Inside the Vatican Magazine March-April 2023

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Photo — In Jerusalem in 1994. Grzegorz Galazka

The Man, the Theologian, the Successor of Peter JOSEPH RATZINGER

A Life for the Church

EDITORIAL

by Robert Moynihan

A Life for the Church MARCH-APRIL 2023 Year 31, #2

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INSIDE THE VATICAN BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023

P

ope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away on December 31, 2022, at the age of 95, at the Mater Ecclesiae convent in the Vatican, where he spent the last years of his long life in retreat and prayer.

I was privileged to be a friend of this holy and humble man, whose intellectual patrimony and testimony of life will enrich the Church for decades and centuries to come.

I first met him in September 1984, in St. Peter’s Square, almost 40 years ago now. I was just 30, he in his late 50s. I was walking just before 9 a.m. under a sunny Italian sky toward the Vatican Library when I saw a white-haired man with a dark leather briefcase walking across my path. I recognized him from seeing him on Italian television.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you Cardinal Ratzinger?”

“I am,” he said.

“I am doing some research here in the Vatican Library for a thesis I am writing, and I have been reading your book, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure, and appreciating it very much,” I said.

“Well, thank you,” he replied, smiling. “You know, you are the only one in Rome who has read that book of mine.” (He meant that his other books, like Introduction to Christianity, and his writings on the Second Vatican Council, were the works most people read.)

As you see, I never forgot those words: “The only one in Rome.”

They made me feel my academic research had brought me to a special place, to study matters few others were studying, yet matters of importance to this cardinal who would, 20 years later, be elected Pope.

“Coworkers of the Truth” Thus began a friendship that was to continue for 40 years. I consulted him on the research I was doing, and interviewed him many times, especially in the 1990s, discussing with him the dangers facing the Church and the faith in these modern times. I did not know then that I would create and publish my own magazine on the Vatican, and put him on the cover of 15 issues over 30 years, and write a book about him, trying to support him and help him as he led our Catholic Church as cardinal, as Pope, and as Pope Emeritus.

He chose the motto Cooperatores veritatis (“Coworkers of the Truth”) for his episcopal coat of arms. I tried to become one of his “coworkers” in our age of relativism, an age that often denies that there is any “truth.” Pope Benedict’s wisdom and learning always led him back to the light of truth, not to strange doctrines and new teachings of his own creation. With patience and humility he accepted the

December 6, 2007 — Rome.

Russian painter Natalia Tsarkova poses next to her painting of Pope Benedict XVI (Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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February 1994 — Israel.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger visits Jerusalem on the occasion of the interreligious symposium between exponents of Judaism and the various Christian communities (Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

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great burdens of being the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then the Pope, gently attempting to correct the erring.

As it says in Wisdom: “For you correct little by little those who trespass, and remind and warn them of the things wherein they sin, that they may be freed from wickedness....” (Wisdom 12:1-2).

And now he has passed away. His last words were, “Signore, ti amo” (“Lord, I love you”).

“The dictatorship of relativism” Shortly before he entered the 2005 conclave in which he was elected Pope, then-Cardinal Ratzinger preached the homily at the pre-conclave Mass. In that homily, he warned against the rise of “a dictatorship of relativism.” Taking as his text St. Paul’s warning to the Ephesians (4:14-16), that “we must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine” but “must grow up” in Christ and in love, the cardinal offered the following reflection: “Every day new sects are born and we see realized what St. Paul says on the deception of men, on the cunning that tends to lead into error (cf. Ephesians 4:14). To have a clear faith according to the creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism, while relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of ‘doctrine,’ seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the ‘I’ and its whims as the ultimate measure.”

Someone with his foresight and intellectual gifts surely suffered enormously at seeing these ominous storm clouds rolling in above humanity. And the clouds seem darker today than 20 years ago...

Yet, he never succumbed to despair but continued to exhort us to hope — to Christian hope — which was the subject of his second encyclical, published on November 30, 2007, Spe salvi (“By hope saved”). In that encyclical, he wrote: “Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God’s mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.

“Faith... gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness, he ultimately triumphs in glory.

“Love is the light — and in the end, the only light — that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working.”

Ratzinger’s ecclesial service expanded during the course of eight decades, from his native Bavaria to the ends of the earth, as his gaze focused on the fascinating and mysterious face of Jesus, until the moment of the Encounter. The legacy he leaves us is of a theologian called to the See of Peter, who confirmed his brethren in the faith through teaching, sacramental service and witness of life.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Vatican City, April 19, 2005.

Joseph Ratzinger's first blessing as Pope to the faithful who flocked to St. Peter's Square to meet him (Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

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CONTENTS 6 INTRODUCTION A hOly mAN , A REmARkAblE INTEllECT, P OPE b ENEDICT XVI’ S lIfE SPANNED ThE TRANSITION fROm ThE PRE - TO ThE POST-VATICAN II C hURCh Part One 8 tHe earLY LIFe OF JOSePH ratZInGer h E wAS bORN INTO A fAmIly Of mODEST mEANS , bUT AlSO Of DEEP - ROOTED fAITh Part twO 12 PrOFeSSOr ratZInGer T hE “ PROgRESSIVE ” ThEOlOgICAl mOVEmENT gRADUAlly lEfT hIm bEhIND – IN ThE ARmS Of ThE C hURCh

Part tHree 20 DOCtrInaL HeaD T hE gREAT J OhN PAUl II ChOOSES ThE bRIllIANT ThEOlOgIAN TO hElP hIm STEER ThE C hURCh

Part FOur 24 PaPaCY T hE Shy g ERmAN PROfESSOR IS ElECTED ThE 265 Th P OPE Part FIve 30 eMerItuS b ENEDICT XVI ShOCkS ThE wORlD by RESIgNINg

Part SIx 36 DeatH anD LeGaCY T hE l ORD ’ S “ hUmblE SERVANT ” IS CAllED hOmE , lEAVINg bEhIND A RICh SPIRITUAl lEgACy

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part one

Benedict’s Life The Early Life of Joseph Ratzinger

by Federico Lombardi

J

oseph Ratzinger was born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria.

Joseph came into the world into a Bavarian family of deep-rooted Catholic tradition and modest circumstances – his father, also named Joseph, was a policeman, and his mother Maria was a housewife, but occasionally worked as a cook for the sake of the family budget. He was the third and last child, being preceded by his sister Maria and brother Georg.

Joseph’s childhood unfolded in a basically normal and happy manner, with the family moving to different locations in Bavaria as a result of his father’s service assignments: after Marktl am Inn, in 1929 to Tittmoning (which would remain for Joseph the land of childhood dreams and happy times), in 1932 to Aschau, in 1937 to Traunstein. Here in 1939, at the age of 12, Joseph entered the archdiocesan seminary, where he had been preceded by his brother Georg.

These were the years which saw the rise of the Nazi regime; Joseph felt the approaching storm in the air, but he lived through it, protected by the deeply Catholic environ-

ment of the Bavarian province where the anti-Nazi attitude was widespread, though not militant, and by his family.

He began to directly feel the pinch of the onset of Nazism when the seminary was requisitioned shortly after his entry and he was forced to enroll in the Hitlerjugend (the Hitler Youth), but he did not participate in its activities. At 16, in the depths of World War II, he was assigned to anti-aircraft duty in the city of Munich. He was a soldier, but with other seminarians he could continue his studies, attending classes at a city gymnasium.

In September 1944, he was discharged from the anti-aircraft unit and sent to Burgenland – on the border of Austria, Hungary and Slovakia – for labor service and then, following an illness, to the Traunstein barracks. In the confusion of the final months of Germany’s collapse, he deserted and returned home, but upon the arrival of the Americans he was considered a prisoner of war and taken, along with 50,000 others, to an open-air prison camp under harsh conditions near Ulm. Finally freed, he was home again on June 16, 1945.

Through all these events, his vocation to the priesthood remained solid. Although institutions were still in a precarious condition,

Joseph came into the world through a Bavarian family of deep-rooted catholic tradition and modest circumstances 8

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Joseph Ratzinger - top right - with his brother Georg and his family in 1951. Seated are his sister, Maria, and his parents, Maria and Joseph

Joseph resumed his studies in Munich and Freising. He prepared for the priesthood with mature spiritual discernment and entered deeply, with gusto and passion, into the world of theological studies, favored by the proximity and guidance of personalities of first-rate cultural and spiritual stature.

This is the time when familiarity with the thought of St. Augustine was born in him, becoming his point of reference, his favorite and fundamental author. He was also able to engage in fascinating readings of great contemporary theologians, such as Henri de Lubac.

On June 29, 1951, Georg and Joseph were ordained priests in Freising Cathedral by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich. This was a milestone in the course of his life. Although strongly attracted to theological research and teaching, the priesthood would always remain for

Joseph a primary dimension of his vocation. He lived it with joy, gratitude and a great sense of responsibility, uniting in a vital synthesis liturgical service, the ministry of the Word, and pastoral care with a depth of cultural reflection.

After ordination, the new priest was assigned to a year of parish work in a Munich neighborhood, close to a very zealous parish priest. He performed his duties with such commitment and zeal that he would remember it, many years later, as “the best time of my life.”

Federico Lombardi, SJ, a former director of the Vatican Press Office (2006-16), wrote “Benedict XVI: In Memoriam,” which appeared on LaCiviltaCattolica.com on December 31, 2022. We quote Federico Lombardi’s article here and throughout this special “Benedict XVI” issue of ITV.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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“We learned what it means to have a firm grasp of faith” AgAinst the drAmAtic bAckdrop of hitler’s germAny, A boy’s fAith — And vocAtion — mAture

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ocated in Bavaria, the most densely Catholic region of Germany, the Ratzinger family’s home life was imbued with the Catholic faith. Hitler had come to power when young Joseph was only five, but the family’s faith and spiritual practices fortified them through the difficulties that lay ahead.

In his 2011 memoir My Brother, the Pope, written with author and family friend Michael Hesemann, Joseph Ratzinger’s older brother Georg, also a priest, speaks about the atmosphere of faith in their childhood home: “Generally speaking, our family made a big thing of Christmas. The preparations already began with the First Sunday of Advent.

At that time, the Rorate Masses were celebrated at six in the morning, and the priests wore white vestments. Normally violet is the color of the vestments in Advent, but these were special votive Masses that were supposed to recall the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to the Mother of God and her words, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word’ (Lk 1:38).

“That was the main theme of these ‘liturgies of the angels,’ as they were also called, in which the appropriate passage from the Gospel of Luke was read. After we started school, we used to attend these Masses in the early morning, before classes began. Outside it was still night, everything was dark, and the people often shivered in the cold.

“Yet the warm glow of the sanctuary compensated for the early rising and the walk through snow and ice. The dark church was illuminated by candles and tapers, which were often brought by the faithful and provided not only light but also a little warmth. Afterward we went home first, ate breakfast, and only then set out for school. These Rorate Masses were wonderful signposts leading us.

“In our family, though, it was not only Christmas that was marked by the deep faith of our parents and the religious customs of our homeland.

“From our parents we learned what it means to have a firm grasp of faith in God. Every day we prayed together, and in fact before and after each meal (we ate our breakfast, dinner and supper together). The main prayer time was after the midday dinner, when the particular concerns of the family were expressed. Part of it was the prayer to Saint Dismas, the ‘good thief,’ a former criminal who was crucified together with Jesus on Mount Calvary, repented on the cross, and begged the Lord for mercy. We prayed to him, the patron of repentant thieves, to protect Father from professional troubles.”

Outside the happy Ratzinger home, deteriorating political and social conditions caused the family some measure of difficulty. Michael Hesemann notes that their father “was a small-town policeman in Altötting and then he got a reputation for being anti-Nazi. Just before Hitler came to power, his superiors advised him to get away from the town because the Nazis complained about him.”

In My Brother, the Pope, Georg Ratzinger says of his father: “It was clear to him that the Nazis were really just lying to us.” The family radio was tuned to foreign stations — a punishable offense under Nazi law — because “he wanted to know what was actually happening. Anyone who was not a staunch Nazi listened to these stations,” Georg Ratzinger recalled, “although it was strictly forbidden.”

The evil of the Nazi regime touched the Ratzinger family in myriad ways, from dissuading daughter Maria from pursuing her desire to be a teacher, lest she be required to spout Nazi propaganda in the classroom, to the tragic murder by the authorities of a 14-yearold cousin of theirs whose crime was that he was born with Down Syndrome.

“My father,” later wrote Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “was one who with unfailing foresight saw that a victory of Hitler’s would not be a victory for Germany but rather a victory of the Antichrist that would surely usher in apocalyptic times …”l

“The warm glow of The sancTuary compensaTed for The early rising and The walk Through The snow” Georg Ratzinger’s book My Brother, the Pope, written with author and family friend Michael Hesemann.

Joseph Ratzinger’s book Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 10

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“THIS WAS A TIME OF INTERIOR EXULTATION” EXCERPTS FROM THE RATZINGER BROTHERS’ MEMOIRS this experience, however, there also stood the EARLY TEENAGE YEARS fact that almost every day the newspaper informed In his 1998 book Milestones: Memoirs 1927us of some soldier’s death… Increasingly we recog1977, Joseph Ratzinger recounts the circumstances nized the names of gymnasium schoolmates who only surrounding his entry into the minor seminary at age a short while before had been our classmates, full of 12: confidence and the joy of life.

For us, the seizure of power in Austria by the brown rulers [the Nazi party, in 1938] had a positive CAPTIVITY AND RELEASE aspect. The borders of this neighboring country had In 1943, in the waning days before Germany’s been closed by Hitler…But now Austria was open capitulation in World War II, the Ratzinger brothers, again, although of course at a high price. From that now older teenagers, were conscripted for a brief time day on, we often went with our parents to nearby into the army. Joseph dug defensive ditches in eastern Salzburg, where we never failed to make the pilAustria to prepare for the Soviet armies which would grimage up to Maria Plain, visit the glorious churchdefeat Germany. In the summer of 1945, in southern es, and breathe in the atmosphere of this unique Germany, occupying American forces rounded up city. [...]

German army conscripts, held thousands of them About this time, a quite radical change occurred captive in a huge open field for a period in my life. For two years I had been of just days, and then released them. very happily going from home to Georg, in his 2011 memoir My Brothschool every day, but now the paser the Pope, remembers his own hometor urged me to enter the minor coming: “Americans took us in their vans seminary in order to be initiated into the areas where we lived. I was runsystematically into the spiritual ning home and wanted to know: Is anylife… And so the decision was one alive? Are the same people there? Is made, and at Easter of 1939, I my house there? My mother was standentered the seminary. I did so with ing at the well, my father was at home, joy and great expectations bemy brother had returned from captivity, cause my brother had told me and my sister was also there. That was many exciting things about the probably the sweetest moment in my place and because I had devellife.” oped good friendships with the seminarians in my class. However, “HERE I AM” I am one of those people who are Joseph Ratzinger was ordained to not made for living in a boarding school… But the greatest burden Joseph (left) and brother the priesthood, along with his older for me was the imposition of a proGeorg Ratzinger were brother Georg, on the Feast of Sts. ordained together in 1951 Peter and Paul, 1951, by Cardinal gressive idea of education: every Michael von Faulhaber in the cathedral day for two hours, we had to particat Freising, Germany. He recalls the moment the caripate in sports… dinal archbishop laid hands on him as part of the rite Meanwhile, the drama of history was becoming of Ordination: increasingly grave with every violent act of the Third We were more than 40 candidates who, at the Reich. The crisis in the Sudetenland was ignited and solemn call on that radiant summer day, which I fanned into full flame by a mechanism of lies that remember as the high point of my life, responded even someone half blind could see through…

“Adsum,” “Here I am.”

Despite the grimness of the situation, I was facing We should not be superstitious, but, at the moment a good year at the gymnasium at Traunstein. The when the elderly archbishop laid his hands on me, a Greek and Latin classics filled me with enthusiasm, little bird — perhaps a lark — flew up from the high and mathematics, too, in the meantime had caught altar in the cathedral and trilled a little joyful song. And my interest. Above all, I now discovered literature…

I could not but see in this a reassurance from on high, This was a time of interior exaltation, full of hope for as if I heard the words, “This is good. You are on the the great things that were gradually opening up to right path.” n me in the boundless realm of the spirit. Alongside BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Part two

Professor Ratzinger A Brilliant Professor Meets the Wider Theological World

by Federico Lombardi

A

fter his doctorate on St. Augustine, defended in 1953, came the goal of obtaining the license to teach.

Here he experienced a difficult and almost dramatic passage in his life, due to the open clash between two influential professors of the Munich Faculty – Gottlieb Söhngen, his teacher, and Michael Schmaus – over his dissertation on St. Bonaventure. Eventually the work was accepted, and Ratzinger became a lecturer in 1957. But these tensions would leave a profound legacy. The young theologian, who until then had achieved mostly brilliant successes and high praise, had the novel experience of harsh criticism, to the point where his career was in great jeopardy.

Wisely at the end he observed – regardless of the merit of the discussions – that “humiliations are necessary […]. It is good for a young man to know his limitations, to suffer criticism as well, to experience a negative phase.”

Thus Ratzinger became a professor. This was a key stage in his life, which lasted almost two decades. After all, it was a time in which he did what he felt called to and what he wanted to do. Yet it was a stage that also saw multiple phases. After teaching Dogma and Fundamental Theology at the high school in Freising, the first chair to which he was appointed was that of Fundamental Theology

at the University of Bonn, where he remained from 1959 to 1963; then he moved to Münster for Dogmatic Theology (1963-66), then to Tübingen (1966-69), and finally to Regensburg (1969-77). Accounts of the exceptional quality of his university teaching, such as depth of content, clarity of exposition, care and finesse of language, are unanimous. Students thronged the lecture halls to listen to him. We were able to echo and enjoy these qualities on a broader and more universal level, reading the documents and listening to the speeches, catecheses and homilies of the professor who became Pope.

A crucial event in Ratzinger’s life occurred during this period: his participation in the Second Vatican Council as an expert theologian for the elderly Cardinal of Cologne, Joseph Frings.

When the Council was announced, Ratzinger was teaching in Bonn, in the Cologne diocese, and soon made his mark with an important lecture on the theology of the Council, which he attended.

There was a spark. Frings, though nearly blind, would be a leading figure in Vatican II, a leading figure in the episcopates of central and northern Europe — France, Germany, and Belgium — who would exercise a decisive role in conciliar thought.

Ratzinger, in his early 30s, trained in an academic environment different from that of the Roman faculties, accompanied Frings and

StudentS thronged the lecture hallS to hear him; then came hiS ParticiPation in Vatican council ii 12

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Vatican II, October 1962-December 1965.

Here Joseph Ratzinger participated as expert theologian for the elderly Cardinal of Cologne, Joseph Frings.

Below, during breaks in conversation with the French cardinal and theologian, Dominican Yves Marie-Joseph Congar (left), and with the Austrian Cardinal Franz König, a scholar of considerable fame

prepared notes for him, and wrote drafts of interventions that would leave their mark.

In addition to his contribution to the formulation of the documents, his stay in Rome during the Council sessions represented a unique opportunity for the young professor to get to know and enter into personal dialogue with the leading theologians of the day — Rahner, de Lubac, Congar, Chenu, Daniélou, and Philips — and experience deeply the universality of the Church and the challenges of today’s world, experiencing from the inside the greatest ecclesial event of the century. His horizons widened to the ends of the world; his theological and pastoral reflection engaged with crucial questions, and he could never again close himself off within limited or short-sighted perspectives.

Not everything, however, was easy and trouble-free. The frequent changes of university positions are an indication of this. The exciting and creative time of the Council was also followed by negative developments and divisions

in ecclesial and theological fields. The debate over the role of the theologian in the Church became heated, particularly in Germany.

Thus, while it was Hans Küng himself who had invited Ratzinger to move to Tübingen, the paths of these two theologians diverged and they would become inexorably estranged.

At a certain point Ratzinger had to take note that for Küng and others “theology was no longer the interpretation of the faith of the Catholic Church, but established itself as it could and should be. And for a Catholic theologian, such as I was, this was not compatible with theology.”

In this context, coinciding with the student unrest of 1968 that deeply disturbed university life, Ratzinger left Tübingen for the quieter Regensburg. But one should not think that those years were not also intense and fruitful.

That same year of 1968 saw the publication of his most-read book, Introduction to Christianity.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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A Difficult Friendship The gradual rupTure beTween Joseph raTzinger and swiss Theologian hans Küng mirrors The growing Theological divergences in The church afTer vaTican ii

by Pablo blanco Sarto (omneSmag.com)

The Swiss theologian Hans Küng (right) died on April 6, 2021, in Tübingen, Germany, at the age of 93 after a long illness. He was a decisive figure in the theological panorama in the second half of the 20th century. Between 1960 and 1996 he taught at the University of Tübingen; in 1979 the Holy See withdrew his authorization to teach Catholic theology, because his teachings were contrary to defined truths of the faith.

Küng had focused on the promotion of dialogue between religions, for which he had given birth to the project “Ethos mundial.” His tensions with the Church were reflected, in turn, in his relationship A FRIENDSHIP FOUNDERS ans Küng (born in 1928 and died on April 6, 2021) and Joseph Ratzinger (one year older, 1927-2022) were two young priests when they met in 1957 in Innsbruck, Austria, to discuss theology in depth. Specifically, they discussed Küng’s doctoral thesis, on which Ratzinger had just written a review. Later they met again at the Second Vatican Council, where they both worked as experts (“periti”). There Küng was very well received by the media (it was his image that the Council seemed to conjure when it said it was “opening the window to let fresh air in”) — and he was wearing revolutionary jeans. At that moment a long and committed friendship was born between the two.

The Swiss theologian had studied Sartre and Barth in Paris and Rome. In fact, he had written a thesis on Karl Barth, although curiously his writings would later drift towards the approaches of 19th century liberal Protestantism.

This change of position would later separate the two theologians, although Ratzinger affirms: “I have never had a personal conflict with him, not by any stretch of the imagination” (Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, p. 85).

Küng had initially dealt with ecclesiology, although

H

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with other contemporary theologians.

Differences with Joseph Ratzinger (left) with whom he initially shared some research projects, did not altogether end a friendship that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI recovered when he received him in audience in Rome in 2005, which aroused great expectation in some quarters. Professor Pablo Blanco Sarto traces the twists and turns of this friendship, especially insofar as it reflects the dilemmas of modern Catholic theology, especially in the influential German-speaking world, and Joseph Ratzinger’s role in it. his inquiries into the nature of the Church found certain differences with the teachings of the magisterium. He proposed a Church in which everything consists of pure historical becoming, with which everything can change depending on the various circumstances. If there is a stable form of Church that responds to its essence, he would continue to say, it is the charismatic and non-institutional form, prior to any possible clericalization. Thus, he would strongly oppose a hierarchical Church against a charismatic and “true” Church. Together with this, his later “universal ecumenical theology” would cause him to be denied the faculty to teach Catholic theology in 1979.

Ratzinger was at ease in Münster, in the north, and the council was finally over. “I began to love this beautiful and noble city more and more,” Ratzinger says in his memoirs, “but there was one negative fact: the excessive distance from my homeland, Bavaria, to which I was and am deeply and intimately attached. I was homesick for the south. The temptation became irresistible when the University of Tübingen [...] called me to take up the second chair of dogmatics, which had recently been established. It was Hans Küng who had insisted on my candidacy and on gaining the approval of other colleagues. I

had met him in 1957, during a congress of dogmatic theologians in Innsbruck [...]. I liked his pleasant frankness and simplicity. A good personal relationship was born, although shortly afterwards [...] there was a rather serious discussion between the two of us about the theology of the Council. But we both considered these as legitimate theological differences [...]. I found the dialogue with him extremely stimulating, but when his orientation towards political theology was outlined, I felt that the differences were growing and could touch on fundamental points” (Joseph Ratzinger, My Life, pp. 111-112) as far as faith was concerned.

MARXISM TAKES OVER In the meantime, the Swiss theologian Küng was on board an Alfa Romeo driving through the streets of Tübingen – that city with so much philosophical and theological tradition – at the same time that Ratzinger was cycling through them (cf. J.L. Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger, p. 91). “I began my classes in Tübingen already at the beginning of the summer semester of 1966, otherwise in a precarious state of health [...]. The faculty had a very high level of teaching staff, albeit somewhat inclined to polemics [...]. In 1967 we were still able to celebrate

splendidly the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Catholic faculty of theology, but it was the last academic ceremony in the old style. The cultural ‘paradigm’ with which the students and some of the professors thought changed almost with a flash. Until then, the way of reasoning had been marked by Bultmann’s theology and Heidegger’s philosophy; suddenly, almost overnight, the existentialist scheme collapsed and was replaced by the Marxist one. Ernst Bloch was then teaching in Tübingen and in his lectures he denigrated Heidegger as a petty bourgeois. Almost at the same time of my arrival, Jürgen Moltmann was called to the evangelical theological faculty, who, in his fascinating book, Theology of Hope, rethought theology on the basis of Bloch. Existentialism was completely disintegrating and the Marxist revolution was spreading to the whole university” (My Life, pp.

112-113), including the Catholic and Protestant theology faculties. Marxism had taken over from existentialism.

The student revolt took over the classrooms.

Ratzinger recalls the violence he witnessed in those years in Tübingen with genuine terror. “I have seen face to face the cruel face of this atheistic devotion, the psychological terror, the unbridled abandonment of all moral reflection — considered a bourgeois residue — where the only BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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A DIFFICULT FRIENDSHIP end was ideological. [...] I have experienced all this in my own flesh, because, at the time of the greatest confrontation, I was dean of my faculty [...]. Personally, I have never had any difficulties with students; on the contrary, in my courses I have always been able to speak to a good number of attentive assistants. It seemed to me, however, a betrayal to withdraw to the quiet of my classroom and leave the rest to others” (My Life, p. 114).

Someone spread the news that his microphone had once been taken away from him in one of his classes in Tübingen, to which the now Cardinal replied: “No, they never took the microphone away from me. Nor did I have any difficulties with the students, but rather with the activists who came from a strange social phenomenon.

In Tübingen the lectures were always well attended and well received by the students, and the relationship with them was irreproachable. However, it was then that I became aware of the infiltration of a new tendency that — fanatically — used Christianity as an instrument in the service of its ideology. And that really seemed to me to be a real lie. [...] To be a little more specific about the procedures used at that time, I would like to quote some words recently recalled in a publication by a Protestant colleague, Pastor Beyerhaus, with whom I worked.

They are quotations that do not come from a Bolshevik pamphlet of atheistic propaganda. They were published in flyers in the summer of 1969, to be distributed among the students of evangelical theology in Tübingen. The heading read: ‘The Lord Jesus, guerrilla fighter,’ and went on to say: ‘What else can the cross of Christ be but a sadomasochistic expression of extolling pain?’ Or this one: ‘The New Testament is a cruel document, a great mass superciliousness!’ [...] In Catholic theology it did not go that far, but the current that was emerging was exactly the same. Then I understood that whoever wanted to remain progressive had to change his way of thinking” (Salt of the Earth, 83-84).

Ratzinger continued with his intense teaching load.

However, circumstances were to change significantly in the following years. One of his biographers recounts the recollections of one of his disciples: “Veerweyen began his training under Ratzinger in Bonn, then followed him to Münster, and finally to Tübingen, where he stayed with him until 1967. Veermeyen retains clear memories of Ratzinger in the classroom. ‘He was an excellent teacher,’ he recalls, ‘both academically and didactically.

Always very well prepared. Already in Bonn you could publish practically everything that came out of his mouth.’ Veermeyen says that the courses in Bonn and Münster were always full. ‘We students were proud of 16

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him, because he was one of the most important experts of the Second Vatican Council,’ says Veerweyen.

According to him, the decline in Ratzinger’s popularity began in 1967” (John Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger, p. 105).

A LANDMARK BOOK In those difficult years Ratzinger wrote one of his best-known books. “Since in 1967 the main course in dogmatics had been taught by Hans Küng, I was free to finally realize a project I had been cherishing for ten years. I dared to experiment with a course for students of all faculties, entitled Introduction to Christianity. From these lessons a book was born which has been translated into 17 languages and reprinted many times, not only in Germany, and which continues to be read. I was and am fully aware of its limitations, but the fact that this book

During a break in the work of the Second Vatican Council: Joseph Ratzinger (left foreground) and Hans Küng (right)

has opened a door for many people is a source of satisfaction to me” (My Life, p. 115).

This book is the beginning of what seemed to be a change, but in reality was only a continuing walk in the same direction. The environment had changed so much since the years when he started doing theology!

In the preface to the first edition, the then-professor at Tübingen wondered whether theologians had not done the same thing that happened to Hans-with-Luck (never Hans Küng, he later clarified, cf. Salt of the Earth, p. 85), when he exchanged all the gold he had for common trinkets. Indeed, perhaps at certain times something like this could have happened, he seems to suggest. Despite the obvious fraud, this has a positive aspect, since there are some advantages in the fact that gold has been related to trinkets. Theology had come down from the clouds, but at times it had been content with mirrors and trinkets.

Winds of stormy weather were to blow over the Church. It was in 1966 — the same year in which the controversial Dutch Catechism was published — that

the traditional meeting of German Catholics, the Katholikentag, met for the first time in Bamberg, and, as in Essen two years later, there had been moments of great tension. Hans Küng would later publish Truthfulness for the Future of the Church (1968), in which he reconsidered the figure of the priest and questioned celibacy.

At the same time, a tough debate was opening around the encyclical Humanae Vitae, promulgated that same year by Paul VI. In addition, several initiatives that went against the letter and spirit of the Council came to public light. The German Church, privileged with a very generous tax collection system, collaborated with missions and solidarity initiatives in the Third World. However, confusion among Christians was evident. Thus, progressives and conservatives, philomarxists and apolitical, “papolaters” and Christians with an “anti-Roman complex” debated among themselves continuously. Rahner wrote in 1972, judging the whole situation: “The German Church is a Church in which there is a danger of polarization” (Karl Rahner, Transformazione strutturale della Chiesa come compito e come chance, Brescia 1973, p. 48).

On the other hand, the synod of German bishops in Würzburg (1971-1975) proposed total fidelity to the Council (cf.

Andrea Riccardi, Europa occidentale, in AA.VV., La Chiesa del Vaticano II (19581978), Storia della Chiesa, XXV/2, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 1994, pp. 392396). “A council,” Ratzinger said in 1988, “is an enormous challenge for the Church, for it gives rise to reactions and provokes crises. Sometimes an organism needs to undergo a surgical operation, after which regeneration and healing take place. The same happens with the Church and the Council” (Joseph Ratzinger, Being Christian in the Neo-Pagan Age, p. 118).

The years that followed were, therefore, confusing and difficult. In fact, in 1968, the same year in which Paul VI published Humanae Vitae, Joseph Ratzinger lived through and suffered the student revolts at the University of Tübingen (at the same time, however, he signed the Nijmegen Declaration, signed by 1360 theologians and addressed to the former

Above and below, two theologians who influenced Ratzinger's thought: Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

In the center, Ratzinger with Father Stephan Horn, who was his assistant at the university and is current director of the Schuelerkreis, the professor's alumni circle

Holy Office, calling for greater religious pluralism, cf. John Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger, pp. 67-68). Two years earlier, Hans Urs von Balthasar had published Cordula. The first of these was a critique of the post-conciliar deviations from the very doctrine of the Council, especially by the theology of Karl Rahner. An open reaction to the progressive dogmas was beginning to form.

So in Balthasar there would be a turn and an evolution in his position, which would also be manifested in his works.

The defense of the truth in the Church in this succeeding moment would make him worthy of the cardinalate (although he died a few days before receiving it).

So the Basel professor was still in a position to promote an ambitious initiative. “Balthasar (who had not been called to the Council, and who judged with great acuteness the situation that had been created) sought new solutions that would bring theology out of the partisan formulas to which it tended more and more. His concern was to bring together all those who sought to do theology, not from a set of prejudices derived from ecclesiastical politics, but who were firmly determined to work from its sources and its methods.

Thus was born the idea of an international journal that was to operate on the basis of the communio in the sacraments and in the faith [...]. In fact, it was our conviction that this instrument could not and should not be exclusively theological; but that, faced with a crisis of theology born of a crisis of culture, [...] it should embrace the whole field of culture, and be published in collaboration with lay people of great cultural competence. [...] Since then, Communio has grown to be published today in sixteen languages, and has become an important instrument of theological and cultural debate” (My Life, p. 121).

He had been one of the founders of Concilium in 1965 (and this magazine had now taken an anti-conciliar direction) which would be at this time a spur to the beginnings of Communio. Ratzinger does not see it as a personal turning point. “It is not I who have changed, they have changed. From the first meetings I set two conditions for my colleagues. [...] These conditions [of service and fidelity to the BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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A DIFFICULT FRIENDSHIP Council], with time, became less and less present, until a change occurred — which can be placed around 1973 — when someone began to say that the texts of Vatican II could not be a point of reference for Catholic theology” (Ratzinger, Being Christian in a Neo-Pagan Age, 2006, p. 118).

REACTING TO THE “SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH” It had all started a few years earlier. “They were meeting in via Aurelia. It was 1969; Paul VI was still denouncing the ‘self-destruction’ of the Church, and Catholic intellectuals were still indifferent, dreaming of the Church of tomorrow. In that restaurant, a stone’s throw from the Dome [of St. Peter’s Basilica], sat Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac and Joseph Ratzinger. Over plates of spaghetti and glasses of good wine, the idea of a new international theological journal was born. In those stormy post-conciliar years, another journal was exerting its hegemony in the Church, Concilium, which emerged in 1965 and [was now] in the hands of Küng and Schillebeeckx.

It was necessary to counteract the progressive hegemony in the name of a new, more secure theology” (Lucio Brunelli, “Presentation to Theologians of the Center,” 30 Days, VI, 58-59 (1992). p. 48).

Indeed, since Balthasar had not been able to participate in the council, this offered some advantages. “The distance from which Balthasar was able to observe the phenomenon as a whole conferred on him an independence and a clarity of ideas impossible to obtain if he had lived for four years at the center of the controversies. He saw the indisputable greatness of the conciliar texts and recognized it, but he also noticed that around them fluttered spirits of low rank who tried to take advantage of the atmosphere of the council to impose their ideas” (“Theologians of the Center,” pp. 48-49).

The ecclesial movement “Communion and Liberation” also had a great deal to do with this initiative. “In the young people gathered around Monsignor Giussani [and the new magazine] it found the impetus, the joy of risk and the courage of faith, which it immediately made use of” (Teologi di centro, p. 50). In this regard, Angelo Scola, later Patriarch of Venice and Archbishop of Milan, recalls: “The first time I saw Cardinal Ratzinger was in 1971. It was Lent. [...] A young professor of canon law, two theology student priests who at that time were not yet 30 years old, and a young editor were seated around a table, invited by Professor Ratzinger, in a typical restau18

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rant on the banks of the Danube [...]. The invitation had been procured by von Balthasar with the intention of discussing the possibility of making the Italian edition of a journal that would later become Communio. Balthasar knew how to take risks. The same men who sat at the table of that typical Bavarian inn, a few weeks before, had disturbed his quietness in Basel, with a certain daring, because they did not know him. So, at the end of our conversation, he said: ‘Ratzinger. You must talk to Ratzinger! He is the man who is decisive for the theology of Communio. It is the key to the German edition. De Lubac and I are old. Go see Ratzinger. If he agrees...’”

(A. Scola, Introduction to My Life, pp. 7-8).

A DECISIVE BREAK However, if we go back for a moment to the late 1970s, we must remember that at that time a rarefied

atmosphere had spread in part of the Central European Church. The controversy this time involved Hans Küng, an old acquaintance of the new archbishop. Already in 1977, the Swiss theologian had been summoned before the German bishops to discuss his book Being a Christian (1974), and it was then that he rejected Ratzinger as an interlocutor. Shortly afterwards, his former colleague in Tübingen was consecrated bishop, and later, in 1978, the German bishops thought they had reached an agreement with the controversial theologian. A year later, however, Küng went back on his word and again wrote in a less than serene manner about the infallibility of the Pope. Ratzinger criticized this position, both on the radio and from the pulpit. The moves followed one after the other (cf. John Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger, pp. 129-130).

On December 15, 1979, Hans Küng was banned from teaching Catholic theology. On the 31st of the same month,

the Archbishop and Cardinal of Munich (Ratzinger) preached a homily in which he defended the “faith of the simple.” Referring to the faith of the first Christians, which seemed to some to be too “simple,” he affirmed: “It seemed to them an impossible naivety that this Jesus of Palestine was the Son of God, and that his cross had redeemed the people of the whole world. [...] So they began to construct their ‘superior’ Christianity, to see the poor faithful who simply accepted the letter… as people in a preliminary stage with respect to higher spirits, men over whom a pious veil had to be spread” (“Against the Power of the Intellectuals,” 30 Days, VI, 2 (1991) p. 68).

Ratzinger continued in his sermon on the Liebfrauendom in the Munich Cathedral: “It is not the intellectuals who give the measure to the simple, but the simple who move the intellectuals. It is not the scholarly explanations that give the measure to the baptismal profession of

faith. On the contrary, in its naive literalness, the profession of baptismal faith is the measure of all theology” (“Against the Power of the Intellectuals,” pp. 68-69).

The creed knows more than theologians who ignore it.

Therefore, “the magisterium is entrusted with the task of defending the faith of the simple against the power of intellectuals. [It has] the duty to become the voice of the simple, where theology ceases to explain the profession of faith in order to take it over. To protect the faith of the simple, that is, of those who do not write books, speak on television or write editorials in newspapers: that is the democratic task of the Church’s magisterium” (“Against the Power of Intellectuals,” p. 69). He concludes by recalling that the word of the Church “has never been kind and charming, as a false romanticism about Jesus presents it to us. On the contrary, it has been harsh and cutting, like true love, which does not allow itself to be

separated from the truth and which cost it the cross” (“Against the Power of the Intellectuals,” p. 71).

Years later he would say about this case: “Here a myth should be dismantled. In 1979 Hans Küng’s authority to give doctrine in the name of and on behalf of the Church was withdrawn. This must not have pleased him at all.

[However,] in a conversation we had in 1982, he himself confessed to me that he did not want to go back to his previous situation and that he had adapted very well to his new situation [...] But that [the prohibition to teach in the name of the Church] was not what he expected: his theology had to be recognized as a valid formula within Catholic theology. But instead of retracting his doubts about the papacy, he radicalized his position and distanced himself even further from the Church’s faith in Christology and [in the doctrine] about the triune God” (Salt of the Earth, p. 103). The Küng case seemed to have profoundly marked Ratzinger’s theological and pastoral vision.

A FINAL REUNION In 2005, at Castelgandolfo near Rome, there was an historic meeting between the two theologians who had been at odds for decades: Küng, an implacable critic of John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. The meeting was described by Küng as a “hopeful sign.” The “dissident” theologian acknowledged to the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that he had asked for an audience weeks before with “the hope of being able to engage in a dialogue despite all the differences.” The pontiff answered him “quickly and in a very kind tone,” says the former colleague of Joseph Ratzinger at the University of Tübingen.

Ethics and human reason were discussed in the light of the Christian faith. Both Küng and Benedict XVI were aware that “there was no point in entering into a dispute about persistent doctrinal questions.” So they avoided points of conflict and steered the conversation in more amiable directions in which the Pope’s vision and that of the theologian were in harmony. Küng assured that Benedict XVI was an “open and attentive listener.” He added that “it was a mutual joy to see each other again after so many years. We did not embrace each other, simply because we Germans are not as expansive as the Latins.” Still under the effect of surprise, he acknowledged that “the Pope is open to new ideas,” and clarified that Benedict XVI “is not a Pope who looks at the past, closed in on himself. He observes the situation of the Church as it is. He is capable of listening and of maintaining the attitude of the scholar or researcher.”l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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AT ITS HEART: AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE MAN JESUS RATZINGER’S 1968 BOOK INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY ranslated into twenty languages, IntroT duction to Christianity originated as lectures delivered by Fr. Joseph Ratzinger at the University of Tübingen in 1967.

A few features of Introduction to Christianity are worth highlighting since they remain relevant even today. First, the clearsightedness with which Ratzinger saw, within a few years of the Council’s close, the widespread betrayal of the Council’s foundational principles and governing affirmations.

In the “Preface,” dated summer 1968, he contends: “The question of the real content and meaning of the Christian faith is enveloped today in a greater fog of uncertainty than at almost any earlier period in history.” And he draws upon the folk story of “Clever Hans”—who trades his lump of gold for ever less valuable objects until he is left with a whetstone—to indict those theologians who have “gradually watered down the demands of faith.” A few years later he would sum up the betrayal by lamenting that “they changed wine into water and called it ‘aggiornamento.’”

Second, the book is structured as a theological-spiritual meditation upon the Apostles’ Creed. The choice is significant, for its origin is the baptismal exchange wherein the neophyte commits to a transformed exis-

tence, renouncing those powers that diminish the human and confessing the life-giving belief in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Indeed, Ratzinger boldly sets forth his book’s aim: “to help understand faith afresh as something that makes possible true humanity in the world of today.”

Third, the heart of the matter (and of the book) is its Christological vision. Once again, Ratzinger’s approach is fully theological and intensely personal. “Christian faith is more than the option in favor of a spiritual ground to the world,” he writes. “Its central formula is not ‘I believe in something,’ but ‘I believe in you.’ It is the encounter with the man Jesus, and in this encounter, it experiences the meaning of the world as a person.”

It is Jesus who grounds and enables transformed human existence: what the tradition calls theosis or divinization.

As always with Ratzinger, his reflection weds fidelity and creativity. [...] In Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger sketched an approach to Christology that was faithful to the Church’s millennial tradition, yet painted in fresh interpersonal language. Jesus Christ is the new Adam, the eschatos Adam, who is defined by total relationality: the Son whose existence is from the Father, for the sake of men and women of every age. Jesus Christ does not merely institute the Eucharist. His total being is Eucharist: gratitude to the Father, self-gift for the many. And he continually consecrates his Church, by his loving sacrifice, as a eucharistic people.

(From “What Benedict Saw,” by Robert P. Imbelli, FirstThings.com) –Robert P. Imbelli, a priest for 58 years, is a former professor at Dunwoodie Seminary in New York and graduate theology professor at Boston University.

AN EXCERPT FROM JOSEPH RATZINGER’S INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY

P

erhaps in the last analysis it is impossible to escape a paradox whose logic is completely disclosed only to the experience of a life based on faith.

Anyone who entrusts himself to a life of faith becomes aware that both exist: the radical character of grace that frees helpless man and, no less, the abiding seriousness of the responsibility that summons man day after day. Both together mean that the Christian enjoys, on the one hand, the liberating, detached tranquility of him who lives on that excess of divine justice known as Jesus Christ. … He sees through all our errors and remains well disposed to us. …

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At the same time, the Christian knows, however, that he is not free to do whatever he pleases, that his activity is not a game that God allows him and does not take seriously. He knows that he must answer for his actions, that he owes an account as a steward of what has been entrusted to him… It shows our life to be a serious business and precisely by doing so gives it its dignity.

–Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 1968; English edition: Ignatius Press, 2000, 2004

JOSEPH RATZINGER ON THE “CATHOLIC IDEA OF SOLA SCRIPTURA” FROM HIS “COMMENTARY ON DEI VERBUM, ARTICLES 8-10,” 1967, WRITTEN WHILE HOLDING THE CHAIR OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN, GERMANY

A

rticle 9 takes us to the focal point of the controversy, the question of a mutual relation of Scripture and tradition.

The text shows clear signs of the firm position taken during the discussion against the idea of “two sources” of revelation.

Two objections were made to this idea. The first was that, in a typically modern spirit of positivism, it identified revelation with its historical presentation and thus falsified the original idea of “sources” in the theological sense, in favor of an historical idea of “sources.” One could here point to Trent, which still used the term “source” exclusively in the singular to refer solely to the “Gospel,” which, as the word of Christ, precedes and is the basis of all historical forms of traditions.

The second objection was that the idea of “partim–partim,” which is contained in the idea of the two sources, distributes revelation in a mechanical way between two vessels of revelation that are independent of each other and thus, again fails to recognize its true nature, which is not a collection of propositions that can be divided up at will and sheered out between two different compilations, but a living organic unity which can only be present as a whole. Following the Tübingen theologians of the nineteenth century, Geiselmann had thrown into the debate the formula “totum in sacra scriptura–totum in traditione” as an antithesis to “partim–partim” and asked that the relation between Scripture and tradition should not be understood in terms of a mechanical juxtaposition, but as an organic interpenetration.

Both points have been incorporated in the text. It is emphasized that both Scripture and tradition flow from the same sources.

However, in order to avoid the clash between the singularist and pluralist understanding of the word fons [source], the word scaturigo [bubbling spring] is used, and then it is possible to continue to speak of the duo fontes [two sources]. In fact, however, the comprehensive theological view of Trent is restored, as compared with the superficial approach of neo-scholastic theology and is even given a deeper dimension, insofar as the idea of revelation behind it, as was shown in Article 7, is conceived more personally and less legalistically than in the text of 1546. Also, the idea of unity, of organic interpenetration, is formulated in strong terms both here and again at the end of Article 7 (unum sine aliis non consistat).

One may ask, however, whether this was really a gain and whether the Catholic idea of sola scriptura, which it intended to make possible in this way (an idea that must now, in this formulation, always be thought of as combined with that of totum in traditione), has not been bought at a rather high price. While the first of these two points, the preeminence of revelation over the concrete forms in which it is presented, was able to be accepted by Protestant theologians without any difficulty, the firm emphasis on the unity of Scripture and tradition has aroused the strongest opposition and shown that the Protestant idea of sola scriptura is less concerned with the material origin of the individual statements of faith as with the problem of the judging function of Scripture in relation to the Church.

This emphasis, however, on the indissoluble interpenetration of Scripture and tradition, or (according to Article 10) of Scripture, tradition and teaching office, seems to have excluded this idea even more fully than would a more mechanistic conception, which still preserves the difference between the individual entities. Thus we have the paradoxical result that today it is precisely those formulations of our Decree which were the product of the attempt to take into account, to the widest possible extent, the points made by the Reformed Churches and were intended to keep the field open for a Catholic idea of sola scriptura that have met with the strongest opposition on the part of Protestant theologians and seem to have moved dangerously away from the meaning and intention of the Protestant idea of sola scriptura.n BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Part three

Doctrinal Head “Most Trusted Collaborator”

by Federico Lombardi

T

he sudden death of Cardinal Julius Döpfner, Archbishop of Munich and undisputed leader of German Catholicism, would disrupt Ratzinger’s life just at the time of his having reached full academic and cultural maturity, at the age of 50. Paul VI asked him to take on the difficult task of succeeding Döpfner. It is not uncommon for Popes to think it appropriate to entrust the principal episcopal sees of Germany to individuals of high cultural standing. Ratzinger was a theologian of recognized status, had shown deep attachment to the Church during the postConciliar tensions and was also a “Bavarian patriot,” as he called himself. Acceptance was an “immensely difficult” decision for the professor, but the sense of readiness for the service required of him prevailed. On May 28, 1977, he was consecrated bishop.

Paul VI immediately created him cardinal: on June 27 in Rome Ratzinger received the biretta.

As his episcopal motto, he chose Cooperatores veritatis (“Cooperators of truth”), a quotation from the Third Letter of St. John (1:8). One could hardly find words more expressive of the continuity between the theologian’s commitment to research and teaching and the bishop’s

commitment to the magisterium and pastoral guidance. It would also apply to subsequent engagements: a splendid motto for a lifetime! His service as Archbishop of Munich was intense, due to the commitments involved in the pastoral care of the great archdiocese, but also quite brief.

It coincided with “the year of the three popes” and the two conclaves (1978), and then with the election of Pope John Paul II and his first visit to Germany (1980), which concluded in Munich. John Paul II already knew and highly esteemed Ratzinger. He chose him as Relator of the 1980 Synod on the Family, the first of the new pontificate, and let him know immediately that he wished to have him in Rome at the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. At first Ratzinger resisted, but the Pope’s will was all too clear.

On November 25, 1981, he was nominated prefect, and in March 1982 he moved to Rome.

THE CARDINAL PREFECT This new stage was a very long one.

For 23 years Ratzinger was one of the main and most trusted collaborators of John Paul II, who would by no means be willing to give up his contribution to the

For 23 years, ratzinger was one oF the most trusted collaborators oF John Paul ii.

together they were an extraordinarily eFFective “Formidable Pair” 22

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Cardinal Ratzinger holds 1992’s Catechism of the Catholic Church, for which he was largely responsible.

(Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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A NEW CATECHISM FOR THE CHURCH life of the Church until the end of one of the longest pontificates in history. The relationship between the Pope and the prefect was intense, frank and cordial, based on mutual esteem and admiration, even allowing for the differences between the two personalities. Ratzinger thus certainly was one of the principal characters of this epoch in the life of the Church and he gave support of great theological depth to the magisterium of John Paul II, faithfully interpreting papal positions. It is quite natural to speak of an extraordinarily effective “formidable pair,” a great Pope and a great prefect.

The work accomplished by Cardinal Ratzinger in these years was impressive, thanks to his ability to guide the work of his collaborators, listening to them and directing their contributions with an extraordinary ability to synthesize, so that the documents are not so much the fruit of his personal work as of the effort of the whole group.

But it would not be easy, because the debates in the postconciliar Church were heated theologically.

Three salient events can be highlighted among many of this period. First, the Congregation’s interventions on the topic of liberation theology in the early part of the 1980s. The Pope was deeply concerned about the influence of Marxist ideology on currents of thought in Latin American theology; the prefect shared his concern and faced the delicate problem with courage.

The outcome came in the form of the two famous Instructions, with the intention respectively to oppose negative drifts (the first, from 1984) and to recognize the value of positive aspects (the second, from 1986). Critical reactions, especially to the first document, and lively discussions were not lacking, including specific cases of individual controversial theologians (the best known of whom was the Brazilian, Leonardo Boff). Ratzinger, in spite of his acknowledged cultural finesse, did not escape the common fate of those in charge of the doctrinal dicastery of having the reputation of a rigid censor, guardian

of orthodoxy and principal opponent of the freedom of theological research, and, being German, he would receive the hardly benevolent nickname of Panzerkardinal.

Another document of the Congregation, many years later, also gave rise to a wave of criticism: the Declaration Dominus Iesus, published during the Great Jubilee of 2000, on the centrality of the figure of Jesus for the salvation of all. This time it was mainly those circles most committed to ecumenical relations and dialogue with other religions that reacted. But even in this case there is no doubt that his stance fully corresponded to John Paul II’s intention to protect some essential points of the Church’s faith from misunderstandings or deviations with serious implications.

A NEW CATECHISM FOR THE CHURCH A third endeavor, also at first much debated but eventually achieving wide consensus and success, was the truly herculean effort of drafting a new Catechism of the Catholic Church. An exposition of the entire Catholic faith, mirroring the conciliar renewal and formulated in language suited to today’s times, had been requested by the 1985 Synod. The Pope entrusted the task to Cardinal Ratzinger and a commission he chaired.

The fact that after an era of very strong theological and ecclesial debates and tensions, within a few years, that is, already by 1992, the work came to fruition in a largely convincing way, has something miraculous about it.

Only an exceptional capacity for a unified vision of doctrine and the entire field of Christian life could guide the enterprise and come to terms with it. Sensitivity to contemporary expectations was not lacking. Are these not the same qualities we had recognized and admired 25 years earlier in the author of the Introduction to Christianity?

The Catechism remains probably the most significant positive doctrinal contribution of John Paul II’s pontificate, a valuable tool for the life of the Church: it is not for nothing that Pope Francis makes frequent reference to it.l

RatzingeR had an extRaoRdinaRy ability to guide his collaboRatoRs, listen to them and synthesize theiR woRk. it was not easy: debates in the post-conciliaR chuRch weRe heated 24

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THE RATZINGER REPORT (1985) ON BISHOPS AND “COLLEGIALITY”

T

he Ratzinger Report, published in English in 1985, is a booklength interview with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger conducted by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori.

Cardinal Ratzinger says that bishops are “authentic teachers” of the Christian doctrine who enjoy “ordinary, autonomous and immediate authority in the dioceses entrusted to them” of which they are the “principle and foundation of unity.”

United in the episcopal college with their head, the Pope, “they act in the person of Christ” in order to govern the universal Church.

Vatican II “wanted specifically to strengthen the role and responsibility of bishops,” Ratzinger said; however, the council documents are not put into practice correctly. “The decisive new emphasis on the role of the bishops is in reality restrained or actually risks being smothered by the insertion of bishops into episcopal conferences that are ever more organized, often with burdensome bureaucratic structures. We must not forget that the episcopal conferences have no theological basis; they do not belong to the structure of the Church, as

willed by Christ, that cannot be eliminated; they have only a practical, concrete function.”

“No episcopal conference, as such, has a teaching mission; its documents have no weight of their own save that of the consent given to them by the individual bishops.”

The interviewer asks, why does the Prefect insist on this point?

“Because it is a matter of safeguarding the very nature of the Catholic Church, which is based on an episcopal structure and not on a kind of federation of national churches. The national level is not an ecclesial dimension.”

Episcopal conferences can hide “personal lapses” by bishops, Ratzinger notes.

He recalls an episcopal conference held in his country of Germany during the 1930s. “Well, the really powerful documents against National Socialism were those that came from individual courageous bishops. The documents of the conference, on the contrary, were often rather wan and too weak with respect to what the tragedy called for.” (pp. 59-61)n

A NEW CATECHISM FOR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

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he Second Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops that was convened by Pope John Paul II on January 25, 1985, to evaluate the progress of implementing the Vatican II Council’s goals on the 20th anniversary of its closure, expressed the desire that “a catechism or compendium of all Catholic doctrine regarding both faith and morals be composed, that it might be, as it were, a point of reference for the catechisms or compendiums that are prepared in various regions. The presentation of doctrine must be biblical and liturgical. It must be sound doctrine suited to the present life of Christians.”

In 1986, Pope John Paul formed a commission composed of 12 cardinals and bishops, chaired by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to prepare the first draft of the Catechism.

The commission was assisted by a committee consisting of seven diocesan bishops, experts in theology and catechesis.

Reminiscing on those days, Ratzinger said in 2011: “I must confess that even today it seems a miracle to me that this project was ultimately successful.”

The Catechism was promulgated by John Paul II on 11 October 1992, the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, with his apostolic constitution Fidei depositum (in English, The Deposit of Faith).

The Catechism states: 11 This catechism aims at presenting an organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental contents of Catholic doctrine, as regards both faith and morals, in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church’s Tradition. Its principal sources are the Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, the liturgy, and the Church’s Magisterium. It is intended to serve “as a point of reference for the catechisms or compendia that are composed in the various countries.”

12 This work is intended primarily for those responsible for catechesis: first of all the bishops, as teachers of the faith and pastors of the Church. It is offered to them as an instrument in fulfilling their responsibility of teaching the People of God. Through the bishops, it is addressed to redactors of catechisms, to priests, and to catechists. It will also be useful reading for all other Christian faithful.n BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Part Four

Papacy “Live Starting from the Center”

by Federico Lombardi

T

hus we come to the penultimate, but in ecclesial terms, most important, stage of Ratzinger’s long career, also unexpected like the previous two. Even so, upon the death of John Paul II, there were several reasons to look toward him as a possible successor: the prolonged and close collaboration in full harmony with the previous Pope, the eminent qualities of intelligence and spirit, the absence of any ambition to power that placed him above the parties, to which is finally added the serene mastery with which, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, he conducted the acts and presided over the rites involved in the preparation and implementation of the Conclave.

Despite his advanced age, the factor of continuity quickly prevailed. On April 19, at age 78, Joseph Ratzinger became the 265th Pope of the Catholic Church, choosing the name of Benedict, the sixteenth to bear that name, and presenting himself to the people gathered in St. Peter’s Square as a “simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.”

Despite the new Pope’s age, the pontificate, which would last just under eight years, was to be marked by activity in Italy and abroad. In addition to the “ordinary” activity of celebrations and audiences at the Vatican, we can recall 24 trips abroad, several of them crowned with great success and popularity, with 24 countries on five continents visited; 29 trips within Italy; five Assemblies of the Synod of Bishops — three ordinary general ones: On the Eucharist (2005, already convened

by John Paul II); on the Word of God (2008); on the Promotion of the New Evangelization (2012); and two special ones: for Africa (2009) and for the Middle East (2010) — each followed (except the last one in 2012) by an important apostolic exhortation.

Other major magisterial documents include three encyclicals. Also of particular importance is the Letter to Catholics in the People’s Republic of China, Pentecost 2007. Also worth mentioning

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INSIDE THE VATICAN BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023

are the “Years” by which Benedict XVI intended to give coherence and direction to his pastoral leadership of the Church. After leading to its completion the “Year of the Eucharist,” already begun by his predecessor, he successively proclaimed the “Pauline Year” (June 28, 2008 – June 29, 2009, for the bi-millennium of the birth of the Apostle), the “Year for Priests” (June 19, 2009 – June 11, 2010, for the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé d’Ars), and finally the “Year of Faith” (begun on October 11, 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council). Regarding the latter, which the Pope did not personally lead following his resignation, it is fair to note what he himself said about it, responding to this question from Peter Seewald: “What do you think is, in retrospect, the hallmark of your pontificate?” “I would say,” Benedict replied, “that it is well expressed by the Year of Faith: a renewed encouragement to believe, to live a life starting from the center, from the dynamism of faith, to rediscover God by rediscovering Christ, therefore to rediscover the centrality of faith.”

These words lead us to reflect directly on the priorities of the pontificate as a key to its interpretation. Benedict spoke about them explicitly in a very particular, passionate and intense document: the Letter to the Bishops of March 10, 2009, written in the aftermath of the criticism and attacks on him following the withdrawal of the excommunication of the bishops who followed Marcel Lefebvre and the “Williamson affair.” This seems almost to serve to “account for” his governance of the Church. “In our time when in vast areas of the earth the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame that can no longer find nourishment, the priority that stands above all is to make God present in this world and to open to the people access to God. Not to any god, but to that God who spoke at Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in love driven to the end (cf. John 13:1), in Jesus Christ crucified and risen.”l

the shy German ProFessor who only wished to retire and write books was elected the 265th PoPe.

he called himselF a “humble worker in the vineyard oF the lord” Pope Benedict XVI at an audience in St. Peter's Square in September 2006 (Photo Grzegorz Galazka) BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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A

fter only two days of voting, the 117 cardinal electors chose a successor to the charismatic and beloved John Paul II: the shy German professor who only wished to retire and write books.

The 2005 papal conclave was convened to elect a new Pope following the death of Pope John Paul II on April 2, 2005. Of the 117 eligible members of the College of Cardinals, those younger than 80 years of age at the time of the death of Pope John Paul II, all but two attended.

All the electors were appointed by Pope John Paul II except for three: Filipino Jaime Sin, who was not attending, American William Baum and the German Joseph Ratzinger, making Baum and Ratzinger the only participants with previous conclave

“THE CARDINALS HAVE ELECTED ME...”

THE PAPAL CONCLAVE OF 2005 ELECTS THE “HUMBLE LABORER IN THE VINEYARD OF THE LORD” Coat of arms of Benedict XVI. The scallop shell is an allusion to the Sacrament of Holy Baptism and is also a symbol of pilgrimage.

The red-crowned head of a Moor represents Pope Benedict’s origins and is also a reference to the Order of St. Benedict.

The bear carrying a red pack represents Pope Benedict’s trust in God and his calling to spread the faith to others

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experience from the two conclaves of 1978.

It ended the following day after four ballots with the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

After accepting his election, he took the pontifical name of Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, who in early April 2005 was identified as one of the “100 most influential people in the world” by Time, had repeatedly stated he would like to retire to his house in the Bavarian village of Pentling near Regensburg and dedicate himself to writing books.

At the papal conclave, “it was, if not Ratzinger, who? And as they came to know him, the question became, why not Ratzinger?” said Austin Ivereigh, English Catholic writer and then-spokesman for English Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. On

INSIDE THE VATICAN BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023

April 19, 2005, Ratzinger was elected on the second day after four ballots.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor described the final vote: “It’s very solemn when you go up one by one to put your vote in the urn and you’re looking up at Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. And I still remember vividly the then-Cardinal Ratzinger sitting on the edge of his chair.” Ratzinger had hoped to retire peacefully and said that “At a certain point, I prayed to God, ‘Please don’t do this to me’... Evidently, this time He didn’t listen to me.”

At the balcony, Benedict’s first words to the crowd, given in Italian before he gave the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing in Latin, were: “Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord. The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with insufficient instruments comforts me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers. In the joy of the Risen Lord, confident of his unfailing help, let us move forward. The Lord will help us, and Mary, His Most Holy Mother, will be at our side. Thank you.”

On April 24, Benedict celebrated the Papal Inauguration Mass in St. Peter’s Square, during which he was invested with the Pallium and the Ring of the Fisherman.

The Pope explained his choice of name during his first general audience in St. Peter’s Square, on April 27, 2005: “Filled with sentiments of awe and thanksgiving, I wish to speak of why I chose the name Benedict.

“Firstly, I remember Pope Benedict XV, that courageous prophet of peace, who guided the Church through turbulent times of war. In his footsteps, I place my ministry in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples.

“Additionally, I recall St. Benedict of Nursia, co-patron of Europe, whose life evokes the Christian roots of Europe. I ask him to help us all to hold firm to the centrality of Christ in our Christian life: May Christ always take first place in our thoughts and actions!” l

A Consistent Defense of Tradition Over 40 Years Benedict never did oBject to the new rite of the Mass itself, But rather to the way it was carried out — and to the scandal of prohiBiting the older forM of the Mass

by Peter A. KwAsniewsKi

J

oseph Ratzinger is a theologian from whom I have been learning for decades. Now that he is gone, it seems that fatherly warmth has left the Vatican entirely. Certainly, his theological genius and respect for tradition had already vanished in 2013, with no signs of returning any time soon.

At the International Theological Institute in Austria, I enjoyed the privilege of teaching alongside Fr. (then Dr.) John Saward at the time he was putting finishing touches on his translation of The Spirit of the Liturgy.

Although I had already fallen in love with the classical Roman rite by experiencing it in its recited and sung forms, it was Ratzinger who first opened my eyes to why I loved it — the theological and spiritual rationale.

In discussing The Spirit of the Liturgy with fellow appreciators over the past two decades, especially members of the clergy, I learned that it had had the same powerful effect on many of its readers.

At last, we had found a highly literate, sophisticated, rather audacious modern theologian who valued tradition, explained its meaning, rebuked its assailants, and advanced its recovery.

That he was the right-hand man of John Paul II and followed him to the Chair of Peter added to the momentary elation of recovering territory after a series of brutal losses.

As time went on and I delved more deeply both into the Roman rite itself and into the writings of Ratzinger, I learned that there had been a momentous rupture — one that Benedict XVI was eager to downplay for the sake of ecclesial peace, but one that, in his candid moments, he was fully prepared to admit and to decry.

For example, in a letter written in 1976 to the eminent historian of Roman law Prof. Wolfgang Waldstein, Fr. Ratzinger wrote: “The problem of the new Missal lies in its abandonment of a historical process that was always continual, before and after St. Pius V, and in the creation of a completely new book, although it was compiled of old material, the publication of which was accompanied by a prohibition of all that came before it, which, besides, is unheard of in the history of both law and liturgy. And I can say with certainty, based on my knowledge of the conciliar debates and my repeated

reading of the speeches made by the Council Fathers, that this does not correspond to the intentions of the Second Vatican Council. (“Zum motu proprio Summorum Pontificum,” Una Voce Korrespondenz 38/3 [2008], 201–14) Ten years later, in The Feast of Faith, we find the now Cardinal Ratzinger saying something quite similar, this time to the whole world: “Even the official new books, which are excellent in many ways, occasionally show far too many signs of being drawn up by academics and reinforce the notion that a liturgical book can be ‘made’ like any other book.

“In this connection I would like to make a brief reference to the so-called Tridentine Liturgy.

“In fact there is no such thing as a Tridentine liturgy, and until 1965 the phrase would have meant nothing to anyone.

The Council of Trent did not ‘make’ a liturgy. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing, either, as the Missal of Pius V. The Missal which appeared in 1570 by order of Pius V differed only in tiny details from the first printed edition of the Roman Missal of about a hundred years earlier….

“Yet, with all its advantages, the new Missal was published as if it were a book put together by professors, not a phase in a continual growth process. Such a thing has never happened before.

“It is absolutely contrary to the laws of liturgical growth, and it has resulted in the nonsensical notion that Trent and Pius V had ‘produced’ a Missal 400 years ago. The Catholic liturgy was thus reduced to the level of a mere product of modern times.” (pp. 85–87) We do not find Ratzinger rejecting the new liturgical books, which he used throughout his career from 1969 onwards, but we do find him objecting to the way they were produced, the defects one can find in them, and the scandal of prohibiting the older form of the rite for those who find it spiritually fruitful. He was a consistent advocate of a certain Catholic pluralism, when the progressives showed themselves (ironically?) fixated on a mode of uniformity more characteristic of the Tridentine period they despised in every other respect.

Again, 10 more years later, in 1996, His Eminence, in the interview-book Salt of the Earth, speaks quite openly: “I am BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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A Consistent Defense of Tradition Over 40 Years of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it.

“It’s impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that.

“A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent.

“Can it be trusted any more about anything else? Won’t it proscribe again tomorrow what it prescribes today?” (pp. 176–77) In his memoirs Milestones, published in 1997, he says: “Setting it [the new missal] as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused us enormous harm.

“For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something ‘made,’ not something given in advance but something lying within our own power of decision.” (p. 148) One senses a growing urgency and candor on this question.

In God and the World of 2000, he tells us: “For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 [i.e., the usus antiquor] should be lifted.

“Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here.

“There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past.

“How can one trust her at present if things are that way?” (p. 416) At the Fontgombault conference in 2001, he tells us—as if thinking through in his mind a draft of Summorum Pontificum: “I was from the beginning in favor of the freedom to continue using the old Missal, for a very simple reason: people were already beginning to talk about making a break with the pre-conciliar Church, and of developing various models of Church — a pre-conciliar and obsolete type of Church, and a new and conciliar type of Church…

“I recognize that both Missals are Missals of the Church, and belong to the Church which remains the same as ever...

In order to emphasize that there is no essential break, that there is continuity in the Church, which retains its identity, it seems to me indispensable to continue to offer the opportunity to celebrate according to the old Missal, as a sign of the enduring identity of the Church.

“This is for me the most basic reason: what was up until 1969 the Liturgy of the Church, for all of us the most holy thing there was, cannot become after 1969 30

INSIDE THE VATICAN BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023

— with incredibly positivistic decision — the most unacceptable thing.” (pp. 148–49) Having been elected Pope in 2005, it did not take Benedict XVI a very long time to issue Summorum Pontificum, in the teeth of fiercest resistance.

There is no need to speak at length about a document so important, well-known, and influential, but I should like to quote the key theological principle that enshrines decades of Ratzinger’s consistent thought and pastoral practice: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.” (Letter to Bishops Con Grande Fiducia, accompanying Summorum Pontificum) Finally, almost a decade later, in 2016 — after his abdication — the Pope Emeritus told us again about his motivations for releasing Summorum Pontificum: “I have always said, and even still say, that it was important that something which was previously the most sacred thing in the Church to people should not suddenly be completely forbidden.

“A society that considers now to be forbidden what it once perceived as the central core — that cannot be.

“The inner identity it has with the other must remain visible.

“So for me it was not about tactical matters and God knows what, but about the inward reconciliation of the Church with itself.” (pp. 201–2) When his German biographer, Peter Seewald, confronts him with the objection, “The reauthorization of the Tridentine Mass is often interpreted primarily as a concession to the Society of Saint Pius X,” the Pope Emeritus replies, with surprising intensity: “This is just absolutely false!

“It was important for me that the Church is one with herself inwardly, with her own past; that what was previously holy to her is not somehow wrong now.”

Anyone reading such lines can readily perceive the extent to which the successor of Benedict XVI dissents from his teaching — and seems to misunderstand, if not misrepresent, his motivations.

It is no mere shift in disciplinary policy that we are looking at here, but a tectonic shift in theological principles.

Unfortunately, such a shift is tantamount to a kind of “declaration of war” on tradition.

We pray, along with Pope Benedict, I am sure, that the peace of Christ will soon be restored to His Church as God intends.

PETER KWASNIEWSKI is an alumnus of Thomas Aquinas College in California, a founding professor of Wyoming Catholic College, and now a freelance writer, editor, publisher, and composer. His many books include the 2021 title From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War.l

June 3, 2006 — St. Peter’s Square.

Pope Benedict XVI during the Vigil of Pentecost with ecclesial movements (Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Part Five

Emeritus Benedict Shocks the World and Resigns

by Federico Lombardi

W

hen on February 11, 2013, at a consistory convened to set a date for the canonization of the martyrs of Otranto, Benedict XVI unexpectedly read in Latin a declaration of his desire to renounce the position of Pope, the surprise was great throughout the world, because very few people were prepared for it: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to advanced age, are no longer suitable for the proper exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

The Pope said briefly, but with full clarity, that he felt a decrease in “vigor of both body and soul,” which made him unable “to administer well the ministry entrusted to him,” keeping in mind the demands of Church government “in today’s world, subject to rapid change and agitated by issues of great relevance to the life of the Church.” The renunciation is made “in full freedom,” and the Sede Vacante would begin February 28, 2013, at 8 p.m.

Rivers of ink have flowed about this renunciation and his motivation, but the act was simple, and the reasons given by Benedict XVI are obvious and entirely plausible: it involved a great act of responsibility before God and the Church. This was an act of humility in the face of the immense demands of the Petrine office and of courage in opening a path that was already provided for in Church law, but for centuries no one had traveled. The election of the pope is for life, but the pontificate does not necessarily have to last until the Pope’s death.

The “novelty” of the renunciation was considered by many to be a “historic” act that revealed with particular clarity the farsightedness and spiritual greatness of Benedict XVI, and in this light helps one to reread the entire pontificate with more attention and depth.

Before Easter the Church would have a new Pope. The time following the resignation is known to all: a time of prayer for the Church, of confidential personal contacts, of very rare written interventions, and above all of preparation for the meeting with the Lord.

The benevolence and attention of Pope Francis, the discretion and prayerfulness of the “Pope Emeritus,” all allowed the Church to appreciate a situation that had been unprecedented since the Middle Ages and to sincerely enjoy a shining example of Christian fraternity. The beautiful images of the embraces and prayers in common of the two figures dressed in white were a far greater source of consolation than the attempts — unsuccessful and malicious — to pit Benedict against Francis.

The horizons of Joseph Ratzinger’s thought and ecclesial service expanded during the course of eight decades, from his native Bavaria to the ends of the world, as his gaze focused on the fascinating and mysterious face of Jesus, until the moment of the Encounter. The legacy he leaves us is that characteristic of a theologian called to the See of Peter, who confirmed his brethren in the faith through teaching, sacramental service and the witness of life.l

“My strengths are no longer suitable For the ProPer exercise oF the Petrine Ministry” February 11, 2013 —The Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI attends a meeting with cardinals and announces, in Latin, that he will resign at the end of the month (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters) 32

INSIDE THE VATICAN BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023

February 28, 2013.

A helicopter carrying Pope Benedict XVI takes off from inside the Vatican on its way to the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo (CNS photo/Stefano Rellandini, Reuters)

BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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n this interview with author and papal Ibook, biographer Peter Seewald in the 2016 Last Testament: In His Own Words, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI explains some of the circumstances and motivations concerning his resignation.

Peter Seewald: Now we come to that decision which in itself already makes your pontificate seem historic. Your resignation was the first time a genuinely ruling pontiff had stood down from his office. …

Pope Emeritus Benedict: ‘Light of the World’… to examine yourself before God and before yourself.

Had you judged that your decision was also a disappointment, something that

IN HIS OWN WORDS: BENEDICT XVI ON HIS RESIGNATION “YOU TALK ABOUT IT EXTENSIVELY WITH THE LOVING GOD”

would cause bewilderment?

Intense… they were stopped in their tracks at my news. … at that moment they were really distressed and felt forsaken.

Did you take into account the shock it would cause?

I had to accept it, yes. They know that my hour had passed and I had given all I could give.

When was your mind made up?

I would say during the summer holiday of 2012.

In August?

Thereabouts, yes.

The doctor also said to me that I could not fly over the Atlantic again. As scheduled, World Youth Day was supposed to be in Rio in 2014. Because of the football World Cup it was brought forward by one year.

How does one manage to reach and carry out a decision of this importance without anyone to talk with about it?

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INSIDE THE VATICAN BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023

You talk about it extensively with the loving God. Only four people had been confided in.

Was there a reason for this?

Yes, of course, because the moment the people knew, the mandate would crumble, since its authority disintegrates then.

When and by whom was the text of your resignation speech written?

By me.

Why in Latin?

Because you do something so important in Latin.

11 February; Rose Monday, feast day fo Our Lady of Lourdes…How do you remember that historic day? …it was a new and tremendous step…

I wrestled with it inwardly the whole time…

That morning? As a normal morning? …I would say so, yes.

The same prayers?

The same prayers … Around seventy cardinals in the Sala del Concistoro …

The astonishment began as you started to speak in Latin: “Dearly esteemed cardinals, I have not gathered you together only to let you participate in the canonizations, but I also have something of great importance to tell you.” After the consistory the Pope goes out solemnly… On this day, about which historians still write, what was going through your head?

The question: “What will mankind be saying as I stand there?”… I brought myself before the Lord in a particular way throughout the day.

In the resignation speech… the diminishing of your energy...

The successor of Peter… is not merely a function… Then again, the Pope must do concrete things, must keep the whole situation in his sights, must know which priorities to set, and so on… there remain so many things which are essential, that, if the capability to do them is no longer there…

Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500-58), to whom you referred in a lecture, says in his theology of the cross: “The cross is the authentic place of the representative of Christ.”

The Pope must each day bear witness, must take up his cross each day and always be a martyr, in the sense of being a martyr to the sufferings of the world and its problems.

My predecessor Pope John Paul II… for 20 years bore the weight and the suffering

February 28, 2013.

Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, left, gestures as Pope Benedict XVI leaves the Vatican for Castel Gandolfo, Italy (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

February 28, 2013.

Pope Benedict XVI retires to the apartment at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, after appearing for the last time on the palace balcony (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Catholic Press Photos)

8 p.m. Feb. 28, 2013.

Members of the Swiss Guard close the main door of the papal villa (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano)

BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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n 2022, the frail but still intellectually vigIletter, orous 95-year-old pontiff sent a personal released by its recipient, to Franciscan University of Steubenville president Fr. Dave Pivonka on the occasion of an academic symposium being held there. In the letter, he reveals some of his thoughts about the “necessity” of Vatican Council II. October 7, 2022 Dear Fr. Pivonka, It is a great honor and joy for me that in the United States of America, at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, an International Symposium is dealing with my ecclesiology, thus placing my thinking and effort in the great stream in which it has moved.

“VATICAN II PROVED NOT ONLY MEANINGFUL, BUT NECESSARY” When I began to study theology in January 1946, no one thought of an Ecumenical Council.

When Pope John XXIII announced it, to everyone’s surprise, there were many doubts as to whether it would be meaningful, indeed whether it would be possible at all, to organize the insights and questions into the whole of a conciliar document and thus to give the Church a direction for its further journey. In reality, a new council proved to be not only meaningful, but necessary.

For the first time, the question of a theology of religions had shown itself in its radicality. The same is true for the relationship between faith and the world of mere reason. Both topics had not been foreseen in this way before. This explains why Vatican II at first threatened to unsettle and shake the Church more than to give her a new clarity for her mission. In the meantime, the need to reformulate the question of the nature and mission of the Church has gradually become apparent. In this way, the positive power of the Council is also slowly emerging.

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INSIDE THE VATICAN BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023

My own ecclesiological work was marked by the new situation that arose in the Church in Germany after the end of the First World War. If the ecclesiology had hitherto been treated essentially in institutional terms, the wider spiritual dimension of the concept of the Church was now joyfully perceived. Romano Guardini described this development with the words: “A process of immense importance has begun. The Church is awakening in souls.” Thus, “Body of Christ” became the supporting concept of the Church, which consequently, in 1943, found its expression in the encyclical Mystici Corporis.”

But with its officialization, the concept of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ had at the same time passed its peak and was critically reconsidered. In this situation I thought and wrote my dissertation on “People and House of God in Augustine’s Doctrine of the Church.” The great Augustinian Congress held in Paris in 1954 gave me the opportunity to deepen my view of Augustine’s position in the political turmoil of the time.

The question of the meaning of Civitas Dei seemed to be finally settled at that time. The dissertation of H. Scholz on Glaube und Unglaube in der Weltgeschichte (“Belief and Unbelief in Word History”), grown up in Harnack’s school and published in 1911, had shown that the two Civitates did not mean corporate bodies, but rather the representation of the two basic forces of belief and unbelief in history. The fact that this study, written under the direction of Harnack, had been accepted summa cum laude in itself secured it a full measure of approval. Moreover, it fit into the general public opinion, which assigned the Church and its faith a beautiful, but also harmless place. Whoever would have dared to destroy this beautiful consensus could only be considered obstinate. The drama of 410 (the capture and sack of Rome by the Visigoths) profoundly shook the world of that time, and also Augustine’s thinking. Of course, the Civitas Dei is not simply identical with the institution of the Church. In this respect, the medieval Augustine was indeed a fatal error, which today, fortunately, has been finally overcome. But the complete spiritualization of the concept of the Church, for its part, misses the realism of faith and its institutions in the world. Thus, in Vatican II the questions of the Church in the world finally became the central problem.

With these considerations I only wanted to indicate the direction in which my work has led me. I sincerely hope that the International Symposium at Franciscan University of Steubenville will be helpful in the struggle for a right understanding of the Church and the world in our time.

Yours in Christ, Benedict XVI

D

ated August 29, 2006, only a year and four months after he assumed the Throne of Peter, Benedict felt moved to write a “Spiritual Testament” to be released only after his death.

At this late hour of my life, as I look back over the decades I have traversed, the first thing I see is how much I have to be thankful for. Above all, I thank God himself, the giver of all good gifts, who gave me life and led me through many tribulations; picked me up every time I began to slip, and always gave me the light of his face again. In retrospect, I see and understand that even the dark and arduous stretches of this path were my salvation and that it was precisely in them that He guided me well.

I would like to thank my parents, who gave me life in difficult times and, with great sacrifices, gave me a wonderful home with their love, which shines through all my days as a bright light to this day. My father’s lucid faith taught us

SPIRITUAL TESTAMENT: “STAND FIRM IN THE FAITH!” “PRAY FOR ME THAT THE LORD WILL ADMIT ME IN SPITE OF MY SINS”

siblings to believe and stood firmly as a signpost in the midst of all my scientific study; the mother’s heartfelt piety and great kindness remain a legacy for which I cannot thank her enough. My sister has served me selflessly and with loving care for decades; my brother paved the way again and again with the clarity of his judgment,

with his vigorous resolution and with the cheerfulness of his heart; I could not have found the right path without this continuous preceding and accompanying me.

I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the many friends, men and women, whom he has always placed by my side; for the employees at all stages of my journey; for the teachers and students he gave me. I gratefully entrust you all to his goodness. And I would like to thank the Lord for the beautiful homeland in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps, where I was allowed to see the glory of the Creator himself always shine through. I thank the people of my homeland because in them I have always been able to experience the beauty of faith again. I pray that our country remains a country of faith and I ask you, dear countrymen: do not let yourself be diverted from the faith. Finally, I thank God for all the beautiful things I experienced at the various stages of my journey, but especially in Rome and Italy, which has become my second home.

I sincerely apologize to anyone I have wronged in any way.

What I said a moment ago of my countrymen, I now say to all who have been entrusted to my service in the Church: Stand firm in the faith. Don’t get confused! It often seems as if science — on the one hand the natural sciences, on the other hand historical research (especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) — has irrefutable insights that are contrary to the Catholic faith. I have witnessed the changes in natural science from afar and was able to see how apparent certainties against faith melted away, proving to be not science but philosophical interpretations that only apparently belonged to science. For 60 years now I have been accompanying the path of theology, especially of biblical studies, and with the changing generations I have seen theses collapse that seemed to be unshakeable, but that turned out to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the existentialist generation ( Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation. I have seen and continue to see how the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging again from the tangle of hypotheses.

Jesus Christ is really the way, the truth, and the life — and the Church, with all her shortcomings, is really His body.

Finally I humbly ask: Pray for me that the Lord will admit me into the eternal mansions in spite of all my sins and shortcomings. My heartfelt prayer goes out to all those entrusted to me, day after day.

Benedict PP XVI, August 29, 2006 BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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part six

Death and Legacy On the last day Of the year 2022, the lOrd called his “humble servant benedict” tO himself. he left a brief spiritual testament fOr the church he Once shepherded

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January 5, 2023 — St. Peter’s Square.

After Archbishop Georg Gänswein has placed the Gospel and kissed the coffin, the Funeral Mass for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, presided over by Pope Francis, begins. One hundred-thirty cardinals, 400 bishops and 3,700 priests participated (Photos Grzegorz Galazka)

“Lord, I Love You” P

ope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s last words were “Lord, I love you.”

His longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, reported that he was told this by the nurse attending the dying Pope Emeritus in the early morning of December 31, 2022; Benedict died just hours later.

“Benedict XVI, with a faint voice but in a very distinct way, said in Italian, ‘Lord, I love you,’’’ Gänswein told the Vatican’s official media, adding that it happened when the aides tending to Benedict were changing shifts.

“I wasn’t there at that moment, but the nurse a little later recounted it,’’ the archbishop said. “They were his last comprehensible words, because afterwards, he wasn’t able to express himself any more.”

And so, with a final declaration of love for his Lord, Pope Benedict left behind his long life dedicated to fostering that same love among all the souls of the entire world.

BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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January 2 and 3, 2023 — St. Peter’s Basilica.

The body of Pope Benedict XVI lies in state for two days, during which thousands of faithful pay their respects (Photos Grzegorz Galazka)

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Jan. 5, 2023 – Outside the Basilica.

Pope Francis presides over the solemn funeral of the Pope Emeritus, celebrated by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals (Photos Grzegorz Galazka)

Jan. 31, 2023 – Vatican Grottoes.

In this exclusive photo by Grzegorz Galazka, Archbishop Georg Gänswein celebrates Holy Mass at the tomb of Pope Benedict XVI one month after his death

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Benedict XVI: The Scholar Pope

by Tracey rowland

W

hen in 1946 Joseph Ratzinger entered the seminary for the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising along with his older brother Georg, fellow students distinguished the pair by the names “Organ-Ratz” and “Bücher-Ratz” (the organ-playing Ratzinger and the bookish Ratzinger). Joseph was the scholar, Georg the musician. Joseph completed both his doctorate and Habilitationsschrift dissertations under the supervision of Gottlieb Sóhngen whom he described as both a “radical thinker and a radical believer.” Söhngen had a particular interest in the border zones between philosophy and theology and this interest is reflected in Ratzinger’s many articles and lectures on the relationship between faith and reason.

For Ratzinger, it was always important that these couplets were held together. Ever since Immanuel Kant separated them in the eighteenth century, it has been difficult to present a Catholic world view, since such a view requires that the two be integrated. Not only did Sóhngen understand this, but so, too, did Romano Guardini, who was also lecturing at the University of Munich when Ratzinger was a student.

Guardini fought so strongly against the Kantian separation of faith and reason that his Chair at the University was known not as a Chair in Theology, or a Chair in Philosophy, but as a Chair in the Catholic World View. Contrary to Kant, Guardini also emphasized that Christianity was primarily about an encounter with Christ and thus the Holy Trinity. It was not primarily an ethical system, as Immanuel Kant had tried to reduce it to. These principles, that faith and reason need to be integrated, and that Christianity is about a personal relationship with the Holy Trinity, were to become hallmarks of the theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. From the time he joined the seminary until his death, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI was an intellectual leader.

He was not an activist, not an organizer or an entrepreneur and certainly not a bureaucrat or a politician, but a man with a very deep prayer life, a gift for scholarship and love of music and solemn liturgy. (Given this personality type, one wonders why he did not pursue the vocation of a Bene42

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dictine monk; there are so many great Benedictine monasteries dotted along the rivers of Germany and Austria.)

Whatever the answer is to that question, there is no doubt that his legacy will be his intellectual work. This includes over 60 books as well as numerous articles published in academic journals, his papal addresses and homilies, his encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, and the documents that were released from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when he was its Prefect.

Although the latter were collaborative efforts, they bear the watermarks of Ratzinger’s theological vision. Of these the most prominent are: Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation (1984), Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (1986), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The first two documents sought to address the theological crisis created by various forms of liberation theology popular in Latin America, and Dominus Iesus sought to address issues in ecclesiology. A major problem with liberation theology was the place of truth in its system.

Almost all liberation theologians want to give priority to praxis over truth. Romano Guardini had always insisted on the priority of logos over ethos, and Ratzinger never forgot this. He argued that to flip this relationship is to foster the Hinduisation of Christianity.

Similarly, whenever Ratzinger addressed the subject of Marxism, his primary criticism of this ideology was not that it was atheistic but that it had the wrong attitude to truth. Everything about it, including its atheism and materialism, stems from its stance toward truth.

As pontiff he issued three encyclicals and drafted a fourth that was promulgated under the name of Francis.

Three of the four were on the theological virtues – Deus Caritas Est (2005), Spe salvi (2007) and Lumen Fidei (2013) – the last of the three being the one completed by Francis. This trilogy offered a “Theological Anthropology 101” class, analogous to the “Trinitarian Theology 101” class found in St. John Paul II’s early suite of encyclicals on each Person of the Trinity. Taken together they provide an account of who God is and how He relates to the human

person, and the kinds of virtues required to sustain the relationship between the two.

Although not claiming “magisterial” status, Benedict also produced three books during his pontificate, known as the Jesus of Nazareth trilogy. These were his reflections on the life of Christ with reference to Sacred Scripture. Of all his books, these three appear to have had the greatest influence on Catholics who are not professional scholars. Introduction to Christianity remains his best-seller but is for a more academic market.

In summary, Joseph Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI was truly a “scholarpope.” His leadership style was that of a teacher or confessor of the faith. The gift he brought to the Church was an extensive knowledge of the Catholic intellectual tradition, along with an immersion in modern German philosophy.

The latter has been the source of Edith Stein both the best and the worst of contemporary philosophy, viewed from a Christian perspective. On the one side there are philosophers like the Catholics Peter Wust, Edith Stein, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Alfred Delp, SJ, Robert Spaemann, and the Jewish scholar Martin Buber. The inter-war period was a fertile time for Catholic scholarship. German Catholic Karl Marx intellectual life was emerging from the oppression of the Bismarck era and Catholic intellectuals were engaging with the ideas of their opponents. These opponents, on the other side, were Kant, Marx and Nietzsche and to some degree, though not entirely, the very ambivalent Heidegger.

It’s impossible to understand the current culture wars without including the work of Kant, Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger and their disciples. Kant completely separated faith and reason, Marx gave priority to praxis over reason, and Nietzsche argued that Christianity was a crime against life itself, offering his own alternative neo-pagan humanism to the humanism of the Incarnation. After the Second World War, the Frankfurt School of Social Theory offered some helpful criticisms of Kant, but further developed Marxian ideas about truth that were far from helpful from a Catholic point of view. The “generation of 1968” was heavily influenced by the Frankfurt School ideology and

by Nietzschean-style humanism.

The great gift of Joseph Ratzinger is that he was completely knowledgeable about all of this. When the storm broke in 1968, he was close to its center at the University of Tübingen in Germany. He had the Marxist Ernst Bloch as one of his academic colleagues. He was not like a typical bishop who, when the words “Frankfurt School” are used, has absolutely no idea of what this means. Cultures are formed by ideas,

and the cultural revolution of 1968 – with which the Church is still contending – was built largely on ideas that had their origin in German salons and universities.

Ratzinger/Benedict also understood that a Christian response to these German ideologies requires something more than a knowledge of the patristics and the scholastics, however valuable they may be. It requires an understanding of personalist philosophy as well. St. Thomas Aquinas had written well about universal human nature, but he had not attended to the relationship between history and ontology. St. John Paul II understood this and set about integrating the ideas of Catholic personalists into the Thomistic framework when he was a professor at the Catholic University of Lublin. Ratzinger had also studied personalist philosophers, in his case Martin Buber, Peter Wust and Theodor Martin Buber Steinbüchel. In his many articles and public addresses, Ratzinger was able to draw together ideas from the patristic heritage, the medieval scholastic heritage, the personalist philosophy of the interwar decades and his knowledge of German intellectual history of the past couple of centuries to defend the Church from wave after wave of intellectual attacks.

Friedrich Nietzsche He was the great Church Doctor of the twentieth century and in many ways the heir to St. John Henry Newman, whom he beatified, and who was the great Church Doctor of the nineteenth century. When new generations of scholars read Ratzinger, they will find that he left behind a treasury of insights into fundamental theology, liturgical theology, ecclesiology, scriptural hermeneutics, eschatology, Christology and theological anthropology. He also knew and loved the high culture of Christian Europe – its music and architecture and literature – and will no doubt be viewed as one of the great representatives of this culture – which is itself a fusion of the cultural gifts of the Jews, of the classical Greeks and Romans, and of Christian revelation. Ratzinger was no anti-Hellenist! He believed that the great synthesis of faith and reason, represented by the cities of Athens and Jerusalem, was not a mere accident of history, but something providential, something willed by God. Tracey Rowland, PhD, STL, STD, holds the St. John Paul II Chair of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, Australia.

She is the author of eight books, including Culture and the Thomist Tradition (London: Routledge, 2003) and Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). In 2020 she won the Ratzinger Prize for theology.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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An Appreciation Quiet and humble, yet fearless, benedict bore with steadfast faith the slings and arrows hurled at him

by Thomas G. Weinandy, oFm, Cap.

May 25, 2005 - Rome.

Holy Mass for Corpus Christi, celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, with the beginning of the Procession in San Giovanni in Laterano and Benediction in Santa Maria Maggiore (Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

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S

aint Pope John Paul II was beloved by people more positive – engendering and encouraging the theothroughout the entire world. He was outgoing. He logical and academic community in their pursuit of bringloved the crowds. As an actor he played to his audiing to light the fullness of truth that Jesus and the Catholic ence and won them over. He was a master at preaching the theological tradition embodied. As Pope this affirmative Gospel and at winning souls to Christ. He was a fighter attitude perdured. Benedict’s talks and encyclicals consiswho took on the world of disbelief. tently presented the truths of the faith in a manner that Moreover, he was a great academic. His philosophical would win over the doubter and confirm the faith of the and theological acumen is seen in his encyclicals – his believer. Benedict was but a humble servant of Jesus robust defense and proclamation of the Church’s moral Christ, his Lord and Savior. teaching, and his astute understanding of the relationship That being said, all would acknowledge, and most between faith and reason. He, likewise, possessed a great would praise, Benedict’s intellectual ability, a gift that is love for the Church and for the Eucharist. It is hard to seen in his academic work. To this day, his Introduction to imagine a greater Pope.

Christianity continues to be read by appreciative students Pope Benedict XVI was a different sort of man, yet a and members of the theological academy alike. Likewise, man who was loved by the people as well – but for differhis Spirit of the Liturgy is a foundational text for apprecient reasons. Benedict was shy and unassuming. He did not ating and understanding the Church’s liturgy that has relish the excitement of huge crowds. Nonetheless, he was come down to us through the ages. Benedict, in many also an authentic and fearless proclaimer of the Gospel in ways, was a liturgical theologian. He loved the Mass and the midst of a culture of relathe sacraments, for he was contivism. He was, likewise, a great vinced that they enacted, made theologian, but in a manner that present, all the mysteries of the Benedict’s quiet humility was singularly his own. His theolfaith, such that those who particiwas not founded ogy was imbued with a love for pated in them reaped their saving sacred tradition, particularly that benefits. I am also convinced that on his intellectual acumen, of the sacred liturgy. He promoted every priest and seminarian But on his firmness a love for the liturgy by fostering should be required to read and of faith in the Gospel the beauty of the liturgy. He recstudy his Spirit of the Liturgy. Not ognized that, as the supreme pononly do I think that they would tiff, he was not to be an innovator come to love the liturgy as Beneor trendsetter, but the guardian and advocate of the everdict loved it, but such study would also help alleviate living and ever-life-giving apostolic tradition. And for much of the rancor that exists in our present “liturgical these reasons people loved him – with a robust but quiet wars.” Much of his sound learning and wise counsel love. This affection was readily displayed in the one hunwould calmly prevail. dred and fifty thousand people who paid their respects as Both before and after his election as Pope, Joseph he lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica, and in the thousands Ratzinger bore the slings and arrows that were hurled at who participated in his funeral. He was beloved by cardihim by many within and outside the Church. Members of nals, bishops, priests, and, above all, by the lay faithful. the secular and ecclesial liberal elite media were, and still Thus, what I appreciated most about Pope Benedict are, relentless in their criticism and in their characterizaXVI, a virtue that he manifested throughout his life, was tion of him as an unyielding rigid conservative. However, his quiet humility. He was never a boisterous man pushing such rancor towards Benedict merely makes evident the himself into the limelight. Rather, his calm, unassuming lack of faith among many of his critics, as well as simulpresence brought to every situation a reassuring strength taneously highlighting his own steadfastness in the faith. that all would be done well and in accordance with the Benedict, as a person, as an academic, as an archbishop, Holy Spirit’s will. This quiet humility was founded, not and as Pope was and remains a light in the darkness of our upon Benedict’s intellectual acumen, but upon his firmpresent world. His light will continue to shine even now ness of faith in the Gospel, a faith that was expressed in when he has passed from this world into his heavenly the Church’s magisterial teaching and her ecclesial theoreward. There, with all of the saints, he will give glory to logical tradition. Even in his retirement, these virtues were God the Father, in union with Jesus, the risen incarnate silently and prayerfully manifested.

Son, in communion with the love of the Holy Spirit. He This humble love for the Gospel and the Church’s will forever rejoice in celebrating the heavenly liturgy teaching is witnessed during Benedict’s time as – the heavenly Eucharistic banquet of the Lamb.

Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. While he was often criticized for being Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Capuchin, overly zealous in his search for suspected heresy, is a former member of the Vatican’s International yet that is not accurate. His approach was much Theological Commission.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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The Last Latin Pope?

We Will Not See BeNedict’S like ANytime SooN

by John byron Kuhner

Dec. 18, 2010 - Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI reads a book during his visit to the Vatican Library. The library was reopened the previous September after being closed three years for major renovations (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

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n unusual thing hapBenedict insisted on reading encyclical in German. It was pened at the Apostolic then translated – extremely litevery word of it in Latin, Palace when Fr. Regierally – into Italian. The Italian changing certain phrasings, version was submitted to the nald Foster and the rest of the Latin Office, who had to blitz Vatican’s Latin Office submitand standardizing the styLe of ted their translation of Deus their way through it in order to the whoLe Caritas Est to the Vatican’s Secget it done by the Christmas retariat of State in 2005. It came back to them. With release date.

“You can see right away that Italian wasn’t the origedits. From the Pope. “A few times at the beginning inal,” Foster said in an interview shortly after the publiJohn Paul II would change some of the Latin words, but only in a few very important places. Eventually he cation. “I wanted to do it from German, the original was German and you can see it right away but they said ‘No, stopped. Not even he could read all the stuff he was writeverybody’s translating from Italian.’ So we’re stuck ing, let alone read it in Latin.”

Benedict XVI was different. He had taken much of with the Italian but you can see the Italians don’t like the the first year of his pontificate writing this 16,000 word Italian. So anyway, we did it.”

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This was the kind of Italian the Latinists were being given: “Di fatto, tendenze in questo senso ci sono sempre state.” “In fact, tendencies in this direction there have always been.” It was not hard to see the German behind it: “Tendenzen in dieser Richtung hat es auch immer gegeben.” It became, in Latin, “Reapse in hanc partem proclivitates semper fuerunt.”....“Linguistic madness,” as Foster said. But the Latin is effective at reproducing the German: the German word order in particular is almost completely preserved.

Working from an Italian translation of a German document wasn’t the only problem. The content was, itself, difficult to express in Latin.

Foster explained: “The hardest is this modern – I won’t say modern, I have nothing against what’s modern – but is this jargon that we have... ‘a love of our friend turns our friend into a’ – not into ‘us’! – but into ‘a certain we’.... Unnhh! And they go on and on like this where you can’t... it’s impossible to translate some of this stuff. They never thought that way, the Romans just never thought that way.... Or ‘I’m going to miss a little of my own ego’... well, you have to say in Latin ‘my own person’ or something like that.... If you say mei, well, that’s a piece ‘of me’ but to say ‘I’m losing a piece of me’ and to say ‘I’m losing a piece of my ego,’ that’s another thing!”

However, Foster’s complaints about the process are not really discernible in the final text. It is, in fact, quite easy to understand: Amor per amorem adolescit. Amor “divinus” est, quoniam ex Deo procedit isque nos cum Deo coniungit et hoc in unitatis processu in quiddam veluti “Nos” convertit, quod nostras partitiones praetergreditur et efficit ut unum fiamus, ita ut postremo Deus sit “omnia in omnibus.”

Love grows through love. Love is “divine” because it proceeds from God; and it joins us with God; and in this process of unifying it turns us into something like a “We,” because it transcends our divisions, and brings it about that we become one thing, so that finally God may be “all in all.”

In part this is because after all the “linguistic madness,” after all the jargon, Benedict sat down with the Latin text and read it. There wasn’t time for

this, but he did it anyway. The document ended up being a month late, missing its Christmas release date. Benedict insisted on reading every word of it in Latin, changing certain phrasings, and standardizing the style of the whole (the Latin Office did documents piecemeal, with different translators taking up different parts of the document, and with rarely any editorial oversight over such niceties as consistent word choice and style throughout a document). The end result was much better workmanship than typically comes out of Vatican documents.

Benedict could do this, of course, because he knew Latin. This is not the case with Pope Francis, the first Pope formed after Paul VI repudiated Vatican II’s decree requiring Latin in the seminaries. Francis’ most recent (2020) encyclical Fratelli Tutti still has not received a Latin version and it appears it never will.

It’s still too early to say that Benedict XVI will be the last Pope who knows Latin – history is full of surprises – but it’s hard to see the next Pope having Benedict-level competence in the subject. Benedict was so good at it that he wrote his own speeches in Latin without the Latin Office’s help – most notably, his resignation speech, which the Latin Office knew nothing about until he had actually given it and shocked the world.

It is fitting that the Latin Pope would write about unity. The same thing Benedict says about Love, Popes have been saying for centuries about Latin: it transcends divisions, that we may become one with the Church through the ages; it drains away the ego, that God may be all in all; in its more elevated moments, in its grand prayers, otherworldly chants, and symphonic musicality, it joins us with God and seems indeed to come from God. Without it, and without the Latin Pope, it is hard not to fear a new era of division in the Church.

John Byron Kuhner is the former president of the North American Institute of Living Latin Studies (SALVI), and the editor of In Medias Res, the Paideia Institute’s online journal. He writes the regular Latin column for Inside the Vatican magazine.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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“Music is God’s Gift” Music was a source of deep theological reflection for the pope by

Maestro aurelio Porfiri

T

he death of Benedict XVI has led many to reflect on the legacy of Joseph Ratzinger, a legacy which in my opinion is much more complex than what we are led to believe. Certainly in the decades to come many studies will analyze the life and work of this theologian and Pope who has marked the life of the Church for the last 70 years.

One aspect that I believe is important, and mostly overlooked, is his love for music. Joseph Ratzinger was very fond of music — especially, but not only, that of Mozart. Of this composer, in a speech offered on the occasion of a concert offered to the Pope by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and in which Mozart’s famous Requiem was performed, he said: “Allow me, however, to say once again that a special affection binds me, I might say, has always bound me, to this supreme musician. Every time I hear his music I cannot but think back to my parish church when I was a boy when, on feast days, one of his ‘Masses’ resounded.

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I felt in my heart that a ray of Heaven’s beauty had reached me, and I have this sensation every time, today too, that I hear this great, dramatic and serene meditation on death. In Mozart everything is in perfect harmony, every note, every musical phrase, and it could not be otherwise. Even counterpoints are reconciled and the Mozart’esche Heiterkeit, the ‘Mozartian serenity’ enfolds everything and at every moment. This is a gift of God’s grace, but it is also the fruit of the lively faith of Mozart, who, especially in his sacred music, succeeds in making the luminous response of Divine Love shine out.

This gives hope, even when human life is lacerated by suffering and death.”

An authentic reflection on the music of the great composer is contained in these words; it is not simply comments suited to the circumstances.

Then the Pope continues: “In the last letter, dated April 4, 1787, that he wrote to his dying father, he spoke in this way concerning the last

phase of life on earth: ‘... for some years I have become the guide for just progress? Certainly Benedict XVI says so familiar with this sincere and most beloved friend of this because he well understood that this was the only man (death), whose image, for me, not only has nothing path to follow. terrifying about it but even appears very tranquilizing And yet, it must be noted with some bitterness that, if and comforting! And I thank my God for granting me the it is true that he had the right vision of the problem, he good fortune of having the opportunity to recognize in it did not, however, as Pope, do much to find a solution. the key to our happiness. I never go to bed without thinkAll of us Church musicians hoped for some decisive ing that I might perhaps be dead on the morrow. Yet not action against the cheesy music we have been listening one of those who know me would be able to say that in to for too many years now, but this action never came. company I am sad or in a bad mood. And for this good Sure, nice words, but not many facts. This feeling is fortune I thank my Creator every day, and I wish for it shared by many of us who were hoping for a breakwith all my heart for all my through after so many decades peers.’ It is a letter that shows a of ugliness. And if there was a deep and simple faith which Pope who could lead us to this likewise emerges in the prayer turning point it was he, but he of the great Requiem and leads didn’t. For what reason did this us, at the same time, to love happen? intensely the events of earthly As many observers have life as gifts of God and to rise said, he was a man of great above them, looking serenely at meekness and shyness, as he death as the ‘key’ that opens the himself recognized; despite his door to eternal happiness.” many fine qualities, he did not It is evident from these words have the attitude of a leader, but that the Pope had meditated for rather was a professor who “An Authentic renewAl of music found himself acting as Pope. a long time on the compositions cAn only hAppen in the wAke of of this musical genius, as they Despite the fact that he personhad been a source of great the greAt trAdition of the pAst” ally deeply and sincerely loved reflection for him, together with music, the current musical envi– B enedict XVi theological and philosophical ronment in the Catholic Church works. I believe this is the right is mostly made up of people Concert by the Regensburg Cathedral Choir approach to art – to music – to who have little or no musical in the Sistine Chapel in the presence understand that they are a way to training, and there does not of Benedict XVI and his brother Georg knowledge, as Ludwig van seem to be a will for this to (Photo Grzegorz Galazka) Beethoven stated as well. change. Pope Benedict tried to Benedict XVI also nourished his spirit with creative make it clear that this issue was important but, as in other depths in music and art. cases, he was not listened to.

In a speech on June 24, 2006, after a concert offered Unfortunately, in today’s dramatic situation in the to him by Maestro Domenico Bartolucci, Benedict XVI Catholic Church, we seem to be dealing with a “patient” stated: in his “terminal” phase. If it is true that Jesus promised “An authentic renewal of sacred music can only hapto be with us until the end of time, we have not promised pen in the wake of the great tradition of the past, of Greto be with Him. He is there, but where are we? gorian chant and sacred polyphony.

“For this reason, in the field of music as well as in the Aurelio Porfiri has published more than 200 areas of other art forms, the Ecclesial Community has musical compositions in Italy, China, USA, Germany always encouraged and supported people in search of and France. He has published more than 60 books, is a new forms of expression without denying the past, the contributor to Catholic blogs and magazines, history of the human spirit which is also a history of its and is the founder and artistic director of the dialogue with God.” publishing company Chorabooks. He is the Honorary It seems that these words are quite obvious; from an Master and Organist for the Church of Santa Maria authentically Catholic point of view, they are perfectdell’Orto in Rome and Saint Joseph Seminary ly uncontestable.

Chapel in Macau, China.

Yet how far they are from what we hear in our He edits several newsletters and has regular churches, where the music we hear is only the echo programs on his YouTube channel Ritorno of commercial jingles and fourth-rate songs. How a Itaca. Find him at aurelioporfiri.com. can we fail to understand that only tradition can be Maestro Porfiri resides in Rome.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Benedict XVI and the Turning of the Tide He was a standard-bearer in our war witH tHe spirit of tHe world

by Joseph pearce

March 30, 2002 — St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger are seen together at the altar during the Easter Vigil (Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

“The high tide,” King Alfred cried. “The high tide and the turn!” his battle cry from Chesterton’s epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse was shouted by Alfred the Great at the moment when the Viking hordes were turned back by the resurgent Christian forces under his command.

These lines spring to mind when we think of the effect of the election of St. John Paul II at a time when it appeared that the modernist hordes were about to overrun the Church in the name of the so-called “spirit” of Vatican II. The immediate impact of John Paul’s election was documented early in his pontificate by the historian Paul Johnson in his book Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration.

Published in 1982, only four years after JPII’s election, Johnson’s book makes no mention whatsoever of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. This is hardly surprising, considering that Johnson was probably writing his book prior to John Paul’s appointment of Ratzinger as the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in November 1981.

Thereafter, however, John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger would form an inseparable partnership in the ongoing restoration of orthodoxy and tradition after the heterodoxy and liturgical vandalism of the previous two decades. The

T

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two men stood together in holy alliance as a dynamic duo defending the Faith from those seeking to undermine it.

On the feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1984, Cardinal Ratzinger gave an extensive interview to the Italian writer Vittorio Messori. The book that emerged from their discussion, published in English as The Ratzinger Report, offered the world a unique insight into the Cardinal’s view of the state of the Church less than three years after his appointment as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation.

Asked whether his opposition to the Church’s “openness” to the world was a regressive return to the old spirit of opposition to the world, pro Ecclesia contra mundum, Ratzinger was defiant in his defense of the Church: “It is not Christians who oppose the world, but rather the world which opposes itself to them when the truth about God, about Christ and about man is proclaimed. The world waxes indignant when sin and grace are called by their names. After the phase of indiscriminate ‘openness’ it is time that the Christian reacquires the consciousness of belonging to a minority and of often being in opposition to… that mentality which the New Testament calls — and certainly not in a positive sense — the ‘spirit of the world.’ It is time to find again the courage of nonconformism, the capacity to oppose many of

the trends of the surrounding culture, renouncing a certain turning of the priest toward the people has turned the comeuphoric post-conciliar solidarity.” munity into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no Here was Ratzinger at his most outspoken, the voice of longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed the Church Militant, the voice of a church at war with the in on itself.” spirit of the age, fighting with a crusading spirit for the true At its worst, the liturgy had ceased to be Christocentric and unchanging spirit of the Gospel. but had become narcissistically anthropocentric, a reflection If the publication of The Ratzinger Report set the defiantof man’s idolatrous worship of himself. ly orthodox tone of Cardinal Ratzinger’s role in his dynamic This was not as it should be, prompting Ratzinger to duet with St. John Paul II, the publication of The Spirit of the stress the need for a reorientation of priest and people Liturgy at the turn of the new millennium marked a watertowards Christ. As steeped in the history of the Church as he shed moment in which the future Pope placed his faithful was in her theology and philosophy, he stressed that praying heart and mind at the service of liturgical tradition. towards the east was regarded as being an apostolic tradition As early as 1975, only 10 years after the Second Vatican in the early Church, a practice that “goes back to the earliest Council, Ratzinger had written of times and was always regarded as the need to oppose the “rationalisan essential characteristic of Christic relativism, confusing claptrap tian liturgy (and indeed of private “The world waxes indignanT and pastoral infantilism” which prayer).” when sin and grace are called were degrading the liturgy “to the Reminding us that the Second by Their names ” level of a parish tea party and the Vatican Council had said nothing intelligibility of the popular newsabout “turning toward the people,” – benedicT xVi paper.” (From The Ratzinger ReRatzinger asserted that “wherever port, p. 121) possible, we should definitely take Most notably, the disappearance of the use of Latin from up again the apostolic tradition of facing the east, both in the the liturgy was in clear contravention of the teaching of the building of churches and in the celebration of the liturgy.” In Council in Sacrosanctum concilium, which stated unequivparticular, “a common turning to the east during the ocally that “the Latin language … is to be preserved” in the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential.” liturgy.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s masterful book on the spirit of the Apart from this unauthorized abandonment of Latin, liturgy was a call to action. many post-conciliar liturgies lacked any trace of beauty, When, as Supreme Pontiff, he issued his Apostolic Letter, especially in the way in which traditional sacred music, such Summorum Pontificum, given Motu Proprio, he sought to as Gregorian chant or polyphony, had been abandoned and put the principles enunciated in The Spirit of the Liturgy into banished in deference to what Ratzinger termed “utility practice, restoring the splendor of liturgical tradition. music,” “catchy tunes” and other ditties to the Deity which Even as he was calling on the faithful to kneel for Comrarely ascended above the level of the banal. munion, he was exhorting them to stand and fight for the In “the splendor of holiness and art” the Church bears ancient traditions of the Church’s worship. witness to the truth through the good and the beautiful: “If Here was a true leader of the Church, the closest ally of the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the St. John Paul II, who was prepared to take the fight to the world, how can she dispense with beauty in her liturgies, that monsters of modernity. beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiLike a modern St. George coming to the defense of the ance of the Resurrection?” The Church needed to be “a place Bride of Christ, a true damsel in distress, Benedict XVI had where beauty – and hence truth – is at home.” Without such wielded his sword of truth and his lance of reason in a battle beauty “the world will become the first circle of hell.” with the dragon of disorientation.

One of the major causes of liturgical confusion was the Although those who remain disoriented have sought in disorientation of the priest during Mass. Whereas it had been recent years to once again point the Church in the wrong customary for the priest to face the same way as the peodirection, they are doomed and destined to fail. ple, towards the east (ad orientem), the liturgical modThe gates of hell will not prevail. ernists turned the priest around so that he faced the The tide has turned. opposite way to the people (versus populum), turning his back on the east. Instead of the priest and the Joseph Pearce is an internationally acclaimed people being united in praise, facing the same way, the author, television host, editor of the St. Austin Review, priest now faced the people and became the central focus series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions, senior of the liturgical “performance.” contributor at The Imaginative Conservative, and current He was now the star of the show with the sanctuary being holder of the Newman Chair in Catholic Studies at transformed into the stage on which he performed: “The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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Benedict XVI Made Me Who I Am Personal reflections from a seasoned catholic journalist by

Tom Hoopes

T

he image I will always have of Pope Benedict XVI is encountering him in St. Peter’s Square one early morning in the Jubilee Year 2000. I was the executive editor of the National Catholic Register, covering the Holy Year. He was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He smiled at me from a distance. I smiled back. Now was my chance. I fished my pen and notepad out of my pocket and strode confidently toward him — but I’ll finish that story in a moment.

A NEW AQUINAS It’s hard to believe that was 23 years ago, and that now he’s dead. A few days after his death, I told the story of my encounter with him at a special presentation in a windowless room under St. Benedict’s Parish Elementary School cafeteria in Atchison, Kansas.

Our pastor had realized that he had something worldclass to offer his parishioners: Benedictine College theologian Dr. Matthew Ramage is a parishioner and a highly respected theologian whose academic work has been dedicated to examining and elucidating the remarkable breadth and depth of Benedict XVI. Ramage called Benedict a new Thomas Aquinas and a 21st-century Doctor of the Church.

He described how, as a theologian, Ratzinger would pack lecture halls in Regensburg with students eager to hear the shy man read quietly from a prepared lecture, his glasses at the end of his nose. Later, book-length interviews with Ratzinger on wide-ranging topics were newsmakers whenever they appeared.

“Benedict is like Aquinas because he is always finding ways to enrich the ancient tradition by new discoveries,” he said.

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Then Ramage told the fascinating story of how Benedict’s career put this remarkable mind in the center of Catholic officialdom at the highest levels for decades.

In his early 30s, Ratzinger became a theological consultant for the Second Vatican Council. This means not only that he knows the Council backwards and forwards, but that his presence is felt, to a degree, in the shape of the documents themselves.

The year he turned 50, Ratzinger was made a cardinal

by Pope John Paul II. Four years and two popes later, he was made prefect of the Congregation of the Faith. This made him the rock of calm at the center of the storm of dissent and doubt that swirled through the Church as Vatican II was implemented – or not implemented, as the case may be.

In 2002, three days after turning 75, Cardinal Ratzinger gave a remarkable homily to cardinals gathering in conclave — and was punished for his good deed by being made Pope. He put the Corbinian bear on his coat of arms, identifying himself with the animal that was forced to make a trip to Rome, carrying a saint’s baggage.

Ramage painted a picture of Ratzinger as the quintessential behind-the-scenes leader, a theologian who spent his career not in the spotlight, but just outside it — not directing the play, but making the whole show work right.

HE SAVED MY SOUL This is what Pope Benedict XVI did for my personal life, too.

I lost my faith around the age of 10 which, recent statistics suggest, is about when most kids lose their faith nowadays. The Church didn’t help. Parish instruction made the faith seem amorphous and unserious. It is to my

It came to light, not coincidentally, shortly after Pope credit, I think, that I rejected what I was offered and Benedict XVI became Pope. Father Maciel had been refused to be confirmed. accused of crimes in 1997 but my friends and I had I was only converted because, through a series of crazy worked hard to convince ourselves — and others — that coincidences, I ended up attending the St. Ignatius Instithis was just an elaborate hoax. tute, a Great Books program that Ignatius Press founder That pretense became impossible after Benedict Father Joseph Fessio had started in San Francisco. I was became Pope in 2005. In 2006, he removed Maciel from plunged into a community of sincere Catholics who active ministry. The full news would be revealed three embraced me and introduced me to the Faith. years later, when a communiqué from Benedict’s Vatican The Institute curriculum, from Aristotle to Evelyn revealed that Maciel was guilty of “actual crimes” and Waugh, helped me realize for the first time that truth lived “a life devoid of scruples and of genuine religious existed and was knowable. A year abroad in England sentiment.” sealed the deal, where Oxford Dominicans taught me a lot It was devastating. I was totally disillusioned. That and traveling Europe with my roommate taught me even was good. I needed to be. To be disillusioned means to more — he was the undergraduate version of the future have an illusion taken away. I had been “disillusioned” world-renowned theologian Adrian Walker. before when I learned in college that the world was telling Back in San Francisco, I worked for the school newsme lies. I was disillusioned now paper, whose editors assigned me He put tHe Corbinian bear when I learned that some in the to research a recurring issue: Church are as bad — no, worse — Efforts of the administration to on His Coat of arms – tHe than the world. strip my program of its fidelity to animal forCed to Carry a The same man was a light in the the magisterium. The program saint’s baggage to rome shadows in both cases, taking away stayed alive only because of Cardithe comforting lie, and showing me nal Joseph Ratzinger, who had been Father Fessio’s thesis director. The Opposite page, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the hard, but solid, truth.

I have been seeking that truth priest maintained a lifelong rela- is pictured with Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio tionship with his mentor. On sever- in this 1987 photo. The then 46-year-old ever since, no longer willing to al occasions, the powerful Vatican priest is the founder and editor-in-chief of accept the easy version of the Ignatius Press, which has published 25 Faith’s answers, interrogating the cardinal intervened for the school. books in English sources — significantly, by followSo I simultaneously discovered

by Cardinal Ratzinger ing Ramage as he walks with Benetwo things in college: First, that the (CNS photo courtesy dict through the morass of The Catholic faith was a vital part of Ignatius Press/Dorothy Peterson) Dark Passages of the Bible, The who I was and integral to my hapHistorical Truths of the Gospels, The Theory of Evolupiness; and second, that I wouldn’t have discovered it, at tion, and Nietzsche’s attack on what Benedict calls The all, without the repeated, direct intervention of Cardinal Faith Experiment.

Joseph Ratzinger.

A LIGHT IN THE SHADOWS After I graduated I worked as a journalist and as a Congressional press secretary, and eventually became the editor of the National Catholic Register.

It was my dream job, combining three great loves of my life: journalism, the Catholic Church, and my chosen home in the Church at that time, the Regnum Christi movement of the Legion of Christ, which owned the paper.

The job showed me that the Church was changing the world, not the other way around. We covered the new Catechism, which Cardinal Ratzinger used to address the vapid expression of the Faith that had repelled me as a child. We covered his Jesus of Nazareth book, which was translated by my old college roommate, Adrian Walker.

And we covered the meteoric rise and triumphs of the Legion of Christ and its founder, Father Marcial Maciel.

And then we covered his ugly fall from grace when the shocking hidden depravity of Father Maciel’s secret life of sexual sin came to light.

THE VATICAN’S SIDE DOOR So, let me finish at last the story of my encounter with Pope Benedict XVI that happened 23 years ago.

I was conscious that I was approaching the man who saved the program that saved my soul. Later, he would remove a false prophet I was beholden to. Then, he would lead me through faith crises back to solid ground.

We exchanged smiles, and I advanced, notepad in hand. With a nod, Ratzinger reset the trajectory of his walk and gave me a wide berth, darting into a Vatican side door, out of reach.

He wasn’t the spotlight guy; he was the “humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard.” He didn’t want to chat. He was too busy doing the hard work that would transform the world.

Tom Hoopes is the former executive editor of the National Catholic Register and Faith & Family magazine, and the author of The Rosary of Saint John Paul II, The Fatima Family Handbook and What Pope Francis Really Said.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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The Marian Vision of Benedict XVI CorreCt Marian devotion shows “the CoexistenCe of indispensable ‘reason’ with the equally indispensable ‘reasons of the heart’”

by RobeRt Fastiggi, Ph.D.

I

f we were to list the great Marian Popes, we might include pontiffs like Bl. Pius IX, who defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, or Leo XIII, who issued twelve encyclicals on the Rosary. We might also include Pius XII, who defined the dogma of the Assumption, or St. John Paul II and his extensive Marian corpus. Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, however, should also be considered a Marian Pope, though this might not be evident to many people. In an article entitled, “Mary, ‘Personal Concretization of the Church’: Elements of Benedict XVI’s Marian Thinking” (Marian Studies Vol. 57, 2006), Fr. Johann Roten, SM, provides a comprehensive list of publications of Joseph Ratzinger with a Marian aspect from 1961–2000.

Although Joseph Ratzinger never published a treatise on Mariology, two books have been published that synthesize his Marian vision. The first is Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief, which was translated by J. Michael McDermott, SJ, and published by Ignatius Press in 1983.

This book is based on three lectures given by Fr. Joseph Ratzinger in the spring of 1975, and it shows the Virgin Mary’s central role in Scripture as a type of bridge between the Old and New Testaments. The second book is Mary, the Church at the Source, which was translated by Adrian Walker and published by Ignatius Press in 2005. This book is a compilation of significant articles of Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Virgin Mary. The five texts of Ratzinger cover some important themes such as “the place of Mariology in the whole of theology”; “Marian piety”; and Mary, “the sign of the woman.” For Ratzinger,

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like von Balthasar, it’s essential to understand the Marian profile of the Church.

There have also been two recent books that provide key insights on the Marian vision of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. The first is Innovation within Tradition: Joseph Ratzinger and Reading the Women of Scripture by Mary Frances McKenna (Fortress Press, 2015). In this book, McKenna shows how Ratzinger highlights the central role of women in the Bible and salvation history. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the supreme embodiment of this female line of Scripture. Mary’s “yes” to be the Mother of the Word Incarnate shows that “it is through Jesus and Mary” that sin, which “negatively affects humanity, is overcome.”

The second recent book is Mary, Daughter Zion: An Introduction to the Mariology of Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) published by Peter Lang in 2022. Written by Fr. Martin Ifeanyi Onuoha of Nigeria, this volume provides a detailed analysis of Joseph Ratzinger’s vision of Mary in the Old Testament, the Infancy narratives, the New Testament as a whole, and in the Marian dogmas. Like Dr. McKenna, Fr. Onuoha points to how Mary’s “yes” is central to the Marian vision of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. This emphasis on the “yes” of Mary is evident in Cardinal Ratzinger’s June 26, 2000 Theological Commentary on the Message of Fatima: • I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which has become justly famous: “My Immaculate Heart will triumph.” What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history of the

world, because it brought the Savior into the world – because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and remains so for all time.

The “yes” of Mary is so important to Joseph Ratzinger because his theological vision is supremely Incarnational.

Out of this Incarnational/Christocentric vision there emerges a Mariology that is Scriptural, Patristic, Liturgical, and Ecclesiological. In his interview with Vittorio Messori, published as The Ratzinger Report (Ignatius Press, 1985), Cardinal Ratzinger lists six points for understanding “the importance of Mary with regard to the equilibrium and completeness of the Catholic Faith:” 1) The place assigned to Mary by dogma and tradition helps to root us in solid Christology. 2) The Mariology of the Church shows the right relationship between Scripture and tradition. The four Marian dogmas—Mother of God, Ever-Virgin, Immaculate Conception, and Assumption—have their clear foundation in Scripture, but “it is there like a seed that grows and bears fruit in the life of tradition, just as it finds expression in the liturgy, in the perception of the believing people and in the reflection of theology guided by the Magisterium.” 3) As a Jewish girl who becomes the Mother of the Messiah, “Mary binds together, in a living and indissoluble way, the old and the new People of God, Israel, and Christianity, synagogue and church.” 4) Correct Marian devotion shows “the coexistence of indispensable ‘reason’ with the equally indispensable ‘reasons of the heart,’ as Pascal would say.” The contemplation of the surpassing dignity of the Mother of God “assures faith its full human dimension.” 5) Mary is “figure,” “image” and “model” of the Church.” Without Mary, theology can “reduce faith to an abstraction,” and “an abstraction does not need a Mother.” 6) Mary’s destiny as Virgin and Mother “continues to project a light upon that which the Creator intended for women of every age … through her virginity and her motherhood, the mystery of woman receives a very lofty destiny from which she cannot be torn away …As a creature of courage and obedience she was and still is an example to which every Christian—man and woman—can and should look.”

The Marian vision of Benedict XVI was shaped by Vatican II and St. Paul VI’s proclamation of Mary as “Mother of the Church” in his address at the end of the third session of Vatican II (November 21, 1964). For Benedict XVI, Mary as the “type of the Church” was essential. He was clearly influenced by the renewed interest in this Patristic and medieval theme, which was emerging in the middle of the twentieth century. In his homily of December 8, 2005, Benedict XVI commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the solemn closing of Vatican II. In this homily, he notes that the Council “took place in a Marian setting. It was actually far more than a setting: it was the orientation of its entire process.” He recalls Paul VI’s proclamation of Mary as Mother of the Church, and he says, “Indelibly printed in my memory is the moment when, hearing his words: ‘Mariam Sanctissimam declaramus Matrem

Ecclesiae’ — ‘We declare Mary the Most Holy Mother of the Church,’ the Fathers spontaneously rose at once and paid homage to the Mother of God, to our Mother, to the Mother of the Church, with a standing ovation.” He continues by stating that with this title, Paul VI “summed up the Marian teaching of the Council and provided the key to understanding it. … Mary is so interwoven in the great mystery of the Church that she and the Church are inseparable, just as she and Christ are inseparable.”

The intimacy of Mary with the Church was an important theme at Vatican II, especially in chapter eight of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. As a theological advisor to Cardinal Frings at Vatican II, Fr. Ratzinger was no doubt present at the August 26–29, 1963 meeting that took place in Fulda, Germany that was attended

by Cardinal Frings and various bishops and theologians — mostly from northern Europe. During this meeting, theologians such as the Jesuit Karl Rahner raised objections to the 1962 schema on the Blessed Virgin Mary, which referred to Mary as “Mediatrix of all graces” in the text and “coredemptrix” in two footnotes. In Lumen Gentium 62, Mary is referred to as “Mediatrix” but not “Mediatrix of all graces.” The footnotes referring to Mary as “co-redemptrix” are absent.

Before becoming Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger distanced himself from the Marian title “co-redemptrix” because it departs too much “from the language of Scripture and the Fathers” (see God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, Ignatius Press, 2000, p. 306). Pope John Paul II, however, had used the title at least six times, but not after 1991. Some believe Cardinal Ratzinger persuaded the Polish Pope to stop using the title and to avoid defining Mary as “Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix of all Graces, and Advocate” as the movement, Vox Populi Mariae Mediatrici, was asking.

As Pope, though, Benedict XVI showed himself in favor of recognizing Mary’s universal mediation of grace. In his homily of May 11, 2007 at Campo de Marte, São Paulo, for the canonization of Frei Antônio de Sant’Ana Galvão, he stated that “there is no fruit of grace in the history of salvation that does not have as its necessary instrument the mediation of Our Lady. …” In a January 10, 2013 letter to Archbishop Zimowski—who was representing the Holy See for the celebration of the World Day of the Sick—Benedict XVI commended the mission of the Archbishop by imploring the prayers and intercession of the Immaculate Blessed Virgin Mary, the “Mediatrix of all graces” (Mediatricis omnium gratiarum).

Robert Fastiggi, Ph.D., is Professor of Dogmatic Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan. He is a former president (2014–2016) of the Mariological Society of America; a member of the theological commission of the International Marian Association; and a member of the Pontifical Marian Academy International.l BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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The Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI: The Holy Face “He could not tear Himself away from tHe sigHt of tHe Holy face”

by Paul badde

Pope Benedict XVI contemplates the Veil of the Holy Face in Manoppello.

(Photo Paul Badde/EWTN)

O

n December 31st, an honorary German citizen of Manoppello died with these Italian words on his lips, “Signore, ti amo” (“Lord, I love you”): Pope Benedict XVI. His visit by helicopter [to Manoppello, Italy, site of the Shrine of the Holy Face] will be here forever remembered. Countless cameras captured how he could not tear himself away from the sight of the Holy Face, in which the half-blind seer had just discovered “the Face of God,” and which he never tired of praising during his pontificate. Since then, he no longer waited for the end after his death, but for “an encounter,” a term which became, more or less, the center of his theology.

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Benedict was the first Pope after more than four hundred years to bend the knee before this “true image” [“Veronica”] of Christ. And even more, by his visit, Pope Benedict catapulted the Holy Image, out of its hiddenness in the silence of the isolation of Abruzzo, and into the consciousness of the whole earth (“omnis terra”)...but also into a [technologically] changed world where new possibilities of digital comparisons [of images of the Holy Face] could, as never before, identify it in a definitive and concise way as the “Crown Relic of the Resurrection.” This return of the Holy Face to Christianity will forever be the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI.l

THE HOLY FACE, LIGHT THAT ILLUMINATES THE WORLD HOMILY AT MASS AT THE SHRINE OF THE HOLY FACE OF MANOPPELLO

BY ARCHBISHOP BRUNO FORTE OF CHIETI, ITALY, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2023, IN MANOPPELLO, ITALY

I

t was Pope Innocent III in the year 1208 who desired that the veil of the Holy Face should be carried in procession from St. Peter’s Basilica to the nearby church of Santo Spirito in Sassia. It was the second Sunday after Epiphany, called “Omnis Terra Sunday” from the words of the Entrance Psalm, Omnis terra adoret te, Deus, et psallat tibi! – Let the whole earth adore You, O God, and sing You hymns (Ps 65:4). At the end of that procession the Bishop of Rome wished to bless with the precious relic the sick of the Pilgrims’ Hospital, which he himself had rebuilt and upgraded. With that gesture the Pope intended to highlight the healing grace flowing from the Face of the Savior contemplated with faith and the fruitfulness of the prayer of adoration and intercession before that Face, which we contemplate in the veil of byssus venerated here in Manoppello.

Another Pope, Benedict XVI, who went to meet the Lord last December 31, wished to visit this place on September 1, 2006 to venerate the Holy Face, receiving such a profound impression that he wrote the beautiful prayer we know, and also he wanted permanently beside him the copy of that beloved Face. Reliable sources assure us that it is to that image that the dying Pope directed his last gaze, pronouncing the words, the true synthesis of his entire life given to Christ, to the Church and to the world: “Lord, I love you!”

The word of God proclaimed this Sunday helps us to understand Pope Benedict’s love for the Holy Face and the reasons that make pilgrimage to this place a particular source of grace and peace: here from the Face of the risen Jesus, marked by pain, but serene and radiant, the light of the Redeemer of man shines for us; here everyone can welcome that light into his heart for his own life; from here we start with the intense desire to witness to everyone the light of that Face, to lead many to the encounter with the Savior, who profoundly changes our lives and makes us pilgrims in love towards the heavenly homeland, where the Holy Father Benedict has now entered and intercedes for us. The text taken from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (49:3,5-6) reports the promise made by the Lord to manifest His glory through His servant, Israel, whom He chose and shaped from his mother’s womb to restore the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the survivors of Israel and whom He made a “light to the nations” to bring salvation from on high to the ends of the earth. In a homily given on September 24, 2011, to young people, gathered for a prayer vigil at the fairgrounds at Freiburg im Breisgau, Pope Benedict affirmed: “Christ, who says of himself: ‘I am the light of the world’ (Jn 8:12), makes our lives shine, so that what is

said in his Gospel may be true: ‘You are the light of the world’ (Mt 5:14). It is not our human efforts or the technical progress of our time that bring light to this world. The suffering of the innocent and, finally, the death of every man constitute an impenetrable darkness that can be illuminated for a moment by new experiences, as by lightning in the night. In the end, however, a distressing darkness remains… However, we see a light: a small, tiny flame that is stronger than darkness, seemingly so powerful and unbeatable. Christ, who rose from the dead, shines in this world, and he does so most clearly precisely where according to human judgment everything seems gloomy and hopeless. He has conquered death – He lives – and faith in Him penetrates like a small light all that is dark and threatening. Those who believe in Jesus certainly do not always see only the sun in life…, but there is always a bright light that shows them a way, the way that leads to life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). The eyes of those who believe in Christ see even in the darkest night a light and already see the glow of a new day.” [...]

Let us ask, then, the Lord, who looks at us from His Holy Face, to fill us with His light and to be witnesses to His light in every situation of our lives, for the benefit of every creature He will give us to meet.

We do so with words taken from the beautiful prayer that Pope Benedict sent us a year after his visit here in Manoppello: “O Lord Jesus, like the first apostles… We too, your disciples of this difficult time, want to follow you and be your friends, attracted by the radiance of your desired and hidden face. Show us, we beg you, your ever new face, a mysterious mirror of God’s infinite mercy. Let us contemplate him in the eyes of our mind and heart: the face of the Son, the radiance of the Father’s glory and the imprint of his substance (Cf. Heb 1:3), the human face of God who entered history to reveal the horizons of eternity, light that illuminates the darkness of doubt and sadness, life that has defeated forever the power of evil and death…

“Make us pilgrims of God in this world, thirsting for the infinite and ready for the meeting of the last day… Mary, Mother of the Holy Face, help us to have ‘clean hands and a pure heart,’ hands enlightened by the truth of love and hearts enraptured by divine beauty, so that, transformed by the encounter with Christ, we may give ourselves to the poor and suffering, in whose faces shines the mysterious presence of your Son Jesus, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen!” + Bruno Forte Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto (Translated by Raymond Frost) BENEDICT XVI SPECIAL 2023 INSIDE THE VATICAN

57

Do Intelligent People Take SATAN Seriously?

His monikers are many: Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Serpent, the Adversary, the Tempter, the Father of All Lies, the Ruler of This World. His lurking presence in the world and the history of mankind is one of the major themes of the Bible. But how many people today take Satan seriously?

Most people’s image of the Evil One resembles an old Saturday Night Live parody: a goofy guy in a bright red body suit with a pointy tail, plastic horns, a goatee, and a ridiculous sneer — someone about as o昀ensive as Santa Claus’s <evil twin brother.= Most people put as much stock in Satan in Hell as they do Santa in the North Pole. The reigning attitude is that all this Satan-and-Hell stu昀 is the preoccupation of infantile minds, an insult to one’s intelligence.

Yes, the topics of Satan and Hell are generally laughed off in our secularized society. Yet, strangely, even in the Catholic Church many priests and bishops are reluctant to mention them, for fear of appearing out of touch.

You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to realize that suppression of the reality of Satan and Hell involves grave consequences. The whole notion of evil is compromised; man’s propensity to sin gets glossed over; and people begin to wonder what exactly it is they need salvation from. If people have no need of salvation, they have no need of a Savior;

if they have no need of a Savior, they have no need of a Church in which to receive Him. Should we be surprised, then, that weekly Mass attendance dropped from 70 percent to 30 percent over the past 50 years (sinking to a nadir of 17 percent after the pandemic shutdowns) or that former Catholics now outnumber converts by a ratio of seven to one?

If Satan’s cleverest wile is to convince us that he doesn’t exist, then he’s been wildly successful.

We at the New Oxford Review, an orthodox Catholic monthly magazine, are spearheading today’s intellectual re-engagement with the ultimate questions, what older Catholics will recall as the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

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Among those who’ve appeared in our pages recently are Karl Keating, Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., Jason M. Morgan, Fr. John A. Perricone, Louise Carroll Keeley, and Richard Gallagher, M.D., the world’s foremost scienti昀c expert on diabolic attacks and author of Demonic Foes (HarperOne, 2020).

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