Benedict XVI: 'Words of St. Bellarmine Have Not Gone Out of Style'

If you are wise, then understand that you were created for the glory of God and for your eternal salvation

Due to the circumstances which surrounded him, moved by charity and love of truth, St. Bellarmine became a valiant and powerful defender of the papacy and the Catholic Church. 'If you are wise, then understand that you were created for the glory of God and for your eternal salvation' (St. Robert Bellarmine)

Vatican City (Catholic Online) -- Pope Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis during his general audience this week to St. Robert Bellarmine, a man of prodigious learning who lived in an age in which "a serious political and religious crisis provoked a split between entire nations and the Holy See," noted our Holy Father.

Fr. Christopher Rengers observed of St. Bellarmine's life: "His first ambition was to be a doctor of medicine. His final triumph was to be declared a Doctor of the Church" (The 33 Doctors of The Church, 487). St. Belarmine was beatified and canonized by Pope Pius XI, and declared a Doctor of the Church by the same in 1931.

Due to the circumstances which surrounded him, moved by charity and love of truth, St. Bellarmine became a valiant and powerful defender of the papacy and the Catholic Church. Aiding him in this mission was a photographic memory, great confidence as a speaker, and an unusually brilliant eloquence.

Throughout his life, St. Bellarmine demonstrated a great love for humanity, as he would often burst into tears on hearing a story of human suffering and death. Rather than simply empathize with the feelings of others, he appeared to truly join in with their suffering in the depths of his own heart, and thus their sadness became his. Also, he displayed a great love and respect for the poor, as he often demonstrated by quickly standing and removing his cap when a beggar came into his presence. As would be expected, he also emphasized love of neighbor, which, of course, includes patiently enduring those human faults and frailties which are a part of us all, but which we often refuse to admit in ourselves:

"When two pieces of wood are placed together in the shape of an inverted V, if each supports the other, both will stand; but if they do not, both fall to the ground. As this matter is one of such great consequence, try to look upon the defects of your companions as a kind of special medicine and [a] cross prepared for you by God. There are many people who willingly practice penances which they have chosen for themselves, but who refuse to put up with their neighbors' faults, though that is the penance which God wants them to bear . . ." (James Brodrick, The Life and Work of Robert Francis Cardinal Bellarmine, S.J., 1542-1561, 33).

Pope Benedict noted that St. Bellarmine's "Controversial Works or Disputationes are still a valid point of reference for Catholic ecclesiology. They emphasize the institutional aspect of the Church, in response to the errors then circulating on that topic. Yet Bellarmine also threw light on invisible aspects of the Church as Mystical Body, which he explained using the analogy of the body and the soul, in order to describe the relationship between the interior richness of the Church and her visible exterior features."

In Volume I of The Controversies, we find a defense of the papacy. Commenting on this Pope Pius XI stated: "He stood as such a defender of the authority of the Roman Pontiff, even to our own times, that the Fathers of the Vatican Council [Vatican I] used his writings and ideas most fully" (quoted from Rengers, 499).

Yet it should be recognized that, lest some think he defended the papacy simply due to a brotherly attachment to the hierarchical structure of the Church, as one member of the clergy among others, St. Bellarmine correctly understood the institutional structure of the Church as divinely appointed by Christ. The office of Vicar of Christ is not, as some would imply, merely a construct of later times imposed as a method of undue control, but rather is an office instituted by our Lord himself. The papacy therefore belongs to Christ, for it was the Son of God who established it as necessary from the very moment he said to Simon, son of Jonah: "And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt. 16:18-19. NAB).

Our Holy Father also drew attention to De gemitu columbae, another book of St. Bellarmine's, in which the Church is represented as a dove. In this work he "forcefully calls clergy and faithful to a personal and concrete reform of their lives, in accordance with the teachings of Scripture and the saints. . . . With great clarity and the example of his own life, he clearly teaches that there can be no true reform of the Church unless this is first preceded by personal reform and conversion of heart on our part."

Quoting from St. Bellarmine, Pope Benedict stated: "If you are wise, then understand that you were created for the glory of God and for your eternal salvation. Favorable or adverse circumstances, wealth and poverty, health and sickness, honor and offense, life and death, the wise must neither seek these things, nor seek to avoid them per se. They are good and desirable only if they contribute to the glory of God and to your eternal happiness, they are bad and to be avoided if they hinder this."

Our Holy Father Benedict XVI concluded "These words have not gone out of fashion, but should be meditated upon at length in order to guide our journey on this earth. They remind us that the goal of our life is the Lord. . . . They remind us of the importance of trusting in God, of living a life faithful to the Gospel, and of accepting all the circumstances and all actions of our lives, illuminating them with faith and prayer."

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F. K. Bartels is a Catholic writer who knows his Catholic faith is one of the greatest gifts a man could ever have. He is a contributing writer for Catholic Online. Visit him also at catholicpathways.com

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