Posted on: Saturday, April 23, 2005

EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH

By The Very Rev. Joseph A. Grimaldi

Benedict XVI will be a name that needs some getting used to. We have been living the last 40 years with the simplicity of John, followed by Paul, then with the names joined twice in affectionate embrace of their predecessors. But Benedict...

Even at 78, he is too young to have lived during a previous pontificate of that name. The name isn't adopted from familiarity, but history books.

So what's in a name? A great significance, I think. Just as it is widely known that both John Paul I and II chose their names in tribute to those who preceded them, it can be assumed that Benedict XVI has a respect and admiration for the example set by Pope Benedict XV.

Benedict XV served from 1914 to 1922, during which World War I raged. He made valiant, but unsuccessful, efforts to negotiate peace, calling for a decrease in arms, the cessation of inhumane warfare, international arbitration and the restoration of occupied territories, among other things.

Benedict XV was also pope when an internal war of ideas was being waged within the church, causing division and anxiety among the faithful. Die-hard traditionalists battled a group known as the "modernists," a situation not unlike today's often polarizing disputes between so-called Catholic "conservatives" and "liberals." Benedict XV's predecessor, Pius X, had gone so far as to excommunicate prominent "modernists." Benedict XV was able to put a halt to that division.

Benedict XV was also the pope who promulgated canon law, the temporal laws of the Catholic Church, for the first time. He unified hundreds of "rescripts," or lawful rulings, written by the church's individual bishops in a single volume that, with revisions in 1983, has served us to this day.

Benedict XV wrote 12 encyclicals, reached out to the Eastern Christian churches and he saw the number of countries with diplomatic ties to the Holy See rise from 14 to 26. In his eight-year reign at the beginning of another century, he established himself as a passionate man of peace, outreach and unity.

Pope Benedict XVI finds himself in similar times. We live in a world scarred by war and threatened by terrorism. We witness humanity's inhumane treatment of its weak and vulnerable. Within the church, we have endured scandal, shame, and rancorous divisions. Within Christianity, we still suffer separations between East and West, orthodox and progressive.

I believe the new pope sees his role as leading a church that, by the light of Christ, will be a beacon of peace and healer of divisions.

In his first message as pope, delivered April 20 in the Sistine Chapel, Benedict XVI said: "The church today must revive within herself an awareness of the task to present the world again with the voice of the one who said: 'I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.' ... With this awareness, I address everyone, even those who follow other religions or are simply seeking an answer to the fundamental questions of life and have not yet found it. ... From God, I invoke unity and peace for the human family and declare the willingness of all Catholics to cooperate for true social development, one that respects the dignity of all human beings."

The Very Rev. Joseph A. Grimaldi is the judicial vicar for the Diocese of Honolulu.