Don’t know where else to post this, and don’t feel comfortable posting the link, but was affected by March 2 London Daily Mail article by someone the paper calls a ‘leading Catholic writer’ - maybe someone will want to look for it - it is not at all unfavorable to Pope Emeritus Benedict (please forgive me if I’ve got the new title wrong - I thought I heard it on a podcast recently from either CALive or EWTN)… in fact, it shows an enormous sacrifice and gamble this writer sees him to have taken. … I was sure that any mainstream publication would have a negative take, and when I realized what I was reading it was actually enlightening and, for me and for that writer, **greatly increases the poignancy of what is happening **. . . .
It does not put Pope Emeritus Benedict himself in a bad light, but it does put the entire ruling body of the Vatican in a horrible light.
As a Catholic, I am only interested in knowing that the teachings of Our Lord remain uncompromised in any way. If some of its leaders are involved in unseemly behavior, it is well to remember that the Church is founded on Christ, and not on any one or more individuals within His Church, no matter how high they may have risen in that Church. We don’t follow Cardinals, not even Popes, in the spiritual sense, but Christ Himself.
Forget not that Judas rose to become one of the select few whom Christ considered His inner circle of friends. Was his act of betrayal a scandal? Indeed it was, to have one of your closest confidants sell you out. But it was a scandal, too, that broke Christ’s heart, and how he wished His betrayer would repent, as Peter, our first Pope later did. Just as Christ no doubt prayed for His betrayer, we should not only pray for the departing Pope, the Church, and all the people in the Church, we should pray also that anyone involved in any scandal that might be present in the Vatican might repent and then courageously do whatever they must to make things right in the best interest of the Church.
Let any such scandal, and I’m not conceding it is true, only serve to underline the weakness of humans, the need for constant prayer and vigilance against the assaults of the devil, and that the bedrock of the Church and our salvation is none other than Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior, whom we follow with all our hearts.
We follow Jesus, not men in black cassocks, who for the most part, do sacrifice their lives to bring Christ and His sacramental life into our lives. We honor the office of the priesthood, but we follow them only in the sense that they follow Christ, and when some of them let us down, we just keep on following the Master, and pray that He sends leaders who will be faithful to His teaching and the Father’s Will,
As the administrator of the Holy See and acting head of state of the Vatican City State, is he permitted to see everything the Holy Father can/could see?