The New Pope Benedict XVI and His Thoughts on the Papacy

Pope Benedict XVI is widely respected for his intellect and his breadth of knowledge. In one particular book, Called to Communion, he meditates upon "The Primacy of Peter and the Unity of the Church." Here are some selections:

Many non-Catholics affirm the necessity of a common center of Christianity. It is becoming evident that only such a center can be an effective protection against the drift into dependence on political systems or the pressures emanating from our civilization; that only by having such a center can the faith of Christians secure a clear voice in the confusion of ideologies. (47)

The Church is founded upon forgiveness. Peter himself is a personal embodiment of this truth, for he is permitted to be the bearer of the keys after having stumbled, confessed and received the grace of pardon. The Church is by nature the home of forgiveness, and it is thus that chaos is banished from within her. She is held together by forgiveness, and Peter is the perceptual living reminder of this reality: she is not a communion of the perfect but a communion of sinners who need and seek forgiveness. (64)

[T]principle of tradition in its sacramental form--apostolic succession--played a constitutive role in the existence and continuance of the Church. Without this principle, it is impossible to conceive of a New Testament at all, so that we are caught in a contradiction when we affirm the one while wanting to deny the other. ... [T]he site of Peter's martyrdom nonetheless appears clearly as the chief bearer of his supreme authority and plays a preeminent role in the formation of tradition--which is constitutive of the Church--and thus in the genesis of the New Testament as Bible; Rome is one of the indispensable internal and external conditions of its possibility. (71)

The Roman primacy is not an invention of the popes, but an essential element of ecclesial unity that goes back to the Lord and was developed faithfully in the nascent Church. (72)

The men in question are so glaringly, so blatantly unequal to this function that the very empowerment of man to be the rock makes evident how little it is they who sustain the Church but God alone who does so, who does so more in spite of men than through them. The mystery of the Cross is perhaps nowhere so palpably present as in the primacy as a reality of Church history. That its center is forgiveness is both its intrinsic condition and the sign of the distinctive character of God's power. ... (73)

For with the same realism with which we declare today the sins of the popes and their disproportion to the magnitude fo their commission, we must also acknowledge that Peter has repeatedly stood as the rock against ideologies, against the dissolution of the word into the plausibilities of a given time, against subjection to the powers of this world. (73-74)

When we see this in the facts of history, we are not celebrating men but praising the Lord, who does not abandon the Church and who desired to manifest that he is the rock through Peter, the little stumbling stone ... . Therefore the Petrine promise and its historical embodiment in Rome remain at the deepest level an ever-renewed motive for joy: the powers of hell will not prevail against it ... (74)