Monday, February 11, 2013 7:29:54 PM
Benedict XVI’s legacy
"God's rotweiller" failed to address the sex abuse scandals scarring his church, bets on next pope begin
By Natasha Lennard - Monday, Feb 11, 2013 2:09 PM UTC
(Credit: AP)
Pope Benedict XVI set a couple of precedents in recent months. He became the first social media pontiff, opening a Twitter account late last year. And as of Monday, he is the first pope since the middle ages to resign.
These nontraditional moves aside, though, Benedict XVI, formerly Joseph Ratzinger, was a fiercely conservative Catholic leader who failed to challenge a widespread child sex abuse scandal in the church. His papal legacy will include the maintenance of a system of impunity for abusers of the church’s most defenseless and innocent members. The Guardian’s Rome correspondent John Hooper noted .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/11/pope-beneditc-resignation-paradoxical-papacy :
~~~~~
The abuse scandals dominated his seven years as leader of the world’s Catholics. Before his accession, there had been scandals in the United States and Ireland. But in 2010, evidence of clerical sex abuse was made public in a succession of countries in continental Europe, notably Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Benedict’s native Germany.
The pope was himself affected by one of these scandals. It emerged that, while he was archbishop of Munich, a known molester was quietly re-assigned to duties that, in time, allowed him to return to pastoral duties and make contact with young people.
~~~~~
The pope’s failure to properly confront the darkest aspect of his church was particularly disturbing to critics who remember that, while serving under his predecessor John Paul II, then-Cardinal Ratzinger had overseen the Vatican department charged with addressing sex abuse cases. According to Hooper, “the future Pope Benedict personally read much of the testimony and, say his apologists, he was deeply shocked and moved by what he learned.”
Commentators already reviewing Benedict XVI’s papacy have highlighted the paradox that as a fiercely rigorous theological scholar and doctrinal purist, he earned the epithet “God’s rottweiler,” “But after several years into his new job he showed that he not only did not bite but barely even barked,” noted Reuters .. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/11/us-pope-resigns-idUSBRE91A0BH20130211 .
He also tallied a decidedly mixed record when it came to interfaith relations. According to Reuters, “Israel’s chief rabbi praised Benedict’s inter-faith outreach and wished him good health.” But Benedict angered Jews, noted Hooper, when he allowed the wider use by Catholics of an old liturgy that includes a Good Friday plea that Jews be “delivered from their darkness.”
Benedict had served in the Hitler Youth as a child when it was compulsory in Germany, but has vociferously condemned his country’s past treatment of Jewish people. According to Reuters, “he prayed and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, most of them Jews, died there during World War Two.” Yet, controversially, he lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Britain’s Richard Williamson. “The Vatican said Benedict had been unaware of Williamson’s views when he acted,” wrote the Guardian’s Hooper.
In a 2006 lecture he caused outrage when he said that Muslims were “only evil and inhuman.” He attempted to mitigate the damage with a trip to Turkey later that year, during which he prayed in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque with a Turkish Mufti.
In electing Benedict at age 78, the Cardinals had, according to commentators, hoped for a brief, stopgap pope after John Paul II’s long reign. Benedict XVI likely caused more controversy than had been desired. A Twitter account was a thin, modern gloss on a deeply conservative, traditionalist papacy.
A Vatican spokesman said Monday that the pope does not fear schism in the church after his resignation, since his choice to step down was prompted by health concerns, not problems with the papacy. But the betting has already begun over who will take his place. Experts believe a non-European could be chosen. Peter Turkson from Ghana, now head of the Vatican’s justice and peace department, is often tipped as Africa’s front-runner. Two Latin American candidates are also looking like strong possibilities — Odilo Scherer, archbishop of the huge diocese of Sao Paolo, or the Italian-Argentine Leonardo Sandri, now heading the Vatican department for Eastern Churches.
Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.
More Natasha Lennard. .. http://www.salon.com/writer/natasha_lennard/
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/11/benedict_xvis_legacy/
======
Contrasting Benedict and John Paul II
by Christopher Dickey Feb 11, 2013 12:15 PM EST
Every pope mixes the roles of CEO and Vicar of Christ, but a comparison of Benedict XVI
and his predecessor, John Paul II, suggests just how different those roles really are.
Some see the pope as an administrator of that enormous multinational corporation called the Catholic Church. Others prefer to see him as the corporeal symbol of something still more vast: the human spirit and its relationship to the Holy Spirit.
Vatican John Paul II
Pope Benedict XVI, left, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is seen
with the late Pope John Paul II during mass in St. Peter's
Basilica at the Vatican on Sept. 11, 2002. (Pier Paolo Cito/AP)
In practice, every Vicar of Christ has something of the CEO about him. But when it comes to Benedict XVI, who rose to power in the Vatican as its enforcer of orthodoxy, one always suspected his heart was more in administration than incarnation. And his announcement that he will resign because he can no longer perform his duties to his own satisfaction is proof enough of that. It is a responsible decision, and a worthy one. It is even brave, considering how little precedent there is for it. (The last papal resignation was before Columbus sailed to America.) But it is not inspiring.
The contrast with Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, is striking. The late pontiff was in much worse shape. At the age of 84, he was a year younger than Benedict is now, but afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, which petrified his features, palsied his hands and slowly, agonizingly stopped his once powerful and athletic body from functioning.
As my colleague Rod Nordland and I wrote .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2005/02/27/precious-suffering.html .. during the death watch of 2005, because John Paul was the leader of a billion Roman Catholics, because he was the first pontiff of the satellite and Internet age, reaching out to billions more, and because he was John Paul II, who had ruled the church for more than 26 years, “in that public experience of suffering lay enormous power.” And he knew it.
After recovering from the pistol shot that almost took his life in front of St. Peter’s in 1981, John Paul declared that suffering, as such, is one of the most powerful messages in Christianity. “Human suffering evokes compassion,” he wrote in 1984, “it also evokes respect, and in its own way it intimidates.” In 1994, as age and infirmity began to incapacitate John Paul publicly, he told his followers he had heard God and was about to change the way he led the church. “I must lead her with suffering,” he said. “The pope must suffer so that every family and the world should see that there is, I would say, a higher gospel: the gospel of suffering, with which one must prepare the future.”
At the time of John Paul’s last long battle against his own death, many Catholics saw his pain as something like the agony of Jesus himself, and neither John Paul nor those around him discouraged such comparisons. When asked a few years ago if he might consider resigning, John Paul reportedly asked, in reply, “Did Christ come down from the cross?” That pope was not doing a job, he was carrying out a divine mission, and his pain was at its core.
This exaltation of suffering may be difficult for many non-Catholics to understand. (Protestant crosses, typically, do not depict Jesus at all, much less in the death throes shown by Catholic crucifixes.) But suffering, as scholars point out, is at the very core of the faith; it is the vital link between the human experience and that of Christ as savior. He was a suffering victim who seemed to have been defeated by the earthly powers of his time. But in his moment of apparent weakness and defeat, Christians see him as triumphant, dying for humanity’s sins and opening the way to heaven.
If there has been one consistent tenet of the Catholic Church in the modern world, moreover, it is the sanctity of life. One may disagree with the way this is interpreted in the fight against abortion or the efforts to keep alive through medical means bodies and brains that are basically dead. Certainly I do. But you had to hand it to John Paul. He was not fighting for “quality of life.” He was fighting for life, period.
Benedict, on the other hand, has presented himself to the world too often as fighting for doctrine. His vision of the church was not as something transcendent and all embracing—catholic with a small “c” if you will. He was very clear about this. Benedict’s vision was of a church that would be smaller, more exclusive, more rigid in its beliefs.
Now that Benedict has decided to step down, one must speculate that his core motive is not to enjoy retirement at Castel Gandolfo or some monastery in Rome, but to be able to choose—perhaps even hope to dictate—who will be his successor.
That’s what a good CEO would do. But one likes to imagine that the Vicar of Christ, as we saw with John Paul II, would fight for life literally and symbolically until the end, leaving the choice of his successor purely to the College of Cardinals working, as they understand it, the will of God.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/11/contrasting-benedict-and-john-paul-ii.html
It wasn't easy to read all that suffering in the name of Christ stuff, and i'm glad to see Benedict resigning for the
reason he gave. He may live longer as a result and, all else aside, for me anyway, that's a good thing for him.
See also:
Big News: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/pope-benedict-xvi-to-resi_n_2660670.html?1360581141
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84436328
It was the last news heard before turning the radio off last night.
"God's rotweiller" failed to address the sex abuse scandals scarring his church, bets on next pope begin
By Natasha Lennard - Monday, Feb 11, 2013 2:09 PM UTC
(Credit: AP)
Pope Benedict XVI set a couple of precedents in recent months. He became the first social media pontiff, opening a Twitter account late last year. And as of Monday, he is the first pope since the middle ages to resign.
These nontraditional moves aside, though, Benedict XVI, formerly Joseph Ratzinger, was a fiercely conservative Catholic leader who failed to challenge a widespread child sex abuse scandal in the church. His papal legacy will include the maintenance of a system of impunity for abusers of the church’s most defenseless and innocent members. The Guardian’s Rome correspondent John Hooper noted .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/11/pope-beneditc-resignation-paradoxical-papacy :
~~~~~
The abuse scandals dominated his seven years as leader of the world’s Catholics. Before his accession, there had been scandals in the United States and Ireland. But in 2010, evidence of clerical sex abuse was made public in a succession of countries in continental Europe, notably Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Benedict’s native Germany.
The pope was himself affected by one of these scandals. It emerged that, while he was archbishop of Munich, a known molester was quietly re-assigned to duties that, in time, allowed him to return to pastoral duties and make contact with young people.
~~~~~
The pope’s failure to properly confront the darkest aspect of his church was particularly disturbing to critics who remember that, while serving under his predecessor John Paul II, then-Cardinal Ratzinger had overseen the Vatican department charged with addressing sex abuse cases. According to Hooper, “the future Pope Benedict personally read much of the testimony and, say his apologists, he was deeply shocked and moved by what he learned.”
Commentators already reviewing Benedict XVI’s papacy have highlighted the paradox that as a fiercely rigorous theological scholar and doctrinal purist, he earned the epithet “God’s rottweiler,” “But after several years into his new job he showed that he not only did not bite but barely even barked,” noted Reuters .. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/11/us-pope-resigns-idUSBRE91A0BH20130211 .
He also tallied a decidedly mixed record when it came to interfaith relations. According to Reuters, “Israel’s chief rabbi praised Benedict’s inter-faith outreach and wished him good health.” But Benedict angered Jews, noted Hooper, when he allowed the wider use by Catholics of an old liturgy that includes a Good Friday plea that Jews be “delivered from their darkness.”
Benedict had served in the Hitler Youth as a child when it was compulsory in Germany, but has vociferously condemned his country’s past treatment of Jewish people. According to Reuters, “he prayed and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, most of them Jews, died there during World War Two.” Yet, controversially, he lifted the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Britain’s Richard Williamson. “The Vatican said Benedict had been unaware of Williamson’s views when he acted,” wrote the Guardian’s Hooper.
In a 2006 lecture he caused outrage when he said that Muslims were “only evil and inhuman.” He attempted to mitigate the damage with a trip to Turkey later that year, during which he prayed in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque with a Turkish Mufti.
In electing Benedict at age 78, the Cardinals had, according to commentators, hoped for a brief, stopgap pope after John Paul II’s long reign. Benedict XVI likely caused more controversy than had been desired. A Twitter account was a thin, modern gloss on a deeply conservative, traditionalist papacy.
A Vatican spokesman said Monday that the pope does not fear schism in the church after his resignation, since his choice to step down was prompted by health concerns, not problems with the papacy. But the betting has already begun over who will take his place. Experts believe a non-European could be chosen. Peter Turkson from Ghana, now head of the Vatican’s justice and peace department, is often tipped as Africa’s front-runner. Two Latin American candidates are also looking like strong possibilities — Odilo Scherer, archbishop of the huge diocese of Sao Paolo, or the Italian-Argentine Leonardo Sandri, now heading the Vatican department for Eastern Churches.
Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.
More Natasha Lennard. .. http://www.salon.com/writer/natasha_lennard/
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/11/benedict_xvis_legacy/
======
Contrasting Benedict and John Paul II
by Christopher Dickey Feb 11, 2013 12:15 PM EST
Every pope mixes the roles of CEO and Vicar of Christ, but a comparison of Benedict XVI
and his predecessor, John Paul II, suggests just how different those roles really are.
Some see the pope as an administrator of that enormous multinational corporation called the Catholic Church. Others prefer to see him as the corporeal symbol of something still more vast: the human spirit and its relationship to the Holy Spirit.
Vatican John Paul II
Pope Benedict XVI, left, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is seen
with the late Pope John Paul II during mass in St. Peter's
Basilica at the Vatican on Sept. 11, 2002. (Pier Paolo Cito/AP)
In practice, every Vicar of Christ has something of the CEO about him. But when it comes to Benedict XVI, who rose to power in the Vatican as its enforcer of orthodoxy, one always suspected his heart was more in administration than incarnation. And his announcement that he will resign because he can no longer perform his duties to his own satisfaction is proof enough of that. It is a responsible decision, and a worthy one. It is even brave, considering how little precedent there is for it. (The last papal resignation was before Columbus sailed to America.) But it is not inspiring.
The contrast with Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, is striking. The late pontiff was in much worse shape. At the age of 84, he was a year younger than Benedict is now, but afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, which petrified his features, palsied his hands and slowly, agonizingly stopped his once powerful and athletic body from functioning.
As my colleague Rod Nordland and I wrote .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2005/02/27/precious-suffering.html .. during the death watch of 2005, because John Paul was the leader of a billion Roman Catholics, because he was the first pontiff of the satellite and Internet age, reaching out to billions more, and because he was John Paul II, who had ruled the church for more than 26 years, “in that public experience of suffering lay enormous power.” And he knew it.
After recovering from the pistol shot that almost took his life in front of St. Peter’s in 1981, John Paul declared that suffering, as such, is one of the most powerful messages in Christianity. “Human suffering evokes compassion,” he wrote in 1984, “it also evokes respect, and in its own way it intimidates.” In 1994, as age and infirmity began to incapacitate John Paul publicly, he told his followers he had heard God and was about to change the way he led the church. “I must lead her with suffering,” he said. “The pope must suffer so that every family and the world should see that there is, I would say, a higher gospel: the gospel of suffering, with which one must prepare the future.”
At the time of John Paul’s last long battle against his own death, many Catholics saw his pain as something like the agony of Jesus himself, and neither John Paul nor those around him discouraged such comparisons. When asked a few years ago if he might consider resigning, John Paul reportedly asked, in reply, “Did Christ come down from the cross?” That pope was not doing a job, he was carrying out a divine mission, and his pain was at its core.
This exaltation of suffering may be difficult for many non-Catholics to understand. (Protestant crosses, typically, do not depict Jesus at all, much less in the death throes shown by Catholic crucifixes.) But suffering, as scholars point out, is at the very core of the faith; it is the vital link between the human experience and that of Christ as savior. He was a suffering victim who seemed to have been defeated by the earthly powers of his time. But in his moment of apparent weakness and defeat, Christians see him as triumphant, dying for humanity’s sins and opening the way to heaven.
If there has been one consistent tenet of the Catholic Church in the modern world, moreover, it is the sanctity of life. One may disagree with the way this is interpreted in the fight against abortion or the efforts to keep alive through medical means bodies and brains that are basically dead. Certainly I do. But you had to hand it to John Paul. He was not fighting for “quality of life.” He was fighting for life, period.
Benedict, on the other hand, has presented himself to the world too often as fighting for doctrine. His vision of the church was not as something transcendent and all embracing—catholic with a small “c” if you will. He was very clear about this. Benedict’s vision was of a church that would be smaller, more exclusive, more rigid in its beliefs.
Now that Benedict has decided to step down, one must speculate that his core motive is not to enjoy retirement at Castel Gandolfo or some monastery in Rome, but to be able to choose—perhaps even hope to dictate—who will be his successor.
That’s what a good CEO would do. But one likes to imagine that the Vicar of Christ, as we saw with John Paul II, would fight for life literally and symbolically until the end, leaving the choice of his successor purely to the College of Cardinals working, as they understand it, the will of God.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/11/contrasting-benedict-and-john-paul-ii.html
It wasn't easy to read all that suffering in the name of Christ stuff, and i'm glad to see Benedict resigning for the
reason he gave. He may live longer as a result and, all else aside, for me anyway, that's a good thing for him.
See also:
Big News: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/pope-benedict-xvi-to-resi_n_2660670.html?1360581141
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84436328
It was the last news heard before turning the radio off last night.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
