Fr. Joseph Ratzinger on Patriarchate vs. Papal Primacy

"The more new Rome (which could not dream of calling itself ‘apostolic’) obscured the old idea of the apostolic see in favor of the patriarchal concept, the more; the more Old Rome emphasized the completely different origin and nature of its authority. Indeed, this is something entirely different from a primacy of honor among patriarchs, since it exists on quite a different plane, wholly independent of such administrative schemes. The overshadowing of the old theological notion of the apostolic see – an original part, after all, of the Church’s understanding of her own nature – by the theory of five patriarchs must be understood as the real harm done in the quarrel between East and West."

Read the whole article HERE

Joseph Ratzinger's American Mind

The following was taken from the Culture War's Magazine website. This was a review of a book.

The review itself takes a closer look at the Role US culture had on Joseph Ratzinger.  The reviewer of the text also recently put out a book on John Courtney Murray and his collaboration with the CIA before, during and after the second Vatican Council

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Joseph Ratzinger's American Mind

 Vincent Philip Munoz,
God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson (Cambridge University Press, 2009) 242 pp., Hardcover, $97, Softcover, $26.99.

Reviewed by David Wemhoff

“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” -- Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) from The Manchurian Candidate (1962) In 1945, Germany was in ruins. The Americans, with their allies, had defeated the Germans after years of total war, and now it was time for the conquerors to rule. The proconsul they sent over to govern the conquered Germans was John J. McCloy, Wall Street lawyer, World Bank President, and Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman of the Board.

Kai Bird reveals in his excellent work, The Chairman: John J. McCloy and The Making of the American Establishment, that the mission of John J. McCloy was to remake German society into the liberal Enlightenment society known as America. McCloy, as High Commissioner of the occupied land could implement the programs, and monitor their success, needed to do that. During the years that followed the conquest, Americans conducted a campaign of psychological warfare and social re-engineering of German society, and, indeed, the societies of all Western Europe, ostensibly to stop the spread of Communism. “American(s)” refers to those who hold to the liberal, Enlightenment principles that created the country known as the USA which, with its Constitution and Declaration of Independence in large measure, shape the society known as America. One can be a citizen of the USA (that is, CUSA) and be a Catholic, and most CUSAs are Americans. One cannot be a Catholic and an American. To be an American is to believe in American principles before the teachings of the Church, or in other words to accept the Enlightenment ideals as superior to the teachings of the Faith.

The American occupying authorities conducted a number of studies of the German populace to assess the depth and breadth of their psychological warfare and social re-engineering efforts. Anna J. Merritt and Richard L. Merritt summarized the results of these studies in two books entitled Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS Surveys 1945-1949 (“OMGUS”) (University of Illinois Press, 1970) and Public Opinion in Semisovereign Germany: The HICOG Surveys 1949-1955 (“HICOG”) (University of Illinois Press, 1980). These studies document not only the methods used but also the desire of the American conquerors to shape the thoughts, opinions, values, and worldview of the Germans and target populations among the Germans.

Two important areas of inquiry were the impact of American entertainment (mostly motion pictures), and the impact of American mass media, primarily Voice of America (VOA), one of the more important United States’ propaganda machines to the world at the time. In Report No. 119 from May 1948, it was noted that “The number of audiences within which AMZON Germans participated was strikingly related to attitudes toward the American way of life. Regardless of social class, the more sources of information which an AMZON German had, the more likely he was to be favorably disposed toward American policies in government or economics, ways of life, and activities ...” (OMGUS, p. 236). (AMZON is military jargon for the American Zone of Occupation which included Catholic Bavaria.) In Report No. 184 from July 1949, about 40 percent of survey respondents in the AMZON listened to VOA “more or less regularly.” VOA had the largest audience of American information programs, and VOA reached more of all segments of the German society (OMGUS, p. 307-308). The majority of VOA listeners considered the programs to be good (OMGUS, p. 308). Report No. 137 from September 1948 showed that nearly two-thirds of those aged 15 to 24 in Munich attended movies and that American films were extremely popular (OMGUS, pp. 256-257). Report No. 188 issued one year later revealed that 44 percent of the AMZON residents believed American movies showed how American life really was (OMGUS, p. 311). In that same study, respondents were forced to chose between parents or the authorities as to who should have the final say in what children should watch. (Id.) Report No. 171 from December 1952 indicated the majority of Germans interviewed saw VOA as a propaganda instrument of the U.S., and while 39 percent of the interviewees saw this as a good thing for Germany, the vast majority was silent on the question (HICOG pp. 204-205).

A young seminarian by the name of Joseph Ratzinger came of age during the American occupation of Germany. He attended the seminary from 1947 to 1950 in Munich, or Ground Zero of the American efforts to culturally re-engineer Europe. Joseph Ratzinger, like millions of other German Catholics who listened to American broadcasts and enjoyed American movies, was the target of the American psychological warfare and societal re-engineering efforts after World War II during the period known as the Cold War. His thinking was reshaped to accept America as the ideal, and one of the best tools the Americans used to do that was the doctrinal weapon of mass destruction known as The American Proposition (TAP) that was developed and disseminated by Henry Luce and John Courtney Murray, SJ during the Cold War, and injected into the Church’s veins by the likes of Felix Morlion, OP.

TAP has had the intended effect on the leader of the Catholic Church when one considers Ratzinger’s statements at the White House in 2008--nearly 60 years later--after he had become Pope Benedict XVI. When he came to the United States in April 2008, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, met with President George W. Bush. After the President’s remarks, the Pope gave a short talk. In it he profusely praised America and the principles behind its founding, thereby ignoring at least a hundred years of pontifical pronouncements on the proper ordering of society and the church to the state. He approved of the myths about American existence and history that are continuously reinforced, in one form or another, to the captive audience in the United States: From the dawn of the Republic, America’s quest for freedom has been guided by the conviction that the principles governing political and social life are intimately linked to a moral order based on the dominion of God the Creator. The framers of this nation’s founding documents drew upon this conviction when they proclaimed the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights grounded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God ... [R]eligious beliefs were a constant inspiration and driving force, as for example in the struggle against slavery and in the civil rights movement. ... Americans continue to find their strength in a commitment to this patrimony of shared ideas and aspirations. ... [A]ll believers have found here the freedom to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, while at the same time being accepted as part of a commonwealth in which each individual group can make its voice heard. ... The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. ... Democracy can only flourish, as our founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth and bring the wisdom born of firm moral principle to decisions affecting the life and future of the nation.



Ratzinger, like most people exposed to American culture and to the weaponized form of Americanism developed by Murray, Luce, and the CIA during the Cold War, may not have fully understood the effect of American propaganda when it was happening, though he should have at some point in his 80 some years. The effects of succumbing to American propaganda, especially TAP, are pernicious. One comes to view America as the ideal for the social, cultural, and political organization of peoples and societies, and that opens the door to all sorts of evil and mischief, not the least of which is domination by the City of Man.

America’s apologists, especially through TAP, say that the Church has no rightful and exalted position in society, and that all one needs is the natural law with the Holy Spirit directly enlightening everyone. None of these ideas are Catholic, but Ratzinger/Benedict has indicated his allegiance to them all the same in a number of public events, such as the one in 2008 at the White House and more recently the one before the Bundestag on September 22, 2011. Accepting TAP and America as the ideal means rejecting Christ, for it means rejecting the Faith and His Church with its rightful place of preeminence, as the country’s religion. People who accept TAP come to believe in America as the ideal, necessarily accept a corrupt form of Christianity because America, and its propaganda justifying it, is a Protestant construct. Hence, to accept America as the ideal is to fall under the power of the Jews as Dr. E. Michael Jones pointed out in his scholarly work on the Jews, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History.

The Holy Spirit

While the Holy Spirit keeps him from writing encyclicals that are erroneous, Ratzinger a/k/a Pope Benedict XVI is an American in his speeches, policies, and personal opinions, which he seems to enjoy spreading about, and which the media is quick to pick up. As this is being written, a report has issued from what used to be the East German police, the Stasi, and according to Zenit.org, Ratzinger was a “fierce foe” of Communism. This bit of evidence strongly militates in favor of Ratzinger’s having become an American in thought and worldview. (It would be interesting to know what the CIA has on Ratzinger.)

This colonization of Ratzinger’s mind by the Americans to view America as the ideal explains a lot, not the least of which is the reason our joy at his elevation to the Papacy was replaced over the years by bewilderment. With his many public appearances and talks that are devoid of mention of Christ and promotion of a decidedly American worldview, and with such writings as Jesus of Nazareth, and Light of the World, we see the danger posed to Catholics. Instead of seeing the world with its many problems through the lens of the Gospels, Ratzinger/Benedict sees the world as an American would. He therefore gives credence to and endorsement of America. Being an American is not compatible with being a Catholic, and Ratzinger’s many statements while serving as Pope have caused many a Catholic to stumble and become confused without offering any solution to so many troubles that beset them, and without offering any way to evangelize the world for Christ as He commanded in Matthew 28:18-20. Catholicism and Americanism are in conflict. Catholicism orders all we do and think towards serving God. Americanism orders all one does and thinks to serving Mammon. The twain shall never meet.

But let’s face it--the Americans are brilliant--and they are able to hide this truth so adroitly by getting everyone to shadowbox. (The brilliance is akin to an evil genius most probably because it comes from a lack of scruples based on adherence to Truth.) From 13 small and relatively insignificant dependents of Great Britain in 1776, they have fashioned the country that today is the only superpower and is capable of projecting armed forces to wage war half way around the world in the Hindu Kush. With the exception of one four year period, there have been no other attempts to break the country up, and there have been absolutely no attempts to violently overthrow the government. Every two and four years, there are orderly elections held for the various federal or national offices that were set up by the Constitution. The elections keep the rich and powerful in their riches and powers while the everyday slob who fights the wars, pays the taxes, and suffers in the heat, dirt and grime for his daily bread is given the illusion that he and his fellows are the rulers. It’s a great ploy, and what has made it greater is that it has worked for more than 200 years to keep everybody down on the farm and harmless to the vested, to the real, interests, for the most part. And, it’s even a greater accomplishment when you consider that the Americans got most of the world to buy into their lies. Getting the Pope on their side helps with selling the rot.

Americans are practical--they seek to know how things work, the better to control you. They wait, watch, study, and they are nice about it. They try to get you to buy into bad ideas that sound good but are nothing more than a way to turn you from God. They use honey, because they know that attracts more flies. But should you oppose the Americans and stick to your principles, well, then it’s time for the airstrikes and a lot more violence from the “red white and blue.” And that’s what they did with the Catholic Church when they figured out how important the priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes were, they put things in motion to make sure that at some point the guy who got to the top of the Church would support America and the American ideology. That way, they would not have to worry about the Catholic Church, and service to God, getting in the way of service to Mammon. America and Americans are dedicated to service to Mammon for they reject Christ’s Church, which means they reject Christ, which means they reject God. With God out of the picture, there’s only one other option: Mammon or wealth. Notre Dame Professor

A professor at the University of Notre Dame helps us to understand the true nature of America and what was intended by the Founders. Vincent Phillip Munoz, an Associate Professor of Religion and Public Life in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, is a victim of the American conquest of the Catholic mind, and so he can do no better than Ratzinger/Benedict. However, with his book, God and The Founders, he has started to expose some of the myths about the American Founders perpetuated at the White House by Ratzinger. Munoz has started to shed some light on the Founders and to show what they really thought of religion, which is far different from the myths foisted on the world. Munoz’ failing is that he still accepts the American myths, and sees America’s conception of religious liberty as a good. God and the Founders is an examination of the thought on religious matters of James Madison, who was the principal architect of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, the principal architect of the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington, the first President and also the “Father of His Country.” He analyzes, through the eyes of Madison, Jefferson and Washington, a number of cases decided by the United States Supreme Court between 1947 and 2005 implicating the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Munoz’ analysis reveals that for the most part, the courts seem to primarily favor the views of these three founders in the following order when it comes to defining church state relations in the United States: Madison, Washington, then Jefferson.

Madison believed that government should not be cognizant of religion and the religious beliefs or affiliations of the citizens. In his “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” written in 1785 in opposition to a bill pending in the Virginia Legislature to permit payment of state funds for teaching Christianity, Madison wrote that religion would not only be exempt from “the authority of the Society at large,” but religion should also not be employed “as an engine of Civil policy. ... an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation” (pp. 224-225). To Madison, religion meant only worship, or going to church, as he wrote “the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him” (p. 223). Under the Madisonian view of church and state, not only is religion relegated to one hour a week of singing hymns and chanting prayers, but the individual is supreme in determining how he or she wishes to worship, the magistrate, or the state, is incompetent in determining the True Religion, and religious beliefs can never be a cause for action in the public sphere.

Washington held to a more utilitarian view of religion in the state. Washington wanted to get things done. Ultimately a pragmatist, Washington, whose life largely consisted in surveying and soldiering, held to a three-part doctrine according to Munoz. First, the “state action must have a civic purpose” (p. 123). Second, “state action may support or burden religion as a means to further that interest, but the state may not compel an individual to practice a religion in which he does not believe” (Id.). Finally, “state endorsement of religion ought to be as ecumenical as possible in light of the civic purpose being advance” (Id.). (Catholics should immediately recognize how America has twisted the real meaning of “ecumenism.”) Washington saw that religion could be put to the use or service of the “civic purpose” which ultimately means the state, and he, like Madison, opposed religion dictating one’s actions in the public sphere as evidenced by his opposition to the Quakers’ refusal to bear arms during the American Revolution. While he believed that the state should never compel one to belong to one religion or another, he also was of the view that the state was incompetent to judge the truth or falsity of any religious set of beliefs. Jefferson

Jefferson, who penned those famous words, “we hold these truths,” was perhaps the most radical of the three revolutionaries. Jefferson “aspired to create a society in which clergy and sectarian theological dogmas did not guide human thinking” (p. 123). To that end, he wanted the state to advance “nonsectarian religious ideas and institutions” (p. 126) and to weaken the power and influence of the various religious sects and of Christianity. In essence, Jefferson wanted Americans to embrace a form of Unitarianism that rejected things such as the Trinity and Jesus’ resurrection and embraced a creator God who gave men rights. (Remember the quote from the Declaration of Independence?) Jefferson was Jewish in his thinking, and he too, like Washington, saw that religion could be manipulated, or used, to serve the state.

All three of these men relegated any and all religions to supporting roles in society thereby leaving the determination of the issues and policies of the society in the hands of those who would conduct the affairs of state strictly in accordance with principles of utility if not also material gain. In a society where the government is nominally a democracy but more properly an oligarchy, two of the fundamental purposes of government, unity and establishment of order, cannot be achieved by the very structure of the government. Without a common religion to cobble together the people, all that can happen is for the competing powerful interests in the society to work the best manipulations of the people to enhance their power and wealth.

Needless to say, the American Founders were indeed revolutionaries, and they held to and posited beliefs on the relation of church and state that were and are radically at odds with the Truth and the teachings of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII made these teachings clear when he wrote nearly 100 years after the founding of the United States that “[I]t is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual, either to disregard all religious duties or to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion; that the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favor and support” (Immortale Dei, para. 35.). Again in Immortale Dei Pope Leo XIII wrote “Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its reaching and practice--not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion--it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honour the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favour religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule.”

Pope Gregory XVI, writing 50 years earlier in Mirari Vos (1832), condemned the actions of a government that would not show a preference for the Roman Catholic Faith. He wrote “[T]hat absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone … spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. ... When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin ...” (para. 14.).

The United States Constitution, along with the statutes and the court declarations that have issued from the document, has done great damage by keeping Catholicism away from the people and from having any real effect on societal and governmental policies. American jurisprudence has served to keep the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Faith, out of the life of the nation and its society. This is a grievous error as Pope Leo XIII explains in Immortale Dei: “To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society, is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated. ... The Church ... is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action” (para. 32). The reason for this is clear: “A well-spent life is the only way to heaven” and the State must cooperate in the salvation of souls. Pope Leo explains: “For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavour should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the well-being of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God” (para. 32.).

The State

In sum, by its very nature, the Church teaches, the State must seek to help souls to heaven by providing the necessary material conditions and processes, both of which require the recognition of the proper role of the Roman Catholic Church. America, and the political entity that gives shape to this society, is not concerned with souls or with providing the conditions for souls to realize their true end.

In Deus Caritas Est (2005), Pope Benedict XVI wrote that “[T]he Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community with the State must recognize ...” (para. 28). It is in this recognition that there can be accomplishment of the mission of the Church to “help form consciences in political life, and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly ...” (para. 28). This most crucial of requirements of government is not met by the American State, and so the possibility of achieving a just state is diminished, if not obviated, and what evolves in its place is a State that is “not governed according to justice” and therefore becomes a “bunch of thieves” (para. 28.a). Without the proper recognition of the Church and the Faith by the United States, the very foundational principles of the country become suspect, and America must then organize itself in accordance with principles in opposition those taught by the Faith, and hence to the spiritual and material harm of the people of that society. As referenced by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Section 2244), Blessed John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus teaches that those societies, like America, that reject or do not recognize the man’s origin and destiny as taught by the Church “borrow...some ideology” and they “arrogate to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny.”

It is simply stunning--and a testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit and the weakness of men--to witness the same man who wrote the encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to completely ignore the truths set forth in that encyclical during his talk at the White House in 2008 in the presence of the President of the United States. On one day, he presents great Truth with an encyclical. On another day, Ratzinger strengthens the psychological chains forged by Americans to control Catholics and keep all in darkness and bondage to Mammon. In the true spirit of Americanism, the doctrine of the Church is kept inviolate, but Benedict, a/k/a Ratzinger, is telling Catholics to think, and act, and view the world as Americans, and in so doing he has placed a stumbling block for Catholics to live the Faith. Benedict, whose ideas and beliefs and worldview were formed at Ground Zero of the Cold War by the Americans to be an American, is, regrettably, helping make sure that Catholics are Americans first.

Good Job

Munoz does a good job of fleshing out the beliefs of Madison, Washington and Jefferson, all three of whom were so crucial to the founding of the United States and ultimately that societal construct known as America. But he fails as a Catholic because he does not present Catholic teaching on church and state relations, and he instead argues for what he calls a “modified version of the Founders’ approaches” (p. 218). This modified approach, which he calls “No legal privileges, no legal penalties” may get him points with the administration at the University of Notre Dame where he is a Tocqueville Professor and still seeking tenure as he said last September before one of Notre Dame’s football games, but it should not stand him in good stead with the Church and the Faith. Indeed, in this attempt to “separate church and state more intelligently, and to better protect religious freedom” (p. 221), Munoz shows just how hostile the preeminent Catholic university is to the Faith, the Church, and souls. By insisting on this revolutionary and dangerously erroneous ideology, he threatens the continued existence of the very society he claims to want to advance and protect despite his protestation that his approach will allow Americans to “govern ourselves more thoughtfully” (Id.). Munoz exhibits the problem that has confronted and divided Catholics in the United States for at least 60 years. That problem is based on the fact that American psychological warfare and fifth columnists like John Courtney Murray, SJ, have successfully taught Catholics the Big Lie: “America is infallible, the Church is not.” As a result, you see people like “pro-choice Catholics” such as Mario Cuomo and his son Andrew who, having accepted the Big Lie, must accept that Roe v. Wade is a proper and moral decision, because, after all, it comes from America, which is infallible.

But that is what conquerors do; they destroy the conquered and themselves if their conquest is not in the name of Jesus Christ and with the sign of the Cross. Munoz’s mind has been enslaved by the Americans just as is the mind of Joseph Ratzinger has. Benedict’s many speeches praising America are a, if not the, critical factor for the darkening of Munoz’s mind so as to accept error. Benedict, as leader of the Catholics, has been conditioned to be an American and to serve America, and so Catholics are bound to follow their leader into captivity. Ratzinger, now pope, as a type of Manchurian Candidate, is a symbol of America’s occupation of the Catholic Church.

One of the great causes for hope and miracles of the day, in addition to the numbers of people entering the Church and growing it around the world even while its prelates are suffering through their American and Jewish captivity, is that the Holy Spirit still speaks through the papal encyclicals, such as Deus Caritas Est, which calls Catholics, and all people, to the truth and liberation from error. For error leads to sin, and the wages of sin is death. One need only consult antiquity and societies of the modern era grown too engrossed in serving wealth to see where it all leads. The unfortunate part is that many who consider themselves Catholic will go down with the sinking ship known as America. And, most importantly, many are in danger of the fires of hell because of the American ideas that come from the man who is pope.

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Lot's there I know, but I think it was worth while.

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+

Cardinal Ratzinger on Kneeling (Postures): A Full Excerpt from "Spirit of the Liturgy

Below you will find a transcribed full excerpt from then Cardinal Ratzingers monumental effort Spirit of the Liturgy. This part of the book was brought up in a lentan retreat I attended at St. Stanislaus, and I believe it is worth your time even though it is fairly long:

Spirit of the Liturgy

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect CDF (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI)

3. Posture

source

Kneeling (prostratio)

There are groups, of no small influence, who are trying to talk us out of kneeling. “It doesn’t suit our culture”, they say (which culture?). It’s not right for a grown man to do this – he should face God on his feet.” Or again: “It’s not appropriate for redeemed man – he has been set free by Christ and doesn’t need to kneel anymore.” If we look at history, we can see that the Greeks and Romans rejected kneeling. In view of the squabbling, partisan deities described in mythology, this attitude was thoroughly justified. It was only too obvious that these gods were not God, even if you were dependent on their capricious power and had to make sure that whenever possible, you enjoyed their favor. And so they said that kneeling was unworthy of a free man, unsuitable for the culture of Greece, something the barbarians went in for. Plutarch and Theophphrastus regarded kneeling as an expression of superstitio. Aristotle called it a barbaric form of behavior (cf. Rhetoric 1361 a 36). St. Augustine agreed with him in a certain respect: the false gods were only the masks of demons, who subjected men to the worship of money and to self-seeking, thus making them “servile” and superstitious. He said that the humility of Christ and his love, which went as far as the cross, have freed us from these powers. We now kneel before that humility. The kneeling of Christians is not a form of enculturation into existing customs. It is quite the opposite, an expression of Christian culture, which transforms the existing culture through a new and deeper knowledge and experience of God.

Kneeling does not come from any culture – it comes from the Bible and its knowledge of God. The central importance fo kneeling in the Bible can be seen in a very concrete way. The word proskynein alone occurs fifty-nine times in the New Testament, twenty-four of which are in the Apocalypse, the book of the heavenly liturgy, which is presented to the Church as the standard for her own liturgy. On closer inspection, we can discern three closely related forms of posture. First, there is prostratio – lying with ones face to the ground before the overwhelming power of God; secondly, especially in the New Testament, there is falling to ones knees before another; and thirdly, there is kneeling. Linguistically, the three forms of posture are not always clearly distinguished. They can be combined or merged with one another.

For the sake of brevity, I should like to mention, in the case of prostratio, just one text from the Old Testament and another from the New. In the Old Testament, there is an appearance of God to Joshua before the taking of Jericho, an appearance that the sacred author quite deliberately presents as a parallel to God’s revelation of himself to Moses in the burning bush. Joshua sees “the commander of the army of the Lord” and, having recognized who he is, throws himself to the ground. At that moment he hears the words once spoken to Moses: “Put off your shoes from your feet; for the place where you stand is holy” (Josh 5:15). In the mysterious form of the commander of the army of the Lord”, the hidden God himself speaks to Joshua, and Joshua throws himself down before him. Origen gives a beautiful interpretation of this text: “Is there any other commander of the powers of the Lord than our Lord Jesus Christ?” According to this view Joshua is worshipping the One who is to come-the coming Christ. In the case fo the new testament, from the Fathers onward, Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives was especially important. According to St. Matthew (22:39) and St. Mark (14:35), Jesus throws himself to the ground; indeed, he falls to the earth (according to Matthew). However, St. Luke who in his whole work (both the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles) is in a special way the theologian of kneeling prayer, tells us that Jesus prayed on his knees. This prayer, the prayer b which Jesus enters into his Passion, is an example for us, both as a gesture and in its content. The gesture: Jesus assumes, as it were, the fall of man, let’s himself fall into man’s fallenness, prays to the Father out of the lowest depths of Human dereliction and anguish. He lays his will in the will of the Fathers: “Not my will but yours be done.” He lays the human will in the divine. He takes up all the hesitation of the human will and endures it. It is this very conforming of the human will to the divine that is the heart of redemption. Or the fall fo man depends on the contradiction of wills, on the opposition of the human will to the divine, which the tempter leads man to think is the condition of his freedom. Only one’s own autonomous will, subject to no other will, is freedom. “Not my will but yours…” – those are the words of truth, for God’s will is not in opposition to our own, but the ground and condition of its possibility. Only when our will rests in the will of God does it become truly will and truly free. The suffering and struggle of Gethsemane is the struggle for this redemptive truth, for this uniting of what is divided, for the uniting that is communion with God. Now we understand why the Son’s loving way of addressing the Father, “Abba”, is found in this place (cf. Mk 14:36). St. Paul sees in this cry the prayer that the Holy Spirit places on our lips (cf. Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6) and thus anchors our Spirit-filled prayer in the Lord’s Prayer in Gethsemane.

In the Church’s liturgy today, prostration appears on two occasions: on Good Friday and at ordinations. On Good Friday, the day of the Lord’s crucifixion, it is the fitting expression of our sense of shock at the fact that we by our sins share in the responsibility for the death of Christ. We throw ourselves down and participate in this shock, in his descent into the depths of anguish. We throw ourselves down and so acknowledge where we are and who we are: fallen creatures whom only he can set on their feet. We throw ourselves down, as Jesus did, before the mystery of God’s power present to us, knowing that the Cross is the true burning bush, the place of the flame of God’s love, which burns but does not destroy. At ordinations prostration comes from the awareness of or absolute incapacity, by our own powers, to take on the priestly mission of Jesus Christ, to speak with his “I”. While the ordinands are lying on the ground, the whole congregation sings the Litany of the Saints. I shall never forget lying on the ground at the time of my own priestly and episcopal ordination. When I was ordained bishop, my intense feeling of inadequacy, incapacity, in the face of the greatness of the task was even stronger than at my priestly ordination. The fact that the praying Church was calling upon all the saints, that the prayer of the Church really was enveloping and embracing me, was a wonderful consolation. In my incapacity, which had to be expressed in the bodily posture of prostration, this prayer, this presence of all the saints, of the living and the dead, was a wonderful strength – it was the only thing that could, as it were, lift me up. Only the presence of the saints with me made possible the path that lay before me.

Secondly, we must mention the gesture of falling to ones knees before another, which is described four times in the Gospels (cf. MK I:40; 10:17; Mt 17:14; 27:29) by means of the word gonypetein. Let us single out Mark I:40. A leper comes to Jesus and begs him for help. He falls to his knees before him and says: “If you will, you can make me clean.” It is hard to assess the significance of the gesture. What we have here is surely not a proper act of adoration, but rather a supplication expressed fervently in bodily form, while showing a trust in a power beyond the merely human. The situation is different, though, with the classical word for adoration on one’s knees – proskynein. I shall give two examples in order to clarify the question that faces the translator. First there is the account of how, after the multiplication the loaves, Jesus stays with the Father on the mountain, while the disciples struggle in vain on the lake with the wind and the waves.  Jesus comes to them across the water. Peter hurries toward him and is saved from sinking by the Lord. Then Jesus climbs into the boat, and the wind lets up. The text continues: “And the ship’s crew came and said, falling at his feet, ‘Thou art indeed the Son of God’” (Mt 14:33, Knox version). Other translations say: [The disciples] in the boat worshipped [Jesus], saying…” (RSV). Both translations are correct. Each emphasizes one aspect of what is going on. The Knox version brings out the bodily expression, while the RSV shows what is happening interiorly. It is perfectly clear from he structure of the narrative that the gesture of acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God is an act of worship. We encountered similar set of problems in St. John’s Gospel when we read the account of the healing of the man born blind. This narrative, which is structured in a truly “theo-dramatic” way, ends with a dialogue between Jesus and the man he has healed. It serves as a model for the dialogue of conversion, for the whole narrative must also be seen as a profound exposition of the existential and theological significance of Baptism. In the dialogue, Jesus asks the man whether he believes in the Son of Man, The man born blind replies: “Tell me who he is Lord.” When Jesus sys, “It is I who is speaking to you”, the man makes the confession of faith: I do believe, Lord”, and then he “[falls] down to worship him” (Jn 9:35-38, Knox version adapted). Earlier translations said: “He worshipped him.” In fact, the whole scene is directed toward the act of faith and the worship of Jesus, which follows from it. Now the eyes of the heart, as well as of the body, are opened. The man has in truth begun to see. For the exegesis of the text it is important to note that the word proskynein occurs eleven time sin John’s Gospel of which nine occurrences are found in Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan women by Jacob’s well (Jn 4: 19-24). This conversation is entirely devoted to the theme of worship, and it is indisputable that here, as elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel, the word always has the meaning of “worship”. Incidentally, this conversation, too, ends – like that of the healing of the man born blind – with Jesus’ revealing himself: “I who speak to you am he” (Jn 4:26).

I have lingered over these texts, because they bring to light something important. In the two passages that we looked at most closely, the spiritual and bodily meanings of proskynein are really inseparable. The bodily gesture itself is the bear of the spiritual meaning, which is precisely that of worship. Without the worship, the bodily gesture would be meaningless, while the spiritual act must of its very nature, because of the psychosomatic unity of man express itself in the bodily gesture. The two aspects are united in the one word, because in a very profound way they belong together. When kneeling becomes merely external, a merely physical act, it becomes meaningless. On the other hand, when someone tries to take worship back into the purely spiritual realm and refuses to give it embodied form, the act of worship evaporates, for what is purely spiritual is inappropriate to the nature of man. Worship is one of those fundamental acts that affect the whole man that is why bending the knee before the presence of the living God is something we cannot abandon.

I saying this, we come to the typical gesture of kneeling on one or both knees. In the Hebrew of the old Testament, the verb barak, “to kneel”, is cognate with the word berek, “knee”. The Hebrews regarded the knees as a symbol of strength; to bend the knee is, therefore, to bend our strength before the living God, an acknowledgement fo the fact that all that we are we receive form him. In important passages of the Old Testament, this gesture appears as an expression of worship. At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon kneels “in the presence of all the assembly of Israel” (2 Chron 6: 13). After the exile, in the afflictions of the returned Israel, which is still without a Temple, Ezra repeats this gesture at the time of the evening sacrifice: “I…fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God” (Ezra 9:5). The great psalm of the passion, Psalm 22, ends with the promise: “Yes to him shall all the proud of the earth fall down; before him all who go down to the dust shall throw themselves down”. The related passage Isaiah 45:23 we shall have to consider in the context of the New Testament. The Acts fo the Apostles tells us how St. Peter (9:40, St. Paul (20:36) and the whole Christian community (21:5) pray on their knees. Particularly important for our question is the account of the martyrdom of St. Stephen. The first man to witness to Christ with his blood is described in his suffering as a perfect image of Christ, whose Passion is repeated in the martyrdom of the witness, even in small details. One of these is that Stephen, on his knees, takes up the petition of the crucified Christ: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (7:60. We should remember that Luke, unlike Matthew and Mark, speaks fo the Lord kneeling in Gethsemane, which shows that Luke wants the kneeling fo the first martyr as his entry into the prayer of Jesus. Kneeling is not only a Christian gesture, but a Christological one.

For me, the most important passage for the theology of kneeling will always be the great hymn of Christ in Philippians 2:6-11. In this pre-Pauline hymn, we hear and see the prayer fot he apostolic Church and can discern within it her confession of faith in Christ. However, we also hear the voice of the Apostle, who enters into this prayer and hands it onto us, and ultimately, we perceive here both the profound inner unity of the Old and New Testaments and the cosmic breadth of Christian faith. The hymn presents Christ as the antitype of the First Adam. While the latter high-handedly grasped at likeness to God, Christ does not count equality with God, which is his by nature, a “thing to be grasped”, but humbles himself unto death, even death on the Cross. It is precisely this humility, which comes from love that is the truly divine reality and procures for him the “name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on Earth and under the Earth” (Phil 2: 5-10). Here the hymn of the apostolic Church takes up the words of promise in Isaiah 45:23: “By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall sear.’” In the interweaving of the old and New Testaments, it becomes clear that, even as crucified, Jesus bears the “name above every name” – the name of the Most High – and is himself God by nature. Through him, through the Crucified, the bold promise of the Old Testament is now fulfilled: all bend the knee before Jesus, the One who ascended, and bow to him precisely as the one true God above all gods. The Cross has become the world-embracing sign of God’s presence, and all that we have previously heard about the historical and cosmic Christ should now, in this passage, come back into our minds. The Christian liturgy is a cosmic liturgy precisely because it bends the knee before the crucified and exalted Lord. Here is the center o authentic culture – the culture of truth. The humble gesture by which we fall at the feet of the Lord inserts us into the true path fo the life fo the cosmos.

There is much more that we might add. For example, there is the touching story told by Eusebius in his history of the Church as a tradition going back to Hegesippus in the second century. Apparently, St. James, the “Brother of the Lord”, the first bishop of Jerusalem and “head” of the Jewish Christian Church, had a kind of callous on his knees, because he was always on his knees worshipping God and begging for forgiveness for his people (2, 23, 6). Again, there is a story that comes from the sayings of the Desert Fathers, according to which the devil was compelled by God to show himself to a certain Abba Apollo. He looked black and ugly, with frighteningly thin limbs, but, most strikingly, he had no knees. The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.

But I do not want to go into more detail. I should like to make just one more remark.  The expression used by St. Luke to describe the kneeling of Christians (theis ta gonata) is unknown in classical Greek. We are dealing here with a specifically Christian word. With that remark, our reflections return full circle to where they began. It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture – insofar as it is a culture, for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the One before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture. The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost, kneeling must be rediscovered, so that in our prayer, we remain in fellowship with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in union with Jesus Christ himself.

+JMJ+

A reminder for the upcoming Lenten season

I had the great joy of assisting at Holy Mass today and one of the readings out of the missal reminded me of an important Lenten practice that is often foregone.

Mass of the Holy Cross (Votive Mass)

Tract (as translated in Baronius Press 1962 Roman Missal)

We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee: because by Thy Cross Thou hast redeemed the World. We Adore Thy Cross, O Lord, we commemorate Thy glorious Passion: have have mercy upon us, Thou who didst suffer for us. O blessed Cross, which alone wast worthy to bear the King of heaven and the Lord.

After this was said, immediately it struck me that the practice of Friday Stations of the Cross should play a greater role in my Lenten exorcises.  Perhaps you should take the time to partake in the Stations at your local Parish if possible.

I'm sure Fr. Z will take up this as well.  His recording of then Cardinal Ratzinger's stations from Easter 2005 are excellent.

So get to it!

+ JMJ +