A lengthy interview published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on July 20, 2023. Martin Mosebach’s discussion partners are Thomas Ribi and Benedict Neff. The entire interview is most worthwhile; I translate only the passages relating to the Church.
Concerning questions of religion or of the Church, you still have very pronounced points of view.
Martin Mosebach: Yes, the currently reigning Pope receives very bad grades from me.
Is it appropriate, as a believing Catholic, to criticize the Pope?
Martin Mosebach: Naturally it is – at all times people have criticized the Pope. What’s important is the reason for which one criticizes him. I do not to deny that he is Pope. But I criticize him when he does not want to be Pope – that is his problem.
Where does he not want to be Pope?
Martin Mosebach: The Pope is the supreme judge of the Church he stands for the preservation of orthodoxy, as the final court of appeal. He must defend the 2000-year-old tradition against each age’s present. But Francis will not assume this role. Orthodoxy is for him just a burden and not the tested guarantee of survival of the church.
Nevertheless, in one point he has decisively acted: he abolished the decision of Benedict XVI in favor of the old form of the mass as it existed up to the second Vatican council.
Martin Mosebach: He gave the bishops the right to abolish the old liturgy where it is celebrated. He didn’t, however, give them the right to permit it; that he has reserved to himself. Thus, he has drastically restricted the scope of authority of the bishops, to whom he otherwise delegates many decisions. His Dictatus Papae, however, is coming too late because the spirit of Tradition can no longer be returned to the bottle. Under Benedict XVI Tradition grew to such an extent that Francis cannot push through his prohibition anymore.
Behind the reform efforts of the Church, which you call heresy, are there not the efforts of the representatives of the Church to fill people with enthusiasm for a Church that is ever more remote from them?
Martin Mosebach: But it is after all a religion not a sports event! The Church is a cosmos which one life does not suffice to get to know. The Catholic religion is probably the most complicated of all. if, as often happens, we have allowed allowed religious instruction to deteriorate for 50 years then people don’t know any more from which institution they are attempting to escape. Attempting, I say, because it is impossible to cancel baptism.
Your father was a Protestant – how were you drawn to Catholicism? Were you a believer already as a child?
Martin Mosebach: As a child I was very pious until I was 10 or 11 years old – afterwards I did not go to church. That started again much later when I was around 30 years old. It began when I discovered the Gregorian chant and wanted to hear it again and again. All at once I was Catholic again without an illumination or a conversion experience.
Simply because you went to church?
Martin Mosebach: I believe that we are above all physical beings. Understanding and thought are relatively unreal. In my religious temperament I am a materialist.
In your view, would it be a negative comment, if one were to say faith is above all a routine of doing?
Martin Mosebach: No, that is even the highest wisdom. It’s exactly that!
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