Benedict PP. XVI: Three Years of Papacy
By Santhosh Sebastian Cheruvally

Rome, APR. 14, 2008, 09.20 Hrs (CBCI News):

Benedict PP. XVI is completing three years of papacy on 19th April. He was elected to succeed the late Pope John Paul II of venerable memory. To lead the Church pastorally and to serve the world morally, as the successor of a man whose memory continues to be a living reality, is sensible and possible with the assistance and in the plan of God.

In this write up I shall make a brief reflection based on what the papacy of Benedict PP. XVI appears to mean.

From ‘Joseph’ to’ Benedict’

One might wonder, in the Shakespearean sense, what is so much in a name, especially in a world and society which despite the globalised closeness faces cancerous anonymity in terms of identity and need of one another. One gets the depth of the meaning of a name and its representative significance when viewed from the Biblical and Christian perspective. This is why the baptismal name means fundamentally a new awareness of identity for a Christian. In this way, whether it is Israel or Emmanuel, it means what it contains. Within this perspective ‘Joseph’ in both the Old and New Testaments stands for the mysterious guidance of God towards the realization of his plan. The Josephs are in both OT and NT are brought forcefully even beyond the logic of human reasoning and not without subsequent pain, to make blossom God’s plan for the world. Young Joseph (Ratzinger) in his Bavarian childhood and adolescence was forced to witness the ideology and evil designs of Hitler’s National Socialism. Even at a tender age in which one hardly understands the ideological affectations of social system, young Joseph saw his Bavarian catholic ambience and its popular festivals and parish schools becoming turbulent. I believe it is in these childhood experiences, his theological roots were born and his characteristically apologetic and intellectual defense of the faith and the Church.

If Joseph was a name not of his conscious choice, but willed by his parents, Benedict is a name the Pope chose for himself consciously. St. Benedict is the father of western monasticism. He is known for his rule of the monasticism which saw its birth in solitude, contemplation, mystical ecstasies and realistic human temptations. The Benedictine heritage serves as the Christian basis for Europe and he is, therefore, the patron saint of the continent. Therefore he is named the patron of Europe. Joseph Ratzinger, instead, was (is) a diocesan priest. Yet in choosing this name he seems to remind the Church in Europe first of all of its Christian roots, which should be substantially distinguished from fundamentalistically inspired nationalistic religious ideologies prevalent even in a country like India among a certain section of its people. Benedict here means calling one to contemplate experience and find the joy of Christian vocation. It is in this sense that, in his first ever radio interview (Radio Vaticana) following his election as Pope, he said, "It is beautiful to be a Christian." Simple words, they mean and convey both a personal and communitarian dimension for a Christian ponder over his baptismal dignity, beauty and duty.

Pastoral and Theological Appeal

His pastoral address to the Church began with his words “I am a humble servant in the vineyard of the Lord.” In these words, carefully chosen and spontaneously expressed, he confessed that his primary responsibility as the Pope means a pastoral responsibility as the labourer of the Lord for his flock. In continuation with his pastorally diaconic leadership of the Catholic Church, Benedict PP. XVI presented his first and programmatic encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love). The first encyclical for a Pope certainly speaks much of him and his plan, of his present anchoring and prognostic orientations. In this sense, he spoke for the first time to the community of faith and appealed to them to rediscover and experience the unicity of Christ and the unicity of God as the God who is Love in essence and manifestation. His second encyclical Spe salvi (Salvific Hope) dwells further upon the fact that Love spurs us (humanity) to have hope, to live in and to live with hope. True hope is born only in God who is Love. And where there is Love, there is God (experienced and respected). His weekly catechesis is a further conscientious addition to the riches of his pastoral appeal. They are strongly concentrated on the wisdom and riches of the Fathers of the Church. The Fathers of the Church are the bulwarks of the Tradition and faith, who took their faith and God experience in Christ to secular, theological and catechetical levels of interactions which are yet mystagogical, apologetic, catechetical and liturgical. The church of his conviction in his catechesis and encyclical is the church founded on the principles of Kerygma (proclamation of faith)- Marturion (testimony out of faith and faith experience), Leitourgia (authentic worship), diaconia (commitment to service of neighbor) and carità (founded on Love). His language is not only intellectually stimulating, pastorally encouraging. For Benedict, PP XVI theology is a responsibility wedded to kerygma and pastorality. Theology seems to take on the direction for him as both a spiritual and rational utterance born out of a living encounter with God in Jesus Christ, something exactly that precisely reflects the petrine confession of Jesus as the Son of the Living God and the Thomasine (istic) encounter -confession after the resurrection, “My Lord and My God” . This seems to be the reason why he confesses in the preface of his book ‘Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in Jordan to the Transformation” that his reflection in the book is born out of his personal contemplative journey to seek the face of Christ. This is the reason he says in the same book that behind the Nicene Creed, it is Peter confessing ‘You are the Son of the living God.” It is based on this faith experience that Benedict PP. XVI seems to seek the ecumenical koinonia in prayer and charity, beyond the years long followed discussions centred on theological and ecclesiological technicalities.

Secular Appeal

His secular appeal to the world is mainly reflected in the Urbi et Orbi (to the City and to the World) messages, without forgetting that this appeal has indeed strong reverberations also in his pastoral encyclicals and catechetical teachings. He has constantly called the world and its political frameworks to be attentive to justice and dialogue in order to resolve the problems facing and threatening humanity. Problems of poverty can be alleviated when the nations are attentive to a culture of love which accepts and respects the other and helps the world to walk on the path of hope. It is in this line that he has called even the different religions, while being respectfully conscious of their vibrant identities, towards joining hands for working out a culture of coexistence and a world minus violence in the name of religion. No religion can in this sense either justify or perpetuate mentalities or structures that caricature human dignity or advocate and inflict violence and discrimination upon segments of humanity just because they belong to cultures and faiths different from a nation’s mainline religious or cultural ethos. It is based on the celebration of Life that he appeals to the nations to be responsible in constructing constitutional ideals which respect life in its fullness, instead of looking for convictions of convenience. This is all possible, according to Benedict PP. XVI, even when the circumstances are existentially and socially cloudy and dark, once humanity begins to experience God in Love and God as Love, which sets the world on the way of Spe salvi…

[Fr Santhosh Sebastian Cheruvally is doing doctoral studies at Gregorian Pontifical University, Rome. E: sanseban@gmail.com]