Spiritual defender: How Pope Benedict Outclassed John Paul II

Saturday, February 16, 2013

RAYLOKEFebruary 17, 2013 at 12:00 AM
PERSONAL CHOICE, ...''I AM THAT I AM '' ...One of the most depressing tenets of Catholic doctrine has been its fear of extending personal choice into those areas of life where the church feels we must just accept our fate: we must not use contraceptives, we must not choose to leave a partner we married many years ago, we must not choose the moment of our deaths, however much pain we are in. By remaining in his job until his death, a pope was to show that he too accepted his destiny and renounced personal choice. For 600 years no pope had resigned his position. Wojtyła’s much-televised terminal illness stressed this culture of masochistic acceptance in a quite grotesque orgy of pathos. And now, in a single, simple gesture, the arch-conservative Ratzinger finally shows us what it means to exercise reason in harmony with faith. In a few Latin words he tells us that he is a man, not the pope, and that there is nothing to be gained by his staying nailed up there on the cross of papal duty, for him or anyone else. It is an act of rebellion and individual choice that demystifies the papacy, but suddenly makes it possible again, opens the way, post-Wojtyła, for a different, less heady, kind of leadership. It is extraordinary to think, though, that with this one sensible decision, this unimpressive man has set himself in the history books more surely and radically than his interminably glamorous predecessor.
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