THE POPE’S RESIGNATION… HAVE THE WOLVES WON?

IBIYEMI VICTOR

Maybe the announcement of the Pope’s resignation would be the most bizarre news of the year. It has left many in religious coma and spiritual convolution. Many are yet to believe it is true looking for others to wake them from this slumber? Most especially, in the catholic fold, some conservatives believe it is a ruse that will actually not happen, traditionalists cover their faces to this announcement seeing it as ridicule or a joke. In the secular society, this announcement has attracted and promoted many bulletins and newspapers when consumers see the different headlines of the Pope’s resignation. A journalist expressed her shock inter alia: “I cannot still get my head around this announcement, it all seems rather like the moment when the curtain moves back to reveal the wizard of Oz as a wee man pulling lever”. Some political analysts see it as a political prank and a cunning political decision. Amidst all these flying opinions, the fact remains that the announcement has been made and it is really real.

For those who still doubt the possibility and canonicity of the pope’s resignation, the provisions of canon 332§2 confirms the validity of papal resignation if freely made and properly manifested. In the history of Catholicism, the last papal resignation was six centuries ago. Though papal resignation is an uncommon event, only five popes have unambiguously resigned with historical certainty, all but one between the 11^th and 15^th centuries- disputed claims of four previous popes having resigned date between 3^rd and 11^th centuries. Gregory XII (1406-1415) resigned in 1415 as the last pope who resigned from office. Eccentric though, it is an established phenomenon that popes can truly resign, if they choose due to reason stipulated above. Benedict therefore was not insane or doing a extraordinary thing when he announced his resignation from the papacy.  

Though stubbornly conservative in many respects, Benedict is also a radical (as displayed in his encyclical of 2005 on the theology of love). Secretly, he has kept his most radical utterance till the end- it was a blast. Speaking in Latin at a routine event, he said: “after having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Peterine ministry.” He further said in his resignation letter that “in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of St. Peter and proclaim the gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary. Strength which has in the past few months deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity adequately to fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.” And so because of this infirmity from old age, he has decided to step down for another spirit-filled man to wear the shoes of the fisherman.

With these upheavals in the Church at this time via sex-scandals, massive loss of faith in Europe, Islamic crisis, ranging from the outside and the inner circle- in the Vatican via Vatican leaks and other manipulative activities in the inner life of the Church, it is only apt that the old pope resigns for someone more energetic to continue the work he had been doing so well.  

To his critics, Benedict is a weak pope who gave free hands to Vatican officials who almost ruptured the image of the Church in the last days of his papacy. Some even said he is so bookish that he forgot how to administer the affairs of the Church orderly. Some critics have been more vehement and argue that through his resignation, Benedict has exposed the papacy as a job or profession and not a sacrosanct heavenly ambassadorship. Some faithful see it as a betrayal of his divine mission and argue that “the theologian who held relativism as the worst foe of the Church has become the pope who relativized the papacy- popes have always suffered to the end, why is Benedict coming down from the cross”. Angry critics further the argument that “Ratzinger no longer believes that he is God's representative on earth- in fact he has lost faith. But has the Holy Father truly lost faith? In Benedict's first sermon as pope, he asked the faithful to pray for their new shepherd “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves” Have the wolves won? 

The wolves obviously can never win. The resignation of the pope if looked keenly with a reasonable faculty and in the light of faith and love, it is purely an act of grace, love and humility. In recent years, Benedict has been one of the oldest popes to have survived that enduring age. He is truly a German. Members of the episcopate normally retire at the age of 75, however, Benedict will be eighty-six in April and he was elected at seventy-eight- that should send some signals into reasonable minds. Furthermore, of what good is a pope with feeble mind and less administrative control due to infirmity or old age?  That is where the humility of Benedict shines out. He is such a humble saint that accepted the reality that he is now running out of strength, instead of wearing the fisherman's shoes when he is incapable of meeting the Peterine task adequately, he has decided to remove them for another young divinely-elected man to fit into the shoes and continue the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth. Not many of us can do that. How many would decrease for others to increase? Indeed, many of us monopolize the throne and eventually die in prayer that our fruits should inherit the throne such that it becomes a family tradition. What the pope has done is an act of grace.

On the last day of his pontificate- 28^th of February, the sede vacante begins and that is in preparation for the conclave. Surely, there are lessons for the conclave that will begin ceteris paribus on the 15-19 March. The 117 eligible Cardinals for the conclave must have learned some lessons from the resignation of Benedict XVI. In the conclave, the Holy Spirit and the Princes of the Church will confirm the successor of Benedict XVI and hence we will shout: Habemus Papam!!! As it has been, this is always an important time in the Church’s life- a time of reverent prayers. The decision of the Cardinals is the future of the Church of Christ, for whatever they bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven.        

What about the final days of Benedict XVI?  He is to retire to the Mater Ecclesia convent, founded in 1992 by John Paul II specifically to create a prayerful counterweight to the worldliness of the Roman Curia, the Church’s central administration. Will he be referred to as Pope Emeritus? As to the title of his retirement, nobody knows.

GOD BLESS THE POPE, THE GREAT AND GOOD