Mourning Benedict’s decision: may we trust what he has done

“My favourite Pope has broken my heart.”

Jet-lagged at 6:30 in the Montreal morning, I stared at my Facebook page in shock. My friends in Rome had the news first, and they were sending it to friends electronically. More out of instinct than reason — for I do not consciously trust the secular press to report Catholic news accurately — I clicked to the UK’s Telegraph. My eyes had not deceived me, and my Rome friends had not gone crazy. The Holy Father really had announced — no, not his resignation — his abdication. The unthinkable had not only been thought but said.

This was not news I wanted to be alone with, and so I went upstairs to tell my husband, a convert, a man who took the name “Benedict” for his confirmation and rejoices every week in the motu proprio that struck the chains from the traditional Latin Mass. Although he prays often for the Holy Father’s health and sings the “Pro Pontifice Nostro” with great gusto during Benediction, my husband has long been resigned to the fact that Pope Benedict is old and frail. It would have been a matter for sorrow if I were bringing Mark quite different news, but not for this unsettling, even frightening, shock.

I know more than one heart broke when the news filtered out Feb. 11. Of course, many Catholic blogs and newspapers have been quick to absorb the news, to praise the Holy Father for his decision, to rejoice in, or deplore, the past eight years, and to look forward with excitement to the election of the next pope. There have been many questions and much speculation, but the quick acceptance on the part of many Catholics — summed up as “Thank you, Papa Ratzi! Enjoy your retirement!” — seems to me somewhat unconvincing. No, the Holy Father hasn’t died, and no, it seems his death is not imminent. But what has died is our comforting expectation that as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the Holy Father remains the Holy Father from his election until death does us part. Until last Monday, I had never heard of the five-month reign of Pope St. Celestine.

How do we mourn an abdication? For the fact is, many Catholics are already mourning the abdication. Cardinals, elderly men, wept when they heard the announcement. Catholics with traditional, theological interests tell me that they are disappointed, shocked, worried. Beyond the theological implications of papal retirement, Benedict XVI was doing so much good for the Church.

Among other accomplishments, he faced head-on the problem of clerical sexual misconduct, restored the traditional Latin Mass and found a place for those Anglicans who longed to join us but also to keep their liturgical traditions. Benedict even strove to win back the irregular and reviled Society of St. Pius X, a group whose unshaken love for the ancient faith is overshadowed by persistent and, unfortunately, not unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism among its clumsy leaders.

Traditionalists saw in Benedict a Pope who valued and protected traditional theology and worship, a Pope whose ecumenism did not stand in the way of welcoming eager converts to the faith. We hoped for even more wonders. We prayed for a long reign.

The abdication, then, came as a slap in the face although, yes, some years ago Benedict told a journalist he thought a pope should resign if he were no longer able to fulfil the tasks of his office. The situation reminds me of the shock of the apostles when Our Lord Jesus Christ was arrested, tried and crucified. He had told them it would happen, and they hadn’t wanted to believe Him. The triumphant profession into Jerusalem on a donkey must have seemed to them the prelude to a long and glorious reign, the crucifixion an unthinkable disaster.

The analogy may seem far-fetched to those who are perfectly sanguine about the abdication and look forward eagerly to the conclave. I beg their indulgence as I address readers who are grief-stricken. This loss — the strange, even unnatural loss — of a living Pope is perhaps for us a little Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Like the disciples, a time of hope and wonders has ended with something we could not have imagined, something that may even seem like a betrayal. How could a Pope resign, we ask. But how could the Messiah give Himself up for a shameful death, the apostles must have wondered. If traditionalists feel sad and frightened for the future, well, so did the apostles who hid together in the upper room. And yet we know, as they did not then know, that their time of mourning would be very short. Easter Sunday dawned. The Lord knew what He was doing, and we may trust that His servant Benedict knows what he is doing, too.

(Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer and author of Seraphic Singles.)