Sandro Magister has written an article Last-Ditch Appeal: The Pope Should Withdraw His Resignation making the case for a hypothesis of Pope Benedict XVI withdrawing his abdication before the end of this month.
Of course he would lose all credibility. This abdication does somewhat demystify the Papacy and undermines the heritage of Pius IX and Vatican I – the infallible “demi-god”. Are future Popes going to be like eastern patriarchs or chief executive officers of modern states or large business corporations? Either way, we could see the fulfilment of Malachy’s prophecy: the end of the Papacy as it has been known over the last thousand years or so – but not the end of the world.
It also depends on who gets elected – the person and the chosen papal name giving the message of the course to be steered.
Could it be that the Orthodox, Anglicans and even many Protestants have not been wrong with a more spiritual definition of Christ’s Church? The future could be very interesting indeed with a kind of “1989” in the Church and a different idea of a new spring…
* * *
Also see Benedict’s Wager, with a HT to Deborah Gyapong. This is an interesting viewpoint.
The Blue Flower 
Sorry, Father, I don’t think David Warren’s viewpoint is interesting at all: it’s just another whinge from the viewpoint that anything that criticises Roman Catholicism is bad.
Stephen, maybe you should read it more closely. I read there a distinct criticism of a RCism more interested in bureaucracy than in prayer and a hope that Benedict’s unusual action may give opportunity for a realignment of that.
As regards–“Could it be that the Orthodox, Anglicans and even many Protestants have not been wrong with a more spiritual definition of Christ’s Church? The future could be very interesting indeed with a kind of “1989″ in the Church and a different idea of a new spring…”–since this is first and foremost an internal issue within the RCC, it makes me wonder if there are any Jean Gerson’s or Nicholas of Cusa’s around in the RCC today who might be elected Bishop of Rome. There was a time during the medieval, scholastic era when it looked like a real conciliar approach would be taken, but popes and princes crushed that in the 15th century and then Trent and Vatican I buried it.
How is Orthodox understanding of Christ’s Church comparable to that of Anglicans and other Protestants. One can always cherry-pick one or two things and say, “Ah, that sounds similar, they must therefore be the same on this and many other issues”, but that purposely avoids context and with differing definitions/understandings. Could you please elaborate? For starters, Orthodox could never understand the attachment to the filioque among the so-called anti-papists.
Anyone? I’ve just lost my mother. Comments are welcome to give detailed commentaries on Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant ecclesiologies…………
Such a large and divise issue with tangled histories! This seems to be an issue the West needs to resolve first, on its own. Not unlike what the East needs to do on its own regarding divisions within and relations with the Oriental Orthodox.
Some potential ecclesiastical models that come to my mind are (1) the RC conciliar movement of the 1300-1400s, (2) the Augsburg Confession’s attempt at reform (see Melanchthon’s Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope & his Loci on Of the Power of the Church, or of the keys, and Of Human Precepts in the Church; and esp. as embodied in the Scandanavia High Churches), and (3) the Anglican Communion (esp. the thoughts underlying the later Non-jurors). Sadly, the non-RC West has been seriously tending towards falling into serious error in the modern era (WO, homosexuality, open communion, etc.).
Orthodox conciliarism may not be too attractive or realistic unless and until we can solve our serious problems in the diaspora and realize fully constructive brotherly relations between Moscow and Constantinople. Yet in light of Trent, Vatican I, Pius IX, and all the medieval scholastic baggage regarding the Roman Communion, no one should hold their breath that Rome will make any real concessions regarding full conciliarity.
You may be right. Pity. The true continuity issue for RC’s has been for generations, and will continue to be, that it is the reigning Pope who counts. Pius V said his rite was inviolate, until another Pope, Paul VI, said otherwise. Popes said for years, “no filioque”, and then one Pope said, “yes, let’s include the filioque”. So who knows what a new Pope might say? There are no structures left to serve as a check or balance, no ecclesiastical or liturgical ones at any rate. Pius IV and Pius X did so much innovation on the former, that they cleared the way for Paul VI and JPII to innovate liturgically.
I find myself much drawn by the suggestion in “Benedict’s Wager”. Yes, Joseph Ratzinger was a successful operative in the machinery of power of the Roman Church, but I like to think that I saw more than that in him. If God be seen as the ultimate authority and the prime mover of His Church (as He must be seen, even against the background of Vatican 1), then it is not in actions or pronouncements, but in prayer that the ultimate answers lie. If there ever has been a time in history when Christianity faced serious crisis, that time is now. It becomes a difficult thing to imagine how the wielding of such power as the papacy has accrued to itself can leave time or effort for the serious prayer the office requires. Perhaps, just perhaps . . . . . .
I think this is connected in a round-about way: over at Foolishness TW, there was a recent article entitled “A smaller, purer, socially-irrelevant church”. It referred back to some thoughts by Benedict, and the expression disturbed me. Of course, the spiritual journey is a journey, for most of us I dare say, for some notion of greater “purity”. We may be seeking to be, platonic-fashion, less body-bound; we may be seeking greater clarity, focus, less ego and so on. But, even setting aside that I do not think this was only what was in Benedict’s mind, or what might be in the mind of those who take up this expression, how could one deliberately choose social irrelevance? And does “small” mean “humble” or merely “exclusive”?
Now, we might reasonably infer what is meant by the expression by some who adopt it: a church that is rid of the backsliders, the doubters, the dissidents, the waverers, the confused, the ignorant, the puzzled and bewildered, the cynical, the disbelieving, the ambivalent, the rebels, the disillusioned, the betrayed, the plaintive, the unorthodox, the novel, the shocking, the non-conforming…..in a word, all the ratbags that make up a sizeable proportion of the humanity that finds itself in or affected by this thing called ‘the Church’.
So, who would be left? The pure, of course. Should this be thought a meaningful reality and not simply an ever-diminishing category doomed to a kind of perpetual atomic fission, it yet may not be cause for anxiety if it was, as desired, socially irrelevant. I’d like to think Benedict had something other in mind when he used an expression of this sort. He may have meant a church that was rooted in individual humility, the desire for purgation and cleansing grace, and focused on deep underlying challenges rather than superficial ones. But I don’t know how many have thought about the implications of using such language without such qualification.