As the second anniversary of the end of Benedict XVI's Pontificate is almost on us, a couple of not especially exceptional commentaries is all I have seen so far.
In the first one, I don't know that I would call it an 'experiment' since certainly, Benedict XVI did not intend his retirement to be an 'experiment'. Perhaps 'experience' is the better word. And as to the second part of the title, did anyone really seriously think that Jospeh Ratzinger would obtrude into the affairs of the Church after he had voluntarily given up the Papacy?
The Pope Emeritus experiment is working
by Fr Mark Drew
February 26, 2015
Two years ago Benedict XVI became the first Pope Emeritus in the Catholic Church’s history. Thanks to his wisdom and restraint the historic innovation hasn’t led to disaster.
[That's an equivocal and therefore objectionable statement. Why would one have assumed that it would lead to disaster, to begin with?]
Two years ago this month shock waves ran through the world’s media as Benedict XVI announced his resignation. There was much speculation concerning the reasons for his unexpected decision and the identity of his successor, while many commentators wondered about the consequences for the Church of having “two popes”.
Within hours further details emerged: the outgoing pontiff would not revert officially to being Joseph Ratzinger or even to the appellation of Cardinal Ratzinger. He would retain the name of Benedict XVI, which he had assumed upon election to the See of Peter, and would continue to wear the white cassock worn by successive popes. His official title, from the moment on which he renounced office, on February 28, would be that of Pope Emeritus.
The title was without precedent. Popes had resigned before, of course. The most recent – the holy but ineffectual hermit Celestine V – was pope for a few months in 1294. Far from assuming a position of honourable retirement, he was imprisoned in a papal fortress where he quickly succumbed to old age. One hopes that mistreatment did not contribute to his demise, but his successor had good reason to fear the consequences of leaving him at liberty. A former pope might have become the tool of a faction unfriendly to the new incumbent.
The College of Cardinals was notoriously prone to factional intrigue. Political leaders, aware that the stakes were high in terms of political and economic power, were only too willing to exploit divisions among churchmen. So medieval popes could not afford to be sentimental when the unity of Western Christendom was at stake.
Though he was to be canonised not long after his death, Celestine V was a danger while he lived. A gentle sequestration was seen as a necessity, rather than an affront to the dignity of the unfortunate ex-pope, who in any case was a renowned ascetic unlikely to protest vigorously against the rigours of his isolation.
The monastery of Mater Ecclesiae, within the walls of the Vatican City State but secluded from the workings of the curial machine, might seem not dissimilar to a form of incarceration. But Benedict XVI’s seclusion there has been totally voluntary and he appears only too grateful to have been relieved of the burdens of office.
This has not stopped commentators both within and outside the Church voicing concern that the newly invented status of Pope Emeritus might prove problematic. Anybody who has had a superannuated predecessor hanging round the office – or the parish – will understand this fear.
Days after Benedict’s resignation, I was asked by a taxi driver – a non-Catholic presumably little acquainted with ecclesiastical power play – if there was not a risk of Benedict cramping the style of his successor.
Many then shared his anticipation that the presence of “two popes” in the Vatican might undermine the authority and freedom of action of his successor. Some even thought – including some of those with a direct stake in the outcome – that the conclave was going to be difficult with the former pope still around behind the scenes. But
Benedict announced quickly that he would play no part in the conclave (he was already past voting age even if he was deemed still a cardinal).
But this was not enough to reassure the doubters. They feared (and some hoped) that the cardinals might feel unable to choose someone uncongenial to the former pope as long as he was felt to be hovering in the background. Then, once the new pope took over, would Benedict be able to refrain from trying to influence his decisions? Might he not become a focus of dissent, if the successor attempted to pursue a different path?
I told the taxi driver that what I knew of Benedict XVI’s character made me sure that these apprehensions would not be realised. He is a humble man, a shy academic more at home in the tutorial than in the eye of the media and having little interest in the machinery of power.
He truly believes that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, through (and
sometimes in spite of) the decisions and actions of the men who govern her, even at the highest level. I was sure he would respect the liberty of his successor, remaining silent even if he had his private misgivings.
Moreover, Benedict is a theologian whose ecclesiology is probably more balanced than that of anyone else in his generation. He knows that, simply put, there cannot be “two popes”. Once a canonical election has taken place, and as soon as he consents to his election, the new pope is Bishop of Rome, successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ.
In the two years since I gave this answer to my cabbie’s question, nothing has led me to revise it. It is clear to all that the new Pope is markedly different from his predecessor in style, and there are certainly differences of substance with regard to questions like the relation of pastoral activity to doctrine and missionary strategy.
[][What 'missionary strategy'? Other than paying lip service to 'mission' and the much-abused 'peripheries', whatever they really are, what missionary initiative has Bergoglio undertaken? De-christianization continues apace in Eruppe and Catholics continue to leave the church by the millions in Bergoglio's native Latin America.]
But it is not yet clear how far-reaching the differences are. Many Catholics, including influential members of the hierarchy, are alarmed and perhaps inclined to look towards the Pope Emeritus for guidance. His choice has been to remain silent.
There was a direct and unambiguous confirmation of this during the family synod last October. It was reported then that a group of cardinals thought that Pope Francis was overturning the clear and repeated teaching of his predecessors. Supposedly, several of them formed a delegation and went to Mater Ecclesiae to see Benedict, asking him to intervene. His response, they said, was simply to state that, since he was no longer pope, he had no authority in the matter, and that they should address their concerns to Pope Francis.
According to some versions of the report, he himself informed his successor of the visit. If the report is true, the cardinals would certainly have been disappointed.
Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Benedict’s faithful assistant, has insisted the story is false. But we all know that denials concerning politically charged matters in the Church are to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Archbishop Gänswein is not to be suspected of untruthfulness, but he will be quite familiar with the principle of mental reservation – the more so now that he works for a Jesuit pope. A version of events containing even relatively minor inaccuracies can be denied without prejudice to honesty, especially when the subject matter is itself confidential.
Even if the story were totally invented, it still would serve to illustrate what I am convinced Benedict would do in such circumstances – and, indeed, what he must do, both as a matter of professional ethics and in Catholic ecclesiology.
So those who wish for direct intervention by the Pope Emeritus will remain unsatisfied. There is one respect only in which he will continue to exercise a role in the debates, and that is by the force and cogency of his writings both before and after his election.
It is true that he chose to revise his writings on the question of the re-admission to Communion of the divorced and remarried, renouncing his former advocacy of this pastoral accommodation at the very time it was the burning issue of the day. But even this is at most only an indirect intervention, and Archbishop Gänswein has assured us that it was long since planned and that its timing was purely coincidental.
The archbishop is, in fact, the channel through which the world gets most of the information about Benedict that the Pope Emeritus wishes to transmit. From him, we have learnt that he enjoys good relations with his successor, whom he likes and respects, and that he does not regret his decision to resign, and judges still that it was necessary for the good of the Church.
But it is less easy to explain away two further gestures by Benedict, relating to reforms that defined his pontificate: the liberation of the traditional Latin Mass and the creation of the ordinariate. On October 10 last year he sent a letter to traditionalists saying he was glad that the Extraordinary Form “now lives in full peace within the Church, also among the young, supported and celebrated by great cardinals”. On the very same day, he wrote to the Friends of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, welcoming the growth of the body for ex-Anglicans in England.
[What's to explain away'? In both cases, he was asked to give a message, understandably, and he obliged.]
Such actions intensify the speculation, especially among those ill at ease with the orientations of Pope Francis. There are persistent rumours that Benedict’s resignation was not entirely free, and these are potentially damaging to the unity of the Church, because if this were the case then both his resignation and the election of his successor would be canonically invalid. In a rare, direct interview with a German journalist with whom he has close contacts, Benedict categorically denied that he was forced to step down.
Yet there were some genuinely puzzling details. For example, asked why he continued to wear papal white, Benedict explained that there were no other clothes available
Surely, no one could have taken that answer seriously. It was clearly tongue-in-cheek, a touch of Joseph Ratzinger's characteristic German irony in response to an absurd question of why he continues to wear white!] –
a claim impossible to take seriously given that a trusted employee could easily have made a quick trip to one of the numerous clerical outfitters across the piazza from the Apostolic Palace in the days between the announcement of the resignation and its taking effect. Perhaps he was simply joking. [There's a world of difference between irony and joking!]
Then there is the ambiguity about what exactly a “free” decision to resign is. It is not clear exactly what sort of pressures constitute a lack of freedom as Canon Law would understand it, and it is certainly true that Benedict was under pressures from inside and outside the Church that would have crushed lesser men. In spite of this, all the evidence suggests that the decision was taken by Benedict himself, that he truly considered it necessary for the good of the Church, and that he still does.
Everyone seems to forget that for most of 2010, the pressure was intense from the most powerful media giants on earth to get him to resign, over recycled and rewarmed stories somehow blaming him in large part for the sexual abuse scandals caused by priests and for covering it up, though he was the first and for a long time the only ranking Church official to have done anything about it. But in 2010, AP, the New York Times and Der Spiegel threw all their considerable power and resources into trying to link Joseph Ratzinger directly or indirectly to sexual abuse or the cover-up thereof, openly seeking to drive him to resign. In July that year, he gave a book-length interview to Peter Seewald in which he spoke of the circumstances that he thought should compel a Pope to resign, but he added that no one should resign to run away from a crisis. He held firm, as the media's putative 'smoking guns' against him self-destructed for lack of substance. Later that year, he would begin using a rolling platform in St. Peter's Basilica, but he soldiered on, to be beset by Vatileaks in 2012. That turned out to be almost certainly the singlehanded work of a monomaniacal valet though the media insisted it must have had some ranking Vatican prelates behind it.
Meanwhile, he made significant historic trips to Mexico and Cuba and then to Lebanon. He also asked three veteran cardinals to conduct an internal investigation for him, not just of what happene exactly, but the circumstances surrounding the affair. Paolo Gabriele was convicted, he served half of his prison term and then was pardoned by Benedict himself. The three cardinals finished their report in December, Benedict XVI made Georg Gaenswein an Archbishop and Prefect of the Pontifical Household, and two months later, announced that he was stepping down as Pope. He had made sure he had cleared the decks before doing so. This was a man who did not wish to inflict the advancing infirmities of age on his exercise of the Papacy and therefore on the Church, for practical as well as for symbolic reasons. What the world admired in the obvious agony of the final years of John Paul II, it would mock and vilify in Benedict XVI, in whom every sign of infirmity would be turned into a metaphor for the Church - a consequence far worse than the physical suffering and inconvenience to him of advancing age.]
Attempts to undermine Pope Francis’s papacy by alleging that his election was invalid for other reasons have gained little traction. The best known is that of Antonio Socci, an Italian journalist of no little standing and a fervent Catholic, though certainly no fan of the current Pontiff. Socci’s book Non è Francesco (“He’s not Francis”) alleges that the election was invalid due to procedural irregularities whose complexities will go above the head of all but the most expert canon lawyers. So far it has failed to convince anybody whose opinion would count and has been all but ignored by other Vaticanologists.
Another opinion publicised by Socci, and this time quoted approvingly by others, is that Benedict has willingly renounced the government of the Church but preserves for himself some spiritual aspect of papal authority. According to this theory, Francis refers to himself as “Bishop of Rome” rather than “Pope” precisely to accommodate this mysterious division of labour. [What crap, which Drew didn't have to purvey! From the moment he presented himself to the world as Pope, Jorge Bergoglio chose to style himself 'Bishop of Rome', ostensibly manifesting his humility by not calling himself Pope, as if anyone would ever not call him Pope! It is also a pedantic and gratuitous insistence on the fact that the first title of the Successor of Peter is Bishop of Rome, by virtue of which he is Pope - a fact that means nothing to the rest of the world, or even to the majority of Catholics, who would never think of the Pope as 'Bishop of Rome', much less refer to him as such.]
But this distinction holds no water theologically. It is the Roman Church which holds the primacy over the Universal Church; it is the Bishop of Rome who exercises all and every authority involved in that primacy.
[In short, the reigning Pope has all the powers and prerogatives of the Papacy. As an ex-Pope, Benedict XVI retains none of it, even though he continues to exercise his Petrine ministry in prayer, for which no needs authorization of any kind.]
What is plausible is that Benedict, in renouncing papal authority, did not mean to renounce the burden which comes with it – what St Paul calls “solicitude for all the churches”. He now carries the Church only in his prayers and by his example. Part of this spiritual responsibility involves support for his successor, for whom he prays, as we should. It is not insignificant that Benedict only appears in public alongside Francis and, indeed, at his invitation.
It cannot be easy for Benedict to witness everything that is happening in Rome today, even if the contrasts between him and Francis are not the hard and fast oppositions some take them for.
It must cause him some chagrin to see some of his orientations for the Church neglected or even reversed, and some of his most trusted lieutenants marginalised while former adversaries are promoted.
[I would think that what he feels is sorrow rather than chagrin that his orientations are neglected or reversed; and as to his successor's personnel decisions, I am sure he is realistic enough to expect that a pope so diametrically different from him in orientation (Vatican-II progressivist) and personal style would have little use or tolerance for persons incompatible with that orientation and style.]
But he remains serene because he has an unshakeable faith in the Church and in God, who guides her with a steady hand while human leaders come and go. In this respect, as in so many others, we should heed him and seek to imitate him.
[The following is a nasty and thoroughly unsubtle putdown of Benedict XVI which is wholly gratuitous and unnecessary - the journalist didn't need to write it, but he did anyway. Out of spite, as if to say 'NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH'!.
It's the journalistic equivalent of a school bully showing off to the new principal (Bergoglio) by grinding the former principal's face into the ground. The usual media trick since March 13, 2013, of making Jorge Bergoglio look so far above his predecessor by pointing out how 'worthless' the latter is compared with the man elected by the cardinals to succeed him. I am only posting this for the record - since it comes from the current Vaticanista of AFP, one of the world's top three leading news agencies (with AP and Reuters)....
Two years on: Forgotten pope
sees out days in the shadows
By Jean-Louis De La Vaissiere
Vatican City, February 25 (AFP) - It was feared he would become a sort of shadow pope. Instead he has opted to see out what remains of his life in the shadows. [He has not opted for anything other than what any sincere person means to do when he voluntarily gives up a high-profile job - to withdraw into relative obscurity, which is not synonymous to "life in the shadows" In fact, Benedict XVI inhabits, as he has always done, a world of light, natural as well as spiritual, that owes nothing, then and now, to media razzle-dazzle and the glare of publicity. And just in case, the writer may have been translated unidiomatically and he meant 'lives in the shadow' (of Pope Francis) rather than 'shadows', then that too is false.
Except for geographical proximity, Benedict is completely out of the Bergoglian orbit, even if his private secretary is perforce part of the Curia. The Bergoglian world needs nothing from him except to 'stay in his place' and not obtrude in any way into their reality, even if the Pope apparently can tolerate his presence on the few occasions he has invited him to attend.
I am uncharitable enough to think that JMB means these occasions to underscore to Benedict XVI, "See? I am Pope now, and you are nothing but a has-been whom everyone would forget if I did not deign invite you to surface now and then!" It may well say more about me that I perceive JMB's attitude towards Benedict XVI as one of triumphal condescension, a kind of taunting payback for those eight years that he, who emerged the only challenger to Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 Conclave, was relegated by the world to virtual obscurity until he became Pope.]
Two years after becoming the first leader of the Catholic church to resign in seven centuries, Benedict XVI has melted away from public view, [And isn't that what he meant to do? Isn't that what the media and all his detractors wanted for him - total oblivion, if possible, and in utter disgrace, as they think of him?] even if he remains a benchmark for those in the Vatican who are unhappy with the less traditionalist, more unpredictable regime that succeeded his. [He remains a benchmark for all Catholics who are orthodox and therefore respect the deposit of faith that he left intact and burnished to the brilliance it deserves.][/dim
Anyone seeking a gauge of the relative popularity of Benct and his successor, Francis need look no further than the souvenir stalls in the streets around St Peter's: the new pope's beaming face is everywhere while postcards featuring the austere features of the erstwhile Joseph Ratzinger are rapidly becoming collector's items. [First, only the determinedly anti-Ratzingerite would ever call his features 'austere'; 2) Benedict XVI - and those who love and admire him - would be the last to question the phenomenal popularity of the current Pope: Joseph Ratzinger has always stood and shone on his own merits, without needing to be compared to anyone. If, as Pope, he not only survived but overcame the inevitably invidious comparisons to John Paul II in the first two years of his Pontificate, as the pope who voluntarily stepped down, he has nothing to overcome. Besides, is it more impressive and meaningful to be a souvenir best-seller than it is to be a book best-seller, which I don't think anyone even in the Francis fanworld would claim for their idol.]
Benedict formally retired on February 28, 2013, leaving the Vatican in a white Italian airforce helicopter for the papal retreat of Castel Gandolfo, where he spent a few months recuperating before returning to the confines of the Vatican and taking up residence in a former convent.
Two weeks after the helicopter ride, Francis was elected. Two years later, the first Latin American pope is a global superstar, a natural and decisive leader who has been credited with shaking up the Vatican, breathing new life into Catholic teaching and bringing the faithful flooding back into the arms of the Church.. [ 1) Which is to imply that Benedict XVI was not a natural or decisive leader; 2) What kind of 'new life' is being breathed into Catholic teaching, anyway?: and 3) there are no statistics so far to back up these anecdotal impression of 'faithful flooding back into the arms of the Catholic Church' - indeed, the Church continues to lose members by the tens of thousands in Europe and in the millions in Latin America.]
Whether being eclipsed so comprehensively rankles to any extent with Benedict is anyone's guess. But there has been no hint of that in the handful of public or reported statements to emanate from him over the last two years. [De La Vaissiere obviously does not appreciate how Benedict XVI constantly effaced himself (i.e., 'self-eclipsed') himself during his years as Pope in order to 'put nothing ahead of Christ', as St. Benedict exhorted. Benedict's Pontificate was never about himself or about being the star - if he had been self-centered or worldly in any way, he never would have given it up.]
A year ago he was quoted as saying that his decision to step down had been the product of a mystical experience and that Francis's confident leadership had helped him understand why God had willed him to step aside. [That apocryphal account was immediately denied at the time by Georg Gaenswein.]
He wrote to Italian newspaper La Stampa to dismiss a claim that he had been forced out against his will: which, were it true, would invalidate Francis's status as the leader of the Church.
There has also been much speculation that Benedict quit because he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, unable to cope with the pressure of the top job in an institution beset by a series of problems ranging from paedophile clerics to financial scandals surrounding the Vatican bank.
The leaking of his personal correspondence by his butler Paolo Gabriele was said to have left Benedict deeply dismayed, the resulting court case having lifted the lid on a Vatican hierarchy beset by corruption, nepotism and fierce internal rivalries. [There! He finally brought it in - the MSM boilerplate crafted out of bald-faced exaggeration if not sheer fiction about Vatileaks. But what nepotism? That's one charge never brought up. What 'fierce rivalries'? No cardinals tried to trump any other [the way Cardinal Coccopalmeiro is now trying to upstage Cardinal Pell], and nothing in the Vatileaks documents even indicated that other staple fiction of the era - of cardinals seeking to outmaneuver each other for the post-Benedict succession! Certainly no one in the Curia, considering that far and away the only Italian papabile in view at the time was Cardinal Scola, off in Venice and then Milan and not implicated at all in any of the leaked documents.]
On all those questions however, the now Emeritus Pope has maintained a discreet silence, as he promised he would at the time of his departure. [And why would he do otherwise? The problem with journalists is that they keep judging Benedict XVI as if he were an 'average' man like they are. He decided to resign as Pope - that's it! No one needs to tell him about the inexorable abyss that forever deprives him of any of the powers and prerogatives of a Pope. 'Average' thinking cannot imagine a Pope ever giving up being Pope, just as it cannot imagine an ex-Pope retreating as far into the background as he can in order to serve the Church in a new way - in prayer and contemplation as the contemplative orders do.
Whether he genuinely approves of Francis in terms of style and/or substance remains unknown. [What does it matter what he thinks of his successor? On the day he stepped down as Pope, he promised 'respect and obedience' to whoever would succeed him. Though I wonder if he will feel dutybound to speak out if and when his successor enacts 'communion for everyone' in the universal Church!]
But what does seem clear is that the 87-year-old seems to be in better health now than he was when he made his shock announcement to cardinals that he no longer had the strength of mind or body to carry on.
His private secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, recently revealed that Benedict regularly plays Mozart on the piano from memory.
He is a little unsteady on his legs at times but not alarmingly so for a man approaching his 88th birthday.
And intellectually, according to Ganswein, he is as sharp as ever, having recently produced a theological text on questions of truth for the benefit of Vatican scholars. [??? That bit of information has completely escaped me, mea culpa! Must check it out.][colore]
Francis has insisted there is no friction between the two popes. "The last time there were two or three popes, they didn't talk among themselves and they fought over who was the true pope," he joked in July 2013.
And there was a flash of affection when the new pope said of the unusual situation of having two popes living so close to each other: "It is like having a grandfather – a wise grandfather – living at home." [Which I did not at all read as 'a flash of affection' but rather as a condescending remark. Especially since Benedict is only ten years older than Bergoglio.]
But Vatican expert Andrea Tornielli says no one should be in any doubt as to who is the boss. "Benedict is very discreet. If he appears in public it is at Francis's request." [Another totally gratuitous comment, especially from Tornielli. Who, in his right mind, would doubt who is the Pope, but to use the word 'boss' is to underscore - unnecessarily - that Benedict 'takes orders' from Francis, as if the Pope's invitations were commands rather than invitations.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/03/2015 14:15]