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.

On February 19 Irish Prime Minister made an official government apology for state involvement in the Magdalene Laundries, a network of workhouses that were run by Catholic religious orders between 1922 and 1966. More than 10,000 women and girls were forced into unpaid labor at the laundries. Following the government’s apology hundreds more women have come forward, each potentially due thousands in compensation.

The pope has resigned or retired. That statement really takes a while to settle in. Writing in the New York Times, Fr. Jim Martin noted that "Rare is the person who will voluntarily relinquish immense power." In the last few weeks, we have become experts in church history, learning about Gregory VII, Celestine V and other popes who have resigned. Yet perhaps we should also be looking at the humble Saint of Assisi and founder of the Franciscan Order. After all, it isn’t only popes who resign. St. Francis resigned too! When St. Francis resigned as leader of the Franciscan Order, he offered a lesson in holiness, humility and power. I think these are things that Pope Benedict is teaching us as well and will, in the end, be his most lasting legacy.

The crowds were larger, the audience wider as Benedict XVI spoke at his final general audience Wednesday, Feb. 27. His candor was striking: “There have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the church it has ever been - and the Lord seemed to sleep.” And amid the thanks, to his collaborators, the people of the church, a wider public, there was a sense of hopefulness, that he was not in it alone: “I said before that many people who love the Lord also love the Successor of Saint Peter and are fond of him, that the pope has truly brothers and sisters, sons and daughters all over the world, and that he feels safe in the embrace of their communion, because he no longer belongs to himself, but he belongs to all and all are truly his own.”