reading the hybrid Lumen Fidei, for example, the reader can be confident that the passages citing Funk's edition of the Apostolic Fathers came from the pen of Papa Ratzinger.
ReplyDeleteDear Mick Jagger,
ReplyDeletethe problem with that article is not that it speaks bad of the dead, but that it bashes Pope Benedict for not pronouncing, with the weight of his office, a lie from the throne of Peter (that is, Peter Travelling-to-Germany).
The duty of Popes, and any Catholic, to be on the side of Truth is not limited to Catholic dogma; even if, as the author seems to assume, massive adherence to some specific lie were politically and cultural-atmospherically helpful (which, just as an aside, is quite certainly not the case either).
If you want a measure of how loathsome Andrea Grillo is, consider this piece in which he dances on Pope Benedict's grave:
ReplyDeletehttps://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2023/01/progressive-liturgist-reviews-ratzinger.html