Congress session: The Pontificate of Benedict XVI: What we’ve learned so far (John Allen Jr.)
John Allen Jr. is the Vatican corespondent for the National Catholic Reporter and CNN’s Vatican corespondent. This is a guy who KNOWS the Vatican inside and out. It was just amazing to listen to him rattle off names and statistics and conversations and documents and meetings and offices in the Vatican and a million other things about the international Church. I highly recommend reading his weekly column The Word From Rome and also going to see him at whatever conference you might find yourself with the opportunity to hear him speak.
In this session he talked about what Benedict was expected to do, what he has done, more importantly what he HASN’T done and what we can expect in the future.
I love learning about Vatican affairs because I learn so much about the Church that Christ founded. It’s a REALLY BIG Church doing so much good work and interacting with so much of the world. It also helps me to put in context the documents that get released and the newspaper headlines that are often so critical of our Church.
What I took away from this session was that all of the commentary from a year ago from various reporters about what Benedict’s election meant for the Church were very much wrong. Benedict has been far more moderate and cautious that just about everyone gave him credit for. He’s also been far more personable and “crowd friendly” than many worried he would not be.
Allen pointed out that so much of the criticism for Benedict came from the fact that as Cardinal Ratzinger it was his JOB to disciple dissident theologians. Many assumed that he would take that job with him to the Chair of St. Peter. But that is no longer his job. His job now is to be the voice of Christ for His Church.
Benedict also seems to realize that there is a HUGE difference between the matters of faith and morals and the fallible administration of the Church. He seems to have far more leniency in dealing with administrative matters, in which a great deal of personal judgment must be used, than with dogmatic matters. He seems to have no desire to enforce his view of how the Church should be administered on everyone else and leaves much of that to other bishop’s discretion.
And so with so much of life, the sky is not falling, the sun will rise again and all those who prognosticate otherwise are over-reacting. What is true is that the Church that is founded on 2000 years of Tradition and traditions is not going to yield to the modern pressures to change. Christ will prevail in His Church.