Did Benedict XVI Validly Resign? The Anatomy of a Renunciation, Part II

Answering the Objections

In Part I we argued that Benedict XVI’s renunciation of February 11, 2013, was invalid by the law itself. The papacy is a single juridical office held by one man. Benedict, by his own public words and those of his secretary, believed he could lay down its active exercise while keeping a bond to the Petrine office that could not be taken from him. That belief was a substantial error, and the bond he meant to keep was the condition on which he acted.

But an argument of that weight deserves to be tested, not merely asserted. So in this second part we do what the great scholastics would have done by stating each objection in its strongest form, then answering it. Where an objection lands and holds merit, we will say so. Where it does not, we will attempt to demonstrate why. Here are eight objections as follows:

1. “He declared the See vacant and called a conclave.”

The objection. The Declaratio could hardly be more clear. Benedict did not merely announce that he would step back from governing. He declared that from 8:00 p.m. on February 28 the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, would be vacant, and that a conclave to elect a new Supreme Pontiff must be convoked by those competent to do so¹. Canon 332 §2 asks only that a resignation be free and properly manifested. Benedict was free, and he manifested exactly the effect a resignation produces. What more could the law require?

The reply. This is the strongest text against us, we admit, and we will not pretend otherwise. But notice what it proves. It proves that Benedict intended the outward effects of a resignation: an empty chair and a successor to fill it. We have never denied that. The question Part I raised is different: what did Benedict understand himself to be giving up, and what did he believe he kept?

A man can intend a legal effect while erring about what his act contains. Dr. Edmund Mazza offers a telling historical parallel. In November 1918, Blessed Karl of Austria signed a declaration renouncing all participation in the affairs of state and releasing his government from office. For generations English-speaking writers called this an abdication. It was not. Karl deliberately chose words that gave up governing without giving up the crown, which is why his opponents kept pressing him to abdicate for the rest of his life². Karl knew precisely what he was doing; Benedict, we argue, did not. But the parallel shows that stepping away from rule, even in a way that lets others govern, is a different act from renouncing the office itself, and that a text can accomplish the first while its author believes he has kept the second.

Benedict’s vacancy clause must therefore be read alongside his own account, given sixteen days later, of what he was keeping: the “always and forever,” the “enclosure of Saint Peter,” the title, the white cassock, the name. And here the law has a further word. Canon 188 does not say that a resignation made in substantial error is valid but regrettable. It says the act is void by the law itself³. A void act produces none of its declared effects, including the effect it names in its own text. A deed that says “title passes on March 1” passes nothing if the deed itself is void. So the vacancy clause cannot rescue the act. If the act fails, the clause fails with it.

Nor can time repair what was void from the beginning. The canonical tradition holds that an office conferred before it is legally vacant is conferred invalidly, and that the conferral does not become valid when a vacancy later occurs⁴. An old rule of law puts it simply: Non firmatur tractu temporis, quod de iure ab initio non subsistit, “what does not stand in law from the beginning is not made firm by the passage of time⁵.” We will return to this principle when we come to the conclave of 2013 and to Benedict’s death in 2022.

The canonists have already faced a case of this shape. In 1046, at the Synod of Sutri, Pope Gregory VI left the papacy, and some historians have suspected that he was pushed out rather than freely resigning. Wernz and Vidal answer that if Gregory’s resignation had been made merely “for form,” without his true and free consent, it “would not have produced its juridical effect, that is, the vacancy of the Apostolic See,” and the election of his successor “would have been invalid⁶.” That is precisely our argument in miniature: a renunciation that lacks what the law requires leaves the See occupied, and an election held in that condition elects no one. Fairness requires us to add how Wernz and Vidal finish the sentence. The successor’s election, they note, “is generally not called into question,” and they treat that fact as evidence that Gregory did truly resign. That is the argument from the Church’s acceptance, and quite frankly, it deserves an essay of its own.

2. “Benedict himself said it was valid, and that a see has only one holder.”

The objection. Who knows Benedict’s mind better than Benedict? In February 2014 he wrote to the journalist Andrea Tornielli that there was “absolutely no doubt” about the validity of his resignation, that its only condition of validity was the complete freedom of his decision, and that speculation to the contrary was simply absurd⁷. In 2020 he told Peter Seewald that his arrangement avoided any thought of two popes, because a see can have only one holder⁸. Archbishop Gänswein, in the same 2016 interview with Paul Badde cited in Part I, called Francis the lawfully elected pope⁹, and in 2023 he insisted that weakness was the one and only reason for the renunciation¹⁰. Surely the man himself, and his closest collaborator, are the best witnesses to what he did.

The reply. These statements deserve respect, but lets consider what substantial error is. A man in error does not know he is in error; if he did, he would not be in it. Every person whose act is void for substantial error sincerely believes the act was valid. If the sincere testimony of the person acting settled the question, the clause on substantial error in canon 188 could never apply to anyone. The standard is objective, or it is nothing.

Marriage tribunals know this all too well. Couples who swear, in perfect good faith, that their marriage was valid are sometimes mistaken, and the Church judges the case by its objective facts, not by the spouses’ certainty¹¹. Benedict’s certainty about his own act is evidence of his good faith, but it does not serve as evidence that his act was free of error.

Read the 2014 letter closely, too. Benedict said the only condition for validity is the complete freedom of the decision. That is not quite what the law says. Canon 188 names several defects that void a resignation, and freedom from fear answers only one of them. Benedict’s letter answered the question he was being asked, whether he had been forced, and we accept his answer. It did not address substantial error at all.

The 2020 statement is more revealing still, because in it Benedict tried to solve the very problem we have raised. He conceded that a see can have only one holder. He then described himself as keeping a spiritual bond to that see, recognized as a legal reality, which “cannot be taken away under any circumstances.” But the see in question is the Apostolic See. A permanent, legally recognized bond to the papal see, held by a former pope who keeps the papal name and style, is exactly the divided papacy he said he was avoiding. He denied two popes in word while describing them in substance. That is not a refutation of the error, but it is the error itself stated with unusual clarity.

Gänswein’s testimony demonstrates the same tension. In the very interview where he called Francis the lawful pope, he also said that for three years the Church had had “two popes,” and that this described the reality as he perceived it¹². As for his 2023 insistence that weakness was the only reason for the resignation, we agree. Weakness was the motive. Our argument has never been about Benedict’s motive, but rather about what he understood his act to be.

3. “The error concerned a consequence, not the substance.”

The objection. Canon law distinguishes carefully between error about the substance of an act and error about its properties or consequences. Marriage is the classic case. Canon 1099 provides that error about the unity, indissolubility, or sacramental dignity of marriage does not vitiate consent, provided it does not determine the will¹³. A man who marries believing divorce is possible still marries validly. By analogy, Benedict willed to resign, and he did. His theory of a “pope emeritus” was a private theological opinion about what would follow, not a defect in the act itself.

The reply. We accept the principle, and we think it is exactly the right test. But notice the proviso at the end of canon 1099: unless the error determines the will. An error that merely floats in the mind, unacted upon, leaves consent intact. An error that shapes what a person actually chooses does not.

Part I showed that Benedict’s error was of the second kind. It was not a stray opinion he happened to hold while resigning. It governed what he chose to do. By Gänswein’s testimony, Benedict regarded abandoning the Petrine office as impossible for him, thought out the emeritus model over decades, and pressed ahead against competent advice. By his own account, his renunciation did not revoke his engagement to the papacy. And the error took visible shape in his choices: keeping the papal name, continuing to don the white cassock, the style, maintaining residence within the Vatican, and keeping the title of “His Holiness.” An error that determines the form of the act itself is precisely what the proviso of canon 1099 excludes.

The analogy also cuts the other way. When the New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law explains substantial error in the context of resignation, the very canon at issue here, it lists among the essential elements of a resignation “the nature of resignation and its consequences¹⁴.” For resignations, at least, error about consequences is not set aside as accidental. It is named as substantial.

Wernz and Vidal, whose definition of substantial error Part I adopted, add a caution we should repeat. Whether an error touches the substance of an act, they say, is judged “not in itself, but in relation to the voluntary act,” and they admit that the judgment is hard to make in practice¹⁵. We accept both halves. The difficulty is real, and it is why this question cannot be settled by slogans on either side. But the standard itself favors our reading, because if substance is measured by what the will actually chose, then the decisive evidence is what Benedict chose, and on that he and his secretary were not silent. Wernz and Vidal also apply the rule directly to resignations by stating that a renunciation made in substantial error is void by the law itself¹⁶.

4. “Canon 333 §2 lets a pope choose a collegial manner of exercise.”

The objection. Canon 333 §2 says the Roman Pontiff has the right, according to the needs of the Church, to determine the manner, whether personal or collegial, of exercising his office¹⁷. Gänswein described Benedict’s arrangement as giving the office a “collegial and synodal dimension.” If the supreme legislator chose a collegial form of the Petrine ministry, who is to say he could not?

The reply. Canon 333 §2 concerns how the office is exercised, not who holds it. It assumes a single Roman Pontiff and “this office,” and it lets him decide whether to act alone or together with the college of bishops, as a pope does when he convokes a council. It does not, and cannot, create a second holder. The constitution of the Church, with its one head, is of divine law, and the First Vatican Council taught that the primacy was given to Peter himself¹⁸. No pope can legislate away what Christ established.

Nor did Benedict claim to be exercising the office in any manner at all. Gänswein agreed with Badde that Benedict’s part was contemplative, “without having any authority to decide¹⁹.” A share in an office that carries no exercise of its power is not a collegial way of exercising it. It is a claim to hold the office without exercising it, and canon 333 §2 says nothing about that. Finally, Benedict promulgated no law creating a new form of the papacy. He performed an act of renunciation, and an act of renunciation stands or falls by canon 332 §2 and canon 188.

5. “The same reasoning would invalidate his acceptance in 2005.”

The objection. If Benedict held an erroneous, sacramental view of the papacy in 2013, he surely held it in 2005 as well. If that error was serious enough to void his renunciation, it was serious enough to void his acceptance. Then he was never pope, the 2013 conclave filled a See that was in fact vacant, and the whole argument collapses. It proves too much.

The reply. Mazza answers this objection quite well. Benedict’s view, that sacrament and jurisdiction interpenetrate, causes no difficulty when the two are received together. It causes difficulty only when someone tries to separate them²⁰. In 2005 Benedict accepted the whole office, and the whole office is what he received. His theory about its nature changed nothing about what he took on. In 2013 he tried to give up part of it and keep part, and there the error became operative.

An illustration here may help. Imagine a man who believes, wrongly, that after he sells his house he may go on living in it as its “owner emeritus.” When he buys the house, his error does no harm: he wants the whole house and gets it. Only when he sells does the error bite, because now he means to hand over the deed while keeping the keys. The same false belief can sit harmlessly beneath one act and void another. That is not an inconsistency in our argument, but rather it is how error works.

6. “Munus and ministerium are simply synonyms.”

The objection. The whole distinction between munus and ministerium is a typical lawyer’s trick. The Code itself defines an ecclesiastical office as any munus stably constituted for a spiritual purpose²¹, and Church documents use munus, ministerium, and officium interchangeably. Fr. John Rickert of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, among others, has made this argument at length²². Worse for the thesis, Stefano Violi, the canonist whose 2013 article first drew wide attention to the distinction, has since revised his view: he now holds that Benedict did renounce the office of Bishop of Rome²³.

The reply. We largely concede this point, and it is why Part I refused to rest the case purely on vocabulary alone. The terms do overlap, and Benedict’s Latin may well have used them loosely. If our argument depended on the words alone, this objection would be worth taking seriously. But it does not. Benedict’s own explanations of his act carry the weight, and they would carry it in any language.

But Violi’s revised position does, however, deserve a closer look, because it actually sharpens our case. Violi now argues that when a bishop renounces his see, he loses the office and its powers, while his sacramental participation in the munera that come from episcopal consecration remains. That is exactly right, and it is exactly what Part I said: a pope who resigns keeps what belongs to him as a bishop, and nothing that belongs to him as pope. Benedict claimed more. He did not say he remained a bishop praying for the Church. He said he remained in the enclosure of Saint Peter, kept the papal name and style, and became “Pope Emeritus.” While Violi’s correction describes a valid resignation, Benedict described something else.

7. “It was really about fear and pressure.”

The objection. Some who share our conclusion argue from fear rather than error. Canon 188 voids a resignation made out of grave fear unjustly inflicted. At his inauguration, Benedict asked the faithful to pray that he would not flee for fear of the wolves²⁴. In 2015 the late Fr. Silvano Fausti, confessor to Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, said that Martini had told Benedict in 2012 that the Curia would not change and he must leave²⁵. Why not make the stronger, simpler argument?

The reply. Because, however it is finally judged, it cannot bear the weight of proof that a question of this gravity requires. We set it aside for three reasons.

First, the public evidence cannot establish it in law. Fausti’s account is a recollection, published after Martini’s death, of a private conversation. And even taken at face value, it describes advice from a fellow cardinal, not coercion.

Second, the principals deny it. Gänswein said publicly that Vatileaks and similar pressures had little or nothing to do with the renunciation, and that no traitor, mole, or journalist could have caused it²⁶. Benedict told Tornielli his decision was entirely free. We may wonder, but the public record offers nothing that could prove otherwise.

Third, fear lives in the conscience, and the conscience is exactly what we unfortunately cannot examine. An argument that depends on proving another man’s interior state invites the charge of conspiracy theory. The argument from substantial error needs none of that, since it rests entirely on what Benedict and his secretary said in public.

8. “Then Benedict was a heretic, and no pope at all.”

The objection. If Benedict believed the papacy could be divided between an active and a contemplative member, he contradicted the dogma of the First Vatican Council that the primacy belongs to Peter and his successors. Even Roberto de Mattei has said that if Benedict intended to divide the papacy, he would have fallen into heresy²⁷. And St. Robert Bellarmine taught that a manifest heretic ceases to be pope²⁸. So either Benedict was never pope, or he ceased to be pope, and in either case the 2013 conclave stands.

The reply. Error is not heresy. Heresy, in the Church’s law, is the obstinate denial or doubt, after baptism, of a truth that must be believed with divine and Catholic faith²⁹. Two things are required here in order for someone to be considered heretical: a defined truth, and pertinacity in rejecting it.

Neither is present here. Benedict’s error concerned the relationship between sacrament and jurisdiction and the meaning he gave to the word “emeritus.” Those are questions the Church has not defined. Ratzinger himself wrote that even the sacramentality of the episcopate, which Vatican II taught with great solemnity, should not be considered a dogma³⁰. Nor did Benedict pertinaciously deny the unity of the papacy. On the contrary, he affirmed it in words, insisting that a see can have only one holder. His fault was not denying the doctrine but failing to see that his own act contradicted it. That is the mark of a theologian in error, not of a heretic.

Even on the strictest classical view, the objection fails. Wernz and Vidal follow Bellarmine in holding that a pope loses his office for heresy only when it is “notorious and publicly divulged,” and they insist that a crime is notorious only when it is evident not merely as a fact but as a crime³¹. Cardinal Billot, who held the same view, thought it far more probable that a pope could never fall into heresy at all³². None of these authorities would have called a mistaken theory about the word “emeritus,” sincerely held and never imposed on anyone, notorious heresy.

We say this plainly because some who share our conclusion have called Benedict a heretic. We do not. The charge is unnecessary to our argument and, we believe, unjust to the man. A farewell audience and a series of interviews are not acts of the magisterium, and nothing Benedict said about his own status was proposed to the Church as a truth to be believed.

Weighing the Objections

Of the eight objections, one has real force and one we largely concede. The vacancy clause of the Declaratio is the strongest text against our position, and we have tried to meet it honestly (e.g, a void act produces none of the effects it names). The point about munus and ministerium we grant in substance, which is why our case never rested on it. The appeal to fear we set aside, because the public evidence cannot prove it in law. The rest, we believe, fail on examination, and several of them, Benedict’s 2020 statement above all, end by confirming the error they were meant to deny.

One objection remains, and it is the weightiest of all: that the peaceful acceptance of Benedict’s successor by the whole Church settles the question beyond appeal. It deserves an essay of its own, and it will receive one later in this series.

Until then, we close with the same conviction that opened Part I. To say that Benedict erred is not to condemn him. We pray for the repose of his soul, and we are grateful for much that he gave the Church. But a father’s mistakes do not become true because we love him. The keys were given to one man, and Christ’s Church has a right to know who holds them.