(Updated) Pope Benedict and his legacy
by Simon Caldwell, TCW:
POPE Benedict XVI is dead, succumbing to the frailty of his 95 years after almost a week of drifting in and out of consciousness. On Thursday he regained sufficient strength to celebrate Mass from his bed before declining for a final time and dying in Mater Ecclesiae monastery at the Vatican at 9.43am yesterday.
The Catholic Church is now mourning one of its greatest intellectual giants, an outstanding theologian who leaves a brilliant legacy, which grew from a life sometimes marred by trials and controversy.
Joseph Ratzinger overcame the obstacles in his way to emerge triumphant at the forefront of a small but distinguished band of faithful interpreters of authentic Christian teaching who were courageous and talented enough to confront the constant attempts by revolutionaries to redefine it. With Pope St John Paul II, whom he would later serve with distinction, the future Pope Benedict was present at the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, an event which sought to adapt the Catholic Church to the modern age, and like the Polish pope he understood clearly the parameters of the teaching of the council and how they were to be implemented. His rejection of a ‘year zero’ of new-fangled Christianity in favour of a hermeneutic of continuity with tradition inevitably pitched him against so-called progressives. Many of these were animated by what they called the ‘spirit of Vatican II’, a nebulous concept which strangely had more in common with the Zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s, but who seldom gave a damn about what the documentation of the council actually said.
Ratzinger had a critical role in facing down an internationally-concerted attempted hostile take-over of the Church by radical ideologues. It was in this context, and as Cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that he emerged in the popular imagination as a modern-day inquisitor, an enforcer, a right-wing reactionary, the ‘Panzerkardinal’ or ‘God’s Rottweiler’.
Read also: (Newer items at the top)
The Political Philosophy of Joseph Ratzinger by Fr. James V. Schall, Crisis Magazine
Benedict XVI: a steely intellect with a tender heart by James Parker, MercatorNet
Pope Benedict, My Papa by Fr Dwight Longenecker
‘A humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard’ by
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI by Ray Kinsella, The Article
Pope Benedict vs the calculating elites by Brendan O’Neill, spiked
Joseph Ratzinger: A Man Sent from God by R Jared Staudt, Crisis Magazine
The Torment of Pope Benedict by Damian Thompson, UnHerd
Benedict: The Pope who resigned from the papacy, BBC
‘One of the greatest theologians of his age’: Tributes pour in for Pope Benedict XVI who’s died at 95, Marcus Jones, Premier
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