Don’t interpret humility and shyness as signs of a ‘Ratzinger Lite’
I’m beginning to think I was too cautious. In the days that followed, the new Pope seems to have charmed all comers. At his inauguration on Sunday the world encountered a gentle and gracious man. Being 78 and somewhat shy doesn’t seem like a disadvantage any more.
Are we in for another momentous papacy? There are promising signs. The Pope’s natural shyness may work to his advantage. We feel sympathy for a man who must fill John Paul II’s shoes without having the immense crowd-pleasing skills of his predecessor.
This Pope’s real selling point, however, is his command of theology and his capacity to say meaningful things in an eloquent way. Last Sunday, he spoke of the lambswool ‘pallium’ which Popes have worn on their shoulders since the fourth century.
The pallium provides an image of the shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep and takes it, on his shoulders, to safety. But it also symbolises, the Pope said, the “yoke of Christ” - “God’s yoke is God’s will”, Benedict said.
“And this will does not weigh down on us, oppressing us and taking away our freedom. To know what God wants, to know where the path of life is found... this is also our joy.”
This is what Joseph Ratzinger has always been about. The Church teachings which he once defended so vigorously, even in the face of widespread dissent, he defended because he saw them as “God’s yoke” - the Church’s formula for human happiness.
On Sunday he addressed the fear that following Christ might cost too much.
“If we let Christ into our lives, we lose ... absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide ... the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation.” Though he may be 78 and somewhat reserved, Benedict XVI has no plans to be a ‘transitional Pope’. He will wear that pallium with purpose.
Yet, even while asserting his desire to teach the faith, Benedict disarmed some of his critics. In the early hours of his papacy there was much talk of his previous role as an ‘enforcer’ of the Church’s doctrine.
By Monday morning, however, there was positive commentary about his warm words for people of other faiths and non-believers. The appearance of a new ‘softer’ Joseph Ratzinger was hailed.
There may be some wishful thinking in that sort of talk.
Or perhaps an unspoken fear on the part of his former critics. It would be far too much of a coincidence if people ended up taking a second doctrinally conservative Pope to their hearts. In fact, it would lay bare a truth that is gradually dawning on us. Many of us fall for a rather superficial analysis of the Church and its teachings. We have internalised a view that the Church leadership really is too conservative and must move with the times. Yet it seems that the very firmness, the steadiness, of a Pope who refuses to water down the Church’s message is capable of speaking to us at a deeper level.
That might seem improbable at first glance. But then, the scale of the grief that awaited Pope John Paul’s death would have seemed improbable a month ago. And it seemed improbable, a week ago, that so many people who would describe themselves as socially liberal would find themselves rooting publicly for Benedict XVI.
It has been a month of surprises. Those of us without clear memories of previous papal elections or funerals half expected that the Vatican’s elaborate ceremonies, full of hierarchy and formality, would seem passé in a society which cherishes democratic values so strongly. But coincidentally, or providentially, papal events seemed made for the media. The vigil for the dying Pope, and the period of mourning before the election of his successor, caused a surge of interest in the Church and its teachings.
For once, too, we sensed that the splendid surrounds of the Vatican were not in contradiction to the Church’s humble origins and its message of solidarity with the poor. We rediscovered the power of ritual and ceremony to focus our attention on the big questions about the nature of our existence and the momentous answers that the Christian church offers. The dignity of the Christian message was accentuated.
NONE of this is to say that the Church’s problems are going to disappear overnight. Pope Benedict would appear to know that better than anybody. In 2003, he gave a 45-minute interview in English to American journalist Raymond Arroyo. Asked about Pope John Paul’s vision for a “new springtime of evangelisation” in the western world, Ratzinger replied that the Church would not see “buses of conversions” in the near future. “That is not the way of God. The essential things in history begin always with the small, more convinced communities... it should be an error to think now or in 10 years with the new springtime, all people will be Catholic. That is not our future, nor our expectation. But we will have really convinced communities ... a new life in very convinced persons with joy.”
This “creative minority”, Ratzinger believed, would be attractive even to non-believers: “I would say, if we have young people really with the joy of the faith... this will show the world, ‘even if I cannot share it, even if I cannot convert to it at this moment, here is the way to live for tomorrow’.”
The new Pope, therefore, will take a reflective view of the large crowds who gathered in St Peter’s Square in recent weeks, or watched on TV.
On the one hand, the crowds bore testimony to humanity’s deep spiritual hunger and the enormous significance of the Church for people worldwide. Yet the Church, like its founder, knows it must be ready to suffer the displeasure of the crowd rather than abandon its message. Ratzinger has realised that all along. As Pope Benedict, he is unlikely to forget it.
That is why it would be inaccurate to see the gentle, people-friendly Pope who emerged last Sunday as some kind of rebranded ‘Joseph Ratzinger lite’.
The new Pope was simply following the advice he gave himself and his fellow cardinals last Monday before they entered the conclave. “Truth and love are blended,” Ratzinger had said. “Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like ‘a clanging cymbal’,” he said, quoting St Paul.
This desire he has, to proclaim popular and unpopular truths of his Church in a spirit of love may well find expression in the papal motto that he has yet to choose. “Speak the truth in love,” writes St Paul in Chapter 4 of his letter to the Ephesians. Place your bets now.
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