A small but vocal number of Catholics are convinced not only that Francis is not the pope, but that Benedict XVI is still the valid pope. What are their arguments? Are they right—is Joseph Ratzinger still the pope?
Links:
• Roma Lucuta Est Blog
• Steven O’Reilly Twitter
• “Pia Fidelis: The Two Kingdoms” by Steven O’Reilly
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Transcript:
Eric Sammons:
A small but vocal number of Catholics are convinced not only that Francis is not the Pope, but that Benedict XVI is still the valid Pope. What are their arguments? Are they right? Is Joseph Ratzinger still the Pope? We’re going to talk about that today on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons your host and the editor in chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, I encourage you to like and subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it, help grow the channel. I really appreciate it if you do that. It really does help bump us up in the algorithms, the magic algorithms of YouTube and other podcast platforms if you subscribe to the channel and like this episode. Also, you can follow Crisis Media on the various social media channels, Twitter, GETTR, Gab, MeWe, Facebook, all of them. Usually just @CrisisMag is the best way to find us.
Today our guest is Steven O’Reilly. He is a former intelligence officer. He’s a graduate of the University of Dallas and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He’s had articles published in the old This Rock Catholic Answers magazine, OnePeterFive and LifeSiteNews. He’s the founder of the Roma Locuta Est blog which provides commentary on topics related to Catholic current events and apologetics. He’s also the author of an upcoming book called Valid, The Resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, which is expected to be out in August. That’s really what we’re going to talk about today. Welcome to the program, Steve.
Steven O’Reilly:
Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. Before we get started, let’s just say what the situation is, how odd it is. Currently there are two men living in the Vatican, at the Vatican, each wearing white papal robes, each being called Your Holiness and each maintaining the title in some form of Pope. Obviously this is confusing imagery at the very least. A lot of people are asking the question is Francis really the Pope? Online, this is probably a lot more vocal, a lot more strong than you would get in a regular parish. I don’t think there’s much discussion at your regular Catholic parish about whether or not Francis or Benedict is the Pope, but if you go online, Catholic Twitter or wherever, you see there’s a lot of people arguing, or it seems like a lot of people, they’re at least very vocal, that Benedict is still the Pope.
To be honest, it is a confusing situation. I do think there are a lot of sincere and well-meaning Catholics who are honestly unsure about the status of Francis and about whether or not Benedict is still the Pope. Now, those who don’t think that Francis is the Pope, they generally fall into two categories. One is the Sedevacantists who believe that there is no valid Pope. That just means the seat is vacant, no Pope. We’re not going to talk about that today, that’s a whole different discussion. What we’re talking about is that group of people who believe that Pope Benedict, for whatever reason, his resignation wasn’t valid, it didn’t happen, whatever the case may be, so he is still the Pope. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. First, to clear it up at the beginning, the first question I want to ask is what do we call the people or the view that Benedict is still the Pope? I’ve seen a lot of different names and I’ve seen people get upset at the various names. Let’s first clarify what should we call this theory?
Steven O’Reilly:
Sure. Well, when I first started writing on this subject back in 2017 on my blog I coined the term BIP which just stood for Benedict is Pope, quite literally, even though occasionally some folks have taken exception to that, somehow I’m being dismissive of them. It was not, it was just a way of naming them. Other folks have used Benevacantist and Beneplenist. In my book I decided, recently in my blog I’ve opted to use Benepapist or Benepapism. Again, not to be pejorative, just to be descriptive. I thought that Benedict is Pope or BIP as an acronym probably … long live Benedict but he is up there in age and, when he passes, Benedict is Pope, it will obviously no longer be an accurate name so I just thought Benepapism and Benepapists would be the terms I use on my blog and book.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. I think that’s good because it’s not trying to be demeaning or anything like that. Benevacantism was kind of a silly term. I know I used that at first too because it was jokingly connecting to Sedevacantists, but of course that makes no sense, the actual term, that Benedict is vacant or something like that. I think though Benepapist is good because it’s just simply the idea that Benedict is still the Pope right now. In just a few sentences, give the overall view of the Benepapist position other than just the fact that he’s obviously still the Pope. How would you describe that position?
Steven O’Reilly:
I think going back to the origins, I think that Benepapists, as you mentioned, they’re sincere folks. Like, I think, many Catholics, traditional Catholics, conservative Catholics, they’ve looked at the course of this papacy almost from its very beginning and all the odd things that have happened. We can go to 2016, Amoris Laetitia, there’s Pachamama, the Scalfari interviews and so many other things you kind of lose track. You have this situation where people wonder how could a Pope do this? How could a true Pope do this? Folks have cast about looking for theories. I mean, obviously you have things like the open letter which accused Francis of a delict of heresay. Some folks might say Francis was a true Pope but then maybe he fell or maybe he’s just a material error or maybe he might even be a heretic and they can’t do anything about it.
The Benepapist view is that they looked back at the original documents of the resignation and some of the oddities around the Saint Gallen Mafia. Did they somehow force Benedict out? Was there something wrong with his actual resignation statement? Then they looked at that overall situation and determined that his resignation was invalid. Therefore, if you can say Benedict’s resignation is invalid, he’s still Pope. If he’s still Pope, obviously Francis is not, problem solved and we can forget about things like Amoris Laetitia and all that. We just have to wait for the rest of the Church to catch up to us or to them. That’s how I think it originated. We can obviously go into some of the documents and some of the specific theories that they have.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Before we do that, it sounds to me though, I mean, this is how it appears to me as well, we have a problem and I think a lot of Catholics, good Catholics do acknowledge the problem and that is Francis is doing things that a Pope probably shouldn’t be doing or at least is scandalous. There’s our problem so what is the solution? I think there’s a lot of different answers that people have come up with. One is Sedevacantism, that Francis isn’t the Pope and there is no Pope. Either he was never a Pope and neither was Benedict or JP II or Paul VI going all the way back to maybe Pius XII, or that he was elected valid Pope and then he fell through heresy, some public heresy that they determined. That’s one idea.
Another idea is the view that I think a lot of people watching this and myself, I hold, is that he is a true Pope but, yes, these are problematic elements. They don’t invalidate his papacy but they do show, like in the past where Popes have done things that are bad, he’s a Pope that’s done things that are bad. Others have just tried to gloss over it saying, “Oh, it’s not really that bad. You’re misinterpreting him,” or something like that. Then of course this view of, “Well actually Benedict is still Pope,” the question becomes when did the idea that the papal resignation of Benedict was not valid, when did that originate? Was it right after in 2013 or did it take some time before it originated, before people started really promoting it?
Steven O’Reilly:
Well, I think some of the seeds are back there from the beginning. I think there were some canonists who had looked at how he had worded his resignation. I think that raised some eyebrows early on. There might have been two or three canonists who might have said something. Then of course, to my recollection, some of the earlier concerns were about the Saint Gallen Mafia, the illegal campaigning. Then, with regard to Benedict, was there any assassination attempt? I mean, there had been a Cardinal or a Bishop who had made some reference that he’d be dead within a year. There were concerns that the ATMs at the Vatican had been shut off I think in January 2013. Maybe this might have been something to push him out. I think those were some of the earlier theories.
As early as 2014 I think it was, Andrea Tornielli had interviewed Benedict and at that point he was even saying theories that his resignation was invalid were absurd. It does go back pretty far. I think, to my mind, what really launched Benepapism was the Gänswein speech in 2016. That’s when he did make some kind of … when you read it, on the surface at least that really raised a lot of eyebrows talking about an expanded papal ministry and that type of stuff. I think it was Ann Barnhardt who was the first to call that out. That’s when she came up with the theory, the substantial error theory that there was a substantial error in Benedict’s resignation, in his Declaratio. Then they found some evidence for that also in the last audience of Pope Benedict on February 27th, 2013, the day before his resignation. That became, I think, the basis for substantial error theory which has become one of the two major theories since that time.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Yeah. Let’s get actually into it now. Within Benepapism there is multiple views of what is happening, what happened and why his resignation was invalid or didn’t happen or whatever. I would say that, within those, there’s even breakdowns. One major view is the invalid resignation theory, that basically his resignation for various reasons, one or more, it was invalid. Another one is that, the other major theory is that, yeah, the resignation was invalid, but it was almost done on purpose. Whether or not Benedict meant to do it or didn’t mean to do it is somewhat debated within Benepapism.
Let’s first give the invalid resignation, the idea … Canon 188 says a resignation made out of grave fear that is inflicted unjustly or out of malice, substantial error or simony is invalid by the law itself. For example, let’s just give an example, if somebody puts a gun to Pope Francis … let’s just use Pope Francis, let’s say he’s Pope, puts a gun to his head and says, “You must announce your resignation or I will pull the trigger,” and then he announces his resignation, the law would say that’s an invalid resignation because he made it out of grave fear.
Steven O’Reilly:
That’s right.
Eric Sammons:
Another example, obviously simony, if somebody said to him, “Pope Francis, I’m going to give you a million dollars to resign,” and then he does, he announces his resignation, he gets a million dollars, that’s another case of an invalid resignation. Nobody’s accusing, by the way, Benedict or anybody of simony here, but they are saying both it’s potentially grave fear and the substantial error. First explain why some people would say that Pope Benedict’s resignation was made out of grave fear.
Steven O’Reilly:
Well, I think to go back to the Saint Gallen Mafia, we know they’ve existed from the mid ’90s and I think they expressed their reason to be was to oppose Cardinal Ratzinger at the time and then later to oppose his election in the 2005 conflict. You do have a group of people who were anti-Ratzinger from the beginning so you have that going on. Then you have, like I said, as I mentioned before, these rumors of a possible assassination. I think that surfaced around 2012. You have the financial shutdown of the ATMs for a period of time, I think in early 2013. The suggestion was that maybe there was something that pushed him out. When you look at all these theories, there’s no smoking gun that you can say, “This event is what led him to resign.”
You could say, if the Saint Gallen Mafia did it, you’d still need proof that it happened. Then of course, even if you found proof, today nine years later the question is would that now invalidate the resignation? That’d be probably a debate for the canon lawyers and theologians to go after, but my sense would be it probably would not invalidate it because, as Athanasius Schneider would say, situations like that would be healed in a route that the church has accepted this man as Pope Francis for the last nine years for the most part so therefore he is the true Pope.
Eric Sammons:
It sounds like there is some smoke when it comes to the grave fear theory in that there was definitely some funny business going on. Now personally I’ve read enough history of papal elections in the past, there are a lot of cases, in Medieval times particularly, where a lot of threats, I mean, Emperors and lots of stuff going on where Popes resigned. I mean, Popes were basically forced to resign by Emperors and things like that yet the church recognizes those resignations as valid. I feel like there have been cases of Popes who have resigned out of grave fear and the church has accepted them. This canon that states a resignation made out of grave fear is invalid by the law itself, I mean, how do we actually reconcile this with the fact that historically … I mean, it does seem like there have been cases where Popes were pushed out the door and the church now just recognizes, “Yeah, that all worked out and we’re fine.”
Steven O’Reilly:
That’s right. The other thing too I’d point out with regard to Benedict’s case is, if you look at the things he said in his Peter Seewald interviews which he did actually before he resigned and then afterwards, it’s clear that he recognizes that a Pope cannot leave under duress. The question was did the WikiLeaks scandal, which erupted in early 2012 … he said no, in fact he waited, he deferred his resignation until the gentleman was arrested and then they had a trial and the trial ended in October, late October, early November 2012. I think his resignation was, he really, I think, settled on it in December even though there’s strong indications that he told Petroni and he told Gänswein as early as June or July 2012 that he was going to resign. He deferred his resignation because of WikiLeaks. There’s no indication that he submitted to fear. Even though there might have been the smoke out there, there’s no indication that he understood himself to be under any kind of duress that led him to resign.
Eric Sammons:
Right. I think that, I mean, it’s almost like … you brought up what Bishop Schneider had mentioned about the church accepting Francis as Pope for the past nine years and the idea is that’s almost what happened historically when you had Popes who were pushed out of the papacy. The church accepted that and they accepted the next Pope. That, in a way, seems to almost trump canon law. I feel like when I’ve dealt with, talked to people who are the most adamantly for the Benepapist position, everything is very much centered around canon law. I don’t want to dismiss canon law as unimportant, but it does seem to be something a little bit greater than canon law working here when we’ve had cases in the past where stuff like this has happened and the church has said, “Okay, but we’re just going to move on with this person as Pope.” Am I right there or am I dismissing canon law too much in this case?
Steven O’Reilly:
No, I agree, man. I’ve done a lot research in my blog looking into the conclave. I do think there are a lot of oddities involved in that. This might not be the place to go into all that, but as you look into these oddities and you start looking at the canon, and I’m no canon lawyer, but it’s almost like, “Don’t do these things. Don’t get caught or don’t get caught too soon. If enough time goes by, you’ll be accepted.” I mean, it doesn’t say that, but I think the canon law is not intended there to create a legal case to knock down a papacy nine years later. Going to what you were saying, what Athanasius Schneider was saying, I mean, we can’t be nine years later going through some old textbooks, dusty canon law books from 300 years ago to say, “Ah, here’s this little thing here, B and C, it’s an invalid resignation,” and we undo nine years of everything. You just can’t do that. I mean, it is move on.
I mean, I do think Francis is Pope. I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow there was something that said he wasn’t, but I think that, when you look for a solution, you want a solution that’s a good theory. Benepapism, and we’ll get more into this, Benepapism is a bad theory and a bad theory is never a good substitute for a good theory.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Okay. Let’s move on from the fear motive to the one that’s probably the more substantial. That is that his resignation includes substantial error and that’s part of the Canon 188 that says if it’s made out of substantial error. I can’t think right off the top of my head of an example, but if a Bishop were to resign thinking one thing and actually doing another, being mistaken about something perhap
