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| Pope Benedict XVI |
The article below is
indeed a good one. Nevertheless I think—with regards to Benedict XVI being
forced to “resign”—that the following question is yet to be satisfactorily
answered:
“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”. I think there is 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 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! Putting aside the other facts regarding Francis’ “election”,
what do you think?” (See: Father Paul
Kramer on Benedict XVI’s confusing words: ...there's much behind the scenes...).
See also: How Pope Ratzinger messed up the papacy!
Again, Benedict XVI’s
profound silence over all the errors and heresies of “Pope” Francis calls into
question the statement that he was forced to resign. Some Catholics see this
silence as just "human weakness". But what sort of "human
weakness" is really this—that a pope or "former pope" sees the
Church clearly being destroyed by barefaced enemies but not only remains
profoundly silent but in fact mingles with the destroyers? (See: Benedict XVI supporting Francis
and his disastrous “pontificate”).
More troubling, still,
is the fact that you can never hear most of our Catholic Faith defenders
mention—let alone condemn—any error of Vatican II popes who in fact laid the
foundation of all Francis is doing currently—intellectual dishonesty of many
is just unthinkable! (See for
instance: John Paul The Great:
“Protestants can receive Communion under certain conditions”. Francis: “The
divorced and remarried can come forward to receive under certain circumstances,
too”. Is Cardinal Burke aware? ).
The statement that
Ratzinger is an opponent of religious relativism has also been countered by me
with the article, Relativism will certainly damn
our souls!—where I demonstrated that quite contrarily he
promoted it BUT in a subtle manner.
Nevertheless, it is
certainly wrong to conclude, based on the facts above, that Benedict XVI is
among those "advancing the secular agendas of the left"—as the Sedes
often do rashly.
The article:
The Ongoing Discussion about Pope Benedict XVI’s Resignation Receives
New Fuel
Since the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI in
February of 2013, speculations have never fully ceased as to whether he was
pressured to do so, after all, in order to make way for a more
progressive-leaning pontiff. Archbishop Luigi Negri has now given new fuel to
this debate in a recent 6 March interview, as reported by John-Henry Westen at LifeSiteNews:
An Italian archbishop close to Pope Benedict XVI
says the former pope decided to resign as a result of “tremendous pressure.”
Archbishop
Luigi Negri, who says he has visited Pope Benedict “several times” since his
resignation in 2013, is the only Italian bishop to have ever participated in
the annual pro-life march in Rome. Negri resigned as archbishop of
Ferrara-Comacchio in February [2017] after reaching the mandatory retirement
age of 75.
In an article published Monday by news outlet Rimini 2.0, Archbishop Negri
said that, while he has little knowledge of the inner workings of the Curia, “I
am certain that the truth will emerge one day showing a grave liability both
inside and outside the Vatican.”
“It is no coincidence that in
America, even on the basis of what has been published by Wikileaks, some
Catholic groups have asked President Trump to open a commission of inquiry to
investigate whether the administration of Barack Obama exerted pressure on
Benedict,” he said. It remains shrouded in mystery for now, he said, “but I am
sure that those responsible will be found out.”
Archbishop Negri is referring in this interview to
the 22 January 2017 Open Letter to President Donald Trump, as published by the
traditional Catholic newspaper The Remnant. Part of that
letter reads, as follows:
“We
were alarmed to discover that, during the third year of the first term of the
Obama administration your previous opponent, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, and other government officials with whom she associated, proposed a
Catholic “revolution” in which the final demise of what was left of the
Catholic Church in America would be realized. Approximately a year after this
e-mail discussion, which was never intended to be made public, we find that
Pope Benedict XVI abdicated under highly unusual circumstances and was replaced
by a pope whose apparent mission is to provide a spiritual component to
the radical ideological agenda of the international left. The Pontificate
of Pope Francis has subsequently called into question its own legitimacy on a
multitude of occasions. […]
“We remain puzzled by the behavior
of this ideologically charged Pope, whose mission seems to be one of
advancing secular agendas of the left rather than guiding the Catholic Church
in Her sacred mission. It is simply not the proper role of a Pope to be
involved in politics to the point that he is considered to be the leader of the
international left.” [my emphasis]
Among The Remnant‘s trenchant questions
put to the President of the United States, the following can be found: “What other covert operations were carried out by US
government operatives concerning the resignation of Pope Benedict or the
conclave that elected Pope Francis?”
[my emphasis]
This
Open Letter has subsequently, after its publication, found international
interest, even some notoriety, and has now been spreading much more than some
ideological circles in the U.S. and in Europe might have desired. Archbishop
Negri’s own reference to it is the best proof of the wide circulation of
that Remnant document. The reason for this strong
interest in the Remnant’s Open Letter might be that many
people in the world – and I do not even talk only about Catholics; for I have
likewise heard, as well, from secular people in Europe about this same story –
realize that something has gone wrong in Rome ever since Benedict’s abdication.
Important to note is that the former head of the
Vatican Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, S.J. immediately released a statement denying Archbishop Negri’s claims about Pope
Benedict’s resignation, calling Negri’s words “untenable” and even “a strange
proof of friendship” toward Benedict.
However,
there have now also come to us other voices joining the one from Archbishop
Negri, and they are supportive of his claim with regard to the pressure that
had been put on Pope Benedict to resign. In the following, we shall therefore
present translations from two texts as composed by two distinct lay witnesses.
One is an 8 March interview with the former President of the Vatican
Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who was forced to resign not long before
Benedict’s own resignation. As the Vatican expert, Dr. Sandro Magister, had put it in February of 2016: “And they
drove him [Tedeschi] out in short order, in 2012,” even though he was committed
to reforming the bank. Tedeschi most of all admires the cardinals Robert Sarah,
Carlo Caffarra, Gerhard Müller, Raymond Burke, and George Pell. Tedeschi, in
book excerpts published last year by Sandro Magister (see above link), then
also criticized Pope Francis’s Encyclical, Laudato Si, for allowing
certain dubious people to work on this papal text. Tedeschi wrote last year, as
follows:
“But what surprises me the most is to
see that neo-Malthusian environmentalists were called to work on the encyclical
itself. Fortunately the spirit of the magisterium remained intact, even if it
took no little effort for most observers to find it, or rather, to give it the
benefit of the doubt that it was [actually] there.”
These
older quotes from Tedeschi might help us to get a sense of this man who has now
again raised his voice, in the here translated 8 March interview, and this time
with regard to the discussion about the resignation of Pope Benedict in 2013.
The second text here presented in translation, entitled “Ratzinger
Eliminated by Hypocritical Do-Gooders” (“Ratzinger
eliminato dal buonismo ipocrita”)
is written by the Italian scholar, book author, and journalist, Dr. Rino Cammilleri,
and it has been published on 10 March by Professor Roberto de Mattei’s
website Corrispondenza Romana.
But, before I present to you more fully these two
translations, let me repeat my report of an important article written by
Antonio Socci, which I published back in the summer of 2016. It would be fitting to reconsider his own earlier
insights and findings in this new context:
“In this context, it might be worth referring to
a 12 June post written by the
Italian journalist and Fatima expert, Antonio Socci. Socci tries to clarify the matter of two putative
popes – Francis and Benedict – in light of the recent confusion caused by the
speech by Archbishop Georg Gänswein. Socci thus attempts to put this claim into
a larger geopolitical perspective. Although I myself cannot fully follow parts
of Socci’s reflections here, one part seems very striking and sobering – and if
true, it is also gravely shocking. Socci claims that, while still in his papal
office, Benedict XVI was given an “opportunity” – a proposition. To him it was
“proposed to accept an ‘ecumenical re-unification’ with the Protestants of
North Europe and/or North America in order to create a kind of ‘common religion
of the West.’” For the Catholic Church, says Socci, this would have meant to
“enter the unified politically correct thought soup” and to become an “irrelevant
folk museum within a ‘multicultural’ Europe.” Socci continues: “To this
‘dictatorship of relativism,’ Benedict XVI said ‘no!’ He answered: ‘As long
as I am here, this will not happen.’”
“The Italian journalist then adds that,
subsequently, Pope Benedict “was forced to give up the ‘active exercise’ of the
Petrine Office (only half-way?).” Later on, Socci puts the further development
of Bergoglio’s election as pope into the larger context of the hegemonic reign
of relativism in the West, which we now see to be growing. Moreover, he says: “Bergoglio
has made the Obama agenda his own.” And Socci then refers to a speech by United States President Obama in May in front of the Catholic-Evangelical
Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., where he said that the Church should
abandon “divisive terms” such as abortion and “gay” marriage and that she
should rather “dedicate herself to the problem of poverty.” Socci thus
concludes: “The empire wants the Church to be a ‘social worker’ who comforts
the losers in the field hospital of the strong powers, but does not disturb the
handlers.” Additionally, according to Socci, U.S. Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton herself had proposed a year ago, at a conference of
pro-abortion feminists, that “the deeply rooted cultural codes, religious
beliefs and the structural bias must be changed.”
“Socci then piercingly and ironically
says: “The churches must therefore surrender to the ‘liberal’ secularism of the
imperium. In fact, Bergoglio has already abandoned the ‘non-negotiable
principles [such as those found in Amoris Laetitia!].’” It is
in this same context, that Socci sees the upcoming 31 October 2016 papal trip
to Sweden, in order to “celebrate Luther and to ‘stitch up’ the 500 years
exactly since the schism – evidence of a new imperial religion?”[my
emphasis added]
These
earlier insights from Antonio Socci might become more weighty in our judgments
when we now consider and incorporate the new developments coming to us from
Italy.
Let
us now first consider Ettore Tedeschi’s interview, and, subsequently, then the
text written by Rino Cammilleri.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, Former President of the IOR
(Institute for the Works of Religion – Vatican Bank) from 2009 to 2012,
Interview with IntelligoNews.it, 8 March 2017
Monsignor
Negri says that “Obama’s hand was behind the resignation of Benedict XVI.” The
former archbishop of Ferrara speaks of an “American conspiracy” against the
Pope. Is this plausible?
“The
plot appears to be American only because they have had the leadership of the
New World Order. You see, the conspiracy, if we can so call it, was aimed at
trying to solve some problems caused by the failure of the famous New
World Order of the ’70s, gnostic, neo-Malthusian and environmentalist. This
project of the New Order was openly intended (among other things) to
relativize the most dogmatic religious faiths and clearly proved to be
so opposed to the Catholic faith as to publicly state – and by the highest
authorities at the U.N., WHO…. – that Christian ethics could no longer
be applied and that religious syncretism is to be required to create a new
universal religion (thanks also to processes of immigration). Even the
U.S. President, Obama specifically, in 2009, personally declared that, for
healthy bio-psycho-social well-being, free access must be given to abortion
without restrictions, euthanasia due to rationing of care, and denial of the
rights of conscience. Well it is not difficult to understand that, in this
context of opposition to the Catholic faith, the Pope, the highest moral
authority in the world, could become the subject of attention for his
disposition or else his willingness ‘to understand the needs of the global
world.’ Now, Pope Benedict XVI insisted, instead, on re-proposing the anthropological
problem according to the Catholic vision (ergo man is a creature of the
Creator-God), he combatted relativism, bringing God to the center of the
cultural debate, especially closing the gap between faith and reason, and he
affirmed the need to return to evangelizing, explaining that the failure of
Western civilization was due to the rejection of Catholicism, etc. Why are we
surprised that such a restorer Pope should not be considered ‘out of
play’? A famous secularist philosopher wrote, as reported by Il
Fatto Quotidiano, on November 26, 2009: ‘When the Church of silence will
take the floor, the ‘reconquista’ of Ratzinger will vanish, like
dreams and vampires at daybreak.’”
If
the Americans had been able to make a Pope resign, could they have had the
strength also to make them elect someone else to their liking?
“The
Americans were able to ‘fire’ Clinton/Obama and get Trump elected. I am
thinking that they have great capacity to react…. One day I would like
to explain to the Pope my Vatican experience with American circles which are
directly and indirectly influential. But returning to Monsignor
Negri, I think that it is difficult to understand how it can be decided
to no longer take seriously a priest of his character. Neither is
it even comprehensible to me how people like him and the four cardinals who
have raised the dubia, demonstrating just how much they love
Church, can be ignored and put aside. I find it not only
incomprehensible but also unwise, because thereby we are deprived of their
expertise, which does not seem to me so easily replaceable. Monsignor Negri,
who will certainly continue to serve the Church, will do so with many worthy
Catholics who are nearby. It is a sin that the current leaders of the Church
close to the Pope, threaten to deprive him of his loving and prestigious help,
expertise, and energy. Someone suggested yesterday that one could think of
putting Monsignor Negri in charge of the [Ecumenical Monastic] Community of
Bose, in order to ‘enhance it,’ as was already done with the Franciscan Friars
of the Immaculate.”
Could
his removal and the resignation of Ratzinger be connected?
“How
should I know? Certainly Negri was a favorite ‘spiritual son’ of Ratzinger,
certainly with an extraordinarily strong personality and character, typical of
great ‘saintly’ personalities in the history of the Church. They also
tell me that, apart from everything else, we are only at the beginnings of the
attack on our holy Church. But I can also assure you that the
Church will be defended, unto martyrdom, by people just like Monsignor Negri.
This is the difference between a saintly man like him and the many rampant
‘boot lickers.’” [my emphasis added]
(Translation
kindly provided by Andrew Guernsey)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rino Cammilleri, “Ratzinger Eliminated by
Hypocritical Do-Gooders,” Corrispondenza
Romana, 10 March 2017
If
it was not a plot, then it certainly is very similar to one. We speak about the
resignation of Benedict XVI on 11 February (the Lourdes Day) four years ago
[2013].
The
former Archbishop of Ferrara, Msgr. Luigi Negri, wanted to get rid of a stone
in his shoe which has bothered him for quite a while: “I am certain that the truth
will emerge one day showing a grave liability both inside and outside the
Vatican.”
He
declared, to be sure, that there was put upon Benedict XVI an enormous
pressure. From whom? From Obama?
Negri
reminds us that: “It is no coincidence that in America, even on the basis of
what has been published by Wikileaks, some Catholic groups have asked President
Trump to open a commission of inquiry to investigate whether the administration
of Barack Obama exerted pressure on Benedict.”
The
one concerned himself has denied [the existence of such pressures] in a recent
book of conversation with Peter Seewald, saying: “Nobody has attempted to
blackmail me.”
Maybe.
But, one may ask how much credibility these above-quoted Ratzinger words should
have since they contradict his earlier words. At the time of his resignation,
he announced that he would retire into silence and prayer, and that he wished
to make himself “invisible to the world.” Since when, however, does someone who
wishes to retire into silence and prayer, give bestseller-interviews? Thus
remains the fact that he never gave a convincing reason for his resignation. After
all, this is not about just anything that one could take lightly.
A
pope who resigned is an epochal event for the Church, even more so when he
still dresses as a pope and lets himself be called pope (emeritus). And
moreover: such a thing has never happened before.
Another
additional fact is: through him and his resignation, the Church has come to
face a new pontificate which is out to do always the opposite from the
previous one. Just as Trump now dismantles Obamaism.
The
dark marks which have lain on the resignation of Benedict XVI remain. The fact
that it is mostly traditional Catholics who have doubts about this case does
not change any iota of the assumption. Yes – and exactly because one judges the
trees by their fruits, as the Gospel teaches us and it is also basic common
sense.
As
much as Ratzinger was reviled by those who truly have influence, just as much
Bergoglio is now being celebrated by those same people. Ratzinger was blocked
from speaking at the State University of Rome; but, for Francis, the red carpet
was laid out in front of that same university. And surely not because Francis
has held there any epochal speeches as did his predecessor in Regensburg. No,
he [Francis] spoke spontaneously; and more: he kept on talking as if he were
among friends in the bar. Most of all, this was really a political speech, that
is to say, a politically correct speech. Also, his insistence – whether appropriate
or not – upon the undifferentiated reception of the migrants fosters the
further suspicion of those who are now convinced of a plot.
The
Catholic teaching is seen to be too strict for the “New World,” which gnomes
like Soros want to create: a hybrid, flowingly amorphous,
homosexualized and individualized world of uprooted consumers. Therefore:
away with the theologian-pope and move forward with the pastor-pope who
attenuates the doctrine of the Faith and who pleases, so much, the masters of
political correctness. Moving on in the direction of a Jovanotti [Italian
rapper] Church, which can best be inserted into the coming Brave New World.
As
I said: It will not be a conspiracy. Of course not. Only: If it turns out to be
one, after all – would the results then look different? [my emphasis added]
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