May 8, 2005

The Ratzinger report

Since Benedict’s election I’ve been reading works by and about our new pope.

As we prepared the last issue, I was praying that our new pope wouldn’t be elected until after we met our deadline on Tuesday, April 19. It’s not that I didn’t want to hear the good news—just that I was nervous about how we’d meet our deadline if we had to tear up the paper and start over again with news of the new pontiff. (We managed to send the issue off about six hours later than usual, with the help of coffee, prayers, and an understanding printer.)

I didn’t seriously think the election would be decided before Wednesday or Thursday. After all, most conclaves take several days to complete their momentous business, and this one had just begun the previous day. But to be on the safe side, I asked my friend Becky Menn-Hamblin (who works at HGTV, where everyone has a TV set at his or her desk) to monitor CNN for papal news.

It must’ve been shortly before noon when she called to say, “Mary, they’re saying they can’t tell what color the smoke is, but I’m telling you, this is white smoke.” She held the phone to her television set, and my heartbeat accelerated as I heard the crowds cheering in St. Peter’s Square. I didn’t realize how riveting the election would be until that moment, and as I ran to turn on the TV at the Chancery, my excitement increased.

Most of the staff ended up in front of that TV, and we watched as Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez appeared on the balcony and proclaimed, Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus papam—“I announce to you a great joy: we have a pope.”

I’ve been on a high ever since, and I’ve taken the opportunity to read as much as possible about the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as well as essays and articles by the cardinal. The more I learn, the more I admire and love the man. He is brilliant, kindly, good-humored, and self-effacing—so much more interesting and complex a personality than many of his critics suggest.

At the moment I’m reading God Is Near Us (Ignatius Press, 2003), a collection of the new pope’s essays on the Eucharist, and listening to audiotapes of Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium (Ignatius Press, 1999), a lengthy Q-and-A interview between Cardinal Ratzinger and the journalist Peter Seewald.

If you have the notion that the cardinal functioned as some sort of doctrinal attack dog (“the pope’s rottweiler”) in his former position as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, you should read (or listen to) Salt of the Earth to see how the congregation functioned. I was fascinated to learn about the collegial discovery and decision-making process of the congregation and how its members were constantly in dialogue with local church officials and others who could shed light on various cases. The congregation’s decisions represented the hard-won, carefully developed consensus of the members—not arbitrary or capricious decisions on any individual’s part.

In my reading I’ve also learned that Pope Benedict’s key passions are teaching, learning, and developing theological ideas. He was a popular university professor in 1977 when he was tapped to become the Archbishop of Munich—a big surprise to Father Ratzinger—and he really didn’t want the job because it would take him away from those passions. But he said yes because he felt it was his duty to serve the church rather than please himself. He was again surprised at being made a cardinal later the same year, but again he put service first. (Fortunately for us, he did find time to continue developing his ideas and writing.)

In 1981 he began his position as prefect, a post from which he tried to retire three times. His heart’s desire was to go home to Germany, where he could spend more time with his older brother, Georg, also a priest, and devote himself to his studies.

Each time the former Cardinal Ratzinger requested resignation, Pope John Paul II refused—and seeing how the pope continued his own work despite failing health and suffering, the cardinal knew he couldn’t press the point.

God obviously had plans for Joseph Ratzinger.

Since Pope Benedict’s election I’ve also read numerous articles by those who are disappointed in the conclave’s choice. One such piece, published May 1 in the Chicago Sun-Times, perfectly illustrates the way we humans tend to view the world through our own filters rather than see what’s actually going on. The author, William O’Rourke, is on the creative-writing faculty at the University of Notre Dame and is the author of the book The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left.

His recent column, “Will elevation to papacy change Benedict XVI?” takes the new pope to task for, well, looking so happy since his election.

O’Rourke’s problem seems to be that he can’t believe someone who didn’t want the papacy—as Benedict has openly said—could then wear such a big grin when appearing on the balcony April 19 and on every public appearance since then. O’Rourke calls it “a charm offensive,” commenting that the new pope tells the story about praying not to be elected “only to set up a punch line: ‘Evidently . . . [God] didn’t listen to me this time.’”

Because he looks so happy about the result, O'Rourke reasons, he must have been campaigning for it—must have wanted the “power” of the papacy. After all, he had been “second in command of one of the most powerful and wealthy enterprises in the world.”

Right.

Those who interpret the church primarily in terms of power politics will not be able to accept that the former cardinal would really have preferred to return to a quiet life of scholarship, family ties, Mozart, and churchyard cats.

I’ve been studying Pope Benedict’s photos, and he does indeed appear to be a profoundly happy man.

Why? I suspect it has to do with the joy of abandoning oneself to God’s will—a concept many find difficult to comprehend.