You are introducing me to Ratzinger in a way I could not understand, before.
Thank you for this.
Is everything okay, sir?
I commend his honesty as far as it went. He was stuck btwn a rock and a hard place, that of knowing that decreeing the assumption of the Assumption an article of faith, thereby requiring the highest form of submission, could not be justified on the basis of warrant from hundred years of history that was silent on it, and the nature of what (fable) finally did provide some material for the belief that developed.
And yet as a cardinal, he had to uphold this promulgation as being Divinely revealed truth. And so his recourse was to act like a Cardinal Manning, that "The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour," that history, Tradition and Scripture is only what Rome authoritatively decrees. In the case of Ratzinger, his premise was that Rome can "remember"an event that there is no evidence of being forgotten. For which he even invoked John 16:12–13 and Jn 16:4 for support, of promises to be led into all Truth, and of remembering what the Lord has told the disciples, which broad promises can be invoked to sanction most any supplementary fable like the Assumption.
Likewise, Rome presumed to "infallibly' declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based criteria: pope or ecumenical in union w/ him defining a matter of faith and morals for the whole church). Which means that her declaration (Pastor Aeternus) itself that she is infallible, is infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares, past, present and future. She also essentially presumes protection from at least salvific error in non-infallible magisterial teaching on faith and morals.
Thus, the RCC is an object of faith, as is God.
Autocratic absurdity