Sir, – Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign as head of the Catholic Church has apparently attracted empathy from political leaders, religious figures and commentators alike.
However, for those who have suffered from the abuse meted out by some of his religious such eulogies ring very hollow indeed. Benedict’s legacy is that of a church mired in worldwide scandal and it will need priests of integrity led by a new decisive Pope endowed with vision and Christian compassion to heal the wounds of the past. Perhaps his resignation is a hopeful beginning? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – So the Pope has resigned. I am personally shocked that so many are shocked by this supposedly seismic event.
The Catholic Church has been headed up by a man whose attitudes toward gay marriage, abortion and contraception belong to another age and who failed to comprehend the utter sense of outrage, disgust and moral indignation during his mismanagement of the clerical child abuse issue which he attempted to sweep under the Vatican carpet.
In the coming days more than 100 celibate men between the ages of 55 and 80 will sit down to play their very own ecclesiastical version of “Pope Idol” after which the faithful can look forward to the latest septuagenarian emerging from this conclave.
Religion in general and Catholicism in particular has become less and less relevant in people’s lives, although the press and media might like to inflate the importance of a papal resignation. The conspicuous absence of so many younger members of society from the Mass and other religious gatherings proves that where matters of religion are concerned the younger generation are consumed with apathy. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Congratulations to Pope Benedict for making the courageous decision to resign before his deteriorating health rendered him incapable of fulfilling his duties.
The church needs a healthy and energetic figurehead if it has any chance of renewing itself in Ireland and around the world. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – The resignation of Pope Benedict will be welcomed most, perhaps, by those who can remember the articl (Patsy McGarry, March 2nd, 2009), which stated: “In June 2001, every diocesan bishop in the Catholic Church was written to, in Latin, by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. They were instructed that, where complaints of clerical child sex abuse were concerned, these were first to be referred to Rome and it would decide how they were to be dealt with.
“The Congregation document was accompanied by a letter, also in Latin, stipulating that the instruction was to be kept secret.”
These letters were sent out eight years before the same man, as Pope, publicly expressed his shock and horror about the harm done to children, by his priests, around the world. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Your profile of Pope Benedict was just what might be expected from The Irish Times (Analysis, February 12th). However, your facts are wrong on the issue of the extraordinary form of the Mass, the so-called Tridentine Mass. It was not, as Patsy McGarry avers, Pope Benedict’s “decision to allow the Latin Mass be celebrated again”.
First of all, the Latin Mass remains the normative Mass of the Catholic Church, and Latin the official language of the universal Church. (Did it occur to anyone to wonder why Pope Benedict delivered his retirement speech to the cardinals in Latin?).
Paragraph 36.1 of the Second Vatican Council’s document on liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, said: “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites” (an instruction more honoured in the breach than the observance). Many bishops maintained (wrongly) that the 1400-year-old Tridentine Mass had been abrogated after the council. This was clearly not so, as Catholics in England and Wales were able to continue to attend Mass in the old rite, thanks to Cardinal John Heenan. Pope John Paul II, both in Quattuor Abhinc Annos in 1984 and his apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei of 1988, asked the bishops to be generous in their permission for use of the old rite, but his words were largely ignored. As a result, Pope Benedict, in his 2007 Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, allowed priests to use the old rite, without the necessity of requiring permission from their bishops.
Today, that rite flourishes in churches such as St Kevin’s in Harrington Street, Dublin, and throughout Ireland, thanks in part to Pope Benedict XVI. Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Imagine an army in which junior officers must retire at 75, more senior officers must retire at 80 but the supreme commander can go on indefinitely irrespective of declining mental or physical health. Exactly. Surely the church must seize the pope’s resignation as a God-given opportunity to declare that, in future, all must retire at 75. To miss this opportunity would indeed be a cardinal error. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Although the phrase might not fully fit: “The Pope is dead, long live Vatican II!”. – Yours, etc,