Monday, March 30, 2020

Pope Benedict and Pope Francis: Power and Papacy

Power is seductive, even within religious organizations. It is like a drug in that denial can accompany an instinctual urge for immediate power even at the expense of the person’s own credibility. Put another way, self-discipline can easily succumb to the urge for power, even if the person has previously foreswore acting on that urge. Warped discernment between minor and major issues can also occur from the gravity of the instinctual urge. For example, a cleric may choose to break his or her decision to disavow acting on the urge in part because he or she incorrectly views the issue at hand to be a major one, when in fact it is not, at least as far as the religion is concerned. As in the case of a drug, perception, judgment and cognition may be impaired, or warped, by the urge itself. The Roman Catholic ex-Pope Joe Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) is a case in point.


When Pope Benedict resigned in 2013, “some experts believed he should go back to being simply ‘Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,” his previous title and given name, to emphasize that he no longer held any papal authority and to reduce the chance he might be seen as a rival point of reference to his successor.”[1] For his part, Ratzinger vowed to remain “hidden from the world.”[2] This decision was particularly important because just the fact that he continued to wear papal attire could lead people to view him as having such authority. In fact, bearing the likeness of a pope could have tempted him to leverage his appearance in order to challenge the current pope, presumably on a controversy central to the Roman Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, the former pope was not able to keep himself hidden from the world. In From the Depths of Our Hearts, published in 2020, he “argues in favor of the centuries-old tradition of celibacy within the church.”[3] In the introduction, he wrote, “We can say: ‘Silere non possum! I cannot remain silent!”[4] He could not remain silent, hidden from the world, on the matter of a tradition. His change of heart on remaining silent would have been more justifiable had a major theological doctrine, such as the divinity of Christ, been the controversy, yet he inveighed on a tradition, which a pope could change.

Indeed, the former pope broke his silence on a matter then before the current pope, challenging Francis’s statement that sometimes other factors had to be considered.  In this case, the exception had to do with whether to relax the celibacy rule pertaining only to the Amazon region in South America and only to whether elderly men could be ordained to relieve the shortage of priests. No priest would be getting married. So the controversy was actually quite minor because it was not only on a tradition, but even more damning, on a regional exception that still would not allow priests to get married (the elderly men in the Amazon being already married).

In short, the former pope chose to challenge the sitting pope on an exception to a tradition. Yet Ratzinger perceived the matter to be very important indeed. He wrote that he believed that celibacy carries “great significance” and is “truly essential.”[5] In fact, “(t)he call to follow Jesus is not possible without this sign of freedom and of renunciation of all commitments,” he wrote.[6] With its requirements, celibacy must penetrate “all of the attitudes of existence.”[7] Leaving the matter of whether it is or is not possible to follow a Christian religious calling without being celibate aside, I submit that the former pope overreacted to Pope Francis’s assertion that sometimes other factors should be considered as to whether specific exceptions should be made. The former pope chose to break his silence in order to use his papal influence to challenge the sitting pope on a minor matter.

Even if celibacy is as important to the Church as Ratzinger asserted, challenging the current pope when the latter agrees with the former pope on the principle represents a misjudgment in which, I contend, the urge for power was salient. Ratzinger felt an irresistible urge to speak up, violating his own terms of being hidden from the world, on an exception to a general rule. By implication, he compromised not only his own credibility, but also the viability of the office of an emeritus pope. I submit that whatever influence he achieved on whether an exception should be made to the celibacy rule was not worth the costs to not only him, but also his Church as unified rather than divided.


1. Amy Woodyatt, Vasco Cotovio, and Hada Messia, “Ex-Pope Benedict Undercuts Francis on Priests and Celibacy,” CNN.com, January 13, 2020. (accessed same day)
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.