“No way.”
This morning, in my dark bedroom, I felt for my glasses on my nightstand. Found them. With corrected vision, I looked again at my phone, at a post on Google+ shared by somebody in my circles:
“Pope to resign.”
I thought it was a hoax. By now you know it isn’t.
I have had a day to process the news, to begin to adjust to the reality that Rome will probably have a new Bishop by Easter.
Today, these have been my thoughts, in no particular order:
- I want to cry a little.
- What an example of humility and responsibility.
- This excerpt from a 2007 Catholic News Agency article is a fabulous snippet of the big picture of B16’s wisdom:
In contrast to this beauty and purity, the Holy Father turned to the young people of today who are, he said, “growing up in an atmosphere pervaded with messages that propose false models of happiness. These boys and girls risk losing hope because they often seem to be orphaned of that real love which fills life with meaning and joy,” Pope Benedict warned.
Adults advancing false models of happiness, he said, were targeting children at ever-younger ages.
“Adolescents, youths and even children are easy victims of the corruption of love, deceived by unscrupulous adults who, lying to themselves and to them, draw them into the dead-end streets of consumerism,” he continued.
Pope Benedict lamented that in a consumerist society even human bodies become objects, saying that this objectification is occurring earlier and earlier.
“How sad it is when young people lose the marvel, the enchantment, of the most beautiful feelings, the value of respect for one’s body,” he said.
- Dolan! Dolan! (Although Dolan doesn’t think so.)
- I am stunned.
- Toupster, Toupster! (…who just three days ago became a monsignor.)
- I really hope I’m at home the day the chimney smoke turns white, or anywhere in front of a TV when it happens. How exciting it was to watch the white smoke rise live when the cardinals elected Cardinal Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI. How neat it would be to see it again when white smoke rises for St. Peter’s next successor.