When Pigs Fly (Again)...Ratzinger Quits...Again!

by Michael Monasky

Feb. 11, 2013 |

This morning my barista noted the same pink sky we all witnessed. Within minutes, the curlicue tails and porcine snouts came into focus. Another employee announced that the pope resigned. I chose to believe my eyes and doubt my ears.

In the early 1960's, as the Second Vatican Council went into full swing, ecumenism was the order of the day. No more Mass in Latin. Nuns shed feudal habits and donned modern, professional garb. This giddy environment imagined a female priesthood. Catholics, (universalists, really), saw real brother-(and sister-)hood in this egalitarian reality with Lutherans, Anglicans, and anyone who'd come to the table to break bread.

Theologian Hans Kung is the author of the liberal documents of Vatican Two. He has taught at the University of Tubingen for the past 53 years. Kung and Joe Ratzinger were appointed by Pope John the Twenty-Third as the Vatican Council's experts. Against much academic opposition, Kung hired Ratzinger at Tubingen in 1966. The tumultuous end of the 1960's proved too controversial for him (e.g., the Days of Rage, May 1968 protests, etc.). While he rejected the tone of the times and the behaviors of his students, Ratzinger abandoned his post at Tubingen in 1969.

The collegium of Catholic cardinals ignored that precedent. Ratzinger became Pope Benedict the Sixteenth in 2005, and announced his resignation today, the first in nearly 600 years. According to the BBC, “...resignation is extremely rare: the last Pope to step aside was Pope Gregory XII, who resigned in 1415 amid a schism within the Church.”

There is an inherent inconsistency in the Ratzinger/Benedict schema. His abandonment of ecumenical theology promoted the Tridentine Mass, a reassertion of papal infallibility, and an overall rejection of ecclesiastic reform. If that weren't bad enough, the pope's covert rejection of science baffles some of his supporters.

“Should any ecumenical consistency prevail, it is proprietary to Hans Kung.” Still a priest, he continues to write about reform in the Vatican despite losing his license to teach Roman Catholic theology in 1979. His books are eminently readable. In The Catholic Church, he concludes with the hope that the College of Cardinals will nominate a “Pope John the Twenty-Fourth” for an ecumenical rebirth, a transcendence of the modern, popular reforms of Vatican Two.

Yeah...that'll happen. When pigs fly.