By Luke Coppen, AC Wimmer, Matthew Bunson
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95, ending the memorable life of an ecclesiastic who proclaimed the “eternal joy” of Jesus Christ and himself as a “humble worker” in the Lord’s vineyard.
His death announced in Rome on December 31.
Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was elected pope on April 19, 2005 and took Benedict XVI’s call. Eight years later, on February 11, 2013, the 85-year-old shocked the world by pronouncing – in Latin – that he was resigning from the papacy. It is the first resignation of a pope in nearly six hundred years. He cited his complex age and lack of strength as unworthy for the job.
However, the enormous legacy of his profound theological contributions to the Church and the world will continue to be a source of study and reflected image.
Even before his election as pope, Ratzinger exerted a lasting influence on the Church, first as a young theologian at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and then as Prefect of the Vatican Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith. .
A staunch advocate of Catholic education, he coined the term “dictatorship of relativism” to describe the growing intolerance of the ideals of secularism in the twenty-first century.
Benedict’s stance has been formed through his deep understanding of this challenge to the Church and Catholicism in the face of developing ideological aggression, adding from a Western secular mentality, both inside and outside the Church.
Benedict was also a key architect in the fight against sexual abuse in the Church in the early 2000s. He oversaw vital changes in canon law and eliminated many criminals from the clerical state. He also introduced a canonical investigation into the Legionaries of Christ, after developing allegations of serious sexual abuse through the founder of the order, the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado. The canonical investigation resulted in a lengthy reform procedure under the authority of Cardinal Velasio de Paolis.
Millions of others have read Benedict XVI’s books, adding the revolutionary “Introduction to Christianity” from 1968 and the three-volume “Jesus of Nazareth,” published between 2007 and 2012, when he was pope.
He was the first pope to quit his job in nearly six hundred years. He traveled from Vatican City to Castel Gandolfo by helicopter on February 28, 2013 and retired the following May to the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican City State Gardens.
“I am only a pilgrim who begins the last leg of his pilgrimage on Earth,” he said in his last words as pontiff. “Let us go forward with the Lord through the Church and the world.
Known for his love of music, he played Mozart and Beethoven on the piano, as well as cats, Christmas biscuits and the occasional German beer. The deceased Pope is also famous for his kindness, courtesy and for being a true child of Bavaria.
Joseph Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, Holy Saturday, in the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn. His parents, Joseph and Maria, raised him as a Catholic. His father, a member of a classic family circle of Bavarian farmers, a police officer. . Joseph Sr. , however, such a fierce opponent of the Nazis that the circle of relatives had to move to Traunstein, a small town on the border with Austria.
Joseph and his older brothers, Georg and Maria, grew up with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, which he would later call “a sinister regime” that “banished God and has therefore become impervious to all that is true and good. “Drafted into the Army’s auxiliary anti-aircraft service in the final months of World War II, he deserted and spent a brief time in an American prisoner-of-war camp.
After the war, he resumed his studies for the priesthood and was ordained a priest on June 29, 1951, in combination with his brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger. The two remained united. A week before Georg’s death in 2020, Benedict traveled to Bavaria. to say goodbye to his elder brother for the last time.
While Georg became a famous choral conductor, Joseph pursued doctoral studies in theology and became a university professor, dean and vice-rector of the prestigious University of Regensburg in Bavaria.
He was an expert (peritus) at the Second Vatican Council for Cardinal Joseph Frings, Archbishop of Cologne. In 1972, he joined eminent theologians such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac in founding the theological journal Communio to reflect faithfully on theology in the tumultuous post-Council epoch and to refute misinterpretations of the conciliar documents that were advanced.
Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of Munich and Freising in early 1977 and made him Cardinal in June of the same year.
In 1981, Pope John Paul II appointed Ratzinger prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and president of the International Theological Commission.
He was instrumental in the elaboration of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (published in 1992) and in the explanation and defense of Catholic doctrine. He was vilified for his paintings through secular media and progressive Catholic groups, especially when he fulfilled the task of investigating the paintings of some theologians who presented erroneous and even heretical teachings. In 1997, at the age of 70, the then cardinal asked John Paul II to allow him to renounce the curial so that he could devote himself solely to painting in the Vatican Library. John Paul II asked him to stay and he remained one of the key figures in the struggle until the pontiff’s death in April 2005.
After the death of John Paul II, Ratzinger was elected pope in one of the shortest conclaves in fashion history.
Cardinal Ratzinger chose Benedict XVI’s call because, as he explained at a general audience a few days after his election, Benedict XV (Pope from 1914 to 1922) had also led the Church through an era of turmoil, World War I (1914 to 1918). .
“Following in his footsteps, I would like to place my ministry at the service of reconciliation and concord among Americans and peoples, because I am deeply convinced that the wonder of peace is first and foremost a gift from God,” he said April 27. 2005.
“The so-called ‘Benedict’ also recalls the ordinary figure of the wonderful ‘patriarch of Western monasticism,'” he added. This co-patron of Europe was “a basic reference for European unity and a stark reminder of the indispensable Christian roots of its culture and civilization. “
The papacy of Benedict XVI was characterized by efforts at ecclesiastical, intellectual and non-secular renewal, adding the confrontation between relativism and secularism, the fight against the scourge of clergy sexual abuse, the promotion of liturgical reform and the promotion of an original interpretation of the Second Vatican Council.
In his homily before the 2005 conclave that elected him to the papacy, the longtime pope warned that he opposes a “dictatorship of relativism that recognizes nothing as definitive and whose ultimate purpose is composed only of its own ego and desires. “
He stressed that Jesus Christ is “the measure of true humanism,” and that mature religion and friendship with God serve as a measuring stick to distinguish “good from evil and deception from truth. “
In his speech at Westminster Hall to the leaders of British society on its stopover in the UK in 2010, he spoke of the immense risks to the new society when faith is expelled from the public square.
“There are those who advocate that the voice of faith be silenced,” he said, “or at least relegated to the purely personal sphere. There are those who argue that public holiday birthday holidays like Christmas deserve to be discouraged, in dubious confidence that it may offend those of other religions or none at all.
“And there are those who argue, with the goal of eliminating discrimination, that Christians in public workplaces deserve to be asked to act against their conscience infrequently,” he said. “These are troubling symptoms of an inability to appreciate not only believers’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom of faith, but also the valid role of faith in the public square. “
Much more debatable was his 2006 speech at the University of Regensburg to representatives of science. He criticizes the secular bureaucracy of ideas that herald “an explanation of why it is deaf to the divine and relegates faith to the domain of subcultures,” judging this attitude “incapable of entering into the discussion of cultures. “He also criticized schools of Christian and Muslim ideas for falsely exalting the “transcendence and otherness” of God, so that human explanation for why and understanding of the intelligent “are no longer an original mirror of God. “
Some German media and politicians intentionally took this speech out of context, focusing on an old single quote from a Byzantine emperor. This misrepresentation has been accompanied by an explosion of anti-Christian violence in parts of the Muslim world.
Despite such reactions, Benedict XVI’s genuine contribution has led to greater efforts for an honest discussion between Muslims and Christians, a discussion that hides differences and calls for mutual reciprocity in respect for rights.
Having identified the deep existential and non-secular crisis facing the world, the West in particular, Benedict XVI reminded Catholics around the world of the call to evangelize. Described as the “digital continent”, the global one of online communications and social networks.
“There is no greater precedent than this: to allow the other men of our time to reconnect with God, the God who speaks to us and stores his love so that we can have life in abundance,” he said in his 2010 Post-Anodal Apostolic Exhortation. . On the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church, Verbum Domini.
Benedict also saw the need for the Church to adopt an original of the Second Vatican Council, pointing out in a seminal speech in 2005 two competing models of interpretation (hermeneutics) that had emerged after the Council.
The first, a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, proposes that there be a basic rupture between the Council and the afterlife and that it is not the texts but an indistinct “spirit of the Council” that guides its interpretation and implementation. Benedict lamented: “In a word: we do not confine ourselves to the texts of the council but to its spirit. In this way, of course, a wide margin was left to the question of how this spirit would be explained afterwards and a position was thus taken for each and every one. whim.
Faced with the hermeneutic of rupture, Benedict proposed a hermeneutic of reform and continuity that he called “renewal in the continuity of the one Church-theme that the Lord has given us. It’s a theme that grows over time and develops, while remaining the same. “, the only theme of the People of God in motion.
His efforts to identify a correct interpretation of the Second Vatican Council lasted until the end of his pontificate. On February 14, 2013, just two weeks before his resignation took effect, he said the council had first been interpreted “through the eyes of the media,” which called it a “political struggle” among other currents within the Church.
This “media council” has created “many calamities” and “so much misery,” resulting in the closure of seminaries and convents and the “trivialization” of the liturgy, he said. Benedict XVI said the true interpretation of the Second Vatican Council “emerges with all its non-secular force. “
The call for continuity and reform found expression in the Pope’s attention to the liturgy, especially through his wonderful e-book “The Spirit of the Liturgy” (2000) and his efforts to inspire a return to reverence and good looks in the liturgy.
“Yes, the liturgy becomes personal, true and new,” he proposed, “not through nonsense and banal reports with words, but through a courageous access to the wonderful truth that, through the rite, is before us and can never be completely overcome. “. ” Above all, his vision of the liturgy puts God back at the center: “The genuine ‘action’ in the liturgy in which we are all destined to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and unique in the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does the essential.
Putting his considerations into practice, he published the 2007 Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, which wonderfully extended the authorization for priests to celebrate Mass according to the missal before the 1970 reforms. He wrote in Summorum Pontificum: “In the history of the liturgy there is expansion and progress, but without rupture. What past generations were sacred, remains sacred and wonderful to us as well, and this cannot be completely forbidden suddenly or even harmful. It is up to all of us to maintain the riches that have evolved in the religion and prayer of the Church and to give them their rightful place.
And in reaction to the question of whether this reauthorization of the Tridentine Mass was nothing more than a concession to the schismatic Society of St. Pius X, Benedict told Peter Seewald in “Last Testament” (2016): “This is surely false!It was vital to me that the Church be one with itself internally, with its own past, that what was once holy to it is not bad now.
His efforts to reform the Roman Curia remained unfinished at the time of his resignation. Media attention has focused specifically on the so-called Vati-Leaks scandal, which involves the leaking of personal papal documents and the arrest and trial of a papal butler. However, it has taken steps towards true monetary transparency that has also been pursued through Pope Francis.
Likewise, his years as prefect and then as pope laid the indispensable groundwork for the Church’s reaction to the crisis and helped pave the way for further and far-reaching reforms under Pope Francis.
Long before his election as pope, Cardinal Ratzinger had made serious efforts to confront the scourge of clergy sexual abuse. the Dallas Charter and the Essential Standards that later laid the groundwork for immense progress in dealing with clergy abuse in the United States.
In the days leading up to the death of Pope John Paul II in March 2005, Ratzinger wrote meditations for the Good Friday Way of the Cross in Rome. In his image reflected in the Ninth Station, he made the dazzling condemnation: “How much filth there is in the Church, even among those who, in the priesthood, belong entirely to her!The comments foresaw his commitment to fighting abuses from the moment he was elected.
Two months into his pontificate, Benedict disciplined Father Marcial Maciel, the charismatic and influential founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who had long been accused of sexually abusing seminarians and then leading a deeply scandalous double life.
Hundreds of priests who had committed sexual abuse were secularized under Benedict XVI. It was a continuation of his paintings at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but was now accompanied by formal apologies to the victims, adding those from the United States, Australia. In 2008, during his stopover in the United States, he met personally with the victims and in 2010 wrote a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland asking forgiveness for the enormous suffering caused by the abuse.
“You have suffered much,” he wrote, “and I am very sorry. I know that nothing can fix the evil you have endured. Your acceptance of the truth has been betrayed and your dignity violated. Many of you have discovered that when you had the courage to communicate what had happened to you, no one listened to you.
Despite his complex age at the time of his election, Benedict continued John Paul II’s custom of traveling the world. His 25 apostolic visits outside Italy included 3 trips to his local Germany and 3 World Youth Days.
His visit to Turkey in 2006 focused on relations with Islam and Orthodox Christianity, with his participation in a divine liturgy celebrated by the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople. During his visit to the United States in 2008, he visited the site of the destroyed World Trade Center towers, a synagogue in New York City, and the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
“Christ is the way that leads to the Father, the fact that He provides human lifestyles and the source of that life which is eternal joy with all the saints in His heavenly Kingdom,” he told another 60,000 people gathered for Mass in New York. Yankee Stadium in April 2008.
Although he did not set the record for maximum beatifications and canonizations, Benedict canonized forty-five new saints, joined by Damien de Veuster, the leper of Molokai (2008); French Canadian André Bessette (2010); and Kateri Tekakwitha (2012), the first Native American saint. He had the exclusive difference of allowing the beginning of the cause of canonization of his predecessor, John Paul II, and had the wonderful emotion of presiding over his beatification in 2011. (St. John Paul II canonized in 2014 through Pope Francis. )
He appointed two doctors of the Church in 2012, the medieval German mystic and abbess Saint Hildegard of Bingen and the Spanish priest Saint John Avila.
His 3 encyclicals, Caritas in Veritate, Spe Salvi and Deus Caritas Est, emphasized the theological virtues of love and hope. Pope Francis incorporated Benedict’s unfinished encyclical on religion into his own 2013 encyclical Lumen Fidei.
Each encyclical presented the profound reflections of one of the Church’s wonderful theologians. Importance can be given to his post-synodal apostolic exhortations, the culmination of the synods of bishops held under his direction. His 2007 exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis, on the Eucharist as “the source and summit of the Church’s life and plan,” awaited the call of recent years to Eucharistic renewal.
“The sacrament of charity,” Benedict XVI wrote, “the Holy Eucharist is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of himself, thus revealing to us God’s infinite love for each and every man and woman. Array. . How wonderful it will be for the Eucharistic mystery to awaken also in our own hearts!”(CS, 1).
Benedict’s fame as a theologian and writer was already established around the world before his election to the papacy. His books include “Introduction to Christianity,” a compilation of his educational lectures on religion in the modern world. His books of interviews have been major bestsellers, adding “The Ratzinger Report” (1985) with Vittorio Messori, “The Salt of the Earth” (1996), “God and the World” (2000) and “The Light of the World” (2010) with German journalist and writer Peter Seewald. One of the popular works under his call was the trilogy “Jesus of Nazareth,” an effort of Jesus Christ for the fashionable world.
Benedict led a life of prayer and mirrored image after the election of Pope Francis, in consultation and assembly with his successor. In the end, his time of retreat and isolation was longer than his pontificate.
He foresaw the canonization of John Paul II and Pope John XXIII in St. Peter’s on April 27, 2014. In addition, he attended the release of the Holy Year of Mercy on December 8, 2015.
Occasional public interventions have provoked intense reactions and debates. In 2019, he contributed to the abuse crisis with an essay, getting to the heart of the matter: the dictatorship of relativism he warned he opposed in 2005.
“Today, the accusation against God consists above all in calling his Church entirely evil and, therefore, in dissuading us from it. The concept of a greater Church, created by ourselves, is actually a proposal of the devil, with needs to distance us from the living God, through a deceptive logic from which we are too easily deceived,” he wrote.
“The Church of God also exists in Array and is the very tool through which God saves us. “
In July 2021, the 94-year-old retired pope warned that he opposed a Church and a religious doctrine, saying, “Only religion frees man from the limitations and narrowness of his time. “
In February 2022, the pope emeritus published a letter sending a report on abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising that criticized him for handling abuse cases during his tenure as archbishop in the 1970s. He again spoke to all victims of sexual abuse. his deep shame, his deep pain and his sincere request for forgiveness.
The letter also served in many tactics as a final meditation on his life in retirement, but also on the unwavering religion that characterized his paintings in the name of Christ and His Church.
“Soon,” he wrote, “I will stand before the last judgment of my life. Even if, looking after my long life, I might have a wonderful explanation of why I should be afraid and tremble, I am still in a good mood, because I am confident that the Lord is not only the righteous one who judges, but also the friend and brother whom he himself has already suffered for my faults, and is also my advocate, my “Paraclete”.
“In light of the hour of judgment, the grace of being a Christian becomes clearer to me,” he continued. With a bit of luck he passes through the dark door of death. “
Pope Francis is celebrating the funeral of Benedict XVI.