I do hope and pray that, as Pope, Ratzinger is not a divisive figure.
The people of the world had 26 years of a Pope who reached into their souls and hearts with his words and personality. Ratzinger's dry style is reminiscent of Paul VI.
I did notice, just now, that Ratzinger did not put on the papal white cassock, but just put a large white rochet and the red mozzetta over his black cardinal cassock. Nice informal touch.
Our Lord said that He came not to bring peace, but a sword. A little division can be good every now and again, and there are some bad people within the Church that ought to be divided from Her. I hope "Father" McBrien at Notre Dame takes this as a big hint and goes and joins the Episcopal Church, which he would have done years ago, if he were intellectually honest.
That said, I think Benedict XVI has shown humility and sanctity in his personal life, just like John Paul II. No one would have been as close to John Paul as Ratzinger was if he did not have a deep spirituality.
How Jesus Christ entered my life: I met him first, not in literature or philosophy, but in the faith of the Church. That means that from the beginning he was not, for me, an important figure from the past (like Plato or Thomas Aquinas, for example), but someone who lives and works today, someone whom we can meet today.... Jesus and the Church are, for me, as impossible to separate as they are impossible to identify one with the other. Jesus is always infinitely transcendent to the Church. It was not through Vatican Council II that we first learned that, as the Lord of the Church, he is also her standard. I have always regarded this truth as both consolation and challenge. As consolation because we have always known that the scrupulosity of the rubricists and the legalists does not have its source in Jesus, in that infinite magnanimity that comes to us from the Gospels like a fresh breeze and collapses all excessive literalness like a house of cards. We have always known that nearness to him is as totally independent of the ecclesiastical rank one may hold as it is of one's knowledge of juridical and historical details. To that extent, the person of Jesus has always been for me a source of optimism and liberation. On the other hand, I have never been able to ignore the fact that he asks more of me than the Church would ever dare ask, that the radicalism of his words can be equated only with the kind of radicalism displayed by Anthony, the Desert Fathers, and Francis of Assissi in their wholly literal acceptance of the Gospel. If we do not do that, we have already taken refuge in cauistry, and cannot escape the corroding restlessness, the knowledge that, like the rich young man, we have turned away when we should have taken seriously the words of the Gospel.
I think that shows some potential for reaching into souls and hearts. It grabbed mine.
Dear sinkspur,
"I do hope and pray that, as Pope, Ratzinger is not a divisive figure."
I certainly wouldn't want to see the pope be unnecessarily divisive.
But I don't think that would apply to efforts to further clean up the seminaries, excommunicating heretics masquerading as Catholic theologians, banning pseudo-Catholic politicians from the Holy Eucharist, and disciplining wayward bishops.
For a start.
sitetest