Beyond the Crises in the Church: Pope Benedict XVI’s Pontificate and the Reason for Hope

As one who found her way back to the Catholic Church after being disappointed by Europe’s secularized and watered-down version of Christianity, I may have been pre-programmed to love a book that delves deeply into the pontificate of Benedict XVI. He was the philosopher-pope who, with his deep thinking about faith and reason, helped save my soul. 

Beyond the Crises in the Church is much more than a church history book. It evaluates the eight years of a papacy forced to deal with multiple crises—from the sexual abuse scandals to the problems of terrorism, from “Vatileaks” to accusations of money laundering. Its author, Roberto Regoli, priest and professor of contemporary Church history at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, does not shy away from discussing the German pope’s shortcomings, missed opportunities, and even missteps. Assessing the whole pontificate from election to resignation, the book attributes to history’s first pope emeritus his deserved but frequently denied credit, and repeatedly returns our attention to Joseph Ratzinger’s philosophical insights. By doing so, he helps us more fully appreciate and understand the pope’s impact on his intellectual contemporaries.

Benedict XVI’s papacy spoke to leaders, religious figures, and scholars honestly engaged in the earthly quest for justice. Focusing on the whys of laws far more than on the hows of policy, he awakened many consciences, redirecting minds toward the transcendent concepts of beauty, goodness, and truth that modernity had sought to scuttle. On a global level, he brought theological questions back to the center of public debates, forcing human rights theorists to answer the most serious questions about the sources and scope of these rights and of the law in general. He consistently reminded us of the dangers of relativism and was brutally honest about the incompatibility of human dignity with the objectification of our bodies.

In Regoli’s careful and detailed historical accounts, every honest reader can find reasons to recognize and appreciate both the intellectual capacities of the scholar who became a pope, and the supernatural humility that accompanied and guided his ministry until its final days. But Regoli is a historian. For this reason, this is not a book “in favor of” or “against” the current or the previous pope. As the author repeatedly states, the book does not, and cannot, provide a “general assessment” of the pontificate. It is too early for that, he suggests. As Regoli notes, both in his book and in an essay published in First Things in 2023, a pope’s contemporaries may often be very wrong about the merits or demerits of his papacy. It was true for Gregory VII, now a saint, but who died in exile in Salerno. A thousand years later, he is remembered and known as a “zealous, reforming pope who confronted major crises in the Church in the eleventh century,” and his pontificate is considered “the most important . . . of the entire second millennium.” Will a similar argument be made for Pope Benedict who, ever since his resignation in 2013, and until his death in 2022, “was not in exile, but was hidden from the world”? A pope who, even before 2013, did not necessarily gain the love or support of the media or the general public? Time will tell. 

In the meantime, this volume may help those most critical of the current or previous papacies—and of any sort of internal and external Church politics—to grasp the complexity of an institution that, while religious in nature and mission, has almost as many diplomatic (and very much earthly) relationships as the United States of America. In 2011, Regoli reports, the U.S. had diplomatic ties with 188 nations; the Holy See with 177. We learn how much the personalities, passions, talents, inclinations, and striking limitations of the men who dedicate their lives to the Church’s mission continue to play a profound role within it. 

Of course, religious truths have an eternal quality to them. But their historic “successes” and “failures” are inextricable from the human beings to whom they are entrusted. Whether the current Church focuses more on social justice or on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, furthermore, does not only depend on who is exercising the Petrine ministry. Prelates, secretaries, nuncios, and political leaders of nations all play a significant role in the life of the Church. And as we learn in this book, some of these aided Pope Benedict. Others did not.

Particularly in the opening chapters, we learn the importance of Vatican and curial politics, both before and after a papal election. Regoli’s detailed accounts—almost journalistic at times—demonstrate how conclaves are hardly dissimilar from secular elections. While the Holy Spirit “guides” the conclave, as most Catholics maintain, the pope himself remarked in 1997 how

[t]he role of the Holy Spirit must be understood in a very flexible sense. It is not as if the Holy Spirit dictates the candidate everyone is supposed to vote for. Ultimately, the only solid criterion is that the one elected will not be someone who ruins everything.

We discover the existence of “factions” and the importance of a new pope’s appointing the right people to the right offices. In this respect, we soon learn, Pope Benedict was far from perfect. Toward the end of his papacy, he admitted:

I am just in that aspect actually more a professor, someone who deliberates and reflects on intellectual matters. So practical governance is not my forte, and there, I would say, is a certain weakness.

In terms of weaknesses, most people remember the chaos that his 2006 speech in Regensburg created in the Islamic world, when Benedict XVI quoted the words of a Byzantine Emperor not particularly generous toward Islam. Reactions ranged from demonstrations to ransacked churches to Islamic leaders requesting a public apology. Pope Benedict was clearly unaccustomed to the constancy of media attention, and some Western leaders reacted by maintaining their distance. What Regoli helps us understand is how such chaos might have been prevented, or at least better managed, not by a better pope, but by a more experienced secretary of state. For that important role, the pope had chosen Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a dear friend of “proven affinity and fidelity,” but a man new to the diplomatic world and who often disappointed the expectations of delegates of other states. Indeed, Regoli notes that “[t]he bulk of nominations to top positions were made either following or contemporaneous with crises in the media or in governance,” paving the way for a series of pontifical missteps detailed in the book.

Today, large numbers of (self-identified) Catholics say that they believe in Christ, “but not in the Church.” In our hyper-individualistic society, many profess to want a very personal God, a mix-and-match religion, and an intermediary of choice (if any) between us and him. Furthermore, we want this intermediary to be, or at least appear to be, flawless. But Catholicism is unique in that the goal is not to find perfect shepherds. Catholics believe that the Church is a vehicle for salvation not because it is a human institution, but because it is a divinely inspired one. It is because of divine grace and mercy, not our own efforts, that we can hope for eternal life. And no pope, no matter how just, orthodox, charitable, or politically savvy, will ever be able to resurrect any of us from the dead. While humanly disappointing, if Pope Benedict, or his successors, are not perfect, this is precisely why we need the Church.

That said, Pope Benedict did a lot of tangible good during his eight years in the Vatican. In addition to his philosophical reflections on faith and reason and on charity and truth, he realized how the West’s crisis of faith was not unaffected by liturgy’s collapse, “which at times is even celebrated etsi Deus non daretur”—“as if God did not exist”. In this respect, it is to Benedict’s credit that—commencing with his predecessor—the past two decades have witnessed a renewal and beautification of liturgies, a recovery of the use of Latin and Gregorian chant, and an ever-growing love for sacred art and architecture. Nevertheless, Pope Benedict did not “choose” one liturgy over another. He praised the use of Latin and encouraged its teaching and use in seminaries while discerning “no contradiction between approving, supporting, and defending the so-called extraordinary form” and “allowing for the customs of the Neo-Catechumenal Way.” With him, the Church was truly Catholic—universal, with room for all.

Pope Benedict’s ability to unite different Christian sensibilities was mirrored in his ecclesial political strategy. With three different groups—the Lefebvrites, Anglicans, and Orthodox—considerable fruit resulted. In 2009, Benedict lifted the excommunication of four bishops illicitly ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and allowed for wider use of John XXIII’s Missal, which had been abandoned after Vatican II. With Anglicanism, he was the pope who—in 2009—created the now common “ordinariates,” making it possible for entire Anglican communities to enter into full communion with the Church of Rome. And he continued and renewed dialogue with the Orthodox Church, a community that, like the Catholic Church, is determined to resist modernity and its ethical aberrations.

Currently, one of the biggest crises of the Church—at least from within—seems to consist of the divisions among Catholics with different sensitivities, different liturgies, and different political, cultural, and moral priorities. While some of those are truly irreconcilable, Regoli’s book reminds us that the Holy Spirit is constantly at work—that the Church has overcome numerous crises, including in the recent past. Indeed, hidden among the author’s accounts of a particular and very significant pontificate are not only facts and pieces of information that only a full professor of Church history could insert into a book. The whole narrative is also filled with hope—a rare virtue, but one that should motivate all the members of the Church, even and especially in times of crisis.

Image by kirkikis and licensed via Adobe Stock.