Peter Seewald - Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present

AFTERWORD:
Final Questions to Benedict XVI

After the many interviews I was able to have with Benedict XVI, a few more questions arose, which I proceeded to ask him in the autumn of 2018. However, the pope emeritus failed to answer many of the questions. For what you are asking me there leads naturally very far into the churchs present situation, he explained in an accompanying letter of 12 November 2018. Answering such questions would inevitably be interfering in the work of the present pope. I must avoid and want to avoid anything in that direction.

Papa Benedetto, do you follow events in the Church?

Yes.

You didnt want to write a spiritual testament. But have you done so?

Yes.

As pope you immediately introduced the canonization process of your predecessor, without waiting for the usual five years. What drove you to that haste?

The obvious desire of the faithful and the model given by the pope, which I myself had experienced over more than two decades.

It is often said about your papacy that you came up against many blockades in the Curia.

The blockades came more from the outside than from the Curia. In the first place I wanted to promote the clean-up not just of the small world of the Curia but of the church as a whole. The pope is not primarily pope of the Curia, but he is responsible for the church at that historical moment. Events showed that the crisis of faith had also led to a crisis in Christian living. That is the dimension the pope must keep in mind.

Did Vatileaks contribute to your decision to retire?

In my Last Testament I made clear that my retirement had nothing to do with the Paolo Gabriele affair. If I had run away from such occurrences, then there would have been other occasions of that kind. But to withstand them and not bend to them seems to me now, as it did then, an essential job for the pope. That is why my retirement had absolutely nothing to do with all that.

There is still speculation today about your visit to the tomb of Pope Celestine V in 2009, the only pope to have resigned before you. What was behind it?

My visit to Pope Celestine Vs tomb was more of a coincidence. But I realized that Celestine Vs situation was unique and could not serve as an example in any way.

The US journalist Rod Dreher said: A friend who was close to Benedict told me that the pope had resigned, as he had realized that the corruption in the Curia went much further than he could cope with. Was that invented?

Yes.

A sentence in your inauguration sermon remains particularly in mind: Pray for me that I dont flee in terror from the wolves. Did you foresee all the things that would come upon you?

Here I must also say that the radius of what a pope may fear is taken to be much too small. Of course issues like the Vatileaks are annoying and, above all, unintelligible and very disturbing to people in the wider world. However, the actual threat to the church, and so to the papacy, does not come from these things but from the global dictatorship of ostensibly humanist ideologies. Contradicting them means being excluded from the basic social consensus. A hundred years ago anyone would have found it absurd to speak of homosexual marriage. Today anyone opposing it is socially excommunicated. The same goes for abortion and creating human beings in a laboratory. Modern society is formulating an anti-Christian creed and opposing it is punished with social excommunication. It is only natural to fear this spiritual power of Antichrist and it really needs help from the prayers of a whole diocese and the world church to resist it.

Volker Reinhardt, a church historian at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, said: For me Benedict XVIs resignation is an act of extreme self-distancing from the condition of the church and an admission that he cant lead the church in the way that is needed.

An extreme self-distancing from the condition of the church was certainly not my intention. If you study papal history, you soon realize that the church has always been a net with good and bad fishes in it. It belongs to the Catholic understanding of the church and its leadership not to conceive of an ideal church but to be prepared to live and work with a church that is up against the power of evil.

John Paul II wrote in 1989 that the question of retirement in the event of serious illness came up. Five years later he reached the conclusion that there was no room for a pope emeritus in the church. Have you ever asked yourself what your predecessor would have said about your retirement?

It is right that very early on both Paul VI and John Paul II signed statements declaring their retirement in the event of an illness that made the proper exercise of their office impossible. They were thinking primarily of various forms of dementia. Following their example, I also signed a similar statement relatively early on. In the end I realized that other kinds of failing capacity to do the job properly were also possible.

By your resignation have you laid the foundation stone for a new tradition in the Catholic Church? You are the first successor to St Peter to call yourself pope emeritus. Church historians declare that there cant be a pope emeritus because neither can there be two popes.

It is hard to understand how a church historian, who is someone who studies the churchs past, should know better than others whether there can be a pope emeritus or not. From my point of view Id like to say the following. Until the end of the Second Vatican Council bishops could not retire either. When finally, after vigorous debates, retirement for bishops was introduced, at once a practical problem arose, which no one had thought of: you can only be a bishop in connection with a particular diocese. The ordination of a bishop is always relative: that is to say, related to being assigned to a bishopric. That relative character of the office of bishop, inherent in the sacrament, means that for non-resident bishops (today usually called auxiliary bishops) a fictional see has to be found. More than a hundred sees from the early church are available, most of which are in present-day Islamic regions, which can no longer really be occupied by bishops. So for a retiring bishop, who was no longer the bishop of his own diocese (for example, Munich or Berlin), a titular see was found (for example, Carthage or Hippo etc.). But with the rapidly growing number of retiring bishops and other titular bishops, it could be seen that soon the titular bishoprics would run out.

What does that mean?

I believe the solution was found by the then bishop of Passau, Simon Konrad Landersdorfer, who was a very energetic and learned man. He said that after his real diocese he did not want a fictional one. He had to be satisfied with being bishop emeritus of Passau.

What is an emeritus bishop or pope?

The word emeritus meant that he was no longer the active holder of the bishopric, but remained in a special relationship to it as its former bishop. So the need to define his office in relation to a real diocese was met without making him a second bishop of it. The word emeritus said that he had totally given up his office, but his spiritual link to his former diocese was now properly recognized. In general, a titular see was a pure legal fiction, but now there was a special relationship to a see where the retired bishop had formerly worked. This real, but hitherto legally unrecognized, relationship to a former see is the new meaning of emeritus acquired after Vatican II. It does not affect the legal substance of the office of bishop but acknowledges the spiritual link as a reality. So there are not two bishops but a spiritual assignment, whose essence is to serve his former diocese by being with it and for it in prayer with all his heart and with the Lord.

But does that apply to the pope?