The Shepherd and the Wolves: Remembering Benedict XVI

Il Pastore e I Lupi: Ricordando Benedetto XVI

By Aldo Maria Valli

Chorabooks, Hong Kong 2023.

With a Foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider and a “Testimony” by Cardinal Joseph Zen.

Aldo Mario Valli is among the most articulate and inspiring defenders of Catholic traditionalism today both in the spoken and written word. Yet Valli is a relative newcomer to the traditionalist cause. Indeed, he was a long-term associate of the late Cardinal Martini of Milan. He covered the papacy of Pope Benedict for a leading Italian TV channel. But the blinkers fell from his eyes with the publication of Amoris Laetitia.  

In the Shepherd and the Wolves (Il Pastore e i Lupi) Valli has written a short history and defense of Pope Benedict XVI. It is evident from the book that Valli has great affection for Benedict, whom he knew professionally as a journalist but also from private encounters. Valli describes for us a gentle, spiritual man of great intelligence, who nevertheless, even before his papacy, became the target of outright persecution from forces within and outside the Church It was an attack which the scholarly, shy Benedict found difficult to confront. 

So, this book in not at all a critical analysis of Benedict’s papacy (at least up to the last few pages of this book!). Rather, it is a warm, appreciative reminiscence and a defense against the accusations that rained down on Ratzinger before, during and after his papacy – and which continue to do so now, even after his death. For example, as far as I am aware, in Germany a lawsuit is still underway against the estate of Benedict XVI related to the tenuous connections of Ratzinger when Archbishop of Munich with a sex offender priest – all in order to besmirch the Pope’s reputation in a potential trial.

Valli devotes much space in this short book to the public statements of Pope Benedict and in setting forth his philosophical and theological principles.  He also rebuts the endless attacks against Benedict in the media – that Benedict was unpopular, too focused on Europe and on condemning errors, disrespectful to other religions, indifferent to clerical sexual abuse, etc.  – not to mention even wilder claims.

In this regard, The Shepherd and the Wolves strongly resembles much of the
2020 biography of Pope Benedict by Peter Seewald. As I wrote of the latter book, I find such point-by-point defenses of limited utility, especially ten years or more after the facts. By structuring a book around rebutting clearly absurd accusations Valli (and Seewald) cede all the initiative to Benedict’s opponents. They are the ones who are allowed to set the framework of the discussion. Regarding the media a historian of Benedict’s papacy should be rather asking different questions:  Why were the media uniformly hostile to Benedict but currently are still fawning and obsequious towards Francis?  Why did the Vatican willingly participate in the staged media game? Above all, why were Pope Benedict and the Vatican so obsessed with their image in the media in the first place?

Like Seewald (at least until his most recent interview, that is!) Valli also appears to restate the assertions of Benedict that his resignation was entirely voluntary, dictated by his failing strength and not at all motivated by internal political crises of one kind or another in the Church. I am not sure anyone believes this, especially given the ten post-abdication years.

Yet at the very end of the book Valli breaks with this party line and offers an alternative critical review of Pope Benedict. His interpretation is sad and highly insightful– and, for what it’s worth, also agrees with my own views on the subject. First, Valli frankly points out the disastrous consequences of Benedict’s renunciation, not only by enabling the reversal of the Pope’s own policies but also by reconfirming the understanding of the papacy as a secular political function. 

Valli sees the key to Benedict’s actions in his consistent desire to find a Third Way between traditional theology and radical modernism. Pope Benedict could never ascribe any guilt for the unfolding catastrophe of the post-conciliar Church to the Council itself.  Rather, he made a mythical “council of the media” responsible for the Church’s woes. For Valli the tragedy of Benedict is not weakness of character but precisely his theological and intellectual starting point – his theology. Ratzinger at the Council had wanted to ignite a fire which would purify and illuminate the Church. Yet the wood for that fire was taken from warehouses in which it was claimed that that the Church and the world could and should live in reciprocal harmony. Yet the truth is that the world is marked by sin and the Church cannot do anything but call it to conversion. That purifying fire turned into a devastating blaze that could neither be contained nor brought under control.   

In a sense, the papacy of Bergoglio was the bitterest possible “punishment” for Ratzinger’s lack of insight.  Pope Benedict had to witness for ten years how the process of self-dissolution, initiated by the Council, was carried to its most extreme consequences precisely because of his own resignation. Valli asks: “Who could imagine a condemnation more terrible”?  Indisputably, the destiny of the humble Bavarian professor was ultimately tragic. (pp. 161-62)

Acknowledging these truths does not at all detract from Valli’s admiration for Pope Benedict.  He concludes his book by quoting from a letter he received from one of his readers. She wanted express her thanks to Pope Benedict, a man and pastor she has always considered a spiritual father, a witness who had given strength to her life and had always seemed to speak directly to her. Benedict’s rather summary funeral mass reflected how Benedict to the very end never had the recognition he merited.  In contrast, so many of the simple faithful had greeted and thanked him. His message had reached both the mind and the heart! (p. 163)