No Easy Road for Men of God

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI was laid to rest. The world media were forced to cover the event, barely containing the vitriol they always had for the man.

Why were such a kind and humble scholar always the subject of such scorn? Most of it, I think, was that worldly commentators so hated his predecessor, but St. John Paul II’s charisma simply washed over everyone, like a tidal wave. So they took it out on his successor.

There is also a lot of academic jealousy by insiders. The Church has many saints, but only 37 are named Doctor of the Church, and none was born in the last two centuries. Benedict will likely receive this greatest honor, though not for decades, the process understandably taking a long time.

The attacks on Benedict by the secular press began long before his papacy but boiled over with the 2006 Regensburg lecture, where he delved into some of the ideas behind Islam and whether, for example, Sura 2.256 was abrogated, paving the way for conversion by the sword. The Islamic world, egged on by the secular media, was outraged, proclaiming itself a religion of peace and reason. Muslims then killed many Middle Eastern Christians to prove their point.