Moving on

Pope Benedict XVI announced his retirement last week saying that in recent months his ‘strength of mind and body’ had deteriorated to the extent that he had ‘to recognise my incapacity adequately to fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.’ He is the first Pope to resign in 600 years.

The announcement was greeted first with shock, then with acknowledgement of the Pope’s courage in making this decision. There was appreciation of his intellectual ability and theological insights, but a widespread sense that leadership was not one of his stronger gifts, particularly in his handling of the child abuse scandal.

But whatever our views of Benedict and his papacy, his decision to retire flags up some interesting issues.  For a start, many of us will find ourselves having to decide when it’s the right time to step down from a responsibility we’ve been carrying. It is very possible – in work, church, or in our private lives – to keep on doing something, fulfilling a role, when to an impartial observer it’s clear that the time has time for us to move on.

Why our reluctance to step down? Perhaps we simply can’t conceive of ourselves without a role we have fulfilled for so long. Perhaps we imagine ‘No one else can do this as well as I can.’ Perhaps we think other people expect us to stay and would feel ‘let down’ if we don’t. Perhaps we simply sense we ‘ought’ to continue.

I can imagine, for instance, someone who has cared lovingly for an elderly relative for many years, but is finding it increasingly difficult as the relative’s health deteriorates and they themselves grow older. It’s so hard to admit we’re struggling.

Whatever our situation, a time may well come when it’s right to say ‘I can’t cope any more,’ or ‘I can’t cope any more without extra help,’ or ‘Someone younger could do this better than I can.’  And often, when we step down, or seek support to continue, we experience a sense of liberation at the relief of a burden removed or shared.

But Benedict’s resignation also raises the question ‘What does commitment to Christ look like?’ A  Polish Cardinal, a former secretary to Pope John Paul II said in a radio interview last week that John Paul had remained in office until his death, despite his frailty because ‘You don’t get down from the cross.’

The thought is that Jesus’ destiny was to die on behalf of the human race. He did not climb down from the cross leaving his work unfinished. The Cardinal’s comments imply that John Paul II saw it as his destiny to serve God as Pope until the very end, despite ill-health, and felt that to step down would have been in some way a dereliction of duty.

The Cardinal’s remarks were interpreted (wrongly, he claims) as implying that Benedict was somehow copping out, that his commitment to Christ was suspect because he was giving up with the task still undone.

The point is that all of us as Christians are called to be, and to remain while there’s a breath in our bodies, committed to God whatever it takes. But that commitment will not necessarily show itself in the same way in different lives, for we each have our own calling, our own destiny.

What matters is that we follow with love, faith and a good conscience the path to which we believe we have been called, as both John Paul II and Benedict have done.

The final lesson from Benedict’s resignation is that our decisions do not have to be shaped by tradition alone. It is a tradition that Popes don’t resign. Benedict has shown us that what matters is not fulfilling a tradition, but taking what you believe is that next God-given step, even when this disturbs those of us to whom tradition is important.

God’s values are constant and unchanging, but God is never in the business of preserving traditions for the sake of it. Quite the opposite. God is a holy iconoclast forever doing new things, and doing old things in new ways.

Yet we often try as Christians to freeze-frame old ways of doing things or to recreate them - whether in our own lives, or in a big international Church, or in the smallest house-church - without stopping to think if God is still breathing life into what we are doing. The danger is that in seeking God through replicating tradition we may be closing our heart to the loving whispers of God’s creative Spirit.

We pray for courage, grace and peace for Benedict as he moves on to the next stage of his journey, centred on prayer and writing perhaps, with time for music and old B&W films on DVD, Benedict who, it seems, has heard those loving whispers.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 21st February 2013)