Benedict’s Tragedy

So let us think the Benedict Conspiracy to its end.

The man is 91, but he is afraid of being killed.

Or, the man is 91, but he is more afraid of his reputation than of his salvation.

Or, the man is 91, but he thinks that protecting the Church from some sexual scandal is more important than letting her drift on the path of sacrilege and heresy.

All three hypotheses (and the Benedict Conspiracy revolves around variations of those) make of Benedict not only a very dumb man (all three) but also a very self-centred and actually pretty vain one.

All of them, also, go against what the man has kept saying from 2013: that he abdicated of his own accord and without pressure, that Francis is a great guy, and that there is continuity between his Pontificate and Francis’. Therefore, the Conspiracy Theorists also say that Benedict is a big, big liar.

The truth is, in fact, pretty easy to detect if only one looks at the facts.

Yes, Benedict abdicated of his own volition. Yes, he naively thought his predecessor would be one in his mould, setting an agenda of V II mild heresy compared to Francis’ antics. No, he did not expect the wreckage that came later or he would have conducted his Pontificate in the same way. Yes, to Benedict V II comes before orthodoxy; and yes, to Benedict not rocking the boat is more important than his eternal salvation, of which he has also, in pure Francis style, stated he is pretty sure anyway. And yes, yes, yes: the man is a follower, a water carrier, an order taker. There is nothing in him, nor was it ever, of the great, or even mediocre, leader of men.

This is the tragedy of this life explained in a blog post. A fitting punishment for A man who, since the Early Sixties, has thought that there could be a form of acceptable “heresy light”, and has always remained of his opinion; obeying to the wolves whenever told to, and trying to do thing a bit in his own way, every now and then, when he was at the top. But even then he never was a leader, and together with Summorum Pontificum he gave us a number of horrid episcopal and cardinalatian appointments.

What a weak, tragic life.

And he keeps working a it, and at his own likely damnation, at the ripe age of 91.

M