Week in Review - Do Popes Quit?

Books & Arts

Want to send this page or a link to a friend? Click on mail at the top of this window.

More Books and Arts

A SPECIAL SECTION: Haiti, Since the January 12, 2010 Fierce Earthquake

Posted April 12, 2010

Do Popes Quit?

HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

The Hermit Pope Celestine V was pope for five months before resigning in 1294.

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

VATICAN CITY

He is elected for life, by a group of elderly men infused with the will of God. People address him as Holy Father, not Mr. President. After bishop of Rome, his second title is vicar of Jesus Christ.
Can a man like this quit his job?

A smattering of voices suggest that Pope Benedict XVI can, and should, as outrage has built in recent weeks over clerical abuses in the Catholic Church. The calls - from some lay Catholics, bloggers, secular publications like the German magazine Der Spiegel and street protesters - have been fueled by reports that laid blame at his doorstep, citing his response both as a bishop long ago in Germany and as a cardinal heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles these cases. In the most recent disclosure, on Friday, the news emerged that in 1985, when Benedict was Cardinal Ratzinger, he signed a letter putting off efforts to defrock a convicted child-molesting priest. He cited the priest's relative youth but also the good of the church.

Vatican officials and experts who follow the papacy closely dismiss the idea of stepping down. "There is no objective motive to think in terms of resignation, absolutely no motive," said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, in an interview before Friday's disclosure. "It's a completely unfounded idea."

Friday's disclosure is not likely to change that position. The princes of the church - the cardinals who elected Benedict five years ago - have been virulent in their rejection of criticism of the pontiff. Last week, the dean of the cardinals, Angelo Sodano, told the official Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano that it was not Jesus' fault that Judas betrayed him and not a bishop's fault if a priest shamed himself. "And certainly the pontiff is not responsible," said Cardinal Sodano, who referred to church criticism as "petty gossip" before the pope's Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square - although on Friday, the Vatican spokesman adopted a softer tone in a Vatican Radio address.

There is a more practical reason why Benedict will most likely remain on the throne of Peter, said Alberto Melloni, a professor of church history and the director of the liberal Catholic John XXIII Foundation for Religious Science in Bologna. Who in the hierarchy would want an ex-pope sitting around, possibly passing judgment on his successor, possibly attracting a rival faction?

Mr. Melloni offered another, subtler explanation for why the pope would not be leaving. To resign, paradoxically, the pope has to feel in a strong enough position to say, "Of course, God does not need me; he can drive the church with any other type of driver," Mr. Melloni said. A pope with that kind of confidence probably wouldn't need his cardinals to defend him so vigorously, which suggests that Benedict may feel insecure, in Mr. Melloni's interpretation.

If serious evidence of the pope's involvement in bad decisions emerges, the cardinals might be inclined to soften in their support. In any case, it is possible that the cardinal electors will take a closer look at the record of candidates on abuse issues for the next election.

Most analysts reject the possibility of resignation. "A lot of foreign newspapers are saying it, but the answer is absolutely no," said Emma Fattorini, a professor of history at the University of Rome. "The church is not a party, a movement, a newspaper, a government."

____________________

The vicar of Jesus Christ retires to Heaven. Still, resignation has been contemplated from time to time.

____________________

Of course, popes have resigned before - the last a mere 595 years ago, when Gregory XII stepped down to heal a schism. Before that, Celestine V, a fiercely ascetic former hermit who wore his temporal power heavily, resigned in 1294 (Dante consigned him to hell for cowardice, some interpreters of the "Inferno" believe).

While it does not apply to Benedict, another reason for papal resignation was widely discussed in the Vatican in the years before John Paul II' s death in 2005. Several cardinals openly raised the possibility in the event John Paul became too ill to govern.

One of those cardinals was Joseph Ratzinger. If John Paul "sees that he absolutely cannot do it anymore, then certainly he will resign," the cardinal was quoted as saying in the weekly publication of his old archdiocese, back in 2002. Two years later, he gave some insight into his conception of the papacy in an interview with the Italian Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana. "The pope is chosen for life because he is a father, and his paternity goes beyond his function," he said, paraphrasing Pope Paul VI.

John Paul himself entertained thoughts about resigning. In his last will and testament, he wrote, "Providence has seen fit for me to live in the difficult century that is departing into the past, and now in the year in which I reach my 80s, one needs to ask oneself if it is not the time to repeat with the biblical Simeon, 'Nunc dimittis.'" The Latin was a reference to a Gospel passage in which Simeon says, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace."

John Paul was responsible for two recent but fleeting references to papal resignation in official church policy. A revision of the code of canon law issued under him, in 1983, says, "If it happens that the Roman pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone."

In John Paul's 1996 constitution on papal succession, "Universi Dominici Gregis," he made a reference to "the death or valid resignation of the pope" as he set limits on the College of Cardinals' actions after either event. In any case, it might be no surprise that the leader of a worldwide church of one billion people would at least think about throwing in the towel. Pius XII reportedly planned to resign if the Nazis invaded the Vatican, and some believed that Paul VI, weighed down by the office, contemplated the idea, according to â€œ101 Questions and Answers on Popes and the Papacy," by Christopher M. Bellitto, a church historian at Kean University in Union, N.J.

I think it's highly unlikely that this pope will resign," Mr. Bellitto said. "There's in his mind and the curia's mind not enough evidence that he did anything wrong. I imagine he thinks, 'Probably God put me in this position, and it will be up to God to take me out of this position.'"

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, Week in Review, of Sunday, April 11, 2010.

Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights

More from wehaitians.com

Main / Columns / Books And Arts / Miscellaneous