Y’all may recall that following his audience last week, B16 was handed a cell phone by a man in a wheelchair and he spoke into it for a few moments.
Nobody knew who was on the other end of the line.
Now we do.
Turns out that he was speaking to a 44-year old nun who was too ill with cancer to attend the audience as she’d originally planned.
Like everybody else, I cheered (literally!) when the election of Benedict XVI was announced. I called up a buncha folks and congratulated them, even though none had any influence on the papal election. It was simply a day for Catholics to congratulate each other.
I couldn’t wait to see what B16 would do as pope. I still can’t wait to see his first encyclical. Why isn’t it out already!?! (That’s my heart talking, not my head. I know that first papal encyclicals usually aren’t out this quick.)
Amid the euphoria, though, I recognized that B16 was unlikely to approach his pontificate with the "Let’s kick some serious butt!" attitude that I knew many would wish. His reputation as a rottweiler is . . . well . . . rot.
The man is far more patient and gentle than his enemies and even many of his friends, or at least fans, give him credit for.
Make no mistake: I expect great things from his pontificate, and I pray that God gives him a long reign as pope, but the great things that I just know are in the offing will be delivered in a kindler and gentler and more nuanced manner than many expect. (Joseph Ratzinger is nothing if not nuanced.)
We’re already seeing signs of that, and we’ll see more in the future.
HERE’S GEORGE WEIGEL TALKING ABOUT THIS SUBJECT. . . . IN PARTICULAR AS IT APPLIES TO THE LITURGY.
Joseph Ratzinger is a firm and faithful man, but he’s not a rash one.
Now that he’s the captain pro tempore of the bark of Peter, Benedict XVI’s orders to the helmsman are going to be more like a firm and faithful "Steady as she goes, Mister" rather than a frantic "Damn the torpedoes!" or "Fly her apart, then!"
It is true that there are crises affecting the Church that need decisive action, but these are unlikely to be handled in a frantic and heavy-handed manner. Popes tend to fall back on their own natures when dealing with problems, and Ratzinger’s nature is not to be frantic and heavy-handed.
One can also understand why popes tend to fall back on their own natures. Grace builds on nature, and if God has called one to the papacy, he expects one to utilize the nature he has given one as one attempts to fulfill its duties. The responsibilities of the office are so great and the future so unknown that, ultimately, all one can to much of the time is take one’s best guess about how to handle a situation and then entrust the results to God.
Holiness in this life and heaven in the next are what the Church is to aim for, but what currents and storms and rock and shoals one may encounter on the way there are unknowns. It is like sailing a ship where the standing orders are "Third star on the left, and straight on till morning."
In the media’s perennial case of Not Getting It, pundits are speculating that Benedict XVI’s papacy is tilting more to the left than to the right, something not expected from someone they presumed to be the spiritual incarnation of Torquemada.
"[Pope Benedict XVI’s] crowds are far larger than those of Pope John Paul II at the same time last year. Sunday addresses from his apartment window have drawn up to 100,000 people. And so far, to the surprise of many, the new pope’s words and deeds have drawn sharper criticism from the Catholic far right than from the left.
"John Allen, Vatican analyst of the liberal National Catholic Reporter, analyzed nearly 45,000 words that Benedict spoke in his first 45 days. They proved mostly positive, not the attacks on secularism and heresy many expected from Ratzinger, Allen said.
"’There is an obvious sense of alarm from the right that this pontificate will not deliver the strong conservative agenda that that wing of the church was expecting,’ said Allen, who just completed his second biography of Ratzinger/Benedict."
While it is true that so far I have seen far sharper attacks on Pope Benedict since his election coming from Rad Trads than from Rad Progs®, this is once more a case of pitting pastoral care against doctrinal clarity.
What many on both sides seem to be missing is that Joseph Ratzinger has a different job now as Pope Benedict than he had as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. It’s not that he can be expected to neglect doctrinal clarity; only that he will approach it in a different manner as pope than he did as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. And, in addition, he has far greater opportunity and visibility as pope to show pastoral sensitivity than he did as head of the CDF.
The truly Rad Trad Catholics, with a few exceptions, never expected much from Pope Benedict XVI because they more or less dismissed him as a "Novus Ordo Pope." The Rad Progs have not expected much from him either, and are a bit surprised that he has not yet put anyone in a Jedi death grip. (Even in the case of Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., former editor of America, the article notes that his story is mainly considered to be the last act of Cardinal Ratzinger rather than the first of Pope Benedict.)
Those truly in danger of disappointment are those orthodox Catholics who expected Pope Benedict to be SuperPope. And, not only SuperPope, but a SuperPope made in their own image and likeness of what they believe a SuperPope should be and do.
… at a papal liturgy.
"The halberds moved forwards and, suddenly, the Pope was before us. He himself made nothing of his entry, but, as one, we swayed towards him. Tears streamed down the cheeks of the Rottweiler nun, and, to my enormous surprise, down my own. Here was the living successor of St. Peter, the guardian of the spirit at the heart of all Rome’s gilded worldly treasures. Here was the Holy Father. When people clapped, I willingly joined in.
"Astounded at my reaction, I expected it to pass. It did not. During the entire lengthy Mass, with its mainly commonplace liturgy and dodgy singing, I remained moved in a way I did not find at all comfortable. I wanted my detachment back, but I couldn’t find it.
"And it did not end there. As it was Corpus Christi, when Mass was over, the Pope, holding aloft the monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament, came slowly down the steps to get into an open-topped popemobile, a prie-dieu protected by a golden canopy settled on its flat-back. He was very close and looked very serious.
"Then Signora Wild Boar called out his name — ‘Benedetto!’ — and as he turned to acknowledge us, his face lightened and he smiled a smile of delighted sweetness before raising his arm to indicate that the Blessed Sacrament was more worthy of our attention. If Signora Wild Boar had not been quite so bristly, I’d have kissed her."
(Nod to Ut Unum Sint for the link.)
The great thing about being Catholic is that love properly expressed for human beings leads us to the love of God. Non-Catholic Christians often complain about Catholic devotion to Mary and the saints, and this story of Pope Benedict is a perfect parable of the right understanding of Catholic devotion to Mary and the saints. Our love for fellow Christians, including love for our spiritual father in the faith, does not end with them; it is directed on to God himself and indeed magnifies the glory of God. The saints don’t jealously hoard our love for them. They acknowledge it, are delighted by it, and point us on to God.
Did you know that not all pre-Vatican-II popes were created equal in the eyes of disaffected post-Vatican-II radically-traditionalist Catholics? Apparently, not all of the pre-Vatican-II popes made the grade as Sufficiently Loyal To The Post-Vatican-II Rad-Trad Vision Of The Church.
Case in point: When the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI many Catholics were touched by his explanation that the choice was made, in part, to honor the largely-forgotten twentieth-century Pope Benedict XV. Not all, though. There was at least one person, herself a radically traditionalist Catholic, who saw dark designs in the new Pope’s choice of name:
"Benedict XV came into his Papacy as Europe was entering World War I. In his first Encyclical, Ad Beatissimi issued November 1, 1914, the Pope, who refused to take sides in the Great War, made a dramatic call for peace between the warring factions of Europe. He also made it clear that inside the Church he was calling for a stop to the war against the modernists.
"Even while he referred to the ‘admirable fruits’ of [the] previous pontificate [that of St. Pius X], he called for concord among the members of the Church, that is, the modernists and the ultramontanes — the traditional Catholics who had been strengthened by Pius X. This ‘peace’ orchestrated by Benedict XV is what gave the modernists the opportunity to emerge from their dark, semi-occult caverns back into the light of day with a comfortable position in the Church."
"Dark, semi-occult caverns"? This rhetoric is so over-the-top that it practically fisks itself. To continue, let’s look at what this cheery individual sees in store in a Ratzinger pontificate given the current Pope’s choice of the name Benedict:
"I believe Benedict XVI intends to oblige traditionalist Catholics to ‘reconcile’ with Vatican II and the New Mass, to finish with our resistance and incorporate us in the Conciliar Church. It would be a maneuver similar to that of Benedict XV 100 years ago, when he struck his blow at the Sodalitium Pianum and the anti-modernist reaction. It is my opinion that we should be prepared for this kind of progressivist maneuver."
A pope who hopes to reconcile disaffected Catholics with the Church they claim as their own? Imagine that!
"What should be the position of Catholics at this important juncture? To be aware of the maneuver that is probably being prepared. To continue our resistance against the errors of Vatican II and its consequences. To offer an intransigence [sic] opposition to any proposition that implies acceptance of error. To display an invariable determination to remain always within the bosom of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and remain faithful to her perennial teachings. To maintain a firm belief in the promise of Our Lady that she will intervene and restore Holy Mother Church to shine again with her purest doctrine and lead the world to build the Reign of the Immaculate Heart of Mary."
You know, in some ways, radical traditionalism — as opposed to a legitimate Catholic traditionalism that merely prefers traditional expressions of the faith but does not reject Vatican II and the contemporary Church — annoys me more than progressivism. Perhaps it is because the progressivists are usually honest enough to admit that they wish to change the doctrines and disciplines of the Church. They are easier to deal with because their agenda is clear. Radical traditionalists, on the other hand, present their discontinuity with Church history and their rejection of the authority of the Church’s leaders as a supposedly Truly Catholic Response to concerns about the admitted difficulties in some human sectors of the modern Church. Anyone who rejects their understanding of the Church and its teachings is not as Catholic as they.
And that "anyone" apparently includes even a pre-Vatican-II pope.
EXCERPTS:
1. He takes truth seriously. Born in Bavaria in 1927, on the eve of the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, young Joseph Ratzinger saw firsthand the brutality and terror of the Nazi way of life. Behind totalitarian violence was utter contempt for the truth claims of the historic Christian faith. As a schoolboy, Ratzinger once witnessed his Nazi teacher replace the cross in the center of his village with a Maypole, a neo-pagan symbol of Teutonic native religion.
Despite the defeat of Hitler and Stalin, the de-Christianization of Europe and, to a lesser extent, of North America continues to pose a great challenge to the church today. This is why Cardinal Ratzinger spoke, on the eve of his papal election, of the "dictatorship of relativism."
On his episcopal coat of arms are the Latin words "cooperatores veritatis," a phrase taken from 3 John 1:8, "That we may be fellow workers for the truth." The Christian faith stands or falls with the imperious claim that the almighty Creator of all that is has acted in space and time to reveal himself in nature and history and to redeem the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a statement about the way things are, not merely about what is "true for me."
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)
As folks guessed, I’ve been counting up the number of days Benedict XVI has been pope until they pass 33, the number that John Paul I served.
The reason is that I’ve been concerned about how traumatic it would be for the Church if Benedict XVI had an ultra-short reign.
After the cardinals elected such a wonderful pope, I really, really hope that he gets to shepherd the Church for a long time, though since he is 78, one must be realistic about how long "a long time" is for a person of his maturity.
The new pope himself, apparently, made reference in the conclave to the fact that his reign would be short, and I read in his interview book The Salt of the Earth where he referred to his health having been poor years ago when he first came to work at the Vatican (if I recall correctly).
Then when Benedict skipped the beatification ceremony of a couple of folks, it made me extra nervous, though he didn’t seem to be sick. It may simply be that he wants to devote his time to pressing things (like his first encyclical, for example) without delaying things like beatifications. (I presume he’ll still personally celebrate canonizations, though not necessarily.)
While Pope Benedict has passed an important milestone–the 33 day mark–he still could (God forbid) die in an abnormally short amount of time, and that would also put the Church through a huge convulsion, perhaps ven making the cardinals question whether they had elected the right kind of candidate. (Hopefully they’d focus on Cardinal Ratzinger’s age rather than his orthodoxy as where they went wrong.)
But let’s hope that Benedict XVI still will have a lot of time to shepherd the Church, to consolidate the gains of his predecessor, and to make his own unique contributions.
God bless Benedict XVI!