Conservative U.S. Catholics mourn beloved figure
The death of Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday sent a broad wave of mourning through the American church. At the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, a single bell tolled for 15 minutes at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.
But his death held special meaning for the conservative wing of American Catholicism: It represented the loss of their unofficial figurehead, a shadow presence whose influence they followed even after he resigned in 2013 and Pope Francis became the church’s global leader.
While he largely faded from public life since his unexpected retirement, the former pope — whose early reputation as a firebrand once earned him the nickname “God’s Rottweiler” — remained a hero to many theological conservatives, who viewed him as a standard-bearer for a kind of doctrinal commitment and rigor they saw lacking in the church under Francis.
In recent years, the conservative wing of American church leadership has been gaining power and has clashed openly and often with the country’s second Catholic president, Joe Biden, and the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, over the issue of abortion.
On Saturday, during a vacation in St. Croix, Biden released a statement that said he and his wife “join Catholics around the world, and so many others, in mourning the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI,” adding that the pope “will be remembered as a renowned theologian, with a lifetime of devotion to the church, guided by his principles and faith.”
Biden remembered Benedict’s comments during a 2008 visit to the United States and White House, where the pope noted that the “need for global solidarity is as urgent as ever, if all people are to live in a way worthy of their dignity.”
Pelosi, D-Calif., who is also Catholic, expressed her admiration of Benedict’s spirituality and recalled welcoming the pope to Washington in 2008 and visiting him at the Vatican the next year.
“Paul and I join our fellow Catholics in mourning the passing of Pope Benedict XVI: a global leader whose devotion, scholarship and hopeful message stirred the hearts of people of all faiths,” she wrote in the statement, referring to her husband.
Benedict’s promotion of Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, helped shape the character of church hierarchy in the United States at its highest levels. Parts of the American church, including the younger generation of priests, have long held Benedict “in an awe bordering on reverence,” said George Weigel, a conservative Catholic commentator and author of To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II.
Catholics make up about 20% of all U.S. adults. The church has grown increasingly polarized in the past few years, and the faction that has opposed Francis’ agenda has strengthened.
At their annual meeting in November, U.S. bishops chose as their top leaders Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, who was named by Benedict to the Archdiocese for the Military Services, and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, who was elevated to his role by Benedict. Both have prioritized an opposition to abortion and have taken conservative stances on an array of social issues.
Benedict “continued throughout his long life to be an effective teacher of the faith,” Broglio said in a statement. “It will take many years for us to delve more deeply into the wealth of learning that he has left us.”
Benedict’s theological writings and influence as Joseph Ratzinger, when he was Pope John Paul II’s right-hand man, made him one of the most dominant forces to shape the culture of the current American priesthood.
No one was more important in helping John Paul turn the church to the right, said David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University.
“It continued to shift to the right more than I think he would have liked or envisioned,” Gibson said. “The orthodoxy he envisioned morphed into a kind of Tea Party Catholicism that may have been as strange to him as any liberal developments in the ’60s and ’70s.”
When Benedict visited the United States in 2008, he warned against the “subtle influence of secularism” that could lead Catholics to accept abortion, divorce and cohabitation outside of marriage.
He also acknowledged the “deep shame” caused by the sexual abuse scandal and said it was “sometimes very badly handled” by the church.
Benedict’s resignation, heralded by some as a move of humility, was also seen by his critics as fallout from the church’s mishandling of that crisis.
For many survivors of sexual abuse, his theological intellect could not compensate for his limited response to the global crisis, either when he led the church’s top doctrinal watchdog or as pope.
“Had he disciplined complicit bishops like he disciplined dissident theologians, a lot of cover-ups and crimes would have been stopped,” said David Clohessy, the former national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“He was brilliant but timid, causing thousands of children to be assaulted by refusing to act decisively to end decades of irresponsible church secrecy around child sex crimes,” he said.
In the United States, Benedict’s legacy is in the intellectual tradition and hierarchical appointments he leaves behind. His high-profile promotions include Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston; Cardinal Donald Wuerl, formerly of Washington; and Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis.
Cardinals around the country released statements of tribute and mourning.
“His life and his pontificate were based in a deep and abiding faith and an extraordinary record of theological scholarship,” O’Malley said. “In all of my personal interactions with Pope Benedict XVI, I found him to be an engaged leader, thoughtful in his decisions and always committed to the mission of the Church.”
He added, simply, “I will miss Pope Benedict.”