Pope Benedict shows us how the Catholic Church went so terribly off-course

By David Von Drehle
Columnist
April 12

There was consternation among Vatican-watchers in 2013 when Pope Benedict XVI became the first pontiff in centuries to resign the papacy rather than die on the job. Would it not be confusing to have two men residing in Roman palaces to whom the Holy Spirit had entrusted the “claves regni caelorum” — the very keys to heaven ?

Now that Benedict, born Joseph Ratzinger, has broken his six-year official silence to quibble with his successor on the topic of sex abuse in the church, confusion is no longer a hypothesis. It’s murky indeed when Pope A offers veiled criticism of Pope B in the pages of a Bavarian periodical. As anyone who has co-parented children knows, authority figures who are not on the same page will be played against one another. So it is with Roman Catholic leaders today: Conservatives who don’t like the tendencies of Pope Francis are looking to their preferred pope for the doctrinal equivalent of ice cream and a later bedtime.

But, in another respect, Benedict’s strange, self-justifying public letter is clarifying. It shows, not always intentionally, how the Catholic Church went so terribly off-course, and why this important institution is having so much trouble finding its way. When a hierarchy makes itself accountable only to God, but at the same time grants itself sole power to speak on behalf of the Almighty, and then cloisters itself amid opulence and toadies, the result is a monstrous indifference.

Benedict grades his own tests. So, of course, he passes with flying colors.

According to his letter, church leadership — in which he has played an enormous role for more than four decades — is essentially blameless in the abuse crisis. Priests raped children and bishops covered it up — because the rest of us in society forced them into it through our godless depravity.

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