The Pope’s Wise Decision

I make no pre­tense of pass­ing judg­ment on the pon­tif­i­cate of Bene­dict XVI. Although a bap­tized Catholic (by Car­di­nal Cush­ing of Boston, no less), I have acci­dently missed Mass for the last, oh, 55 years or so. If I ever went back and went to con­fes­sion, the next in line would have to wait for a year.

I also make no pre­tense of judg­ing Benedict’s poli­cies on, or respon­si­bil­ity for, the sex­ual abuse by priests, oppo­si­tion to birth con­trol, con­dem­na­tion of gays, or refusal to admit women to the priest­hood. We can have all those fights another day, and I dare­say that Bene­dict may even­tu­ally be judged as wrong on all of them.

Nonethe­less, I admire what the Pope has done in resign­ing his office, sched­uled to take place later this week.

I have a pal whose mother is 91. His father died six years ago, so his mother lives alone. Last year, while dri­ving, she side­swiped three parked cars. The police came to the house and took her license away. The fam­ily has var­i­ous finan­cial inter­ests (they own a shop­ping cen­ter) and his mother con­tin­ues to run these, send­ing out rental invoices on an old type­writer and pay­ing the bills. But of course, she has become increas­ingly for­get­ful, can’t recall what bills she paid and when, and so on. It is the same sit­u­a­tion with her invest­ment port­fo­lio, sav­ings and other finan­cial affairs, right down to the elec­tric bill at her home.

On top of that, she is can­tan­ker­ous and views with sus­pi­cion any attempts to help her.

What is my friend to do? He could go to court and attempt to be named guardian, but the fact is, he loves her. He doesn’t want to be in an adver­sar­ial posi­tion with her. All options have been explored, includ­ing in-home help. She is adamantly opposed.

For obvi­ous rea­sons, most of us don’t like step­ping aside. Look to the world of sports for myr­iad exam­ples of great play­ers who didn’t know when it was time to go; who hung on and tar­nished their own legacies.

Many of my clients are elder law attor­neys who see (and help with) these sorts of sit­u­a­tions every day.

Pope Bene­dic­tus XVI (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Pope, at age 85, has wisely rec­og­nized that he lacks the phys­i­cal and men­tal strength to deal with one of the world’s most demand­ing jobs, and he has found a way to grace­fully step aside, despite 600 years of tra­di­tion (that’s how long it has been since another pope resigned).

The words of Bene­dict to res­i­dents of a Rome facil­ity for the elderly a cou­ple of months ago hint at his upcom­ing decision:

“I come to you as Bishop of Rome, but also as an old man vis­it­ing his peers. It would be super­flu­ous to say that I am well acquainted with the dif­fi­cul­ties, prob­lems and lim­i­ta­tions of this age … At times, at a cer­tain age, one may look back nos­tal­gi­cally at the time of our youth when we were fresh and plan­ning for the future. Thus at times our gaze is veiled by sad­ness, see­ing this phase of life as the time of sunset.”

Bravo to Pope Bene­dict for not cling­ing to power, for not stand­ing in the way of the energy and strength that younger man might bring to the job, for becom­ing again Joseph Ratzinger. And may his action be an inspi­ra­tion to other seniors, who could ben­e­fit from let­ting go of the bur­dens and respon­si­bil­i­ties they have car­ried for so many years.