He was supposed to be ‘God’s Rottweiler.’ In Newsweek, A.N. Wilson looks at the paradox of Benedict XVI.
My wife exclaimed, when she heard of the pope’s surprise announcement to retire: “It’s bad enough having one old man thinking he’s infallible—now there’ll be two of them!” Our conversation went on to imagine the election of yet another octogenarian, who might well in turn resign before the demise of Benedict. Pretty soon, the Vatican could fill up with retired infallible old men, most of them Italian, all nodding in front of the daytime television in the geriatric wing, and all—all—infallible.
My guess is that this time, they won’t go for yet another ancient European, and they will plump for a cardinal either from Africa or South America. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana would be good. Another possibility is Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria—an arch-conservative who makes Ratzinger seem like a wishy-washy Anglican. (Which in many ways he is!)
But my money is on Cardinal Leonardo Sandri of Argentina. At 70, he is the ideal age—with 10 years, at least, before he joins the other infallibles in the dayroom. Additionally, he has the great advantage of being, at present, in charge of the Vatican’s relationship with the Eastern churches—and it is surely the moment in history to reunite Rome with the Orthodox. And he is also a voice of South America—and that must be heard. Europe and North America have grown deaf to the faith, and the church needs someone from elsewhere to nourish the flame once more.
Whatever happens, for a pope who was elected on the traditionalist ticket, it was a curious thing to retire. Popes just don’t retire. And then he did. Ever since his moment of truth in 1968, when the rioting students of Tübingen converted the liberal-minded Joseph Ratzinger into the Enemy of the Enlightenment and Defender of Catholic Reaction, this has been a man—surely—who wanted to revert to the way things were in the good old days, back in … er … when exactly?
That has always been the problem for “traditionalists” or “conservatives” in any sphere of life—church, politics, family life. How far do you want to go back? At what point, exactly, did things begin to go wrong?
Appointed as John Paul II’s righthand man, Ratzinger was the Nasty Cop, engaged to wage war on the liberals. But in point of fact, he was always a much subtler figure than his enemies—or, more dangerously—his fans believed. Almost the first thing he said to the English Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was: “When are we going to make Newman a saint?”
John Henry Newman, the 19th-century convert from Anglicanism, in 1845 wrote a world-changing book—literally—called The Development of Christian Doctrine. In it, he posited that nothing stays the same; everything is in a state of flux and development. He popularized the Hegelian view of the world for English speakers, and thereby prepared the world for Darwin and modern political democracy. But it took a while for the church—in the Second Vatican Council—to catch up. Ratzinger, behind the old-fashioned vestments, and the occasional sharp message to American or German liberal theologians, has always in fact been a Newman Catholic, aware that the church, for all its historic roots in the world of late classical antiquity, is ever changing, ever new.
Dante Alighieri, not a poet who minced his words about popes, had no hesitation in sending to hell the only pope who had resigned in his lifetime. True, he did not put the resigning pope in the very pits of hell with those who sell political office, or who betray their country or their friends. But there he is, cowering on the borders of hell at the very beginning of the Inferno. “And then I saw—and knew beyond all doubt—the shadow of the one who made, from cowardice, the great refusal”—che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto.
They are tough words, especially if we take them to refer to a man whom the Catholic Church venerates not merely as a holy pope but as a saint: Saint Celestine V.
No one would compare Benedict XVI, a highly intelligent and articulate man, with the poor hermit peasant-friar who was chosen as a compromise candidate for the papacy in 1293. Unable to make up their minds between rival French and Italian rascals, the College of Cardinals—only 12 men in those days, dithered for 27 months! Eventually, someone had the idea of appointing a saint to the Holy See. Poor, illiterate Padre Pietro was an 85-year-old hermit living in a little grotto on a mountainside in the region of Naples. He accepted the papal office, but was terrified by it, and after only a few months begged to be allowed back to his cell. The cardinals accepted his choice. He was canonized relatively quickly, in 1313, less than 20 years after his death. Modern scientists examining his skull found the unmistakable traces of a nail having been driven into the poor old man’s head, so he was evidently murdered, and in all likelihood, it was his suave lawyer-successor, Boniface VIII—Dante’s bête noire—who arranged the murder.
It was an unedifying episode in medieval history, and we would probably not know much about it if Boniface VIII had not, in addition to murdering his predecessor, sent Dante into exile from his native Florence. Boniface thereby made himself into one of the villains of world literature, and all of Dante’s hatred was poured out on the pope’s head.
There is matter for meditation here. Celestine V was a holy and good man, but a very bad pope. Boniface, if only half the things his enemies said about him were true, was far from a good man. But he was a brilliant pope who rescued the Western church (for a time) from some of the worst crises in its history: the breakup of Christendom itself being the worst, with the Eastern Orthodox churches going it alone, while the Western church was riven with schism. Add to that the European wars and the ever-present threat of Islam in Spain and in Eastern Europe.
Benedict XVI is neither a holy hermit nor a criminal. But he is a paradox. Before he became pope, he was the white hope of the arch-conservatives in the church—”God’s Rottweiler”—the man who was going to send the liberals howling to their lairs while the universal church once again reasserted the old ways.
And in some ways, it looked very much as if this was what Benedict set out to do when he was first elected. He wore a variety of extremely old-fashioned vestments—the little red cap trimmed with white fur bearing more than a passing resemblance to that of Father Christmas—and those scarlet loafers made by Prada. He brought in from the cold the ultraright conservatives who followed Archbishop Lefebvre. (But he failed to do a name check with all of them, and found himself acknowledging as a bishop an English oddball called Richard Williamson, who was a Holocaust denier.) He restored the old Tridentine Mass, for those who wished to use it—a semi-cynical move, since how many priests are left who know how to perform the old rite?
But also, from the very first, he revealed a surprising intellectual flexibility. The very first address he made to the cardinals, just after his election, was a remarkable piece of prose for anyone to have written—but even more for a German Catholic. For a German pope, it was actually astounding, for he acknowledged that Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, had in effect been right, and that Christians are saved not by the mere performance of religious observances but by faith in Christ. His first encyclical, “God Is Love” (“Deus Caritas Est”), followed up the theme with an exaltation of love in all its human forms. It contained none of the usual carping papal denunciations of gays or divorced people. It was a simple celebration of love—as simple as Dumbledore’s when he tells Harry Potter that he had been saved by “love, Harry, love.”
Oh, yes. Harry Potter. That too. When a sour-faced old Austrian Catholic schoolmarm went to the boring trouble to write a book denouncing Harry Potter as encouraging magic and the black arts, Benedict carelessly endorsed her thesis. But when it was pointed out to him that, as a matter of fact, J.K. Rowling was on the side of the angels, he was gracious enough to withdraw his denunciation.
In other words, Joseph the Unbudgeable, Ratzinger the Ironclad Bismarck of Church Politics, transmogrified into a gentle, unpredictable, accident-prone old pope, more absent-minded professor than Grand Inquisitor.
Continued on Page 68
