Tension between the two popes
“The irony,” a well-placed Jesuit at the Vatican told me, “is that this pope, great agent of decentralization in the Church, is personally the most centralized pope since Pius the Ninth. Everything has to cross his desk.”
.. With that in mind, he spends part of the day buffing his collected writings, which will run to 16 volumes. That he has written so much works against his hope to be read in the future.
.. Benedict knows, better than anybody, that his renunciation of the papacy is what made Francis’s freestyle, judgment-averse pontificate possible. The thought is enough to keep him awake at night. For it is his firm belief that the willingness to suspend judgment is the core of the dictatorship of relativism.
.. But the difference between the two popes has to do with doctrine as well as temperament—especially one doctrine that Kasper, in a very visible dispute with Ratzinger, spelled out better than anybody else. It concerned what exactly the pope is. Kasper argued that the pope is chiefly the bishop of Rome: eminent, yes, but one bishop among many. Ratzinger argued that the pope is a super-bishop of sorts, whom the other bishops must follow as a sign of Church unity.
.. “They have different ways of reading the signs of the times. Benedict is good with ideas, but he had poor judgment of people. Francis knows people, how they think. He took the city bus in Buenos Aires. He calls people on the phone. He uses the computer. But Benedict, he doesn’t drive”—here the Friendly Cardinal grasped an imaginary steering wheel. “He doesn’t do Internet”—here he pointed at his laptop. “He is not … normal! Francis, he is normal!”
.. It wasn’t hard to picture Pope Francis inside, drowsing before the Blessed Sacrament, as he is wont to do. For all his vitality, he is neither fit nor young.
.. “Who am I to judge?” Who, indeed? It is not a simple matter; it cannot be. In the end there is a need to judge and be judged, is there not? We are, he and I, successors to Peter, keeper of the keys to the kingdom. Who will judge, if not us?