In times of great crisis the Church has convened councils to renew itself. I will mention the very first epoch-making council, that of Nicea in AD 325, which established the basis of Christian belief with the compilation of the Nicene Creed we still use today. There was also the Council of Trent, convened by Paul III Farnese that set the Counter-Reformation rolling. In the lifetimes of many of us, Vatican Council II brought the Church in synch with the 20th century. However, during the Pontificate of the late John Paul II, the winds of change got stuck in the doldrums and there they have remained ever since.
Many people wondered why the College of Cardinals chose Joseph Ratzinger to be Pope; a scholarly, retiring bureaucrat; a stark anticlimax to his showman predecessor who managed to communicate with the masses even when trapped in a body riddled by Parkinson's Disease. Cardinal Ratzinger's position as Head of Doctrine for so many years had not endeared him overmuch to the rank and file of the Catholic world. He was, and to some extent still is, known as God's Rottweiler. It's now plain that the oration at Pope Karol Woytila's funeral was, in fact, an electoral manifesto and, to the dismay of those who were expecting a renewal under a new and charismatic leader, Benedict XVI ascended to the Throne of St Peter without much deliberation on the part of the conclave.
Since then, Benedict XVI, like Laocoon, has been struggling with the monsters of the deep which have emerged, intent on destroying the Catholic Church. The most virulent of the monsters are the escalating paedophilia scandals and the threat of Islam to a Europe that is culturally Christian, yet, in moral disarray; ultra-Catholic Malta's a la carte Christian morality is a case in point.
It is pretty obvious to me now that the College of Cardinals was well aware that these monsters were, sooner rather than later, going to grow apocalyptically. Who was better positioned to face them than the Head of Doctrine who had been dealing with them for so many years? Furthermore, just imagine had they decided to elect a young reformer. Imagine the paedophile scandals reaching epic proportions when the Church was in the midst of a delicate process of self renewal? All reforms would have been dashed and the troubles of the Church infinitely magnified.
Therefore, Byzantine as it may appear, the election of Benedict XVI was no accident put part of a bigger picture that is only emerging now. I am, in fact, convinced that Joseph Ratzinger accepted the position in the full knowledge that it fell to him to reap a whirlwind that very few other Pontiffs have been unlucky enough to contend with. I feel that he willingly accepted the Papacy in order to bear the brunt of decades upon decades of misguided policy both with regard to the internal rot within the Church's ranks and the alarming infiltration of Islamic fundamentalism in Europe. This is why I strongly believe that the next step is that Benedict XVI will convene a council to renew the Church from within and without just like John XXIII did, and then leave it to his successor, inevitably a young forward-looking prelate, to take the Church into the 21st century albeit a trifle late but not a moment too soon.
This is why I believe that, despite his innate failings, Catholics must seriously pray for this Pope who will be among us very soon. His burden is huge. Everyone in the Vatican, with the apparent exception of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has accepted the Church's culpability and has admitted to adhering to a damaging and short-sighted policy for too long.
The growing atheist and agnostic choruses of disapproval are shrieking for the total annihilation of the Catholic Church. The Vatican, meanwhile, has not stopped asking to be forgiven. Even those courageous young men who have asked to meet the Pope want to do so not because they want any money, not because they want to harm the Church but because, like many of us whose love of the Catholic Church is bred in the bone, despite the slaps in the face and rejections, they want to make their peace with Christ's earthy representative and put their nightmares to rest.
Benedict XVI has been vilified in the international media like no other Pope in history. On his frail octogenarian shoulders he is bearing the sins of the entire Catholic Church and, like a lamb to the slaughter, he is undergoing this terrible trial with great courage and equanimity. He will, mark my words, go down in history as a martyr for the Faith.
kzt@onvol.net