Are You Human... or Are You Rover?

Pause For Thought with Andrew Graystone, Director of the Church and Media Network

Almost without thinking about it, lots of us mark out our lives in relation to the iconic people whose lives coincided with ours. While I was growing up John Noakes and Valerie Singleton were always there after school. Elton John and Phil Collins provided the soundtrack to my teenage years. And Margaret Thatcher’s influence towered over my early adult life. They were distant figures really. I’ve never met any of those people, never mind counted them as friends. But they and lots of others are the big characters on the stage on which my life has been acted out. So much so that when one of them leaves the stage for good I shall feel the loss almost as if a friend had passed on.

Some of the billion or so Roman Catholics in the world will be feeling that today, with the news that Pop Benedict the Sixteenth is retiring at the end of this month.

The role of the Pope is such a strange one; he’s a religious icon in a secular age; the leader of a vast church that’s glorious in many ways but also flawed. It seems odd that an ordinary human who’s the same age as my dad, with all the aches and pains and anxieties of any 85 year-old, should be invested with such power and authority and symbolism.

So the fact that Benedict has chosen to retire will be shocking for some. But in a way he’s giving us a reassuring reminder that even the Pope is only human. Benedict has never pretended to be God…he’s only wanted to point us to God. And when he visited the UK just over two years ago it wasn’t his pomp and power that the crowds talked about, but how down-to-earth he seemed.

When Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope he came with a stern reputation. Sometimes he was nicknamed “God’s Rottweiller.” But his message as pope hasn’t been about the judgement of God or even the holiness of God. The main thing he’s wanted to talk about is the possibility of friendship with God through Jesus Christ. As he retires into the background in a couple of weeks he’ll be reminding us that the power and pomp of the church is temporary, but the friendship of God can last for ever.