The Last Word…

Fomenting Another Formosus

v As much as the enemies of Pope Formosus wanted to defame his name and annul his acts, many of the enemies of Benedict have sought the same with regard to the Pope Emeritus.

By Father Celatus

Anniversaries

are occasions to be celebrated or mourned, depending upon the event that they mark. Among those that we celebrate annually are weddings and ordinations; among those we mourn are deaths and destruction.

February twenty-eighth marks the first anniversary of the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI. On the day of his abdication many pastors were unsure what to say or do within their parishes.

After all, while we have experienced the death of multiple pontiffs in our own lifetime, one would have to be the ripe age of Methuselah to have lived through a previous abdication of a pope.

I chose to toll the church bells on the day of the abdication of the Pope.

While not a traditionalist himself, Pope Benedict had done more for tradition than his recent papal predecessors by reiterating the right of priests and the faithful to have access to the Mass and Sacraments in their traditional forms. For that we should remain ever grateful to this pontiff. But the act of abdication itself seemed so inconceivable and incongruent with tradition that it warranted the tolling of church bells in sorrow and with foreboding as to what such an extraordinary change in the papal office portends for the Church. But not everyone was mourning the abdication of Pope Benedict. Enemies of tradition and proponents of modernism were thrilled.

Finally, after decades serving as a cardinal and then pope, Ratzinger the Rat had "resigned." In my own parish, on the day of his abdication, a picture of Pope Benedict mysteriously disappeared from the church narthex. After much searching my staff found poor Benedict buried in the bowels of the boiler room. We rescued the image of the Pope and restored it to its rightful place. After all, at the time there was no papal successor on the throne. Soon after, however, we received a mandate from the chancery to remove all public pictures of the former pope.

Benedict XVI had been expunged.

If truth be told, the mad rush of maniacs to cast Pope Benedict into the abyss reminds me of a poor pope from centuries past. Pope Formosus had a brief but troubled reign as pontiff in the latter ninth century during a turbulent period in the Church. The political and ecclesiastical intrigues of this medieval period are fascinating but for purposes of comparison between these two popes we will confine ourselves to what happened to the hapless Pope Formosus following his death.

Without doubt Vatican II has been one the most disastrous general councils of the Church in her entire history but perhaps the most bizarre synod of all time was the Synodus Horrenda , or Cadaver Synod.

This is the name commonly given to the posthumous trial of Pope Formosus, which took place in the Basilica of Saint John in Rome in the year 897. The trial was convened and conducted by a successor of Formosus, Pope Stephen.

The rotted papal corpse of Formosus was disinterred; it was dressed in papal vestments and propped up in a sitting position upon the papal throne in the basilica. A deacon was assigned to be defense counsel of the deceased, a jury of cardinals was appointed and Pope Stephen prosecuted the case.

Pope Stephen raged for days with accusations against Formosus which included perjury, coveting the papacy and having acceded to the papal throne illegally. Formosus-or rather his corpse—remained silent in the face of these charges. The final verdict was that Formosus had been unworthy of the office of pope. Sentence was passed and swiftly applied: all previous papal measures and acts by Formosus were annulled and all his ordinations declared invalid; the corpse of Formosus was stripped bare and the three fingers of the right hand used for blessing were cut off. After these outrages the putrid corpse of Formosus was cast into the depths of the Tiber River, from which it eventually washed up on its banks.

But the story does not end at the Tiber.

Rumors soon spread that miracles were attributed to the body of Formosus and a public uprising led to Stephen being deposed and imprisoned, wherein he was strangled to death. Bad karma for Stephen, Buddhists would say. The next pope nullified the Cadaver Synod, rehabilitated Formosus, had the papal corpse dressed in pontifical vestments and reinterred in Saint Peter's Basilica. The pope also prohibited any future trials of a dead person.

But the story of Formosus still had not ended. Along came another later successor to the papal throne, Pope Sergius, who once again had the much abused corpse of Formosus exhumed, put on trial and convicted, and this time beheaded. Some sources record that the headless body was once again cast into the Tiber, from which it was rescued by a godly monk. Pope Sergius overturned the rulings of his two predecessor popes, introducing more confusion than ever into the Church.

But enough history! Much of the medieval period of the Church is vociferously criticized for its ecclesiastical confusion and corruption.

Yet these same critics will not point their accusing fingers at the present Modernist period of the Church, which has more than its share of the same. Unanswered questions remain as to why Pope Benedict abdicated his office and some still wonder if his "resignation" was even valid. I continue to mention him by name at Masses in my prayer for the Pope.

As much as the enemies of Formosus wanted to defame his name and annul his acts, many of the enemies of Benedict have sought the same with regard to the Pope Emeritus. More than anything, they want to cast advances instituted by Pope Benedict on behalf of tradition into the abyss, completely ignoring or annulling his remarkable motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum . A case in point has been the tyrannical purge of sacred tradition within the ranks of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. With Rome quietly complicit in this indefensible act, traditionalists worldwide are wondering who is next.

So how should we mark the first anniversary of the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI? I shall toll the bells of my church once again. For if there was cause for sorrow and foreboding one year ago, how much more so now. But take heart!

Currents bore the body of Formosus to the banks; providence will prosper the incipient reform of Benedict in the Church. v

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