Five years of Pope Benedict XVI

As we review this week Pope Benedict’s first five years as supreme pastor of the Catholic Church, we do so acutely aware that his pontificate cannot be properly estimated until well after its completion, when that sad day arrives.

Indeed, it is not easy to predict how history will remember the German pope. Commentators who in the current climate opine that the pontificate of Benedict XVI will be overshadowed or even defined by the sexual abuse scandal may well overestimate the lasting impact of their opinion.

Other issues may well exercise future historians. These will certainly include Pope Benedict’s endeavours in interreligious dialogue, particularly with Muslims and Jews; his efforts at redefining the place of the Catholic Church in a rapidly secularising West; his positions on social justice and on life and family issues; and the impact of his leadership on the Catholic Church itself.

When history eventually writes the story of Pope Benedict, it will surely regard him as an often misunderstood and misinterpreted pope. Paradoxically, Pope Benedict is predictable and yet he frequently surprises. And sometimes the cause for misunderstanding is the pope himself.

For example, when in a 2006 lecture in Regensburg he quoted the medieval Emperor Manuel II who had said the prophet Mohammed had brought “things only evil and inhuman”, Pope Benedict clearly was not stating his personal view of Islam, as the context made clear. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see why what the Holy Father thought to be an innocent side remark would spark a furore — a controversy which ended up strengthening dialogue between Muslims and Catholics.

Perhaps other popes might have had an easier ride than the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not universally popular. As pope he has discarded that position’s inhibiting shackles and now exhibits his gentle personality in fuller dimensions.

And still, preconceived notions about Pope Ratzinger prevail, inside and outside of the Church. Those who hoped that he would crack down on so-called dissidents (an awful term which calls to mind the nomenclature of totalitarianism) have been profoundly disappointed. The pope might please conservatives and aggrieve progressives on matters such as liturgical reforms, unity with traditionalists, and the insistence on a particular understanding of the Second Vatican Council, but he is also a thoughtful and doctrinally cautious pope who can find no way to innovate on matters such as the proposed excommunication of Catholic politicians who legislate on access to abortion.

There is much that the secular left should admire about Pope Benedict’s positions on the economy, poverty, peace, ecology, immigration and capital punishment. And yet, for much of the secular left all this is meaningless because it regards the pope objectionable on other matters, particularly abortion, embryonic stem cells and gay marriage.

Above the din of all the posturing and sometimes artificial controversy, Pope Benedict’s overriding pontifical theme — which he aims to carry out not as the CEO of a multinational institution but as a shepherd, a teacher and a pastor — is often ignored: love. Love in its different but complementary manifestations was the theme of his first encyclical, Deus caritas est (God is Love). The pope whom many expected to be a doctrinal enforcer emphasises not notions of rules but of love, with evangelisation — leading people to God’s love — at the faith’s centre.

It is a simple and yet revolutionary notion. And it may well be this that history will record as the defining product of Pope Benedict’s pontificate.