Andrea Tornielli has been 'forced', as it were, to take a stand perhaps before he meant to, because of an unfortunate and widely-reported statement attributed to Cardinal Stanislaw Dsiwisz, saying "John Paul stayed to the very end, because one does not come down from the Cross"... This certainly is not his definitive commentary on the resignation, but I thank him for responding to the Dsiwisz statement so promptly and so strongly.
The Pope is not 'leaving the Cross':
He is acknowledging his frailty and
doing so, relativizes the Papacy
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of
February 12, 2013
The words of John Paul II's former secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dsiwisz, that John Paul II "did not come from the cross" have appeared - beyond his intentions when he said it - like a resounding negative judgment against the decision of Benedict XVI to resign the Papacy.
Indeed, the Pope freely chose to resign - or had announced that he will formally do so by 8 p.m. on February 28 - because he feels that his strength has deteriorated. He has no apparent specific ailment. Nor can one say that his intellectual capacity has weakened in any way, as we heard from his extemporaneous lectio divina to the seminarians of Rome a few days ago.
Why then is the Pope 'coming down from the Cross'? Is he trying to escape from his responsibilities?
In his homily at the start of his Pontificate, in April 2005, Benedict XVI asked the faithful to pray for him: "Pray for me that I may not feel from the wolves". And in these almost eight years of his Pontificate, there have been more than enough wolves. And the Pope faced all of them with gentleness.
Now he has chosen to leave the Pontificate at a time of calm, after the conclusion of the Vatileaks episode, after having given the Church
iron-clad measures to fight the sexual abuse of children and minors by priests.
Did the Cross of the Pontificate become too heavy for him to carry? It must be so, otherwise the 85-year-old theologian would never have come to such a 'sensational' decision - a precedent in the history of the Church, considering that none of the very few papal resignations that have happened in the two preceding millenia can be comparable to his.
But it is precisely in this that we can see Papa Ratzinger's last great teaching. From the Pope who, in his first address to the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel after his election, said that the Pope should make the light of Christ shine forth, not his.
Everything in these troubled years of his Pontificate has been carried out by him to make the Church understand that the true guide of the Church is not the Pope nor his protagonism nor his heroism as a solitary figure hoisted on a pinnacle and constantly exposed to the pitiless eye of TV cameras. The Church's leader and guide is Jesus, of whom the Pope is 'only' the Vicar.
And this teaching is contained yet again in how he acknowledged his physical and perhaps psychological frailty when he carried out his humble and free act of leaving the Pontificate, which, in a way, 'relativizes' the Pontificate.
The Pope is Pope because he is Bishop of Rome. Bishops are required to submit their resignation when they turn 75 and should become accustomed to being 'emeritus'.
It doesn't happen with the Pope, and it is obvious that an emeritus Pope who moreover, still lives in the Vatican, would be an encumbrance to whoever his successor is.
And yet, despite these issues, in Benedict's request to be forgiven for his faults, and in admitting that it is impossible for him to continue his Petrine ministry as it ought to be carried out, we see an example of great Christian realism: That the ministers who serve the Church are all frail humans. From he who sits on Peter's Chair to the least of priests.
The article seems to be left dangling - and I've checked both the Italian and English versions in the Insider site. The missing thought appears to be that the age rule for bishops should also apply to the Bishop of Rome: This is how Benedict XVI's gesture 'relativizes' the Papacy, in that the Pope should not have the absolute right to hold on to his position until he dies, regardless of whether he continues to be capable or not. I read somewhere else that it was another way by which Benedict XVI would broaden the meaning of collegiality, without weakening the inherent primacy and supremacy of Peter among the bishops.
Here, on the other hand, is what could be a definitive commentary on the B16 Pontificate - and an excellent one even if not as 'comprehensive' as it could be. (But comprehensive in reporting about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI can get to be encyclopedic fast!_ It starts out with a dead-on analysis of how and why the media have done their best to demonize Benedict XVI and therefore to find nothing positive at all to say about his Pontificate. !
The reluctant Pope
By George Neumayr
February 12, 2013
He served out of duty, not ambition.
On Benedict XVI’s papal coat of arms appears a beast of burden (a bear with a pack-saddle), a symbol of the reluctance and dutifulness with which Benedict served in the Vatican. In fact, he had once
[THRICE - every time he racked up another five-year term after his first 10 years in Rome] asked Pope John Paul II if he could leave Rome and return to Germany. But the Pope asked him to stay and continue to serve as the Church’s head of doctrine.
After John Paul II’s death, Benedict emerged as the indispensable man, without the least bit of angling for that role. He didn’t seek the papacy; it simply fell upon him. He had hoped the college of cardinals would select someone else. But his acute intellect, grasp of the Church’s crisis, and closeness to John Paul II made him the obvious choice.
Given this background, his resignation appears more understandable. He entered the papacy humbly and now leaves it humbly. His resignation is a great loss for the Church and the world. He represented the unity of reason and faith at a moment when the world was fast losing both. Between the West’s culture of abortion and the East’s culture of jihad, he stood as the civilizational center for life.
The media verdicts so far on his supposedly inconsequential and failed pontificate have been useless, reflecting nothing more than the progressive prejudices of reporters and pundits. Long after their spiteful articles have yellowed, his encyclicals will be read.
The truth is that they didn’t like him from the start, treating the elevation of a believing Catholic to the papacy as somehow “controversial.” Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the
New York Times, once blurted out that “the struggle within the Church is interesting as part of a larger struggle within the human race, between the forces of tolerance and absolutism.”
That is the only prism through which the media ever saw Benedict: he fell on the wrong side of the progressive “struggle” and so became a target for endless media bias.
All the coming coverage of the papal election, sure to be absurdly ill-informed and tedious, will turn on that same standard. Candidates who appear sympathetic to the “forces of tolerance” will receive glowing coverage for weeks while the Church is lectured about the need to “modernize” and avoid a “contentious” Pope.
Modern liberals simply can’t rest until the Church elects a liberal Pope. Hijacking the Church for their own ideological purposes has long been their goal. They dream of a Pope giving his imprimatur to the sexual revolution and socialism. Then at last the “forces of absolutism” will have been defeated!
By absolutism, the Kellers ultimately mean God. That’s the absolute authority they seek to overthrow. They numbered Benedict among their historical enemies for refusing to join them in removing God from religion. He wouldn’t swallow the secularist acids they dish up as “dialogue” and so he had to be dismissed. [i.e., forced out of office.]
But historians decades from now will take his pontificate seriously. It stands as an important step toward the restoration of order and orthodoxy within the Church after many years of scandal and foolishness.
While plenty of dysfunction is still on display, Benedict did what he could to curb it. Contrary to the media’s spinning, he inherited these crises; he didn’t create them.
Indeed, the moments in his Pontificate that the media has worked hardest to try and trivialize and discredit will hold up the best:
- his battles with the “dictatorship of relativism,”
- his promotion of wider use of the traditional Latin Mass,
- his reinstitution of the ban on the ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood,
- his historic overture to disaffected Anglicans,
- his voluminous stream of speeches and writings aimed at repairing the catechetical collapse within the Church;
- his insistence on the “non-negotiable” character of the natural moral law in shaping politics and culture.
He threw out an anchor to stop the doctrinal and disciplinary drift within the Church, which future generations will appreciate even if this one doesn’t.
The pressure* on modern Popes, both from outside and inside the Church, to pander to the permissive society is enormous. He resisted that pressure, understanding that if the Church mirrors the morality and philosophy of the world, she becomes just one more force for evil and delusion in it.
He was a reluctant Pope but a conscientious one, whose legacy, like that of his namesake, will be to have scattered seeds of recovery along the dark fields of Europe and the world.
^[GBut very simply, there is no way that a Pope - whose duty is to protect and defend the faith - could ever give way to pressures, external or internal, to 'adapt' the faith to changing times. An adaptable faith is no faith at all. And an adaptable Pope would be derelict to his duty. This are basic principles that seculars (and therefore the media), along with Catholic liberals and dissidents, obstinately fail to see.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/02/2013 14:10]