UNITED STATES
The Salt Lake Tribune
By DAVID GIBSON Religion News Service
When Benedict XVI stunned Catholics by announcing that he would become the first pope in six centuries to resign, it immediately raised concerns — which were dismissed just as quickly — that an ex-pope around could undermine the legitimacy of the new pontiff.
Now, nearly two years later, those fears are emerging again, fueled by the growing discontent of conservative Catholics with Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, and by Benedict’s presence, if not quite as a player, in church debates Francis has sparked.
“Benedict is hanging back for now, but there’s no doubt that he could easily become a figurehead for traditionalists hearkening back to the good old days,” Notre Dame New Testament professor Candida Moss and Joel Baden, Old Testament professor at Yale Divinity School, warned in a Daily Beast column earlier this month.
Hubert Wolf, a church historian at the University of Münster, echoed those thoughts in comments reported by a leading German newspaper last week, when he said there were worries that “around Francis and Benedict XVI, two competing power centers could come into being in the [Roman] Curia, with pope and anti-pope at the top of each.”
What’s fueling these fears? They seem outlandish, almost medieval. But there are at least four factors at work:
1. “There is another pope still living.”
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a Catholic who has become something of a spokesman for conservatives, made that point in a widely circulated column warning that Francis could provoke a schism on the right.
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