The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI

Charles A. Coulombe

• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781626810525
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A concise account of one of the most epic developments in the modern Catholic church—the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict XVI's precedent-shattering announcement that he would renounce the Papacy—the first Pope to do so in 600 years—touched off a firestorm of speculation and commentary throughout the world's media and the blogosphere. But much of this ocean of opinion is just plain wrong, because of the complex nature of the Papacy and the Church. Written by a renowned Papal historian, journalist, and lecturer—who also sits on the board of the Queen of Angels Foundation and serves as a delegate for the International Monarchist League— The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI gives you solid, inside information to make up your own mind on one of the most epic developments ever to shake the modern world, a radical change in course for the planet's largest religion.

Chapter I

Mother Church

To understand Benedict the man and the Pope, we must understand the office he has just renounced and the Catholic Church over which it presides. To get such a grasp we have two major challenges facing both ourselves and the media establishment who aspire to guide our opinions: 1) The Papacy and the Catholic Church are both exceedingly complex topics, bound up with the entire world’s history for the past two millennia (challenging enough in a time when few of us know even our own city or state’s history, let alone our country’s); and 2) the values and beliefs of the Church, as in the first few centuries after her foundation, run counter to those of the dominant elites even in those countries where until recently she was supreme. In those that have never been Christian or else, as in post-Protestant nations where the Church was defeated politically, she is for many historically a foreign enemy as well.

But if we wanted to understand the Dalai Lama and his followers, for example, it would do us no good to say we don’t believe in reincarnation, theocracy, or monarchy. They do; and to truly comprehend them we must suspend our own disbelief. So while most North Americans and Europeans—certainly those who matter among them in terms of public life—do not share the beliefs of Benedict and his flock regarding either their Church or her earthly head, that lack of sharing is supremely unhelpful in comprehending the man and his legacy.

To begin with, just what do believing Catholics understand their Church to be? There is actually no political model that describes it—not even those of other religious denominations, save the Eastern Orthodox. Both they and the Catholics conceive of the Church as the “Mystical Body of Christ”—that is to say that for them, admission into the Church via Baptism is admission into the continuing life and work of Christ Himself, into the Ark of Salvation. This is why believers hold their Church and its myriad teachings to be sacrosanct—and any attack against her to be an attack against God Himself.

What divides Catholics from Orthodox is the issue of the role of the Pope: for the latter, he is merely one of the five patriarchs (the others are Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem) to whom in common Christ gave the dominant role in the Church. Of those five, he is merely “First among Equals.” But for Catholics, as successor of St. Peter, chief of Christ’s Apostles and first Bishop of Rome, he is the visible head of the Church on Earth. To them, he has the final word in matters of discipline, Faith, and morals; the Holy Ghost will prevent him from trying to define any error as the doctrine of the Church. This is what is called the doctrine of Papal Infallibility—it does not mean personal papal perfection, as reflected in the daily confession customary for Popes. Indeed, St. Peter’s Chair has been occupied by 267 widely varying men—all those before Constantine the Great legalized the Church in 312 A.D. were martyred, and so considered Saints. The remainder since have been a mix of some holy, a few really bad, and—human nature being what it is—many mediocrities. All have been faced with trying to guide an ever-expanding flock that now numbers over a billion people in every nation of the world.

To do this, it has been the constant belief of Catholics as a practical matter that in order to maintain neutrality and independence the Pope cannot be politically subject to any earthly government. This belief has been fuelled by the experiences of the Eastern Patriarchs with their own Christian and Muslim rulers, as well as those of earlier Popes who had to fend off the desire of various Byzantine and Holy Roman Emperors and Kings of France to reduce the Pope to a sort of personal chaplain. As a result, successive Pontiffs happily accepted donations of territory that coalesced into the Papal States—centering on Rome and encompassing a band of central Italy. In 1870, in a move unrecognized by then Pope Bl. Pius IX and his immediate successors, the newly united Kingdom of Italy completed its gobbling up of said states. The issue was resolved by the 1929 Lateran Treaty, which established the independence of the tiny Vatican City in Rome and various connected properties scattered around the area and further afield. Despite its size, however, Vatican City hosts the Holy See, as the Papal administration is called, which in turn carries on diplomatic relations with 80 nations and participates in the work of 45 multilateral organizations, most notably the UN. When Benedict renounces his Papacy, he also abdicates as Sovereign of this microstate (there is only one smaller in the world, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, whose domain consists of two palaces and outbuildings in Rome and a small parcel on the island which gave those knights their name).

The Pope’s strictly spiritual duties also operate on several different levels. As Pope, he of course leads the entirety of the Church in doctrinal matters and is responsible for overseeing the machinery of the worldwide Church—the only even vaguely analogous other leadership post in the world would be the Secretary General of the United Nations. But as Patriarch of the West (a title Benedict gave up, but the reality of which remains), the Pope is head of the Latin Church, by far the largest part of the Church. There also exist however 22 Eastern Catholic Churches, distinct from each other and the Latins. Over them, the Pope exercises spiritual authority; but in matters touching governance, discipline, and liturgy, they look to their own leaders.

The Pontiff is moreover Primate of Italy—that is, the leader of the Church in that country (once Primates of different nations held much more authority than those who remain today, and many countries now have no such figure; those who remain are usually more ceremonial than practical figures in the life of the national Church). In this role, it falls to the Pope to appoint the head of the Italian Episcopal Conference—the only such head of a national bishops’ conference so chosen. Moreover, the Pope must sometimes deal with the Italian government on behalf of the Church in that country in very particular and routine ways.

Benedict is also leaving his role as Metropolitan of the Roman Province—the dioceses situated around the Diocese of Rome. Most of the Catholic world is divided into such provinces: the Province of Los Angeles, California, for example, contains the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (whose Archbishop is Metropolitan of that Province), and the dioceses of Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino, Fresno, and Monterey; as with the Primacies, however, the Provinces have lost much, though not all, of their functions. But in addition to those of the Roman Province, there are dioceses and other institutions around the world under the direct authority of the Holy See that look to the Pope rather than the local metropolitan or bishop for oversight.

Lastly, there is the Diocese of Rome, rulership of which gives the Pope his authority. That diocese functions like any other—save that within its boundaries most of the many religious orders and lay organizations of the universal Church maintain either headquarters or representations, the various institutions of the Italian State in Rome look to it for chaplains and other services, the embassies accredited to the Holy See practice their statecraft, certain nations such as France and Spain maintain jurisdiction over particular parishes and other places, and pilgrims from all over the world throng its streets looking for grace and spiritual assistance.

Every Pope must play each of these roles, any one of which is a full-time occupation. To assist him, the Pope has the help of the Roman Curia—bureaucracy which is the Holy See. Divided into various bodies, each with its own mission, power structure, traditions, and corporate culture, it is perpetually overworked, underfinanced, and understaffed. Nor is the old gibe “The Roman Curia—giving you yesterday’s technology tomorrow” entirely untrue. Running it effectively is yet another overwhelming obligation, and yet it is only by doing so that a Pontiff can hope to accomplish his other tasks. There is a reason the light in the papal apartment burns so late!

Like Christ, although a spiritual reality, the Church is incarnate in the here and now—especially among her members; she may be perfect, but they are not. The tension between the holiness of the one and the sinfulness of the other provides much of the drama of Church history: sinful churchmen—clerical and lay—may from time to time by their actions drag the Church down into the muck. But she always reemerges. Whatever one may think of this view, it is one explanation of the cyclical nature of Church history.

The chapter of that history in which we are now living may be said to have begun with the French Revolution in 1789. The more simpleminded are tempted to portray that year as the dividing line between darkness and light (which side was which, of course, depends upon one’s point of view); it was more complex than that. But whether one sees that date as the overthrow of medieval darkness or the eruption of Satanic horror, what is certain is that across Europe oceans of blood were spilt (including that of King Louis XVI and his family), age-old political institutions overthrown and replaced by new constructions imagined from whole cloth, and the Church bereft of many murdered priests and religious and despoiled of innumerable properties. Moreover, she no longer held the dominant place in the atmosphere of “Catholic” Europe that she had had. Two Popes had been exiled and imprisoned, and one of these died in that exile.

But by the time the dust cleared in 1815, reaction had already begun. Many of the members of the Romantic Movement that swept Europe in the wake of Napoleon either were or became fervent Catholics, or at least admired the art and history the Church had produced. With so many churches ruined and religious orders dispersed, a positive fetish for reconstruction occurred in every facet of Catholic life: architecture, liturgy, devotions, social teaching, and much else.

Despite the apparent corking of the revolutionary genie back into the bottle, however, it reemerged, especially in the form of ever more centralizing governments. These regimes were seen as one facet of “modernity” alongside such developments as the industrial and scientific revolutions, the growth of nationalism, and the emergence of an industrial-banking ruling class (Marxism, a reaction to this latter development, nevertheless inhabited the same de-supernaturalized world view as that of its bourgeois opponents). The idea that government could be carried on without reference to religion became ever more popular; as the nineteenth century wore on, the Catholic Church in Europe and Latin America fought a succession of conflicts with various “liberal” (an extremely elastic word) regimes. The best churchmen ever achieved in these skirmishes ranging from political fighting over divorce and control of education to outright warfare was a draw—it was in the course of one such that the Papal States were lost. Nor was this struggle confined to legislatures, courtrooms, and battlefields. Universities, journalism—even literature and the stage were fields of combat. At the same time both the Popes in their encyclicals and the various national Churches tried to help the workingman ever more steadily ground under foot in factories of the day.

This pattern was disrupted in Europe by World War I. On both sides, the liberal dream of an ever more civilized future died a bloody death in the trenches; in the East, Orthodoxy suffered a most unpleasant introduction to modernity with the Bolshevik Revolution, during which the Russian Imperial Family was murdered; in the West, the last great Catholic power, Austria-Hungary, splintered and its Emperor and Empress—both now considered saintly—were exiled. If many disheartened Europeans looked to Communism, Naziism, and Fascism for secular salvation, the Church received a burst of energy as Catholics attempted to answer from their tradition the questions then plaguing Europe and the world. But such answers as they gave did not halt the rush to war. Another round of slaughter culminated with the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 and the incorporation over the next few years of half the continent into the aggressively atheistic Soviet Empire.

While such Catholics as Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, and others laid the foundations of the European Union—hoping to revive in a new form the Christendom of old, the reality was that Europe lay in ruins. Power had shifted eastward and westward to the Soviets and Americans. There were no Catholic governments of consequence left, and philosophies inimical to the Faith dominated the intellectual life of Europe and North America. It was certainly a new world, if not a brave one.

But across the sea lay the United States. In that nation of Separation of Church and State—an idea traditionally condemned by the Popes—the Catholic Church of the 40s and 50s appeared to be flourishing. ...

Table of contents

• The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI
• The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter I
• Chapter II
• Chapter III
• Connect with Diversion Books...