Posted on 09/27/2011 10:58:47 AM PDT by NYer
There is one front page news story that will certainly not go unnoticed: that is, that the Pope is thinking about resigning during the Spring of 2012. Journalist Antonio Socci has confirmed the same in the Italian daily, Libero.
"For now,” Socci writes, “he is saying that this may be true (Joseph Ratzinger’s personal assumption), but I hope the story does not reach the news. But this rumor is circulating high up in the Vatican and therefore deserves close attention. The Pope has not rejected the possibility of his resignation when he turns 85 in April next year.”
Socci recalls that the assumption he will resign, without any hitches, was the same thing Ratzinger talked about in an interview in the book “Luce del mondo” (Light of the World), when, in response to a question by interviewer Peter Seewald, he said: “When a Pope arrives at a clear awareness that he no longer has the physical, mental, or psychological capacity to carry out the task that has been entrusted to him, then he has the right, and in some cases, even the duty to resign.” Furthermore, in another passage, Benedict XVI wondered if he would be able to “withstand it all, just from the physical point of view.”
Socci makes the following observation in today’s edition of Libero: “Today, Pope Benedict seems to be in really good form; just the same, there’s the issue of his age and just how much energy he has left.” But the writer/journalist also recalls another passage from the same book interview, which has to do with the attacks and controversies related to the pedophile priests' scandal: “When there is a great menace, one cannot simply run away from it. That is why, right now, it is definitely not the time to resign.”
“It is actually at moments like these that one needs to resist and overcome difficult situations. One can only resign at a time when things are calm, or simply, when nothing more can be done about it. But one cannot run away right when the threat is alive and say, ‘Let somebody else take care of it.”
The issue of papal resignations has been the subject of debate for many decades. Pope Pius XII had prepared a letter in which he stated he would resign if he were taken away by the Nazis (“In that way, they will have Cardinal Pacelli, but not the Pope.”)
Pope John XXIII, while talking with his confessor, had taken into consideration that he would possibly have to leave when his illness worsened. Even Pope Paul VI, who had established the exclusion of those who were over 80 from the conclave, and renunciation of the episcopal seat at the age of 75, seriously thought about resigning in 1977, when he turned 80, but his entourage dissuaded him from going ahead with this. This issue came up again, in a dramatic fashion, with Pope John Paul Il’s long illness; he had even prepared a letter of resignation.
Anyone who knows Ratzinger would confirm that the answer he gave to Seewald, is what he feels would be best, in the event of him becoming physically, mentally, or psychologically incapacitated. However, such a possibility seems, at the moment, somewhat remote. In fact, one is immediately struck by the contrast between the front page story in Libero and the images coming from Germany, where Benedict XVI is concluding an historic trip, during which he made 18 speeches in four days. Many of these put him under considerable pressure, especially as they were entirely written by him. The German press was astonished at the old Pontiff’s endurance, which he demonstrated by the fact that he was able to manage all the exhaustion from moving around; he did not sleep more than one night in a single bed. And he was successful in carrying out a packed schedule of engagements, meetings, vigils, and celebrations.
This would show that nothing of what Benedict XVI himself said in answer to his alleged plans to resign, seems to be materialising.
Finally, a total media “distortion” caused an outburst of fear after explosive gunshots were heard yesterday in Erfurt. They were fired by an unbalanced youth with an air gun, who targeted two security guards, without wounding them, on a street just 500 meters from where the Pope was to celebrate mass, two hours before Ratzinger arrived. False alarms that were blown out of proportion by the media, were also raised when Pope John Paul II visited Mexico City in 2002, and a year ago, when Pope Ratzinger was in England.
I hope and pray this is just a rumor!
Popes don’t resign. They die.
I thought the Pope was supposed to die in office...never heard on any resignation? How does the Pope who is renowned to be infallible, resign from being God on earth? Does he become fallible after that?
This raises so many questions to me...
Me too! Amen!
I would think that any pope who resigned simply because of reaching a certain age would be setting a precedent which future popes would have a hard time ignoring. Resigning because of incapacity to carry out the duties of the office would be a different matter.
Pope Celestine V resigned because he didn’t think that he was suited for the office. Dante put him in hell as a result, but he was later canonized. (Dante has not been canonized...but he does have a very nice tomb in Ravenna.) Gregory XII resigned to help end the Great Schism (there were two other men claiming to be pope but he is generally regarded now as the rightful pope...but people at the time couldn’t figure out which was the true pope).
or something like that.
In 1595 Saint Malachy wrote a prophecy describing, quite accurately, each future pope to come. The final Pope on the list is the one following Pope Benedict.
Pope Celestine V
Been discredited so many times it's not even worth a new thread.
Unless he has some horrible illness, I don’t see this happening. I pray that is not the case, and this is just a rumor.
Assume that the Pope decides to resign because he feels that his faculties/strength/ability are beginning to ebb, and he wants to exit on his own terms, while still reasonably capable. The BIG question is how effective he could be in helping to choose his successor. College of Cardinals is an interesting place at election time..
There have been a handful of resignations and retirements in the last 2000 years, most famously Pope Celestine V , who retired to become a hermit, and is a canonized saint. Oh, and Pope Gregory XII (1406–1415), who retired to end the Western Schism.
No problem with the infallibility thing, which is not a "personal characteristic" of a Pope. It is a characteristic of the Church. It exercised by the Pope himself, only when he is, in very rare and formally limited circumstances, defining a doctrine on faith or morals in the name of the Church.
I hear that before NYER somebody post over the weekend about Pope retiring next April I think just rumor right now
Can Pope retired I know they could be overthrown that the series Borgias told me LOL!
</sarcasm>
Ping for later.
So, what has been discredited, that it was published in 1595 or that it correlates with 112 successive Popes?
The Pope is only "infallible" on certain issues. He can make mistakes:
"Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error[1] when he solemnly declares or promulgates to the universal Church a dogmatic teaching on faith as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation. It is also taught that the Holy Spirit works in the body of the Church, as sensus fidelium, to ensure that dogmatic teachings proclaimed to be infallible will be received by all Catholics. This dogma, however, does not state either that the Pope cannot sin in his own personal life or that he is necessarily free of error, even when speaking in his official capacity, outside the specific contexts in which the dogma applies."
The Pope is not God on earth.
"The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church (which is composed of the Latin Rite and the Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the see of Rome). In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle.
The office of the pope is known as the Papacy. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction is often called the "Holy See" or the "Apostolic See" based upon the Church tradition that the Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul were martyred in Rome."
(from wiki)
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