Ten Days of Davies: In defense of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

The following excerpt from an article entitled  Apologia Pro Joseph Ratzinger first appeared in "Christian Order" in 2004.  Michael described himself as a "Traditionalist", but this title didn't mean that he was opposed to Rome on principle. He was an ardent defender of Archbishop Lefebvre, but he was also happy to speak to those charged with negotiations with the society.  Michael was even persecuted for his friendship with Cardinal Ratzinger by other Traditionalists, yet as you will see in the following article he was not afraid to take fellow believers to task for stirring controversy where none was brewing:

Source

Apologia Pro Josef Ratzinger

MICHAEL DAVIES

I am using the term Apologia as Newman did, in the sense of a reasoned explanation, and not in the sense of an apology. The great defender of orthodoxy in the post Vatican II Church certainly has no need to apologize for anything he has said, written, or done in the last forty years. Every Catholic who loves the faith is considerably in his debt.

I was prompted to write this brief apologia as a response to an attack upon the Cardinal by one James Larson in the February 2004 issue of Christian Order, in which this layman, who displays no discernible sign of theological expertise, has the temerity to make an accusation of heresy against the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), formerly the Inquisition.

Such temerity almost defies belief. I would be somewhat surprised if Larson even knows what heresy is, and so I will tell him. It is the pertinacious denial of a truth that must be believed by divine and Catholic Faith - Canon 1325 - 2 of the 1917 Code and Canon 751 of the 1983 Code. Such truths involve such dogmas as that of the Trinity, The Resurrection, The Real Presence, The Immaculate Conception, the Infallibility of the Pope. The denial has to be pertinacious, that is the person guilty of the denial must have been admonished by his legitimate superior and refused to retract. By no possible stretch of the imagination can the Cardinal have been considered to be guilty of heresy in its correct sense, even in his younger days when he had some rather liberal ideas. One does not know whether to laugh or cry at Larson’s arrant and arrogant nonsense. Having had the honour of meeting Cardinal Ratzinger regularly over the past ten years I know that he would certainly laugh even more than I did at the Larson diatribe.

Read the rest of the defense HERE

+JMJ+