In his first night as pontiff emeritus, the Vatican says, Benedict slept peacefully. Perhaps not everyone else has. The cardinals have set their first General Congregation for Monday, March 4, not as some mistakenly wrote, to begin the conclave, but to consider the housekeeping tasks of the sede vacante and possibly to set a date for the conclave to begin.

When the great wooden doors of the papal residence at Castel Gondolfo closed Thursday evening, the pontificate of Benedict XVI was complete. No one occupies the See of Peter. Sede vacante. Josef Ratzinger, the emeritus Bishop of Rome, bid pilgrims in the palace courtyard "Buona notte," and entered a period of well-deserved retirement. The rounds of farewells are ended. The decision of when to begin the conclave to elect the next pope will not be taken until early next week. It is time for the church to take a rest too, to turn a deaf ear to speculation, refuse to be drawn into gossip and listen for the whispers of the Spirit.

I want to get this into print before the cardinals go into the conclave because this might help them in their decisions Last night I stayed up late reading Karl Rahner rsquo s 1984 essay ldquo Dream of the Church rdquo in which he is allowed to eavesdrop on a Vatican ecumenical meeting during wh

As Benedict XVI’s pontificate comes to an end, we should pause to reflect on what this punctuation means for the Church. What era are we living in? Our answer to this question is important because it frames our approach to the opportunities, challenges and indeed crises we face as a Church. Can we still describe ours as the Post-Vatican II era 47 years since its close? 35 years, nearly three quarters of that time, the Church has been under the formative pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Surely the state of the contemporary Church is as much a result of their vision, plans, and actions as the Council.

It was a solemn leave-taking in Benedict’s last meeting as pontiff with the College of Cardinals, subdued, almost anticlimactic after the emotional encounter in Piazza San Pietro Wednesday. That it was unprecedented, really, can be seen in his solemn promise of “unconditional reverence and obedience” to his successor. Our experience of papal loyalty has rather been to their apostolic predecessors.

Are more cordial relations possible in the near term between New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and President Obama? The administration and the U.S. bishops have been at loggerheads over a Department of Health and Human Services mandate for cost-free contraception in new health insurance plans and have seemed to have had more than a few brittle moments during the 2012 election. After H.H.S. recently took another crack at revising exemptions and accommodations for religious employers in its mandated coverage, Cardinal Dolan, while not signing on to the latest revision, seemed to tone down the confrontational rhetoric a notch or two, offering to continue to work with the Obama administration to find a resolution that was amenable to the consciences of all parties. That more conciliatory stance was encouraged publicly by two bishops.