The Pope and the Philistines

The Pope and the Philistines | Tracey Rowland | Catholic World Report

Benedict XVI’s papacy has been
one of imagination and urbanity hampered by bureaucracy

In Called to Communion, published in 1996, a decade before the beginning of
his papacy, Joseph Ratzinger had some strong words to say about the
bureaucratic machinery of the Church. 
He wrote:

The more administrative machinery we construct, be it the
most modern, the less place
there is for the Spirit, the less place there is for the Lord, and the less freedom
there is.

He added
that in his opinion, "we ought to begin an unsparing examination of
conscience on this point at all levels of the Church".  In a later collection of essays, titled
Images of Hope, he observed that “the
saints were all people of imagination, not functionaries of apparatuses.”

In recent
days one senses that this unsparing examination of conscience might finally
have begun.  One also senses that
in the papacy of Benedict XVI the Church had one of the greatest theologians
occupying the Chair of Peter in centuries, but that for all his high
intelligence, he never quite managed to contend with the bureaucratic machinery
and it often let him down. 

The
decision to abdicate would not have been a decision made lightly given
Benedict’s respect for historical precedent and the sacramental nature of his
office.  He is the last person on
the planet to think of the papacy as a job.  He never thought of himself as the CEO of a multinational
corporation and he sharply rebuked those whose ecclesiology was borrowed from
the Harvard School of Business or, worse, some Green-Left women's
collective.  Christ was and is a
Priest, a Prophet and a King, not a business manager.  Benedict believes that the Church is nothing less than the
Universal Sacrament of Salvation and the Bride of Christ.  For him the keys of Peter are no mere
mythic symbol.  So a decision to
abdicate could only have been made on the basis that he thought worse things
might happen to embarrass and confuse the Church's 1.2 billion faithful if he
lacked the strength to govern. 

Possible Like-Minded Successors

The
challenge in choosing Benedict’s successor is finding someone who has the
strength and ability to deal with the administrative side of the office of the
papacy while retaining at least some of the intellectual flair and imagination
of Benedict and his predecessor. 
There are many who think that either Cardinal Angelo Scola or Cardinal
Marc Ouellet could carry these responsibilities.  Certainly both are exceptionally intellectually gifted and
are men of imagination, not functionaries.  They are also in a similar intellectual mould to
Benedict.  They share the same
interpretations of the Second Vatican Council and they are very much across the
theological anthropology and moral theology of Blessed John Paul II.

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