Summary: life seems to be imitating a Morris West novel today, as the world tries to digest the reality and the implications of Pope Benedict XVI’s almost unprecedented decision to abdicate. After 600 years, the world does not know what are the mechanics of a papal abdication. We do know, however, that Benedict XVI has decisively broken with the example of his predecessor, Blessed John Paul II, whose oblation of his own suffering, visible to the entire world, gave the world not only a lesson in how to face the reality of dying, but also called that world to examine its own capacity for compassion. What Karol Wojtyła offered to his church and to the world, Josef Ratzinger has chosen to withhold. There are more answers than questions out there as Roman Catholic church finds itself in syncope, waiting for the conclave that will elect a new pontiff. Will the new pontiff had more confidence in God’s providence than the lame-duck pope? We can only make the Sign of the Cross and hope for the best.
If life imitates art, then today the world seems to be going through the stages of a Morris West novel.
Not The Shoes of the Fisherman, but one of its sequels, The Clowns of God, which begins with the abdication of a pope.
Benedict XVI abdicated this morning, demonstrating once again the astonishing power of the Vatican to grab the attention of the world and hold it rapt as long as the Vatican wants it, even if the headline originally read like something satirical out of The Onion. A 100 division armored thrust at the heart of NATO could not have caused more shock and surprise in the capitals of the world.
In an institution which claims to have a precedent for just about everything, the first abdication of a reigning Roman Pontiff in six centuries is about as unprecedented as anything else in the tradition bound world of the Vatican.
Even so, as West phrased it in Shoes of the Fisherman, the life of the church is in syncope. The Vatican today no doubt finds itself as busy and as confused as an anthill prodded with a stick. Cardinals must be gathered and a conclave organized. Only this time, the conclave will be dominated by the presence of the outgoing pontiff (try to say that phrase; cognitive dissonance inevitably sets in). Yet, the life of the church nonetheless remains in syncope. For even if for a little more than two weeks, the Roman church will have that oddest of all phenomena in her midst, a lame-duck pope.
Of course, the Vatican will fall back on the closest analogous precedent, which is that of a papal passing. Already, Cardinals are making phone calls to power brokers within the church, posting to Facebook, tweeting, and otherwise putting out feelers to the colleagues whom they hope can place the tiara on their hopeful heads. Oddsmakers are no doubt lining up their lists, long or short, of papabile, or viable candidates for the top job.
Yet, for all the relief that may be felt in the Vatican that the institution is at least free, for once, from the “other shoe dropping” surprise of a papal death (coming as they so often do at “an hour we do not expect” [Matt. 24:44, 25:13; Luke 12:40]), Benedict’s volitional departure may well leave many of the Roman faithful curiously unsatisfied.
After all, Roman pontiffs don’t just step down, like other bishops in the Roman and other rites do. They don’t just accept emeritus status, like senior faculty members at a university. The accepted mode by which the tenure of the pope ends is death.
That’s right, pontiffs die in office.
Indeed, the slow, agonizingly visible dying process of Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, played itself out before a grieving world. If the mode of Karol Józef Wojtyła’s life was so different from ours as to be incomparable or incommensurate therewith, the process of his death touched upon basic human universals. By dying in front of us by inches, John Paul II left us a vade mecum for facing what Benjamin Franklin defined as one of the only two certainties of life (the other being taxes).
By dying in front of us by inches, John Paul II challenged the compassion not only of the human community of which he was the Petrine head, but also of the larger human community of which the Roman Catholic Church is ineluctably a part. John Paul II’s very public Via Dolorosa toward the final Calvary of his own passing brought home to us all the universality of death and dying. Anyone who has lost a loved one ---as I did on the feast of Saint Andrew the First-Called--- last year understands such a reality at a visceral level. In a real sense, John Paul II’s last gift to the church he led was to teach its members how to face the reality of death, which is --- in the words of the late constitutional scholar and novelist Walter F. Murphy --- a free gift of God; we have no claim upon its mercy.
Still, by leaving to his church an example of fortitude even to the end, John Paul II set an example for living and dying that a shocked world wonders why his immediate successor could not or would not emulate. What Karol Wojtyła offered to his church and to the world, Josef Ratzinger has chosen to withhold. Already, questions have been raised about the extent to which Benedict’s astonishing decision to cast off the papacy reflects a want of confidence in the providence of God, to say nothing of reflecting a lack of confidence in his own ability to imitate the Christ Whose vicar he was elected to be. Now a stunned world, even that majority of it which is not of the Roman observence, is left to speculate on the whys and wherefores of Benedict's astonishing decision; we will never know how Benedict the bishop would have faced the inevitability of death and dying, which are perhaps the only universals of the human condition.
If, to a certain extent, our mortal lives all recapitulate in some way the Stations of the Cross, we may justifiably ask why Benedict the pontiff bailed before reaching the 10th Station, where Jesus is stripped of His garments. As Josef Ratzinger himself noted in his own recent meditation on the 10th Station, by being stripped of His garments, our Lord was deprived of all of the outward and visible symbols of his place in society. We may justifiably ask whether by opting to avoid the public agony of his beatified predecessor, this pontiff has also tried to avoid the indignities that go with death, whether death on the Cross, or death in a hospital bed accompanied by the ravages of advanced Parkinson’s disease.
Comparisons -- as La Rochefoucauld once reminded us -- are odious, and we should be reluctant to compare the mode of Benedict XVI’s departure with John Paul’s “courageous oblation of his suffering.” Nonetheless, there remains something curiously unsatisfying about Benedict’s volitional decision to lay down a ministry which, in the teaching of the Roman church, represents a positive and lifelong gift of the Holy Spirit, from which there is no release except death. Under that teaching, Roman pontiffs aren’t just elected by their cardinalatial colleagues; the election itself is ostensibly guided by the Holy Spirit. Does Benedict’s pre-mortem departure from the Chair of Peter betoken a crisis of faith?
At all events, the abdication --- in its truest sense --- of a Roman Pontiff for the first time in six centuries leaves us with more questions than answers, questions that won’t be answered while the Roman church finds herself in syncope, grappling with the sudden challenge of finding a new pope was predecessor yet lives, hoping that God’s good providence may enable them to elect a pontiff who will be more moved by the example of Blessed John Paul II than by the somewhat sketchy and hurried departure of the incumbent pope.
As the Russians sometimes say in shocking situations, the most we can do is make the Sign of the Cross and hope for the best.
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Paul S. Marchand is an Episcopalian attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City. He metaphorically swam the Thames into the Anglican faith more than a generation ago, arriving at Lambeth Palace dripping wet in the water of new baptism. While this post may not be “strictly relevant” to events in and around Cathedral City (ultramontanists, flame warriors and reflexive umbrage-takers take note), so significant an event as what happened in Rome yesterday will necessarily ramify throughout the world, even to Cathedral City. The views expressed herein are not intended to constitute, and should not be taken as, legal advice.
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