KNOWN to the world as “Pope Emeritus” Benedict XVI since his retirement in 2013, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger is nearing the end of his life, according to news reports.

At 95 years old, Benedict is extremely frail and is now confined to his bed on Vatican grounds.

Though still hailed by some as a conservative Catholic and a force for “tradition,” Benedict defected from the Catholic Church long ago and his death will bring to a close merely one chapter in a story of harrowing, unprecedented apostasy. Based on his public record, Ratzinger sadly cannot even be considered a Catholic, let alone a retired pope. Those who hold to the familiar, nostalgic image have not fully examined the record. Like the other Vatican II false popes he smiled and waved from countless photographs and traveled the world, creating a personality cult similar to those of Soviet Communism where enormous pictures of Uncle Joe Stalin assured the powerless they were loved. He was the perfect man for would-be Catholics hungry for a dash of intellectualism in an age of sentiment and longing for some of the old grandeur that had been replaced with ugly, Bolshevik worship and churches. Meanwhile Benedict openly and repeatedly denied dogmas of the Church, including the Resurrection, the indissolubility of marriage and Infant Baptism. He was a master of doublespeak. He never reversed the gutting of the liturgy by his predecessors. He promoted a Marxist social gospel while also making many genuinely Catholic statements. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton: falsehood is never so destructive as when it is very close to the truth. Indeed, Ratzinger was one of the primary forces behind the revolution of Vatican II, the cause of so much chaos — social, religious and political.

An excellent dossier on Benedict is available at Novus Ordo Watch. I strongly caution readers, however, to be wary of Novus Ordo Watch’s promotion of traditionalist chapels operating outside the structure of the Catholic Church. These are not the solution.

When it comes to the false popes of Vatican II, it is not a question of left or right. They were and are both progressives and conservatives. No, it is a question of truth or error. No pope has ever possessed the authority to build a new religion. We cannot know the interior state of Joseph Ratzinger at this time. May God have mercy on his soul.

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