This article was shared with me by Herr C.S. in Germany, and while I have no way to verify whether or not the radio appearance it refers to actually occurred(anyone can say pretty much anything on the internet, after all), it is nonetheless intriguing enough on the face of it that I bring it to your attention.

It seems, according to this article, that former Pope Benedict XVI (Josef Cardinal Ratzinger) has broken his post-retirement silence to issue a warning about curious dealings inside the Vatican:

Former Pope Warns of Vatican Alien Agenda

If true, then it sets the "space news" that has been going on during the previous month into an even more curious light, for Benedict is confirming what most Vatican watchers have long sensed was taking place: a real struggle between two factions, one intent on preserving what remains of Catholic identity and culture in the wake of the Vatican II revolution(which Ratzinger himself, in his function as a priestly peritus or expert during that council, helped to lead), and the other intent on completely transforming the church into the agency of something ultimately completely foreign to any form is historically rooted Christianity, Roman Catholic or otherwise. Many, including former Vatican watcher, the late Fr. Malachi Martin, himself a former Jesuit, shared those concerns. For the record, it is worth recalling that Martin wrote a book about the subversive influence of the Jesuits, and requested Pope Paul VI (Giovanni Cardinal Montini) to release him from his vows to the order, which the Pope did.

But what Benedict XVI has done is to warn of an "alien agenda." The question is - assuming the comments as reported in the above-linked article are true - is what Benedict really meant by that phrase "alien agenda," for "alien" can simply mean foreign, i.e., something intrinsically non-Roman Catholic or perhaps something non-Christian, or, in its current colloquial usage, can mean "non-terrestrial" or "non-human." And in the Catholic context, that could be taken to mean also something spiritual and demonic.

Given the rather strange space news we've been tracking on this site over the past month or so, however, the context does seem to argue that Benedict is indeed warning about the sudden turn of events in the Vatican. Whereas previously Vatican spokesmen have commented on the possibility that non-human intelligent life could be baptized, implying the view that such life could and should be evangelized and converted, more recent pronouncements have jettisoned this possibility for the well-known meme of welcoming our "space brothers" as being inevitably "closer to God" than humanity, since on this view they would not have fallen. This, as I commented in a previous blog, is a fundamental abandonment of the cosmic dimensions of the doctrine of the Fall, a dimension shared by all traditional expressions of that doctrine, be they Protestant, Roman Catholic, Anglican, or Eastern Orthodox.

But the real significance here is the obvious one: a former pope, the first to retire and resign from office in almost 600 years, has issued a warning about something going on inside the Vatican. I strongly suspect, that with the stories that continue to swirl around the Vatican bank, the continuing clergy sex scandals (and its suppression), rumors of even more "black practice" among various groups of clergy and hierarchs, and now the strange flip-flop on the "space brothers" issue from the Vatican, that for Benedict to break silence and comment on affairs while his successor is still alive, is a huge - nay, gigantic - breach of protocol and ecclesiastical courtesy. We may be indeed looking at a constellation of developments that formed the real reason for Benedict's resignation.

And that can only mean that Benedict is quite alarmed.

See you on the flip side.