Benedict XVI: Defender of the Faith

By Joseph Pearce

Pope Benedict XVI will go down in Church history as one of the greatest popes. In this heartfelt defense of Pope Benedict's words and works, a tribute to his life and legacy and a homage to his sanity and sanctity, Joseph Pearce's biography provides an unforgettable encounter with this great historical figure.

As the defender of the Faith, Pope Benedict XVI fought tirelessly and largely successfully against the forces of secularism first as the indomitable Ratzinger and then as the incomparable supreme pontiff. As an uncompromising defender of the dignity of the human person, he fought the wickedness of the world in his unremitting battle against the dictatorship of relativism and its culture of death. Within the Church, he fought against the spirit of the world in his war on modernism and its worship of the spirit of the age, restoring the splendor of truth in his defense of orthodoxy and the splendor of the liturgy in his defense of tradition. Years from now, Catholics will still look back on Pope Benedict's enduring legacy with enormous gratitude. For he successfully steered the barque of Peter in charity and truth against the evil tides that sought to engulf the Church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TAN Books
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781618907370

Joseph Pearce

Joseph Pearce is the author of numerous literary works including Literary Converts, The Quest for Shakespeare and Shakespeare on Love, and the editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series. His other books include literary biographies of Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

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Benedict XVI

Joseph Pearce’s biography demonstrates the immense devotion and enthusiasm Pope Benedict evoked among the young disciples of Jesus around the world. Pope Benedict is probably the best theologian among all the popes and he should become a Doctor of the Church. Joseph Pearce’s work will help further this cause.

—George Cardinal Pell

In an age marked by so much frenzied and false search for man’s purpose, a pope whose brilliance was exceeded only by his love of Jesus Christ directed and redirected the focus of the faithful over and over to the complementary realities for which man was made: human friendship and divine worship. Joseph Pearce, with his customary liveliness and his rare capacity to render the complex accessible, has performed a unique and highly valuable service in revealing to the faithful the heart and mind of a pope whose magnificence never once hindered his humility.

—Christopher Check, President, Catholic Answers

This very clear and accessible new biography of Pope Benedict XVI is a perfect introduction to the life of this great theologian and pope. Joseph Pearce has managed to make the thought of this soaring intellect and prayerful soul understandable and compelling for the ordinary reader. Pearce gives us the main outlines of Benedict’s life, then takes us with him from the enthusiastic joy of Benedict’s election on April 19, 2005—‘As the name of Joseph Ratzinger was proclaimed as the new Vicar of Christ, all heaven broke loose!’—to the unexpected sorrow of Benedict’s resignation on February 11, 2013. Throughout, Pearce makes a compelling case for his conclusion: that ‘Benedict will be remembered as one of the greatest defenders of the Faith in the Church’s long and tempestuous history.’

—Dr. Robert Moynihan, founder and editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, author of Let God’s Light Shine Forth: The Life and Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (2005)

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Joseph Pearce’s Work

"Joseph Pearce has a remarkable gift of writing about history, literature, and culture in general. His writing is objective and accessible, that is, it shows his steadfast attention to the truth and to language which manifests the same truth in its inherent beauty or natural attractiveness….

I express deepest gratitude to Joseph Pearce for his … tireless pursuit of the truth revealed to the heart of man by reason and by faith as it is manifest in the beautiful and the good. It is my hope that his pursuit may inspire the same pursuit in the reader, who, attracted by the beauty of the truth, will be ever more disposed to follow the truth by what is most beautiful of all, a good and holy life.

—Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

BENEDICT XVI

Joseph Pearce

TAN Books

Gastonia, North Carolina

Benedict XVI: Defender of the Faith © 2021 Joseph Pearce

All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Creation, exploitation and distribution of any unauthorized editions of this work, in any format in existence now or in the future—including but not limited to text, audio, and video—is prohibited without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Excerpts from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Spe Salvi, Caritas in Veritate, Deu Caritas Est, Summorum Pontificum and other encyclicals, speeches, and other writings copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by www.davidferrisdesign.com.

Cover image: Pope Benedict XVI © L’Osservatore Romano, used with permission.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021946024

ISBN: 978-1-61890-736-3

Kindle ISBN: 978-1-61890-738-7

ePUB ISBN: 978-1-61890-737-0

Published in the United States by

TAN Books

PO Box 269

Gastonia, NC 28053

www.TANBooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

For Joseph Fessio, S.J.

In admiration, gratitude, and friendship

CONTENTS

In Gratitude

Foreword

Prologue: An Apology

1. Living with Big Brother

2. Heilige Geist or Zeitgeist?

3. Weapons of Mass Destruction

4. The Rise of Ratzinger and the Fall of Man

5. Being Human

6. The Spirit and Antispirit of Vatican II

7. Sex, Slavery, and False Liberation

8. The Spirit of the Liturgy

9. Habemus Papam!

10. Young People and the Love of God

11. Faith and Reason

12. Restoring Tradition

13. Faith, Hope, and Clarity

14. God and Globalism

15. A Pilgrimage to England

16. Defender of the Faith

About the Author

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

IN GRATITUDE

The author would like to express his heartfelt gratitude to Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke who had agreed to write the foreword to this book until a serious COVID-related illness prevented him from being able to do so. In addition, the author would also like to thank Scott Hahn for agreeing to step into the breach at very short notice to provide the foreword.

FOREWORD

This book is surprising. This book is unique.

But it earns those adjectives not because it is about the man we knew as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and know today as Pope Emeritus Benedict. Books about that man constitute a genre by themselves—and I love those books, because I love the man.

There are thick volumes that situate him in history, that summarize his writings on the liturgy, that synthesize his theology of the Church, that place him in relation to one or another thinker, that trace the development of his thought on faith and culture.

This book touches on all those things, but only in a subordinate way.

Joseph Pearce did not write this book to analyze anything, or advance an agenda, or incite responses from excitable academics or pundits.

What he did was produce a portrait of a beautiful man—a shy, kind, Christian man who received many gifts from God in the course of his life. And, as we see in these pages, he labored to use all those gifts in loving service of the Giver.

Yes, we see the man’s luminous intellect. That light could not be hidden under a bushel. But we also see his humor, his sense of family, his enduring friendships, his counsel given to both the lowly and the mighty. We come to know him through the things that are most important to him, rather than the themes that pique our curiosity—or our hunger for gossip.

Thus, I see, for perhaps the first time on paper, the image of the most remarkable man I have met—the man whose books led me gently but inexorably to the Catholic Church.

Joseph Pearce makes abundantly clear the gift we have had in Joseph Ratzinger and Pope Benedict. God gave him to the whole world as a cardinal and then as pope.

Joseph Pearce has now given him to us as a gentleman we are compelled to love, a true Defender of the Faith.

At the end of the book, the response of my heart rose with words from the Roman Missal: Deo gratias! Thanks be to God!

Thanks, too, to my friend, Mr. Pearce.

Scott Hahn

PROLOGUE

AN APOLOGY

Like most people, or at least like most Catholics, I remember exactly where I was on April 2, 2005, the day John Paul II died. Minutes after hearing the deeply saddening news, I gathered together with Father Joseph Fessio and a small group of students on the campus of Ave Maria University in Florida, in the open air, to pray for the Pope. I don’t remember the actual prayers that were said, but I do recall that we sang the Salve Regina, beseeching the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for the Pope and for the Church.

Even as we grieved for the passing of one pope, our minds and prayers were already turning to thoughts of the next. The Church was under siege from her secularist enemies from without and was being betrayed by the modernist fifth columnists from within. She was in need of a strong and faithful shepherd to protect the flock from the wolves outside her walls, baying for her blood, and the wolves in sheep’s clothing within her own ranks, betraying her with a kiss. Even though we knew that Christ would protect His bride, it was difficult to avoid feelings of anxiety as we awaited the election of John Paul’s, and Peter’s, successor.

Like most Catholics, I also remember where I was on April 19, 2005, the day Pope Benedict XVI was elected. I was once again on the campus of Ave Maria University and, in union with Catholics around the world, was waiting with bated breath for news from the conclave. As the chapel bell of the university began to chime, I knew that the wait was over. White smoke must have risen from the chimney above the Vatican. We had a new pope! I rushed to the cafeteria, where a large group of students and faculty had already gathered, crowding around the TV screen. Hope and anxiety filled the room. The wait seemed interminable, the tension unbearable, the silence deafening. Highly charged emotions were held in check by the absence of knowledge: a vortex in a vacuum. The doors opened. Another excruciating wait before anyone emerged. Eventually, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez made the long-awaited announcement in Latin: Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: HABEMUS PAPAM! As Joseph Ratzinger was proclaimed as the new Vicar of Christ, all heaven broke loose! Everyone in the room erupted in sheer joy and jubilation, cheering and dancing. The dean and I found ourselves doing an impromptu jig, leaping around in each other’s arms in a most indecorous manner! Father Fessio broke down with uncontrollable tears of joy. A former student of Ratzinger’s and a longtime champion of the Cardinal’s work, Fessio, as the founder of Ignatius Press, had published the first English translation of many of Ratzinger’s works. For this great and faithful Jesuit, his mentor’s election to the Chair of Peter was not only the answer to his prayers but a dream come true. His personal joy was an additional reason for my own rejoicing, accentuating the sheer elation of the moment.

One imagines that similar scenes of joy erupted throughout the world wherever two or three faithful Catholics gathered together. In contrast, the election of Ratzinger was greeted with grief and horror by those heretical theologians and cafeteria Catholics whose heresies and backsliding equivocations had been condemned by the new Pope during his many years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As usual, these wolves in sheep’s clothing howled in unison with the wolves in the secular media, uniting themselves with the avowed enemies of the Church in their hatred of the hero of orthodoxy who had forced them into retreat during his years as John Paul II’s faithful and fearless servant. In the war of words that followed the Pope’s election, the enemies of orthodoxy decried the new German shepherd as God’s Rottweiler. Although the gentle and saintly Ratzinger did not deserve such an epithet, it is ironically apt that the wolves who would devour the flock should hate the Rottweiler who had courageously stopped them from doing so!

The foregoing description of my elation at the election of Benedict XVI serves as a confession of my devotion to this great Pope and an expression of my partisanship with regard to the importance and majesty of his legacy. In this sense, I make no apology for the enthusiastic and unabashedly positive appraisal that follows. In another sense, however, I feel that a different sort of confession is necessary and that some sort of apology is indeed required. I confess an inadequacy with regard to the possibility of doing justice to the sheer enormity and magnificence of this great Pope’s life and work. Having made the confession, I accompany it with an apology for the inevitable deficiencies in the book that I have written.

I feel in Benedict’s presence what G. K. Chesterton felt in the presence of the saintly Dominican Vincent McNabb. Chesterton wrote, Father McNabb is walking on a crystal floor over my head.¹ I feel at least as strongly that Pope Benedict is walking on a crystal floor over my head, not only in terms of his sanctity, but in terms of his wisdom and his scholarship. How can one hope to encapsulate someone who is so much larger and higher than oneself? Wouldn’t it be safer and more appropriate to do what T. S. Eliot counseled with regard to the genius of Dante? I feel that anything I can say about such a subject is trivial, Eliot wrote to a friend. I feel so completely inferior in his presence—there seems really nothing to do but to point to him and be silent.² It is, however, significant that Eliot had already disregarded his own advice, even as he was penning his cautionary words of inadequacy to the friend, because he had just finished the writing of an article on Dante as a Spiritual Leader. Perhaps, following Eliot’s example and not the letter of his law, it is sometimes permissible to throw caution to the wind in writing about our superiors.

I am further encouraged to throw caution to the wind in defiance of my own sense of inadequacy by the trail that Chesterton blazed in his book on St. Thomas Aquinas. One can only imagine what Chesterton must have felt as he embarked on the writing of his book. After all, the angelic doctor was not only walking on a crystal floor over Chesterton’s head; he was also walking on a crystal floor over the saintly head of Father McNabb. As a humble Dominican, McNabb was a follower of Aquinas, as was Dante, both of whom looked up in awestruck admiration to the crystal floor on which St. Thomas walked.

Aware of the enormity of the task and the inadequacy of his ability to execute it, Chesterton began his study of Aquinas