Ratzinger’s lack of training in Thomas Aquinas as a young man opened himself up to new ideas of bifurcating the papacy. Bergoglio takes the active part (doing), Benedict retains the prayerful part (being).
- Being is unitive. It is personal. It is not divisible. Being is fundamental to Thomastic understanding and that which the Teutonic theologian Ratzinger avoided in his younger heady days. It is true he moved away from Rahner as he matured, but the attempt to split the papacy is indication that he has not sufficiently done so.
Ex/ John F. Kennedy was a president.
As president, Kennedy in enacts laws.
When Kennedy was shot, dying in the car, he was still president. Kennedy was still president and remained so until his death was pronounced. There was an interim period of no president. VP Johnson became (a form of being) the president only after the office was vacant and the proper oath administered along with his free consent. Kennedy could have remained in a coma for weeks following the shooting. It would not have stopped him from being president. Being involves essence. Doing, enacting laws, flows from the essence of a thing, the presidency. Form & matter.
- Jesus gave the keys to Peter, the man, singular.[1] The papacy is a juridical office established by Christ himself. The papacy is not given by the Church. The Cardinals elect a candidate with episcopal character and should act in accord with proper procedure. When Benedict accepted the decision, he became Pope immediately. The Cardinals did not make him Pope. Christ bestowed the papacy on him with his consent. When Peter was given the keys it was directly from the Lord and immediately effected.
No one, not even the Pope can change the nature of the office. He can only exercise it well, mediocrely, or poorly. It is a juridical office with special privilege of our Lord’s guarantee of freedom from error. It can be resigned. It is not a forever office. It does not impart an indelible character on the man’s soul. If it could not be renounced, then why are there laws governing resignations? Substantial error.
[1] At open variance with this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture, as it has ever been understood by the Catholic Church, are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in His Church, deny that Peter, in his single person, preferably to all the other Apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction; or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon Blessed Peter himself, but upon the Church, and through the Church on Peter as her Minister. If anyone, therefore, shall say that Blessed Peter the Apostle was not appointed the Prince of all the Apostles and the visible Head of the whole Church Militant; or that the same, directly and immediately, received from the same, Our Lord Jesus Christ, a primacy of honor only, and not of true and proper jurisdiction; let him be anathema. http://catholicplanet.org/councils/20-Pastor-Aeternus.htm accessed April 27, 2020
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