On the Papacy: A “Polemical Discourse” between Thomas Sternberg and Martin Mosebach

In 2019 Herder Korrespondenz published the following “polemical discourse” of which I translate excerpts.1) This interview sent representatives of  German Church into incoherent rage. 

Lucas Wiegelmann is the interviewer. I assume our readers know of  Martin Mosebach. Thomas Sternberg is a politician and quintessential member of the establishment of the German Catholic Church. He is the president of the (lay) Central Committee of German Catholics which is in the forefront of the current “Synodal Path” agitation. I will only comment that at this very moment the Synodal Path proponents are speaking far less favorably of the papacy than in this interview. The Vatican’s recent prohibition of the blessing of homosexual couples has touched off only the latest of a series of clashes with “Rome.”

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You’re saying that Peter was the first Pope?

Mosebach: Of course!

Sternberg: Excuse me, but I can’t  agree with that. It’s simply nonsense! The papal office developed with the times. There  were bishops relatively early in the Church. A certain theological precedence crystalized around those bishops who had dioceses in the government centers. …..

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Do you have a favorite pope in history?

Sternberg: I especially admire Paul VI – the greatest reforming pope of recent history.

Mosebach: The most terrible pope of recent history.

Sternberg: Just in his first appearance he sent a signal. He sold his tiara to an American museum and donated the proceeds to the poor. ….He viewed himself as the bishop of Rome, as the first among bishops……It was also fitting that he radically pruned  the court ceremonies of the Vatican….The guards were abolished,  the diverse ranks and special offices, the ostrich feather fans – all that was eliminated.

Mosebach: Paul VI did what a pope has no right to do. With his reform of the of the mass he destroyed the organically developed Catholic liturgy and left us an order of worship 2) that obscures the Eucharistic mystery. Paul VI abused papal authority. You yourself have said that up to the middle ages the early papacy was characterized by deciding controversies. Therein is the area of responsibility of the pope, not the unleashing of religious and political forces. It’s a passive authority. The office of Vicarius Christi would place completely insuperable demands on everyone who would understand it as an active office. This office can only be exercised in a passive manner. It’s an office that Mr. Everyman has to be able to assume. Peter, not Paul, became the first pope. If genius and charisma were essential, this office would be madness. By the way, the old pomp, which Paul VI abolished, accomplished exactly this – it covered up the person of the pope. When the pope entered, one didn’t see the little old man anymore because he was hidden under the mass of brocade. Then,  in the 20^th century this cult of the solitary man in white developed under the influence of the news media – the Pastor Angelicus shining out over the masses.  The pope as charismatic leader, however, contradicts Catholic Tradition. The pope isn’t free, he is subject not just to the gospel but to the entirety of Tradition. Only within this can he act (take the initiative), and in the end that means he cannot act at all. And, indeed, he absolutely shouldn’t!

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Mosebach: It’s clear: the entitlement to infallibility only exists when the pope speaks in submission to Tradition. When he doesn’t do that, then he is simply not authoritative. He possesses his authority by being a mere submissive mouthpiece of the eternal, that existed before him.

Sternberg: With this formulation you open the door to resistance against the pope. The judgment whether something is accord with Tradition or not depends very much on the historical convictions, knowledge and perceptions of the individual.

Mosebach: You are probably thinking of Cardinal Lehmann, who once reinterpreted the papal directive to exit advising on “pregnancy conflicts”  (abortion) as a directive to remain doing it. He supported this with the infamous words: “I’ve learned how to handle texts.” Especially Jesuits are very much engaged in handling Tradition in this way. I almost have the feeling that Pascal’s cruel caricature of the Jesuits in “Lettres a un Provincial“ has only been vindicated truly and completely in our days. In that book Pascal wrote this beautiful sentence about the Jesuits: “Ecce patres, qui tollunt peccata mundi.”  One would think he is talking about Francis. But these maneuvers, these cunning ideological reinterpretations, collapse after a certain amount of time. What endures is the great block of Tradition by means of  which a believer can take the measure of something. First of all a glance in the gospels suffices. The gospels are radical. Every line of the gospels denounces that cunning that would make Christianity acceptable. But everyone can also take the measure of something using, for example,  a gothic cathedral – if you stand before Notre Dame de Paris and ask if this or that encyclical, this or that papal address stands comparison to this building? And if not, it’s certainly not the fault of the cathedral.

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Francis wants precisely that, going forward, Rome doesn’t have to decide everything. In Evangelii Gaudium he writes: “I also don’t believe that one should expect from the papal magisterium a final or complete  answer  to all questions concerning the Church and the world.”

Mosebach: Pope Francis is trying here in a somewhat unclear manner to address a mistaken development. The First Vatican Council in the document Pastor Aeternus confirmed, in the midst of a political crisis, the infallibility of the pope in questions of faith and morals. It thereby launched  through in part dramatic formulations an exaggeration of the papal office that didn’t correspond to Catholic Tradition.  Especially in the post-conciliar papal theology the papal office was exalted to an extent that doesn’t survive a comparison to Tradition. This omnipotent papacy, which seems to have imitated the absolutist fantasies of Joseph de Maistre,  has revealed its full danger really only now, when suddenly everything is supposed to depend on this one very special personality Bergoglio. Perhaps Catholics should be thankful for this situation, because it makes more urgent the correction of such exaggerations. Leading the papacy back to its old constraints would be fortunate for the Church. The Pope as supreme judge, who decides controversies in submission to Tradition – that suffices.

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Sternberg: …The papacy has acquired a totally new coloration with Francis….…I really very much admire Francis’s opening to the perception of other people. The way he treats disabled people, the way he really lifts people out of their wheelchairs and always goes first to them instead of to officials. …

Mosebach: But you must certainly know, Herr Sternberg, that that’s part of the ritual of modern dictators: kissing children, soothing the sick, visiting field hospitals and so forth. Since publicity has existed, since we have had propaganda,  rulers have displayed themselves in this manner. It was old fashioned, almost touching in its rootedness in the past when the papal court still had its ostrich feather fans. The strong men of the modern age – a Hitler or Stalin – have used far different stylistic means to exhibit themselves in the best light. It’s the same with the current pope. A football stadium, where tens of thousands zero in on a solitary white form in the middle – that’s a far more totalitarian language than the ponderous, old-fashioned  court etiquette of the past!  Then there’s the utilization of the sick in their wheelchairs! Lined up a row,  they are now used to demonstrate our charity and mercy towards them! A shiver runs through me when the reigning Holy Father always speaks of the “tenderness of God.” I’d just like to roll up and die! The tenderness of God – that, in the face of the hard language of scripture! It’s a reprehensible downplaying, a deception, to deprive the faithful of the Rex Tremendae Majestatis from the regrettably abolished Dies Irae. Permit me too here to call attention to the close connection between kitsch and heterodoxy.  

Sternberg: I really have to object strongly here, because I have experienced it differently….

1. „Käme es auf Genie an, wäre dies Amt ein Irrsinn“ Herder Korrespondenz Spezial 1/2019
2. Gottesdienstordnung: The German word here refers to the regulations governing worship services (agenda) of the German Protestant (Lutheran) church.