PopeWatch: Disaster Rather

@Greg: My thought was that the reason why Pope Benedict resigned was that some negative circumstantial evidence had come out about Pope St. John Paul II and that it could seem as if Benedict had covered it up.

There are usually a half dozen factors that coalesce into an event, and I think it is so in Benedict’s case.
1)   It has been well attested that Benedict XVI was something of a hypochondriac.
2)   There have been rumors that Cdl Martini was told Benedict he would have to resign if he could not reform the Curia and clean up the scandalous mess.
3)   Five days prior to his resignation Benedict received the “two volume red leather bound” report on Vatileaks that showed both sexual and financial corruption on a grand scale.
4)   Having witnessed, first-hand, how the Curia manipulated St. John Paul II in his frailty, and he concluded he would be similarly abused.
5)   Concluding he was not up to the task of crushing the scandal, it wasn’t hard for Martini et. al. to convince him resignation was the only honorable solution.

Bottom line, he wasn’t the man for the job. Doesn’t mean isn’t a Saint. Just a man who came up wanting. History is full of such men.

The sad thing–or at least one of them–is that clerical types are so easy to cow, even if they’re Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church.

In the days following the Great War, little (in stature) Benedict XV, furious about a very public scandal in the U.S. Church, had the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston on his knees before him, weeping genuine tears. (It was his brother who had caused the scandal.) “The hand that gave the red hat can take it back again!” the Pope is reported to have said.

Short version: Benedict XVI did not have the requisite steel to ride herd over the dubiously eminent curial Cardinals.

In the immortal words of Clint Eastwood in the memorable film role as Dirty Harry in Magnum Force; “Man’s got to know his limitations”. Whatever Benedict’s limitations, he had enough integrity to acknowledge that he was not the indispensable man. Would that others had such humble judgement.

Wow! Talk about being cynics!
If you want to howl about gutless wonders, look at our bishops, archbishops, and cardinals. …Frankly, look at the lot of the Catholic faithful we have. How many times did John Paul II or Benedict XVI do anything that hinted at traditional norms or teaching, …and a solid 1/4 of the Catholic faithful screamed blood murder? Didn’t the progressive factions of the Church basically go ballistic when Benedict issued Summorum Pontificum?
I heard a very great deal during my teens about the “Spirit of Vatican II”, especially attending a Catholic high school. Yet as I…aged… and finally grew irritated enough with this “spirit” to actually investigate the Council, …this “spirit” proved very elusive, yet I finally discovered that the Council had actually written a great deal.
All I have ever learned about JP II and Benedict demonstrate they each had massive mountains to climb to provoke the Church to remember much of anything of it’s own history, teaching, or culture. Large chunks of the Church had no desire to remember any of this. Too many saw the “pre-conciliar” Church as being “the bad old days”.
Remember, then-Card Ratzinger had spoken with JP II about resigning from his then post in CDF. Card Ratzinger intended retiring to Germany, to spend his remaining days in quiet solitude with his brother, maybe attending a few academic conferences now and then. Instead, JP II declined his resignation, then the Holy Spirit seems recruited him to the papacy. John Paul, of course struggled with Parkinsons for 25(?) years. I could wish the Church had listened to both more thoroughly.
No, I’ve heard on several occasions how we don’t always get the pope we want, yet we sometimes get the pope we deserve. I think that applies to the current situation. If I read Vatican II, I find the Church seeking to reach out to the world in “new”, innovative ways, …and being perhaps a bit too optimistic about the world’s willingness to listen.
The only thing Benedict lacked was youth.

“We got the pope we needed. Catholics could never have known how corrupt the church had become…”
I understand your point, yet I cannot agree with this. I recall hearing rumblings about priestly abuse as early as 1988 or so. I recall the story exploded about 2002 with revelations in the Boston Globe. I ALSO recall being disgusted with the hypocrisy–and frankly the bigotry–of academia at the time. They had every reason to know precisely how much virtue and vice would come from “consent”. They insisted on “tolerance” anyway. They still declared how those “pelvic issues” the Church warned against were mostly old-fashioned, needlessly restrictive rules. Many still won’t admit how “safe” sex education contributed to this mess.

DHS, I believe Benedict was telling the truth when he gave his reasons for abdicating. I just don’t think it was the WHOLE truth.

If Benedict was looking to protect JPII, it most likely had to do with the Fr. Maciel scandal. As to what JPII knew about Maciel and when did he know it is unclear.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s exchange with ABC’s Brian Ross is very telling in that after it became clear Ross wasn’t buying Ratzinger’s Sgt. Schultz routine, he got visibly upset. Ratzinger was normally very even keeled in his public demeanor.

https://youtu.be/UK9b2O_Wdnc?si=eCgtrcRBpnu5BDow

His dismissive handling of Maciel was a bad look. Maciel’s victims were rightly upset with him. Benedict refused to meet with Maciel’s victims while he often met with other abuse victims makes for an even more problematic look.

The fact that he did not suppress the Legion, a cult masquerading as a religious order, is scandalous.

If there’s more to Benedict’s abdication than the official reason, it’s having to do with Maciel is a strong possibility, maybe even a probability.

Benedict did not laicize McCarrick. He ordered him to stay out of the public eye, an order McCarrick ignored with impunity.

I am not aware of any “one strike and you’re out” policy of JPII regarding abusive priests. In fact, JPII stood in the way of some bishops who wanted greater flexibility under canon law to more effectively deal with predatory priests.

in his book Vows of Silence, Jason Berry points out

“In March 1993, when the U.S. bishops’ delegation (including Cardinals Bevilacqua of Philadelphia and O’Connor of New York) met with John Paul, they wanted greater autonomy under canon law to remove child molesters from the priesthood. Four years after the U.S. bishops’ canonists first met with Vatican authorities on the matter, the Roman Curia held fast to the use of secret trials for presenting the pope information on which he could make a decision. American bishops balked at using a ritual many thought archaic as they dealt with expensive criminal and civil cases. The Americans wanted a way to expel bad priests. “My dear bishops,” said the pope.“I lived all those years under communism. I am not about to let that come into the church.”6 In viewing an accelerated way of laicizing sex offenders as akin to a totalitarian regime’s trampling on clerics’ rights, John Paul emphasized sin over crime, a mentality to which many bishops attributed their own mistakes, seeing the abuse of children as a moral lapse to be forgiven.7 In Rome, the bishops spoke of financial losses from litigation; the pope told them to keep suspended priests on the payroll. “You’ll get no quick fixes out of me,” he declared.”

While there were aspects of John Paul II’s pontificate that were stellar, his handling of the clerical sex abuse scandal was not one of them.