Transfiguration

Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough – John Houston, as Noah Cross, in “Chinatown.”

            Eighty-five-year-old Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to retire from what is a lifelong post appears to signal change to the nearly 2,000 year-old Catholic Church that for the last three decades has been buffeted by the high winds of change.

Technology – from television to computers to the Internet – has afforded more knowledge and education to Western Civilization’s populations, raising questions about faith and some church practices that have not changed in well over a millennium.

The church’s one institution in particular, the male-dominated clergy where women are forbidden to become priests, cardinals or even the pope, bedevils many Catholics. The reasons and rationalizations neither make sense nor sustain logic.

            Yet, the church is not a monolith of poor reason and irrationality. It has reversed it self on some important issues.

After imprisoning for life in 1633 the physicist, mathematician and astronomer Galileo, for making the observation that the Earth rotates around the sun, the church started to recant less than a hundred years later. Its pillorying and detention of the man who is known today as the father of modern science was, perhaps, wrong.

            In December 2008, the 400^th anniversary of Galileo’s earliest telescopic observations, Pope Benedict praised his contributions to astronomy. Interestingly, in 1741, another pontiff, Pope Benedict XIV, authorized the publication of Galileo’s complete scientific works.

            To demonstrate how far the church had come in recognizing the once heretical scientific explanations of Galileo, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences announced in 2008 that a statue of the astronomer would be erected on the Vatican grounds.

Less than a year later, though, the Pontifical Council of Culture announced that plans for the statue were suspended. It’s another example of how non-monolithic the church really is, though not for lack of trying to keep it monolithic.                                                                                           

Forces for and against progress and enlightment are at constant battle within the church.

In his homily at Mass this week, Pope Benedict spoke of “sins against the unity of the Church,” hinting at Vatican office politics, according to an NBC News report. It’s unclear exactly what his Holiness was referring to; the actual meanings of his pronouncements, like those of his predecessors, are often veiled. 

            The Vatican is an institution of immense power and wealth, largely secretive, filled with mystery and intrigue. For most people, it’s another world, one that seems very old and far removed from their own contemporary lives.

            Even the pope’s speeches on love and spirituality are distant in their impact, if there is any impact, to the average person, whether or not they are Catholic.

            Despite the church’s power and wealth, its keepers struggle from an ancient fortification, Vatican City, to maintain relevancy in a fast-changing modern world. It has failed to even adequately address the child sex-abuse scandal that has rocked the church to its core and threatens the existence of the Holy See.   

            Curiously, the last time a pope resigned was 1415. Pope Gregory XII was elected under condition that he would abdicate the papacy when rival Pope Benedict XIII who presided from Avignon, France, did. Their abdications ended the Western Schism that lasted 39 years and was driven by politics rather than theological disagreements.

            Once Pope Benedict XVI steps down at the end of February, it will be fascinating to see who the College of Cardinals elects as the new pontiff and what it will mean for the future of the Catholic Church.