Why Pope Benedict XVI Matters to Me

On this 88th birthday of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, I became a little nostalgic. And I started to think… Why does Pope Benedict XVI matter so much to me? I hope you’ll allow me to explain.

It was early April, 2005 and the world was in mourning. The long-suffering, deeply afflicted Pope John Paul II had slipped away and we were ushered into a period with which I was unfamiliar as a non-Catholic: The Interregnum. Sede Vacante. The period between popes. The time of St. Peter’s vacant seat. I was in Puerto Vallarta at the time of the Pope’s death with my wife and the news coverage was characteristically wall-to-wall. My wife, a cradle Catholic, was intrigued by the unfolding of events. This was not surprising, in part, since she vividly recalled seeing the spritely, courageous Pope at Bird’s Hill Park, Winnipeg during his 1984 papal visit to Canada. Knowing the Pope was ailing, I had spent most of our Mexican vacation reading His Holiness by Bernstein and Politi and now found myself transfixed by the solemn and deeply holy process of the Catholic Church commending the Holy Father to the hands of God and respectfully preparing to hear the call for his successor. However, the sense of poignancy and holiness of the funeral rites for the Vicar of Christ would soon be replaced by the gossipy chatter of odds-making anchormen and women. They looked at “the field”, considered the “dark horses” and discussed “odds and chances”. What, by Catholics, is regarded as an ancient process guided by the ineffable hand of the Holy Spirit was reduced to a political horse race by the news media. And before long, one “papabile” (“pope-able” candidate) became the focus for ire and mockery: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

The German Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, was soon assigned nicknames like the Rottweiler, the Panzer Cardinal, and the Pope’s Enforcer. Stories of rigidity, intolerance and aloofness were alluded to. He was an intellectual, they sniffed, but a cold one. He was an honest man, they observed, but a stickler for rules as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

But that is not who Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is to me.

Pope Benedict XVI, the man Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was called to be, is the Pope of the Dictatorship of Relativism homily which first opened my eyes to the seductive modern trap of truthlessness. He is the Pontiff of the Regensburg Speech that reminded me of faith’s accountability to reason and reason’s accountability to faith. He is the Shepherd who spoke eloquently before the British Parliament, the German Bundestag, French cultural leaders and the United Nations and reminded of the God-given responsibility to administer justice, dispense sweet mercy and place the dignity of each human being above all. He taught authoritatively on the Church Fathers and pointed me to the brilliant minds of Romano Guardini, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar. As Cardinal, he helped with the updated publication and release of the Catholic Catechism (and YouCat) and as Pope he spearheaded the reform of the Roman missal. And among innumerable extraordinary books, Pope Benedict XVI wrote unparalleled works on the Liturgy and Jesus Christ.

But, you see, Pope Benedict XVI’s true gift – his true essence – rests not with his remarkable and storied intellect. It resides in his deep love for Christ. The Pope was raised under the harrowing threats of National Socialist ideology and suffered under total war. He would journey through seismic postwar cultural change and a crisis-driven 1960s decade. His life’s experiences would concentrate his mind, sharpen his theology and imbue him with deep humility. The external threats and insecurities of his unsettled world would foster a rich mystical interiority. What would ultimately be his informing and defining creed? An enduring, unshakeable friendship with Christ.

An intellectual giant and mystical model. A shepherd of erudition and a disciple of deep faith.

That is who Pope Benedict XVI is to me.

And I owe a special debt of gratitude to this Pope because he was instrumental in my conversion to Catholicism. That is why Pope Benedict XVI matters to me.

There are people who have (or will) follow the lead of the media with distaste or disdain for Benedict XVI. They will cite all that they love about Pope Francis at the expense of what they didn’t like about Pope Benedict XVI. But I say, you can love them both and have affection for both and follow them both. I was once a skeptic about Benedict XVI. But I was wrong. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton,

“[Pope Benedict XVI] hasn’t been tried and found wanting; he has been found difficult and left untried.”

And to paraphrase Blessed Archbishop Fulton Sheen,

“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate [Pope Benedict XVI], but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the [Pope Benedict XVI] to be.”

To those who haven’t “tried” Pope Benedict XVI, please consider starting with a few of these resources (I am selecting some of my favorites):

Books By Pope Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger
-Introduction to Christianity
-Spirit of the Liturgy
-Jesus of Nazareth trilogy
-Peter Seewald interview series (God & the World, Salt of the Earth, Light of the World)
-Milestones
-Christianity & the Crisis of Cultures
-Behold the Pierced One

Writings/Speeches by Pope Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger
-Encyclicals (God is Love, Saved in Hope, Charity in Truth)
-The Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings & Speeches
-Dictatorship of Relativism homily
-The September Addresses (Regensburg, Westminster, Bundestag, Paris) -Conscience & Truth

Books about Pope Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger
-Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI
-Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age: A Theological Portrait
-Benedict XVI:An Intimate Portrait
-The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Approach

My previous posts:
-Behold the Pierced One: Spending Holy Week with Benedict XVI
-Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis & the Greatest Friendship Imaginable
-Loving Francis, Missing Benedict
–The Pope and the Journalist
-Pope Benedict XVI and Surprise

And some of my fellow bloggers:
-The Anchoress

Happy Birthday, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. God bless you.

And thank you.