Just a little distraction from the sedevacantist debate, here are some more of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) utterances. Like all Modernists (one day they are Catholic, the next day they are modernists) their theology was first influenced by Pope Pius VII's 1820 rejection of the 1616 decree of Pope Paul V with regard to a literal reading of Scripture. That was the birth of modernism.
Ratzinger’s opinion of Genesis 2:4-9, the creation of man from the soil of the Earth.
‘We are told you are not God, you did not make yourself and you do not rule the universe, you are limited. You are a being destined for death, as are all things living; you are only earth…..
All of this is well and good, one might say, but is it not ultimately disproved by our scientific knowledge of how the human being evolved from the animal kingdom?... But let us look a little closer, because here too, the progress of thought in the last two decades help us to grasp anew the inner unity of creation and evolution of faith and reason…. It perceived that all things that we used to consider as unchanging and immutable were the product of a long process of becoming.’--- In the Beginning,
Now the Council of Trent had long decreed: ‘Lastly, He formed man from the slime of the earth, so created and constituted in body as to be immortal and impassable, not, however, by the strength of nature, but by the bounty of God.’ Adam then, according to Trent, was not created for death, for that came only after Original Sin. But Cardinal Ratzinger prefers his Teilhard de Chardin’s version. He continues with the words ‘one might say.’ Such phrases were followed by more of his quoting others in such a manner that leaves the reader wondering if it is also his belief or not. It means in the event of the comment being challenged he or his apologists can say he was just quoting someone else (in this case Jacques Monod and in another as we will see, Paul Feyerabend) but it was not his personal belief.
In a departing speech to the parish priests and clergy of Rome by Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) on the occasion of his resignation from the papacy in February of 2013, the retiring pope gave an insight to his part in the Second Vatican Council, and the reasons given why the Council was called:
‘For me it is a particular gift of Providence that, before leaving the Petrine ministry, I can once more see my clergy, the clergy of Rome. It is always a great joy to see the living Church, to see how the Church in Rome is alive; there are shepherds here who guide the Lord’s flock in the spirit of the supreme Shepherd. It is a body of clergy that is truly Catholic, universal, in accordance with the essence of the Church of Rome… For today, given the conditions brought on by my age, I have not been able to prepare an extended discourse, as might have been expected; but rather what I have in mind are a few thoughts on the Second Vatican Council, as I saw it... Cardinal [Frings] invited me [Fr Joseph Ratzinger] to go with him to the Council, firstly as his personal advisor; and then, during the first session in November 1962, I was also named an official peritus of the Council. So off we went to the Council not just with joy but with enthusiasm. There was an incredible sense of expectation. We were hoping that all would be renewed, that there would truly be a new Pentecost, a new era of the Church, because the Church was still fairly robust at that time – Sunday Mass [the Tridentine Latin Mass] attendance was still good, vocations to the priesthood and to religious life were already slightly reduced, but still sufficient. However, there was a feeling that the Church was not moving forward, that it was declining, that it seemed more a thing of the past and not the herald of the future. And at that moment, we were hoping that this relation would be renewed, that it would change; that the Church might once again be a force for tomorrow and a force for today. And we knew that the relationship between the Church and the modern period, right from the outset, had been slightly fraught, beginning with the Church’s error in the case of Galileo Galilei; we were looking to correct this mistaken start and to rediscover the union between the Church and the best forces of the world, so as to open up humanity’s future, to open up true progress. Thus we were full of hope, full of enthusiasm, and also eager to play our own part in this process.’ (L’Osservatore Romano, Feb 14, 2013, page 4, and Libreria Editrice Vaticana website.}
Topic: Benedict nearing death? (Read 11673 times)