VATICAN CITY — Two pontiffs, both wearing white, both called “pope” and living a few yards from one another, with the same key aide serving them.

The Vatican’s announcement Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI will be known as “emeritus pope” in his retirement, be called “Your Holiness” and continue to wear the white cassock associated with the papacy has fueled concerns about potential conflicts arising from the peculiar reality now facing the Catholic Church: having one reigning and one retired pope.

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There has been good reason why popes haven’t stepped down in past centuries, given the possibility for divided allegiances and even schism. But the Vatican insists that while the situation created by Benedict’s retirement is certainly unique, no major conflicts will arise.

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Some Vatican-based cardinals have privately grumbled that it will make it more difficult for the next pope with Benedict still around.

Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, Benedict’s one-time colleague-turned-critic, went further: “With Benedict XVI, there is a risk of a shadow pope who has abdicated but can still indirectly exert influence,” he told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine last week.

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Adding to the concern is that Benedict’s trusted secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, will be serving both pontiffs — living with Benedict at the monastery being converted for him inside Vatican grounds while keeping his day job as prefect of the new pope’s household.

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Kueng said it was a mistake for Gaenswein to serve both men and for Benedict to remain so close to the center of action.

“No priest likes it if his predecessor sits next to the rectory and watches everything he does,” Kueng was quoted as saying in Der Spiegel. “And even for the bishop of Rome, it is not pleasant if his predecessor constantly has an eye on him.”

Goodness gracious, people look for controversy just to create it.

A few points they may have overlooked, or simply failed to ask about in their rush to print:

1) The problematic papal positioning of the past happened back when the papacy was a major seat of temporal power. It, um, isn’t now, so a good portion of the allure is gone. Also those struggles happened because more than one guy claimed he was pope and stuck to that claim for a good long time. This pope is retiring. Not trying to hold onto power. Disappearing of his own free will. There cannot be any confusion about who is the real pope.

2) Relying on unnamed “some Vatican-based cardinals” and Hans Küng for insight on the implications of Benedict’s resignation is like relying on unnamed “high-level GOP staffers” and Chris Matthews for insight on power struggles within the Republican party. Really. Benedict (it is speculated) is retiring in part because he recognizes his own strength is not up to dealing with problems within the Vatican that have blown up and surprised him over the past year or two. The persons involved may be cardinals willing to talk to the American media. Just a hunch.

3) If the next pope decides he does not wish Archbishop Gaenswein to remain secretary he can end Gaenswein’s service in a moment’s notice. There is absolutely nothing preventing that move. Conflict ended.

4) Benedict isn’t exactly like any old former pastor, isn’t living in an apartment nearby, meeting with the old ladies of the parish every week for bingo, getting coffee with the old guys at McDonald’s in the morning, still accepting dinner invitations, and showing up at coffee and donuts after Mass on Sundays to talk about the “good old days.” Benedict, always a shy man who desired not to be in the spotlight at all, is, of his own free will, disappearing to a monastery inside the highly protected, very secluded Vatican City. If you’ve never been, the Vatican, with the exception of St. Peter’s Square and Basilica, is surrounded by a high stone wall, a fortress wall, with very limited access points. Benedict no doubt wants to live in a monastery there because it’s the only place he can be reasonably assured a little peace and quiet—something he has desired for decades but has been unable to find because of his duties at the Vatican since John Paul II made him head of the CDF.

In fact, the WaPo article, while misunderstanding what they are reporting, shares this bit:

Benedict himself has made clear he is retiring to a lifetime of prayer and meditation “hidden from the world.” However, he still will be very present in the tiny Vatican city-state, where his new home is right next door to the Vatican Radio transmission tower and has a lovely view of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.

By the simple fact that he will live there he will be “very present in the Vatican,” yes. Is it possible to be less than “very present” in the place where you are? But “right next door to the Vatican transmission tower” and having “a lovely view of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica” do not equal, “setting up the Waldorf and Statler of papacies.” (Transmission towers aren’t exactly glamorous, he won’t have, or attempt to have, unfettered access to it, and a good bit of Rome has “a lovely view of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.”)

Remember, that opening line means something, folks: “Benedict himself has made clear he is retiring to a lifetime of prayer and meditation ‘hidden from the world.’” For decades the man has been almost Horton-esque in his reliability: he means it, he says it; he says it, he means it. Why would he go the way of a certain former Democrat U.S. President now?The man did not want to be pope in the first place and is now retiring because he’s too tired and weakened to continue to carry the burden. It simply beggars belief that he would allow any ambiguity about who’s really in charge ’round here to emanate from him.

All in all, I should think the new pope would be overjoyed to have Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, one of the most brilliant minds of the last 50 years, sitting in a monastery just a few minutes’ walk away.

Sorry, WaPo, unnamed Vatican-based cardinals, and Hans Küng, but that’s not controversy you’re going to be able to sustain.

A great view of the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica simply means you’ve got great real estate in Rome. Not that you’re setting up a shadow papacy. — Photo: Catholic News Agency

Starting with the humorous and moving quickly to the serious.

In case you hadn’t heard, and purely for context, we announced two weeks ago that our president, Father Terence Henry, TOR, will step down from that position at the end of this academic year. That in mind, Bob Rice, popular Catholic musician and assistant professor of Catechetics here at Franciscan, offered:

Isn’t it obvious? The Pope is resigning so he can be the new president of Franciscan University.

— Bob Rice (@therealbobrice) February 11, 2013

The cuisine here in Steubenville isn’t nearly as good as in Rome, but we would certainly welcome this prospective new president… He *would* have to become a TOR, however. One of our students offered a common solution to problems here on campus:

First Fr. Terry and now the Pope? This is too much. I need a couple hours in the Port. #overwhelmed #fusprobs — FUS Problems (@fusprobs) February 11, 2013

“The Port,” for those unfamiliar, is the replica we have on campus of the Portiuncula chapel St. Francis re-built in Assisi when he heard the Lord instruct him to “Rebuild my Church.” We have perpetual adoration in the Port during the academic year. As you can imagine, that also makes it a place to go when you don’t know where else *to* go.

Our vice president for Advancement, Michael Hernon, noted, “Steubenville has a new bishop, soon a new president for the university, and now a new pope. What a year of faith!”

Sure gives one the opportunity to just let go and trust that God is in charge.

We posted a collection of reactions from Fr. Henry and some of our theology professors. Here are a few highlights.

Father Henry offered,

While Pope Benedict’s resignation is certainly unexpected, it is yet one more sign of the strong leadership he has exhibited throughout his papacy. It takes a particular kind of wisdom to know when to step down and a wonderful humility to do so.

I’ve seen some saying that Pope Benedict ought to stay in the office until he dies like John Paul II did. As much as I might think it is a good idea and I would like that to happen for the great witness is gives of noble suffering, I recognize that what I’m saying is I, I, would like it. Frankly, what I would like or what I think is the appropriate thing to do doesn’t really matter here. If I love this pope and trust his judgment then that trust must extend to a decision as momentous as this one. Few would grasp the gravity of such a move as well as Joseph Ratzinger, especially since he had a front-row view to the deterioration and demise of his beloved predecessor. Does Benedict want to set the precedent that popes ought to resign before the onset of Alzheimer’s or another debilitating disease that saps the mind but not the body? Modern medicine can keep a body alive long after the mind is gone. If we trust that the Holy Spirit will protect the Church from any harmful actions of a debilitated pope—and we do—ought not we also to trust that the Holy Spirit could guide a pope to resign *before* he loses his mental faculties and then cannot resign with a free conscience and fully operational will?

Interim chair of the Department of Theology, Dr. Alan Schreck, said,

Upon his election as pope, some predicted that Pope Benedict XVI would be a polarizing figure, continuing his long-held role as the Catholic Church’s chief doctrinal defender and ‘censor.’ Pope Benedict certainly did not avoid controversy in the pursuit of truth, engaging in honest and serious dialogue with other religions and with modern culture, unafraid to challenge the ‘dictatorship of relativism.’ Yet Pope Benedict was deeply committed to promoting reconciliation: among Christians, among nations, and with those alienated from the Catholic Church.

Indeed, this pope has gone further than anyone thought imaginable extending olive branches and making efforts to restore unity. From the true meaning of his much-maligned Regensburg Address—the one that angered some fundamentalist Muslims to murderous rage, but actually led to a significant dialogue with Muslim scholars—to his visit to Turkey and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, to the establishment of the Anglican Rite and the massive influx of former Anglicans to the Church, to his efforts to draw the Society of St. Pius X back into the fold, to Summorum Pontificum and the seismic shift it caused in the landscape of Catholic liturgical development, and other efforts that escape me at the moment, he has used a graceful humility, arguing with an unassailable logic, founded in the truth of the Love of God, proposing always that any approach not founded in and leading to that love, is inhuman and doomed to denigrate humanity and lessen all of us.

I love the language Dr. Regis Martin, professor of systematic theology, uses, (and I appreciate that he echoes what I said this morning):

The sudden news of the Pope’s decision to retire at the end of this month, rather than die, as his sainted predecessor did, with his boots on, has taken us all by surprise. But the shock of the realization that this gentle and good man, this wonderful Vicar of Christ whose mind is as profound as his heart is fearless, should be tempered by the recognition that while popes come and go, the Church remains forever. And the legacy he leaves behind will surely last as long as the Bride and Body of Jesus Christ himself. What precisely that patrimony will consist of I leave for another day. But surely the centerpiece of his life has always been the love of God monstrated before the world in the sending of his Son. All else has been a footnote to that horizon-shattering event. And so I see his departure in the immediate context of that blinding light. Leaving—to recall the last line of a poem by Stephen Spender—‘the vivid air signed with his honor.’

Yes. No pope’s full impact on the Church, and therefore the world, can be calculated within many decades of the end of that papacy, but I think this pope’s impact will reverberate with the loudest of them for centuries for reasons touched on in the list above of areas where he has tried for reconciliation. Striking because of how quiet and meek a man he is. But from the outset, when the first encyclical of this extraordinarily intellectual man was a profound meditation on “God is Love” (a very Augustinian opener that just warms my Augustinian heart), we knew we had something we did not expect.

Almost as though “God is Love” is the answer to, or countering position against, the “dictatorship of relativism” he identified as a great threat to modern man roughly a year prior.

More will be said in the days and weeks to follow, but that’s enough for now.

Pope Benedict is resigning. Not the end of the world, nor the end of the Church.

If you find yourself saddened by this news remember: the Church is the bride of Jesus Christ, not the product of human enterprise. The Pope is Christ’s vicar, not successor. The pope is a caretaker and steward, not lord. Continue to love the Church and not any one man. Trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit—that same Holy Spirit who gave us Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger. And especially pray for the cardinal-electors who just started burning up the red phone lines. They are who the Holy Spirit shall work through, pray that they are sensitive to the authentic promptings of the Spirit.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

If, on the other hand, you find yourself happy with this news because you think “finally, we’ll get a pope who will allow contraception, women priests and [all manner of silliness] to prevail,” prepare yourself for continued frustration. The Church is the creation of God, not to be remade in our own image and likeness. She does not approve these things because they are un-approvable.

The Church is who she is because of Jesus Christ and not because of any individual man. All we weak human persons can contribute is more difficulty through our sinfulness—but even when we screw up, God is capable of bringing great good out of it.

We will hear all manner of silliness and bad advice from many corners about what sort of man (heh… or woman…) the Church ought to elect to show that she is still “relevant.” An actively and activist homosexual man. A non-Catholic. A man who isn’t so hung up on this or that doctrine.

Meh.

That’s like impetuous teens telling their stodgy conservative parents to “get with the times and live a little” in licentious, irresponsible, indulge-your-appetites behavior … except it falls short of the relationship between the Church and the world by orders of magnitude.

Those who would try to remake the Church do not understand her. Pope Benedict’s resignation, though an epochal event in world history, will not rock the Church, but merely confirms the primacy and solidity of the Church over the ever-changing times.