Another victim of enforced piety

Today we awoke to the news that Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is to resign his post as Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. This ‘shock’ announcement has certainly come rather out of the blue – not even his closest aides were aware of the decision – but it can come of little surprise that a frail, old man who has appeared demonstrably weary for some time should have finally cracked under the immense pressure of leading one of the world’s most revered and despised institutions.

It is no secret that Ratzinger’s health has been in decline for a number of years. Both in movement and in speech, he has become considerably slower, and his doctors have advised him not to make any more transatlantic journeys. In 1991 he suffered a haemorrhagic stroke, and was hit by another in May 2005, just one month after being elected as Pope John Paul II’s successor. Cardinals have reported that he suffers from a heart condition and Pope Benedict himself remarked early in his pontificate that he did not expect a long papacy. This is clearly not a man who should have held such a position as he did. Any ordinary 85 year old with a heart condition and a history of strokes would be relinquished of all responsibilities and receive round-the-clock care. Yet, this poor man has endured an eight-year papacy; a reign which has transformed an obviously frail man into a dangerously unhealthy one.

The most distressing thing, however, is that this suffering has not been self-imposed. If Ratzinger had ignored all medical and clerical advice and freely chosen to continue his duties as Pope in spite of his ever deteriorating health, then one could at least admire his commitment. But there are plenty of indications that Benedict has been dragged along against his better judgement by the Catholic authorities, who are determined to squeeze every last drop of piety and devotion out of anyone who professes faith in the Catholic Church, however feeble and ill they may be. Ratzinger twice asked permission to resign his post as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith before he became Pope, and was twice refused by John Paul II, whose own servility and dogmatism drove him to see in his closest clerical servant. Furthermore, Ratzinger had already reached a bishop’s retirement age (75 years old) by the time John Paul II passed away, and the Cardinal very much took up the mantle of Holy Father out of submission to the whims of the Catholic Church rather than out of a willing desire to hold the position.

But this all sounds rather familiar. A frail old person who is used by the Catholic Church as a propaganda tool, and sucked dry of all their goodness and devotion to Catholicism. Mother Teresa is still revered today as one of the most saintly figures in modern Catholic history, but for many years she privately admitted to a near-complete lack of faith. Letters she wrote to her friends and associates reveal that when she tried to pray she felt nothing but “emptiness and darkness” and despite her “deep longing for God”, she couldn’t avoid the deep pain of “God not really existing”. Mother Teresa was ashamed of her scepticism, but could not reconcile it with the work she was expected to do with the Missionaries of Charity. The Catholic Church knew what a positive message she sent out to the world about Catholicism, so ordered her to continue her work and prolong her public obedience to the will of a God she couldn’t bring herself to believe in.

I am not accusing Pope Benedict XVI of a similar loss of faith, though it must be held as a possibility. In his official statement, Benedict clearly states that he is both physically and mentally incapable of continuing with his position. I do not deny that he feels any of this, but there are a number of indications that he has at least become disillusioned with the Catholic Church. Who can blame him? He is a very weak, elderly gentleman who has been refused resignation on health grounds time and time again, and the recent story of one of his faithful servants passing confidential papal documents on to a journalist, combined with the contempt in which Benedict is held for his role in the child-abuse scandals and subsequent cover-ups, could quite conceivably have shaken his faith in the organisation and operation of the Catholic Church, if perhaps not in its core teachings. Hopefully this frightfully frail man will now be free to think for himself and to recover his health privately. The surprising element of Benedict’s resignation is not that he is the first Pope to resign in 600 years; it is that he has been allowed to slip through the Catholic Church’s net and escape before obligatory and reluctant piety claims another victim.