by Jonathan Ekene
Ifeanyi
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"The only explanation for why the Catholic world has
so blithely accepted this ludicrous notion of two Popes in Rome is
that Catholics just don't care anymore. The spirit of Vatican II has
so stripped away the sensus
Catholicus that Catholics—those still
bothering to tune in to "As The Vatican Turns"—literally
don't give a damn. They have no traditions left to help keep
them afloat in the veritable ocean of novelties in which they're drowning. ...Who knows? Who cares! There's
nothing left to play out in this act, save for a fat lady named
Chastisement to take the stage. But, alas, before we conclude
that Pope Benedict is the hero in this tragedy and Pope Francis the
villain, perhaps we should take a moment to try to understand and
explain the warm and loving expression on the face of this Bishop in
White as he greets that Bishop in White." (Michael Matt, The Remnant, June 17, 2016).
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My father, Mr Charles Ifeanyi, is fondly called a “free
thinker” by one of my cousins, Pius. This is because he scarcely shows interest
on church-related issues—despite having taught in a seminary years ago. But I know my dad better than my cousin
does, and so disagree with him on that! Yes, he doesn’t always join us to discuss
or argue on church issues, but sure, you will encounter his sensus Catholicus—or what I’ve termed his “Catholic reflex
action”—when the matter is a very serious one. I really had such an encounter
on February 11, 2013, the very day Pope Benedict XVI announced his intention to
“resign”. I was in my father’s house in Anambra State on that day. I got the
news first, rushed to my father’s room and broke it to him and his first
reaction was simply “Shut up!”
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| Pope Ratzinger |
And why the “Shut up”? For Mr Ifeanyi, it is, in fact, an abomination to even pronounce such. When
later he read the newspaper himself as well as heard the news on the radio, he
told us plainly that for Pope Benedict XVI to have taken such a decision, “he must be an enemy of the papacy”. For my
dad, nothing on this earth—not even a threat of death—can force a good pope who
really loves the Church to take such a radical
decision. “The papacy is holy, spiritual and monarchical”, he said. “A pope
doesn’t resign...Oh! ...he wants to mess up the papacy! He wants to destroy it!
God forbid him!” he lamented. (It is instructive to note that my father doesn’t
know much about the lives and teachings of Vatican II popes because he doesn’t
always join us to study them, hence his instant
judgement of Benedict XVI was based
purely on the fact before him, namely that he chose to “resign” the office of St. Peter).
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| Pope Ratzinger |
Well, I need not state here that the only truth I picked from Father Gruner in this regard was just his
statement that Benedict XVI “has done what he wants”. Although I don’t dismiss
other facts regarding that “resignation”, what has actually been in my mind
from day one is that—from Father Gruner’s perspective—Pope Benedict XVI
“resigned” because he freely wished to do so, and—from my father’s
perspective—because he is indeed an
enemy of the papacy. (Of course when my dad used the word “enemy” he was just referring
to Ratzinger’s “I don’t care attitude”,
not an enemy in the sense of a freemason or someone with a secret intention to
destroy the Church).
That Ratzinger willed this novelty
is just an indisputable fact. As one commentator once put it—regarding Benedict
XVI’s resignation: “If anyone wondered about Benedict’s interest, they might
have found a clue in a long interview that he gave to the German journalist
Peter Seewald for his 2010 book, Light of the World”. In that 2010
interview—five years after reigning as pope—in which Benedict XVI gave his most
personal account of the distress caused to him by the clerical sex abuse
scandal, with particular reference to Germany and Ireland, he did not consider
resigning over the crisis but does raise the possibility of a pope resigning if
he were to lose his mental capacities (and the reasons he eventually gave for
“resigning”, old age and deteriorating health, were similar). He said, during
the 2010 interview with Peter Seewald: “If a Pope clearly realises that he is
no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the
duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also
an obligation to resign.” Compare this to what he said during his “resignation”
in 2013: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have
come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer
suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry”. Isn’t there a
correspondence here? And this, plus Benedict XVI’s visit—in fact twice—to the
tomb of Pope St. Celestine in 2009, the pope who resigned properly (and for the good of the Church) in 1294, which indicates
that he probably had been harbouring this thought of resignation right before
2013, perhaps right from the very day he was elected!
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| Father Paul Kramer |
Father Gruner didn’t take time to study the so-called “resignation”
carefully. Father Paul Kramer did just that—from
his own words it is clear that Benedict XVI only resigned the active ministry, not the contemplative
aspect of the papal munus, he maintains. Note that this—together with the
fact that Bergoglio is indisputably a public heretic—has been Father Kramer’s
major reason for rejecting the current “pontificate”. The other idea of some
mafias wanting to force Benedict XVI to resign is simply not a fiction as well, but it’s just secondary.
Take it or leave it: Ratzinger, who is just “the best”
among all V2 popes, is a real modernist—an innovator who is responsible for the
suffering the church is going through currently. As Father Kramer stated: “Judging by Benedict's own words, he appears
to have deliberately done exactly what Mons. Gänswein described: attempting to “enlarge”
the petrine office to be filled by two men, one exercising the active ministry,
and the other the contemplative aspect of the papal munus.”
In
his article THE CASE OF THE DUAL PAPACY
-- "DEUX PAPES VERMOULU", Father Kramer writes:
“In order to
understand the precise scope and extent of Benedict XVI's
"renunciation" (not "resignation" or
"abdication"), one must focus on his words which explain exactly what
he renounced:
“ " Qui permettetemi di tornare ancora
una volta al 19 aprile 2005. La gravità della decisione è stata proprio anche
nel fatto che da quel momento in poi ero impegnato sempre e per sempre dal
Signore. Sempre – chi assume il ministero petrino non ha più alcuna privacy.
Appartiene sempre e totalmente a tutti, a tutta la Chiesa. Alla sua vita viene,
per così dire, totalmente tolta la dimensione privata." ... " Il
“sempre” è anche un “per sempre” - non c’è più un ritornare nel privato. La mia
decisione di rinunciare all’esercizio attivo del ministero, non revoca
questo."
“ "Here,
allow me to go back once again to 19 April 2005. The real gravity of the
decision was also due to the fact that from that moment on I was engaged always
and forever by the Lord. Always – anyone who accepts the Petrine ministry no
longer has any privacy. He belongs always and completely to everyone, to the
whole Church. In a manner of speaking, the private dimension of his life is
completely eliminated." ... "The 'always' is also a "for
ever" – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision
to renounce the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this."
“Here
Benedict XVI states explicitly that the gravity of his decision to accept the
papacy consisted in the fact that he was thereby engaged in a commitment,
received from Christ, which is "for always", and his "decision
to renounce the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this."
Thus, Benedict did not renounce the Petrine office or its ministry, but only
the active exercise of the ministry. He then goes on to say that he will no
longer wield the power of office, but will remain "within the enclosure of
St. Peter": " Non porto
più la potestà dell’officio per il governo della Chiesa, ma nel servizio della
preghiera resto, per così dire, nel recinto di san Pietro. San Benedetto, il
cui nome porto da Papa, mi sarà di grande esempio in questo. Egli ci ha
mostrato la via per una vita, che, attiva o passiva, appartiene totalmente
all’opera di Dio." ("I no longer bear the power of office
for the governance of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to
speak, in the enclosure of Saint Peter. Saint Benedict, whose name I bear as
Pope, will be a great example for me in this. He showed us the way for a life
which, whether active or passive, is completely given over to the work of
God.")
“Hence, the
intention expressed by Pope Benedict is to remain in the Petrine office and
retain the passive aspect of its official service (munus), i.e. "the
service of prayer"; and to hand over the active aspect of the munus, i.e.
exercise of governance, to a successor, who will effectively fulfil the
function of a coadjutor with power of jurisdiction. Thus, Benedict's clearly
expressed intention was not to abdicate the office, but only to vacate the
cathedra in the qualified sense of handing the seat of power of governance to
one who will succeed him in the active governance, but not abdicating from the
office itself. This solves the apparent mystery and explains why Benedict XVI
refused to revert to being Cardinal Ratzinger; and why he retains his papal
coat of arms and papal attire”.
Last month, the highly respected Italian journalist, Sandro
Magister—no ‘traddie’ and certainly no ‘conspiracy nut’—vindicated Father
Kramer: “It is the unprecedented
innovation that Ratzinger seems to want to put into practice. It has been
announced by his secretary, Georg Gänswein. Redoubling the already abundant
ambiguities of the pontificate of Francis”.
In
his brilliant piece, Not One Pope
But Two, One “Active” and One “Contemplative”, Sandro Magister writes:
“The resignation of the papacy was not his last act.
Already in his withdrawal from the see of Peter, in that memorable February of
2013, Joseph Ratzinger made sure to say that in his election as pope there had
been something that would remain “forever.”
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| Sandro Magister |
“And most recently the archbishop in
closest contact with him, Georg Gänswein, has told us that Benedict “has by no
means abandoned the office of Peter,” but on the contrary has made it “an
expanded ministry, with an active member and a contemplative member,” in “a
collegial and synodal dimension, almost a shared ministry”.”
Indeed, this is sad! And how thoughtless today’s “Catholics”
can be! They eat and drink even while the Church is being destroyed by the
enemies! As Michael Matt rightly stated in The
Remnant, “The only explanation for why the Catholic world has so blithely
accepted this ludicrous notion of two Popes in Rome is that Catholics just
don't care anymore. The spirit of Vatican II has so stripped away
the sensus Catholicus that Catholics—those still
bothering to tune in to “As The Vatican Turns”—literally don’t give a
damn. They have no traditions left to help keep them afloat in
the veritable ocean of novelties in which they're drowning.” In six
words, they have just lost the faith!
The article by Sandro Magister reads:
“These staggering
statements from Gänswein, made on May 20 in the aula magna of the Pontifical
Gregorian University, have sown dismay among Ratzinger’s admirers themselves.
Because no one doubts that they correspond to his thought and were authorized
by him. But no one would have expected from him such an unheard-of act of
rupture in the history of the papacy, totally without precedent, “a sort of
exception willed by Heaven,” as Gänswein himself has called it, after a
pontificate that is also “exceptional,” an “Ausnahmepontifikat.”
“The absolute innovation
is not the resignation, but the sequel.
“When on December 13,
1294 Celestine V announced his abandonment of the pontificate, as the story
goes “he came down from the throne, took the tiara from his head and put it on
the floor; and mantle and ring and all he took off in front of the astonished
cardinals,” after which he went back to being an ordinary monk, in complete
withdrawal from the world.
“This is what even the
most authoritative of Catholic canonists, the Jesuit Gianfranco Ghirlanda,
envisioned in “La Civiltà Cattolica” immediately after the resignation
announcement of Benedict XVI: that he would indeed remain a bishop, more
properly “bishop emeritus of Rome,” in that sacred ordination is an indelible
act, but would “lose all his power of primacy, because this did not come to him
from episcopal consecration but directly from Christ through the acceptance of
legitimate election.”
“But then Ratzinger’s
behavior contradicted this order of things.
“And right away
appeared some who justified him theoretically. Like the other canonist Stefano
Violi, who maintains that Benedict XVI did not by any means renounce the office
of Peter, but only his active exercise of governance and magisterium, keeping
for himself the exercise of prayer and compassion. Precisely what Gänswein gave
as fact one month ago: a double papacy “with an active member and a
contemplative member,” Francis and Benedict, “almost a shared ministry.”
“Now, that there could
be two popes in the Catholic Church, of different profiles but still more than
one, is something that expert theologians and canonists like Geraldina Boni and
Carlo Fantappiè judge as not only unheard-of but “aberrant,” as well as being a
source of conflicts.
“But there is more. Violi even theorizes the hypothetical superiority of the
“contemplative” pope over the “active,” in that he is closer to the example of
Jesus who despoiled himself of everything, even his divinity.
“And then it is not at
all true that the distinction of roles between Francis and Benedict is so clear.
“Ratzinger has
repeatedly broken the silence that he had foreshadowed after his resignation.
Roughly ten times already he has said or written something in public, each time
requiring the study of what is or is not in accord between him and the magisterium
of the “active” pope.
“For example when, in
the interval between the two synods on the family, Ratzinger retracted his
youthful ideas in favor of communion for the divorced and remarried and rewrote
the exact opposite, in a sort of preemptive contestation of “Amoris Laetitia.”
“In the magisterium of
Francis ambiguity triumphs, but the “papacy emeritus” of Benedict is an
unsolved enigma, too”. (The article is here: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351317?eng=y).
On
this year’s Feast of the Pentecost, One Peter Five wrote the following:
“Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, I called Fr. Ingo Dollinger, a German priest and former professor of theology in Brasil, who is now quite elderly and physically weak. He has been a personal friend of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for many years. Father Dollinger unexpectedly confirmed over the phone the following facts:
“Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, I called Fr. Ingo Dollinger, a German priest and former professor of theology in Brasil, who is now quite elderly and physically weak. He has been a personal friend of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for many years. Father Dollinger unexpectedly confirmed over the phone the following facts:
“Not long after the June 2000
publication of the Third Secret of Fatima by the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told Fr. Dollinger during an in-person
conversation that there is still a part of the Third Secret that they have
not published! “There is more than what we published,” Ratzinger said. He also
told Dollinger that the published part of the Secret is authentic and that the
unpublished part of the Secret speaks about “a bad council and a bad Mass” that
was to come in the near future. Father Dollinger gave me permission
to publish these facts on this High Feast of the Holy Ghost and he gave me his
blessing...”
One Peter Five concludes that “This information also might explain why Pope Benedict XVI, once he had become pope, tried to undo some of the injustices that are directly related with this Dollinger revelation, namely: he freed the Traditional Mass from its suppression; he removed the excommunication of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX); and lastly, he publicly declared in 2010 in Fatima: “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete.” (See: Our Lady warned of "a bad Council and a bad Mass...", published by Paul Anthony Melanson.
One Peter Five concludes that “This information also might explain why Pope Benedict XVI, once he had become pope, tried to undo some of the injustices that are directly related with this Dollinger revelation, namely: he freed the Traditional Mass from its suppression; he removed the excommunication of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX); and lastly, he publicly declared in 2010 in Fatima: “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete.” (See: Our Lady warned of "a bad Council and a bad Mass...", published by Paul Anthony Melanson.
But then, is that enough? It’s
just a fact that no one is more familiar with Fatima than Pope Benedict XVI who
for many years controlled all access to Sister Lucy and did himself read all
the Secrets. Why did he not consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart, as
requested by Our Lady of Fatima?
The above “revelation” by Dollinger is of course what Father
Gruner spent almost all his years shouting everywhere while he was alive. But
he was ignored by Ratzinger and co. Early in 2015, shortly before his death,
Father Gruner—I call him the Great Fatima Prophet—visited Rome. According to
him, “...while I was there, something happened—something soul-shaking!—that I
did not expect!”
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| Father Gruner |
In his letter of 12 March 2015, Father Gruner wrote: “I spoke with Father Gabriel Amorth, the
world’s most famous living exorcist. His words shook me as few things ever
have! Father Amorth told me that we have but a SHORT TIME left before the
chastisements predicted by Our Lady of Fatima begin to rip our world apart in
ways we can hardly imagine! HOW LONG? LESS
THAN 8 MONTHS! Father Gabriel Amorth told me that unless the consecration of
Russia is done—as Our Lady asked—by the end of October, 2015, the dark
prophecies of Fatima may well come to pass any day after that.”
Father Nicholas Gruner, Our Lady's loyal ambassador and
Priest Son, was called home. Why? Was his race won? Did he cross the finish
line and earn the hero's crown? I believe he did. As one commentator, James
Cunningham puts it—commenting on Father Gruner’s death:
“To me it is a clear
sign that the time for the great suffering is immanent. How long and extensive
the violence, disease and chaos will last is unknown but, I think, like you, it
will end with a new era, the era of Our Lady complete with the cleansing and
purification of the Holy Catholic Church. Somehow, by the Grace of God, the
consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart will take place to Her
satisfaction and all the errors of modernism and the Second Vatican Council and
Novus Ordo will end. I believe the restoration of the Church will be so great
and beautiful that our imaginations cannot as of yet conceive of such beauty. I
believe that Our Lady will have a special role in its decoration. It will rival
the greatest arts of the counter-reformation. Please God, let me live to see
it.
“Who knows whether Pope
Benedict XVI will outlive Pope Francis? I am 75 years old and yet three of the
four men who died just this past year on my block were younger than me. No one
knows when God requires a soul.
“I sense a similarity
between Noah locked away in the Ark with the whole new world of creation and
Pope Benedict XVI locked away in the Vatican (an Ark of another spiritual
creation) and releasing a dove. The dove returns with an olive branch, (Gloria olivae).
...The world is so full of evil that the Chastisement will actually be a
blessing ending the deluge of souls pouring into Hell. Viva Cristo Rey!”
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