The Pope Who was Actually a Bear

In 1977, a frail, reluctant, 50-year-old college teacher was pressed by his confessor to accept appointment as Bishop of Munich. The job would take him from his beloved students and embroil him in ecclesial and political struggles for which he had little taste. Reluctantly, that good scholar, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, accepted the appointment.

Unnoticed by most people, on the coat of arms that he created for his service as bishop Fr. Ratzinger included a puzzling symbol: a bear with a pack on its back.

Just four years later, Pope John Paul II summoned Bishop Ratzinger to Rome. There, for a quarter of a century more—and now as Cardinal Ratzinger—he bore extraordinarily heavy burdens as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the second most important office in the Church.  In the final three paragraphs of the fascinating memoir he wrote while still Prefect of the Congregation, Cardinal Ratzinger explained the significance of the bear:

According to legend, on his way from Germany to Rome in the early 700s, St. Corbinian’s horse was torn to pieces by a bear. Corbinian reprimanded the bear, loaded onto it the pack the horse had been carrying, and made the bear haul that burden all the way to Rome. Only then did Corbinian release the bear.

Then Cardinal Ratzinger quotes Psalm 22 (“When my heart was bewildered, I was stupid and ignorant. I was like a dumb beast before You. I am always with You”). He tells us that in those very words, St. Augustine spoke of the burdens he carried once he became bishop:

A draft animal am I before You … for You.  And this is precisely how I abide with You.

How often, continues Cardinal Ratzinger, writing the last paragraphs of his  memoir …

did Augustine protest to heaven against all the trifles that continually blocked his path and kept him from the intellectual work he knew to be his deepest calling! But this is where the Psalm helps him avoid bitterness: “Yes, indeed, I am become a draft animal, a beast of burden, an ox—and yet this is just the way in which I abide with You, serving You, just the way in which You keep me in your hand.”

And then, years before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger says:

The heavily laden bear that took the place of St. Corbinian’s horse, or rather donkey—the bear that became his donkey against its will: is this not an image of what I should do and of what I am?

His answer?   For the last eight years, he’s placed it right before us, right there on his Papal Coat of Arms.

The future Benedict XVI concludes his 1998 memoir with the following touching words that came suddenly to my mind yesterday as he stepped into the helicopter that took him from the Vatican:

It is said of St. Corbinian that, once in Rome, he again released the bear to its freedom. The legend is not concerned about whether it went up into the Abruzzi or returned to the Alps. In the meantime I have carried my load to Rome and have now been wandering the streets of the Eternal City for a long time. I do not know when I will be released, but one thing I do know. Augustine’s remark applies to me, too:   “I am become your donkey, and in just this way I abide with you.”

Less than 24 hours ago—God be praised!—and after 36 years of carrying burdens he would never have chosen himself, our faithful bear was finally released, traveling neither into the nearby hills of Abruzzi nor back over his beloved Alps, but merely the short distance to Castel Gandolfo where he can pray and think and write, far from the increasingly shrill and reckless attacks that countless souls and organizations have unleashed against him and his beloved Church.

Have you ever seen the Pope or the Church assaulted so frequently, so viciously, and with such reckless disregard for what they actually believe and do?

Just two days ago in his final Wednesday audience, speaking of his eight years’ tenure, Pope Benedict admitted that sometimes he felt like St. Peter and the apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee.

The Lord gave us many days of sunshine and gentle breeze, days when fishing was plentiful. Then there were times when the waters were rough and there was a head wind, times when it seemed the Lord slept.  But I always knew that it was the Lord’s boat, not mine. Not ours.   He will not let it sink.   He leads it, and yes, does so through the men He chooses, because He wants it to be so. This was, and is, a certainty that nothing can tarnish.

Now, pursued by critics as cruel and as persistent as dogs after a bear, this good man chosen by God to lead us for a time has finally had the burdens lifted from his shoulders.

May the teeth of his critics cease to tear his soul,  may the sounds of their cries fade away!

This I pray, and pray genuinely—for Benedict, but not for you and me.  Our time of battle is not done … nor even hardly begun.

In fact, just last year Benedict himself placed on your shoulders and mine a burden which we cannot—and must not—shirk.   Just over a year ago, Pope Benedict told our American bishops that in the face of hostile forces that threaten not just our Christian faith, but humanity itself, committed believers must never fall silent.

Catholics, he told them, must confront anti-Christian forces—the very ones inflamed to harm him now—with “rational arguments in the public square” to help shape the values that will shape the future.

Essential to this task, Benedict told our American bishops, is “an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture.”   That’s you and me.   You and I have become St. Corbinian’s bear!

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Psalms 22
1	My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2	O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest.
3	Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4	In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5	To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed.
6	But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people.
7	All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads;
8	"He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!"
9	Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts.
10	Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.
11	Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help.
12	Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
13	they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.
14	I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast;
15	my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death.
16	Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet --
17	I can count all my bones -- they stare and gloat over me;
18	they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots.
19	But thou, O LORD, be not far off! O thou my help, hasten to my aid!
20	Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog!
21	Save me from the mouth of the lion, my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen!
22	I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee:
23	You who fear the LORD, praise him! all you sons of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel!
24	For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.
25	From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
26	The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live for ever!
27	All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
28	For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
29	Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and he who cannot keep himself alive.
30	Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation,
31	and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it.

1	Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.
2	But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had well nigh slipped.
3	For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
4	For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek.
5	They are not in trouble as other men are; they are not stricken like other men.
6	Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.
7	Their eyes swell out with fatness, their hearts overflow with follies.
8	They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.
9	They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.
10	Therefore the people turn and praise them; and find no fault in them.
11	And they say, "How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?"
12	Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.
13	All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.
14	For all the day long I have been stricken, and chastened every morning.
15	If I had said, "I will speak thus," I would have been untrue to the generation of thy children.
16	But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,
17	until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end.
18	Truly thou dost set them in slippery places; thou dost make them fall to ruin.
19	How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!
20	They are like a dream when one awakes, on awaking you despise their phantoms.
21	When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart,
22	I was stupid and ignorant, I was like a beast toward thee.
23	Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou dost hold my right hand.
24	Thou dost guide me with thy counsel, and afterward thou wilt receive me to glory.
25	Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee.
26	My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.
27	For lo, those who are far from thee shall perish; thou dost put an end to those who are false to thee.
28	But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all thy works.