Pope Benedict has announced his resignation from the papacy. What popes have done this before, and how has it changed the Church?
In the wake of Pope Benedict’s announcement that he is resigning from the papacy, I thought I would speak with the historian Dr. Andrew Jones about the history of papal resignations.
While it hasn’t happened often in history, there have been popes who have resigned before, and their resignations (technically, their renunciations of the papacy) have left a lasting impact on Church history.
There are also some fascinating cases where we aren’t quite sure what happened.
In this episode of the Jimmy Akin Podcast, Dr. Jones and I begin to go through the cases, explaining what happened, what we know, and what impact the papal resignations have had.
First of two parts.
Here are links to the web sites mentioned in the show:
Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days and then was tempted by the devil. What is going on in this mysterious incident?
This Sunday the gospel reading speaks of a mysterious event, just after Jesus’ baptism, in which he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness.
How could Jesus–the All-Holy Son of God–be tempted?
Why did this event happen, and what was going on?
Here are 9 things you need to know about Jesus’ “temptations” . . . and ours.
1. Why did Jesus go into the desert after his Baptism?
Empowered and led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert in preparation for his ministry, which his baptism inaugurated. Click here for more information on his baptism.
Forty days recalls various periods of preparation in the Old Testament, including the forty days Moses spent fasting and with God on Mt. Zion at the giving of the Law (Ex. 34:28), the forty days the Israelites spent spying out the Promised Land (Num. 13:25), and the forty years that the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land (Num. 14:34).
Should we have holy water in the fonts during Lent or should they turn into little ash trays? What does the Church say?
Like other liturgical seasons, Lent has its own special rules, and there are certain things that should not be done in Lent.
Here are 6 of them . . .
1. Instrumental music with no singing
In some parishes, instrumental music is used at certain points during Mass. A passage will be played on an organ or on another instrument or instruments, even though nobody is singing.
But not in Lent (with a few exceptions).
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) states:
313. In Lent the playing of the organ and musical instruments is allowed only in order to support the singing. Exceptions, however, are Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts.
2. Singing or saying the Gloria
Just after Sunday Mass begins, it is common to sing or say the Gloria (“Glory to God in the highest”).
But not on the Sundays of Lent.
The General Instruction states:
53. The Gloria in excelsis (Glory to God in the highest) . . . is sung or said on Sundays outside Advent and Lent, and also on Solemnities and Feasts, and at particular celebrations of a more solemn character.
3. Singing or saying the Alleleuia before the Gospel
Yesterday I was interviewed by KPBS–the local PBS affiliate–on the resignation of Pope Benedict and the upcoming conclave.
It was a brief segment–just five minutes, and they told us in advance that they were going to ask like six questions in that five minutes, so we have to be really concise.
What I was most interested in was the whole partisan/political way they tried to frame the issue. It was far more nakedly political than I’d guessed, especially for a network that tries to project an attitude of impartiality.
Would you like to express your love and gratitude to Pope Benedict for his service to the Church? Here is a way you can do it.
After I heard the news that Pope Benedict was renouncing the papacy, I felt moved to record a brief, from-the-heart video expressing my thoughts and feelings. (I don’t like the word “renounce” either, but it is the technically correct term, and it was used by Pope Benedict in his announcement.)
I decided to do the video unscripted, in the form of a video open letter to Pope Benedict, expressing my admiration for him and my gratitude for his service to the Church.
I know he doesn’t know who I am and that he may never see the video, but I wanted to do it anyway.
I have very much valued the service Pope Benedict has given the Church. I have been an admirer of his for many years before he was elected pope, and his service to the Church was already staggering.
When he agreed to shoulder the burden of being the successor of St. Peter, the vicar of Christ, I cheered!
I had been afraid to let my hopes get up that he would be elected pope, but he was!
He is an awesome teacher and a man of deep thought, profound piety, and amazing humility.
I will miss him terribly. I respect and accept his decision. But I could not let this occasion pass without expressing the burden of my heart.
Here’s the video . . .
Now that I’ve had my say, it’s time for yours.
After making the video, it struck me that it would be possible to get people’s expressions of love and gratitude to Pope Benedict after he leaves office. (He’ll be far too busy beforehand.)
Therefore, I invite you to use the comments box to express your prayers and best wishes to Pope Benedict.
After his departure, I will print your messages in a large-type, easy-to-read format and send it to him, along with a cover letter again expressing my own gratitude to him.
(Before sending it, I will also delete any inappropriate messages, so keep it positive.)
But please, do, let him know how much you love him and value his service as the successor of St. Peter and how you support him at this challenging time.
Pope Benedict XVI has announced his resignation. Here is the full statement and first reaction.
Pope Benedict has announced his resignation and the election of a new pontiff.
This is not a joke.
This is the first time this has happened since 1415.
Here is Pope Benedict’s statement and some first thoughts on it.
The Statement
Here’s the full statement from Pope Benedict on his resignation:
Dear Brothers,
I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church.
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.
I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.
However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.
For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.
Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects.
And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff.
With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.
First thoughts . . .
1. I’m disappointed. I think Pope Benedict is an amazing teacher, and I have truly valued his time as pope.
2. I have to accept his judgment. He knows his personal situation and the demands of his office better than I do. If he thinks it’s time to go, I have to respect that.
3. It’s not entirely a surprise. He himself has said things before that indicated this could someday be a live possibility for him.
4. It’s not without precedent. A number of popes have resigned before, most recently in 1415, when Gregory XII resigned.
5. It’s good that this happened “out of the blue,” rather than when there were calls for a papal resignation. The latter could encourage divisiveness (that is, if dissidents got the idea that all they had to do to oust a pope they don’t like is make a big enough stink).
We know that John Paul II thought about resigning repeatedly but didn’t, likely in significant part because there were calls for his resignation and it would have set a terrible precedent.
6. While there were no resignations for almost 600 years, just as there were no non-Italian popes for 450 years, we’re probably going to see more of both in the future.
While the next pope might be an Italian, the diversification of the college of cardinals has already resulted in a trend toward non-Italian cardinals. That will continue.
More to the present subject, the on-the-job demands for a pope have gone up in recent years. Being the leader and public face of the billion-member Catholic Church in a time of rapid change and diminishing faith is not an easy task.
At the same time, advancing medical technology means increasingly long lifespans with a longer period of frail health.
It is not easy to be eighty five (Pope Benedict’s age) or ninety or ninety five and feel confident steering the ship of Peter in today’s world.
Unless we get really wizard regenerative medical technology really soon, we’re likely to have more popes in that kind of situation, and thus there are likely to be more resignations in the future.
7. Pope Benedict may follow the pattern of previously resigned popes and spend the rest of his days in a monastery. Alternately, he may live quietly with his brother. Either way, he will do his best to stay out of the public eye so as to give his successor the freest hand possible. (This is the same thing that usually happens when a U.S. president leaves office; it’s traditional for him to more-or-less vanish, at least for a time.)
8. The fact that Pope Benedict chose to do this now, just before Lent begins, so that his resignation takes place in two weeks and we should have a new pope before Easter, means that his deterioration of health is serious. This is also the case in view of the big agenda he set for this year (the Year of Faith) and that he will now not complete.
9. I hope he does release his new encyclical–on faith–before his resignation is effective. His successor could release it anyway, with any suitable modifications he deemed appropriate. Or it could not come out at all. But I hope it will, and under Pope Benedict’s name, while he’s still pope.
10. Let us all fervently pray for both Pope Benedict, for his successor, and for the Church.
It covered the basics of the rules of fast and abstinence in Lent, but it didn’t cover every possible application of them.
Then, by email, I received this query, which deals with an application I hadn’t considered before:
Is fasting and abstinence practised by Roman Catholics who are incarcerated?
Thanks. Your prompt reply is earnestly requested.
Interesting question!
In principle, both fast and abstinence are to be practiced by Catholic prisoners. There is no general exception for them (not that I have been able to find).
However, prison poses special challenges.
Could there be exceptions in individual cases?
How to Answer the Question
There are two ways to attack a question like this, where there is no explicit answer in the Code of Canon Law.
The first is to dive into the secondary literature (commentaries on the Code of Canon Law, handbooks of moral and pastoral theology, etc.).
Much of that will date from before the current, 1983 Code, and even before the Church’s current system of penitential practices was set up in 1966. However, it might still shed light on the question today.
I checked the main U.S. commentary and didn’t find anything on the question.
I’m sure there is some discussion of it out there, but it might take more time than we have before Lent begins for me to find it, so in the interests of providing a timely answer, let me pursue the other way of attacking the question, which is to try to extract the principles embedded in the law and apply them to this situation.
What’s the Goal?
The first question to answer is what is the goal that the Church’s requirements of fast and abstinence are trying to accomplish?
It isn’t to get people to eat less or fewer types of food, whether from reasons of diet, economy, health, or what have you.
Eating less food (in the case of fasting) or fewer types of food (in the case of abstinence) is just a means to an end.
What end?
Penance.
That’s why this topic is dealt with in the section on penitential days in the Code.
By undertaking a form of limited hardship, we can express sorrow for our past sins and train ourselves in self-discipline to say no to sin in the future.
That’s fundamentally what we’re trying to accomplish here, and it leads to a second question . . .
How Much Hardship?
The Church, at least in the Latin Rite today, does not expect us to undertake extreme hardship in pursuit of these goals on Ash Wednesday and the Friday of Lent and Good Friday.
With the discipline of fasting, all that is required by law is cutting down a bit on what we’d otherwise eat. We’re allowed one full meal and two cases where we can have “some food.”
Comparing that to the normal practice of eating three full meals and allowing oneself a few snacks, that’s not a huge difference.
When it comes to abstaining from meat, that would not have been a big deal–historically–because until recently, many people did not eat meat every day (some still don’t).
The requirement of abstinence just meant not indulging in what was–then–a cultural sign of celebration (eating meat).
So in both cases, the Church is only expecting us to shoulder a quite modest form of hardship.
But this burden can fall disproportionately on some . . .
When a Little Is a Lot
Some people are in situations in which the disciplines of fast and abstinence would pose a disproportionate burden on them.
This is more common with the requirement of fast than of abstinence, since normally other foods can be eaten in place of meat. If meat were the only source of calories that was available, even abstinence could pose a disproportionate burden.
But more commonly the situation arises with fasting. This can happen, for example with various medical conditions, such as diabetes.
Diabetics needs to keep their blood sugar in a certain range, and this can require a more frequent intake of food than envisioned by the Church’s fasting discipline.
The situation can also arise from things other than medical conditions. The standard sources from before Vatican II note exceptions for workers who need to keep their energy level up during the day, lest a lack of food interfere with them fulfilling their job duties.
In such situations, people are excused from keeping the discipline of fasting (and/or, more rarely, abstinence).
Sound pastoral practice, though, would urge them to find another way of practicing penance on these days in order to honor the spirit of the day.
So What About Prisoners?
I am not fully conversant with how food is regulated in jails and prisons, and I imagine that it varies considerably from place to place. However, it seems certain that prisoners generally have less freedom in terms of when and what to eat than non-prisoners.
In some situations, they may also have less flexibility regarding their activity level.
If that lack of freedom would significantly increase the burden of keeping the disciplines of fast and abstinence then a prisoner would be excused from keeping them.
Interestingly, I can see in the case of a prisoner how situations regarding abstinence could be more challenging.
On a Friday in Lent they might be served a food that has meat in it as their principal source of calories for a meal. Removing the meat might either be impossible, very difficult, or might so decrease the calories available to them that it would turn an occasion of abstinence into an occasion of fasting.
This is not required. In such cases the prisoner would be excused from abstinence.
Whether the burden of the disciplines of fast and abstinence are disproportionately high on a prisoner will depend on his individual situation and will require a judgement call.
A prisoner is bound to fast and abstain if he can do so reasonably. If the burden would be disproportionately high for either, though, then he is excused from that requirement, just as a person with a food-related medical condition or other situation would be.
In such cases, the prisoner should still seek to keep the spirit of the day in some way.
They could also choose to fast and abstain anyway, even with the greater burden. The Church’s requirements regarding these practices are minimums, not maximums, and we are all encouraged to do more than the minimum. This is not a matter of requirement but of free choice, and choosing to do more than the minimum is praiseworthy.
What About Prison Officials?
The above information applies to prisoners, but what about prison officials who are (to a significant degree) in control of the food Catholic prisoners have available to them on the Church’s penitential days?
Since there is no general exception made for prisoners to the disciplines of fast and abstinence (only need-based exceptions, where they exist), prison officials should accomodate Catholic prisoners’ abilities to fast and abstain on the Church’s penitential days.
There are two grounds for this: First, there is the simple humanitarian ground of trying to allow another person to fulfill his religious duties. Second, there are the protections of religious liberty found in U.S. law (most notably in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, although there are many other protections of the free exercise of religion as well).
Thus they should seek to allow Catholic prisoners to have meatless meals on days of abstinence and, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, they should not impose activity levels on prisoners that would be inconsistent with fasting.
They should also seek, to the extent possible, to have Catholic services available for prisoners on these days as well, particularly on Ash Wednesday, the Sundays of Lent, and the days of Holy Week, including Good Friday, leading up to Holy Saturday and Easter.
Remembering Those in Prison
I hope the above information is useful, and I invite readers to keep those behind bars in your prayers.
Our Lord took special note of the care we should have for prisoners, telling us,
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
27. Lent [is a liturgical season that] is ordered to preparing for the celebration of Easter, since the lenten liturgy prepares for celebration of the paschal mystery both catechumens, by the various stages of Christian initiation, and the faithful, who recall their own Baptism and do penance.
The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days’ fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term quadragesima (French carême, Italian quaresima, Spanish, cuaresma), meaning the “forty days”, or more literally the “fortieth day”. This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times.
The evangelists Mark and Luke both speak from their own perspectives, which helps better express the complex truth about Jesus.
While they may agree about the facts of Jesus’ life, the authors of the four gospels have different interests and perspectives.
Matthew has a particular interest in Jewish concerns, Luke has a particular interest in Gentile concerns, etc.
But sometimes the differences between them come out in more personal ways.
Tuesday’s gospel reading contains a particularly striking illustration of that.
Mark on Doctors
Tuesday’s Gospel reading contains the passage from Mark 5 dealing with the woman with the flow of blood. You know, the one who is healed by sneaking up and touching Jesus’ clothing.
In Mark’s account of the event, we read:
And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse [Mark 5:25-26].
Ouch! Harsh.
Physicians had caused this woman a lot of suffering, they took all her money, and she got worse rather than better.
Not a positive commentary on the medical profession.
Some Truth
The comment would have resonated with many people in Mark’s day, for the state of the medical profession was primitive.
Doctors might be well meaning, but they had nothing like the tools we do today.
Even just a few centuries ago, one physician (my memory fails me on precisely who) made the ironic statement that medicine amounts to making the patient comfortable while nature takes its course.
Yikes!
And even today there are many situations that are not treatable or not easily treatable. We’re only at the dawn of effective medicine (that is, if we don’t ruin the future course of medicine by making the development of new cures uneconomical).
A Matter of Perspective
While it wouldn’t be surprising for many patients in Mark’s day to share his outlook on doctors, there is one group that you could count on to have a significantly different perspective.
40 days after his birth, Christ was presented at the temple. Why?
Later this week the Church celebrates the Presentation of the Lord.
It’s a feast that happens every year on February 2nd.
We read about the presentation of the Lord in Luke 2, but the text can be a little mysterious.
What is actually happening there?
Some claim that Luke himself didn’t know . . .
What Luke Says
Here is what Luke actually says about the event . . .
[22] And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord [23] (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) [24] and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.”
He then records the encounters with Simeon and Anna the prophetess, but at the moment our focus is what Luke refers to as “their purification.”
