News and Commentary by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Recently there was a flurry of news reports regarding the letter that Monsignor Nicola Bux, a priest of Apulia, who has worked in the Roman Curia, claims to have from Pope Benedict XVI.  Msgr. Bux is reported to have claimed at conference at Naples, in October of this year, that the letter proves that Pope Benedict XVI validly renounced the papacy. Yet, Msgr. Bux who has claimed to have such a letter for years has refused to publish it.

FromRome.Info was the first to report the partial contents of that letter, here. And in that report, I speculated that the real reason Msgr. Bux continually has omitted publishing the Letter is that it does not prove what he claims.

Or in other words, he is interpreting the letter according to his own opinion.

To win debate, you have to argue objectively

As has been said by many for more than a decade, the controversy over whether Pope Benedict XVI renounced the papacy or not, does not turn on questions of intentions or interpretations, but on the objective meaning of the text of Pope Benedict XVI’s Declaratio of February 11, 2013.

Yet during that time, whenever the side, which claims and sustained the renunciation effected the full and entire renunciation of the Papacy, displays its argumentation, it is always an argument about how they interpret the text, or what happened, or what Pope Benedict XVI intended to do or say or mean.

Steve O’Reilly — who describes himself as a former CIA agent — summarizes that flawed position very well in his recent article, “Intellectual Honesty and the End of Benepapism“, which he published on Dec. 9, in a renewed version after WordPress pulled his previous version of the article for violating my intellectual property rights for my English translation of Pope Benedict XVI’s letter.

That Steve presumed he could quote my entire translation, in contravention of all copyright laws and my express refusal to grant him such permission in a comment on his blog (which he never published), is part and parcel of the modus operandi of all of those who claim Pope Benedict XVI abdicated. That is, they presume words mean what they want them to mean and cannot suffer the Law saying that they mean something else.

The Letter from Pope Benedict XVI to Msgr. Nicola Bux

This is also the case with Msgr. Bux. Because, according to my sources, the Letter of Pope Benedict XVI, which he has in his possession, and which bears a date in the year 2014 A. D. is signed:

Benedict

In a tightly cropped hand writing, noticeably identical to the Pope’s authentic signatures.

The objective argument, therefore, about how Pope Benedict XVI wants his own letter to be interpreted, therefore, must revolve about how Pope Benedict XVI identifies himself. And by using his Pontifical name, it is clear to all honest readers, that his intention is to continue to retain something of the Papal dignity he assumed, when he took the name “Benedict”.

It would be quite otherwise, if he has signed the Letter, “Monsignor Joseph Ratzinger”, which he would be obliged to do if he had indeed renounced the papacy.

And if Msgr. Bux wants to deny my source, he can publish the full text of the actual letter. If he does not, he has conceded that my source is correct: the letter is in fact signed, Benedict.

So, in that letter, which I translated, here, when the alleged author writes that he never intended to renounce only ministerium but not the munus, but signs it with the Pontifical Name — if we are to assume he is sane and not totally mad — we must understand that he intended to renounce the office (munus with ministerium) by naming only the ministerium of the office, but did not intend to renounce the dignity of the office (by which he is Benedict, not Ratzinger).

Yet, not only is such a renunciation incomplete, and thus invalid, by reason of retaining the pontifical dignity of the papal office, it is also invalid by reason of the attempted used of metonymic signification (using one word to name another), cf. my Scholastic Question below in the Appendix to this article.

But authors like Steve O’Reilly don’t care about such details, because when they lose the argument in the real world, they retreat to their sand castles of presumption and interpretation, and take confidence that they are among many who do the same thing in attempt to win the debate.

But the truth of Canon Law and of all jurisprudence is, rather, that if you have NOT renounced all the aspects, powers, authority and dignity of the Papacy, you have NOT renounced, even if you wanted to. The man who renounces, being a man and not the pope, cannot make up new modes of signification to signify he wants to renounce. Juridical actions in the Church of Christ don’t work that way.

But they do work that way in a Church of clowns, thieves and liars.

APPENDIX

There is more than ample historical evidence that Pope Benedict XVI understood that the word, munus, does not meant the same thing as the word, ministerium. For example, citing from his 2005 discourse, as I show here, in my 2022 article, “Pope Benedict XVI’s teaching on munus and ministerium“.

There is also the definitive proof from the Code of Canon Law, which requires the Canon on Papal Renunciations to be understood in only one way, as I showed here in the 2019 Conference at Rome, on the Renunciation of Pope Benedict XVI, “Munus and Ministerium, a Canonical Study“.

Moreover, it is clear that “Pope Benedict XVI knew what he was doing, and knows he remains the Vicar of Christ,” wherein I report Dr. Mazza’s scholarly study of how Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Ratzinger used terms, and the requirements of the Code of Canon Law regarding how to signify in a juridical act.

Finally, it is clear in jurisprudence, that it is illicit to read “munus” as “ministerium” in a juridical act, as I show here, in my 2020 article, “Pope Benedict XVI never abdicated and he told us as much.” And again, in my 2023 article, “The Canonical Tradition requires the renunciation of munus, not ministerium“.

For a refutation of every argument ever brought in favor of the validity of Pope Benedict XVI’s abdication of the papacy, see my Scholastic Question on the matter, which I first published in November of 2018–February 2019.