Stepping Out of the Limelight

What is literally the biggest news in the world today? That Pope Benedict XVI is stepping down as head of the Roman Catholic Church. If the head of Walmart, the biggest corporation in the world, decides it’s time for sunny weather and lots of golf you might read about it in the business pages, but when the moral leader of 1/6 – yes, you read that right, 1/6 – of the world’s population decides that a permanent vacation is in order, it’s headline news the world over.

Popes Down the Line

Through what is called the line of apostolic succession, the Catholic Church traces its roots back to St. Peter, he of leading disciples, denying Jesus, and being crucified upside down fame. Jesus gives this line its starting point in scripture, when he looks at the man previously known as Simon, renames him Peter (meaning “Rock”) and says to him that “on this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). 

As the line of these popes have come down the centuries, there have been good popes, bad popes, and some how-come-a-lightning-strike-didn’t-destroy-the-church-the-minute-he-walked-in-the-door popes. A very few of these retired, deciding that a life of prayer and piety sounded better than one of politicking. Quite a few more were forcibly retired, often with the help of poison or a well-sharpened knife. But those days of chaos and craziness have fallen out of fashion, and for the last 6 centuries popes have kept to the simple course of getting elected and staying in office until they died.

JPII, Ailing Popes and Religious Authority

What about Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II? He had been in severely ill health for many years before his death in 2005, and there had been many calls for him to step down, but JPII would have none of it. God had called him to the papacy, he said, and it was his cross to bear. Benedict, JPII’s doctrinal right-hand man for the 24 years he spent heading up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has a different vision, though. He says that the leader of the largest religious institution in the whole world needs to be fit mentally and physically as well as spiritually in order to do the work that he is called to do in a Facebook-Twitter-do-it-now-while-everyone-is-watching world.

But this leaves Catholic and other Vatican watchers with a lot of questions:

Ø Is Benedict retiring because he saw the behind-the-scenes of what happens when a pope becomes incapacitated, and he believes that having others pulling the strings while the pope remains a figurehead is not good for the Church he loves?

Ø Is he setting a precedent that is going to haunt other popes in their advanced years – will they be strongly pushed to step down and make way for younger shoulders to carry the burden? 

Ø Does a retired pope exert any authority different from that of any other Church leader?

Ø Will he still be a power figure in the Church?

Benedict may answer these questions one way (he is going into a life of prayer in a monastery, away from the power plays), but that does not mean that all those who follow in his footsteps will do the same.

Where the Papal Rubber Meets the Road

To the on-the-ground Catholic, the comings and goings of popes may not matter so much. But the decisions of the papacy have an extraordinary amount of on-the-ground payoff for those same Catholics: who they can or cannot marry, what forms of birth control they may or may not use, what values they should teach their children, how they should think about abortion, the death penalty, stem cell research, and a whole host of other social hot-button issues. A pope has the potential to dramatically change the conversation about an insane number of subjects for an insane number of people.

And that’s why the retirement of this one 86-year-old man is the biggest news story you’ll read about all week.