Hearing the news yesterday morning on WGN that Pope Benedict XVI had announced that he would step down from his ministry as pope, I first thought “Oh, it must be April 1st” but then quickly realized that it was the middle of February and not April’s Fools Day, and that this was serious business indeed.
The news that Papa Ratzinger had announced his abdication of the Apostolic See and his ministry as the Bishop of Rome, Peter’s Successor, Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church effective February 28, 2013 was truly stunning. Here are some initial thoughts.
1. I think that Rocco Palmo (here) is right to note that Benedict reached this decision some time ago. Benedict clearly cited his health and age as the reason for his decision. “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 an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”
In this, I think, Benedict is in effect saying 'There is no one man indispensable to the life of the Church . . . only the God/Man Jesus. Yet the man who succeeds Peter needs to have the strength and vitality that I lack precisely because the Church needs to be a vital force in the world . . . as a teacher and promoter of God's mercy in action. And although my successor will not be “young” as the world measures youth, I pray that he will have the youth of spirit to fulfill the role as Peter's successor -- to confirm the brethren in the faith -- in a way I am no long able. I trust that the Holy Spirit will guide the Church in this so that the Gospel can be preached with even greater efficacy.'
So construed, Benedict’s decision is itself an act of teaching – a demonstration of how we are to live our lives as Christians – to trust in the Lord and His providence. Although John Paul II decided to remain in office until his death and Benedict has chosen to step down, you can hear in the latter’s statement the teaching of his predecessor: “Be not afraid!”
2. Still, the timing is remarkable in that Benedict would choose to set the process in motion for the selection of his successor before Easter. Because Holy Week and the Paschal season are an especially hectic and demanding time for the pope, I agree with Jimmy Akin’s comment (here) that Benedict must truly feel that “his deterioration of health is serious.” Jimmy Akin also notes that stepping down now means that Benedict will not complete the important and ambitious work of the
Year of Faith that he set out to do.
3. Many have noted that the abdication of a pope is extremely rare, and indeed is without precedent in modern times, the last pope to do so being Gregory XII in 1415.
It is, however, worth noting that an analogous situation already exists in the contemporary Church. In 2011, Nasrallah Sfeir, the long-ruling and much beloved Patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church, stepped down because of his advanced age and Bechara Rai was elected to serve as the new head of the Lebanese church. Similarly, Lubomyr Husar stepped down and was succeeded in 2011 by Sviatuslav Shevchuck as the Major Archbishop (the de facto Patriarch) of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. (Other examples could be provided).
Although serving as Bishop of Rome – Pastor of the Universal Church, Servant of the Servants of God – carries with it special responsibilities and burdens, these are examples in which the heads of two respective churches within the Universal Church have stepped aside to leave the task of shepherding the flock of Christ to a younger man without fear of schism, without the fear that the elder man would interfere with the leadership of his successor.
4. We are of course left to ponder what Benedict’s legacy will be. In the first place, I think he be remembered as the pope who continued the important work of John Paul II in giving the Church a definitive and authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council – a point also made by Rev. Robert Barron (linked to in Kevin Lee’s recent post here).
Like his immediate predecessor, Benedict made secure a correct understanding of the Council by telling us what it was and what it was not. It was a council of reform and not a council of rupture with the twenty ecumenical councils that preceded it, either with respect to the contents of the faith or the structures of the Church, some of which (e.g. orders) are of divine origin and cannot be altered. It was far less a matter of reordering internal church affairs than it was an evangelical moment. It was a call by the Holy Spirit for the faithful to engage the world precisely as followers of Christ.
Rev. James Martin, S.J. has said (here) that Benedict will be remembered for his three encyclicals and for the books he published on Jesus of Nazareth while pope.
I think that his three encyclicals are important, but as I have written elsewhere (here) because of their nature as ecclesial documents and the process whereby they were generated, each lacks a certain polish.
More than his encyclicals, I think that as pope Benedict will be remembered for his sermons in a way not unlike Pope St. Leo the Great. He is an extraordinary homilist.
I also think he will be remembered for his theological writings prior to becoming pope. Joseph Ratzinger has a special talent as a thinker and writer for explaining complex theological ideas in a way that makes them understandable to modern men and women for whom talk of religious faith has become problematic. A great deal of contemporary theological writing seems to veer towards the drivel of a new age mysticism and syncretism or the dry prose of an engineering manual, or the latest party platform, providing little if any connection to the Living God of history – the God of Israel, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ. In his writings, Ratzinger has consistently mined the depths of scripture and the theological concepts of the great Catholic tradition (especially the Fathers) while connecting both to philosophy and contemporary thought in a way that provides new insights, all the while keeping the person of Jesus and our relationship with Him foremost in the minds of readers.
In terms of the nearly 1.2 billion people who make up the Catholic Church world-wide, only a tiny fraction were fortunate to be Joseph Ratzinger's graduate students. But through his writings and sermons, many have been given the opportunity to be his pupils, to be students in the Ratzinger seminar on faith and life.
Michael Sean Winters has a detailed response to the Catholic bishops' recent response to the Administration's proposed changes to the mandate. While there are (as usual!) some things in his post which strike me as sensible, I thought it missed the mark a bit in two places. First, there was what seemed to me to be an unfair swipe at the "lawyers" -- especially the great folks at the Becket Fund (who litigated the case that Winters and I agree was a huge win in Hosanna-Tabor, where the Court rejected what Winters and I agree was the Administration's strikingly unsound argument against the ministerial exception). "The lawyers" have had and should have an important role in this debate because we are talking about, well, a law, about what it actually says and does, and about whether that law is, well, legal. It is not fair to say that the Becket Fund has "an agenda that has more to do with politics than with pastoring" because -- while it's true that the lawyers at Becket are not pastors -- their work over the years has been admirably non-partisan, in the sense that they defend the religious liberty of all, "from the Amish to Zoroastrians." They do not do the work they do to help Republicans, or hurt Obama, but to defend what the Church's pastors at Vatican II reminded us is a fundamental human right.
It's also worth noting, I think, that the continuing urgent need for lawyers in this debate has been (to me) demonstrated by the unwillingness of many commentators, journalists, and bloggers to read carefully the new proposal and figure out what -- given the relevant regulatory and legal environment -- it actually would, and would not, (and can, and cannot) do. Although, as I've said several times, the proposed change to the definition of exempt religious employers is welcome, the confidence expressed in some quarters that the new proposal eliminates the basis for religious-freedom concerns is, it seems to me, premature. Of course, if we do, eventually, get a new version of the mandate that *does* answer the concerns, then that will be a very good thing. It is not the case that the "lawyers" want to litigate for the heck of it; they want to solve the problem.
Finally, Michael Sean writes: "The most disappointing aspect of the bishops’ statement was their continued insistence on an exemption for private, for-profit employers. As I wrote Monday, this is a proper concern for the Becket Fund, it is not a proper concern for the bishops. And, furthermore, I think we need to be very careful in this hyper-individualistic society of ours, in advocating an individual’s right to claim an exemption from a law based on their religious beliefs." I am afraid I disagree. While it is true (as I have said often on this blog) that the enterprise of accommodating faith-based objections to general laws can be a complicated one -- one that might well "play out" differently, in some cases, for for-profit employers than for parochial schools -- the idea that the religious-freedom rights of business owners is "not a proper concern for the bishops" seems very wrong to me. Religious-freedom is a human right, and is presented as such in authoritative Catholic teaching. How could violations of that right not be a concern of the bishops, simply because their own and the Church's institutional interests are (perhaps) taken care of. Winters is worried about the argument that "an individual [has a ] right to claim an exemption from a law based on their religious beliefs" and, to be sure, that argument can be abused and should, in some cases, be rejected. That said, there is nothing objectionably "indvidualistic" -- it's in Dignitatis humanae -- about the argument that religion-based exemptions from general laws should generally be extended, to the extent possible, consistent with public order and the common good.
Like Lisa, my only personal encounter with Joseph Ratzinger was a few weeks before his election as Pope, when he celebrated Mass at St. Peter's for those attending a confernce on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Gaudium et Spes. In his homily that day, he said:
... We should not be surprised if the attitudes toward Jesus, that we find in the Gospel, continue today in attitudes toward his Church. It is certainly true that today, when the Church commits herself to works of justice on a human level (and there are few institutions in the world which accomplish what the Catholic Church accomplishes for the poor and disadvantaged), the world praises the Church. But when the Church's work for justice touches on issues and problems which the world no longer sees as bound up with human dignity, like protecting the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death, or when the Church confesses that justice also includes our responsibilities
toward God himself, then the world not infrequently reaches for the stones mentioned in our Gospel today...
As Christians we must constantly be reminded that the call of justice is not something which can be reduced to the categories of this world. ...
And so, to be workers of this true justice, we must be workers who are being made just, by contact with Him who is justice itself: Jesus of Nazareth. The place of this encounter is the Church, nowhere more powerfully present than in her sacraments and liturgy. The celebration of the Holy Triduum, which we will enter into next week, is the triumph of God's justice over human judgments. In the mystery of Good Friday, God is judged by man and condemned by human justice. In the Easter Vigil, the light of God's justice banishes the darkness of sin and death; the stone at the tomb (made of the same material as the stones in the hands of those who, in today's Gospel, seek to kill Christ) is pushed away forever, and human life is given a future, which, in going beyond the categories of this world, reveals the true meaning and the true value of earthly realities. ...
Michael Sean Winters calls attention, here, to Mark Silk's complaint about what he regards as the bishops' insufficiently enthusiastic embrace of the proposed (i.e., not-yet-adopted) new contraceptive-coverage mandate. In my view, the theme (which I've come across in several posts and pieces by commentators) that the bishops are somehow being churlish or ungrateful for observing that -- notwithstanding the welcome revision to the definition of exempt "religious employers" -- the mandate continues to burden religious liberty in regrettable and unnecessary ways is a strange one.
Two quick thought: Silk writes:
The bishops offer nothing to indicate that the many non-Catholics who receive health coverage at their colleges and hospitals may have rights of their own that ought to be recognized. Or that those institutions, by virtue of the substantial public funding they receive, might legitimately be distinguished from houses of worship.
Both of these sentences peddle mistakes. First, there is no question here of "recogniz[ing]" the "rights" of "non-Catholics" to receive free contraception-coverage from Catholic institutions. Even putting aside doubts about the wisdom of the mandate as a policy matter, the claim by those objecting to the mandate is not that these employers should be denied coverage, or (obviously) told they cannot use contraception. The complaint has been that, if the government thinks free contraceptive-coverage is a good thing, then the government should pay, rather than making the religious employers do it. No "rights" of non-Catholic employees are violated if their free contraceptive-coverage comes from the government, rather than from, say, Catholic Charities.
Second, it is wrong to say that the institutions in question "receive" "public money" in a way that somehow waters down their religious-ness. They don't "receive" money as a gift, or a subsidy -- they accept payment and reimbursement for benefits they provide to the community. There's no reason this relationship should push them into what Cardinal Dolan called "second class" religious-institution status.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Fr. Robert Barron
appeared on MSNBC today to comment on the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI. (His appearance begins around 3:10). He fields questions and offers some interesting comments of possible successors.
In light of our Holy Father’s
announcement today that he will step down from the Chair of Peter at the end of
this month, we need to take stock of several points that will help to put his
announcement and its impact in a proper context.
First of all, several other popes,
although not recent ones, have resigned their office as many news sources are
reminding us today, albeit for different reasons. But no one whom I have read
in this regard has discussed the plan of Pius XII who, with credible evidence
that Hitler had a plan to kidnap him and hold him hostage, had arranged for his
resignation if Hitler’s plan had been carried out during the Second World War.
As Pope Pius noted to his closest aids, if Hitler carried out his plan, he
would have had not Pius XII but Eugenio Pacelli; thus, the person in Hitler’s
custody would not be the pope but a priest who was also a cardinal. It was
evident that if Hitler’s plan moved forward and succeeded, the Church and the
world in relatively modern times would have had to deal with the resignation of
a pope. Even though Hitler’s plan was not implemented, what becomes clear is
that Pius XII’s plan and Benedict XVI’s actions are similar in that the
decisions both of these pontiffs made were not done lightly or out of a desire
to do other things after a long life of service. They were done for the good of
Christ and His Church.
Second, Pope Benedict exercised a
leadership that many in the secular world do not understand. Robby has pointed
out one example of this in his commentary on the remarks made by Nicholas
Kristof. Another example also comes from today’s The New York Times online article by Rachel Donadio, which has
since been changed, but which earlier made an allegation about his
ultra-conservatism. What followed has been retained, i.e., his papacy was
overshadowed by clerical abuse. Ms. Donadio called the wrong man a
conservative. The case can be objectively made that Pope Benedict was an ardent
advocate for the Church’s teachings because he understood not only the “what”
about them but the “why” as well. I do not think Ms. Donadio, her paper, or
many who consider themselves progressives will ever understand that Benedict
was far more concerned about everyone that many of the strongest advocates who
advance theories about human rights, which are lacking because they are based
on the concept of the isolated individual who has claims to whatever he or she
wants without attending responsibilities. Benedict knew the perils of this kind
of thinking and the falsehoods to which it leads; moreover, he understood,
lived, and preached the way for the progress of all peoples, not just some.
Third, the fact that Pope Benedict
will be stepping down from the papacy does not mean that his Christian
leadership will conclude, for he remains a disciple who will continue to serve
as a powerful example for others. In the future, his discipleship will likely
focus on two major activities. The first will be to continue his scholarly work
with which the papacy interfered. The second is that he will likely spend time
in his monastic habitat to pray in preparation for meeting his and our Creator.
For those of us who also share health concerns associated with either old age
or disease or both, his prayerful preparation for meeting God will, for many of
us, be and remain a vital exercise of discipleship that needs to be adopted by
anyone who claims to follow Christ.
RJA sj
