Pope Benedict XVI

Four years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, or abdication — debate swirled around the question of what the appropriate English word was. “Renuntiare” was the Latin verb in his announcement, which he read aloud to a meeting of cardinals: He renounced (“relinquished” might be a better translation) the ministry of the bishop of Rome. Every bishop has three functions: to sanctify, to teach, and to govern. Benedict aced the first two but flunked the third: That’s the popular assessment. In fairness to him, remember that the Vatican is a nest of perpetual dissension, full of the pope’s allies and enemies and officials affiliated with third-party movements, as it were. One view is that Benedict inherited an especially fractious Roman Curia and that the battle lines that had formed during the pontificate of John Paul II remained largely in place after his death in 2005: If you had wanted to bring down John Paul, you wanted to bring down Benedict. The scholar-pope that was Joseph Ratzinger appears to have had little appetite or aptitude for politics. At age 85, he might have concluded that he was unlikely to reinvent himself as Machiavelli’s Prince. Fill in here some speculation about VatiLeaks, the St. Gallen Mafia, and the infamously shady Vatican Bank. Add the curious information that about a month before Benedict announced that he was stepping down, the Italian government prohibited the nation’s banks from doing business with the Holy See. The Vatican Museums were suddenly unable to take payment by plastic. Perhaps the challenging circumstances in which Benedict found himself were not all that different from those that had beset popes for centuries — but younger popes. By February 2013, Benedict was the fourth-oldest man ever to hold the office. Moreover, John Paul, who had experience in the theater, had enlarged the definition of the papacy: It was now, among other things, a stage on which the Holy Father could use his presence and charisma to preach and bring souls to Christ. The burden of the public’s expectation that Benedict, too, would be a mediagenic rock star must have grown heavier as he grew older. The tradition that the pope serves for life becomes less feasible as people live longer, taking their time to cool down as they prepare to pass through the veil and cross to the other side. Our forefathers were more likely to be sent rushing through it headlong as they fell to sudden illness while still near the height of their mental powers. Benedict established a modern precedent that some of his successors blessed with great longevity might find it prudent to follow. Benedict was a liturgical pope, removing impediments to the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass and advocating its reintegration into the life of the Church. Catholic liturgy, or public prayer, is the prime manifestation of the Church’s reason for being: If you think that, you are liable to rank Benedict as the most consequential pope since the Second Vatican Council. If you consider liturgy an ornament, an aesthetic nicety subordinate to doctrine, ecclesiastical leadership, or the influence that the successor of Saint Peter has often aspired to exert among the princes of this world, you might tend to see Benedict as having been distracted by lower-order business, while Francis is probably your idea of a pope who gets it. Even if you disagree with Francis’s aims, you have to admire him for knowing how to play the game — if, that is, your view of the papacy is that it’s primarily a political institution. In a fundamental sense, Francis’s pontificate recalls the days when the notion that the papacy is invested with temporal power was openly celebrated. It no longer is, at least formally. Paul VI gave up the tiara in 1963, and 15 years later John Paul II finally put an end to the sedia gestatoria, the chair on which popes had been carried aloft, bobbing along on the shoulders of their footmen. Francis would reject the symbolism as anachronistic, but he embraces the underlying premise that the pope is an important player on the stage of world politics. Benedict might appreciate the symbolism, given his love for tradition and antiquity, but his aversion to the underlying premise was obvious, sometimes painfully so. Pope Emeritus Benedict has retired to an ascetic life in the Vatican Gardens, where he spends his days in quiet, praying for the Church, which is troubled. He no longer teaches or governs it. He continues to sanctify it. Godspeed to him.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/444833/pope-benedict-xvi-resigned-four-years-ago-today