By Miki Tasseni :
FEW explanations are being given over the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI
as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion followers of the Catholic
religion, as the French call the denomination, and instead the focus is
being directed as to who will take his place. This is not strange as there
is an old principle or perhaps slogan, of ‘the king is dead, long live the
king,’ that once a sovereign leaves, time is not spent on thinking about
his reign, but of transfering loyalty to a new one. Before that takes
place, obviously the preliminary question is ‘who shall that possibly be,
you think’?
Chroniclers say that the last time a pontiff decided to retire, or perhaps
to resign, was close to 700 years ago, implying that this is an extremely
rare event in church history. What they did not say was whether similar
reasoning can be applied at the moment, the difference being that at that
time the political or strategic implication of the pope’s departure was
clear, unlike at this moment. The pope merely said his age and health
weren’t good, but that begs comprehension as he was among closest aides to
late Pope John Paul II, and this sort of reasoning simply had no relevance.
So the point of departure in solving the riddle of the pope’s retirement is
to reject his explanation that it arises from age or disease, and this is
part of church tradition that one would expect a conservative pontiff like
himself to observe. For instance, when John Paul II died in 2005 and a new
pontiff was being sought, bookmakers ruled out Austria’s Cardinal Christoph
Schonborn, for the simple reason that at 60, he was far too young for the
post. This time he may well be a frontrunner, despite flaws that Italian
possibles are ignored, and Third World is rather excessively cited.
The proper reason Benedict XVI would leave office is fear, about something
he is pretty sure, certain or convinced about, but which might not be
public enough for others to properly gauge his motivation. In that case the
personal consideration like age and health simply means that the sort of
perception or sentiment that forms the background of this decidedly
shocking decision is so hidden and so private that it was impossible to
refer to it in positive terms, that is, forthrightly. It would thus follow
that the pontiff explained it subjectively, of not having energy, drive to
lead.
Ordinarily fear means a power above someone which can compel him or her to
act in the direction that such an authority directs, and when someone holds
that office, it is hard to countenance such an event. The Vatican however,
as authors like David Yallop often gleefully recount, has its fair share of
conspiracies in the think of an Italian culture as its very fabric, of
which the Mafia cannot be removed. The height of this reality was in the
brief papacy of John Paul I where the pope was poisoned; soon after, a key
Vatican banking official was found dead, hanging under a bridge.
Yet however it is difficult to countenance that kind of scenario since, asd
in 1978, the proper outcome would have been similar, as one doesn’t
threaten the pope, tell him to resign, he does that and the matter ends
there. Nor would such an issue be as secret as not to be identified or
speculated in any manner, the way conspiracy theories of September 11 in
the United States similarly fail. Consequently the issue of fear remains in
place as otherwise this is inexplicable, but not ‘Mafia dread,’ etc since
no organisation could sustain a conspiratorial situation by such
resignation.
And since this is a resignation or retirement not of a political leader but
the pontiff, it is vital to seek in spiritual matters where such a move
could possibly arise, and for once, the cornucopia of legends being heard
over the past year come to mind. It was being said that May 21 2011 would
be the ‘end of the world,’ which of course didn’t materialise, and then
this shifted to a dusted Mayan calendar, positing the end of 2012 as more
or less the end of this world. This time however there was a catch to it
that “a new spirit rules the earth,” though some fear of comet spread out.
In other words, there is something at the spiritual level which has some
bearing to the retirement or resignation of Benedict XVI which can be
gleaned from such a background at least. For it to constitute an
explanation for the retirement, it has to be physically connected with
something of a similar sort or within the same legend which the pope could
not have ignored, not as a legacy but as an event. It means a fight takes
place in celestial terms as St Paul explained, and it ends in resignation
of the pope. It’s the defeat of a certain order of things in the church, a
‘revolution.’
The parallel of the pope’s resignation in a spiritual sense, or in the
celestial fights that St Paul talks about is the baptism of Emperor
Constantine, how it is projected in the Book of Revelation. The text says
there was a war in heaven, where the angel Michael (ancient priest
Melchizedeck, who received an offering from the partiarch Abraham) fought
Lucifer (Satan) and his angels. They lost, and expelled.
It is an event that Jesus had already seen vividly while he was still in
the world, saying “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a star,” a celestial
parameter that isn’t difficult to grasp as the baptism of Constantine and
the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. This event was pivotal
in the celestial arrangement of things because the fate of the world was no
longer tied up with this or that pagan empire rising or crushing another,
but the word of Christ taking firm root in the world. Satan remained,
deceiving from the world, not determining fate in heaven.
The parallel with the resignation of Benedict XVI is tied up with the other
event 700 years earlier, explained as the wish to avoid schism, that is,
division in the church. On the basis of the guiding notion of fear, the
same consideration worked in the decision to retire by Benedict XVI.
fearing for the church generally and to that extent his own safety,
implying that “the new spirit” that we were being told is reigning in the
world after December 2012 is at work. As in the case of what St. Paul said
and also the Revelation, this must firstly be spiritual, not physical
reality.
For the ‘less initiated,’ St. Paul said “we fight not wars of blood and
flesh but wars of faith, against rulers of the sky and powers of darkness,”
in which case the fight in heaven was whether Constantin would be baptised
or not. At that time it was evident that the Roman Empire could not hold
itself in the old way because pagans were rearming everywhere, so the pagan
authorities in Rome had no means of taking initiative and reconquer that
whole expanse. Emperor Constantine dreamt up a better method, of re-uniting
the empire by faith, by himself getting baptised.
What makes it possible to figure out the sort of faith wars that underline
the way Benedict XVI left his throne, or rather the ‘Petrine ministry’ as
he called it, is tied up with some legends of the Catholic Church that
arose in the past century. The crucial aspect if the visit in the world six
times in 1917, by Holy Mary, to talk to three children at a rural town
named Fatima, after the daughter of the Prophet of Islam. Holy Mary visited
the place and talked to the children six times, May 13, June 13, July 13,
August 13, September 13 and October 13, where on the last visit she had
promised to make a miracle on the sun, and that is what she did, and left.
Why this should be helpful to grasp recent events is that we are in 2013,
which thus forms a pair with the chosen dates of Holy Mary’s visits. Why
the pope had to quit was that he slighted the visit in 2000 when the
Vatican finally decided to release the ‘third secret of Fatima.’ Holy Mary
showed many bishops being killed.
At that time, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was the prefect of the Congregation
of the Faith in the Vatican, and he did not seek to solve the mystery of
Holy Mary’s visits in a pastoral sense, but rather in a doctrinal or
dogmatic manner. As the pope’s closest adviser on such issues, he did not
spend time in fasting and prayer to obtain an answer to that mystery from
heaven, and instead issued a statement that the visit was (more or less)
immaterial, and changes nothing in the outlook of the church. In that
sense, he doesn’t fit as ‘Vicarius Filii Dei,’ representative of the son of
God.
Put differently, this is a scenario that heaven laid out close to a century
ago, as there are four years and two months to mark 100 years of the start
of those visits. What was also embedded in the visit and it ties up with
‘end of the world’ theory is that a new situation exists where pastoral
link with heaven is possible, of people seeking things from the Lord (not
wealth but explanation) by fasting and prayer, and a church that returns to
the pastoral sources and testimony as taught by Christ. The church that was
based on dogma, doctrine and canon law is coming to an end. Benedict XVI
saw a sign that he has to quit, and was sure it was the Virgin Mary.
(ends)