From Friday 20 January in the bookstore What is Christianity. Almost a spiritual testament collection of Benedict’s posthumous writings edited by Elio Guerriero and Monsignor Georg Gnswein
The Pope Emeritus himself, Joseph Ratzinger, had asked the editors: the volume should have come out only after my death. So it was. What is Christianity. Almost a spiritual testament, on which Elio Guerriero and Monsignor Georg Gnswein worked, was sent to the bookshop by Mondadori yesterday 20 January (the Corriere anticipated an excerpt on Tuesday 17). And now we understand Benedict XVI’s caution towards his own posthumous pages: For my part, while I’m alive, I don’t want to publish anything anymore. The fury of the circles against me in Germany – Ratzinger had explained in a letter to Elio Guerriero – is so strong that the appearance of my every word immediately causes a shouting murderer. I want to spare myself and Christianity this.
You read it in What is Christianity, and not the only hard passage that Francesco’s predecessor reserves for his readers. Severe, for example, is the judgment reserved for certain circles of progressive Catholicism, especially in North America. There were individual bishops, and not only in the United States, who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole, aiming in their dioceses to develop a kind of new, modern catholicity. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that, in quite a few seminaries, students caught reading my books were considered unsuitable for the priesthood. My books were disguised as harmful literature and were read only on the sly, so to speak, reports the volume.
In another passage from the book, underlined by the Ansa news agency, Benedict XVI speaks of homosexuality and the fact that what he defines as gay clubs exist in various seminaries. Speaking of the meeting that Pope Francis had convened with the presidents of all the episcopal conferences of the world on the subject of sexual abuse committed within the Church, Ratzinger adds that in the context of the meeting of the presidents of the episcopal conferences of the whole world with Pope Francis , the question of priestly life is at heart above all and also that of seminaries. Specifically, with regard to the problem of preparation for the priestly ministry in seminaries, we note in fact a large collapse of the current form of this preparation. here that Benedict XVI explains that homosexual “clubs” were formed in various seminaries who acted more or less openly and who clearly transformed the climate in the seminaries.
The Bavarian Ratzinger then recounts that in a seminary in southern Germany, candidates for the priesthood and candidates for the lay office of pastoral contact person lived together. During common meals, the seminarians were together with married pastoral representatives, partly accompanied by their wives and children and in some cases by their girlfriends. The atmosphere in the seminary could not help priestly formation. Then he even reports that a bishop, who had previously been rector, he had allowed pornographic films to be shown to the seminarianspresumably with the intention of thereby enabling them to resist against unfaithful behavior.
Speaking of his sensational resignation in February 10 years ago, Benedict XVI explains that at that moment he was at the end of his strength. The book reads: When on February 11, 2013 I announced my resignation from the ministry of Peter’s successor, I had no plan for what I would do in the new situation. I was too exhausted to be able to plan other jobs. Furthermore, the publication ofChildhood of Jesus it seemed like a logical conclusion to my theological writings. but the activity of reflection and theological elaboration did not actually end. After the election of Pope Francis I slowly resumed my theological work. Thus, over the years, a series of small and medium-sized contributions have taken shape. Those, in fact, collected in the volume now in the library.
January 21, 2023 (change January 21, 2023 | 16:57)
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