The perils of overactive imaginations as two brothers say goodbye
- John L. Allen Jr.Jun 21, 2020
This is the first time I saw this:
Since the trip was announced Thursday, Benedict’s first outside Italy since his resignation seven years ago, various versions of the following theories have bubbled up in the German and Italian press, as well as in on-line discussions:
- Benedict XVI will never return to Rome, because, like his namesake St. Benedict, he’s disgusted by the corruption of the Eternal City and wishes to flee into a sort of 21st century hermitage.
- Benedict won’t come back because he’s unable to support the direction being set by Pope Francis, so declining to return after his brother’s death is his final, albeit silent, form of protest. (This despite the fact that Benedict sought, and received, Francis’s approval before undertaking the journey.)
- Benedict will stay in Germany in order to serve as a counterweight to the progressive line of the majority of the country’s bishops, as they embark on a controversial two-year “synodal journey” featuring issues such as clerical celibacy, sexual morality and women in the Church. (That seems to be the most titillating prospect for the German press in particular.)
5 comments:
They are both frail and very old men whose days of having the stamina to lead anything are well in the past. This is why they retired.
Battles are for the young. Young people do not have strokes from blood pressure rising in combat. All old men have a words, and even those need be few and carefully chosen.
And they know even those will be limited by what little time remaining which God grants them in this life. They know at some point the younger generation must simply sink or swim on their own when the adults have done all they can do.
I like Pope Benedict, but it should be said that many of the bad bishops and cardinals we have today were appointed by him and Pope John Paul II.
Approximately 1.2 billion Catholics, millions and millions of words written by millions in newspapers, blogs etc and on websites each year by Catholics discussing the liturgy, Francis and a dozen other topics..
But it is easy to forget when it comes to those in a position to have TRUE inside knowledge of what is happening right NOW in Rome, in the Vatican, among prelates right at the top...
That would be a miniscule, tiny number of people.
AJP.
Anon 1031.....they were appointed via recommendations from this side, Popes know only what they are told and they also did not know who they COULD trust....the kingmakers such a McCarrick and HIS patrons...and that is not only here, but inside the Vatican, or especially the Vatican. I am quite sure Benedict saw how used was John Paul II was in his declining years, and saw how thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated was the Vatican and could only see worse coming if he stayed and his true patrimony betrayed if he did.
Twenty years ago John Allen wrote a biography of Cardinal Ratzinger from a liberal Catholic standpoint (he later admitted that it was unbalanced). He largely discounted the prospect of a Ratzinger papacy, but remarked that it would result in 'better bishops'.
From the perspective of Great Britain (England and Scotland) it has to be said that the appointments since 2005 have been encouraging. Abbot Hugh Gilbert of Pluscarden Abbey is now Bishop of Aberdeen. Mark Davies (Shrewsbury) and Philip Egan (Portsmouth) are notable conservatives and hate-figures for The Tablet. Robert Byrne (Hexham and Newcastle) founded the Oxford Oratory and when he was made an auxiliary bishop in 2014 he was the first Oratorian to be consecrated bishop since 1874. Even Marcus Stock (Leeds) who seemed to fit the stereotype of a CBCEW apparatchik dismayed the 'tabletistas' by celebrating a Pontifical High Requiem Mass (EF) for his predecessors.
What has changed? Firstly, the Bishops' Conference(s). The old liberals are dying off and there are no young liberals to replace them. The Apostolic Nuncio to England and Wales from 2011 to 2017, Archbishop Mennini, whose responsibility it is to draw up the 'terna', saw himself as representing the Holy See rather than the CBCEW. The Bishops' Conference as a self-perpetuating oligarchy, the so-called 'magic circle', is a thing of the past.
This was symbolized recently in the decision by Bp Davies to undo the 1984 wreckovation of Shrewsbury cathedral and restore it to its 19th century glory. Judging from the most recent photographs it is now more or less complete, and the whole process took little over a year.
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