The John-Henry Westen Show - June 24, 2026


Did Benedict Really Resign？ The Canonical Case That Won't Go Away


Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

137.9

Word count

3,307

Sentence count

168


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Pope Benedict XVI did not actually give up the papacy because he only gave up its active duties,
00:00:06.560 not the office itself. Since the papacy can't be split into parts,
00:00:10.760 that attempt doesn't work, so his resignation would be invalid.
00:00:17.420 If you feed these five provable premises into any AI, they will all declare that Benedict XVI's
00:00:26.200 resignation was invalid. Well, I know that sounds really weird, but we're going to get to it. Let's
00:00:32.160 begin as we always do with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
00:00:36.860 the Holy Ghost. Amen. So a few months ago at Sign of the Cross Media, we broke the story that the
00:00:43.380 Vatican Criminal Court was investigating the claim that Pope Benedict XVI's resignation was invalid
00:00:48.660 based on the petition to the court submitted by canon lawyers of a longtime well-known Vatican
00:00:55.200 journalist named Andrea Scianchi. The acceptance of this case by the court showed that there was
00:01:02.300 at least some modicum of possibility of such a claim. And so I've looked into it more than I
00:01:08.920 ever have before. I reviewed statements from faithful and God-fearing Catholics who risked
00:01:14.560 everything to warn openly of what they truly believed was an anti-pope in Francis and then
00:01:21.760 subsequently in Leo. Men like Archbishop Rene Grasida, who just died. Archbishop Jan Pavalenga,
00:01:30.640 the former superior of Archbishop Athanasius Schneider. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò,
00:01:37.520 who suffered a pronouncement of exorcism for this very thing. The famous Fatima priest,
00:01:42.620 Father Nicholas Gruner. Italian well-known Father Giorgio Maria Fari. Dr. Edward Maza.
00:01:50.660 Patrick Coffin.
00:01:51.820 Basically, the thesis of Benedict's resignation being invalid stems from his failure to resign
00:01:58.400 properly.
00:01:59.060 Whether or not he failed to do it properly was his intent or if it was unintentional,
00:02:05.520 that's a key question, but it's actually beyond the point.
00:02:10.040 And here is the central point.
00:02:12.520 Canon law requires that in order to resign the papal office, the munis, in Latin, the
00:02:18.760 office, it must be resigned. So Canon 332, number two, says that the Pope must renounce his munis
00:02:29.980 for the resignation to be legal and complete. The munis is the actual papal office itself,
00:02:36.620 the permanent job title, if you will, of being the Pope, the full authority and role given by God.
00:02:44.760 In Benedict's official resignation document, the Latin language Declaratio from the 11th of February in 2013, he wrote that he was renouncing his ministerium, not his munis.
00:02:58.880 The ministerium is the active work, the day-to-day exercise of governing.
00:03:04.420 So that the claim that these many faithful Catholics are making, high-ranking Catholics, who again risked everything for this, is that Benedict only said, I resign from doing the day-to-day work of the Pope, ministerium, but he never said, I quit being the Pope, the Munis.
00:03:22.860 Therefore, under the exact wording of Canon 332, number two, the resignation was not properly done and is invalid.
00:03:34.420 Now, the weirdest part of this is that twice in his Latin document, he actually talks about
00:03:43.220 the munis, the munis petronum, the Petrine office, which is the actual office of the
00:03:51.020 Pope, which he was supposed to resign if he wanted to resign.
00:03:54.340 But when he actually declares the resignation in the essential line, he says, and I'll quote
00:04:01.240 it for you in the Latin, declaro me ministerio renunciare. I declare that I renounce the ministry.
00:04:09.080 So basically, he used the wrong word. And it is posited that the legal requirement of canon 332
00:04:18.380 was never met. Benedict kept the munis, the office, they say. He stepped back only from
00:04:25.260 the ministerium, the act of exercise. And therefore, he remained the true Pope in a hidden or impeded
00:04:33.060 way, or just by the fact that he didn't do it properly, which means he made a substantial error,
00:04:40.500 but he's still the Pope. You might say the easy explanation for this is that his Latin was not
00:04:46.460 up to scratch. The problem is there's a massive difficulty with that suggestion.
00:04:51.780 He was one of the world's greatest Latin scholars.
00:04:56.880 Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Benedict XVI, had his formal classical education in Latin from the age of 10.
00:05:06.220 It was pre-1945. Ratzinger attended the classical gymnasium, the high school, in Traunstein, where the curriculum centered on Latin and Greek as core subjects.
00:05:18.780 He began this classical training at age 10 and he excelled in it.
00:05:23.760 And you can check out the fact that he excelled in it in his own biography from 2008.
00:05:30.560 It says he begins classes at the local gymnasium for classical languages where he studies Latin and Greek.
00:05:39.360 Go check it out.
00:05:40.300 It's in his official 2008 biography.
00:05:43.480 Also, in his doctoral and postdoctoral work, they required advanced Latin scholarship.
00:05:50.600 His 1953 doctoral thesis, The People and the House of God in St. Augustine's Doctrine of the Church,
00:05:58.280 involved deep engagement with St. Augustine's Latin texts and required writing and scholarly work
00:06:05.880 in the academic Latin tradition of German theological faculties at the time.
00:06:11.920 Joseph Ratzinger's 1957 habilitation thesis, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, analyzed 13th century Latin theological sources.
00:06:23.440 Both were accepted at German universities where Latin proficiency was mandatory for theology professors.
00:06:31.580 And you can check that out in the Vatican's own testament.
00:06:34.660 In fact, Benedict's own 2005 testament, it said,
00:06:38.240 my doctoral dissertation was about the notion of the people of God in St. Augustine. My postdoctoral
00:06:44.460 work was about St. Bonaventure. Generally, our formation was historically oriented. And that's
00:06:51.840 from the Vatican's own recount of his in 2005 at the time of his election. Then in the New Yorker
00:06:59.740 magazine in 2005, the time of his election again, they said this about him. And I quote,
00:07:06.380 The young Ratzinger wrote his doctoral dissertation on St. Augustine's ideas.
00:07:13.060 He became an excellent Latinist, which proved important when he was a theological consultant
00:07:20.620 at the Second Vatican Council, where Latin was the official language.
00:07:26.460 End quote.
00:07:27.580 And you can go check that out from July 25th in 2005, New Yorker magazine.
00:07:33.080 Go to what the New Yorker said.
00:07:34.380 he was a paritus that's an expert at the second vatican council from 1962 to 65 and latin was
00:07:42.580 the working language as a theological expert or paritus to cardinal joseph frings ratzinger
00:07:50.120 participated in drafting and debating the second vatican council documents entirely in latin he
00:07:57.220 prepared latin schemas he worked fluently in the language during sessions and you can go check that
00:08:03.300 out that there's articles all over the place that describe this. Again, you can get another
00:08:08.560 appreciation for this from his reputation as a Latinist while Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation
00:08:16.780 for the Doctrine of Faith, which ran from 1981 till his election to Pope in 2005. As head of
00:08:25.940 the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, he routinely oversaw, corrected, and issued official
00:08:31.260 documents in Latin. A 2010 article notes that interpretations of his Latin documents required
00:08:39.800 precise linguistic analysis. All of these things you can verify. I'll put them in my notes for my
00:08:46.940 blog post on this. But beyond all of this, it's Benedict's own assessment of his own Latin,
00:08:56.340 which you can read in the quintessential biography
00:09:00.740 which happened after his resignation
00:09:03.780 with his longtime friend, Peta Seewald.
00:09:08.280 So asked why he wrote the Declaration in Latin,
00:09:12.140 the plope explained, and I quote,
00:09:14.800 Latin is the language that I have so mastered
00:09:17.980 that I can write in it properly.
00:09:20.800 I could have written it in Italian,
00:09:22.700 but with the danger that there would be a couple of mistakes in it. End quote. Okay, so he was one
00:09:31.660 of the world's greatest Latinists. Some people will say, but maybe he didn't have time to write
00:09:38.420 the declaratio properly. Unfortunately, that's also not true because we know right away that
00:09:46.080 Georg Ratzinger, Father Ratzinger, Benedict's brother, knew for several months and confirmed
00:09:52.220 benedict's long consideration i'll quote it for you he said the quote this is from the newspaper
00:09:57.520 his brother told the dpa news agency that the pope had begun to find walking difficult and had
00:10:05.440 been considering stepping down for months end quote you can go check that out one source i'll
00:10:10.240 leave in my blog post global news from an ap report 11th of february 2013 so secondly you have
00:10:16.800 the vatican spokesman father federico lombardi at the time he said and i quote it took months to
00:10:24.420 decide it was not improvised and you can get that over at my blog the link to it but the source was
00:10:31.040 cnn also from february 11th 2013 then you can get it the same news also from the observatory romano
00:10:40.720 the official vatican newspaper the decision made and i quote nearly a year ago it says and that's
00:10:49.680 the official vatican newspaper for you so you have all of this evidence showing us that indeed the
00:10:55.420 decision was made long before and he had weeks to write it this is kind of incredible life site news
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00:11:54.060 Another claim could be, is he losing his mind?
00:11:58.240 So some might say maybe Benedict was just losing his mind altogether.
00:12:03.440 And even though he thought his Latin was still up for the task, in reality, he was losing his
00:12:08.700 mind and needed to resign. And this error was just more proof of that very fact that he needed to
00:12:14.140 resign. That doesn't work either. Most of us know he spent years afterward still functioning.
00:12:22.840 But even at the time, you have this incredible testimony. It's an explanation from lifelong
00:12:30.380 Vatican watcher, Phil Lawler. He's known for his Catholic culture blog. And in his article titled
00:12:37.080 The Real Story Behind the Pope's Resignation, which was issued on February 15th of 2013,
00:12:44.660 Phil Lawler wrote this, and I quote, has there been any evidence at all that Pope Benedict is
00:12:50.300 losing his mental acuity? Absolutely not. Just this week at a Thursday afternoon meeting with
00:12:57.540 priests of the rome diocese the holy father apologized for not having a prepared address
00:13:04.260 and then extemporaneously delivered a cogent well-organized and fascinating 45 minute talk
00:13:13.740 on the interpretation of vatican ii he remains a brilliant analyst preacher and teacher
00:13:20.860 go check that out from phil lawler at the time in order to find an explanation we have to dig
00:13:27.460 deeper into this resignation, which has caused so much controversy. The only explanation for
00:13:34.140 Benedict XVI failing to resign properly seems to be his belief that in some way he could retain the
00:13:41.420 papacy. It is, in fact, what he said. The main texts of this postulation come from Archbishop
00:13:49.840 Georg Ganswein, who is Benedict XVI's longtime personal secretary and prefect of the papal
00:13:56.140 household. In a May 20th, 2016 speech at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and I'll
00:14:03.480 give you the full link to the full talk, which was in German, it was during this presentation of a
00:14:08.880 book on Benedict's pontificate, Archbishop Gensfein explicitly described Benedict's 2013
00:14:15.180 resignation as creating, and I quote, a new situation in the papacy. He said there's an
00:14:22.540 expanded or quasi-shared patron ministry with two complementary parts, one active, and that
00:14:30.280 meant Pope Francis, and one contemplative, meaning Benedict himself. He stated that Benedict had not
00:14:37.180 abandoned the ministry he accepted in 2005, even while stepping aside from active governance.
00:14:44.140 This is the closest thing to an open description of what critics call a bifurcation or split or dual aspect of the papacy with Benedict retaining a contemplative or prayer-based share of the papacy.
00:15:02.180 That speech, by the way, May 20th, 2016.
00:15:06.220 And again, you can get the full link to the full text over at my blog post.
00:15:12.340 Genswein says, this is why Benedict XVI has not given up either his name, i.e. the papal name,
00:15:19.960 Benedict XVI, or the white cassock. This is why the correct name by which to address him,
00:15:26.540 even today, that's post, this is 2016 now, is your holiness, which is the title reserved for
00:15:32.860 the Pope. And this is also why he has not retired to a secluded monastery, but is within the
00:15:39.080 Vatican. Benedict himself confirmed it. He described his resignation as resigning only the
00:15:45.340 active exercise of the ministry. While remaining bound, as he said, always and forever to the
00:15:51.900 patron office in a new way, through prayer being in the enclosure of Saint Peter. It's basically
00:15:58.060 the same thing that Gensfein himself said. Now let me give you his words. The real gravity of
00:16:04.380 the decision that's the decision to resign was also due to the fact that from that moment on
00:16:09.920 i was engaged always and forever by the lord always anyone who accepts the patron ministry
00:16:17.500 no longer has any privacy he belongs always and completely to everyone to the whole church
00:16:23.900 the always is also a forever there can be no longer there can no longer be he says
00:16:30.560 a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does
00:16:36.760 not revoke this. I no longer bear the power of office for the governance of the church,
00:16:42.860 but in the service of prayer, I remain, so to speak, in the enclosure of St. Peter. St. Benedict,
00:16:49.860 whose name I bear as Pope, will be a great example for me in this. He showed us the way
00:16:57.240 for a life which whether active or passive is completely given over to the work of god end
00:17:03.880 quote we have to understand that this just doesn't work there can't be two popes there can't be a
00:17:11.740 bifurcation of the office so the pope is a singular office christ himself instituted the petrine
00:17:18.680 primacy as part of the divine plan for the church it's not just a ecclesiastical arrangement why
00:17:26.060 didn't he for instance make all the apostles popes he didn't he made peter the first pope
00:17:32.460 vatican one the document pastor eternus from 1870 if you look at chapters one to two the council
00:17:40.840 solemnly defines that and i quote the primacy of jurisdiction over the whole church of god
00:17:46.980 was immediately and directly promised and given to blessed peter the apostle by christ the lord
00:17:53.700 It is singular in that, and you can tell this, it's uniquely given to one man.
00:18:00.140 The office was given by Christ to Peter alone, not to the College of Cardinals, not to the
00:18:05.660 College of the Apostles, or to multiple persons.
00:18:08.880 Why not, for instance, to John, the beloved apostle?
00:18:12.380 Nope.
00:18:13.160 In fact, the Code of Canon Law, at number 331, the bishop of the Roman Church, in whom
00:18:19.540 constitutes the office that's the munis given by the lord uniquely it says or you could translate
00:18:26.780 that singularly to peter the first of the apostles and to be transmitted to his successors you have
00:18:34.540 this idea from the church that it is always a singular office it's given to one person it can't
00:18:42.500 be two. Even the second Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium, says just as the office granted
00:18:50.020 individually to Peter, the first among the apostles, is permanent and is to be transmitted
00:18:57.040 to his successors. In the Bible, you'll read Matthew 16, 18-19, and John 21, 15-17. They use
00:19:07.400 the singular you when christ gives the keys and the command to feed the flock to peter alone after
00:19:16.820 all that we've now proved the different premises that you can feed into ai to get this answer
00:19:24.580 here's the prompt that i used you're an expert in ecclesiastical latin canon law and the catholic
00:19:31.380 dogmatic theology. Base your entire analysis on the following premises. Do not introduce any
00:19:38.240 external considerations or additional principles beyond these premises. And here are the premises
00:19:43.700 that I used. Number one, Benedict XVI was one of the greatest Latinists of the 20th and 21st
00:19:50.660 centuries. Number two, Benedict XVI had many months to prepare the Declaratio. Number three,
00:19:58.100 In the Declaratio, he deliberately chose to renounce only the ministerium or ministry of the Bishop of Rome while explicitly discussing the Munis Petronum earlier in the text.
00:20:11.640 He did not renounce the Munis.
00:20:13.860 Number four, the Petrine office or Munis is one, singular and indivisible.
00:20:19.440 And number five, Canon 188 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law states, and I quote,
00:20:27.340 A resignation made out of grave fear that is inflicted unjustly or out of malice or
00:20:34.220 substantial error or simony is invalid by the law itself.
00:20:39.760 Remember, substantial error is in there.
00:20:42.760 So all that stuff about thinking to bifurcate the office, if that was why he did it, that
00:20:47.600 would be a substantial error and would also invalidate.
00:20:49.920 But back to our AI prompt.
00:20:51.400 Then I ask the AI, perform a step-by-step canonical and theological analysis strictly
00:20:57.840 within the framework of these premises, analyze the implications of premise three in light
00:21:04.060 of premises four and five for the validity of the resignation, and then state the conclusion
00:21:10.480 follows from these premises regarding the validity of the 2013 resignation and the status
00:21:19.440 of all subsequent claimants to the papacy, Francis and later Leo. And here's what you get from two
00:21:27.440 AI bots that I checked. From chat GPT first, the conclusion. From these premises alone, the following
00:21:34.340 conclusion follows. The 2013 resignation is invalid. Pope Benedict XVI retained the munus
00:21:41.740 petronum, that's the papal office. Three, the apostolic see was therefore not truly vacant. Four,
00:21:47.840 the election of Pope Francis and any subsequent claimants would lack a valid juridical foundation.
00:21:55.860 In simple terms, if those premises are all taken as true, Pope Benedict XVI did not actually give
00:22:03.320 up the papacy because he only gave up its active duties, not the office itself. Since the papacy
00:22:09.760 can't be split into parts, that attempt doesn't work, so his resignation would be invalid. That
00:22:16.920 means the papal office was never truly empty. Therefore, Pope Francis and any later popes
00:22:23.620 would not be valid popes under those assumptions. And that was from ChatGPT. When I fed it into
00:22:29.980 Grok, here's what I got. From the foregoing analysis, which rests exclusively on the five
00:22:36.440 premises supplied, the 2013 resignation is canonically and theologically invalid. Benedict
00:22:42.880 the 16th remained the true and sole pope of the catholic church until his death all subsequent
00:22:48.900 claimants to the papacy francis and any later popes are not and never were legitimate successors
00:22:56.100 of peter they possess no canonical or theological title to the petrine office go try it yourself
00:23:03.240 with an ai bot for life site news this is john henry weston pray for the church and may god bless
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