"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Paul Is Dead

by West Virginia Rebel

An old, but still relevant, comparison of the late John Paul and “The Rottweiler”:

I was a little awed to be breaking bread with people who knew the pope when—who had taken his classes, drafted his documents, carried out his directives, shaken his hand without pomp and circumstance. But such workaday relationships are where his true life is lived. Whereas John Paul seemed most at home when celebrating mass for 100,000 strangers, Benedict is most himself when among fellow churchmen in Rome. Whereas John Paul made all the world an altar, Benedict’s sphere of action is the compound of churches and offices surrounding St. Peter’s. As a symbol of the papacy John Paul’s popemobile has been replaced by Benedict’s personal theological library of several thousand books, which were photographed after his election so that they could be reshelved in the same order in the papal apartments.

In short, Mr. Outside has been succeeded by Mr. Inside; and the story of Ratzinger’s emergence as the Church’s leader reveals the ways in which his pontificate is likely to affect the Church as a whole. In many ways the central fact of the papacy in the modern age is the gap between the pope’s growing power in the Church and his diminishing influence on the religious lives of individual believers. This gap is one that John Paul and his predecessors sought to close. Under Benedict the gap is open—wide open. He will govern more but matter less than John Paul—and will probably matter less to the lives of individual Catholics than any other pope of the past half century.

Two years later, I have to say that Benedict has changed little. He may be more of a traditionalist than John Paul was, which is partly why some religious conservatives like him, and he may sincerely see that as being his role as leader of the Church, but it has also distanced the Holy See from the people in a way we haven’t seen recently. As an agnostic and a religious skeptic I admired John Paul because he really did come across as “The Peoples’ Pope.” Ratzinger, on the other hand, has come across as yet another figurehead, albiet one who governs with more authority and reminds me of why I became skeptical of organized religion in the first place.

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