The back-story to what happened is that on Sunday evening, the Secretariat of State sent the 2005 draft up to the papal apartment in preparation for Tuesday’s meeting. Hearing nothing, they presumed that Benedict intended to use it, and gave it to the Press Office and L’Osservatore Romano for distribution. In fact, however, the reason Benedict never replied with any corrections or amendments is because he decided to set aside the draft altogether. When the mistake became clear, copies of L’Osservatore Romano with the unused text had to be withdrawn, and the Press Office found itself in the awkward position of retracting its own bulletin.
What’s also interesting is the differences between the 2005 address and what Benedict delivered. As Allen says:
In fact, Benedict covered much of the same ground as the 2005 draft, insisting that it must be the priest or deacon who delivers the homily at Mass, underlining the importance of individual confession (Benedict argued that confession is where Christians step out from behind the collective and make the faith personal), and urging that study of scripture cannot be reduced exclusively to a historical-critical approach. Yet his tone was pastoral and gentle. On the subject of homilies, for example, he said that he understands that when a priest is tired and overworked, and there are eloquent lay preachers available, it just seems to make sense to let others give the homily. Yet, the pope said, the mystery of the Mass forms a unity, and elements of it cannot be "sliced away" without rupturing that unity. On the other hand, Benedict did not issue a new edict, saying instead that "as much as possible" this ought to be the way things are done.
Because he’s God Rottweiller and stuff.
One of the current taglines on Benedict involves more or less constantly alluding to his "Augustinian pessimism," which, in the eyes of pundits, puts him in opposition to what we right-thinking people should believe – that things are going GREAT, and humanity has been on a track of nothing but progress in every way since whenever humanity started.
By the way…what exactly is the opposite of "Augustinian pessimism?" Panglossian optimism? "Augustinian pessimism" has always seemed like simple realism to me.
But I have to say, when I read items like this, I don’t see pessimism. I see optimism that eventually, when presented with the truth, people will eventually find their way to it. Don’t you think that has marked almost every talk that has come from Benedict? A conviction that, first of all, God is real, human beings are made by God, in his image, and find their peace in Him. (yes, Augustinian, indeed.) All of the competing voices and temptations out there will eventually fail us, individually and collectively, and we’ll eventually figure out that what God is offering us is not a prison sentence, but a key to unlock the prison in which we’ve locked ourselves.
When I listen to him, I hear a wise old man who has just about seen and heard it all – who, especially in his years at CDF, saw the best and the worst, and who, most importantly, also saw how people find their way out of the worst. Force-feeding and slamming down the books – any kind of sudden action out of the blue – will immediately put Newton’s Third Law into motion. He has a deep sense of history, and of how human beings live in history, and and an ackowledgment that human beings are not perfect and never will be on this earth. That there have never been perfect times, and never will be. What we can do is far more than just limit the damage, but it is also true that falling into the trap of having faith in our own imagined perfection has its own set of deep dangers.
What I am trying to say, though, is that i find Benedict’s process, such as I understand it, indicative, not of pessimism, but of an incredible optimism. (or – per Richard in the comments – hope.) Profound faith in God, in the truth, and in how all of this inevitably connects with the depths of the human heart – and if it is just explained enough to people with an open mind…we’ll get it. Eventually, we will. Forcing or manipulating is not the way to go.
Like that little snippet up there about the homilies. I suppose there are plenty of arguments to muster against what he says there (and I’ve heard them), but the way he puts it – well, here’s what the liturgy is, so this is why the priest or deacon really needs to deliver the homily – it’s just such a reasonable, clear explanation, it’s hard to see anyone rejecting it. Oh, they will, but they’d also reject it if he’d come in there with a demand that canon 767 be obeyed or else, but they wouldn’t have even had the rationale presented to them, with the chance that it just might find a place in their brains, sit there, and grow.
Infallibility doesn’t extend to papal management style or decision-making. But still. When a 79-year old man who is brilliant, apparently very kind, also apparently an excellent listener who really values the process of dialogue and intellectual exchange, and who has been continually immersed in the worst of what this Church gives to the world (the CDF is responsible for overseeing clerical sexual abuse cases and other problems) – when this man is put in charge by the people who know him quite well – I’m going to listen and learn, even, I admit, as I yearn for a few hammers to come down, here and there.
Hope. A virtue. I think Pope Benedict has a lot of it. Enough to share, in fact.
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