IL PAPA RETIRO
(…stepping down with grace and style)

Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement that he was stepping down seems not to have come as a complete surprise. It was obvious that his failing health had reach a point where, to continue as the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic World, was no longer possible.

So he showed how to step down with grace and style, by celebrating a last high mass as the start of Lent for all the faithful, and paving the way for an early conclave of Cardinals to choose a new pope to replace him.

The Church has been around for a long time, almost two thousand years, so it has had lots of practice in handling such events (even though this is the first time in some 600 years that a pope has voluntarily stepped aside), and careful stately transition has always been its practice. In some ways Pope Benedict XVI can be considered one of those caretaking transitional princes of the Church, shepherding it through a turbulent era of conflict and contention. In other ways he may even have been controversial. Regardless, he has done his best to maintain its institutional merit and relevancy.

The most serious negative that might be placed upon him, however, is the ponderous and very obfuscating way cases of child-molesting priests were handled by the Church’s hierarchy. It did serious damage to its image and reputation. And while he may not have been directly involved in the way its organizational machinery ground its way through such cases, it did all happened on his watch. Ultimately, of course, when these scandals became too virulent in their impacts, he did step forward and make public mea culpas about them. But it will be a long time before such blots on those white robes of the pope fade away.

The Church, meanwhile, prepares to further transition itself forward into this 21sr Century. A century in which, technology, makes our world ever more focused on the material, and ever more secular in its perspectives. How it will manage to square that circle, will determine how well it remain relevant to those who profess to be…Catholic.

CENTURION