Die koerante is vol beprekings oor die aftrede van die pous. Die meeste artikels en berigte beeld hom uit as konserwatief, vaal en oninspirerend.
Ek lees vandag in die NYT 'n heeltemal ander perspektief op hom. Dit boei my, want dit laat my 'n spirituele kant van hom sien waarvan ek nie voorheen bewus was nie.
Ek onthou dat kollega's in Malta - jonk en krities - by my 'n soortgelyke indruk geskep het. Ek was bietjie wantrouig oor hul mening. En nou lees ek hierdie berig wat my herinner aan wat daardie kritiese jongmense vertel het.
Die tyd, sou Gamaliël sê, laat ons onderskei wat van God af kom. Wat ook al die geval is, dit bly vir my nog steeds 'n wroeging dat so 'n invloedryke kerk so geslote is teenoor vroue en teenoor mense aan die rand van die samelewing. En tog, dit boei my dat die skryster dink die pous het besluite van die tweede Vatikaanse konsilie meer konsekwent tot uitvoering gebring - en dit - indrukwekkend, deur Skoonheid in die liturgie terug te bring. Ook indrukwekkend is sy Augustiniaanse fokus op die persoonlike vereniging met die Waarheid (transformasie!) en op die liefde. Sy eerste pouslike ensikliek was oor die liefde.
Ek moet met my Malta-kollega's in gesprek tree. En dieper dink oor hoe vooroordele blind maak.
Ek moet met my Malta-kollega's in gesprek tree. En dieper dink oor hoe vooroordele blind maak.
Hier is die berig:
The pope is the latest of a small number of popes to resign the chair of St.
Peter. The most famous of these — the one whose resignation had all the
earmarks of an abdication — was Pietro del Morrone, Pope Celestine V,
the saintly Benedictine hermit who resigned in 1294 after only a few
months, realizing that he was called to serve his church through prayer
and penance rather than bitter politics and gorgeous, endless public
ceremonies.
It was a decision Benedict honored. In July 2010 he attended the
celebration of the 800th anniversary of Celestine’s birth in Sulmona,
Italy, and spoke of this medieval pontiff’s capacity for inner silence
and “vivid experience of the beauty of creation.”
The previous year, while visiting the same region after a devastating
earthquake, Benedict placed his pallium — the narrow band of wool with
which he was invested at his inauguration — over the case containing
Celestine’s remains, and left it behind. It was a significant
foreshadowing of the moment when he too would resign and, like
Celestine, face the uncertain verdict of history.
It cannot have escaped Benedict’s notice that, according to a
traditional (though debatable) interpretation of “The Inferno,” Pope
Celestine is the figure Dante met in the vestibule to hell: “I saw and
recognized the shade of one who, through cowardice, made the great
refusal.” Anyone who has this job can expect to be misunderstood.
Chief among the misunderstandings of Benedict’s pontificate are those
that cluster around the unhelpful label of “conservative.” He is far too
astute a scholar and too modern a churchman for such a label to be of
much use. Unfortunately, one still hears him accused of turning the
clock back on the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, thwarting the liturgical renewal it mandated and keeping the
laity firmly in its place — an impression that would not survive a
careful reading of his papal documents alongside the actual texts of the
council. In fact, under Benedict’s leadership, the celebration of Mass,
the “source and summit” of Catholic life, has begun to mirror more
faithfully the reforms that the Second Vatican Council intended. Beauty
is back in season, and millions of Catholics around the world are
embracing this change with gratitude.
For the intellectuals of many faiths who admire him, Benedict is a
profound religious thinker in the Augustinian tradition according to
which the longing for truth is innate and universal and the various
disciplines of philosophy, theology and the natural sciences all have as
their ultimate aim a personal union with truth. With his distinctly
nonfundamentalist interpretation of the Book of Genesis; his
sophisticated handling of recent trends in biblical criticism (most
notably, though least noticed, his book “Eschatology: Death and Eternal
Life”); his role in the creation of the modern Catholic catechism; and
his papal writings on faith, reason and love (beginning with his
extraordinary first encyclical “God Is Love”), Pope Benedict has opened a
new era in the dialogue between religion and secular reason.
His errors, of course, have been amply recorded. Less attention has been given to his efforts to make amends. The speech in 2006 at the University of Regensburg was a public relations
disaster: one wonders how, in the midst of a deeply thoughtful
reflection on faith and reason, he failed to foresee the damage he would
cause by quoting, without evaluation, the Islamophobic remarks of a
14th-century Byzantine emperor. The upshot of the resulting debate,
though, was an improvement in Catholic-Muslim relations, for which Pope
Benedict deserves some credit. His critique of New Age versions of
Buddhism as narcissistic was poorly phrased, and instantly
misunderstood; yet even this gaffe provided an occasion for fruitful
dialogue.
He was willing to allow that condoms might have value in preventing the
transmission of H.I.V. in Africa. And where bioethics and sexual ethics
are concerned, he has sought to clarify the consistent rationale of
Catholic teaching, to defend the dignity of the human person, and to
carry on the version of feminism that one associates with John Paul II.
Pope Benedict’s announcement that he is retiring — made on the feast day
of Our Lady of Lourdes, the World Day of the Sick, on the threshold of
an early Lent — was his “Nunc dimittis,” his “I will diminish,” his
final summons to a weary church to look beyond politics and the calculus
of power, and to recover its real sources of renewal. Even the
“spiritual but not religious” set might be intrigued by a pope who, by
resigning his position, admits not only his own frailty but that of the
throne on which he has been seated. What I see in Pope Benedict XVI is
not the shade of one who through cowardice made the great refusal, but
the substance of one who through humility and wisdom made the great
acceptance.
