The passing of any pope unleashes waves of news commentary, frequently with supporters clashing with critics in an attempt to help shape the narrative heading into the conclave to pick the next occupant of the Throne of St. Peter.

What about the passing of a pope emeritus? That would make things simpler, since there the current pope was still alive and in charge. Right?

Apparently not. The death of Pope Benedict XVI, if anything, seemed to raise the stakes in many lingering debates in Catholic life. My takeaway is that it represented the final, formal close of the era of St. Pope John Paul II, as well as that of Pope Benedict XVI, who, as Cardinal Ratzinger, had played a crucial theological role in support of John Paul.

Thus, this event — for many on the Catholic right and left — marked the end of the “Veritatis Splendor” era, with John Paul II’s emphasis on the defense of transcendent truths, and the open door into the Synod on Synodality era, with its modern Jesuit emphasis on dialogue and evolving doctrine.

The complex nature of this transition provided the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

How complex? For a glimpse of the sweeping nature of this story, check this post from the Catholic listserv Big Pulpit — which circulates daily lists of URLs to news reports, blog posts, podcasts and other commentary on Catholic affairs.

The January 2 offering include a list of “The Top-10 Most Visited Links” about the death of Pope Benedict XVI. That was followed with the “Next-10 Most Visited Links.” Then there was “Another-10 Most Visited Links” and “The-Next-Another-10 Most Visited Links.” This went on and on for another screen or two, with a total of 80 must-read links for that day.

That’s all. Good luck reading all of that — plus countless other offerings in both the mainstream press and countless Catholic commentary sources.

GetReligion readers will not be shocked to discover that, for many journalists, the death of this orthodox theologian was primarily a political story. You can see evidence of this in Julia Duin’s earlier post: “Piecemeal coverage of Benedict XVI death reveals ultra-thin ranks of religion reporters.”

There was, of course, an urgent need to stress the differences between the Benedict XVI and the press-popular Francis. But it was also clear that, for many journalists, this was another opportunity to dig into the Holy Communion wars between conservative U.S. Catholic bishops (including men Francis has denied red hats) and the loving, flexible Francis team that has embraced President Joe Biden (or declined to even slap his hand, as he has — in words and deeds — clashed with centuries of Catholic moral theology on marriage, sex and family).

For millions of news consumers, the Associated Press obit will be main take that they see on this story: “Benedict XVI, first pope to resign in 600 years, dies at 95.” This piece was way shorter than it needed to be, but did provide some poignant summary material. For example:

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger never wanted to be pope, planning at age 78 to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria. Instead, he was forced to follow the footsteps of the beloved St. John Paul II and run the church through the fallout of the clerical sex abuse scandal and then a second scandal that erupted when his own butler stole his personal papers and gave them to a journalist.

Being elected pope, he once said, felt like a “guillotine” had come down on him.

Nevertheless, he set about the job with a single-minded vision to rekindle the faith in a world that, he frequently lamented, seemed to think it could do without God.

The quickest way to view the contrasting views of the life and times of Benedict XVI is to read and contrast two remarkably different pieces in The New York Times.

One piece was a perfect example of political-lens journalism: “For Conservative Catholics in U.S., Pope Benedict’s Death Is Loss of a Hero.” The sub-headline said it all: “Even after his retirement a decade ago, the former pope remained the unofficial figurehead of the conservative wing of the American church.”

Frankly, I was rather shocked that the actual Times obituary was long, balanced and remarkably solid: “Benedict XVI, First Modern Pope to Resign, Dies at 95.” Why was this piece so strong? A journalism colleague of mine noted that most of the reporting and writing on this piece was done 20 years ago and, thus, lacked some of the obsessions of the here and now. Also, it was a holiday weekend and newsroom resources, in terms of staff to do an ambitious new draft, may have been thin.

The lede was a bit complex, in terms of grammar, but nailed two crucial realities:

Benedict XVI, the pope emeritus, a quiet scholar of diamond-hard intellect who spent much of his life enforcing church doctrine and defending tradition before shocking the Roman Catholic world by becoming the first pope in six centuries to resign, died on Saturday. He was 95.

Here are two examples of the material in this obit that hit me hard.

The church he inherited was in crisis, the sexual abuse scandal being its most vivid manifestation. It was an institution run by a mainly European hierarchy overseeing a faithful — numbering one billion — largely residing in the developing world. And it was being torn between its ancient, insular ways and the modern world.

For the church’s liberals, Benedict represented not the answer to that crisis but the problem: an out-of-step conservative European academic. Many wondered if he would be a mere caretaker, filling the post after the long papacy of the beloved John Paul until a younger, more dynamic heir could be elevated.

He settled that question quickly. Though his shy, bookish demeanor seemed to augur a less ambitious path, he moved with force to act on an idea that he had long embraced: that the church’s answer to rising secularism and the gains of other faiths should lie less in broadening Catholicism’s appeal than in nurturing its more conservative believers, even if the cost was a smaller church.

This led to a crucial act in this drama — the moment when Cardinal Ratzinger declared his core beliefs once and for all, with a ringing affirmation of St. Pope John Paul II’s commitment to defending ancient, core doctrines. Period.

The setting? That was dramatic, too. Here’s that Times passage:

… [A]mong the Vatican cognoscenti, there was no shortage of reasons that he could not become John Paul’s successor: He was too old. He was divisive. He did not have John Paul’s magnetism. He symbolized the church’s European past, not its developing-world future.

After the funeral, the question among many in the church was how to harness what they called the spirit of John Paul. Should his successor reach out to a world that had grown distant from the church, or should he first look within the church to firm up its foundations?

Cardinal Ratzinger delivered his answer just before the papal conclave, the cardinals’ closed meeting in the Sistine Chapel to select a new pope. In a speech that was said to have stunned many of those present, he asserted that a “dictatorship of relativism” had taken hold in the modern world, one that “recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one’s own ego and one’s own desires as the final measure.”

An aide called it a “hold on to your hats” moment. Cardinal Ratzinger was putting his colleagues on notice that if they chose him he would make no concessions to the modern secular spirit.

The irony, of course, was that this very European man was clearly putting modern Europe in the rear-view mirror as — in his actions and appointments to seats of power — he openly embraced the growing and, yes, more doctrinally conservative churches of Africa, Asia and the Global South.

Pope Francis, meanwhile, was an Italian who was born and raised in Argentina. In his actions, more than his words, he has supported progressive trends rooted in Europe and North America and has promoted leaders who undercut, or even attack, the work of John Paul II and Benedict.

This leads to a final poignant theme that readers will have encountered in some coverage linked to the passing of Benedict. Even among this strongest supporters, there is a painful irony that cannot be dodged. Here is a key passage from one feature (“Pope Benedict’s most important legacy is Francis“) at The Pillar.

It was Pope Benedict who gave the Church Pope Francis. ... It is true that, apart from his resignation itself, many assumed Benedict’s most enduring legacy would be his 2007 motu proprio Summorum pontificum, which widened and re-established the celebration of the older form of the Roman liturgy throughout the Latin Church — which Francis abrogated in 2021.

But while it’s unlikely Benedict expected, or perhaps even privately welcomed, Francis’ issuance of Traditionis custodes, he never dissented from it. And the context and timing of Benedict’s decision to resign suggest he made the decision in full awareness of what could follow — and he chose to do it anyway.

That leads, of course, to a big question for the ages: Why did Benedict XVI choose to resign at the time that he did?

Yes, there may be more stories to write, if and when there is solid information on that question, as opposed to riptides of rumors that go on and on and on.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.

FIRST IMAGE: Vatican press office photo of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany greeting the Polish pope, as the pontificate of Pope John Paul II begins in 1978.