Anglican Mainstream

By David Gibson, RNS

If you want a crash course on how papal politics really works, look no further than the saga of Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

On Friday, Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric grabbed headlines by telling the BBC that priestly celibacy was “not of divine origin” and that he’d be “happy” if priests had the option to marry.

On Saturday, O’Brien was back in the news, this time after four men reportedly accused him of “inappropriate acts” dating back to the 1980s.

By Monday, O’Brien had resigned as archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh and announced he would skip the conclave.

From champion of married priests to disgraced churchman within 72 hours, O’Brien’s trajectory is stunning but also emblematic of the frenetic and fever-pitched campaigning that occurs during the tiny window between a pope’s death or resignation and the election of his successor.

The interregnum lasts a few weeks at most, when church leaders and various interest groups can openly voice their views to try to influence the future course of Roman Catholicism. It is also a time when the media act as the chief means for vetting any potential candidate whose track record, views and character might otherwise remain a mystery to the public and even many of his fellow cardinals.

If the process is far less expensive and not quite as mind-numbing as the slog of a U.S. presidential campaign, the condensed papal version is not much gentler, or necessarily more effective. Instead it can be nasty, brutish and short.

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From The Telegraph

Pope Benedict XVI told tens of thousands of pilgrims in St Peter's Square in a voice breaking with emotion that he was resigning because God had called on him to devote himself to prayer

Pope Benedict XVI has given his pontificate's final Sunday blessing from his studio window to the cheers of tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square.

Benedict says even though he's retiring on Thursday from the papacy, the first pope in 600 years to do so, he's "not abandoning the church."

In a voice breaking with emotion that he was resigning because God had called on him to devote himself to prayer but said he would not foresake a Church role.

Instead he says he'll serve the church with the same dedication he has till now, but will do so in a way "more suitable to my age and my strength."

Benedict, 85, will spend his last years in prayer, meditation and seclusion in a monastery on Vatican City's grounds.

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By Tim Stanley, Telegraph

By Edward Stourton, Mailonline

The next Pope will almost certainly be someone you have never heard of. That is the only prediction one can make with any confidence as the Roman Catholic Church sets sail on the uncharted waters opened up by Benedict XVI’s resignation.

The church is far and away the world’s largest institution, but the system for choosing its leader is anything but democratic. The decision is taken by members of the College of Cardinals who are under 80: currently 117 of them. Many of them have worked together over the years, and know one another — and therefore the candidates — very well.

But they are not representatives in the sense that politicians in a democracy represent the voters.

They are Princes of the Church, clerical aristocrats, not democrats. And there is often a wide gap between the way they understand Catholicism and the views of ordinary Catholics they are supposed to lead.
 
Indeed, the electoral process is designed to be as ‘unworldly’ as possible. The cardinals will be locked up — the word ‘conclave’ is derived from the Latin for ‘with a key’ — in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican until they have made their choice, cut off from the outside world.

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By Hilary White, LifeSite News

It was an emotional day at the Vatican as Pope Benedict XVI, in two of his last public addresses, called again on Christians to continue to defend the lives of innocent unborn and vulnerable people and to uphold the sanctity of natural marriage. In this morning’s regular Wednesday general audience he warned that Christians will face great pressure to give up their commitments.

From Cranmer – read here

By Karen McVeigh, Guardian

Victims and their advocates – who hold pontiff responsible for covering up abuse – push forward with international legal cases

Victims of the child sex abuse crisis that has engulfed the Catholic church during Pope Benedict's tenure welcomed his unexpected resignation on Monday, amid speculation over what prompted his departure.

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap), an organisation of 12,000 members worldwide, claim Benedict is personally responsible for widespread abuse within the church because he chose to protect its reputation over the safety of children. US lawyers who are currently suing the pontiff and other high-ranking Holy See officials for systematically concealing sexual crimes around the world, said his resignation may lead to more international prosecutions.

[...]  The Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed a case against the pope last year at the International Criminal Court on behalf of Snap, said his departure would make international prosecution easier, both in its case at the ICC and other, potential prosecutions, because it will remove the immunity given to him as a head of state.

In a statement, the CRR said: "This pope is responsible for rape and other sexual violence around the world, both through his exercise of superior responsibility and through his direct involvement in the cover up of specific crimes. Tens of thousands of victims, most of them children, continue to suffer because he has placed the reputation of the church above the safety of its members. His resignation will make international prosecution easier for national systems of justice that still grant immunity to current heads of state."

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David Lindsay comments here

By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, Catholic Herald

by John Bingham, Telegraph

To his many admirers, Pope Benedict has proved to be a persuasive defender of Christian values and a voice of stability in a world where centuries-old certainties about the family, the state and faith have shifted at a dramatic rate.

(AM's newslinks on Pope Benedict's resignation can be found here)

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has released the following message on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

It was with a heavy heart but complete understanding that we learned this morning of Pope Benedict’s declaration of his decision to lay down the burden of ministry as Bishop of Rome, an office which he has held with great dignity, insight and courage. As I prepare to take up office I speak not only for myself, and my predecessors as Archbishop, but for Anglicans around the world, in giving thanks to God for a priestly life utterly dedicated, in word and deed, in prayer and in costly service, to following Christ. He has laid before us something of the meaning of the Petrine ministry of building up the people of God to full maturity.

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The Archbishop of York's message can be read here

David Cameron pays tribute to Pope Benedict XVI

From BBC News

The Pope is to resign at the end of this month in an entirely unexpected development, the Vatican has confirmed.

The 85-year-old became Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005 following the death of John Paul II.

The reasons behind the head of the Catholic Church's surprise resignation have yet to emerge.

Resignations from the papacy are not unknown, but this is the first in the modern era, which has been marked by pontiffs dying while in office.

At 78, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was one of the oldest new popes in history when elected.

He took the helm as one of the fiercest storms the Catholic Church has faced in decades – the scandal of child sex abuse by priests – was breaking.

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Cranmer has the full resignation statement

Pope Benedict XVI resigns – live reaction by Paul Owen, Guardian 

Comment: The leadership of the Catholic Church are hate-fuelled bigots by Paul Tippetts, Pink News

Pope to resign. This is unbelievable news, but evidence of Benedict XVI's deep humility by Damian Thompson, Telegraph

Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation: live blog from Catholic Herald

The Pope has tried to help, but being a Catholic has never felt more difficult than at the beginning of the 21st century by Cristina Odone, Telegraph

The Catholic Church in England and Wales will have no say in the papal conclave. Just as well, perhaps by Damian Thompson, Telegraph

Three centuries of popes – interactive by Paddy Allen and Ranjit Dhaliwal, Guardian

Anglican-Catholic relations rest, in part, on Pope’s successor from ACNS
 
Can the pope resign? from The Guardian

Pope Benedict XVI has resigned – what happens next? from The Guardian

Pope Benedict XVI – in pictures The Guardian

Pope Benedict's resignation: a stunning shock by Andrew Brown, Guardian

SPUC thanks Pope for linking protecting life with defending marriage

Richard Dawkins: what a nasty old man by Damian Thompson, Telegraph

Who will be the next Pope?  from Cranmer

Cranmer links to One Of These Men Will Be The Next Pope by Michael Brendan Dougherty, Business Insider

Pope Benedict resignation: Cardinal Keith O'Brien shocked by news from BBC News, Scotland

Peter Tatchell: A Pope who opposed human rights

Reflecting on the resignation by Fr Ed Tomlinson

By David Gibson, Sacred and Profane

Apparently not in New Zealand, where the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a four-and-a-half story billboard depicting Pope Benedict XVI blessing the marriage of a male couple “is unlikely to cause widespread offence.”

By Steve Doughty and Simon Caldwell, Mailonline

The Pope will today give a public warning to David Cameron that his plans for same-sex marriage will undermine the family.

Pope Benedict XVI’s New Year’s Day message warns that the Coalition’s reforms will reduce the status of marriage and harm the families that are built around it.

He will say that such moves by politicians are ‘an offence against the truth of the human person’.
 
In a message aimed at the Prime Minister – who is not named – the Pope will add that the cause of preserving the institution should be supported by everyone concerned about the family, whether or not they are Christian.

The Pope warns there is ‘a need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union’.

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By Harry Mount, Telegraph

In his Christmas message, the Pope said, “The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have."

How we rush to fill our time with time-saving appliances that soon become mere time-filling devices. Mobile phones, iPads, Facebook, tweeting – all, at their best, are staggeringly efficient things that produce extraordinary advances in our working lives. I have written whole articles on my phone while on the train and filed them to newspapers instantaneously – a process that would once have needed a pen and paper, a copytaker, a railway station telephone box and a team of hot metal print workers.

Those same marvellous things then come along and devour our spare hours, destroying our capacity for spiritualism, for reading long books and for just thinking. We shouldn't really blame the devices themselves, more our capacity for being waylaid by short-term gratification. That man avidly staring at his phone on the 7.32am from Guildford might be reading Proust or the Bible on his mobile – except he's not.

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By John-Henry Westen, LifeSite News

The gender theory, which is behind the homosexual revolution and the attack on the family was highlighted in Pope Benedict’s Christmas message to Vatican prelates this morning. “There is no denying the crisis that threatens,” the family “to its foundations – especially in the Western world,” he said.

Crediting the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, for the research, Pope Benedict XVI said “the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper” than was originally believed. “While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question.”

According to “the ‘gender’ philosophy,” explained the Pope, “sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society.”

The Holy Father added: “The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious.”

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By John Smeaton, SPUC

Pope Benedict's message, published on 8th December by the Vatican, for "the celebration of the world day of peace, 1st January 2013" could not have been more appropriately timed in view of current developments in both Ireland and Britain.

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, said:

"Those who insufficiently value human life and, in consequence, support among other things the liberalization of abortion, perhaps do not realize that in this way they are proposing the pursuit of a false peace. The flight from responsibility, which degrades human persons, and even more so the killing of a defenceless and innocent being, will never be able to produce happiness or peace. Indeed how could one claim to bring about peace, the integral development of peoples or even the protection of the environment without defending the life of those who are weakest, beginning with the unborn. Every offence against life, especially at its beginning, inevitably causes irreparable damage to development, peace and the environment. Neither is it just to introduce surreptitiously into legislation false rights or freedoms which, on the basis of a reductive and relativistic view of human beings and the clever use of ambiguous expressions aimed at promoting a supposed right to abortion and euthanasia, pose a threat to the fundamental right to life. 

"There is also a need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union; such attempts actually harm and help to destabilize marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society. 

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By John Bingham, Telegraph

The pope has reaffirmed his desire for stronger ties between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in his first message to the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

In a message through Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Vatican’s ecumenical chief, he spoke of the long-standing aim of “fully restored ecclesial communion” between the two churches.

The letter promised prayers for the Bishop of Durham and his family and spoke of the “intense spiritual and human friendship” between previous Archbishops and Popes.

Ties between the church in England and the papacy were first severed under Henry VIII and permanently separated under Elizabeth I.

But current relations between the two churches are widely viewed as closer than at any point in the last 400 years.

The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has a strong personal friendship with Pope Benedict, and shares a similar background as a theologian.

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By Hilary White, LifeSite News

The different areas of interest for people involved in public life, the pope said, are not distinct from each other, but are “profoundly interconnected,” and are all “constituted by respect for the transcendent dignity of human beings,” Pope Benedict told a group of Christian politicians last week.

The defence of human life, Benedict said, is not therefore separate from the defence of natural marriage. Rejection of abortion, euthanasia and eugenics, “is, in fact, interwoven with respecting marriage as an indissoluble union between a man and a woman and, in its turn, as the foundation for the community of family life”.

“It is in the family, founded on marriage and open to life, that human beings experience sharing, respect and gratuitous love, at the same time receiving – be they children, the sick or the elderly – the solidarity they need.”

Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech to the European Christian Democrat movement, said that “authentic progress of human society cannot forgo policies aimed at protecting and promoting marriage, and the community that derives therefrom.”

The family, based on the union of a man and a woman, he said, moreover “constitutes the principal and most significant place for the education of the person.”

“Thus the family, the basic cell of society, is the root which nourishes not only the individual human being, but the very foundations of social coexistence.”

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From The Guardian

Paolo Gabriele, Benedict XVI's butler, ordered to stand trial over scandal that has exposed infighting at top of Catholic church

Westminster Abbey’s Choir sang for Pope Benedict XVI, with the Cappella Musicale Pontificia ‘Sistina’, the Sistine Chapel Choir, at the Papal Mass marking the Solemnity of St Peter and St Paul in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, on Friday 29th June, a historic occasion of great significance for Anglican-Catholic relations.

The service was broadcast live across the world and was the first time in its 500-year history that the Sistine Chapel Choir had sung alongside another choir during a service.

The Abbey Choir was invited to Rome by Pope Benedict XVI, following his visit to the UK in September 2010, during which he attended an ecumenical service of Evening Prayer at Westminster Abbey. This reciprocal visit is a further fruit of the Pope’s visit to Great Britain and is a powerful symbol of the communion already achieved between the Anglican and Catholic churches.

The Dean of Westminster, The Very Reverend Dr John Hall said: ‘It is not hard to detect behind this invitation from His Holiness a papal project to restore some of the Church’s musical tradition to the liturgy. The experience of participating in these liturgies in Rome has enriched the Abbey and its Choir and the Anglican tradition of worship.’

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