“If you follow the will of God, you know that in spite of all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a final refuge. You know that the foundation of the world is love, so that even when no human being can or will help you, you may go on, trusting in the One that loves you.” —Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict)
“Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.” —Ratzinger
Pope Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95. My theology professor once described him as the last great renaissance theologian; that is, the last theologian who was able to speak competently and articulately on theology as a whole, and various branches of it. We are living in a world with increased specialization, when most people are not competent even at their own area of expertise, let alone anything outside those extremely narrow limits. Benedict XVI was truly from a different era, an era where deep knowledge in many different areas was not only praised but expected. He also lacked the extreme arrogance of modernity—he understood that humility was essential for a Christian in the midst of the self-esteem movement, a movement that encouraged arrogance without merit. He reminded us unconsciously of how much the modern world has lost in rejecting religion, classical education, merit-based honor, and traditional societal pillars.
This quote is attributed to him, though it unclear when he said it, “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” Whether those are the exact words he spoke or not, I think they perfectly capture Pope Benedict’s life. He constantly sacrificed his own safety and comfort throughout his life to do what he believed was his duty, and thus became one of the greatest of modern popes.
Someone said to me recently that his death would not cause the firestorm the death of a pope normally would, simply because he had already retired. To some extent that is true and to some extent it is false. True, there will not immediately be an election for a new pope. But the reality is that Pope Benedict XVI was the last pope who stood for continuity with Catholic doctrine, and reform instead of revolution. As Pope Francis increasingly shows disrespect to unchangeable Catholic doctrines and targets the traditional Mass of over 1000 years, Pope Emeritus Benedict stood as a living contradiction to the modernism, political irresponsibility, and worldly silliness of his successor. As Benedict once said, “Whenever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.” He will be deeply missed, and I hope that his sins are forgiven, and that he has gone to his eternal reward.
Pope Benedict undoubtedly made mistakes in his life. There were times as pope when he was too lenient to grievous offenders like Cardinal McCarrick, although he also did dismiss hundreds of priests from the priesthood in an attempt to cleanse the Church after the sex scandals his predecessor John Paul II unfortunately did little to stop. Benedict also occasionally caved to demands that he engage in supposedly ecumenical ceremonies, and he sometimes tried to defend parts of Vatican II as being in clear continuity with the past when reading them was enough to know that was not true. But Benedict also did so much that was good. As a cardinal, he worked to make Vatican II stay in continuity with the past as well as provide help to a modern world, and after the council he continued to stick to the truth, even when it was unpopular with and condemned by his former colleagues.
Benedict, born Joseph Ratzinger, was a man who often could not satisfy either group in the debate in which he was caught. But he knew what he thought was right, and he was always at his greatest when he stuck to it regardless of the pressure brought to bear on him. He had practice in his early days. Born in Bavaria, his father was forced to retire due to anti-Nazi sentiment and Joseph himself, after entering seminary, was forced instead into the German army. He did not see combat and deserted the army, evidently sharing his father’s anti-Nazi convictions. Joseph narrowly escaped recapture by the infamous SS and ended up in an American POW camp. After the war and his ordination, he tried to return theology back to the early Church Fathers instead of just St. Thomas Aquinas and rose more quickly through the ranks than he ever wished. He was a key theologian at Vatican II, although he later broke with some of his former colleagues in the extreme changes, deceptively called “reforms,” that were enacted after the council, and were falsely claimed as natural continuations of it.
He desired a quiet life, but Pope John Paul II called him to Rome, and he finally gave in. He was the prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and worked on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but had bought a retirement home with his brother Georg (also a cleric) and hoped he was finally done with important public office. Of course, instead, he was elected the 265th pope of the Catholic Church, one of the few Germans to serve.
As Benedict XVI, he was a much needed reformer at the time. He worked hard to identify and dismiss the priests who were sex offenders, his motu proprio restored the ancient Latin Mass, he wrote three encyclicals and the beginning of a fourth, fought modernism and the “dictatorship of relativism,” and wrote more books (82 altogether are in print).
He once courageously called out the violence inherent in Islam, and grieved as radical Muslims proved his point by killing Christians in retaliation. He seemed to have a fairly positive view of the United States, something not shared by many modern popes, who have tended to like watered-down forms of Socialism or believed distorted descriptions of the American philosophy, and have thus disliked America. Since Benedict tried to reach out to different religions, perhaps he saw America as a model for the separation of church and state, and the combination of many religions and ethnicities into one country. Or perhaps he had a glimmer of understanding, though he defended so much previous Catholic social teaching, that America, more than any other country, allows people to live out the biblical merit-based model Jesus described in the Parable of the Talents.
There is a great deal more to be said about Pope Benedict, of course. He had his favorite comedian, his love for a quiet, family life, his expressed fears that his sins would not be sufficiently conquered at the hour of his death. It was once said of him that he went to confession every day because he so ardently desired to live up to Jesus’s command in the gospel of Matthew (5:48), “Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.”
Perhaps that was why there seems to have been pressure on him to retire from the papacy. Benedict was showing the world that a return to tradition and Biblical virtues, not more modernism, was the solution to the modern Church crisis. And there were bishops who did not want tradition and virtue to be a solution, the current pope being one of them.
Pope Benedict XVI was certainly not perfect, but for his humility, his holiness, his dedication to duty, and his continuing to stand for truth no matter the pressure (both before, during, and after his time as pope), he deserves our undying admiration and gratitude. Even more so than Queen Elizabeth II, Pope Benedict XVI displayed the best characteristics of the World War II generation. He never caved to modern politics or modern heresy, except perhaps in stepping down as pope (which he had always wished to do, believing himself unqualified). As Ratzinger himself said, what did Jesus bring to the world? “The answer is very simple: God.” Pope Benedict XVI expressed his longing to see the face of God, and to be reunited with his beloved family, and I pray that he has achieved that aspiration.
It is an excellent aspiration for the rest of us to have as well, to desire one day to see God face-to-face. After all, whether one achieves the dignity and fame of being pope, or truly lives in the quiet obscurity Joseph Ratzinger desired, the only honor really worth having in this life is that one might say of a person, “He was united to God and has gone to be with him.” May that be said truly of all of us, as it can be said of Pope Benedict XVI.
If the situation was ambiguous, it is now lucid: Apostolica Sedes Vacans.