Fr Z yesterday wrote a very long post, what he described as a thought experiment, to resolve the “Two Popes” controversy, to at least put people’s mind at ease troubled by a Pope Emeritus Benedict still dressed in white living in the Vatican.
He actually takes seriously the “Ann Barnhardt thesis,” of all things. A thesis which goes so far as to suggest Benedict is a prisoner in the Vatican, his life under threat, who left bread crumb signs in his resignation speech that he still considers himself the Pope.
It is all sort of amusing, I guess, but a lot of Catholics take this very seriously. Which explains all the emails in Fr. Z’s inbox.
I actually read Fr Z’s whole blog post in detail to the very end, which was a mental marathon, twisting my mind into a pretzel, it being probably one of Father’s longest and most complicated posts he has ever written.
I am not a priest nor a professional theologian, but I will attempt to also help put people’s minds at ease, who are going through discouragement or even despair over the papal situation, which Father also discusses in that this topic is causing some Catholics to actually leave the Church. I’ve had my own perplexing moments.
I’ll speak from my own questioning of this thing the past 8 years, and very good past explanations from people like Fr Z himself.
My points, for what they are worth:
1. Benedict has been questioned on this, multiple times clarifying he did in fact resign the papacy, and DOES NOT consider himself a Pope, nor the Pope.
2. That or Benedict is lying to the Church, which we have no reason to think he is.
3. When he resigned, he never said or even implied he was retaining the “munus” or office, while resigning the ministry. Even if he didn’t write that word into his speech. Nowhere has he indicated this. In his resignation speech, he in fact said a conclave will elect a new “Supreme Pontiff,” not just a “Bishop of Rome” to carry out the active Petrine ministry. A Supreme Pomtiff is the Pope, and there can only be one Pope at a time, with the authority to bind and loose, and govern universally.
4. Yes, the evidence suggests Benedict thinks that after a Pope resigns the Office, some kind of papal mark continues ontologically in the soul of the man who was Pope before he resigned, that binds him in some way to pray for and serve the ministry of Pope. It is a novel, vague opinion, but in my understanding a Catholic could hold that view.
5. All of these questions continue since the 2013 conclave because of the problem of a Pope Francis pontificate. It is very difficult for a traditional Catholic to see this man as either a believing Catholic or Pope. We can give our personal opinion. You can guess nine. But if we declare it a dogmatic kind of certainty all should believe Francis an Anti-Pope, and Benedict still the real Pope, as to be frank one lay blogger has led countless to believe, then we commit one of the errors of Sedevacantism, which is objectively schismatic. Entertaining or promoting this level of certainty would be to encourage schism and spiritual turmoil.
6. That is, to go that far publicly, that Francis is certainly not the Pope, we would need the judgment of either an Imperfect Council of Cardinals, an Ecumenical Council, or a future Pope on their own. This is the major point of Bishop Gracida in Texas. It is the teaching of the Doctors of the Church.
Conclusion: Benedict is not to be considered a Pope, nor possibly the real Pope. He himself has said exactly this himself several times. And until the proper authority should declare Francis himself an anti-Pope, he is at worst a very bad, doubtful Pope to be prayed for nonetheless as such at each Mass. All the Popes since Vatican II have actively permitted a great modernist Crisis to eclipse the Church, including Pope Benedict himself, as relatively tradition-minded as he was. Therefore, this endless “two popes” controversy ought to be laid to rest, in my view.