| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 31.440
Post: 13.528 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Gold | |
|
More reflections on Benedict XVI's eulogy for Cardinal Joachim Meisner…
The signals from Benedict XVI
in his eulogy for Cardinal Meisner
Translated from the blog of
ALDO MARIA VALLI
July 19, 2017
I don't know if you would agree, but I find the message of Benedict XVI in memory of his friend Joachim Meisner – besides being very beautiful in its simplicity, profundity and elegance – contains some messages that Joseh Ratzinger wants to communicate to us and whose importance goes far beyond remembering a pastor so greatly appreciated by the emeritus Pope.
In expressing his profound affection for the cardinal who died last July 5, Ratzigner invites us to reflect on some points that also tell us very much about Benedict XVI himself – how he sees the Church today, how he is living through this phase of his life, and of the priorities that the faithful should always keep in mind.
Onb his blog, Sandro Magister published the entire text of an Italian translation from the German original, and so we can savor the text word for word. [Valli proceeds to reprint the Italian text.]
I believe that in this message, Benedict XVI tells us much about himself, and his concerns and hopes for the faith and for the Church. Every word must be analyzed, but I shall limit myself to the thoughts expressed in it that struck me most.
At one point, Joseph Ratzinger says that "it certainly was not by chance" that Meisner's last visit "was made to a confessor of the faith". [ [He had attended the beatification ceremony for a Lithuanian bishop.]
To confess the faith, especially in the most difficult times, when everything seems lost: There is a mandate here. If it is not possible through words and gestures, if the circumstances impede a public profession, a person's life itself, with its fidelity and consistency, can become his confession of faith. Especially at a time like ours, marked by a secularization process that directly affects the Church herself, it is such testimony that accounts, and the faithful must pay attention to the signs that God sends us through such testimonies of faith.
I remember, in this respect, that in JESUS OF NAZARETH, Benedict XVI wrote about "the weak signals that God sends the world in order to break the dictatorship of habit" – signals that must not just be received but also searched for, to begin with, and to to do so, one must keep alive the necessary sensibility to do it. The persons able to receive such signals, Benedict XVI wrote, "scrutinize what is taking place around them to seek out what is great, what is good, what constitutes true justice and true goodness… who are not content with existing reality and do not stifle the heart's unease, that unease that impels man to seek something greater and to undertake an internal journey".
A second point in the eulogy for Cardinal Meisner is when Ratzinger underscores his "natural serenity, his interior peace and the trust that he had found" in his old age. A serenity, a peace, and a trust that certainly even Benedict XVI would have sought after he gave up the Pontificate, but perhaps, for many reasons, has not yet fully achieved. It is a treasure that the emeritus Pope seeks with such desire and continues to seek in prayer, in nearness to the Lord, and the prayers of his friends.
Related to the above is a third important point. It is clear that when Ratzinger speaks of pastors "able to oppose the dictatorship of the Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) and fully determined to act and think from the viewpoint of the faith", he also has himself and his experience as the Supreme Pastor in mind.
Without 'forcing' anything out of Benedict XVI's thoughts expressed in the letter, he almost seems to be asking himself: "Will I be able to carry out this task? Will I be sufficiently resolute at a time when the Church is in so much need of authentic pastors? Will my decision to give up the papacy be useful in this context?"
Shortly afterwards, in the eulogy for Meisner, Ratzinger himself emerges clearly. When Benedict XVI says that he was most struck that his friend, in the final phase of his life, had learned "to let go and live more than ever with the profound certainty that the Lord does not abandon his Church, even if sometimes the boat seems on the verge of capsizing" – we see him here, although backlighted, at the moment of his renunciation that was both dramatic and liberating, a decision he made with total trust in the Lord who does not abandon the Church even if disaster, from a human viewpoint, seems so close.
The reference to the boat of the Church reminds us directly of the words pronounced by Cardinal Ratzinger, on April 18, 2005, in his homily at the Missa pro eligendo Pontefice at St. Peter's Basilica on the eve of the 2005 Conclave – words which would seem in hindsight to have been the 'electoral manifesto' of the future pope:
How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.
The boat may be overwhelmed by the waves, may seem to be adrift, but the Lord does not allow it to be shipwrecked because he never sends us a trial without also giving us the strength to face it. And precisely when shipwreck appears nearest, we ought to raise our 'antennae' well to seek out those 'weak signals' that God never tires of sending us – this is the duty of everyone, consecrated persons as well as laymen, to become like spiritual 'radio receptors' that will place us on the wavelength in which Gods sends his messages.
Now we come to Eucharistic Adoration. In the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, I was there as a reporter and I remember very well the night of the Prayer Vigil before the concluding Mass: The Eucharistic Adoration in which almost a million young people participated on the plain in Marienfeld was an unprecedented event. The silence was total, the recollection and contemplation were absolute. Those young men and women launched a very powerful message. Kneeling in prayer and adoration, they demonstrated in the most effective way that Eucharistic Adoration was not a practice that has become obsolete, but that it is at the heart of our experience of the faith. They gave the lie to supposed experts in liturgy and 'pastoral' ministry who said that what Benedict XVI intended to do – introduce Eucharistic Adoration as the main feature of the WYD Prayer Vigil – would never succeed.
Why did Benedict XVI, evoking that prayer vigil with young people in Cologne, underscore in his eulogy for Meisner that "we cannot eat this Bread as if it were any common nourishment", that to receive the Lord in the Eucharistic Sacrament "affects all the dimensions of our life" and that "to receive him must be to adore him and to worship him, which is something that becomes increasingly clear every day"?
These reflections, brief but precise, are in their turn signals that Benedict XVI is sending. Which reminds us of another intervention by Joseph Ratzinger not too long ago. I refer to the brief remarks he gave off the cuff on June 28 last year, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of his priestly ordination.
It had not been on the program that after Pope Francis gave his address, Benedict XVI would reply. But the Emeritus Pope – who was back at the Apostolic Palace for the first time since he left it on February 28, 2013 – rose to say some words, and after the customary civilities, proposed a thought centered on the Eucharist.
Recalling that on the day they were ordained, one of his friends [Rupert Berger] had the word Eucharistomen [dim=8pt[ Greek for 'We give thanks' ] printed on his commemorative prayer card, Benedict XVI said:
“Eucharistomen”! On that occasion, my friend Berger wished to evoke not just the dimension of human gratitude, but of course, the more profound word it hides which appears in liturgy, in Scripture, in the words "Gratias agens benedixit fregit deditque" ("giving thanks to Thee, blessed it, broke it and gave it (to his disciples").
'Eucharistomen' brings us back to the reality of that thanksgiving, the new dimension that Christ gave it. He had transformed the cross, suffering, all the evils of the world, into a thanksgiving and therefore a blessing. Thus, fundamentally, he trans-substantiated life and the world, and he gave us - and gives us every day - the Bread of true life which triumphs over the world, thanks to the power of his love.
In the end, we wish to be included in the Lord's thanksgiving, so that we may truly receive a new life and help in the trans-substantiation of the world - that it may be a world not of death but of life, a world in which love has triumphed over death.
I have asked myself why, on that day, and with such precision, Benedict XVI decided to focus on the Eucharist and trans-substantiation. [At the time, the most proximate reason was probably the announcement that Bergoglio would be going to Sweden to concelebrate the opening of the 500th centenary of Luther's schism with a Swedish pastor, added to the fact that earlier, at a visit to the Lutheran Church in Rome, Bergoglio had indicated he would allow inter-faith communion to a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic. Even if Protestants do not believe in Trans-substantiation at all, and for them, 1) the act of communion is merely a symbolic participation in the Lord's Supper, not a re-creation of his supreme sacrifice for mankind, and bread and wine remain nothing but bread and wine, and 2) a Catholic priest's Consecration of these species do not mean they are trans-substantiated into the real Body and Blood of Christ. Of course, Benedict XVI was also speaking just three and a half months before the second Bergoglian family synod, meant like the first one in 2014, to force the synodal Fathers to allow communion for remarried divorcees who continue to live in adultery. IMHO, this potential disrespect for the Eucharist was Benedict XVI's priority concern.]
And now, in his message about his friend Meisner, he refers anew to the Eucharistic Bread 'that cannot be eaten like any common nourishment" and that in this Presence, we have a duty to worship and to adore. An insistence that cannot be casual.
Some commentators, not without malice, have asked whether the eulogy for Meisner was written by Benedict XVI himself. As far as I am concerned, not only I am completely certain that this is all Benedict XVI, but that it is also important to examine the signals that Joseph Ratzinger thereby wanted to send us all. [And we can be sure Cardinal Meisner in the house of the Lord is only too happy that Benedict XVI had this occasion to send the signals that he did!]
Another 'reading' of the Meisner eulogy comes from Fr. De Souza, who does not think that Benedict XVI's remarks about the state of the Church today was meant in any way as a criticism of his successor. It is true that even in his time, Benedict XVI had used the image of a floundering Church as perennially potential if not actual, but how can we say he did not mean this time to underscore that the image of a Church on the verge of capsizing has become quite actual today? As punctiliously (and overly, IMHO) discreet as he has been these past four years about showing any sign of 'disobedience' or 'disrespect' for his successor, Benedict XVI is certainly not naïve, and we know from his own abundant and compelling Magisterium and the record of his life where he stands on all the heterodox positions and statements that his successor has taken. Because he has become a virtual prisoner of Bergoglio does not mean that he has turned his back on everything he taught and lived before March 13, 2013!
In a way, we do not even need to hear from him what he thinks of every single thing we object to about Bergoglio – we merely have to look into what he has said and written on any specific topic in the past. Which is why it is most unfortunate that he said those words which sounded like total unconditional support of everything Bergoglio says and does, at the opening of his last book-length interview with Peter Seewald. Never mind if, from the timeline, it appears he gave that part of the interview shortly after Bergoglio's election, that is, before it became undeniably clear that this Argentine arriviste intended to remake the Church of Christ in his own image and likeness! Those words documented in a book have given all of his new enemies among Catholic commentators a basis to now continually mock him as 'nuBenedict' or 'deutero-Benedict' (Melloni's Latinized version of what modern parlance would call Benedict 2.0), and to look back on all his teachings on Vatican II as a reinforcement of its false 'spirit' and therefore contributing to the destruction of the Church like Paul VI and John Paul II, a destruction that is only being accelerated and perhaps meant to be achieved by Bergoglio. The latest twist of the knife in this respect is some essay in Rorate caeli by a priest who rants against "the fake hermeneutic of continuity". And Mundabor, much as I agree most of the time with him in his anti-Bergoglio screeds, has been abominably and unforgivably venomous to Benedict XVI lately.
His farewell to Cardinal Meisner
was vintage Ratzinger
The pope emeritus’ July 11 message reminded all listeners why Benedict XVI.
remains without literary peer among Catholic preachers and theologians
By Father Raymond J. de Souza, SJ
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER
July 19, 2017
There was a surprise at the funeral Mass of Cardinal Joachim Meisner on July 15 in Cologne; a message was read from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, dated July 11. The message was not as explosive as some commentators with short memories made it out to be; it was vintage Ratzinger, always alert to the precarious state of the Church.
The message reminded all listeners why Benedict remains without literary peer among Catholic preachers and theologians; in just 650 words (in the English translation), he summarized the arc of a great Churchman’s life in light of the signs of the times. In an ecclesial environment of increasingly strident language, Benedict’s characteristically serene and luminous intervention was a gift to the memory of his great friend. The mellifluous message was significant in seven ways.
A capsizing Church
The image that garnered the most attention, accompanied by inflamed headlines in some quarters of the Catholic media, was Benedict’s depiction of a beleaguered Church:
This passionate shepherd and pastor found it difficult to leave his post, especially at a time in which the Church stands in particularly pressing need of convincing shepherds who can resist the dictatorship of the spirit of the age and who live and think the faith with determination. However, what moved me all the more was that, in this last period of his life, he learned to let go and to live out of a deep conviction that the Lord does not abandon his Church, even if the boat has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing.
That ought not be interpreted as though Benedict thinks the Church is floundering under Pope Francis. There is no basis for ]that in any public record. [What does Father mean by 'that' – that Benedict thinks it, or that the Church is floundering under Francis?]
Dutifully enough, Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein — who read the message at the funeral — clarified that, of course, Benedict’s remarks were not directed at Pope Francis. ['Dutiful' is the appropriate adjective – dutiful to the pope, his official boss, but a gratuitous remark since he volunteered it and was not asked about it. But how could it be dutiful to the emeritus Pope, his private boss by his personal choice? He could have said more neutrally, "I read exactly what Benedict XVI wrote – it is not my place to interpret it, as I think his words are quite clear."]
The image of the boat taking on water is a favorite of Benedict’s. At the Mass before the conclave in 2005, when he preached against the “dictatorship of relativism” — to which he returned in Cardinal Meisner’s funeral message — he spoke also of stormy waters:
How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves — flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth.
And in his last general audience before his abdication, on Feb. 27, 2013, he returned again to the biblical image of the Church as a boat in danger of sinking:
I have felt like St. Peter with the apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: The Lord has given us so many days of sun and of light winds, days when the catch was abundant; there were also moments when the waters were rough and the winds against us, as throughout the Church’s history, and the Lord seemed to be sleeping.
But I have always known that the Lord is in that boat, and I have always known that the barque of the Church is not mine, but his. Nor does the Lord let it sink; it is he who guides it, surely also through those whom he has chosen, because he so wished. This has been, and is, a certainty which nothing can shake.
For long decades, Ratzinger/Benedict has considered the state of the Church — especially in his native Germany — to be in dire shape. His message for Cardinal Meisner’s obsequies could not refrain from returning to that theme, as the two of them spent most of their life together in a boat that was taking on water. Nothing more need be read into Benedict’s image than that. . [I beg to disagree, most vehemently, though I have, of course, compelling reasons to do so: The Emeritus could hardly have been referring to the Church in Germany alone – whatever Mons. Gaenswein or Fr. De Souza may say. Even the passages from the past that Fr. De Souza cites refer to the universal Church, not to some particular Church. (BTW, I am surprised that both Valli and De Souza forgot that Joseph Ratzinger used almost the identical phraseology about the boat in danger of capsizing most famously in the Ninth Prayer for the Ninth Station of the Cross in the Via Crucis meditations he wrote for Good Friday 2005 less than a month before he would be elected Pope.)
As a virtual 'prisoner of the Vatican' (even if the initial circumstances were his choice), living within Vatican walls in itself puts Benedict XVI in the position of a vassal to the lord of the fiefdom who has every means to compel his subjects' compliance – especially when, in this case, the subject is someone who had pledged publicly his obedience and respect to the new pope before anyone even had any idea of who his successor would be to the cardinals who had gathered to elect a new pope. That pledge was a virtual self-estoppel for Benedict XVI – and in hindsight, he ought not to have said it at all, as no one was expecting him to say it. But he did, and he has to live with it as best as he can. How could he, a vassal, disobey, much less, denounce, his liege lord to whom he had preemptively pledged his obedience and respect?
He has to denounce what he thinks wrong or misguided in his successor's words and actions indirectly – and Cardinal Meisner's funeral gave him a great opportunity to do so. In stating general observations about the Church and the life of a dedicated pastor like Meisner, he delivers his commentary on the current state of the Church without having to name anyone. And it is also the best answer to those who claim Benedict believes he is just as much pope today as his successor - otherwise he would not be living under Bergoglio's thumb as he does, in effect. (In the same way that he availed of the Meisner eulogy and of his brief remarks to mark the 65th anniversary of his ordination, he had availed earlier of a message on the inauguration of the Aula Magna renamed in his honor at the Gregorian University to deplore, in effect, the 'replacement' of the Church's mission to evangelize and bring more people to Jesus by the effete and ultimately ineffective idea and practice of inter-religious dialog.)]
Brothers in battle: Ratzinger and Meisner
Cardinal Meisner was Benedict’s best friend in the German hierarchy; they had spoken by phone the day before he died. Meisner himself revealed that, during the conclave of 2005, he fought “like I have never fought before” to see Joseph Ratzinger elected.
After his election, it was reported that Cardinal Meisner still called Benedict “Joseph” in private. Meisner was the one who went to Benedict asking that he sack his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, as he was not being served well. Benedict refused, but that Cardinal Meisner could ask indicated his closeness to the Holy Father.
Together, Meisner and Ratzinger were the two great pillars of Catholic orthodoxy in a turbulent time for the Church in Germany. Ratzinger became archbishop of Munich in 1977, and then came to Rome as prefect of doctrine in 1981. Meisner was made an auxiliary bishop of Erfurt-Meiningen, a diocese in East Germany, in 1975. In 1980 he became bishop of a still-divided Berlin, and in 1988, he was named archbishop of Cologne, Germany’s premier diocese. He held that post for 25 years, until he retired at 80 in 2014.
The Church in Germany has an outsize influence in global Catholicism, due to the level of its scholarship, its well-developed institutions and its vast sums of money. It was critical to the life of the Church universal that Ratzinger and Meisner brought that influence to bear partly for good over the last 40 years. Their friendship was forged in many battles fought together.
A life fraught with history
Benedict began his message:
We had spoken on the telephone to one another just the day before. Gratefulness for finally being able to begin his vacation, after having participated in the beatification ceremony of Bishop Teofilius Matulionis in Vilnius on the previous Sunday (June 25), was audible in his voice. Love for the Churches in the neighboring countries to the East, which suffered under communist persecution, as well as an appreciation for their holding fast amidst the suffering of those times, made a lifelong impression upon him. And, thus, it is no coincidence that the last visitation of his life was paid in respect to a “Confessor of the Faith” from those lands.
Joachim Meisner was born on Christmas Day 1933 in Breslau, Germany. When he was born, Berlin was only three years old as a diocese, having been carved out of the Diocese of Breslau. After the war, Breslau became Wrocław, Poland, and the Meisner family shifted west as the map of Germany shifted west. He grew up under communism and became a bishop in a German Church divided between west and east, free and persecuted; he lived that division daily when he became bishop of Berlin in 1980. Upon his transfer to Germany’s most important see in 1988, he witnessed the unification of Berlin and of Germany.
In his life of nearly 84 years, Meisner lived under the Third Reich, Soviet domination, a divided Germany and a free and united Europe. His solidarity with the enslaved Churches under communism was borne of experience. He, along with Ratzinger, belongs to the last generation of those pastors who witnessed the drama of totalitarian atheism in Europe.
Eucharist and confession
The consolations of old men who have seen much and endured much are worth noting. Benedict did just that:
Of late, two things caused [Cardinal Meisner] to become ever more joyful and confident: For one, he repeatedly related to me how it filled him with profound delight to see how young people, especially young men, experienced the grace of forgiveness in the sacrament of confession — the gift of having truly found that life which only God can give them… The other thing which always touched him anew and put him in a joyful mood was the quiet spread of Eucharistic adoration…
The Eucharist and confession are the two sacraments that can be received frequently; they are thus the pillars of a sacramental life, and the sacraments are the lifeblood of the Church. There can be no healthy ecclesial life without confessional practice and Eucharistic devotion. That Cardinal Meisner, after a long pastoral life engaged in various challenges and many temporalities, would be heartened by a renewal of both sacraments meant that he never forgot what the Church exists for, namely “the life that only God can give.”
World Youth Day
The 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, scheduled before Ratzinger became pope but which was providentially his first foreign trip, brought Benedict and Cardinal Meisner together at global Catholicism’s grandest event. It was observed that Benedict put his own stamp on WYD at Cologne, adding a prolonged period of Eucharistic adoration to the Saturday evening vigil. Benedict now reveals Cardinal Meisner’s key role in that decision:
At World Youth Day in Cologne, this was a central concern of his: that there be adoration — a silence in which only the Lord speaks to the heart. Some experts in pastoral work and liturgy were of the opinion that such silence in contemplation of the Lord could not be achieved with such a large number of people. A few even considered Eucharistic adoration as such to be obsolete, as the Lord desires to be received in the Eucharistic Bread, and not examined. That, however, one cannot eat this Bread like some common nourishment, and that to “receive” the Lord in the Eucharistic sacrament makes demands upon every dimension of our existence — that to receive must be to adore — has since become, once again, very clear. Thus the interlude of the Eucharistic adoration at the Cologne World Youth Day became an interior event which remained, and not only for the cardinal, unforgettable. This moment remained ever present, like a great light, within him.
One expects that that night remains a great light for Benedict, too, demonstrating again the centrality of World Youth Day in the life of the Church — not only for the young, but their pastors, too.
Benedict engages
It was noted widely [and inevitably] that Cardinal Meisner was one of the four dubia cardinals. Along with Cardinals Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra and Walter Brandmüller, Cardinal Meisner signed his name to formal questions put to Pope Francis challenging the apparent papal interpretation of Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).
Benedict certainly knew that his speech at Cardinal Meisner’s funeral would be interpreted as an act of support for the four cardinals’ initiative. But there is no real doubt about what Benedict thinks on the matter, as his own magisterium is clearly opposed by the very interpretations of Amoris Laetitia the four cardinals were attempting to correct. That he might want to salute the last great act of fidelity of a friend and great Churchman is understandable.
Benedict has clearly taken a decision to engage — quietly but unmistakably — over the past year. His decision to write the foreword to the German edition of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s latest book, Silence, was a recent example, where he gave his endorsement to the liturgical path Cardinal Sarah is following.
Both Cardinal Sarah and Cardinal Meisner have been attacked by those who apparently enjoy favor by Pope Francis, so Benedict’s decision to publicly praise them is significant. And if Benedict is doing that publicly, one can quite imagine what he is saying in his private correspondence, in phone calls and to his visitors. [So Fr. De Souza, does that not contradict your hypothesis that the words in the Meisner eulogy were not meant at all to be a criticism of the Church in the age of Bergoglio?]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/07/2017 05:22] |