March 16, 2016 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- On March 16, speaking publicly on a rare occasion, Pope Benedict XVI gave an interview to Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops' Conference, in which he spoke of a “two-sided deep crisis” the Church is facing in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The report has already hit Germany courtesy of Vaticanist Guiseppe Nardi, of the German Catholic news website Katholisches.info.
Pope Benedict reminds us of the formerly indispensable Catholic conviction of the possibility of the loss of eternal salvation, or that people go to hell:The missionaries of the 16th century were convinced that the unbaptized person is lost forever. After the [Second Vatican] Council, this conviction was definitely abandoned. The result was a two-sided, deep crisis. Without this attentiveness to the salvation, the Faith loses its foundation.
He also speaks of a “profound evolution of Dogma” with respect to the Dogma that there is no salvation outside the Church. This purported change of dogma has led, in the pope's eyes, to a loss of the missionary zeal in the Church – “any motivation for a future missionary commitment was removed.” Pope Benedict asks the piercing question that arose after this palpable change of attitude of the Church: “Why should you try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it?” As to the other consequences of this new attitude in the Church, the Catholics themselves, in Benedict's eyes, are less attached to their Faith: If there are those who can save their souls with other means, “why should the the Christian be bound to the necessity of the Christian Faith and its morality?” asked the pope. And he concludes: “But if Faith and Salvation are not any more interdependent, even Faith becomes less motivating.”
Pope Benedict also refutes both the idea of the “anonymous Christian” as developed by Karl Rahner, as well as the indifferentist idea that all religions are equally valuable and helpful to attain eternal life. He says: “Even less acceptable is the solution proposed by the pluralistic theories of religion, for which all religions, each in its own way, would be ways of salvation and, in this sense, must be considered equivalent in their effects.” In this context, he also touches upon the exploratory ideas of the now-deceased Jesuit Cardinal, Henri de Lubac, about Christ's putatively “vicarious substitutions” which have to be now again “further reflected upon.” That is to say, Christ's own acts in the place of others in order to save them eternally.
With regard to man's relation to technology and to love, Pope Benedict reminds us of the importance of human affection, saying that man still yearns in his heart “that the Good Samaritan come to his aid.” He continues: “In the harshness of the world of technology – in which feelings to not count anymore – the hope for a saving love grows, a love which would be given freely and generously.” Benedict also reminds his audience that: “The Church is not self-made, it was created by God and is continuously formed by Him. This finds expression in the Sacraments, above all in that of Baptism: I enter into the Church not by a bureaucratic act, but with the help of this Sacrament.” Benedict also insists that, always, “we need Grace and forgiveness.”
:shocked: This sounds like a man speaking with a view of his own Eternity.
More so than we'll ever know.
I've been getting into Malachi Martin during Lent, and he made a comment during one of his radio talks that was stunning: he said that Paul Vi (it seems they were friends) had "lost his faith" but "regained" it near the end of his life. Some context is extremely important: over the course of this radio interview, he spoke about the plot to destroy the Church, with one element being a cabal of high ranking Churchmen who sought JPII and other papal resignations, after which they would install a Pontiff that was one of them. It seems that although JPII was a bad Pope, he resisted; BXVI could not resist, and we now have Francis
who seems quite obviously a Modernist. Their mission is nearly accomplished (their aim is to eventually have a Church without a Pope: they want to have a rapid cycle of Papal resignations in order to acclimatize "Catholics" to the idea of a Church without a Pope, until they finally abolish the papacy).
We rarely think of the gravity or magnitude of the effects of every Pope's actions, and the effect on the condition of their souls, but I think BXVI and Paul VI were never spiritually fit in the first place and couldn't resist the spiritual, psychological, and intellectual onslaught of what it means to be Pope. I like to think of Modernism and moral nihilism as spiritual viruses with which we've all been infected. There's a cure and it's called traditional doctrine, but we have the potential to be repeatedly re-infected because of the overwhelming onslaught of the word's impurity.
Good Popes have to understand the ripple effects of sin in every action, but also in intellectual thought and philosophy and with every single social or spiritual issues that comes before them. These spiritually unfit men, in my opinion, couldn't do it because they were spiritually contaminated. Once there's some clarity through grace and repentance, I get the sense that they began to understand the magnitude of what they yielded to -- that the effects of their decisions as lone men would last decades and would imperil the souls of millions. I think the grief, remorse, sorrow, and shame that they are confronted with may also be supernatural in nature, a kind of mortification from God... We've all experienced it to a certain degree when we sin (if a person doesn't feel it, I'd bet money that they're surely damned).
When I consider it this way, it makes it incredibly impressive and stunning that Pope Saint Pius X became a Saint. In order to not only withstand that kind of onslaught (a lot of it supernatural/preternatural), but to demonstrate heroic virtue is astonishing. It also makes it apparent how much I lack that kind of spiritual willingness in my little station in life if I can't even overcome temptations and moral quandaries that are comparatively minor.
Topic: Pope Emeritus Benedict says Church is now facing a two-sided deep crisis (Read 2491 times)