As for this topic, please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/archive?word=%22Pope%20Benedict%22&of=50)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/archive?word=%22Pope+Benedict%22). (Lily)
Patheos(http://www.patheos.com)
(1) Joseph: Pope Benedict One Year Later, 11 February 2014
by Thomas L. McDonald
One year ago today we woke to the shock of Pope Benedict XVI doing what popes haven’t done in centuries: resigning. I don’t have too much to add to what I wrote then and in the weeks afterward. He is the man I admire most in the world, and he has taught me more than anyone else about this life and this faith. His wisdom, clarity, gentleness, and good humor marked his 8 years on the throne of Peter with one high point after another.
When I read despicable, ignorant, lying articles about him, an anger starts to bubble up, and then I check it (most of the time). That’s not the way he would respond. He’d listen earnestly, sit silently, and then quietly do what he has done his entire life: teach with love.
I will always be a Catholic, but the years of Benedict were years in which I felt a certain closeness to the papacy that I have not felt before or since. Francis, for all his many skills, is not the careful teacher and meticulous scholar that Benedict was. He is a man in the world looking to overturn tables, and at this point in time he’s the right man for the job. That I don’t feel the closeness to him I felt to his predecessor is a statement on me, not the Holy Father.
Benedict was the last great man of Europe. The last of a type of old world scholar and leader formed in the old ways of learning and forged in the nightmares of war and the upheavals of change. This little man stood astride this century as a bridge between the Church of Then and the Church of Now, and with all his vast power and intellect attempted to reunify them into a single tapestry.
He’s still with us, and still serving the Church in prayer and, I believe, with counsel to his successor. Those who try to drive a wedge between Benedict and Francis are fools. No one who has read deeply in Ratzinger/Benedict could fail to see the continuity of belief and conviction, even as they notice the discontinuity in style. Benedict’s papacy was a time of regrouping and learning between two larger, ebullient figures: John Paul II and Francis. That the shy and thoughtful Joseph Ratzinger was not the globe-trotting John Paul or the gregarious Francis is neither here nor there. To everything its season.
I hope in his retirement he is finding the peace he so desired after the death of John Paul, when he simply wanted to return to Germany and write his books and play his piano. He just wanted to be Joseph: the quiet teacher. But God needed him to be Benedict, so he took that burden until he could no longer carry it. He’s served the faith for decades, and at the end, he’s earned a measure of peace. God be with him always.
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Here are the pieces I wrote about the resignation last year at this time and in the weeks after:
(2) Joseph, 11 February 2013
by Thomas L. McDonald
This is the Room of Tears: the place where popes traditionally retire after being chosen. Here, they contemplate the burden they are about to assume: a 2000-year-old office founded by Christ himself not on a book or a government or a place, but on a man named Simon, thereafter known as Cephas, petros, rock: Peter.
It’s an impossible burden only upheld with the aid of the Holy Spirit. It’s likely that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wept when he retired to this room, for he truly did not want this office. A quiet, scholarly, humble man, he had labored in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith for many long years, and wanted nothing more than to retire quietly to Germany and write.
But when the Holy Spirit calls, you answer. All of us serving in the faith know that, none so well as he did. Some gnashed their teeth and railed when he was chosen to assume the office of Peter. I didn’t. After my return to the faith, I read Cardinal Ratzinger closely and came to love the man, his wisdom, his clarity, his charity. He was the master catechist of our age, and as one called to the catechetical ministry, I felt a connection to this pope that I never had with Bl. John Paul II.
He is the person I admire most in the world, now more than ever when this man caricatured as an “arch-conservative” (and who anyone with eyes to see knew was nothing of the sort) has once again done something bold and unexpected. He has recognized his limitations, and acted accordingly.
There are those who will point to Bl. John Paul II who suffered and bent under the burden of the Petrine office as illness consumed him. They will be right to do so, because it was a powerful witness to the dignity of human life. It also affected the way he managed the church, and as the abuse scandal exploded, that was something we could ill afford. Perhaps this potential for failure loomed large in Benedict’s mind when he made this decision.
He will never again be just another man. What he will be is, right now, uncertain. After being Pope, Cardinal, Bishop, Father, Professor, I think, for a little while at least, at the end, he wants to just be Joseph.
May God bless and keep him in this and in all things, and may He continue to guide our Church.
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