What the secular media failed to grasp

The resignation of a pope was always a going to be a controversial thing. What I didn’t expect was the secular media, of all people, to be so displeased by it as to accuse Pope Benedict of not being sufficiently Catholic.

“For me the lasting legacy of Pope Benedict XVI will be the manner in which he put faith back into dialogue with the world, especially in Europe.” (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

Apparently the fact that Pope Benedict renounced the ministry of bishop of Rome meant that he had broken his vocation vows and even the dogma of infallibility.

Others said his resignation was due to legal pressures (that old story of him shielding priests who abused children). You had a range of conspiracy theories to choose from; they abounded.

Others yet said he was making room for a leader who would be open to dialogue and would have the courage to create systems that will address the sexism, exclusion and abuse in the Church. And others hoped for a non-European pope.

Among many Catholics Pope Benedict gained renewed respect for the grace and humility in his courageous move after he “repeatedly examined my conscience before God”. In fact the pope’s resignation speech had the quality and tone of St Paul’s second letter to Timothy: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith…”

The legacy of Pope Benedict XVI is still up for debate. Secular media like to judge him with the accusation that he was implicated in sheltering abusive priest and the Vatican financial scandals that emerged during his tenure.

Before his resignation Pope Benedict had hinted at his regret about divisions within, leading cardinals jockeying for influence in the upcoming conclave and in the papacy that it will produce.

For me the lasting legacy of Pope Benedict XVI will be the manner in which he put faith back into dialogue with the world, especially in Europe. You now see many Catholics gaining confidence in public, to such an extent that some Catholic politicians challenge and even resign from their parties for reasons of policies contrary to the social teachings of the Catholic Church.

Within the Church, Pope Benedict’s mission was to reverse the trivialisation of the liturgy, lax clerical discipline, and the weakened sacramental safeguards. In a nutshell this pope’s mission was to call the Church to deeper sanctity.

Pope Benedict’s renunciation of the mission of the bishop of Rome has to be seen through the lens of the Church’s founder, our Lord Jesus, the Christ.

The greatest show of obedience in human history was Christ’s conscious decision to permit his own crucifixion.

In Gethsemane you get a sense that Jesus would have preferred to live on a little longer. He felt that the termination of his temporal ministry, extreme human torment and certain human death would be contrary to his mission.

Even as his human body was suffering egregiously and as he was approaching the hour of death, Our Lord proclaimed that he would have preferred to live. Yet he submitted to the will of his Father.

This most unique act in human history represented both the affirmation of an informed conscience and the free submission to divine will.

To me, the resignation of Pope Benedict was informed by the same motive.

The essence of Benedict’s gift to the Church is in using time, near the end of his days, to teach others to reach and correspond to a personal relationship with God, driven by conscience and consistent with Church teachings, via the sacraments and personal sacrifice, no matter what the world thinks.

It is demonstrated in the resignation speech. You feel the hidden personal sacrifice behind words such as “after having repeatedly examined my conscience before God…” This is Christ-like and the essence of the Rock the Church was founded on.

We do not expect the secular media to understand that, even as it preaches Catholicism to the pope.