"Demythologizing the Papacy"

And absolutely fascinating report by the wonderful Edward Pentin on a presentation by Archbishop Georg Gänswein.

Archbishop Gänswein, who doubles as the personal secretary of the Pope Emeritus and prefect of the Pontifical Household, said Benedict did not abandon the papacy like Pope Celestine V in the 13th century but rather sought to continue his Petrine Office in a more appropriate way given his frailty....

Drawing on the Latin words “munus petrinum” — “Petrine ministry” — Gänswein pointed out the word “munus” has many meanings such as “service, duty, guide or gift”. He said that “before and after his resignation” Benedict has viewed his task as “participation in such a ‘Petrine ministry’.

“He left the Papal Throne and yet, with the step he took on 11 February 2013, he has not abandoned this ministry,” Gänswein explained, something "quite impossible after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005.“

Instead, he said, "he has built a personal office with a collegial and synodal dimension, almost a communal ministry...

“Therefore he has also not retired to a monastery in isolation but stays within the Vatican — as if he had taken only one step to the side to make room for his successor and a new stage in the history of the papacy.” With that step, he said, he has enriched the papacy with “his prayer and his compassion placed in the Vatican Gardens....

“So it is not surprising,” he said, “that some have seen it as revolutionary, or otherwise as entirely consistent with the gospel,  while still others see in this way a secularized papacy as never before, and thus more collegial and functional, or even simply more humane and less sacred. And still others are of the opinion that Benedict XVI, with this step, has almost — speaking in theological and historical-critical terms — demythologized the papacy.”

I will not deny that I miss Pope Benedict every day, but I utterly denounce this insistence on pitting the theology and faith and Catholicity of Francis against that of Benedict, or vice versa.
Different styles, different ways of expression, (there is no doubt to which I incline,) different personalities... different reserves of prudence? of the prudence of reserve?  but they are brothers in arms.
Cooperatores Veritatis , indeed.
The unseemly backroom machination against the popes are no surprise, but I did not know about the sister who had been killed in the car accident.
That is the kind of blow that can be hard to bear at any stage in life.
Any way, good read, thank you Catholic Register.
I am finding, with the raging partisanship that seems to have invaded every kind of social and institutionalized information supplying, that there is very little that we can depend on.
Sometimes our enemies tell us the truth, and our allies lie.
Did you hear what....? Well, no, so and so said that what really.... But it said in.... But were there actual quotations, or did someone mischaracterize... Yes, he wrote that but in context he clearly....
And yes, I have been troubled by some things actually said, and other things imputed to Pope Francis, and I don't always think he has phrased things as felicitously as he might have, or taken into account likely misinterpretations.
But so long as neither Ratzinger nor Gänswein has turned on him, neither shall I dare to do such a thing.