Benedict XVI, Ganswein & a Dual Papacy

Rorate is featuring an article by their anonymous cleric Pio Pace. In this article, Pio Pace posits what is in my opinion a ridiculous claim about Mgsr. Ganswein's comments about the "dual papacy."

You no doubt know to what I am referring; Ganswein stated that with the abdication of Benedict XVI, the Petrine ministry had been "enlarged" to include two popes - an active pope and a contemplative pope. So we would have a single Petrine ministry with two dual heads. This is not entirely new; both Benedict XVI and Pope Francis had hinted at a similar idea in the past. 

This is of course, absurd. And Pio Pace admits it, stating that the idea "makes no sense whatsoever" from a theological viewpoint. How ever, in order to save face for Benedict, he posits that the bizarre comments have some sort of "political" motive - that Ganswein and Benedict are attempting to posit Benedict as a "statue" of condemnation against Jorge Bergoglio in order to somehow weaken the legitimacy of the "active pope."

This claim is frankly ridiculous. It is an attempt to try to save face for Benedict XVI by trying to find some legitimizing motive behind the words of Ganswein, and ergo Benedict XVI, who has said similar things in the past.

Pio Pace says the theological explanation for the dual papacy concept "makes no sense whatsoever." The implication seems to be that Benedict XVI would never utter such a theological novelty. Therefore he defaults to assuming some "political" motive that makes Benedict into a clandestine anti-Bergolglian activist. The truth is much simpler: Benedict does in fact believe a theological premise that "makes no sense whatsoever."

This is one issue Traditionalists need to get over: Benedict XVI is not the "traditional" pope as opposed to Bergoglio the progressive pope. Benedict had a certain nostalgia for the traditional liturgy (and in my opinion it was nothing more than nostalgia), but he was a theological progressive in many ways. And with his abdication the "traditional" Pope Benedict perpetrated the greatest novelty of the modern papacy.

Anyone who has really studied the writings of Joseph Ratzinger knows that much of his theology is severely problematic. In fact, it is easier to find objectively heretical statements in the writings of Ratzinger than it is in John Paul II.

This is not to say Benedict is bad or was a failure as pope; but it is to say that we need not bend over backwards to read the bizarre statements coming from him or Ganswein as some sort of clandestine attack on Pope Francis. 

The reason Ganswein and Benedict have discussed an "enlarged" Petrine ministry is simply because Benedict really believes it. That's all there is to it; there's no subtle attempt to condemn Bergoglio. Benedict and Bergoglio are in fundamental agreement on this issue. Benedict has been a friend to Traditionalism, but only in an accidental sense. Essentially, he is a Teilhardian who thinks the Church needs to evolve - a stage in the "complexification" of spirit - and the enlargement of the Petrine ministry is probably just one aspect of this.

That's the simple truth.