The BBC News article "Pope Benedict XVI formally resigns to become 'pilgrim' " (2013) reports on the ceremony surrounding his final day as pope of Benedict XVI, who will keep that name with the new title pope emeritus. According to the article, Benedict has promised to cooperate and support fully his successor, who must deal with various scandals that have damaged the Catholic church in recent years.
When Benedict was elected as pope of the world's billion plus Catholics eight years ago, the first thing that impressed me was that he seemed to love dressing up. Popes have always worn expensive, colourful robes to impress people with their wealth and power, but Benedict seemed to love the colours and the rich silks, linens, brocade, and heavy embroidery simply for its beauty and the fun of dressing up in it. To be honest, he reminded me of the exuberant party goers at Sydney's famous Gay Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. I haven't attended that for more than twenty five years now, but when I was at university and living in Sydney, I didn't miss it. The costumes of the queens, dykes and others were amazing. And like Benedict, it was a display of joy. I might be wrong about Benedict, but as pope he pretty much had the power to do whatever he wanted, and dressing up in colourful outfits with lots of gold trim and white fur seemed to be what he wanted and enjoyed.
Some might think it's a bit disrespectful to compare the traditional head of one of the world's most ancient and largest religions with the sex charged participants in a gay and lesbian mega-party, but I don't agree. I might be wrong about Benedict's motives for dressing up, but by stating the idea, it means it can be treated seriously and either supported or shown to be wrong. What is disrespectful is to say nothing that might be negative - that is disrespectful because it treats the subject as something unsuitable for human discussion, reason and knowledge. Pretending it does not exist or only half exists so that only certain types of comments can be made seems to me more truly disrespectful. Saying something that some might dislike or strongly disagree with is not disrespectful because it treats the topic as something that matters - and that is not showing disrespect.
However, like Australia's Cardinal Pell, I do think that there are problems with Benedict and his church ("Pope Benedict XVI", 2013, Beset by scandals sect.). Cardinal Pell thinks the problem is that Benedict might not have been the best leader, but I think the problems are much more serious: a lot of Catholic teaching, Christian beliefs, and religious teachings generally, are immoral and cause great harm to people and society. For example, the Catholic church's opposition to abortion and even birth control such as condoms, continues to cause great harm to pregnant women in many countries where abortion remains illegal, often with the strong support of the Catholic church, and Benedict has always strongly supported these seriously unjust laws that condemn women, especially teenage girls who might still be in school, to have children that they do not want and cannot properly care for, who lead miserable lives after birth, and who then go on to commit much crime and cause further harm to societies. The pope is completely wrong on this and many other moral issues. And his errors lead to very real suffering for many people and society.
I'm hoping that the next pope will make some changes, but because the Catholic church is so anti-democratic it is very hard to change the awful and deadly traditions of centuries and millenia, however bad those ancient traditions are. As Benedict said on his final day in office: "the Church ... remains always the same" ("Pope Benedict XVI", 2013, Beset by scandals sect., ¶ 3).
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Reference
This response writing blog follows exactly the same organization as all of the others I've written over the last few days.
ReplyDeleteChecking the answers to the questions in the file blogging the BBC News.docx, which I've already emailed you, is high on the list of things to do tomorrow, so you might like to review your own written notes answering questions 1 - 4 there (5 is the less important), and perhaps compare how well they fit this latest response writing post.
As you've probably already realised, our response writing is a little more challenging than Hartmann and Blass's version.