God Has Left the Building

Today Pope Benedict resigns his office as the leader of the Roman Catholic church. And the above title was that given to an opinion column in the weekend Portuguese newspaper. It drew my attention, partly because the title was in English, whereas the rest of the piece, as the rest of the newspaper, was all in Portuguese, and partly, because it seemed mildly shocking for a country that continues to be for the most part fairly traditionally Catholic.

I thought the last paragraph by the writer, Luís Januarío, commenting on the ways in which the news of his resignation was received by the leaders of the Church, was worth recording here.

“It’s a symptom of the times, he writes, that the cardinals of the various factions, seemed to making declarations (about the pope) in the manner of professional politicians of a modern democracy, rather than in the old roman rhetoric. Applauding the decision of the Pope, many of them seem to be ratifying the secularization of the church and admitting that their High priest, is in fact an ordinary human being, albeit a saintly one, with a right to retirement and to resign his post. No longer, does it seem, is he the Holy pope of the Catechism, who was first infallible, then infallible in questions of faith, but finally, now one like the rest of us, capable of good and bad decisions”. God, the article, concludes is no longer in the Vatican.