The Ricochet Podcast - The Passing of Pope Benedict: A Conversation with Father Paul Scalia

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

On the occasion of the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Peter Robinson discusses his career and legacy with Father Paul Scalia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Peter Robinson recording a special episode of the Ricochet Podcast with one guest, the Reverend Paul Scalia, who is the pastor of St. James Church in Falls Church, Virginia, and the vicar for clergy in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. And also, I should add, a friend of mine. And I've known Father and two of his siblings, two of his numerous siblings, for many years. So he's a friend. With the passing of Pope Benedict, I simply thought it would be—honestly, I thought I would enjoy and learn from a discussion with Father Scalia. Anybody else who wants to listen in, that's a kind of additional

benefit from my point of view, but I get father to myself for a while here. Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger, born April 16th, 1927, died December 31st, 2022. He was ordained a priest in his native Bavaria. He pursued an academic career, a brilliant academic career. He was named a full professor at the age of 31, which is unusual anywhere, but very unusual in Germany. He was so brilliant that he served as a theological advisor, still a young man, during the Second Vatican Council in 1962 to 1965, during the long papacy of Pope John, Saint Pope John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger served as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith. Father will explain that to us in a moment. Then he served as pope from 2005 to 2013 when he resigned. And just a decade after his resignation, he died.

He was buried yesterday. The Pope Francis presided over the funeral mass. Father, thank you for making the time. Great to be with you. Thanks so much, Peter. It's a privilege. And I should add, by the way, that although we don't get to see each other that often, I'm in California, you're in Virginia, your homilies are available each week on SoundCloud. And listeners may very well want to check that out. I will say that apart from any—one of the many virtues of your homilies is that you're very disciplined.

They go to 13 minutes, and then they stop. And 13 minutes is that if I'm going to 13 minutes, I'm going a little long. What's your aim, actually? For a Sunday homily, what's your aim? 10 to 12. 10 to 12? Okay. Yeah.

And I do mean this, listeners. If you have a 12-minute workout you want to do, pop in Father Scalia. You'll be healthy and edified at the end of 12 minutes. Well, if you can make your way through all the screaming children in the background, which sometimes is my own niece. All right. So, Pope Benedict, we buried him yesterday. What, in the long, long line of popes, I'm going to suppose that most listeners will have some knowledge, some impression of John Paul II, and of course, of Francis, our present Pope. Where does Benedict fit? Yeah, you know, first of all, I think it's probably better to speak more broadly about Joseph Ratzinger and not just about Benedict. I mean, I think Benedict is very much, and I think consciously, bringing forward all of the work done by John Paul II. I mean, they were such

close collaborators. You know, they met each other at the Second Vatican Council, and they immediately sort of perceived each other as kindred spirits. And so when John Paul II became Pope, he, within a year or two, he brought Ratzinger from Germany to Rome. And so I think Benedict's pontificate is very much a continuation of John Paul II. And it's not fair to say that it's just a continuation of John Paul II, but everything that not fair to say that it's just a continuation of John Paul II, but everything that was being done, all of that work that they together had engaged in is, I think, being brought forward during his pontificate with his, you know, a very different style and a very different way of going about things. You talk about the work. They were engaged in a large project.

And in my simple layman's understanding, that project came down to this, putting the pieces back together. Is that fair? Can you explain? No, I can tell you don't like, you're not comfortable with that. What is the project?

How would you describe the project? No, I think that that is certainly part of it. They were both in the Second Vatican Council, and then they both saw the kind of the unraveling of things after the council, which was not what either of them expected or desired or thought was really a legitimate response to the council. And, and so, uh, yeah, there was a lot of putting the pieces back together again, um, liturgically, doctrinally. Um, and, uh, so yes, there was some of that, but again, I think the mission is much broader than that. These are two men who, who experienced the worst of the 20th century, um, both experienced dictatorship, um dictatorship in Poland and in Germany. And then both kind of saw what Benedict famously termed the dictatorship of relativism. Both saw that coming, you know,

kind of dictatorship, one that we kind of bring down upon ourselves. And so they were really responding to the crisis of thought in the modern world and a crisis of thought that had preceded them, but they saw very clearly. And this is one of the things that I think is so amazing about Benedict. You know, contrary to the popular depiction of him, he's a man who really understood and had a great sympathy for the struggles of the modern world. And you find that in his writings. He doesn't take the objections to the faith lightly. He doesn't think that they're unfounded. He understands where they're coming from. But he's also a man who's so deeply rooted in the Church's tradition and doctrine that he's able to respond very, very peacefully to things and to the many, you know, modernist objections to the Catholic faith.

So, Father, again, I'm going to trot out my little layman's, my modest little layman's understanding and ask you to correct it, amend it as necessary, but also to elaborate on it where I am onto something. So here's one thing, excuse me, I begin this little sally with a story of dinner a decade ago with Christopher Hitchens seated at the other end of the table. And Christopher, Christopher would always start the argument himself. How can you believe that God exists? And finally, Christopher looked at me and said in just terrible exasperation, verging on anger, he said, Peter, how can you of all people believe this claptrap? Now, but when he said me of all people, what he meant was that I had an education of a kind. All right, along comes

Joseph Ratzinger, eventually Benedict XVI. He produced more than 60 books, not pamphlets. These are work of academic heft. I read him when I was in college. I had no idea who he was, but Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity was one of the assigned readings in a course on the history of the Christian church. All right. He's clearly at home with Hebrew and ancient Greek, fluent in Latin, by all accounts, able to have a dinner table conversation in Latin. He's read Freud in the original German. He's read all of Marx in the original German. In his very person, there are all kinds of arguments that he's happy to entertain about the faith, but in his very person, he shuts down one line

of argument finally and completely, and that line of argument is, ah, Catholic belief, Christian belief, it's going to wither away. It's essentially an artifact of peasant life in the Middle Ages. As education spreads, as people begin to enjoy the benefits of the modern world, it'll just wither away. And along comes the man who's the smartest man in the 20th century. And he turns out to, he takes as his life's work, the reassertion of the faith. He shuts down an argument. Is that much right? I don't know that he shuts it down. He engages it. Ah, all right. This is better, right?

Yeah, he engages. I think this is going to be one of his biggest legacies. And again, it precedes his time as Pope, I mean, by decades. What he's engaging most of all is the myth that faith and reason have nothing to do with one another and are in conflict. You know, Christopher Hitchens' entire point, the more educated you become, the less you'll need faith. In his life, he shows that that's not true. He's a man of deep faith and deep erudition. But it's not even fair to say that he sees these as able to peacefully coexist. That wouldn't be enough. Really, the way he understands it is, and taught it so clearly, is that these depend on one another. That faith really seeks understanding, and a faith that

isn't seeking to understand things more really doesn't last very long. And at the same time, he talks about faith purifying reason. It's a great phrase that reason in our wounded human nature is subject to many different prejudices and limitations. And we see those limitations, especially in the modern world, where we limit reason to just the scientific. Which, by the way, since this is one of the gifts of the pandemic, right, is that we see that, wow, science isn't really everything the way that the modern world thought it was. And science is not, science needs to be purified, right? It's not this thing that and dependent on one another. John Paul II issued the encyclical Fides et Ratio, Faith and Reason.

And it's kind of a funny thing. Here is the Pope of the Catholic Church speaking to the philosophical world and telling them, actually, we are able to know what is true. The very thing that you would want philosophers to be confident about. And of course, Cardinal Ratzinger was influential

in the writing of that document, and then continued that line of thought moving forward as well. All right. And now, Ratzinger slash Benedict and the United States. He speaks, he wrote so much that now I'm sorry to say I can't recall which document this is in. You may spot it. He grants that in the 19th century, the church hunkered down and in some way lost the ability to talk to the modern world that was then emerging. And of course, he argues that the Second Vatican Council is the moment when the church finds its voice. It decides how it wants to address the modern world.

And he writes that one of the developments that makes it possible for the church and the world to begin finding ways to talk to each other again is the United States. The French Revolution is an attack on religious belief. The United States is a liberal democratic government of the kind that made figures such as the 19th century Pope Pius IX nervous. But by the middle of the 20th century, we see a Catholic community thriving in the United States next to Protestant churches, next to successful Jewish—successful in the sense that they're thriving, they're not under threat— successful Jewish communities. And there is this notion that in some basic way the United States embodies, rather than represents a threat to many of the Church's most important values. Have I got that right? Yeah, I think that's fair. He liked the United

States. A friend of mine was central in the arrangements for Pope Benedict's visit to the D.C. area back in, I think it was 08. And, uh, and, and he said to me, we were together when, when, when the Pope died and my friend said to me, he said he loved the United States and, and he, and, but I think, I think, um, on, on the sort of the philosophical level that you, I think you summarized it well, is that he saw that this was an area in which the church could engage being herself, but also being free to do these things. And there's a reason, I think, that the church in the United States is healthier than any church in Europe, with the exception of maybe Poland. But I mean, as far as Western Europe goes, the church is moribund, and it's very sad

to see, and it broke his heart, but the church in the United States, I mean, we have, you know, we gripe about things, and sure, there's plenty to gripe about, but actually, you know, the church in the United States is far healthier, and it's because we have this freedom to operate. And we're also, because we're not, we don't have and never did have the backing of the state or anything like that. We have to do for ourselves. And that's why charitable giving in the United States, for example, in churches is an extraordinary thing. Unlike in Germany, where it's all state-run basically and a lot of problems right all right can i these a couple of mandatory questions here the two basic charges against him

one is that he was this kind of authoritarian conservative throwback figure what did they call him panzer cardinal after the german panzer team the or god's rottweiler exactly and that's not just wrong that's sort of 180 degrees off isn't it well absolutely and it's it just it just speaks of a prejudice because rat singer slash benedict was uh sought always to speak the truth that that was his mission that was the his his episcopal motto was co-workers of the truth and he was seeking to clarify what is true um if you see the truth as as a threat then you will see anybody who speaks the truth as authoritarian um or a throwback or whatever else. A couple things about that whole topic. First of all, every Catholic ought to be traditional and conservative, not in the sense of

those terms as political terms, but we only have the faith that we've received through the tradition of the church. That's how we have the faith. None of us fought it up for ourselves or found it for ourselves. We have what we've received. That's called tradition. And that we, yeah, we're conservative in the sense that we're trying to conserve things and hand them on. And that's of the essence. It's not an option in being Catholic. That's why I don't like it when those things are thrown about as just labels. But then more to the point about the man himself, first of all, he shows great gentleness when he was at the Congregation for

the Doctrine of the Faith. I mean, there were some theologians that he disciplined that it took years, like over a decade in one case for a theologian to be disciplined. And, you know, some of us are pulling our hair out. But, I mean, it was incredibly charitable, giving the theologians every chance they had to correct themselves or whatever else. So that's one thing to keep in mind. Another is that, well, the truth is not a threat. And he always understood the truth is at the service of charity. And I would say this is another central point in his entire work, is that truth and

charity, again, like faith and reason, truth and charity don't just mutually coexist. They are dependent on one another. The truth is ordered towards the expression of God's love. We're just celebrating Christmas, right? And the Word was made flesh, right? What is enfleshed? It is the logos. It is the Word of God, it is truth, but it is also incarnate love that is in flesh. And so in the person of Jesus Christ, we see both truth and charity and flesh embodied. And so whenever we pursue the truth, it's really for the purpose of loving God and neighbor better.

It's not just speculation or just interesting things. I'll say this is the worst thing I think that people can say to a priest after Mass is, thank you, Father, that was an interesting homily. If that's the reaction, he's done something wrong. And also, charity has to be tethered to the truth because we're created for love. And if we are not adhering to the structure of love and to the truth of the human person, then our love is going to go wildly astray as we see. And, you know, a lot of the evils in the world are, most every single one of them is of misdirected love. And so the truth helps to guide love to its proper point. And this is the purpose of his work, and this is the purpose of Catholic doctrine,

and why he saw it as so extraordinarily important. Here's the second mandatory question. Wait, can I interrupt? Of course you may. You're the priest. Yeah, so I joked with some friends that there are three words you should never hear in a homily there, by the way. But no, the man himself was a great embodiment of truth and charity.

And I was privileged to meet him once briefly when I was studying in Rome and one of my professors had been Ratzinger's student. And so we ran into Ratzinger in St. Peter's Square, and our professor introduced us to Ratzinger. And I tell you, I bought into the Panzer Cardinal thing, but favorably. Oh, you did? Well, favorably. Right? And so, you know, I mean, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, you know, 23, 24 year old theology student. And I think he's just, he's great. You want a blitzkrieg. Yeah, right. He's, he's laying the smack down on heresy as the saying went. And, um, and so I was expecting a theological Clint Eastwood instead, I encountered this extraordinarily gracious and disarmingly

gentle man. And it was a shock to the system, and it was really good for a young man studying theology to encounter that and realize that the purpose of his work is not just to rebuke, but it's to build up, and that's ultimately what the truth should seek to do. What was the outstanding characteristic of him in that? Was it gentleness? This is a very difficult thing to define, but did you get a sense of holiness? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Oh, you did? Yeah just just a peacefulness and a simplicity and a gentleness and and and really sort of a um a lack of a complete lack of human respect a friend of mine um uh because of where he lived in rome for years he ended up having breakfast with cardinal ratzinger once a week when cardinal ratatzinger would come to that residence to say mass.

And he said Cardinal Ratzinger was completely incapable of small talk. Oh, really? He wanted to talk about the weather or the soccer game, but once you got into theology. And he said he was just so simple and gracious, and no one who knew him didn't love him. That's what a friend of mine observes. And this friend worked in the Vatican under Benedict for some years. So he saw it for a long time. Okay, so here comes the second mandatory question.

That some way or another, not necessarily that he was complicit in, although there's arguments that you'll hear that. You'll see that in the press and in things that people tweeted this last week. But somehow or other, he should have been aware earlier. He should have done more. Somehow or other, the sex scandals of the last decade and a half land at his doorstep that some way in one way or another he he is responsible for failing to do more or failing to do more sooner and the answer to that is well i think the church in general failed to do more sooner right, I, I, I don't think there's, there's, there's, there's any way out of that. Um, there, but, um, he was very aggressive in, in bringing, in bringing, uh, abuse cases to the highest level of authority and, and bringing them over to the congregation

for the doctrine of the faith, which typically doesn't, didn't have jurisdiction for those things, but basically he brought them under his own um his own authority and and and precisely because he wanted to act precisely because he wanted to act and and get those things uh taking and he did and he did um uh yeah so i i think and he's been praised for that by, I mean, I think Pope Francis has acknowledged that few people have done more. John Allen, who... Reporter. Yeah, National Catholic Reporter.

I think he's acknowledged this as well. And that's not a publication that would be typically sympathetic to Pope Benedict. But he's acknowledged that, yeah, he did far more than people realize to address this issue and to address the most serious cases. Because it's only the most serious cases that really go to Rome, right? Right, right, right. So he warned in the, as I recall, it was this homily. This was, what, three days before he became pope. The homily he delivered at the funeral of John Paul II, he used that term, the dictatorship of relativism.

You have said that he was at pains throughout his life to demonstrate that faith and reason needed one another, which sounds like a very gentle, appealing argument to make that could be made in a gentle and appealing way. But in the dictatorship of relativism, he is warning the modern world of real ruin, of real evil. It's not that faith and reason can coexist, it's that reason attempting to live without faith is headed toward what? What did he mean by that phrase, dictatorship of relativism? Well, I think it gets to the point that I mentioned earlier that reason is somewhat crippled in the modern world, precisely because it's kind of separated itself from its source deep in Western civilization. And it's denied this other way of knowing things,

which is called faith. And so there's a crisis of reason in our culture, and especially in the philosophical world, those who say that we can't know things. And, you know, even more broadly than that, people say there is no truth. OK, well, if that is the case, if there's nothing true for us to together try to discover and adhere to and form society according to, if that's true, then what's left, it is simply force, right? If we're not going to build a society according to what is true, which is what relativism says we can't do, then who wins? It's the one with the biggest army or the most lawyers, right?

They're the ones who win. And I think this is especially important right now in the United States, because we've kind of despaired of constructing our society according to what is true about the human person. And once that happens, it's just a matter of, well, you know, who can beat out the other guy and get the levers of power? Our founding fathers were, they were pretty confident that there is something true about the human person. We can know it and we can build a society according to it. Once everything is relativized and we don't, there's nothing true

about the human person, or we can't know the truth about the human person, then the intellect is useless and all that's left is the will. And that's the big part of relativism. Father, let me ask a question or two, if I may, about you. And although we've known each other a lot, I'm going to put a couple of questions more directly than I've ever put them before in any conversation we've ever had, I think. We begin with the concept of the nation. If there's any institution that you'd expect to be in favor of globalization, that you'd expect to make common cause with the United Nations, it would be the Church of Rome. And yet, John Paul II and Benedict speak in terms of nations again and again and again. Poland is to John Paul II, even after almost 40 years under the Soviet Union,

it is a living, separate, identifiable entity as a nation. Benedict comes to this country and he speaks to us. I was looking over his homilies that he delivered. He speaks to the United States of America as a nation. All right. We have that. Now I come to you. Your grandparents, your father's parents come to this country from, it was your grandparents, I think, who came here from Sicily or your great-grandparents? No, my great-grandparents, my dad's, I think, grandparents on his mother's side. But then my grandfather came from Sicily, yeah. Okay, so one grandfather comes from Sicily. Your dad is raised in Queens. This is the whole Italian immigrant experience. Your mom is Irish. Again,

we have the immigrant Catholic experience. And in the old days, when your dad was at Georgetown and your mom was making her way through Radcliffe for old schooling, you could argue that the difficulty for Catholic Americans was that the country was still run by the old WASP ascendancy. The WASP ascendancy is gone. The difficulty for Catholic Americans these days is remaining true even to the fundamentals of their faith in public life. We have a president of the United States who goes to Mass every Sunday and advocates abortion on demand paid for by the taxpayers.

Okay, so this brings us to Paul Scalia. And if we know anything about your family, we know that they take the church and the country seriously. How do you pull this off, Father? How do you think about being a good Catholicolic and a good american in the year 2023 uh yeah i don't um contrary to um unfortunately increasingly number of catholics i don't see those things as in conflict uh i i think that um uh the the more Catholic I am, the better that is for the nation. And I think when Catholics live their faith well, they serve the nation well. I think the middle of the 20th century shows that. I mean, just an extraordinary service of the nation on the part of Catholics who had been raised when really the influence

of the strength of the church in the United States was at its height. And now- In the middle of the last century. Correct. Yeah. The nuns who taught your mom and dad, for example. Well, interestingly, I don't think either of my parents had nuns. Oh, they went to public school?

Yeah, my mom went to public school. Okay, so let's put it this way. When your dad attended Georgetown, there were still Jesuits in the classroom. Oh, yeah, and Xavier High School, yeah. Okay. Oh, no, and it was extraordinary. And they did see these things as helpful, right? And that, listen, how should we live freedom as Americans?

The founding fathers understood it, and they didn't understand it as Catholics, but they understood that virtue produces freedom. And the less virtuous citizenry, what happens? Well, the more the federal, the more the government has to expand to compensate for a lack of virtue. And of course, the more the government expands, the less virtues there's going to be. And so there's just, just on that level. But then another is, you know, one of the greatest things that we can do for, for the nation is to remind the nation that the nation is not all there is. And to remind the government that it is ultimately going to be accountable to a transcendent authority. That's a wonderful thing to do, because it means that the authority will be less likely to overreach, right? And so a vigorous

living out of the Catholic life, it benefits all of society and the United States. These things are not in conflict. All right. So I'm going to ask you one more question about you, Father. Point of departure here is going to be Benedict and John Paul II, who were both theological advisors at the Second Vatican Council. They show up in Rome for this council that is called by John XXIII and ended by Paul VI, and they can have hopes, because the Church is still a completely coherent entity. We understand the lines of authority. We still speak Latin to each other in these great gatherings. You can still

suppose that every bishop and almost all priests are conversant in Aquinas, in Thomist theology. All right, we understand why they go into it as young men. By the time you come along, and by the time the young men whom you are no doubt your vocations, you and your vocations director in the diocese are no doubt counseling right now. By the time you come along, the collapse after the second council has taken place. Tens of thousands of priests in this country leave the priesthood. Tens of thousands of nuns leave their orders. Those nuns who do stay get rid of the habit, dress like thoroughly modern Millie, divorce, annulments become routine, on and on it goes.

You talk about the church in Europe, this is on my mind because I went to Mass, I was visiting Florence and there I was, the Duomo of Florence, vast space built to hold 3,000 people, 12 people at Mass, 12 people at Mass, and I think five of us were American tourists. Likewise, here in Northern California, St. Patrick's Seminary has something like 60 young men. It was built for a couple of hundred. So you come along right into the middle of a collapse which is visible and undeniable, and I have never heard you sound discouraged, or I have never had any sense from you that you feel that you have devoted your life to a fighting retreat or to a losing battle, and this baffles me. What do you think you're doing, Father? Here is the question for you.

It's 2023, the church is a mess, and you're cheerful. Why are you so cheerful? Because the Lord has risen. end, I, I joke that, uh, the, that the pessimist is always, is always happier because the pessimist is always presently pleasantly surprised, you know, like, oh, it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. But, um, but there's something more, uh, at, um, I don't buy into the whole and no Catholic should buy into the whole notion of the right side of history, because Christ is the determining factor of history, and he has already won the battle. And so what are we doing? We're trying to just assist in what has already been won. And even if we, as many saints have experienced, if we lose our particular battle, well, you know, ultimately the war is won. And so just the kind of the peacefulness of, well, let's do what we can.

And also, and I think this is what we find in both John Paul II and Benedict, that there is a serenity because they know that ultimately the truth will be vindicated. And that what they're doing is right. And there's just a peacefulness about that. Like, okay, what we're doing is true and good. And we're striving to save as many souls as we can. And that should bring us peace and joy. We can't base our peace and our joy on the success of numbers, you know, how many people come along,

because there are plenty of people who stopped following our Lord in his public ministry. So I just think, and there are many reasons for hope, just, you know, in the church. How are vocations coming in the diocese of orleans depends on where you are um we have like i am almost 50 men in the seminary we're gonna ordain nine yeah we're gonna ordain nine next year uh this year sorry in in in the spring yeah so um i i joke with the bishop that he has to be careful.

He doesn't want other bishops to get jealous if he tells them that. But no, we're very blessed. We're very blessed here. And that's the thing. I think there are a lot of reasons for hope. And there's just so much negative press out there that we lose sight of the many good initiatives that are happening. A lot of grassroots things in the church that are happening. And it's the same as it ever was.

There's a time of collapse, and then there's a renewal. And that's throughout the church's history. And losing battles are worth fighting, as Tolkien understood. Oh, that's right. There is a line in Tolkien. What is the line? What are you referring to? It's something to the effect of, I'm a Christian, and so I understand history as a series of

defeats that ends in victory, or something to that effect. Yes, right, right. He wrote in a letter to his son, as I recall. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's, you know, the modern mind thinks that history is just going to be an ever-increasing goodness in the world. And that's actually not the Christian view of history. That's certainly not the view that the book of Revelation gives us. That's not actually the view that catechism gives us is that we understand that prior to our Lord's coming, things will actually get worse, not better. So look on the bright side, Peter.

Father, last question. Claire Booth Luce. Claire Booth Luce who spent her last few years in Washington. This goes back to the 80s. I'm sure your mom and dad knew her. I knew her a little bit. Claire Booth Luce, the great journalist. By the way, she was a convert to the church.

I believe she received her instruction from Archbishop Sheen. There's a famous story that if it was Sheen, in any event, whoever was giving her instruction said, is there any priest in particular to whom you'd like to make your first confession? And Mrs. Luce replied, anyone who has seen the rise and fall of empires. That's the kind of confession she had in mind. In any event, she used to say that history will only give even the most important figure one sentence. Lincoln freed the slaves. Churchill defeated Hitler. What do Americans, what one sentence should Americans grasp about Benedict XVI?

I think he was a faithful cooperator of incarnate truth. I think that's what he did. And he took on the yoke, and he was just faithful and diligent in doing the work of incarnate truth right in front of him. Reverend Paul Scalia, the vicar for clergy of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, and the pastor of St. James in Fall Church. Father, thank you for joining us. Peter, great to be with you. God bless you. Thank you.