"Traditiones Custodes Broke Benedict's Heart": Archbishop Gänswein.

In a new interview, shared here by Corpus Christi Watershed, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Prefect of the Papal Household, and personal secretary to Pope Benedict XVI has told how Traditiones Custodes, the poorly written and rushed reversal of his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, broke the old pope's heart.

The interviewer asks: "So, Pope Benedict’s lifting of restrictions on celebrating the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite according to the 1962 Missal did not last as long as he intended. As Pope Emeritus, he was around to see the promulgation of Pope Francis’ Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes. Was he disappointed?"

Archbishop Gänswein replies: "It hit him pretty hard. I believe it broke Pope Benedict’s heart to read the new Motu proprio, because his intention had been to help those who simply found a home in the Missale Vetustum—to find inner peace, to find liturgical peace—in order to draw them away from Marcel Lefebvre. And if you think about how many centuries the old Mass was the source of spiritual life and nourishment for many people including many saints, it’s impossible to imagine that it no longer has anything to offer. And let’s not forget that many young people—who were born long after the Second Vatican Council, and who don’t really grasp all the drama surrounding that council—that these young people, knowing the new Mass, have nevertheless found a spiritual home, a spiritual treasure in the old Mass as well. To take this treasure away from people … well, I can’t say that I’m comfortable with that."

This simply confirms what we all knew. The hasty publishing of Traditiones Custodes, while Pope Benedict XVI was still alive demonstrates a callous disregard for the pope's intellect and teaching as well as his attempts to reconcile the past with the present; in other words, to heal the rupture caused by Vatican II which we are seeing widen under Pope Francis.

What is most concerning is that supporters of the Franciscan Pontificate are increasingly clearly supporters of a hermeneutic of rupture. They want the post Vatican II Catholic Church to have little or nothing to do with the pre-concilliar Catholic Church.

Progressive Catholics have written so-called obituaries that recognise little to nothing of the extraordinary contribution of Joseph Ratzinger to the Church over the last sixty to seventy years and instead read more like character assassinations that obituaries.

Take Catherine Pepinster's awful piece in The Tablet, which is basically the Catholic magazine for Catholics who want to be Anglicans (or something else entirely). In her eagerness to attack the dead pontiff, she fails to even make any sense. For example:

"In July 2007, to the delight of traditionalists and the dismay of liberals, Benedict published Summorum Pontificum, which relaxed restrictions on the use of the Tridentine Rite." - they're not very liberal if dismayed at liberalisation, are they??

"Those who had most feared his election grew increasingly convinced of his desire to dismantle the reforms of the Council, especially of the liturgy. While he became best known for his intellectual expositions of the faith, not only through his encyclicals but also through his addresses during his travels, the papacy of Benedict XVI became increasingly embroiled in controversy, in public relations gaffes, and in revelations of clerical infighting, financial corruption and chaotic mismanagement.’"

What is interesting is that Trads do not see Benedict XVI as at all trad. He is the one who was at the council and tried to rescue the council, explain how its documents moved the Church forward. It is increasingly clear that these are people (Pepinster et al) who really do not understand ecclesiology or Catholicism at all, instead desiring to erect a barrier between the council of the sixties and the Catholic Church of the past. Why you would want to do this is completely beyond me, unless you actually hate the Catholic Church.

A further dreadful example is this from Faggioli - who I cannot believe is an educator at all, everything he does and says seems so mired in relativism and his own myopic perspective.

"Response to this framing came to function as a litmus test of orthodoxy for some interpreters of the council, who as supporters of Benedict focused far more on “continuity” than “reform,” rather than thinking of them together as the pope had described. Yet at the same time, it’s hard to find an example of “reform” that Benedict himself proposed that didn’t try to undo changes brought about by Vatican II and the early post-conciliar period."

Reform you see - it's all that matters. This is the bizarre approach of so many who fail to understand that the Christian life is a submission to the revealed truth, not a reform of anything.

A further example came from former Editor in Chief of the Jesuit Magazine America, Thomas Reese, who provided this myopic, whinge and cringe filled piece which focused on how the mean Joseph Ratzinger didn't let him talk about heresy as much as he wanted to.

Away from the spittle flecked vitriol spewed by the progressives who hate the Church, there was a much more wholesome spirit being expressed:

It’s beautiful to see the wave of love surrounding the Catholic world today, longing for a peaceful, good, and faithful shepherd.

For many of us, he was the main intellectual and even emotional influence in our lives after our own parents.

Benedict XVI: Rest In Peace!

— Rorate Caeli (@RorateCaeli) December 31, 2022

If you are more interested in something beautiful and wholesome in terms of a reflection on Pope Benedict's life and work, you could do worse than watch Gavin, Katherine and I discuss what Pope Benedict XVI meant to each of us: