SSermons rarely attract public attention. Even the Pope’s sermons are hardly noticed outside the circle of passionate Vaticanists. Unlike the sermon of Pope Francis at the funeral of Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI. Immediately after the funeral mass, voices of disapproval rose. Immediately after the ceremony in St. Peter’s Square, the American journalist Rod Dreher, author of a bestseller popular in right-wing Catholic circles with the meaningful title “The Benedict Option”, spoke on Twitter of a “disgraceful act”.
The incumbent Pope could have given the same sermon to his butler, was the devastating verdict. Benedict’s last official act was to expose his successor’s lack of greatness of soul. Finally, in contrast, Dreher reminded his digital followers of the “exuberant and loving memory” of the then Cardinal Dean and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, of John Paul II at his funeral mass on April 8, 2005.
While the criticism from the side of traditionalism of its own accord was not surprising, they also gave up Twitter The statements made by the evangelical theologian Peter Dabrock, who teaches in Erlangen, draw attention: “Listenless, powerless, impersonal” was the sermon of Francis. The former chairman of the German Ethics Council sees in the sermon how he is in a contribution for the magazine “Zeitzeichen” published by the Evangelical Journalism Association, a “symbol” for the state of the Catholic Church.
The incumbent Pope was unable to reconcile gospel and person, got lost in empty phrases and thus failed to give “consolation and hope” to a world church that goes beyond the Roman bubble. The preacher’s discouragement shows the specifically Catholic gesture of “remaining completely disconnected from the reality of life of modern people in one’s own bubble” and “spreading steep theological statements without serious reference to the recipient”.
Cautious turn to the brother
In fact, the Pope’s sermon lacks a personal touch. While Joseph Ratzinger consistently addressed the late John Paul II as the “Holy Father” and explained to the faithful his life in relation to Jesus’ call to follow him as a heroic suffering with Christ, Francis is more reticent in describing his predecessor as “shepherd”, “brother” or in the language of the bridal mysticism of the Old Testament Song of Songs as “the faithful friend of the bridegroom”. Occasionally, the incumbent Pope also weaves in quotations, which are only immediately recognizable as quotations for those in the know – from Benedict’s first encyclical “Deus caritas est” from 2005 or from a sermon at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica from 2006.
The main part of the sermon is a meditation on the last words of Jesus, which are handed down by the evangelist Luke: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). The Son of God, who doubted and – if we follow Matthew or Mark – cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46 or Mk 15:34), for Francis he thus “takes all the consequences and difficulties of the gospel on his shoulders”. This devotion is intended to become a model for the person entrusted with the Church and to enable him to “understand, accept, hope and dare all things” grow.
It is therefore no coincidence that Francis ultimately refers to the example of Gregory I, the great doctor of the church of late antiquity and author of the “Liber regulae pastoralis”, a kind of princely mirror for pastors: Referring to the apostles Peter and Paul, he shaped the papal self-image as ” servus servorum Dei”, as “servant of the servants of God”. Reflecting on this reference always forces a Pope in the light to admit that “he cannot bear alone what he could never bear alone in reality”. As Francis emphatically puts it, he is always dependent on “giving himself up to the prayer and care of the people who have been entrusted to him”.
By refraining from eulogy in this quiet sermon, Francis is offering the universal Church an alternative way of dealing with the death of the Pope Emeritus: Instead of immediately raising Benedict to the honor of the altars, withdrawing his theological heritage from discussion by appointing him Doctor of the Church, or that The incumbent Pope is exercising restraint in finally assessing the past pontificate by publishing disclosure books. Despite all the Roman rituals, he no longer focuses on a “defensor fidei” according to Dreher’s taste or the highest representative of a “hierarchologically structured Roman Catholic official church” that Dabrock scolds, but on the dying Jesus.
The desacralization of the papacy indicated by Benedict through his unexpected renunciation in 2013 thus finds an intricate continuation – the Petrine church of the last two centuries may once again become a serving church capable of devotion. In an unexpected way, with this sermon, Francis could have fulfilled his predecessor’s wish, expressed when he took office, to be just a “simple and humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard”.
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