God speed?

It has been just a little more than two weeks — the common notice time — since the Pope told the world he was leaving his job tomorrow.  With only brief reference to examining his "conscience before God", his announcement was remarkably personal and human.  It was the kind you'd expect from a secular corporate executive or public official being forced by age to throw in the towel.  He said:

...I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

... in today’s world...in order to govern...both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.  For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome...

The pope was no youngster when he ascended to the papacy and some viewed him then as an interim leader, a placeholder.  His election, you might remember, was swift, evidencing that perhaps there may have been few viable contenders or that it had been decided long before when his predecessor was so ill.  If you watched the proceedings following John Paul's death, it was hard not to notice the central role already being played by the then Cardinal Ratzinger including a major pre-Conclave address to his fellow princes.

The personal nature of the abdication announcement is in contrast to the Pope's statements since.  Now God plays a more and it's fair to say defining role:

The Lord is calling me to "climb the mountain", to devote myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church, indeed, if God is asking me to do this, it is so I can continue to serve the Church with the same dedication and the same love with which I have done thus far, but in a way that is better suited to my age and my strength.

No longer is Benedict examining his conscience before God.  The Lord is calling, deciding, giving instructions.   The Pope is merely following what is being asked.  It is an interesting shift and, some might even say, a self-serving one.  Benedict didn't need a divine stamp on his stepping aside but, absent papal powers, he does need God to credential his role as "pope emeritus".

This may seem a very nuanced change and perhaps I'm reading more into than is there.  But I don't think so.  This dancing around when to invoke God is quite common.  That doesn't make it less troubling, quite the reverse.  In fact, one of the things that turns many people away from religion is the manipulative way in which some clergy and non-clergy selectively invoke God, or attribute their own actions or what they demand of others to the divine.

God may well exist.  My view is, and has always been, that proving or disproving the unprovable is a futile pursuit.  I may not believe there is a god in any form and you may believe with absolute conviction in God or just in some higher power.  Both of our beliefs are heartfelt and both deserve, no demand, equal respect.  I devote a chapter in my book Transcenders to the subject.  Its title, "The arrogance of attribution", has direct bearing on this post.  My message there, and here, is that God is not the issue.  Rather it is what some people attribute to God.  Since in the most profound way God, even for those who believe, is unknowable — as the Kadosh or Sanctus prayer invoked by both Jews and Christians says, "utterly separate" — we can't know with any degree of certainty what he is thinking or really wants.

The remoteness (and consequently the opaqueness) of God presents a real challenge for believers.  In effect, God and certainly what is attributed to the divine, is essentially under human control.  Sadly, that invites abuse, particularly in the hands of people with authority and power.  Divine attributions are, in my view, always subject to an educated guess (conditional) and hopefully put forward modestly, but often they are totally arrogant and immodest.  George W. Bush's real and implied claim that he was following God's instructions in going to war is an obvious example.  But so too are some of the claims made regularly on pulpits or is the implication, for example, that God was setting the parameters of Benedict's retirement role.

When the faithful invoke God's name or seek God's blessing in worship or elsewhere, I can see where they are coming from and why they are both moved and inspired.  Who are we to question either their faith or their intent, how can we even begin to know if their belief is merited.  On the other hand, when I hear someone claiming that God literally told them to do something or demanding that we do something on their say so, I am always moved to ask: "How do you know that?  In some cases, the attribution is well intended (though still an attribution), in others it is simply arrogant and often, in one way or another, self-serving.

God's name will be invoked often as the Cardinals meet in Rome during the coming days.  When the white plume of smoke heralds that a choice has been made there will be the inevitable talk of God's role in the process, of a guiding hand in selecting his representative here on earth.  Some, perhaps all, of the assembled princes will believe that to be true.  But in all honesty they will equally know that what transpired in that secluded chamber involved a good measure of sheer human politics, power politics if you will.  Behind the scenes there will have been jockeying for position not only relative to a candidacy but also for the day after.  All princes are never equal and each knows that whoever is finally elevated will have been watching the process, assessing both talent and who can be trusted.  God is definitely on the sidelines in all of that.

As to the day after, the Church has significant issues to face and the new pope will have some tough choices to make.  Matters of doctrine are probably not at issue.  I've said in earlier posts, as have others far more knowledgeable, that the conservative bent of the Roman Church has been baked into the process in the appointments made by two like-minded popes.  No, it's not theology that is likely to take center state on the new pope's table but the institution he will be tasked with leading.  The institution has huge problems, not the least mundane financial issues facing many of its constituent parts.  But the real challenge lies in the fact that both the Vatican and the Church have lost the trust of many in its fold and, lip service paid aside, the respect of many more on the outside.  The pope speaks for himself or for God, but doesn't have the unquestioned moral authority that once automatically made him a leader of import and influence.  As has been widely reported, a good number of his electors are themselves suspect, if only for their lack of proper supervision.  We won't know the magnitude of his victory, but regardless of how large the margin, a cloud hangs over Rome and, as such, over his papacy as it does over Benedict's.  To be successful, he will have to address it head on sooner rather than later — very much a human task of leadership.

Benedict goes into retirement under terms that we all know he, not God, dictated.  The housing will be simple compared to what he's experienced in recent days, but comfortable.  He will continue to wear white garments and a white skullcap.  He will have the title of pope emeritus.  He has given his entire life to the Church and risen to its top.  He surely deserves a comfortable and dignified retirement.  He could have waited for his successor to set the parameters of his emeritus status, but he didn't do that.  Why?  Because he could and, as many CEO's would have done, he exercised his power and rights of office.  History will judge his papacy and now his final time in retirement.  From his advantage point, he hopes God and the historians here on earth will be kind.

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My book Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars is now available in print and as an eBook.  Both versions are available at Amazon; the electronic iBooks version can be found at iTunes; a Nook version at Barnes & Noble.

Abdication

When something hasn't happened in nearly 600 years, and also only four times throughout history, it's very big news.  Not surprisingly the unexpected abdication of Pope Benedict XVI scheduled for month's end has been accorded headline coverage worldwide.  Of course, not being a Catholic, I look at the events in Rome with some distance, though not without great interest.  Funny thing is that one of my first thoughts was not so much about what the princes who surround Benedict were thinking but what thought may have come into England's Prince Charles's mind.   Here is a pope at 85 throwing in the towel after only eight years in office and doing so because of advanced age.  In contrast, just a few days earlier Queen Elizabeth, age 86, celebrated the 60th anniversary of her ascent to the throne of St. James.  My suggestion, Crown Prince in waiting, don't hold your breath.  As to the princes of the Church, well it's open season again — another conclave, another shot at the big prize.

The vote that takes place in Rome will hardly be a democratic free for all.  To start, while there are more than one billion Catholics worldwide, only 118 men, all of whom have been appointed by Benedict and his predecessor, will have a say in the matter.  They will not be of the people, but by the monarch. To be sure there will be politics at play when the elector Cardinals gather, but it is a kind of contained politics more akin to say the Chinese Politburo than what we know as citizens in a democracy.  Like in China, this is a one party system and a buddy system at that.  What's different of course is that while a Chinese party head leads a collective and must answer to his colleagues, popes are absolute and infallible rulers.  They answer only to God.  How exactly that works, I don't really know, but let's take it at face value.

Just as Prince Charles shouldn't hold his breath waiting for his beloved Mum to step aside, we — non-Catholics and Catholics — shouldn't expect a major departure from current Vatican policy.  Such departures haven't happened often, John XIII being the notable exception, and with good reason.   While there is a backbench from which to select potential princes of the Church, popes tend to elevate from a pool of the like-minded and that has been especially true with the men who put all the current College of Cardinals in place. Their appointees are decidedly conservative men who, if Benedict is any indication, see themselves as protectors of long established tradition (the past) rather than shepherds of the future.  Benedict has no tolerance for "cafeteria religion" or reforms.   The new pontiff, replacing one who says he's too old and tired to move forward, is likely to be a study in stylistic rather than substantive change.  Remember, these are a group of men who have largely rejected even the slim light let into their window by Vatican II, which many of them have actively sought to subvert.

Not only is Benedict's successor unlikely to turn the corner on an all male clergy, birth control, gays or stem cell research, I'd guess that a younger more vigorous Bishop of Rome might be all the more assertive about holding the line.  At a time when large numbers of Catholics have left the Church, especially in Western countries, modern day popes and their appointed princes seem to be turning their backs on any kind of dissent.  To be sure there are large numbers of loyal rank and file Catholics who would welcome change, who yearn for it, but they have no say in the matter.  The Church is an autocracy, the Pope its absolute monarch.

There has already been substantial comment and analysis accompanying Benedict's decision.  John Patrick Shanley, author of the powerful play Doubt, penned an op-ed entitled, Farewell to an Uninspiring Pope.  I think "good riddance" better expresses his views.  What struck me about the Times' opinion pieces was how many of its star columnists were brought up in the Church, products of parochial education, and to varying degrees have left it and probably religion behind.  I don't want to extrapolate here and suggest that, of course, well-educated and sophisticated writers could never hold on to the Roman Church's conservative teachings.  Yes both Bill Keller and Frank Bruni who wrote pieces might well be defined as "lapsed" but Ross Douthat most certainly can't be put in that camp.

Douthat is the paper's most authentic conservative — David Brooks is less consistent — and a still young man who always writes with enormous intelligence.  I usually disagree with him, but am always stimulated by and benefit from the read.  It is Douthat's attachment to Church and its teachings that made his thoughts on the abdication more interesting than any of the others.  In his blog entitled, The Pope Abdicates, Douthat speaks of the short-term generosity of Benedict's decision.  He sees this in the context of the fact that,

“globetrotting face of Catholicism” and “media-savvy C.E.O. of a controversial brand” have been added to the theological and administrative obligations inherent in the office, the burdens of age are arguably more of an impediment to papal effectiveness than ever before, and the mix of stasis and confusion created by a pontiff’s slow decline can have more immediately disastrous effects than they might have had in an era when papal incapacity could be a Roman secret rather than a global spectacle.

Carol Williams in a LA Times piece also speaks of the Pope's "generous act", one that she suggests could transform the Vatican.  Echoing Douthat and others she writes, "A pope today runs a massive, global operation, not unlike a multinational corporation. He is expected to travel to the faith’s far-flung congregations and craft important doctrinal policy and teachings."  She suggests that this move might herald a fundamental change in how the Church operates.  It may open the way for future papal abdications, perhaps even the consideration of mandatory retirelment at 75 much like that of Cardinals.  It is just such thinking that troubles Ross Douthat and which is the bottom line of his blog.  In his view the benefits of the current pope's retirement:

...need to be balanced against the longer term difficulties that this precedent creates for the papacy’s role within the church. There is great symbolic significance in the fact that popes die rather than resign: It’s a reminder that the pontiff is supposed to be a spiritual father more than a chief executive (presidents leave office, but your parents are your parents till they die), a sign of absolute papal surrender to the divine will (after all, if God wants a new pope, He’ll get one), and a illustration of the theological point that the church is still supposed to be the church even when its human leadership isn’t at fighting trim, whether physically or intellectually or (for that matter) morally.

Williams points to the logical implications of the Pope's abdication, of its potential for leading the Church into the twenty-first century world.  Douthat speaks of its danger, but more important reflects the dilemma facing religious leaders in our time in and out of the Roman Church.  Like many of the faithful, he has been pointedly critical of the contemporary Church's shortcomings but his underlying view is in sync with its leadership.  However logical change may be, it is threatening to what followers have been taught to consider an eternal faith.  The problem is that much of what has been considered eternal is being challenged by what we now know.  Part of that knowledge is that far from being infallible, popes and other church leaders are mere mortals whose vision is as limited as our own.  They may talk of protecting tradition, but so often and so transparently they are protecting their own interests.  Being among the chosen 118 or ultimately being declared the infallible absolute monarch is, Benedict's move notwithstanding, hard to give up.

Much attention will be paid to the selection of a new pope in the weeks to come.  The drama associated with a conclave, the anticipated white smoke and the pomp, not to mention the theatrics, of the ceremonials are alluring.  We have the same fascination with the British monarchy and for some of the same reasons.  But theater, which is exactly what it has become for a growing number of us including those brought up as Catholics, has its limits.  Church leaders across many faiths are so often talking to themselves, exactly when one would hope they are talking to us, reflecting who we are rather than the vested interests they might have.  Ross Douthat is right.  There is danger in Benedict's generosity, but the implications of that danger have long since passed.  Recognized or not, we are in a different place and changing that will ultimately prove more challenging than preserving the past.

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My book Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars is now available in print and as an eBook.  Both versions are available at Amazon; the electronic iBooks version can be found at iTunes; a Nook version at Barnes & Noble.