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Joseph Ratzinger's Collected Works:
Presenting the first volume
of the Italian edition
Adapted and translated from the 10/28/10 issue of
Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, Oct. 27, the Italian edition of the first volume in the Opera Omnia (Collected Works) of Joseph Ratzinger was formally presented at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See.
The book was highlighted in the entrance to the Vatican booth at the Frankfurt Book Fair earlier this month.
The volume, translated to Italian by Ingrid Stampa, who has previously translated other works of Joseph Ratzinger from German to Italian, and edited by Pierluca Azzardo, professor of political science at the Catholic University of Milan, is La teologia della liturgia: La fondazione sacramentale dell'esistenza Cristiana (The Theology of Liturgy: The sacramental foundation of Christian existence), published by the Vatican publishing house (849 pp, 55 euro).
With Ambassador Antonio Zanardi Landi as host, the presentors were Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who wrote the preface to the Italian edition of this volume; Gianni Letta, undersecretary of the Italian Prime Minister's cabinet; Christian Schaller, deputy director of the Regensburg-based Institut Benedikt XVI, publishers of the series; and Lucetta Scaraffia, professor at Rome's La Sapienza University and regular contributor to L'Osservatore Romano.
Also presented was an accompanying booklet, Joseph Ratzinger. Opera omnia. Invito alla lettura (An invitation to read Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Works), written by Azzardo, and containing essays by Letta and Scaraffia.
We publish here the address given by Cardinal Bertone, and excerpts from Letta and Scaraffia's essays for the booklet. [I will start with translating Bertone's presentation.]
Liturgy as keystone
by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Translated from the 10/28/10 issue of
The Holy Father, in his preface to the German edition - in the first of three volumes from the Complete Works that have been published since 2008 [four actually, according to the Herder catalog and the website of the Institut Benedikt XVI - see Addendum below], wrote: "When, after some hesitation, I decided to agree to the plan of re-publishing all my works, it was clear to me that the order of publication should be according to the priorities followed by the Second Vatican Council, and that therefore, it should begin with my writings on liturgy".
Here, then, offered to us by the author himself, is the first key for us to intelligently approach the reading - which is fascinating and able to engage not just the reader's mind but also his heart - of this first substantial volume which we have in our hands.
I think that the citation I made is one of those confidences to which the Pope has accustomed us after five years, and that we should absolutely not under-estimate it if we wish to grasp not only the line of development of his theological thinking, as the author of numerous writings, but also of the Petrine service to which he was called, in the way he has been carrying it out.
All this, in fact, reminds me of the first address that Benedict XVI made to the Roman Curia in 2005, during the traditional exchange of Christmas greetings.
It was a wide-ranging and detailed discourse, in which the Pontiff wished to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of Vatican-II on December 8, 1965.
In this context, he did not hesitate to pose some questions courageously: "What has been the result of the Council? Was it well received? What, in the acceptance of the Council, was good and what was inadequate or mistaken? What still remains to be done?"
Urgent questions which were followed by the observation that "No one can deny that in vast areas of the Church the implementation of the Council has been somewhat difficult."
But those questions and the conclusion that came with it did not lead to recriminations nor lamentations - they raised more questions and gave voice to the need to offer a synthesis, perhaps still rather embryonic, of the many difficulties consequently experienced by the Church in these past four decades.
Let us listen to more of what the Pope said: "Why has the implementation of the Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult? Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or - as we would say today - on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other".
I have recalled that December 2005 address above all because in it, the Pope highlighted that with respect to the Council, such a confrontation is still going on, and with his usual transparency, simplicity and clarity, what it is that distinguishes these two hermeneutics, so that they can be understood not just by scholars but by the general public.
Thus, it is by recalling those questions and observations that we can better understand the significance of this first volume of his Opera omnia, and can better grasp fully his decision to follow the order of discussions at Vatican II in the publication of his complete works.
To recognize and affirm that there is, on the one hand, a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, and on the other hand, a hermeneutic of reform which urges "renewal in continuity of the one subject-Church that the Lord has given us", is decisive as a key for reading The Theology of Liturgy.
Here in fact, we see the use of that approach which, still using the Pope's words, "If we interpret and implement it (Vatican II) guided by a right hermeneutic, it can be and can become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church".
In my opinion, that explains the perspective of this first and fundamental volume of the Opera Omnia: it aims to help the Church in a great renewal which is possible only if "she loves the Beloved", as liturgy teaches us, a love which bears fruit in our day to day life.
I wish to add, as the second part of my intervention - that this help to the Church has been given during his whole life of study and research by Professor then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and now Benedict XVI. A task that has produced more than a hundred books and more than 600 articles. All this will be found in the entire 16-volume set of the Opera Omnia.
This volume on liturgy contains all his writings on liturgy from 1964 to 2004. The texts attest not only to the work of the scholar but also casts light on the admirable generosity with which Prof. Ratzinger shared the fruit of his studies with a public that is truly vast and heterogeneous.
The vastness and variety of the interventions, resulting from both his theological study and his pastoral service, suggests a further consideration: We must acknowledge the efforts that have been made by the principal custodians of the Opera Omnia - the Bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Mueller, Rudolf Voderhelzer and Christian Schaller.
They have had to work hard to bring us all the published works of an author who has played a leading role in the theology of the last 50 years. An author who has also developed his own way of presenting his studies: while digging deeply into the past, he applies the knowledge in a significant and original way to the concerns of contemporary man. Thus, a way of thinking that is always linked to life and its actual problems.
We know that Joseph Ratzinger's theological method always starts from a serious and acute Biblical analysis, then goes through the Fathers of the Church - of whom he has profound knowledge - to arrive at a reflection in terms of systematic theology.
This rigorous method never becomes a 'cage' for his thoughts, but it represents a guarantee that he will offer original words that illumine the present.
In this respect, i wish to cite just one example from the volume that we are presenting this evening. I cite textually: "For nascent Christianity, the confrontation with Gnosis meant the decisive encounter that would determine her own identity".
From this synthetic statement on the history of the early Church, comes this stimulating affirmation on the present: "Even today, gnosticism has come back to exercise its fascination in many ways: the religions of the Far East carry in themselves the same fundamental structure". And he adds: "The Creator positively wills that the creature exists as something good before him".
Thus, the Creator. not as someone who descends to us from the infinite, but rather one who invites man to discover his own originality so that he can give God "an answer of freedom and love".
In this significant 'sample', we see the characteristic feature of Benedict XVI's Magisterium, which is a continuous appeal to man so that he may acknowledge and accept his calling to the fullness of life, in truth and in charity. Freedom and love have their basis in the capacity of man himself to use his reason well.
Thus the reader of this book, The Theology of Liturgy, is offered, with clarity and surprising luminosity, the image of man who can address his Creator and say: "Come to us Lord, come to each of us, and come in our time - visible, historical and always new."
A refresher:
The volumes in GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN
NB: The volumes in green are those that have already been published in German.
1. Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche
Die Dissertation und weitere Studien zu Augustinus von Hippo
(The People and the House of God in Augustine's Teachings on the Church:
Dissertation and further studies on Augustine of Hippo)
2. [Das Offenbarungsverständnis und die Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras
Die ungekürzte Habilitationsschrift und weitere Bonaventura-Studien
(Revelation and St. BonAVenture's Theology of History:
The unabridged Habilitation dissertation and other studies on Bonaventure)
Published Sept. 2009
3. Der Gott des Glaubens und der Gott der Philosophen
Die wechselseitige Verwiesenheit von fides und ratio
(The God of Faith and the God of Philosophers: The reciprocal relationship between faith and reason)
4. Einführung in das Christentum
Bekenntnis – Taufe – Nachfolge
(Introduction to Christianity: Profession of Faith - Baptism - Discipleship)
5. Herkunft und Bestimmung
Schöpfung – Anthropologie – Mariologie
(Origin and Destiny: Creation - Anthropology- Mariology)
6. Jesus von Nazareth
Spirituelle Christologie
(Jesus of Nazareth: Spiritual Christology)
7. Zur Theologie des Konzils
Texte zum II. Vatikanum
(On the Thology of the Councl: Texts on Vatican II)
8. Zeichen unter den Völkern
Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene
(Signs among Peoples: Writings on Ecclesiology and Ecumenism)
Published in 2 volumes June 2009
9. Offenbarung – Schrift – Tradition
Hermeneutik und Theologische Prinzipienlehre
(Revelation - Scripture - Tradition: Lessons on hermeneutic and theological principles)
10. Auferstehung und Ewiges Leben
Beiträge zur Eschatologie
(The Resurrection and Eternal Life: Essays on eschatology)
11. Theologie der Liturgie
Die sakramentale Begründung christlicher Existenz
(The Theology of Liturgy: The sacramental foundation of Christian existence)
Published October 2008 - First volume of the collection to be published
at the express request of the Holy Father
12. Künder des Wortes und Diener eurer Freude
Zur Theologie und Spiritualität des Ordo
(Announcers of the Word and Servants of your Joy: The theology and spirituality of the Ordo)
Published Sept. 2010
12. Im Gespräch mit der Zeit
Interviews – Stellungnahmen – Einsprüche
(In Conversation with the Times: Interviews - Positions - Objections)
14. Predigten zum Kirchenjahr
Meditationen, Gebete, Betrachtungen
(Homilies for the Liturgical Year - Meditations, Prayers, Observations)
15. Aus meinem Leben
Autobiographische Texte
(My Life: Autobiographical Texts)
16. Bibliographie und Gesamt-Register
(Bibliography and Complete Index)
Mons. Mueller presented the Pope with Volumes 8-1 and 8-2 of the German edition last June.
The theologian who
speaks to everyone
by Lucetta Scaraffia
Translated from the 10/28/10 issue of
Does it make sense that a person who is devoid of any theological preparation as I am should occupy herself with the Complete Works of one of the most important theologians of our time,Joseph Ratzinger? Although I say it with some trepidation, I answer: Yes, without a doubt.
All his work, in fact, is addressed not just to the narrow community of experts and specialists but to all his contemporaries - believers and non-believers alike - because it is born from the questions that our time demands answers to.
They are essays and books written with all of us in mind, we who are contemporaries of this great theologian who can analyze our time and find the answers that Christian culture can and should find.
They are texts written in a language that is limpid and clear, and therefore, understandable even to those who are not familiar with these fields, but who are drawn into reading them because they discover answers to questions that have always been avoided or that are addressed confusedly.
Ratzinger's words are like a clear and patient light, making us think of what Blessed John Henry Newman called the 'kindly light'. A light that leads the readers to find clarity about the fundamental questions of life presented in the way that we perceive them today.
Certainly, much of it is accounted for by the fact that for years, he was a professor, accustomed to making young minds listen to him, and who, according to all who witnessed or experienced his teaching, was an excellent professor.
Thus, the publication of the Complete Works of Joseph Ratzinger, represents an operation of great importance on the cultural level, not just on the religious. If only because it brings forth a specific trait of our present Pope - an intellectual of great depth, a man who, on the theological level, has reflected profoundly on the function of the Church and faith in his time, a sage who seeks to understand in depth the world in which he lives.
Certainly, a Pope like him was necessary at this historical moment, and it is hard not to acknowledge this. Modernity, in fact, is above all, a crisis of sense and reason, a cultural rupture that begins from the way it perceives man himself.
It no longer suffices that the Catholic Church keeps its role as the faithful custodian of tradition. A further step was needed, a leap in lucidity in order to find the way to explain to the contemporary world the patrimony of tradition, and to do this, it required an intellectual that the world could understand completely.
The works of Ratzinger are, first of all, the story of this process of understanding, and above all, the search for a Christian response that is appropriate and sufficient for a world that is modern and secularized.
They are also proof that at a time of religious crisis as severe as that we are undergoing, it is important that he who is the visible leader of the Church unites in himself the qualities of a pastor as well as an intellectual, theologian and wise man.
Through his Opera omnia, we have a way to understand his thinking, and understanding this, his choices and his actions as Pontiff become clear to us, accustomed by now to living in a cultural atmosphere that ignores truth and therefore does not even seek it.
Love for the Church, and therefore defense of it, constitute a basic characteristic of the second part of his life, starting from 1977, first as Archbishop of Munich-Freising, and then from 1982, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Love of the Church, which has never led him to a defensive closing up, as many love to think, especially journalists. Love which is also revealed in his openness to questions and doubts, that he has always considered as positive occasions for growth.
On the fruitfulness of doubt as being necessary in the search for truth, Ratzinger has written intense and beautiful words in this work: "The threat of uncertainty weighs down on the believer, and in moments of temptation, suddenly sees the fragility of everything flash before his eyes, everything that normally appears so obvious to him".
But, "just as we have recognized that a believer does not live without problems (to his faith), but is contantly threatened by the risk of precipitating into the void, so we also recognize the mutual intertwining of human destinies, such that we see that even the non-believer does not live a life completely closed in on itself".
A discovery of the fruitfulness of doubt that can lead to encounter: "And why cannot doubt, which preserves the believer and the non-believer from being closed in on his own isolationism, become the vehicle itself for communication?"
Is this the rigid defender of the Church and of orthodoxy who is ready to condemn every doubt, as Joseph Ratzinger has often been depicted, before and after he was elected Pope? Reading his works allows the dissipation of so many cliches and to make interesting discoveries.
"Nothing can become right if we are not right with God", Ratzinger reminds us in his magisterial and touching commendtary on the 'Our Father'. Only by stopping to listen to Jesus and understand him can we find the true answers to the problems posed by the world today.
Precisely because of this, as he clearly explains in the Introduction, the first volume of the Opera omnia to be published is teh 11th in the series, which collects all his writings on liturgy: "First of all, God. Starting with liturgy tells us this"
- a statement that clearly shows how all of Ratzinger's work should be considered a service to God and the Church, rather than an exercise of personal intellect and culture.
An intellectual effort offered to God, as he himself explains with limpid clarity: "I have never sought to create my own system, my own personal theology. Rather, I have simply sought to think with the faith of the Church, and this means, above all, thinking with the great thinkers of the faith".
His principal work on liturgy, The spirit of liturgy, ties in from its very title to the analogous work of Romano Guardini wno, as Ratzinger writes in the preface, "contributed in an essential way to the rediscovery of liturgy in all its beauty, in its hidden riches and its importance throughout the centuries as the vivifying center of the Church and as the center of Christian life".
He goes on: "For Guardini as for me, it is not a question of dwelling on discussions or inquiries of a scientific naturte, but oof offering an aid to understanding the faith and for the correct exercise of its fundamental form of expression in the liturgy".
These are statements that reveal the sense of the theological work of Ratzinger, how he places himself in continuity with tradition, in the service of the Church, rather than aiming for scientific and academic fame. Statements that also underscore his ties to Guardini, whom he openly vindicates in a singular and specific manner within the body of the work.
This bond, which translates into the drive to continue his work, is evident in all of Ratzinger's writings, in all his intellectual work. Starting with attraction towards the questions of the present, as Guardini wrote: "Our time is given to each of us as the terrain on which we must stand and proposed to us as a task to work on".
And then, in the choice of contemporary language, a very clear language, which goes direct to the heart of things. A language which, as I have pointed out, is never difficult, but seeks to communicate what he wants to say in the easiest way possible.
A language which is never self-referential, which never indulges in the jargon which is so widespread in contemporary Catholic culture alienating it completely from the laity, and which therefore does not inspire reflection and true personal involvement.
In the language of Ratzinger and Benedict XVI, there are never any faults of this kind, no platitudes or ideas taken for granted, nor ones that have been repeated so often as to have lost all their value.
The question of language is fundamental in order to touch the heart of the believer, but above all, to make oneself heard by the rest of the world, a problem that the Church today can resolve by following the example of the Pope.
Ratzinger does not limit himself only to searching for the most understandable way of communicating, but, continuing the work of Guardini, he has sought to restitute to Catholics that intellectual dignity that they seem to have lost, to the point that many educated Catholics are rather ashamed to be Catholics, thinking that their intellectual life is a thing apart from their being believers.
Roman Guardini had completely overturned this point of view, writing, on the ocntrary, that being Catholic allows a point of view that is richer in confrontation with reality, with history, with thought itself, because "every true and real believer represents a living judgment of the world", especially in that he also represents a viewpoint that is not of this world.
The Catholic world view, he wrote, is "the look that the Church has on the world, on faith, from the point of view of the living Christ and the fullness of his transcendence".
We have proof of this even in the way Ratzinger faces the problems that biotechnology poses to our world today, of which he grasps the profound sense, which is an effort to remedy human weakness, to rescue the human being from his finitude.
It is not news that today, in all religions and philosophical systems, man is perceived as a fallen being, condemned to his finitude, for whom redemption means "liberation from such finitude, which is the true weight that hangs over our being".
To a world that seeks to free itself from such finitude with the instruments of technoscience, which sees any dependency as the worst humiliation and thus negates religious faith in the name of total individual autonomy - divine worship responds by showing what is the true way of redemption, the only one by which man can be saved.
Precisely because of this, liturgy has been at the center of Ratzinger's work, at its heart, because "adoration, the right modality of worship, of relationship with God, is constitutive of the right human existence in the world".
Mr. Letta's contribution contains information about a little-known intervention that Cardinal Ratzinger made in a diocesan convention in Italy in 2001, in which his warnings about, in effect, 'Godless globalization', turned out to be quite prophetic..
A basis for political choices
by Gianni Letta
Cabinet Undersecretary
Italian Council of Ministers
Translated from the 10/28/10 issue of
An image immediately renders the significance and importance that not only the world of culture and the scientific community acknowledge in the thinking of Benedict XVI, namely:
In Westminster Hall, the prestigious venue within the world's oldest Parliament, the theologian Pope addressed the entire ruling classes of the United Kingdom who had come to listen to him on his recent trip to Britain.
In the preface of the general editor of the German edition of Joseph Ratzinger's Opera omnia, the Bishop of Regensburg, Mons. Gerhard Mueller, notes that the relationship between faith and reason is at the center of the Pope's thinking.
But the affirmation of the necessary interdependency between reason and religion in Joseph Ratzinger irrigates and brings vitality not only to the field of theological studies but also to other fields of human thought and behavior, and not least, to political action that aspires to the realization of the common good.
In fact, when the Pope invites us not to do without the collaboraiton of faith and reason in the public sphere, he speaks to us of a religion that renounces any intention to impose its dominance but neither does it wish to withdraw, wrongly, from contributing to the good of the entire nation.
In this sense, a passage of his address at Westminster Hall is illuminating:
The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation.
According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.
This link between the world of faith adnd the world of reason is one of the major threads that run through Volume XI of Joseph Ratzinger's Opera omnia, The Theology of Liturgy.
But precisely because of this reaching for totality, along with his passion for man, for every man, that characterizes the thought and actions of Joseph Ratzinger, even in this volume, the great theologian never fails, whenever the occasion arises, to reflect on the question of the correct transposition of faith into public life.
I will limit myself to one example. In 2001, the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was invited to attend the celebration of a diocesan Eucharistic Congress in Benevento and to reflect on the three key words that were the themes of the meeting: Eucharist, communion and solidarity.
For Cardinal Ratzinger, it was important to show how mistaken was the idea that had ripened in the circles of early socialism, for whom 'solidarity' was to be the new, rational and truly effective response to the social problem, primarily because it was opposed to caritas, the Christian idea of love.
Instead, Ratzinger wrote, "At the origin of solidarity - that idea of mutual guarantee for each other, of the healthy for the sick, the rich for the poor, the continents of the North for the South, in the awareness of reciprocal responsibility - is the recognition of the equal and absolute dignity of everyone, whose unshakable basis nonetheless is the recognition that God himself lovingly created every man in his image and likeness".
When the bond between the Creator and his creature is obscured, he said, that which ultimately legitimizes the idea of human dignity disappears. And without it, correct civilian coexistence is cut off from the spring at which it drinks, and a democratic system loses the keystone that supports it.
He concluded: "If globalization in the field of technology and economics is not accompanied by a new openness of the consciousness towards God before whom we are all responsible, then it will end in catastrophe".
What he sasid in 2001 was truly prophetic, if one thinks of the gigantic financial crisis that almost 10 years later would have such tragic consequnces on the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people on the entire planet.
We have now come to analyze such questions of the greatest relevance, and along with these, once more, the theme of the indispensable harmony between faith and reason, and the dangers that come from a social theory and practice that do not take God into account.
Thus, the profound conviction of this great theologian that "it is not enough to transmit technical capacity, rational knowledge and theories or even practices with a determined political structures. All this is useless, in fact, ultimately dangerous, unless the spiritual forces are called forth that give sense to these techniques and structures and enable their responsible use".
This appeal of Joseph Ratzinger in 2001 echoed in the words pronounced by Benedict XVI in Westminster Hall, in his invitation to all men of good will to accept the 'corrective' role that religion can play with reason in facing the great challenges posed by our time.[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/10/2010 23:26] |