The Pope's resignation [...] is bizarre.[...]The putative reason that the Vatican has put out is the advanced infirmity of the Pope himself. This does not make any sense. One assumes, given the history of Popes being old and not resigning for the past 600 years, that the Vatican has figured out a system of ensuring the survival of the church while being led by people who are close to death.[...]A Pope abandoning his position has serious spiritual consequences. In Dante, the last Pope who gave up his job, basically because he was too good to stomach the politics, ended up spending all eternity upside down in a hole of fire. Given those stakes, it's safe to say that the Pope would need a serious reason for quitting other than the one he's given.
[...]
What is so tantalizing about this story is that we'll probably never know the actual reason, not for decades, anyway.
[...]
The Vatican is so opaque that only recently did they release secret files about Pius XII, otherwise known as Hitler's Pope, that showed him saving the lives of Jewish refugees. Even that bit of magnificently good news for the Church was hidden in the vaults.
[...]
Today the speculations will swirl, but it'll eventually peter out when the race for the next Pope takes over the news.
Esquire
[...]
What is so tantalizing about this story is that we'll probably never know the actual reason, not for decades, anyway.
[...]
The Vatican is so opaque that only recently did they release secret files about Pius XII, otherwise known as Hitler's Pope, that showed him saving the lives of Jewish refugees. Even that bit of magnificently good news for the Church was hidden in the vaults.
[...]
Today the speculations will swirl, but it'll eventually peter out when the race for the next Pope takes over the news.
Esquire
I'm hoping for a leaker.
It is not unreasonable [...] to speculate that the renewed call for the Church to open its books on the worldwide extent of the child-abuse scandal among its clergy, something that was Ratzinger's brief under John Paul II and, as Alex Gibney's new HBO documentary argues, something that may be behind the fast-tracking of the move to get the late pope onto the calendar of saints as swiftly as possible, may be a bit of dark matter operating under today's news.
[...]
There is nothing in the institutional church now but this scandal. That has been the case since it first broke worldwide almost 20 years ago. It has demolished the moral credibility of the hierarchy, most of whom, it should be pointed out, were appointed by either John Paul II or Benedict. It was that hierarchy that sustained [the] cover-up. It was that hierarchy that attacked the victims, and the journalists, and the many brave priests who stood up against an institution that had moved so far from the message of the gospels that it might as well have been worshipping Ba'al. And it was that hierarchy that did all those things because it was a perfect instrument of John Paul II's reactionary, top-down theology, a return to the authoritatian model of the Church, which was exactly what Benedict XVI was elected to maintain. The conclave that elected him was the conclave of the cover-up.
[...]
The resignation is another chance for the institutional Church to act with unambiguous justice toward the victims, and unambiguous penitence toward the rest of the world, which is pretty much the way it should have been acting for the past 20 years. Thus would the resignation of Benedict XVI be the only real lasting triumph of his papacy. The odds against it, alas, are extraordinarily long.
Charlie Pierce (a Catholic)
[...]
There is nothing in the institutional church now but this scandal. That has been the case since it first broke worldwide almost 20 years ago. It has demolished the moral credibility of the hierarchy, most of whom, it should be pointed out, were appointed by either John Paul II or Benedict. It was that hierarchy that sustained [the] cover-up. It was that hierarchy that attacked the victims, and the journalists, and the many brave priests who stood up against an institution that had moved so far from the message of the gospels that it might as well have been worshipping Ba'al. And it was that hierarchy that did all those things because it was a perfect instrument of John Paul II's reactionary, top-down theology, a return to the authoritatian model of the Church, which was exactly what Benedict XVI was elected to maintain. The conclave that elected him was the conclave of the cover-up.
[...]
The resignation is another chance for the institutional Church to act with unambiguous justice toward the victims, and unambiguous penitence toward the rest of the world, which is pretty much the way it should have been acting for the past 20 years. Thus would the resignation of Benedict XVI be the only real lasting triumph of his papacy. The odds against it, alas, are extraordinarily long.
Charlie Pierce (a Catholic)
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