To the dictators of relativism and their allies in the chattering class,
the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is seen as an occasion for
celebration and a chance to lobby the Church for a liberal successor.
The mischief is already underway, as seen in such headlines as: “New
Pope should not condemn contraception, says cardinal.”
The Church’s enemies, both within and without her walls, see an
opportunity to capitalize on Benedict’s resignation, and the media, as
always, stands ready to help. The coverage so far of the resignation has
been grotesquely biased. ABC News wins the prize for the most
ludicrously unfair post-resignation story: “Pope Benedict Dogged By
Hitler Youth Past, Despite Jewish Support.”
Other media outlets have been only slightly less subtle in their
distaste for Benedict’s pontificate. They considered it newsworthy to
report that he didn’t “change” Church teaching, as if that fell within
the range of plausible choices before him.
That the Church persists in naming believing Catholics to the chair
of St. Peter is somehow “controversial” in the eyes of the media.
“Benedict’s eight-year reign will be appraised intensively and, I
expect, unkindly. He will be described as a diehard traditionalist, a
reactionary in a time of revolutionary yearnings,” wrote Bill Keller,
the former executive editor of the New York Times. (Author Thomas Cahill, after John Paul II’s death, took a similar line in the pages of the Times, writing that historians may conclude that his conservatism “destroyed” the Church.)
Such judgments on Benedict’s pontificate are wholly predictable,
given the hostility with which the media greeted his elevation and its
equation of liberalism with “reform.” Leading newspapers billed Benedict
at the time of his election as “God’s Rottweiler” (though later they
would cast him as a lap dog during the abuse scandal). He “never had a
chance” with the media, as an executive at Fox News put it.
But Benedict was never as rigid as the media claimed. If anything, he
approached non-doctrinal matters with great flexibility, a style that
explains his willingness to buck 600 years of history and resign from
office. That’s quite a departure from tradition for the “diehard
traditionalist” of Keller’s fevered imagination.
The media’s obsessional interest in the papacy is a tacit
acknowledgment of its power. Journalists may claim the papacy has
“weakened” under Benedict, but the very fact that they cover it with
such intensity belies that description. What the media treats as the
papacy’s greatest weakness—adherence to orthodoxy—is in fact the source
of its prestige.
The media’s frenetic lobbying for a “more progressive” successor to Benedict, as the Washington Post
editorialized, is also a measure of the papacy’s enduring power and
influence. Why should liberals care so much about the direction of a
religion to which they don’t belong? The answer is that they envy its
immense power and wish to harness that power for their own ideological
purposes. Out of this envy they pose as “reformers” who know what is
best for the Church. Yet their unsolicited advice, if taken, would only
weaken her.
They regard the papacy as a relic of “absolutism” and the last great
obstacle to the triumph of their ideology. Consequently, they expend
great energy in trying to neutralize or co-opt it. A liberal pope, in
their eyes, would be an even greater propaganda coup than a liberal
president. They think that if they could somehow cow the Church into
naming a “progressive” to bless their various revolutions—from socialism
to same-sex marriage—those revolutions would spread everywhere.
In the past, the Church’s enemies sought to eliminate the power of
the papacy by force, even to the point of throwing popes in prison. And a
few of her modern enemies harbor the same thoughts, as Pope Benedict
found out. “Arrest the Pope? I rather think we should,” ran a headline
on a column in the British press in 2010. “Put the Pope in the Dock,”
read another headline. United Nations jurist Geoffrey Robertson, joined
by atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, wanted Pope
Benedict prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”
But since imprisoning popes is unrealistic the Church’s enemies seek
to control the papacy through alternative means. Through the
manipulation of popular opinion and media pressure, they clamor for a
liberal pope who will confirm the world in all its errors and surrender
the Church’s institutions to the dictatorship of relativism.
The faithful, however, can take solace in the promise of Jesus Christ
that that day will never come. The gates of Hell may clank against the
Church, but they will never crush her.
