A Retirement

There are only three persons in public life whom I admire: The Queen, Jimmy Carter, and the Pope.

All of them are old.

I have known that a day such as this would come: Sunday, 10 February, 2013
The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI

After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.

It has been hard for me to work today.

Many years ago, it so happened that a group of about a dozen Roman Catholic young people spent a summer in the large farmhouse where I then lived. When I had learned that the Sister who was connected with the local Catholic parish needed a place for them, I offered mine; there was plenty of space for such a group, and just me floating around in the old house. I have many memories of that summer, brought back to me almost every day by the rocking chair where I sit at home in the evenings, usually with a cat in my lap – a chair which they gave to me.

One memory comes back today with special force: it was the Year of Three Popes, 1978. The young people were there in my house when news came of the death of Paul VI on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6. They had a busy day scheduled, like their other days filled with repair work on the homes of poor people in the county. But they laid all that aside.

After offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as he did every morning with the group in the front parlor of the farmhouse (and against all regulations they included me, a Baptist), the priest told the young people to make this a day of silence. They drifted off to various corners of the farm property, some of them going up into the hills and woods, some down to the creek. Most of them were in tears, which I did not properly understand at the time: how could this distant figure have meant so much to them?

How could this distant figure, this Benedict XVI, mean so much to me? I love him as a father. His writings (the primary way in which I know him) have meant more to me than those of any living author. His love of Music and of the great Tradition in liturgy have been shining lights to me, especially as his Pontificate corresponded with a period in my work where I felt that everything that mattered to me was under attack. For he, too, came under constant attack. The liberals, both in the Roman church and in our own Episcopal church, hate him. The secular press misunderstands him; his faith and scholarship and Christian witness are as far above them as an eagle above a scum-filled sewer.

But he is old. His health and strength are failing, as happens to us all. I believe that he carried the work as far as he could, and sees that he can go no further. I gather that his doctors told him “No more trans-Atlantic flights.” That means no more visits to Cuba, or Mexico, or Latin America (or for that matter to the United States and Canada), visits which are an important part of the work of a modern Pontiff.

On the other hand, he spoke often of the example of his predecessor, friend, and mentor John Paul II, whose last years became a sort of public martyrdom. In his weakness, Christ became increasingly visible. Should Benedict have followed his example?

In the 2010 book “Light of the World: The Pope, The Church, and the Signs of the Times” wherein the Pope is interviewed by Peter Seewald, Benedict said this (I do not have the book before me, but I quoted from it in this essay from December 18, 2011, which I encourage you to read; it is perhaps a foreshadowing of this day):

If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign.... One can resign at a peaceful moment or when one simply cannot go on. But one must not run away from danger and say that someone else should do it.

I believe that the decision to retire was difficult for him, and I entirely trust that it was reached through prayer, discernment, and having “repeatedly examined [his] conscience before God.” That being the case, I have no doubt that it was and is the right move.

I wonder if Benedict's visit with Archbishop Williams when the latter came to Rome shortly before his own retirement, and the thoughts and prayers they shared at that time, weighed on Benedict? Here was another Man of God, seeking to be faithful to his vocation, and coming to understand that it was time to resign. I believe that Rowan and Benedict saw in one another a kindred spirit and hold one another in genuine esteem.
[Edited to add this, giving some substance to the above:]


Much has already been written about Benedict's sudden retirement. Here is one item, from the Rev'd Ben Myers, the writer of the blog “Faith and Theology,” which I follow:

A letter to Pope Benedict XVI

Leading the church must feel sometimes like trying to keep a ship on course when someone else has been there before you putting holes in the hull. And then you get to the end of it all and wonder whether you did a decent job or whether you just created more holes for the next person to deal with.

But forgive me, Holy Father, I am forgetting myself. It is, after all, the church we're talking about (I will even use the Catholic capital for once: the Church), not just some troublesome institution. And the church has no leaders, only servants. Or rather it has one leader, always the same, he who loved us and washed us from our sins by his own blood. How easy to forget that the church today – with all its troubles, its sins, its sadness, its calamitous attempts at managing its own PR – is the very same church that was sustained by the testimony of apostles, the blood of martyrs, the prayers of holy saints. How easy to forget that the church is not ours but God's, and that God leads and sustains God's church by secret means which no tongue can tell.

I don't know what your legacy will be, Holy Father, and none of us can guess where the church's future lies. Except to say that the church's life is hidden in the same place it's always been, in Christ who is in God.

LORD God of hosts, we give thee thanks for calling thy servant Benedict to the See of Rome in a time of crisis. Grant that we, encouraged by his example, may persevere in running the race that is set before us, until at length, through thy mercy, we may attain to thine eternal joy; through Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (adapted from the Common of Saints, BCP p. 198)