A posthumous book by Benedict XVI has been released, which collects published and unpublished texts from the period in which he was Pope Emeritus.
He himself asked the curators, Elio Guerriero and Msgr.
Georg Gaenswein, in a letter dated May 1, 2022: "This volume, which collects the writings I composed in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, must be published after my death".
In a letter to Guerriero Ratzinger he explained his choice as follows: "For my part, in life, I no longer want to publish anything. The fury of the circles against me in Germany is so strong that the appearance of my every word immediately causes their part a murderous shouting. I want to spare myself and Christianity from this", reads in "What is Christianity" (Mondadori).
"There were individual bishops, and not only in the United States, who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole, aiming in their dioceses to develop a kind of new, modern catholicity. Perhaps it is worth mentioning the fact that,
in quite a few seminaries, students those caught reading my books were considered unfit for the priesthood.
My books were concealed as harmful literature and were read only in secret, as it were."
Benedict XVI talks about homosexuality
and the fact that there are
gay "clubs" in seminaries
.
Speaking of the meeting that Pope Francis had convened with the presidents of all the episcopal conferences of the world on the subject of abuse, Ratzinger highlights: "In the context of the meeting of the presidents of the episcopal conferences of the whole world with Pope Francis, it is at heart above all the question of priestly life and also that of seminaries.As regards the problem of preparation for priestly ministry in seminaries, we note in fact a vast collapse of the existing form of this preparation".
Then Benedict XVI underlines: "In various seminaries homosexual 'clubs' were formed which acted more or less openly and which clearly transformed the atmosphere in the seminaries. In a seminary in southern Germany, candidates for the priesthood and candidates for
lay office of pastoral referent lived together.
During common meals, the seminarians were together with married pastoral representatives, partly accompanied by their wives and children and in some cases by their girlfriends.
The atmosphere in the seminary could not help priestly formation". He then reports that "a bishop, who had previously been rector, had allowed the seminarians to be shown pornographic films, presumably with the intention of thus enabling them to resist against behavior contrary to the faith". Benedict XVI speaks of his resignation in 2013 and says that at that moment he was "exhausted".
"When I announced my resignation from the ministry of Peter's successor on February 11, 2013, I had no plan for what I would do in the new situation. I was too exhausted - are his words - to be able to plan any other work. Furthermore, the publication of the Infancy of Jesus seemed like a logical conclusion to my theological writings."
"After the election of Pope Francis, I slowly resumed my theological work. Thus, over the years, a series of small and medium-sized contributions have taken shape, which are presented in this volume", explains Benedict XVI in the book which he want is published after his death.