Former Pope Benedict XVI dies at 95

December 31, 2022 4:23 AM

Farewell to Benedict XVI: ‘Humble worker in vineyard of the Lord', Former Pope Benedict XVI dies at 95
posted by kmt (57 comments total)

Mod note: Mod note: As we have very little moderation coverage on weekends, *and* it's a holiday, I'd just like to ask everyone to please moderate your own participation here in a reasonable way. Thank you.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:31 AM on December 31, 2022 [37 favorites]

*
posted by rikschell at 4:33 AM on December 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

He wanted to continue JPII’s legacy of conservatism (I was really pissed when he started harassing the American nuns), but he realized it was a losing battle and didn’t have the physical strength anymore anyway. Oh, that and the pedophile scandal.

When my friend was interested in becoming an Episcopal priest, the only advice the diocese gave him was “learn Spanish, because that’s where the growth is.” So the mother church appoints a Latin American pope, hoping for growth. Like any business. And they’re not going to get it. Will be fascinating to see what happens next, I need lots of popcorn. *

* accidentally typed popecorn.

.
posted by Melismata at 4:46 AM on December 31, 2022 [11 favorites]

He did retire - a cowardly move to escape accountability in a pedophilia scandal, but my mom gives him some credit for it. I don't. Still, a pope retiring ... we didn't know they could do that. It was a thing to see. It sets a precedent. Who knows what might come of it. I'm not sure I'm still invested enough to care, but my mom sure is. For her, I want to believe there's something salvagable that could benefit from surprising turns.
posted by sohalt at 5:03 AM on December 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

I worked for a small publisher once whose owner had a side-hustle at OfficialPopePhotos dot com, selling framed portraits of Benedict to hang in every Catholic school classroom, church office room, and other places the devout decided he needed to be. It somehow fell to me to retouch the images of His Holiness in attempt to make them less terrifying to children. I can't say I was very successful.

My hope is now more light will come out on the scandal of protecting pedophiles in the church now that his living honor can't be insulted.
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:07 AM on December 31, 2022 [40 favorites]

I appreciate that he retired-- it's more humane than expecting Popes to work through pain and disability until they die.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:11 AM on December 31, 2022 [12 favorites]

From the guardian obit

Benedict was a theological conservative, holding uncompromising positions on homosexuality and contraception. He had strongly opposed liberation theology, a radical movement that began in South American in the 1960s and advocated clerical social activism among the poor and marginalised.
.....
In April 2019, two months after Francis convened a groundbreaking Vatican conference on sexual abuse, Benedict published a 6,000-word letter saying abuse was a product of a culture of sexual freedom dating from the 1960s.


spits
posted by lalochezia at 5:25 AM on December 31, 2022 [78 favorites]

Did his retirement affect the various court cases concerning the Vatican at the time? He retired when he was 85 - I had the feeling that he was just generally too old to do any more.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:36 AM on December 31, 2022

My feelings pretty much mirror lalochezia’s. Francis is far from perfect, but his appointment was a thankful turn away from Benedict’s vision of the church. I have no dot to give.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:37 AM on December 31, 2022 [28 favorites]

It's frustrating because these types live to a ripe age of 95, but...I guess they're also vampires, so it's encouraging that they go at all?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:01 AM on December 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

Previously
posted by chavenet at 6:04 AM on December 31, 2022

He retired in 2013. Maybe now that we don't have two popes alive at the same time, the timeline can restore itself and normality can resume.
posted by hippybear at 6:07 AM on December 31, 2022 [12 favorites]

R.I.P.
posted by Wet Spot at 6:18 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

Don't count him out yet!

EPISODE IX THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

The dead speak! The galaxy has heard a mysterious broadcast, a threat of REVENGE in the sinister voice of the late POPE PALPATINE.
posted by charred husk at 6:22 AM on December 31, 2022 [15 favorites]

I'm not a Catholic, but from the outside I thought he was pretty terrible (over and above the abuse issues, which should have been disqualifying on their own). I can't speak to what precedent or theological issues come out of him retiring, but at least it cleared the way for what appears (again, from the outside) to be a much better pope.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:27 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

You can definitely credit him for creating a lot of former (recovering?) Catholics, so there's that.
posted by tommasz at 6:48 AM on December 31, 2022 [8 favorites]

Good riddance.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 6:48 AM on December 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

I am a Catholic, and I thought he was reactionary and regressive. Good riddance.

I am delighted that he stepped aside and Francis came in.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:50 AM on December 31, 2022 [21 favorites]

Tim Minchin's Pope Song.

edit: Ha! Should've guessed at least one of the upthread links had covered it.
posted by brachiopod at 6:57 AM on December 31, 2022 [5 favorites]

I think, to a large extent, Ratzinger gets the hate he does because he was ugly and fit our shallow pop culture image of a villain.

And, also, simply because he was the Pope to follow JP2, who was for many people the only Pope who had ever existed and who had an undeserved reputation for being a nice person.

Which made it possible to start assigning blame to him for policies that have been Catholic policies since forever, and which many people felt were somehow impolite to bring up when that nice JP2 was in charge.

But the policies of protecting priests who raped children were JP2's policies, or rather the policies JP2 inherited and chose to leave intact. Ratzinger didn't start that, he just did what countless Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Popes, and other members of the Hierarchy had done for thousands of years. That doesn't EXCUSE what he did, but it does make the way he's been singled out by some as the Pope Who Protected Rapists invalid.

He was, ultimately, just another Pope. About the same as all the others of the modern era, no better, no worse. Which, given the murderous, torturous, pro-rapist, pro-disease, anti-life, anti-human, policies of the Church definitely made him a villain, but no moreso than JP2 or the current guy.

Sic Transit Just Another Pope.
posted by sotonohito at 6:59 AM on December 31, 2022 [58 favorites]

My wife and I were more than happy to step away from our Roman Catholic upbringings but when a relative walked into a family party, proudly brandishing a shirt that proclaimed "The Cafeteria is Closed" (pretty much the American Catholic predecessor to MAGA), I knew we made the right choice.

Francis is a fresh coat of paint on a rusting junkheap.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:00 AM on December 31, 2022 [8 favorites]

He worked hard to earn a seat in Hell and I wish him success in his endeavors.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:07 AM on December 31, 2022 [47 favorites]

He worked hard to earn a seat in Hell and I wish him success in his endeavors.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:07 AM on 12/31

Epopysterical!
posted by chavenet at 7:09 AM on December 31, 2022 [43 favorites]

Ratzinger's pontificate was, to give him due, the first to actually punish bishops for protecting pedophile priests, with over 80 bishops dismissed over 8 years. There is credible information that he tried his best as Head of the Inquisition, ah, Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, possibly to make up for his own failings as archbishop, but the old guard was so entrenched around JP2 that his attempts to take down the most egregious monsters like Maciel Delgado came to nothing. Charitably, I suspect he wanted to clean house in that particular case, but when he wasn't strong enough and the old guard was targeting him (Vatican Files as well as rumours about Archbishop Gänswein), he knew when to fall on his sword and make room for new blood.

The one thing that's his greatest achievement is a precedent to avoid the spectacle of medical torture and years of Vatican interregnum that was JP2's protracted agony. Let old people pass away in peace and don't leave one of the biggest international organisations headless for interminably long.

And as for Joseph, I wish him a rebirth as a less hypocritical person free to find love wherever they want.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 7:13 AM on December 31, 2022 [13 favorites]

Say what you will about him (and you’ll likely be correct), he knew what happens to irreplaceable men.
posted by Etrigan at 7:14 AM on December 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

with over 80 bishops dismissed over 8 years.

I'll give him one point for each "dismissed" bishop he helped put in prison for child rape.

Can someone calculate the final score for me?
posted by AlSweigart at 7:38 AM on December 31, 2022 [5 favorites]

Shouldn't this post have a CW for child sexual abuse?

What Pope Benedict Knew About Abuse in the Catholic Church.

a German lawyer charged with investigating the abuse of minors in a famous Catholic boys' choir in Bavaria revealed that two hundred and thirty-one children had been victimized over a period of decades. ... the director of the Regensburg boys' choir from 1964 to 1994 was Georg Ratzinger, the older brother of Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI. Joseph Ratzinger was the Archbishop of Munich from 1977 until 1981

Former pope Benedict admits making false claim to child sexual abuse inquiry

Benedict had failed to take action against four priests accused of child sexual abuse when he was archbishop of Munich, a position the then cardinal, Josef Ratzinger, held between 1977 and 1982, and that his denial of being at the meeting in question lacked credibility. ... The meeting Benedict attended discussed Peter Hullermann, a now notorious paedophile priest who had been transferred to Munich from Essen, where he was accused of abusing an 11-year-old boy. At the meeting, during which Benedict was quoted in the minutes, it was decided that Hullermann would be admitted to the diocese despite his known history.

That's just one example of his role in helping his organization's employees and leaders rape children and get away with it.
posted by Nelson at 7:40 AM on December 31, 2022 [10 favorites]

See also the "Roman Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children in Colorado from 1950 to 2019". No link, it's awful, and I lived too much of it.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of these documents in different states and countries. Ratzinger shouldn't have been worried about who had power and what they might say and oh too bad he failed. He should have been burning the place to the ground.
posted by SunSnork at 8:15 AM on December 31, 2022 [5 favorites]

He was no Barbara Walters.
posted by box at 8:23 AM on December 31, 2022 [12 favorites]

Did his retirement affect the various court cases concerning the Vatican at the time?

My conspiracy theory is that’s the reason he never left Vatican City after retirement: he would no longer have the protection of being a head of state, and several other nations would have detained him for questioning.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:38 AM on December 31, 2022 [11 favorites]

May the people harmed by the policies he furthered as Pope find peace and healing.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:40 AM on December 31, 2022 [14 favorites]

I think, to a large extent, Ratzinger gets the hate he does because he was ugly and fit our shallow pop culture image of a villain.

I couldn't pick him out of a lineup and I doubt most non-Catholics could, either. He gets looked down on because he was, at an absolute minimum, fully complicit in protecting evil-doers. He was not a good person and didn't redeem himself by being a good pope.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:41 AM on December 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

"when you die, the primary thing people will remember about you is that you quit your job" is some pretty dark ghost of christmas future territory, but that's what every headline i'm seeing today seems to indicate
posted by phooky at 9:01 AM on December 31, 2022 [8 favorites]

I suspect Benedict will be remembered as a Gorbachev figure (or perhaps a better comparison would be a pre-Reformation humanist pope like Pius II). He recognised the need for reform but only succeeded in paving the way to a revolution he never wanted.

This obituary tribute is interesting as coming from a conservative Catholic who fervently admires Benedict but sees him as a failure:

Having been obliged to play the role of doctrinal enforcer by Pope John Paul, he decided to govern as a pastor and scholar. Indeed, there’s no doubt that his passion for writing interfered with his effectiveness as pope. He retreated into his study to write a biography of Jesus of Nazareth while senior curial officials swanned around the Vatican like elderly playboys in Dubai, using the contents of the world’s collection plates to buy sex and launder money. He did not attempt to conceal the activities of sex abusers in the Vatican, but his disciplinary actions were ineffective.

The guff about Benedict as 'the most intellectually gifted pope for centuries' can be discounted, but the overall picture of a scholar-pope out of his depth rings true. Whether any other pope would have done any better remains an open question.
posted by verstegan at 9:07 AM on December 31, 2022 [5 favorites]

Not long after his ascension to the papal role and the confirmation that his staunch conservative views were unchanged, a comic pointed out that his stint on an AA emplacement as a teenager in the Hitlerjugend meant that the pope was not only anti-women, anti-muslim, and anti-gay but also anti-aircraft.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:37 AM on December 31, 2022 [14 favorites]

@WetSpot, @brachioid
A former catholic thanks you.
I came here to say something ornery and Tim Minchin said it better than I ever could.
posted by falsedmitri at 9:42 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

Dip Flash He gets looked down on because he was, at an absolute minimum, fully complicit in protecting evil-doers.

The problem with this argument is that Pope John Paul II was also, at absolute minimum, fully complicit in protecting evil-doers and he was regarded as a great person in his life, and is memorialized and beloved by many in his death. Not to mention canonized.

The major difference between them wasn't policy, it was that Ratzinger looked like Emperor Palpatine and JP2 looked like a beneficent white grandfather.

Again, those policies that enabled priests to commit rape and be protected by the Church and given a steady stream of new victims by shuffling them around, were JP2's policies. Hell, people say Ratzinger was being evil while he was head of the Inquisition, completely ignoring that it was JP2's Inquisition he was running, and JP2's policies of protecting rapists and silencing victims he was enforcing.

This is not to say that Ratzinger did good things, he didn't. Ratzinger did evil things. But JP2 also did those exact same evil things and doesn't get the hate Ratzinger did. Which means to find out why Ratzinger is so hated we have to look at factors beyond the evil things he did.
posted by sotonohito at 9:54 AM on December 31, 2022 [10 favorites]

Ratzinger did the evil shit without anything to counterbalance it, and when elevated tried to reform the reforms. The most enlightened thing he did was retire. RIP, the least inquisitive Inquisitor.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:01 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

The problem with this argument is that Pope John Paul II was ... regarded as a great person in his life, and is memorialized and beloved by many in his death.

That's a problem with the people who immortalize and belove John Paul II.

To your point about reasons people like John Paul II despite all the raping of children, I think a big part of it is that he was pope before story broke in a big, unignorable way. Weirdly that means he gets less blame because even though he was the man in charge of the conspiracy we didn't know it for most of his rule. Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, 3 years after the Boston Globe published the big stories that got so much international attention. So folks expected this to be his mess to clean up. Only it turns out he, too, was complicit and enabling the raping of children.

(The ugly truth being there is no "mess to clean up". There is only an irrevocably corrupted institution.)
posted by Nelson at 10:07 AM on December 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

Even during JPII's time, before Ratzinger became pope, he had already gotten his hands pretty dirty:

In January 1980, as archbishop, Ratzinger approved the quiet re-location of four-time child abuser/rapist Peter Hullerman without contacting the police or introducing any safeguards

In 1990, Ratzinger led development of a system that asked priests to repent of child abuse but not contact the police

Ratzinger knew about, but did not report, the serial rape and abuse of children by Marcial Maciel, later ordering him to ‘a quiet life’ but still not involving police

In 2001, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he sent a worldwide letter to bishops advising them not to report child abuse outside of the church at least until the victims reach adulthood

And I didn't even have to do any research for these links, I just took them straight off the Genius lyrics page for Tim Minchin's "Pope Song"
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:22 AM on December 31, 2022 [15 favorites]

What Ratzinger did is similar to what Paterno did and countless others besides. They believed, truly, that what they were doing was so important that a raped child here and there were acceptable collateral damage.

People like this belive deep in their heart of hearts that they are uplifting the human race, and there's no talking them out of it.

His legacy should be a cautionary tale but it won't be.
posted by East14thTaco at 11:10 AM on December 31, 2022 [5 favorites]

I think that popes are more continuous than most, and I hold that Ratzinger as a theologian was
deeply inluential on JPIIs policies, and most likely wrote much of them. One church one pope.

I don't think we'll ever know but I do wonder if ratzinger resigned the papacy to protect him and the church from the moral consequences of sex scandals, and I do suspect that for ratzinger the term sex scandals means adult, consensual same sex behavior inside the Vatican as much as intergenerational non consensual sex outside the Vatican. I also have read that the problems about sex for ratzinger's papacy were really problems about money. There's also some thinking about exactly how much work he did crafting the previous popes intellectual life, and how little Francis consulted him. It's still weird to have a dead pope wo an election
posted by PinkMoose at 11:57 AM on December 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

> when you die, the primary thing people will remember about you is that you quit your job

We should all be so lucky to leave such a legacy.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:04 PM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

✝️™
posted by clavdivs at 2:46 PM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

Ratzinger looked like Emperor Palpatine and JP2 looked like a beneficent white grandfather.

It's also interesting that the late Pope is referred to throughout this thread as both "Joseph Ratzinger" and "Benedict" but John Paul II and Francis are never referred to as "Karol Wojtyla" and "Jorge Bergoglio". (I realize Wojityla is hard to spell, but that can't be the only reason.)
posted by dannyboybell at 3:54 PM on December 31, 2022 [6 favorites]

Having "rat" in his name just seems appropriate, somehow.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:44 PM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

Yeah, from a doctrinal perspective, Benedict/Ratzinger was a conservative turn-the-clock-back to the good-old counter-reformation days kinda guy, and the doctrinal heavy-hand behind nice-santa-face JP2/Wojtyla. He eventually achieved the ultimate earthly crown, and he inherited the ultimate shit-show scandal. If I was him, I woulda retired early too.

(Personally I don't like conservatives or conservative Popes. I've said before that I'd consider going back if the Vatican elected a progressive Pope like John XXIII, but now I think that time has really passed. Even though Francis/Bergoglio is not like the usual right-wing dick).
posted by ovvl at 5:49 PM on December 31, 2022

Wojtyla and Bergoglio were both relative unknowns before their ascension to the papacy. Ratzinger was already fairly well known during his predecessor's reign, even to lay people like me.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 6:43 PM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

dannyboybell To be honest, I keep forgetting JP2's real name, possibly because it is hard to spell for a native English speaker, especially one like me who never really cared enough to try to learn.

But a Germanic type name like Ratzinger sticks in my head.

Also, the name "John Paul" has no meaning at all to me, so that reign name isn't particularly objectionable to be. But calling Ratzinger a blessing irks me.

But most likely it's just a subconscious way of expressing disrespect for Ratzinger/Benedict by refusing to use his reign name. Maybe a little like how so many Americans referred to Emperor Showa as Hirohito?
posted by sotonohito at 8:35 PM on December 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

Now do Henry Kissinger.
posted by erattacorrige at 9:47 PM on December 31, 2022 [11 favorites]

Between the whole Tate thing and now this, we're getting a lot of fan service in 2023 season finale.

. not for Nazi Pope, but for those he let harm unto
posted by Jarcat at 10:30 PM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

Awful human being, learned less from Jesus than Charles Manson
posted by bookbook at 4:57 AM on January 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

No doubt the movement to canonize will progress much more slowly than that to make a saint out of St. JPII-- which history is proving was, itself, far too accelerated.
posted by BlunderingArtist at 6:15 AM on January 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

From Anthony Oliveira on Twitter:

"joseph ratzinger was a bad theologian, schemed his way into being pope, and fumbled through a series of moral failings so dire he ultimately triggered the worst papal crisis since Avignon. The obituary he deserved only Dante could write."

posted by dnash at 8:40 AM on January 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

What Ratzinger did is similar to what Paterno did and countless others besides.

It's not just the Holy Mission aspect, but that the Catholic Church really does see itself as a sovereign state unto itself, and really one that is above other states.

Don't worry! I'm not about to go down some "JFK getting marching orders from the pope" nut hole. I just mean that, until fairly recently (in historical terms), the Pope was not just the head of the Church, but also a King of country. In that role, he was responsible for all sorts of secular things like levying taxes, raising armies, building bridges, dredging out sewers, etc. It wasn't until 1870 that the Pope went from ruling over a kingdom while wearing a literal crown to being a regular feature of micronation trivia. It wasn't until 1920 (the year JP2 was born) that the Papacy finally officially dropped their political claims to a big swathe of central Italy

Even beyond the 1000 years or so of the Papal States, the Christian church was amajor European political power starting since Constantine saw the cross. They were a pan-national institution that acted as a literal king-maker to states the Church long outlasted.

It's not hard to see how men of Benedict and JP2's age might have come to age in a ecclesiastical culture which resented the idea that they should have to submit "church business" for judgement by some johnny-come-lately secular state. The shuffling around and covering up for known predator priests makes absolute sense not just in the generally cloistered and paternalistic outlook of the Church, but even more when you factor in a mindset that spent so long as Caesar that they stopped thinking they needed to render unto anyone else but themselves.
posted by Panjandrum at 12:50 PM on January 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Even beyond the 1000 years or so of the Papal States, the Christian church was amajor European political power starting since Constantine saw the cross. They were a pan-national institution that acted as a literal king-maker to states the Church long outlasted.

And this brings up the conflict between the Roman Church and the Orthodox Church, and a large part of the current Ukraine war is how Putin has over decades moved the Russian Orthodox Church (which I think is the one that stands in main conflict with Rome generally) under the sphere of State influence, and a lot of the rhetoric being spoken now by ROC clergy is reinforcing the State line about the war on Ukraine. Francis has been working to diffuse this, but which this arm of the Church being more separatist then and even more now, day by day, he's had little success.
posted by hippybear at 1:23 PM on January 1, 2023

We came to Munich for New Year's and the famous cathedrals are very much in Remembering Pope Benedict XVI mode for the recently deceased German pope.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:45 PM on January 1, 2023