Pope Benedict is dead; now only Pope Francis remains in the Vatican. And the Catholic Church is diminished by his passing, at least in a here-and-now sense. He was controversial for those who wanted the church to identify with the values of the age, and was cordially detested by liberal Catholics – I know of one progressive journalist who burst into tears at the news of his election – but in any serious audit of his life’s work, he emerges as a figure with a claim to the attention of secularists as well as Catholics.
‘The thing you have to know’, said my friend who was on Pope Benedict’s staff during his time in charge of the Congregation of the Faith, ‘is that everyone, but everyone, who worked for him, loved him. Even those who joined feeling instinctively hostile were won over.’ It was a combination of his kindness and simplicity, certainly, but there was also the feeling that here was complete intellectual integrity. And indeed, with his death, we have lost one of the last European intellectuals, the last inheritor of that tradition of German scholarship which flourished from the late nineteenth until the early twentieth century. He was that old fashioned person, the theologian who was a profound believer in reason. The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, got it right when he said that he made dialogue between faith and reason his life’s work.
What he brought to the papacy was absolute clarity of thought, an ability to identify the essence of an issue and to deal with it head on
As Fr Timothy Radcliffe, OP, formerly Master of the Dominican order, observed, ‘when I went to Rome, my view of him had been formed by the image in the press of him as Cardinal Rottweiler and I rather dreaded meeting him. I had to do so several times a year and in fact I found him to be a gentle and humble man with whom it was a pleasure to engage. He was the easiest person with whom to talk in the Vatican. He loved orthodoxy in a way that was supremely intelligent and alive to subtlety and nuance. Because he loved the mystery of faith, he was not closed minded. He loved dogma but he was not dogmatic in the narrow sense, if you see what I mean. I came to be fond of him.’ As for the caricature of him as the papal enforcer, he felt that it did no justice to his luminous intelligence.
In many cases Benedict has been vindicated by events; his view, as the papal enforcer of orthodoxy, that liberation theology, embraced by many clerics in Latin America, was too uncritical of Marxism has, in a way, been validated by the flight of so many Catholics from the Church to embrace hardcore evangelical Protestant movements.
When I was at a papal audience, quite close to him, what struck me was the rare sweetness of his smile and his pleased surprise at encountering a warm response. He was a shy man, pretty well the polar opposite of his theatrical predecessor, but he had his own attractive traits. He loved music and played the piano well, and he was very fond of cats; one apparently followed him to lectures in Tubingen. He would dutifully follow the rules in whatever role he was required to undertake (very German) which made his bombshell resignation so explosive. But he had already made clear that if a pope were unable physically or psychologically to fulfil the office he might be bound to resign. ‘The evidence was so great that there was no internal struggle’, he told his biographer, Peter Seewald.
What he brought to the papacy was absolute clarity of thought, an ability to identify the essence of an issue and to deal with it head on. Interestingly, he was onto the very topical question of gender identity way before most other pundits – I’m afraid folks, he took the view that our gender is a given, not a mere accident – when he condemned the notion that we could pick and choose our gender at will in a message to the Consistory of Cardinals in 2012. None of the journalists reporting the address had a clue what he was on about. He also had no hesitation in tackling the rottenness in European Christianity, which for him extended way beyond the clerical sex abuse scandals.
But he did take that abuse terribly seriously. Looking at the Good Friday Via Crucis in 2005, he said aloud, ‘How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, being in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him.’ More concretely, he dealt practically with the offenders: as Pope he dismissed some 400 priests and defined the canonical basis on which to prosecute bishops and cardinals who failed to comply with the corrective measures. One of his last acts was to repudiate the suggestion that as Archbishop of Munich he had allowed a perpetrator of clerical abuse, Fr Peter Hullermann, to return to his position; what he had done was to authorise his having living expenses while he was undergoing treatment. No doubt he could have done much more, but what he did wasn’t insignificant.
His eight year pontificate was punctuated by controversy, notably the row about his address to the University of Regensburg, which was on his favourite theme of faith and reason. It may be worth considering the offending passage, because what was remarkable about the row that followed was that almost all the critics never read it. He was quoting the remarks of a Byzantine Emperor to a learned Persian during the siege of Constantinople in 1502:
‘[The Emperor] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, [my emphasis] on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly”… The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.’
It’s difficult to see what he said that was wrong here, other than in failing to acknowledge the contemporary reality that any criticism of Islam of any kind, even 500 years old, is not now allowable. However 138 moderate Islamic scholars did engage with him on these issues.
The great legacy of his pontificate is his encyclicals and addresses, and it might be worth quoting Deus Caritas Est (2005) on the different roles of state aid and private charity:
‘Love – caritas – will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love… We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.’
Well, quite so. Later he observed: ‘Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies. It is not a means of changing the world ideologically, and it is not at the service of worldly stratagems.’
That could be repeated more often.
But in Britain, probably the most memorable part of his pontificate was his visit here, where he was warmly received by the Queen, and given a terrific showing of pomp and ceremony in Westminster Hall. His address still makes useful reading. His central challenge, ‘where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found?’ is still utterly pertinent.
In the years that followed his resignation, he withdrew from the round of engagements that had bounded him as pope, to his intense relief. His biographer, Peter Seewald, noted the change in his demeanour when he visited him in 2016.
‘Instead of red slippers, he now wore sandals, like a monk. He has been blind in his left eye for many years, he remembers less and less now, and meanwhile his hearing has diminished. His body had grown very thin, but his whole demeanour was tender like never before. And it was fascinating to see that this bold thinker… has arrived at last at a place where the intellect alone is not enough, a place of silence and prayer, the pulsing heart of faith.’
He told Seewald that he feared death, in a sense, but he had his own ideas about what heaven might entail. ‘In an entirely human perspective, I look forward to being reunited with my parents, my siblings, my friends and I imagine it will be as lovely as at our family home.’
Requiescat in pace.
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