May God grant eternal rest, peace, and light to Josef Ratzinger. I loved him and still do. He was my Pope.
Yet, as with many, I am conflicted. I've said many times. all he had to do was to go to the window at the Angelus on a Sunday and tell the City and the World of those wolves who were persecuting him and out to take over the papacy and destroy the Church. Romans loved Josef Ratzinger. We did. There would have been a bloodletting and we would have risen up in an open war with the enemies. He had the power, but he failed to use it. He was forced out? How, what could they have threatened him with? Martyrdom? Instant heaven. His brother's murder? Same thing. What could he have possibly been threatened with to leave? Yesterday, I used the word "coward" in the combox to the post below. It has offended some. Correct, I should not speak ill of the dead but it doesn't change the truth. When that helicopter carried him away that day, I thought he would be dead in months, that he has some kind of terminal disease and he was going off to die. Instead, he lived three months short of ten years. He was there watching his successor attempt to destroy and did nothing. He let it happen. He was my "Papa" and he walked out on his "Bride" my mother. He let the family house be taken over by an abusive bully who has beaten my mother and continues the spiritual abuse of his children. How do we square this with those who say that he retained the "munus" and only renounced the "ministerium?" No, he left, he abandoned his post, if the election of Pope Francis was defective and he was not a true Pope, he is now. This is the bottom line. The priests of the Diocese of Rome accept Jorge Bergoglio as their bishop and the Bishop of Rome is the Vicar of Christ on Earth and Pope. So, let's get off of this "interregnum" merry-go-round. Sometimes Occam's Razor is simply true. The simplest option is what it is. What I keep my eye on is that God wins in the end and so do those of us who remain steadfast with Him. We keep on going. We don't abandon the job as I see so many past "experts" doing on social media. "Look at what they have done to us." No, look at what you have done to yourself! Stop whining (you know who you are); you who were so prominent and "in the know." Your responses now are pathetic. You've abandoned the job too. On my part, I have not stopped doing what I have done from 2005 and before. I will continue as long as God gives me the will to do it.
God wins. Get back to work.
Courtesy of Rorate Caeli blog.
My
spiritual testament When,
at this late hour of my life, I look back on the decades I have wandered
through, I see first of all how much reason I have to give thanks. Above all, I
thank God Himself, the giver of all good gifts, who has given me life and
guided me through all kinds of confusion; who has always picked me up when I
began to slip, who has always given me anew the light of his countenance. In
retrospect, I see and understand that even the dark and arduous stretches of
this path were for my salvation and that He guided me well in those very
stretches.
I
thank my parents, who gave me life in difficult times and prepared a wonderful
home for me with their love, which shines through all my days as a bright light
until today. My father's clear-sighted faith taught us brothers and sisters to
believe and stood firm as a guide in the midst of all my scientific knowledge;
my mother's heartfelt piety and great kindness remain a legacy for which I
cannot thank her enough. My sister has served me selflessly and full of kind
concern for decades; my brother has always paved the way for me with the
clear-sightedness of his judgements, with his powerful determination, and with
the cheerfulness of his heart; without this ever-new going ahead and going
along, I would not have been able to find the right path.
I
thank God from the bottom of my heart for the many friends, men and women, whom
He has always placed at my side; for the co-workers at all stages of my path;
for the teachers and students He has given me. I gratefully entrust them all to
His goodness. And I would like to thank the Lord for my beautiful home in the
Bavarian foothills of the Alps, in which I was able to see the splendour of the
Creator Himself shining through time and again. I thank the people of my
homeland for allowing me to experience the beauty of faith time and again. I
pray that our country will remain a country of faith and I ask you, dear
compatriots, not to let your faith be distracted. Finally, I thank God for all
the beauty I was able to experience during the various stages of my journey,
but especially in Rome and in Italy, which has become my second home.
I
ask for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart from all those whom I have
wronged in some way.
What
I said earlier of my compatriots, I now say to all who were entrusted to my
service in the Church: Stand firm in the faith! Do not be confused! Often it
seems as if science - on the one hand, the natural sciences; on the other,
historical research (especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) - has
irrefutable insights to offer that are contrary to the Catholic faith. I have
witnessed from times long past the changes in natural science and have seen how
apparent certainties against the faith vanished, proving themselves not to be
science but philosophical interpretations only apparently belonging to science
- just as, moreover, it is in dialogue with the natural sciences that faith has
learned to understand the limits of the scope of its affirmations and thus its
own specificity.For 60 years now, I have accompanied the path of theology,
especially biblical studies, and have seen seemingly unshakeable theses
collapse with the changing generations, which turned out to be mere hypotheses:
the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the existentialist generation
(Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation. I have seen, and see, how, out of the
tangle of hypotheses, the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging
anew. Jesus Christ is truly the Way, the Truth, and the Life - and the Church,
in all her shortcomings, is truly His Body.
Finally,
I humbly ask: pray for me, so that the Lord may admit me to the eternal
dwellings, despite all my sins and shortcomings. For all those entrusted to me,
my heartfelt prayer goes out day after day.
Benedictus
PP XVI
