No matter how much Archbishop Ganswein wants to delude himself, Christ did not build His Church on a “ministry” or an “office.” He chose to build the Church on a man, Peter. Until today, I don’t think any Catholic writer in history has ever had to point out that Peter was one individual human being. Yet this is the level of detachment from reality we are dealing with in our time.
Churchmen today, learned in the make-believe modern philosophies, see reality as something subjective that can be toyed with. The entire teaching of the Church is like a large linguistic sandbox they play in. By reinterpreting the meaning of words, these men have made a living out of creating a false theological world that has no existence except in their own minds. Thus, it is really no exaggeration to say that the intellectual state of these men mimics mental illness.
If what Ganswein says is true, then Benedict XVI believes he possesses the power to fundamentally change what Christ laid down as if the papacy were his own personal plaything. What is truly frightening is that anyone would take this transformation seriously.. The papacy is the pope and the pope is the papacy. The papacy is not a job that can be separated into two sets of duties to be performed by two people. It is rather an institution which is inseparably bound to one individual at a time.
Therefore, Benedict the XVI is either the pope, or he is not. The same goes for Francis. Benedict has absolutely no authority or power to abdicate “some” of the papacy and outsource the rest to another. Yet Ganswein says “the papal ministry is not the same as before” and that Benedict XVI has “profoundly and lastingly transformed” it! Does he think us fools? Nobody, not even a pope, can change or alter one iota what Christ has established.
To admit otherwise, is to accept the absurdity that for 2,000 years there has always been a latent ability for multiple individuals to be “members” of the papacy. Is this yet another novel doctrine that was discovered in the inner workings of Benedict’s mind in the year 2013? Regardless, it is not true. It is a false non-reality. Nevertheless, we are now living in a frightening situation where our own prelates are no longer bound by reason or common sense much less Catholic doctrine. That the personal secretary of Benedict XVI could feel comfortable stating this abhorrent deformation of the papacy publicly and proudly is a clear sign that the crisis in the Church is reaching a fever pitch.
As Traditional Catholics we now seem to be watching much of the hierarchy and our Neo-Catholic brethren drift beyond mere serious disagreement with Tradition into a fantasy world where Tradition, common sense, and logic itself are jettisoned for hallucination and illusion. They are indeed headed towards a realm into which we can no longer follow them or hope to reach them. As Dr. John Senior said, “It is not that they have committed an error; they have abandoned intelligence.”
So, as the Conciliar Church continues to float this absurd self-refuting novel proposition as if it were serious, and as the Neo-Catholics begin writing their tomes of sophistic defense of this anti-reality, we are left like the man Dr. Senior referred to as “The poor lost functionary in the fabricated world of 1984.”As Orwell said:
“It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you -- something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense…
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command...And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! …Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth's center. With the feeling … that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
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