Happy Birthday, Father Benedict!

Today is the 88th birthday of Father Benedict, once Pope Benedict XVI.

Happy birthday!

I recently ran across an interesting article by Elizabeth Scalia (the Anchoress) about Benedict being an “anchor” for the Papacies of the men who proceeded and followed him.

John Paul would not have been free to be John Paul — and all he became to the world during his papacy — without the anchor of Benedict.

He was the “pilgrim” pope, traveling more than any before or since, becoming the first “rock star pope” and writing dense, often impenetrable philosophical treatises, while Benedict quietly supported him, wrote and taught, dealt with curia politics and doctrinal matters and carried a great deal of responsibility on his shoulders, particularly as John Paul reached his culmination.

And now, Benedict is very much an anchor for Francis — who would not even be sitting as Peter, had Benedict not read the times and realized that no one was listening anymore; that something almost unprecedented was needed to change the narrative and shake the assumptions of the world. I am still unpacking the lessons of trust and discernment that Benedict modeled for us when he threw the entire church — and by extension the whole world — into the path of the Holy Spirit.

The whole article is well worth your time. Read it here.

I’d also like to draw your attention to an essay that develops the theme of the essential continuity of these three Popes: Three Popes, One Harmony in Christ: John Paul, Benedict, and Francis by Carl E. Olson:

And yet various differences in personalities and styles evidenced by recent popes are sometimes grabbed onto and ripped from proper and reasonable context. Those differences are used to shape a narrative (a mythology, in some cases) that does a disservice to anyone trying to better understand those particular men, the papacy, and the Church.

This point, unfortunately, needs to be made repeatedly today, especially since the distance between the lives and words of Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, and the pervasive (and media-spun) mythologies about them can be so vast that one is tempted to resigned despair in gazing across the chasm.

Obviously, we don’t know how history will judge these three men. As for me, I think that in a century or so, Benedict XVI will be enrolled amongst the Doctors of the Church.

If you have not read any of his books, what are you waiting for?

The most accessible place to start is probably Jesus of Nazareth. Start there – but don’t stop there.

I’ve often said that had I not already converted when I read his Introduction to Christianity, that book alone might have done it.

Although he has abdicated the Papacy, I sincerely hope that Father Benedict is continuing to write. At this point, I doubt that anything he does will be published until after his death. God willing, that will be many years from now.

Ad multos annos!