(Computer issues on the laptop, which holds the – gulp – book. I’m confident I can resolve it later today. In the meantime, a bit of blogging. And a trip to the store to get a long-overdue USB flash drive, full of repentence for my negligence.)
Tomorrow (4/16) is Pope Benedict’s 80th birthday and the second anniversary of his election is Thursday (4/19).
The MSM is busy offering us its assessment of the 2 years of Benedict’s papacy, and for the most part they are ranging from cringe-worthy to ridiculous.
Three have appeared over the past week:
All of these pieces are negative. Some choice quotes for flavor:
From "Benedict the Invisible" – the Newseek piece.
On his upcoming trek to the Brazilian town of Aparecida do Norte, he plans to huddle with regional prelates worried about their declining influence, the growth of evangelicals and local moves to legalize gay unions and abortion. The pope should choose his words carefully; on one of his last trips, to his native Germany, he sparked a firestorm when he quoted in passing scathing comments about the Prophet Muhammad. Within days Benedict was being burned in effigy. He can expect a warmer greeting in South America. But there’s no denying he’s been a disappointment to many faithful there and elsewhere. Some U.S. Catholics condemn him as aloof, Europeans resent his intrusions into their affairs and he’s never been popular in Latin America. The region, home to 450 million Catholics, had hoped to see one of its own succeed John Paul. Many there have felt ignored by the man who ultimately did.
Part of the problem is style. The last pope was a former parish priest who recast himself as an international player (he spoke eight languages, including Spanish and Portuguese). Benedict is a colorless academic who spent much of his career teaching theology and philosophy. "This is a professor, a quiet man, not an actor skilled in politics," says the American theologian Michael Novak. "[People] should not judge him by the standards of John Paul II."
Perhaps, but the differences go beyond personality. During his long tenure, John Paul undertook more than 100 trips abroad and showed real concern for the developing world. Although Benedict calls for more aid to Africa in a new book, he seems preoccupied by Europe.
snip
It also underscored just how conservative—and far from the mainstream—Benedict is. That will cause more trouble in the future, especially in Latin countries that already believe he is behind the times. Later this month, the Vatican is expected to permit congregations to celebrate mass in Latin without seeking prior approval. This represents a big step backward: Pope Paul VI abolished the Latin rite in 1969, and relatively few modern Catholics can even recall it. But that doesn’t worry Ratzinger. "He’s an old-fashioned guy who wants to go back to what [the church] was before," says David Gibson, the author of an acclaimed 2006 biography of the pope.
The problem, according to Gibson, is that Benedict "doesn’t seem to realize that he’s a world leader and not an academic." Indeed, the pope’s great misfortune may be his election to a job he was never suited for. With the Vatican facing an acute shortage of priests and nuns and its moral authority tarnished by child-abuse scandals, the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics could use a shepherd who would help them tackle present and future problems. What they’ve got instead is a reclusive intellectual more interested in resurrecting old rituals and disputes.
Eighteen months ago, one Rome-based progressive cleric had said he was "surprised to see that [Benedict] seems to be open to hear new ideas." But today, the same priest is disappointed. There has been no sign of any of the hoped-for reforms: overturning the ban on communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, reconsidering the celibacy requirement for priests, allowing gays in seminaries, or a softening of the condom ban to allow for distribution in AIDS-ravaged Africa. The release last month of the Pope’s final document on what had seemed to be a convivial and intellectually open October 2005 bishops’ meeting on the Eucharist is a good example of the Pontiff’s approach. According to a senior Church official who participated: "He took all that debate of the Synod, and then gave us a document that simply defends the status quo." This same official acknowledges a bit of past excessive optimism on Benedict: "People were hoping that with his intellectual acumen and understanding of theology, he’d be in a position to make some of these changes. Unfortunately, at this point, I don’t think we’ll see any of them."
snip
A significant part of any Pope’s job is to manage questions of doctrine and discipline. Benedict’s "no wiggle room" approach is increasingly seen in the context of his great battle to defend Catholicism on its historical home turf of Europe, where he sees a kind of cult of secularism. The Pope’s response is not simply to reaffirm the Christian values of the old continent, a goal also expressed by the continent’s more liberal leaders and theologians like Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Cardinal Godfried Daneels. In addition, Benedict professes a very specific kind of Christianity, one based not only on the teachings of Jesus, but on abiding by the letter of ancient Catholic Church traditions as the only effective bulwark against rampant relativism.
Fr. Z annotates the piece here.
Coupled with an in-tray inherited from John Paul II — reconciliation with Anglican and Orthodox Christians, relations with Islam and China, sexual abuse by clergy, pressure for doctrinal concessions on issues from condoms and Aids to celibacy — this is a heavy agenda for an elderly German theologian who lacks the charisma and showmanship of his predecessor and has already suffered two mild strokes. But he is driven by a sense of urgency. By the end of the Easter celebrations, when he was taken by helicopter for a rest at Castel Gandolfo — the papal lakeside retreat south of Rome — he looked exhausted, the dark pouches beneath his eyes more pronounced than ever. The pontiff is not a crowd-pleaser like John Paul II, a former actor, and his homilies tend towards the abstruse.
But as the second anniversary of his election to pontiff next week approaches, figures close to the Pope are starting a campaign to show the world that his image as “God’s rottweiler” and hardline scourge of Catholic liberals is misplaced.
Now, the Owen piece is a bit better than the others in that it quotes sources (by name) who point out Benedict’s good qualities and the misperceptions of him, but unfortunately it is framed in the context of that last sentence – that this is part of a "campaign" to polish up the image.
If you take the time to read these pieces, the template is clear:
Benedict is an elderly, awkward academic who wears blinders and, if he doesn’t exctly carry a whip, he sure would like to. The poor fellow just doesn’t get it.
One could quibble many details, and plenty of quibbling is going on in other places. My point is more general and has to do with the kind of journalism these pices reflect.
(Although one quibble I’ll offer I’ve not seen elsewhere. The supposedly Euro-centric pope’s new curial appointments have, for the most part, come from the Latin America, Asia and Africa. Again, never mentioned. Not one of the pieces mention the most important diplomatic/ecclesiological business happening right now – the forthcoming letter to Chinese Catholics.)
The issue is not where these writers come down in their evaluation. The issue is the criterea they use for evaluating.
If you think about it, all of these writers are evaluating Benedict on the basis of some conventional wisdom of who he should be and what he should be about, a conventional wisdom that seems to come from two places: 1) "progressive" commenters, clerics and officials, almost all of whom are anonymous and 2) thin air.
The assumption is that for Benedict to have been doing a "good job," he would be slowly but surely implementing a progressive agenda or simply doing the things that "some" are disappointed he’s not doing.
(By the way, you should long ago have learned to be wary of the phrase "some say" or "some believe" used in news articles. It’s hard not to think that "some" is simply I way to say "I" with a few more letters, under the veil of journalistic objectivity. Articles which are sourced by "some" and anonymous "Vatican officials" are less than useless.)
Why should we buy that assumption? We shouldn’t, of course, but the arrogance of journalists who have set the bar for Benedict during their afternoon-long consultations with their clerical buddies over limoncello and grappa while the rest of us are working for a living is laughable.
What should be the standards for evaluation? Should there be any at all? After all, this is an ancient institution with a long memory, not prone to instant evaluations. There are all sorts of parties within the institution with a variety of possible evaluations, from left to right with everything in between. Perhaps it is worth reporting what parties with various agendas think of the Pope so far – check out the Traditionalist websites, the more "progressive" conversations here and there – sure, that’s worth a story. But a story with a cleary-stated focus: This is what people of this particular interest group or theological bent think of Benedict so far. Not "some" as an implied "everyone who matters."
Should the standard be "popularity?" No, unless one is actually attempting to actually measure "popularity" as some journalistic exercise. Many of these evaluations do just that, and here, they can be clearly faulted. The gist of all of these pieces is that our anti-social pope preaching his "abstruse" homilies is sort of sad in his solitude, being whisked off to Castel Gandolfo in his helicopter and all that.
They don’t mention that the crowds he gets are enormous. Twice as many at General Audiences as John Paul was getting. They don’t mention the book sales. The popularity of web sites dedicated to him. In one breath – sometimes in a single article – they can sniff about how alienated he clearly is from the Latin American situation, and then offer predictions of a million or so coming to see him in Brazil.
The Jesus book is currently #1 on German Amazon.
One month before its release in the US – one month – it is #27 on US Amazon.
Look. I don’t see "popularity" as any kind of gauge for evaluating a papacy. But if you’re going to play that game, at least look beyond the trattoria table. Here are some simple suggestions:
1) Look at and report the numbers at General Audiences
2) Talk to those who maintain websites dedicated to Benedict and Vatican-centered news. What’s happened to their hits in the past 2 years?
3) Talk to book publishers – start with the Vatican publishing house. Move on to the European publishers that are publishing him. Talk to Ignatius and Doubleday. What are their sales showing? (remember how I reported that the Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist sold over 200,000 copies its first week in an Italian edition? An Apostolic Exhortation for pete’s sake?)
None. And I mean NONE of these "journalists" who presume to evaluate the "popularity" of Benedict ever try to base their evalution on any facts.
What happens to the message after it’s sent and received is another matter,and more difficult to evaluate. But if you want to report on the interest of Catholics (and others) in what their Pope is saying, you turn to the hard data you do have – which is audience numbers, website traffic and book sales.
How’s he doin’?
More importantly, in evaluting the content and direction of Benedict’s papacy, what are the sources? What’s the starting point?
Again, it’s the "some," but that’s not enough.
To evaluate any papacy, to the extent that we can in the present moment, so close to it, we have to take two starting points:
1) The context of the whole story of Catholic history. (Yeah, a big one, I know. But if we start there, perhaps we can dispense with the breathless, "Pope is Catholic" headlines)
2) Benedict himself.
These journalists – and many of their sources – show absolutely no evidence of ever having read anything Benedict has written – whether we’re talking about his books as Joseph Ratzinger or, more criminally, the homilies he preached, you know, last week.
This constant refusal to just report on what the Pope says (unless it is a phrase containing the words "Iraq," "abortion" or "politician") is getting more than tiresome. How many journalists reporting on Benedict in the secular English-speaking mainstream media are even making an effort to listen to and understand Benedict on his own terms? The situation is different in Italy, where there is certainly a great deal of anti-Benedict sentiment in the media, and some mischaracterization, but you don’t find the almost-total blackout on trying to respect Benedict’s own words in context that you find here and in England.
But you know…I guess if they, like Own, find his homilies "abstruse" – homilies which my teen-aged daughter can read, understand and discuss – well, I guess it’s understandable.
One final point. This is something that’s been eating at me, but I honestly don’t have the extensive reading of Ratzinger to be able to make a firm statement on this – I’ve read 4 or 5 of his books – the most popular ones, including the interviews, the books on liturgy and big chunks of Intro to Christianity.
So those of you with more knowledge than I, correct me if I’m wrong:
It is the matter of this "contrast" between God’s Rottweiler and the Papal Puppy. "Oh," the evaluation goes, "He’s so mild now – that hard-core disciplinarian of the CDF has just melted away!"
(Just a break here to note an ironic contradiction in these pieces. Somehow they always end up saying that Benedict is milder than expected, but also that Benedict is displeasing many and missing the point because he is fixated on doctrine. MAKE UP YOUR MIND PEOPLE!)
Here’s my impression and implicit question.
The CDF’s concerns with theologians during the Ratzinger years were primarily over concerns with Christology and Ecclesiology, Curran being an exception.
Ratzinger’s theological corpus is not a body of work about church disicpline and moral theology. It is about, well, ecclesiology, Christology, liturgy, the nature of faith, the nature of faith specifically in the modern context, the fundamental truth of Christianity.
The notion that Cardinal Ratzinger, once some sort of obsessed canonist pounding out proclamations of rigorist asceticism, pulling down the lax has been transformed into a pitifully frightened purveyor of safe platitudes just doesn’t hold water from any standpoint.
As we’ve noted here, as the NCR(egister) pointed out, the "key" to Benedict is Jesus Christ.
In that respect, he hasn’t changed a bit.
We are gathered to reflect on the completion of a not-brief period of my existence. Obviously, the liturgy should not be used to speak of one’s own self, but one’s life can serve to proclaim the mercy of God.
"Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what He has done for me," says a Psalm (63[66],16). I have always considered it a great gift of Divine Mercy that my birth and rebirth were granted to me together,as it were, on the same day, in the sign of the Easter Vigil. And so on the same day, I was born into my own family and into the family of God.
And I thank God because I have experienced what ‘family’ means. I have experienced what ‘fatherhood’ means, such that I have been made to understand the word of God the Father internally. Human experience has given me access to the great and benevolent Father who is in heaven.
Before Him, we carry a responsibility, but at the same time, He gives us confidence because in His justice, there is always that mercy and goodness with which He accepts our weaknesses and supports us, so that gradually, we may learn to walk straight.
I thank God because I experienced profoundly what maternal goodness means, being always open to whoever seeks shelter, and as such, able to give me my freedom. I thank God for my sister and brother who, with their help, were faithfully beside me throughout my life.
I thank God for the companions I met along the way, for the advisers and friends that He has given me. I am thankful in particular because from the very first day, I was able to enter and to grow in the great community of believers, among whom the frontiers between life and death, heaven and earth, have been thrown open.
I thank God for having learned so many things dy drawing from the wisdom of this community, which encompasses not only all human experience from the most remote times: Their wisdom is not only human wisdom, but unites itself to God’s own wisdom, eternal wisdom.
In the first Reading of this Sunday, we are told that in the early days of the nascent Church, people brought their sick to the public squares, so that when Peter passed by, his shadow could fall on them. To that shadow, they attributed a healing power.
Indeed, the shadow came from the light of Christ and therefore, it carried in it something of the power of Divine goodness. Peter’s shadow, through the Catholic church, has fallen across my life from the very beginning, and I learned that it is a good shadow – a healing shadow because, precisely, it ultimately comes from Christ Himself.
Peter was a man with all the weaknesses of a human being, but above all, he was a man full of passionate faith in Christ, full of love for Him. Through his faith and his love, Christ’s healing power, his unifying force, has reached all men even through all the weaknesses of Peter. So let us look for Peter’s shadow even today, in order that we may be in the light of Christ.
Birth and rebirth. Earthly family and the family of God. This is the great gift of God’s many mercies, the foundation on which we depend. But proceeding through life, I received another new but demanding gift: the call to priesthood.
On the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in 1951 when we – there were 40 others – found ourselves in the Cathedral of Freising prostrate on the ground and on us were invoked all the saints, the consciousness of the poverty of my existence in the face of this new mission weighed on me. So it was a consolation that the protection of God’s saints, living and dead, was invoked over us.
I knew I would not be left alone. And what trust was instilled by the words of Jesus, who during the liturgy of Ordination, we could hear from the lips of our Bishop: "I no longer call you servants, but friends"!
And I have been able to experience that profoundly. He, the Lord, is not just the Lord, but also a friend. He has placed His hand on me and He will not leave me. These words were pronounced later at the conferment of power to administer the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and therefore, in the name of Christ, to pardon sins.
It is the same thing we heard today in the Gospel: the Lord breathes on His disciples. He grants them his Spirit – the Holy Spirit: "Their sins will be remitted to whom you give remission…"
The Spirit of Jesus is the power of forgiveness. It is the power of Divine Mercy, which makes it possible to begin again, always anew. The friendship of Jesus is the friendship of Him who makes us forgiving, of Him who forgives even us, who raises us continuously from our weaknesses and that way, teaches us, instills in us the comsciousness of our internal duty to love, the duty to reciprocate His trust with our loyalty.
In today’s Gospel, we also heard the story of the encounter between the Apostle Thiomas and the Risen Lord. The Apostle was allowed to touch His wounds and so to recognize Him. And he recognizes Him, beyond the human identity of Jesus of Nazareth, in his true and profound identity: "My Lord and my God!" (Jn 20,28).
The Lord carries His wounds through eternity. He is a wounded God; He allowed Himself to be wounded out of love for us. The wounds are for us the sign that He understands us and that He allowed Himself to be wounded out of love for us. These wounds of His – how much we can touch them in the story of our times!
Indeed, the Lord is always allowing Himself to be wounded for us! What better guarantee of His mercy and what consolation that means for us! And what certainty it gives us about who He is: "My Lord and my God!" These words constitute for us a duty to allow ourselves to be wounded in turn for Him.
God’s mercies accompany us every day. It is enough that we have a vigilant heart to perceive it. We are too inclined to take note only of the daily cares that are imposed on us, as sons of Adam. But if we open our hearts, then even immersed in our daily concerns, we can continuously see how God is good with us, how He thinks of us in the small things, thus helping us to deal with larger problems.
And with the growing weight of responsiblity, the Lord also brought new help to my life. Repeatedly I see with grateful joy the ranks of those who sustain me with their prayers; who with their faith and their love help me to carry out my ministry; who are indulgent with my weaknesses, recognizing even in the shadow of Peter the beneficent light of Christ.
For this I give my heartfelt thanks to God and to you all. I ould like to end this homily with a prayer by Saint Pope Leo the Great, that prayer which, 30 years ago, I wrote on the commemorative card of my episcopal ordination: "Pray to our good God, so that in our day, He may reinforce the faith, multiply love and increase the peace. May he make me, His poor servant, adequate for His work and useful for your edification, and grant that I may render service so that, along with the time I am given, my dedication should grow." Amen.
Ann Rogers of the Pittsburgh paper offers a variety of voices – all identified – in her piece.
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