When Pope Benedict XVI renounced the Petrine office, he promised to retreat into a secluded - essentially monastic - life of prayer. He has, with rare exceptions, kept to that promise. His public interventions have been few, and have mostly regarded theological questions. With the publication of his essay on “The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse”, the Pope Emeritus has made another exception.
Benedict offers his impressions, as an observer, on the tumult in 1960s society. As a diagnostic exercise, however, his essay is inadequate.
