Perspective

Because of the all the VatiLeaks falderal right now, some are saying that the Pope should resign.

Nitwits.

Holy Church, having human beings involved in it, has had and will endure stupid and ugly controversies from within. It stands to reason that an institution made up of sinners will experience these things from time to time.

My friend Fr. Tim Finigan, His Hermeneuticalness, has a good comment on his blog which adds some perspective to the titillating details being dished by the dirt-diggers:

Two things always come to my mind in these sort of scandals. First is that St John Fisher and St Thomas More were willing to go to the block on Tower Hill (District and Circle line – opposite the Tower of London, look for the Cross in the middle of the garden) for the authority of the Pope despite the fact that during their lifetime there had been Popes such as Alexander VI, Leo X and Julius II who were not exactly shining examples of Christian morality. We are greatly blessed that the Popes of our lifetime are holy men.
The second is one of my favourite quotations from the Blessed John Henry Newman. In chapter 7 of his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, he wrote:

Now, the Rock of St. Peter on its summit enjoys a pure and serene atmosphere, but there is a great deal of Roman malaria at the foot of it.

Still true today.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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13 Comments

  1. jbosco88 says:

    ‘Nit wit.’ Good, and appropriate, word!

  2. ContraMundum says:

    I haven’t been following this closely, but frankly that’s because I have not heard anything that is seriously shocking, let alone scandalous, so far. I have a vague impresion of infighting, gossip, and financial shenanigans. Compared with the sex abuse scandal, the tepid support in many corners for orthodox, the peaceful coexistence with persons and organizations that use the name Catholic to mislead the faithful through heresy and all the way to apostasy, etc., Italian bureaucrats behaving like Italian bureaucrats leaves me unphased.

  3. Father K says:

    Maybe Cardinal Bertone ought to resign.

  4. anilwang says:

    “Because of [generic event], some are saying that the Pope should resign.”

    It must be Monday. Honestly, I have no idea what the big deal is. Other than someone with a poison pen trying to steal private correspondences for purposes of slander what on earth has been revealed that is scandalous to anyone and why isn’t more attention put on the poison pen?

  5. irishgirl says:

    ‘Nitwits’-Good word to describe them, Father Z!
    I jotted down in the little notebook I carry with me the words you quoted from Father Finigan’s blog.
    I want to quote them to some of the people who go to the TLM chapel which I attend (dedicated to St. Thomas More, BTW) who are always ‘bashing’ the Holy Father and saying that ‘the Church is corrupt’, in the wake of the ‘Vatileaks scandal’. I heard some of their comments last Sunday after Mass, and I tried to remind them that ‘Our Lord has promised that He will NEVER ABANDON HIS CHURCH’.
    I am so tired of the secular media and their constant baying….as one of my friends says a lot of times, ‘Please, Lord, come….come soon….’

  6. “Because of the all the VatiLeaks falderal right now, some are saying that the Pope should resign.”

    Because the sky is blue, the sun is bright, the Holy Father is German, whatever. Those saying this have no credibility whatsoever and their motivations are obvious.

  7. Centristian says:

    *Sigh* We’re forever wanting the pope to “resign” over something, aren’t we? The same Catholics I know who want Pope Benedict to resign over this wanted him to resign over the sex scandal, and before that, when they discovered that he was once forced to join that Nazi children’s group against his will as a boy.

    They loud and proud were forever wanting Pope John Paul II to “resign”, too. Over anything. Any cause was sufficient for the pope to “resign”. “Too conservative rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah…resign!” “Too old, rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah…resign!” “Parkinsons, rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah…resign!” Now it’s the Pope’s naughty butler. “His BUTLER rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah…he’s out of touch and has lost control, rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah…must resign immediately, rah-rah-rah-rah-rah…terrible PR, rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah!!!”

    It’s always something and it always will be. Since we no longer live in an age in the West in which it is acceptable (for the moment) to go around chopping the heads off of our kings, the constant cry of the great unwashed is that they “resign” instead. And this is because the world cannot accept the notion of kingship in a hyper libertine age in which nobody ever wants to be told what to do by anyone, let alone by a priest in Rome who claims to speak for a King that we’ve all but stopped believing in (and for whom, incidentally, we weren’t allowed to vote). But since the mob aren’t quite ready to storm the palace gates and lob his head off (although that day may soon come) the demand will continue to rise from the mob that the Pope “resign”…for the “good” of an institution they wish would just collapse and go away.

    Let’s face it, no Catholic truly concerned about the good of the Church would be terribly enthusiastic about the prospect of two living popes. That’s always worked out so well for us in the past, right? And I’ve heard all the dumb comparisons to the way other “churches” govern themselves “so much more SENSIBLY”. “Why can’t our pope have a term limit, like the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example?” For one thing, our pope does not correspond to the Church of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury. If we’re making a lateral comparison of hierarchies, our Pope corresponds to the Church of England’s “Supreme Governor”…the Queen. And the Queen does not resign!

    Queens do not “resign” in any event. On the rare occasion a monarch does leave office voluntarily, he or she does not “resign”, he or she abdicates. So would a Pope. He is not merely an executive officer. He is the first patriarch of the Christian Church, the embodiment of the entity known as “The Holy See”, and the temporal sovereign of a nation, to boot. Presidents resign. County executives resign. Office managers resign. A pope would abdicate.

    I can envision a world and a church characterized by a mature and Christian spirit in which we could reasonably and calmly and sensibly and prayerfully discuss the revisiting of certain aspects of the papacy that may seem to have arisen out of the unfortunate deforms of ages past in which the bishop of Rome was unduly laden with excesses and disordered expectations, wrapped up as he became in Western politics and worldly glory. Since the revolutions that rocked the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, the pope has seen a radical humbling of his office which has divested it of much of it’s worldly power and glory. This has proved providential. It seems clear that Peter is most effective when he is Peter, and not Caesar or Pharaoh. It is possible that, being Peter and not Caesar, the Bishop of Rome could countenance the idea of a temporary stewardship of the office, should situations seem to honestly warrant a living pope relinquishing the reins of his see.

    But these constant demands of today for popes to resign, or bishops to be elected, have nothing to do with a mature and prayerful concern that our ecclesiastical institutions be revisited to see if there isn’t something that we could be doing better. Such demands today come, instead, from vapid minds and hearts drowning in petulence, to the point at which the mob want him to resign because of his butler.

    How silly.

  8. irishgirl says:

    @ Centristian: Well said!

  9. DisturbedMary says:

    Michael Voris had a recent video on the subject of the attack on Holy Father.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x-LqsCE4zQ8

  10. anna 6 says:

    I have also heard many say that Pope Benedict is the LAST person in the Vatican who should resign…I am with them.

    Most of the leaks, especially the most recent ones, don’t amount to much…however I find the theft and publication of personal letters despicable acts by jealous and petty people.

  11. Johnno says:

    It’s no surprise that many people think the Church is akin to a Corporation and the Pope the head CEO of a board of members. Or even that the Church is political, with the Bishops being the Congress and the Pope the President.

    And you know what… sometimes I honestly can’t blame such ignorance, because many arms of the Church’s body do behave like politicians and corporations.

    Having kept my eye on this, I think it’s good these things leaked. The division it highlights perfectly echoes the prophecies of Our Lady that cardinals will fight cardinals and bishops will fight bishops and the Church will be divided and a great schism will exist. God warned us, and we and the Catholic Church at large from the very top ignored God and the Queen of Heaven. The Church needs to be chastised. And this is how God is doing it. Once God is finished we’ll be better off and better prepared to face the world. This is the Passion of the Church and for the Holy Father. He’s read the 3rd Secret of Fatima, so he fully knows.

  12. The Cobbler says:

    So did these leaks implicate the Pope somehow that nobody’s actually wasting breath mentioning?

    ‘Cause if not, even if I thought the Pope was supposed to be like a CEO or a micromanaging-type tyrant or whatnot, I wouldn’t be calling for him to resign. I’d be calling for him to get with the firing people.

    Sheesh. Moderns ain’t even good at being modern anymore. What fellow in his right mind, modern, ancient or belonging to somethin’ timeless, ever called for cutting off the man who’s in charge of and trying to deal with an institution containing corruption? It’s like calling for the police to be hanged every time you hear of a crime in the newspaper!

  13. farmer88 says:

    The phrase “not exactly shining examples of Christian morality” is probably the understatement of the millennium.

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