BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

This appears to be AP's idea of good will and good cheer at Christmas. Call me paranoid, but for all the carefully planted superficial perfunctory disclaimers that 'he's really doing better than one would expect', I find more than a touch of Schadenfreude and uncharitably wishful thinking in this type of stories by the MSM. GHere, the reporter marshals all sorts of imagined states of mind and physical conditions for the Pope that would support her belittling hypothesis....

Pope heads into busy Christmas season
tired, weak, raising questions about future
by NICOLE WINFIELD


VATICAN CITY, Dec. 17 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI seems worn out.

People who have spent time with him recently say they found him weaker than they'd ever seen him, seemingly too tired to engage with what they were saying.

He no longer meets individually with visiting bishops. A few weeks ago he started using a moving platform to spare him the long walk down St. Peter's Basilica.

Benedict turns 85 in the new year, so a slowdown is only natural. Expected. And given his age and continued rigorous work schedule, it's remarkable he does as much as he does and is in such good health overall: Just this past week he confirmed he would travel to Mexico and Cuba next spring.

But a decline has been noted as Benedict prepares for next weekend's grueling Christmas celebrations, which kick off two weeks of intense public appearances. And that raises questions about the future of the papacy given that Benedict himself has said Popes should resign if they can't do the job. [Excuse me!, Ms. Winfield. Did you ever hear of Leo XIII who lived to be 93???? And died with all his faculties intact??? Why should Benedict XVI's age make people like you assume that he is about to become 'incapable' and must therefore resign????]]

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi has said no medical condition prompted the decision to use the moving platform in St. Peter's, and that it's merely designed to spare the pontiff the fatigue of the 100-meter (-yard) walk to and from the main altar.

And Benedict rallied [What was he rallying from, exactly????] during his three-day trip to Benin in west Africa last month, braving temperatures of 32 Celsius (90F) and high humidity to deliver a strong message about the future of the Catholic Church in Africa.

Wiping sweat from his brow, he kissed babies who were handed up to him, delivered a tough speech on the need for Africa's political leaders to clean up their act, and visited one of the continent's most important seminaries. [So? It was all in a day's work for him - those were events that were programmed and which he planned and prepared to undertake!]

Back at home, however, it seems the daily grind of being Pope — the audiences with visiting heads of state, the weekly public catechism lessons, the sessions with visiting bishops — has taken its toll. A spark is gone. He doesn't elaborate off-the-cuff much anymore, and some days he just seems wiped out. [It may be that I refuse to see these 'signs', but the spark is certainly not gone, and he did make some off-the-cuff remarks in his homily at Santa Maria delle Grazie parish last Sunday. This past week, I was able to watch the telecasts of the Sunday Angelus, the Mass for Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, the Wednesday audience, and the Vespers with university students, and I thought he was in fine form, as he was throughout the trip in Benin. I occasionally notice some tiredness or effort when he reads his texts, but I have not noticed that lately.]

Take for example his recent visit to Assisi, where he traveled by train with dozens of religious leaders from around the world for a daylong peace pilgrimage. For anyone participating it was a tough, long day; for the aging Pope it was even more so.

"Indeed I was struck by what appeared to me as the decline in Benedict's strength and health over the last half year," said Rabbi David Rosen, who had a place of honor next to the Pope at the Assisi event as head of interfaith relations at the American Jewish Committee.

"He looks thinner and weaker ... which made the effort he put into the Assisi shindig with the extraordinary degree of personal attention to the attendees (especially the next day in Rome) all the more remarkable," Rosen said in an email. [So Winfield solicited opinions to support her hypothesis in this way!]

That Benedict is tired would be a perfectly normal diagnosis for an 84-year-old, even someone with no known health ailments and a still-agile mind. He has acknowledged having suffered a hemorrhagic stroke in 1991 that temporarily affected his vision. And his older brother, who has a pacemaker for an irregular heartbeat, has expressed concern about Benedict's own heart. [Of course, he would. Just days before the 2005 Conclave, and soon after it, he was already expressing concern that his brother's poor health did not suit him to be Pope.]

But Benedict is not a normal 84-year-old, both in what he is called to do and the implications if he were to stop.

Popes are allowed to resign; Church law specifies only that the resignation be "freely made and properly manifested."

Only a handful have done so, however. The last one was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 in a deal to end the Great Western Schism among competing papal claimants.

There's good reason why others haven't followed suit: Might the existence of two popes — even when one has stepped down — lead to divisions and instability in the Church? Might a new resignation precedent lead to pressures on future popes to quit at the slightest hint of infirmity?

Yet Benedict himself raised the possibility of resigning if he were simply too old or sick to continue on, when he was interviewed for the book Light of the World, which was released in November 2010.

"If a Pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign," Benedict said. [It only means he is being realistic, anticipating with common sense all possibilities that he might have to face, but that does not mean any of it is imminent! After all, this is the first time since Leo XIII that the Church has a Pope reach this age without any life-threatening or degenerative ailment. It's more or less uncharted territory, but that does not mean open season for unfounded speculation that is most uncharitable towards Benedict XVI.]

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had an intimate view as Pope John Paul II, with whom he had worked closely for nearly a quarter-century, suffered through the debilitating end of his papacy. After John Paul's death at age 84, it was revealed that he had written a letter of resignation to be invoked if he became terminally ill or incapable of continuing on. [A sensible thing to do! When he was unable to speak at that last Angelus appearance in March 2005, he reportedly told those around him, "If I can no longer speak [to the faithful], then it is better that I die". Did he feel then that the end was near and he would not have to resign?]


Winfield seems to be pursuing a needless argument first brought up last September - needlessly and in a rather sensation-mongering manner - by Italian writer Antonio Socci who is generally thoughtful and thought-provoking in his commentaries on the faith, but who can also go overboard with such pet warhorses as a 'fourth secret' of Fatima being withheld by the Vatican for all sorts of conspiratorial reasons... It almost seems as though journalists like Socci and Winfield want to set the scene for what they hope to be self-fulfilling speculation on their part.

And for our part, who love and admire our beloved Benedict, we continue to pray and invoke all of God's graces on him continuously.... AD MULTOS ANNOS, SANCTE PATER!