Here's the first of the MSM wrap-ups of this historic day - AP's headline is, as usual, negatively tendentious, but for all that, this article could have been much worse. Simpson did not even resurrect Regensburg, about which he was among the most accusatory!
Pope's bombshell sends
troubled Church scrambling
By NICOLE WINFIELD and VICTOR L. SIMPSON
VATICAN CITY, February 11, 2013 (AP) — With a few words in Latin, Pope Benedict XVI did what no Pope has done in more than half a millennium, stunning the world by announcing his resignation Monday and leaving the already troubled Catholic Church to replace the leader of its 1 billion followers by Easter.
Not even his closest associates had advance word of the news, a bombshell that he dropped during
a routine morning meeting of Vatican cardinals.
[It is truly infuriating that two reporters who have covered the Vatican for probably three decades between the two of them should show such ignorance of Church events that they would call a solemn public consistory to declare the canonization of new saints 'a routine morning meeting'.]
And with no clear favorites to succeed him, another surprise likely awaits when the cardinals elect Benedict's successor next month.
"Without doubt this is a historic moment," said Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a protege and former theology student of Benedict's who is considered a papal contender. "Right now, 1.2 billion Catholics the world over are holding their breath."
The move allows for a fast-track conclave to elect a new Pope, since the traditional nine days of mourning that would follow a Pope's death doesn't have to be observed.
It also gives the 85-year-old Benedict great sway over the choice of his successor. [Which implies that the punctiliously correct Benedict XVI would seek in any way to influence how the cardinals will vote! One imagines he will scrupulously do his best to keep out of sight after February 28, and one is not sure if he will even take part in the Holy Week liturgies or the inaugural Mass of his successor. We can imagine him giving a statement, perhaps written, about the new Pope, and then perhaps, one photo opportunity to show him pledging his allegiance to the new Vicar of Christ (unless he does this in public at the inaugural Mass.)
True, he appointed more than half of the cardinal electors as presently constituted, but even if most of them happen to reflect his point of view on most things about the Church, they will be voting freely and not likely to consult him about the coming vote.]
Though he will not himself vote, he has hand-picked the bulk of the College of Cardinals — the princes of the Church who will elect his successor — to guarantee his conservative legacy and ensure an orthodox future for the Church.
The resignation may mean that age will become less of a factor when electing a new Pope, since candidates may no longer feel compelled to stay for life.
"For the century to come, I think that none of Benedict's successors will feel morally obliged to remain until their death," said Paris Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois.
Benedict said as recently as 2010 that a Pontiff should resign if he got too old or infirm to do the job, but it was a tremendous surprise when he said in Latin that his "strength of mind and body" had diminished and that he couldn't carry on. He said he would resign effective 8 p.m. local time on Feb. 28.
[One only has to read the transcript of the amazing lectio divina he gave extemporaneously last Friday to the seminarians of Rome to know that Benedict XVI is no less strong in mind today than he ever was!]
"All the cardinals remained shocked and were looking at each other," said Monsignor Oscar Sanchez of Mexico, who was in the room at the time of the announcement.
As a top aide, Benedict watched from up close as Pope John Paul II suffered publicly from the Parkinson's disease that enfeebled him in the final years of his papacy. Clearly Benedict wanted to avoid the same fate as his advancing age took its toll, though the Vatican insisted the announcement was not prompted by any specific malady.
The Vatican said Benedict would live in a convent for cloistered nuns inside the Vatican, although he will be free to go in and out. Much of this is unchartered territory. The Vatican's chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he isn't even sure of Benedict's title — perhaps "Pope emeritus."
Since becoming Pope in 2005, Benedict has charted a very conservative course for the Church, trying to reawaken Christianity in Europe where it had fallen by the wayside and return the church to its traditional roots, which he felt had been betrayed by a botched interpretation of the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
His efforts though, were overshadowed by a worldwide clerical sex abuse scandal, communication gaffes that outraged Jews and Muslims alike and, more recently, a scandal over leaked documents by his own butler.
[The AP having been one of the worst felons in trying to implicate Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI directly in even just one sex-abuse case and its cover-up, I don't expect them to convert overnight on this matter. BUT IT IS PART OF THEIR DESPICABLE BLACK MYTH ABOUT B16 THAT THEY PRESENT THE SCANDAL
1) AS IF THE CRIMES OCCURRED DURING HIS PONTIFICATE, WHEN THEY DID NOT,
2) AS IF THE SCANDAL HAD NOT FIRST ERUPTED IN ALL THE VIRULENCE MEDIA COULD MUSTER UNDER THE PREVIOUS POPE, WHICH IT DID, and
3) AS IF THE RECYCLED FUROR IN 2010 WAS NOT DUE TO ANYTHING BENEDICT XVI HAD FAILED TO DO, BUT BECAUSE OF RE-IGNITED PASSIONS OVER CRIMES WHICH MOSTLY OCCURRED IN THE 1970s-1990s.
I'm not even expecting the MSM to credit him for all the things he has done against this 'filth' in the Church, but at the very least, they ought not to lay down all the blame at his door, since he of all people has been blameless in all this, which is what they have been doing all along. This complete disregard for historical and current facts is truly appalling, and won't end soon, because unlike Nixon, the MSM will always have Benedict XVI to knock around. The truly malevolent will find new excuses to do so even after he is no longer Pope. He is destined to carry this Cross to the end of his days.]
.
Many of
his stated priorities as Pope also fell short: He failed to establish relations with China, heal the schism and reunite with the Orthodox Church, or reconcile with a group of breakaway, traditionalist Catholics.
[Please read all his initial discourses as Pope and point out where those priorities are mentioned! He never said he would 'heal the schism' about anything - because he always says that Christian unity will be the work of the Holy Spirit above all. These reporters mistake original initiatives undertaken by Benedict XVI for 'priorities' - when his priority has always been to bring back the primacy of God to a secular world and to re-catechize Catholics in the essentials of their faith, ]
There are several papal contenders in the wings, but no obvious front-runner — the same situation as when Benedict was elected after the death of John Paul. As in recent elections, some push is expected for the election of a Third World Pope, with several names emerging from Asia, Africa and Latin America, home to about 40 percent of the world's Catholics.
The Vatican stressed that no specific medical condition prompted Benedict's decision, saying he remains fully lucid and took his decision independently.
"Any interference or intervention is alien to his style," Lombardi said.
The Pope has clearly slowed down significantly in recent years, cutting back his foreign travel and limiting his audiences. He now goes to and from the altar in St. Peter's Basilica on a moving platform to spare him the long walk down the aisle. Occasionally he uses a cane.
[I must confess I felt alarm, but no premonition of today's event, when I saw him being wheeled down the rather short aisle of the Cappella Maggiore in Rome's major seminary last Friday.]
As early as 2010, Benedict began to look worn out: He had lost weight and
didn't seem fully engaged when visiting bishops briefed him on their dioceses.
[How absurd! How do they know this? Were they present at these ad limina visits?]
But as tired as he often seemed, he would also bounce back, enduring searing heat in Benin to caress a child and gamely hanging on when a freak storm forced him to cut short a speech during a youth festival in Madrid in 2011.
His 89-year-old brother, Georg Ratzinger, said doctors recently advised the pope not to take any more trans-Atlantic trips.
"His age is weighing on him," Ratzinger told the dpa news agency in Germany. "At this age, my brother wants more rest."
Benedict emphasized that to carry out the duties of being Pope, "both strength of mind and body are necessary — strengths which in the last few months, have deteriorated in me."
"After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited" to the demands of being the Pope, he told the cardinals.
In a way, it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Benedict himself raised the possibility of resigning if he were too old or sick to continue.
"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 in the 2010 book
Light of the World.
But he stressed that resignation was not an option to escape a particular burden, such as the sex abuse scandal.
"When the danger is great, one must not run away. For that reason, now is certainly not the time to resign. Precisely at a time like this one must stand fast and endure the situation," he said.
Although Popes are allowed to resign, only a handful has done it — and none for a very long time.
The last Pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 in a deal to end the Great Western Schism, a dispute among competing papal claimants. The most famous resignation was Pope Celestine V in 1294; Dante placed him in hell for it.
There are good reasons why others haven't followed suit, primarily because of the fear of a schism with two living popes. Lombardi sought to rule out such a scenario, saying Church law makes clear that a resigning pope no longer has the right to govern the Church.
When Benedict was elected in 2005 at age 78, he was the oldest Pope chosen in nearly 300 years. At the time, he had already been planning to retire as the Vatican's chief orthodoxy watchdog to spend his final years writing in the "peace and quiet" of his native Bavaria.
On Monday, Benedict said he plans to serve the Church for the remainder of his days "through a life dedicated to prayer." The Vatican said after he resigns he will travel to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer retreat south of Rome, and then live in the monastery.
All cardinals under age 80 are allowed to vote in the conclave, the secret meeting held in the Sistine Chapel where cardinals cast ballots to elect a new Pope. As per tradition, the ballots are burned after each voting round; black smoke that snakes out of the chimney means no Pope has been chosen, while white smoke means a Pope has been elected.
There are currently 118 cardinals under age 80 and thus eligible to vote, 67 of them appointed by Benedict. However, four will turn 80 before the end of March. Depending on the date of the conclave, they may or may not be allowed to vote.
[Someone has pointed out that two of the cardinals who will turn 80 during the sede vacante are allowed under the rules to take part in the Conclave.]
Benedict in 2007 passed a decree requiring a two-thirds majority to elect a Pope, changing the rules established by John Paul in which the voting could shift to a simple majority after about 12 days of inconclusive balloting. Benedict did so to prevent cardinals from merely holding out until the 12 days had passed to push through a candidate who had only a slim majority.
Contenders to be Benedict's successor include Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan; Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian head of the Vatican's office for bishops.
Longshots include Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. Although Dolan is popular and backs the Pope's conservative line, being from a world superpower would probably hurt his chances. That might also rule out Cardinal Raymond Burke, an arch-conservative and the Vatican's top judge, even though he is known and respected by most Vatican cardinals.
Monsignor Antonio Marto, the bishop of Fatima in central Portugal, said Benedict's resignation presents an opportunity to pick a Church leader from a country outside Europe.
"In Africa or Latin America, there is a freshness, an enthusiasm about living the faith," Marto told reporters. "Perhaps we need a Pope who can look beyond Europe and bring to the entire Church a certain vitality that is seen on other continents."
[With all due respect, both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have looked to the other continents with great consideration. The question is whether there is any Church leader from the Third World who will emerge at the Conclave as a viable contender.]
Cardinal Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila, has impressed many Vatican watchers, but at 56 he is considered too young.
Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Ghana is one of the highest-ranking African cardinals at the Vatican, currently heading the Vatican's office for justice and peace, but he's something of a wild card.
There are several "papabiles" in Latin America, though the most well-known — Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras — is considered far too liberal to be elected by such a conservative College of Cardinals.
Whoever it is, he will face a Church in turmoil: The sex abuse scandal has driven thousands of people away from the church, particularly in Europe.
[Bullcrap, they had already left the Church in spirit and in practice long before they found a pretext to trumpet their desertion.] Rival churches, particularly evangelical Pentecostal groups in the developing world, pose new competition. And as the Pope himself has long lamented, many people in an increasingly secular world simply believe they don't need God.
[The Church is not in turmoil because of any of the above. The Church is 'in turmoil' because MSM has declared it to be so, when they mistake the little patches of the elephant that they can touch for the whole elephant. The number of Catholics continues to rise, and a considerable number of new dioceses were created under Benedict XVI. If the next Pope continues to emphasize Benedict XVI's true priorities - which are necessarily long-term goals - the Church will continue to survive as an institution because after all, it was founded by the Son of God himself.]
The timing of Benedict's announcement was significant: Lent begins this week on Ash Wednesday, the most solemn period on the Church's calendar that culminates with Holy Week and Easter on March 31. It is also the period in which the world witnessed the final days of John Paul's papacy in 2005.
The timing means that there will be a spotlight cast on Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Italian head of the Vatican's culture office who has long been on the list of "papabile." Benedict selected him to preside over the Vatican's spiritual exercises during Lent.
And by Easter Sunday, the Catholic Church will almost certainly have a new leader, Lombardi said — a potent symbol of rebirth in the Church on a day that celebrates the resurrection of Christ.
Therein lies the significance of the timing of Benedict XVI's announcement, why he did not just wait for the 8th anniversary of his Pontificate to take place. He announced it not just on the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes (whose visionary Bernadette's birthday is the same as the Pope's) and the World Day for the Sick, but in time for Lent (his Lenten sacrifice) and with enough time to ensure that there will be a new Pope to lead the Holy Week liturgies culminating in Easter Sunday... The new Pope will go to Rio in summer for WYD, and the new Pope will close out the Year of Faith in November...
Meanwhile, other than the Ash Wednesday penitential procession and Mass tomorrow, and his annual meeting with the clergy of Rome on Thursday - as Cardinal Sodano reminded us earlier today - he will give two more Angelus 'homilies' (Feb. 17 and 24), three more catecheses (Feb. 13, 20 and 27), and, lest anyone forget, his encyclical on faith which will probably be released in the next few days and which will be the most appropriate closing text of his Pontificate. [DIM]
___[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/02/2013 04:55]