The scale of Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement Monday of his resignation shook the world to its core. It rocked Western civilization on its axis. As with any human event that sends us spinning off track, the effect is seismic.
Where do we go from here? How do we get back to normal, if that is even possible now, which I doubt? What happens to this pillar of worldwide faith that has had one brick removed and the structure is teetering, maybe ready to come crashing down?
True, it’s not the first time a pope has stepped down from the Chair of St. Peter. But when you are the successor to the Apostle Peter, whom Jesus designated as the “rock” on which Christianity was to be built (Matthew 16:18-19), an abdication, a resigning of this post is a breach of faith, a snapping in a chain that goes back more than 2,000 years.
The earliest years of Christianity were under constant threat and tremendous persecution. Many adherents to the faith were martyred on a fairly constant basis. In the fading days of the Roman Empire, and with the slow but steady rise during these first centuries of the power of Christianity itself, the times were rife with tension, intolerance and grief.
It must be remembered, too, that although the 21st century may regard the pope as a figure not much more than an old man running around in a fancy nightgown, Christianity literally built Western civilization itself. Papal resignations are not to be treated lightly. They determine human history.
Pontian was one of the earliest church fathers. He became pope in 230 and resigned in 235 because of threats from the Roman emperor Maximinus. Pontian was banished to the island of Sardinia and eventually died from harsh treatment. Following him was Marcellinus, who stepped down after a short reign of eight years (similar to today’s Pope Benedict, who also abdicated after eight years).
Liberius, a pope who resigned in 366, was exiled, to which Pope Felix III was then put in charge. At that time, the Roman Empire wanted two popes to reign, but the contrary Roman population rejected Felix and had him expelled instead.
After him was John XVIII, in which so little was known, except a very obscure reference that this pope died as a monk near Rome in 1009 may have indicated he, too, was rejected and resigned.
Here’s something very ironic and it makes you wonder why Pope Benedict XVI chose Benedict for his designation. Pope Benedict IX became pope in 1033, and then resigned about 1045 after bringing considerable disgrace to the papacy. In the end, he resigned three times, finally selling the papacy itself to his godfather (back in those days popes often as not were a dishonorable, Mafia-like lot).
So this godfather, who became Gregory VI, was out after two years in 1046; the church at this time suggested he resign, the sooner the better due to his scandalous behavior.
Then there was Celestine V, an avowed hermit who was quite old (84) when he left the papal chair after five months. He was declared unfit to be pope by other church officials, yet Celestine had the wisdom to turn the papacy over to the office of cardinals to let them work out what to do. Celestine V resigned in 1294.
The last pope to resign was Gregory XII as a way of trying to heal what Catholic history calls the Great Western Schism. In the 1400s, Europe was so fractured, and at a time when popes held both religious and worldly power, the papacy was divided into two factions — one in Rome, one in Avignon, France. The French pope, Benedict XIII, refused to attend the Council of Constance, which tried to resolve having two popes heading the church. So this pope was deposed by the council in 1417, and Pope Benedict XIII continued acting as pope in his own right from Spain, issuing various decrees, filling the College of Cardinals until the council elected Pope Martin V in November of that year, finally bringing the warring pope era to an end.
So the Catholic Church, even as late as 2013, has good reason to be shocked, upset and deeply concerned about the global effects of the current Pope Benedict abdicating. His reasons — advanced age, seriously diminished capacity to serve, doctors telling him to not make any more overseas trips, his conscience telling him he is not up to the demands of the Catholic Church in modern times — but in being pope, the head of all Christendom, where does the personal leave off, and where do loyalty and service to God remain?
Since popes have stayed until they died for the past 600 years, Pope Benedict’s stepping down creates a crisis in the church that it definitely doesn’t need, coming at a time when religion itself struggles to find footing in the modern world.
On the one hand, yes, religion should matter — there is no question religion is what makes us human — but so do such things as science, which tries to find answers; art, which probes the soul; knowledge, something every human must have; to develop compassion instead of hate, to search for peace and not always create war.
Perhaps you think I am overstating the importance of the Catholic Church, and certainly, faith itself is not limited to Catholicism. Yet who we are throughout the Western world, where we are, what we do today is directly descended from what Jesus and the Apostles established long, long ago.
So Pope Benedict’s resignation, abdication, stepping down, retiring to a life of seclusion is no slight act; it rattles our lives to our very core. The effects are already creating confusion, sadness, that familiar hollow sense of loss, as if the pope has passed away. It means the new pope will be shadowed by the former pope, no matter who he will be, or what he will do.
History will have to judge Pope Benedict’s extraordinary abdication. While we may think his act is either a cowardly or courageous move, only time will tell which is the right answer. It’s impossible for any of us to think our actions will alter the future, that our decisions only affect the here and now.
Truth is, Pope Benedict’s resignation leaves us forever changed.
Jodeane Albright is an award-winning columnist/blogger and the community editor for the Idaho State Journal.
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