Modern society is formulating an “anti-Christian creed” and punishing those who resist it with “social excommunication,” Benedict XVI has said in a new biography, published in Germany on May 4.

In a wide-ranging interview at the end of the 1,184-page book, written by German author Peter Seewald, the Pope emeritus said the greatest threat facing the Church was a “worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies.”

Benedict XVI, who resigned as Pope in 2013, made the comment in response to a question about what he had meant at his 2005 inauguration, when he urged Catholics to pray for him “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

He told Seewald that he was not referring to internal Church matters, such as the “Vatileaks” scandal, which led to the conviction of his personal butler, Paolo Gabriele, for stealing confidential Vatican documents.

In an advanced copy of “Benedikt XVI – EinLeben” (A Life), seen by CNA, the Pope emeritus said: “Of course, issues such as ‘Vatileaks’ are exasperating and, above all, incomprehensible and highly disturbing to people in the world at large.”

“But the real threat to the Church and thus to the ministry of St Peter consists not in these things, but in the worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies, and to contradict them constitutes exclusion from the basic social consensus.”

He continued: “A hundred years ago, everyone would have thought it absurd to speak of homosexual marriage. Today who-ever opposes it is socially excommunicated. The same applies to abortion and the production of human beings in the laboratory.”

This year’s Holy Week celebrations resulted in a major spike of new viewers tuning in to watch Vatican liturgies – an increase from 1.5 million online viewers last year to 5.5 million this year – and a trend matched by ordinary parishes throughout the world forced to go virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet as technology has allowed many Catholic Churches to transition to a new schedule of online rosary groups, live streamed adoration, and televised Masses, parishioners and priests alike have struggled to adjust to the new normal.

For Catholics, who are used to the physical realities of participation in the Mass – from the kneeling to the sign of peace to, most importantly, the reception of Holy Communion – it’s been an abrupt change and theologians have differing opinions on whether, to use the language of Vatican II, one can engage in “full, conscious, and active participation” in a Mass if they are watching via television or online.

“If you turn to a TV Mass with the same attitude that you binge-watch the latest season of [Netflix series] The Crown, then this is not a real act of participation,” said Timothy O’Malley, the academic director at the University of Notre Dame’s Centre for Liturgy. “Of course if you attend Mass as a spectator, hoping to hear some nice music, to see some of your friends, this is not the ideal sense of participation either.”

In preparation for the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, the German bishops conducted an in-depth study of the behaviour of their predecessors under the Nazi regime. On 29 April, the German bishops’ conference presented the conclusions they had come to in a declaration entitled “German bishops during World War II.”

They had been encouraged to undertake the study by repeated complaints that the Catholic bishops in Hitler’s Germany had left German Catholic soldiers alone to cope with the moral dilemma they were in at the time. The bishops came to the conclusion that despite individual opposition to Hitler on the part of one or two bishops, the Catholic Church remained part of society during the war. Its patriotic willingness to mobilise the Church’s material, personal and mental resources for the war effort remained unbroken until the very end, they say.