John L Allen jnr: Visit is a chance for the Pope to show Britain his human side

Published on Wednesday 15 September 2010 16:01

THERE'S A tradition in the Vatican press corps that when one of us writes a book about the Pope, we make sure he gets a copy. Thus when my volume The Rise of Benedict XVI appeared shortly after the papal election of April 2005, I made an appointment to deliver an inscribed copy for the new pontiff.

The book was divided into three sections: the final days of John Paul II, how Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger emerged as his successor, and my predictions about where the new papacy would go.

To be honest, I had always assumed the Pope never sees these books. To my surprise, a few weeks I received a call from the Vatican spokesperson, at the time the Spaniard Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who was with the new Pope at his summer vacation chalet in northern Italy.

Navarro-Valls told me Benedict had come down to breakfast that morning with my book in his hands, and wished to relay a message.

"Please thank Herr Allen for having written this book," Navarro-Valls quoted his boss as saying, "especially the last part about the future of my papacy … it has saved me the trouble of thinking about it for myself!"

The anecdote illustrates one of the best kept secrets about Pope Benedict XVI - his lively sense of humour. On a personal level, he is an infinitely more affable figure than his fearsome public reputation suggests. Scots should get a taste of that today - on previous foreign outings people expected to meet a Grand Inquisitor, but found a gentle pastor instead.

All this is a reminder of the dominant storyline about this papacy, the dramatic gulf between insider and outsider perceptions of Benedict XVI.

Among those who pay attention to papal activity, Benedict XVI has emerged as one of history's great teaching popes. Experts compare him to Leo XIII in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, another intellectual pontiff elected late in life. Leo launched the tradition of Catholic social teaching and laid the foundation for Catholicism's dtente with democratic modernity, just as Benedict has made the post-modern relationship between reason and faith an ide fixe.

The most distinctive element of Benedict's teaching is what I've dubbed "Affirmative Orthodoxy," meaning his determination to present traditional Catholic doctrine in the most positive fashion possible.His first two encyclicals reflected that motif: Deus Caritas Est, "God is Love," and Spe Salvi, "Saved by Hope." The former was actually a historic first, a lyrical papal tribute to erotic love.

Benedict's case for religion in a secular age is premised on the idea that real freedom is not license to do whatever one likes, but the freedom to become the kind of person God intends, and thereby to taste happiness that lasts. Faith isn't a set of rules and limits, but a roadmap to joy.

WHATEVER one makes of that, it's hardly the message of a fire-breathing Savonarola.

A concise account of Affirmative Orthodoxy came after Benedict's 2006 trip to Spain. Some anticipated a slugfest between the pope and Socialist Prime Minister Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero, but it never came.

Afterwards, Benedict said: "Christianity, Catholicism, isn't a collection of prohibitions - it's a positive option. It's very important that we look at it again, because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We've heard so much about what is not allowed that now it's time to say, we have a positive idea to offer."

Of course, Benedict XVI as the "Pope of Hope" is hardly the normal perception in the outside world, where headlines and sound-bites shape impressions.

For that constituency, Benedict's papacy isn't defined by its teaching but its train wrecks.

Recently two Italian journalists published a book cataloguing the debacles under Benedict XVI, including a conflagration with Muslims after he quoted a Byzantine emperor linking Muhammad and violence, a row about condoms and AIDS while Benedict was in Africa, a Holocaust-denying bishop, and, of course, paedophile priests. The Italians titled their collection Attack on Ratzinger, as they believe these disasters are fuelled by media hostility and intramural Catholic opposition. Others would argue Benedict's PR woes are largely self-inflicted, but in any event they're a fact of life, with devastating consequences for Benedict's moral authority.

Mismanagement of the sexual abuse mess is also the most acute instance of a deeper malady in Rome, one which even the pope's best friends have been forced to acknowledge as a crisis of governance. At times, it seems no one is minding the store.

Earlier this year, Italians were stunned by the surreal "Boffo case," featuring charges that senior papal aides had leaked fake documents implying the editor of a Catholic newspaper had harassed the girlfriend of a man with whom he wanted to carry on a gay affair. It took the Vatican 18 days to issue a denial, and when they finally did so, one Roman daily splashed this headline across its front page: "Vatican denies everything, but no one believes it!"

So convincing people there's another story to be told about Benedict XVI is often futile.

HENCE the tragedy of Benedict's pontificate - a magnificent teaching pope, whose classroom is all but empty as his school burns down.Benedict may take solace in the conviction that things will look different down the road. Such thinking in centuries is, of course, part of the corporate culture of the Vatican, where the working motto often seems to be "Talk to us on Tuesday and we'll get back to you in 300 years."

Even in that environment, Benedict is legendary for taking the long view. I once asked Cardinal Ratzinger if he was stung by criticism from former theological colleagues. With a smile, he replied that his predecessors had cracked down on Jansenism, a sort of Catholic version of Calvinism, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Probably not too many minds were changed right away, Ratzinger said, but three centuries later, Jansenism is no more.

Such perspective helps explain Benedict's permanent calmness. It may also help explain why he sometimes seems painfully slow to grasp the depth of a crisis, or to do anything about it.

For the rest of us, who live in the here-and-now, the drama would appear to be whether Benedict's visit to the UK can close the gap between insider and outsider impressions.

If nothing else, it allows him to bypass the usual media filters and public preconceptions, and that augurs well.

• John L Allen jnr is senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter in the United States