The Anchoress is doing her level best to drill holes in the 'Ratzi was a Nazi' meme:
“Tenderness” is a word that has been usedwith some frequency by his successor, Pope Francis; it is not a word people associate with Benedict. For the ignorant and the perpetually angry, Papa Ratzinger is only a caricature –”God’s Rottweiler”. For the First Guardians of the Church Militant he is stern Commander-in-Chief which is, in fact, another kind of caricature.
What Benedict was, and is, is a Christ-lover; for the agenda-driven — whatever their pet-issue — this means he is all-Christ’s before he is anything else. It means, too, that to plumb his depths is to begin to drown in love that is maddening in a way, because it relentlessly points us away from our own concerns (and we are a generation that demands attention) for something deeper and finer; something that makes us truly royal children of a Revolutionary King.
What ended the social media session of cyber-contretemps was my reminding the cranky-one of Benedict’s exhortation, that all people needed to hear the words, “it is good that you exist”.
The conversation ended there, because a tender Benedict was of no use at all to this person’s agenda, which was to make the church behave the way he/she thinks it ought to.
And that’s everyone’s agenda, to a point, because we are all Eves and this is still Eden, and we would all be like as God, if everyone would just prostrate themselves to our ideas.
What was most interesting about the whole engagement, though, was the response of someone else — a Catholic-Junkie and witness to the melee — who, reading through the mess of input, saw those words “it is good that you exist” and, assuming they belonged to Pope Francis, remarked “very Jesuitical!”
That person, too, was shocked to learn that the words came from Benedict.
Read the whole thing, be convinced that the media portrayal and description of Pope Emeritus Benedict the 16th is complete bunk and hogwash.
Carry on.