On April 19, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, becoming the 266th Roman pontiff and taking the name Benedict XVI. To commemorate the fifth anniversary of this historic event for the Catholic Church, CWR asked its contributors to reflect on these first years of Pope Benedict's pontificate.
Priest, Prophet, King
Three ways Benedict has exemplified these three roles
By Father Joseph Fessio, S.J.
Father Joseph Fessio, S.J. is founder and editor of Ignatius Press, and publisher of CWR.
The Holy Father has in the highest degree the roles of Priest, Prophet, and King. Of the many things he has done and said, three stand out in my mind as having a lasting influence on the Church.
As priest, he laid a solid foundation for the “Reform of the Reform” of the Roman liturgy with his motU proprio,
Summorum Pontificum, of 07/07/07. Its deepest purpose is the “interior reconciliation” of the old Mass and the new. The old Mass is now universally available as a “standard of continuity” and so the two forms are in a position to be “mutually enriching.” Some, even in the hierarchy, are hoping eventually for a “Missal of Convergence.”
As prophet, he not only exposed a false prophet whose followers threaten to overwhelm Europe demographically, but he laid another solid foundation, the only one on which genuine dialogue with Muslims can be constructed: the affirmation of the validity of human reason.
He did this in his remarkable address at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006. But his prophetic critique was not only, or even primarily, directed at Islam. He called the West back to a deeper understanding of reason that goes beyond the self-limitation of modern science to what can be counted and measured—to reason that is open to transcendence.
On a side note, as prophet — besides three foundational encyclicals, he has given the world an extended theological and spiritual biographies of the great figures of the Church from the Apostolic Era to (so far) the Middle Ages.
As king, he established the canonical basis for personal ordinariates that would permit entire Anglican parishes and dioceses to return to full communion with the Catholic Church. The apostolic constitution
Anglicanorum Coetibus is arguably the most important event in Anglican-Catholic relations since 1534.
Reform within continuity
A proper understanding of Vatican II has been paramount in Benedict’s pontificate
By Father Matthew Lamb
Father Matthew Lamb is professor of theology and chair of the theology department at Ave Maria University.
From the very beginning of his pontificate Pope Benedict XVI has emphasized the importance of living out our Catholic faith under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the Magisterium of the Church in union with Christ Jesus.
In his acceptance of the burden of the office, Pope Benedict stressed the fact that, as a successor of St. Peter, he is charged with fostering the unity of the Church.
In the first months of his reign the Pope insisted on a proper understanding of the reforms of Vatican II, showing how these reforms were in continuity with the teachings of the Church for the past two millennia on the rock-solid principles of divine and catholic faith. As he stated so forcefully, it is wrong to oppose the “spirit” of the Council to the texts of its teachings. For then:
…it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.
The nature of a council as such is therefore basically misunderstood. In this way, it is considered as a sort of constituent assembly that eliminates an old constitution and creates a new one. However, the constituent assembly needs a mandator and then confirmation by the mandator, in other words, the people the constitution must serve.
The Fathers had no such mandate and no one had ever given them one; nor could anyone have given them one because the essential constitution of the Church comes from the Lord and was given to us so that we might attain eternal life and, starting from this perspective, be able to illuminate life in time and time itself.
Through the Sacrament they have received, bishops are stewards of the Lord’s gift. They are “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1); as such, they must be found to be “faithful” and “wise” (cf. Luke 12:41-48). This requires them to administer the Lord’s gift in the right way, so that it is not left concealed in some hiding place but bears fruit, and the Lord may end by saying to the administrator: “Since you were dependable in a small matter I will put you in charge of larger affairs” (cf. Matt. 25:14-30; Luke 19:11-27).
These Gospel parables express the dynamic of fidelity required in the Lord’s service; and through them it becomes clear that, as in a council, the dynamic and fidelity must converge.
The hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform, as it was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his speech inaugurating the council on October 11, 1962, and later by Pope Paul VI in his discourse for the council’s conclusion on December 7, 1965.
It precisely this reform within continuity that led the Holy Father to issue
Summorum Pontificum, thereby allowing priests to celebrate the extraordinary form of the Mass, and to encourage more accurate translations of the Novus Ordo Missal.
Through the five years of his pontificate Pope Benedict has never ceased to affirm how it is Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life. Popes, bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and all the faithful are only instruments, however unworthy, of Christ’s sanctifying, teaching, and governing mission from the Father in the Holy Spirit. On this fifth anniversary in gratitude let us pray “Ad multos annos, Sancte Pater!”
Why do the media rage?
Pope Benedict’s pontificate has caught the media and dissidents alike by surprise
By Philip F. Lawler
Philip F. Lawler is editor emeritus of CWR and director of Catholic Culture.
The fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict’s election may strike many faithful Catholics as a somber occasion in light of the worldwide media campaign against the Holy Father. I prefer to look at things from a different perspective, and see the brutal criticism as a sign of the Pope’s fidelity to his mission. It was inevitable, was it not, that a strong Pontiff would provoke a strong reaction?
"Blessed are you when men revile and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matt. 5:11-12)
On April 19, 2005, when the newly elected Pope Ratzinger appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, I was immediately struck by his calm, gentle smile. He, of all men — after years of service at the Vatican, guarding against false teaching and more recently plowing through thousands of reports of clerical abuse — knew the problems that faced the Church.
He knew the demands that would be placed on him. He knew that his old age would be marked by toil and care, that he would never enjoy the quiet, scholarly retirement he had sought. Still, he radiated serenity; his facial expression on that day showed not a trace of concern. Even before he stepped out on the loggia to begin his work as Roman Pontiff, he had embraced God’s will for his ministry.
In the early hours of the new pontificate, commentators predicted that Benedict XVI would be less popular and more confrontational than John Paul II. They were wrong on both counts.
Although he undeniably lacked the
charisma [in the limited contemporary sense of the word] of his predecessor, the new Pope drew even larger crowds to his regular weekly audiences. And while he had written extensively on the need for serious reform within the Church, he did not embark on any hasty campaigns.
On the contrary, he made the “hermeneutic of continuity” a keystone of his pontificate, signaling that he would fully support the reforms of Vatican II — with the important proviso that the Council’s teachings must be understood in the light of prior Catholic tradition.
Rather than rushing into a program of reform (like a political leader taking advantage of his first 100 days in office), Pope Benedict has advanced his vision in a series of carefully prepared steps. It is interesting to note that most of his significant initiatives have caught the world by surprise.
This Pope does not run his ideas up flagpoles; he does not use strategic leaks to test public opinion. His challenge to Islam (and to secular Europe) at Regensburg; his gesture toward reconciliation of the Society of St. Pius X; his move to encourage wider use of the traditional liturgy; his open invitation to Anglicans — all caught the world by surprise.
Still, with the passage of time, the overall trend of this pontificate has clearly emerged. Pope Benedict is aiming to end decades of confusion, to challenge an increasingly hostile world to recognize the authority of the Church’s Magisterium. That goal is inimical both to secularists outside the Church and to dissidents within.
It is not surprising, then, that today we find the secularists and the dissident Catholics united in a common cause: to portray this Pope, who has been the leading champion of reform in the Vatican hierarchy, as a foe of reform.
The charges themselves cannot be sustained. The ferocity of the campaign betrays the desperation of the Pope’s critics.
Pope Benedict’s patristic perspective
Student of the past, prophet of the future
By Father David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J. is editor of Homiletic & Pastoral Review and an assistant professor of theology at St. Louis University.
In his (now famed) Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005) Pope Benedict contrasted the two ways of understanding the Second Vatican Council.
While some have insisted on seeing the Council as a clear break from what went before, others maintain that although some aspects of the Church were given new expression, the essence of the faith and those truths upon which human salvation hinges did not change.
Pope Benedict named the first position the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” and the second the “hermeneutic of reform.” Aware that the Church must continuously develop and reform, the Holy Father’s address makes it quite clear that such growth is always organic, an unfolding of the fundamental truths Christ first taught his Apostles.
Such an insight is surely rooted in Benedict’s own love of the Church and in his study and command of Catholic doctrine, but also, more particularly, in his love of the early Church Fathers. For what is of note in this Christmas Address is how the entire message is rooted in the thought of St. Augustine, the opening line of the address coming from one of the Bishop of Hippo’s own Christmas sermons “
Expergiscere, homo: quia pro te Deus factus est homo — Wake up, O man! For your sake God became man” (Sermon 185).
As a student, Joseph Ratzinger wrote one of his doctoral dissertations on St. Augustine’s ecclesiology; as Pope Benedict he included St. Augustine’s famed seashell on his papal coat of arms, thereby pointing the world to both the power of the sacraments as well as the inexhaustibility of Christian doctrine. (The story goes that one day Augustine took a break from writing his treatise on the Trinity and while strolling along the shore, came across a young boy using a seashell to displace the waters of the Mediterranean into a hole he had dug. Augustine naturally told the boy that this was an impossible task, to which the Christ-child responded: “And you will never penetrate the mysteries of God.”)
Immersed in the Church Fathers, Benedict realizes the organic structure of the Church: Christian truth is “from the beginning” and the Church’s role is to appropriate the mysteries of Christ’s life by humbly receiving what her founder reveals.
Such transmission is never determined by what is novel or “relevant” but by the prayerful succession of the ancient “rule of faith,” that treasury of thought and of action given by Jesus to his people for all time.
In an under-appreciated section of
Principles of Catholic Theology (1987), “Anthropological Foundations of the Concept of Tradition,” then-Cardinal Ratzinger relies on Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and St. Augustine again to argue that the human person is by nature a creature of tradition.
That is, like the human person who is inescapably coming from somewhere and simultaneously tending to somewhere else, tradition too moves in both directions: it continuously recovers the truths expressed for yesterday while concurrently guiding the human person rightly into the future.
In this way, writes Ratzinger, Christ’s Church is both the “ground control” and the “heavenly terminal”: both the measure of authentic growth as well as the goal toward which every holy person strives.
It is telling that whereas John Paul II dedicated a majority of his early Wednesday Addresses to (what has become known as) the theology of the body, Pope Benedict took the Christian people through the lives and the contributions of the Church Fathers.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that we cannot late in the evening intelligently join a conversation that began midday. Benedict’s embrace of the early Church has rooted him firmly in this appreciation for continuity, proving that he is not only a student of the past but also a prophet for the future.
Planting the seeds of reform
Future generations will have much for which to thank Benedict
By George Neumayr
George Neumayr is editor of CWR.
The fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict’s pontificate arrives amidst confident pronouncements of its failure: “Little to Celebrate,” “Besieged by Questions,” run the headlines.
But how will Catholics and historians a century from now view it? They will likely see it as a very consequential and reforming one, a turning point in the restoration of orthodoxy and holiness to the Church and greater truth to the world.
Contrary to today’s conventional wisdom, Pope Benedict did not create a “Church in crisis”; he inherited one. But instead of throwing up his hands and succumbing to doctrinal and disciplinary drift, he has been planting seeds of reform that will germinate and produce great fruit in the decades to come.
To the dismay of those largely responsible for the abuse scandal in the Church, he restored the long-neglected ban on the ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood, which is the single most important reform in eliminating the scandal.
To address catechetical collapse and the scandal of unchallenged heresy, he has issued a steady stream of important speeches, encyclicals, and clarifications, such as the CDF’s Doctrinal Note on Evangelization, and repeatedly urged bishops to confront Catholic public figures who defy and distort Church teaching.
To address laxity and chaos within dioceses, he has called for a revival of canon law and used the occasion of the retirement of derelict and dissenting bishops like Roger Mahony to name orthodox replacements.
To arrest secularization of the liturgy and end a poisonous atmosphere of contempt for tradition within ecclesiastical circles, he issued
Summorum Pontificum, which authorizes wider use of the Traditional Latin Mass and makes clear to all Catholics that the old Mass and the new Mass express the same changeless theology.
To redirect vague and feckless ecumenism and inter-religous dialogue toward more fruitful and serious ends, he has undertaken historic initiatives such as
Anglicanorum Coetibus and launched important talks with the Eastern Orthodox.
But perhaps his most lasting contribution to reform, apart from any one reform or initiative, will come from the progress he makes in removing the wedge dissenters have driven between the pre-Vatican II Church and the post-Vatican II Church. Therein lies the fundamental source of much of the confusion and crisis in the Church, as Pope Benedict is keenly aware.
He observed earlier this year that “after the Second Vatican Council some were convinced that all would be made new, that another Church was being made, that the pre-conciliar Church was finished and we would have another totally ‘other’ [Church].” He called this movement within the Church “anarchic utopianism.”
Defeating the anarchic utopians inside the Church and the dictators of relativism outside it was the tricky and thankless task before him five years ago. He is receiving little gratitude in his own lifetime for undertaking it, but future generations will thank him.
At a time when the West demands “reason” without faith and the East advances faith without reason, he stands as the still point synthesizing the two for the betterment of the Church and the world.
Benedict 'contra mundum'
In Pope Benedict, Peter is still here
By Carl E. Olson
Carl E. Olson is editor of Ignatius Insight and the moderator of Insight Scoop
“If the papacy be dead, then the Catholic Church is dead,” wrote Msgr. Ronald Knox around the mid-point of the past century, “and if the Catholic Church be dead, Christ has failed. Close down the churches. Shut up the Bible.”
The enemies of the Church seem to understand this far better at times than do many Catholics. The slanderous and often vile attacks on Benedict XVI are upsetting, to be sure, but they also are evidence of the living truth of the Catholic faith, the radical relevance of the Catholic Church, and, increasingly, the greatness of the man who has been the Vicar of Christ for the past five years.
Many of the enemies of Benedict — who are, first and foremost, the enemies of Christ and his Church — believe (with a religious fervor, it should be noted) that history is a stream of progress, evolutionary and relentless.
This belief, as Ratzinger outlines in several works, has a roots in the eschatological vision of men such as Joachim of Fiore, blossomed during the Enlightenment (“Hegel’s logic of history”), and has flooded the world via numerous channels — Marxism, National Socialism, liberation theology, and so forth — during the past century.
This false messianism, refracted throughout Western culture in countless different forms, has been a focal point of much of Benedict’s thought and writing. But it is a point found within what Father Aidan Nichols, writing in 1988, described as “a far wider vision of faith and the Church.”
Father Nichols, a great theologian in his own right, expressed, in
The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (T&T Clark, 1988; revised 2005), his admiration for the “impressive coherence of that vision.”
If anything, the pontificate of Benedict XVI has amply measured up to that praise. The form and content of the recent attacks on the Holy Father bear this out.
Rarely do they engage with the thought and teaching of Benedict. The angry throng that would arrest and prosecute Benedict cannot compete in the realm of knowledge, ideas, and logic.
Their main weapons are fear, misrepresentation, self-righteous hypocrisy, and appeals to base impulses. They float in the sludge of the modern stream — a stream, Ratzinger noted in
Salt of the Earth, that indeed contains both good and bad — apoplectic that an octogenarian in Rome would dare to call into question any part of the modern project.
“A dead thing can go with the stream,” Chesterton slyly noted, “but only a living thing can go against it.”
Benedict has spent five years reminding the Church and the world that Catholicism is a living thing, whose life flows from the Author of life, the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ.
He has done this through a series of brilliant and engaging audiences on the Apostles, Church Fathers, and various saints. His three encyclicals have been bracing calls to return to fundamentals, while being the furthest thing from “fundamentalism,” a label many (including not a few Catholics) have sought to attach to Benedict’s teaching and actions.
His encouragement of the extraordinary form of the Mass has infuriated a dying breed of liturgical nihilists while infusing life into the worship of the Church. By opening the door for Anglicans, he has exposed the failures of ecumenical endeavors too concerned with getting along at any cost and too afraid of real unity.
Benedict openly acknowledges his debt to Paul, Augustine, Benedict of Nursia, Bonaventure, Guardini, and von Balthasar, whose profound thoughts on Christ, history, culture, liturgy, and ecclesiology are evident in his writings.
But I wonder if he might be compared, in some significant way, to Athanasius, who fought so hard to defend and uphold the teachings of the Council of Nicaea, even while numerous bishops and other Catholics fell into the errors of Arianism.
Benedict, like John Paul II, has worked to defend — to take back firmly, really — the Second Vatican Council, which for too long has been used for purposes contrary to authentic Catholic doctrine, practice, life, and worship.
Yes, the saying, “Athanasius contra mundum” (“Athanasius against the world”), often seems applicable to Benedict. He is a serene and cerebral Papa, but also a strong and steady disciple of the Lord.
Many have tried to exile him from the public square and banish him from the world stage. John Paul II was continually attacked for proclaiming what it means to be truly human in an often inhuman and anti-human world.
Benedict, in a similar way (although with a different style) has proclaimed what it means to be a true Catholic in a world that often spits in the face of the Church. The spitting will continue. “But,” as Knox wrote, “Peter is still here.”
A Pope who thinks in centuries'
Benedict sees the Church as a divine institution with a historical mission
By Tracey Rowland
Tracey Rowland is dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, Australia, and author of Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI.
In 1963 Columbia Pictures produced the movie
The Cardinal. According to Wikipedia ,the Vatican’s liaison officer on the project was a young Joseph Ratzinger.
In the movie there is a dialogue between a couple of venerable curial officials and a young monsignor. The monsignor explains that if the Vatican could just be a little more flexible on some of its political policies, the social standing of Catholics in the United States could dramatically improve within a decade. The officials exchange “he has so much to learn” looks and reply, “The Church, Msgr. Fermoyle, thinks in centuries, not decades.”
This is a point no one would ever have needed to make to the young Benedict. One might say that he was born with a nose for history. Many of his early publications were in the territory of the theology of history, soteriology, and eschatology, and even his ecclesiology was framed within these horizons.
His vision of the Church is that of a divine institution with a particular mission in history against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.
At least one effect of this vision is that he is less concerned than many others of his generation about popularity polls and political correctness. It is a very brave world leader who dares to suggest that there might be some issues about the relationship between faith and reason that the Islamic tradition rather urgently needs to address.
The fact that in his Regensburg speech he also suggested that the will of the individual is no more reliable a standard than the will of Allah, and thus that western liberalism also needs to think more deeply about the faith and reason relationship, went largely unreported, except by Professor Schall from Georgetown.
One gets the impression that Benedict’s analyses are often too nuanced for the average journalist to digest.
[That is a very charitable understatement!]
One solution might be for his press office to produce “background briefing” papers for journalists with short historical memories. For example, it is hard to make sense of his going out on a limb to release the Lefebrvist bishops from the penalty of ex-communication unless one understands how deep is the rift within the Church in France, what happened to French Catholics during the Revolution, and how foolish it was for 1960s-generation ecclesial leaders to present documents like
Dignitatis Humanae to th
e French as the Church’s endorsement of the French Revolution. The 1960s generation was at best indifferent and often quite hostile to history and tradition. This was bad anthropology. Benedict now has to contend with the pastoral mess this “bull in a china shop” behavior created.
Without such an appreciation of the historical background, the Pope’s extraordinary efforts to bring back wounded and disgruntled sheep could look like what Hans Küng called “fishing in the muddy waters of right-wing extremists,” but it is not.
It’s his job to go after the lost sheep and care for them individually, rather than treating them as mere “collateral damage” in the forward march of history toward a more modernity-friendly world-ethos, as Küng would have it.
On the positive side of the ledger his speeches and homilies have been inspirational. Often busy leaders rely on the speeches they are handed by aids which were drafted by committees with all the compromises this inevitably entails.
However, when Benedict speaks one senses that he has written the material himself, and it is never bland. His Wednesday audience addresses, or “Catechetics 101 classes,” have been immensely popular.
Catholics have enjoyed the weekly installments on the adventures of the Apostles and the contributions of the early Church Fathers. They have also taken up reading
Jesus of Nazareth, a book that has been quite popular with Christians from other denominations.
Indeed, those in the Wednesday audience crowds include many Christians who are not Catholic. Unlike a lot of Italian and Spanish ecclesial leaders who spend their entire childhoods never meeting a Protestant, Benedict comes from the country where it all began. His homilies are also Christocentric and scriptural, and many Protestants warm to his references to Christ and Scripture. He speaks a theological dialect they understand.
Relations with the Orthodox have also improved. Archbishop Alfeyev of the Moscow Patriarchate has even established the St. Gregory Nazienzen Foundation to form a European Catholic-Orthodox Alliance against “secularism, liberalism, and relativism.”
Like members of the Tradition Anglican Communion, the Orthodox consider magisterial teachings against the ordination of women and homosexual marriage reasons for respecting the Petrine Office and establishing closer relations with it.
The traditional Anglicans are not Protestants in the usual sense. Most often they are people who have been deterred from swimming the Tiber by their knowledge of what Digby Anderson calls “the oikish translation of the Mass” that awaits them on the other side, or because they are not comfortable rubbing shoulders in the pews with Fenian sympathizers.
Benedict has been sensitive to these cultural factors. While the Fenian issue is really outside of his jurisdiction he has at least allowed the Anglicans to keep their own rite of the Mass at the same time as he proceeds with the reform of the Roman rite, in particular the reform of those “oikish translations.”
In general one might summarize the first five years by saying that this papacy has been focused on healing the schisms of the 11th and 16th centuries and the problems created by the “hermeneutic of rupture” approach to the Second Vatican Council, including the schism of 1988. It has been a papacy devoted to Christian unity.
This has required a certain sensitivity to historical and theological differences not often possessed by the average secular journalist. Someone with Benedict’s intellectual ability and “nose for history” is very well placed to do this and he has bravely taken the flack, especially from
people who either can’t think beyond the present or want it to be forever 1968.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union thought in terms of five-year plans, not centuries, and today it is out of business. Meanwhile
Pravda carries an editorial in praise of a Pope who dares to think beyond the next five years.
No doubt Benedict could improve the social standing of Catholics in the world if only he would stop complaining about sloppy liturgy and put his energy into the promotion of gay marriage, women priests, publicly funded contraception, and abortion on demand. But then the gates of hell would have prevailed, and this is not possible.
A fatherly figure
History will vindicate the paternal care Benedict has shown for the Church.
By Robert Royal
Robert Royal is president of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, DC.
Cardinals literally locked in conclave to elect the next Pope swear not to reveal any details of the process. But more than one of them has said in general terms that when they got together five years ago to choose a successor to John Paul II, it was clear that only one man could do the job the times required: Joseph Ratzinger. They were right.
But in several ways not immediately obvious. The media-fueled firestorms of the past few months have obscured his real character and achievements for the general public. That smoke will subside and, to any far-minded observer, leave him essentially untouched. He is simply not one of those Church leaders who believe that you help the Church by refusing to face hard questions or challenges. If you doubt this, take a look at the first pages of his
Introduction to Christianity or almost anything he has written or said or done in a lifetime of patient integrity.
It’s true that a lot of the time he’s playing Mozart, so to speak, for the world — while the world’s tastes have turned to rap music or lost a musical sense altogether. The cardinals in 2005 seemed to have thought that he had the deepest grasp on the intellectual problems confronting the Church, as deep a grasp as JPII had of the large public questions that he so brilliantly engaged.
His intellect ranks among the greatest in the world, but Benedict also has palpable personal charm and pastoral gifts — as all his old students and those who know him attest. There is no greater proof of this than the way he quietly disarmed an American press waiting to attack during his visit here in 2008.
The media’s attention span is short, however, and the demand for gripping headlines that will stand out in the ever-growing sea of information has led more than one journalist into temptation.
Benedict’s longer-term contribution, however, is what will remain of importance, and it’s no exaggeration to say that beyond general anti-Catholicism, those efforts have been the real target of the attacks over alleged culpability in not removing abusive priests quickly enough.
Benedict’s over-arching goal for his papacy was announced in a homily he gave the day after being elected, at a small Mass prior to his first full-scale public Mass as Pope.
He repeated something that has guided him even in the days when he was thought to be one of the young theological liberals at the Second Vatican Council: he welcomed the reforms and pastoral renewal set in motion by the Council, but insisted they must be interpreted in “continuity” with everything that went before, since the Catholic Church is the single, undivided Body of Christ.
This signifies neither a return to the past or a simple reading of the present in well-worn channels. Instead, it looks to a dynamic and creative engagement with our time using the timeless Catholic sources of thought and inspiration.
That is the way to understand his engagement with European thinkers on the place of religion in public life. In his now famous lecture at the University of Regensburg (where he once taught), in his conversations with Marcello Pera in Italy and Jurgen Habermas in Germany, Pope Benedict has taken the Catholic case to unbelievers who sense the impending crisis in Europe and in any society that tries to base itself radically on secular rationality.
This may seem an esoteric question. In fact, how it is answered will have the most far-reaching practical consequences for whether countries like those in Europe will be able to survive in ways that respect the human person and to resist external threats like those of radical Islam.
Within the Church, Benedict has not only called for a recognition of continuity, he has tried to heal breaches with traditionalists and the Orthodox, and invited Anglo-Catholics to full communion.
Observers who only think of human relations in terms of power regard these steps, of course, as power grabs. In fact, they are attempts by a father to gather the family together again.
As he reminds us in
Caritas in Veritate: “Reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and of giving stability to their civic coexistence, but it cannot establish fraternity. This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first, teaching us through the Son what fraternal charity is.”
Someday, that paternal side of Benedict, the one that encourages us all to be true brothers and sisters to one another, will be evident again.
Has his papacy, in a now almost hallowed Vatican tradition, suffered much from clumsy PR? Yes. Will his final years be taken up largely in dealing with an abuse crisis he has done more than any other Catholic leader to clean up? Yes. Will the press unfairly accuse and revile him and blame him for many things he has given his whole life to combating? Yes.
But as the first Pope elected in the third Christian millennium he has been a strong witness to what a real Christian must do and suffer in the times to which we have all been called. And for that, dear Papa Benedict, many thanks.
Pope Ratzinger
A scholarly pope who also listens
By Father James V. Schall, S.J.
Father James V. Schall, S.J. is professor government at Georgetown University.
The three functions traditionally attributed to a Pope are to teach, to sanctify, and to rule.
The first function means keeping the revelation that was handed to Peter and the apostles intact and known to men.
The second concerns the sacramental and prayer side of human life, primarily with the integrity of the Eucharist.
The third function is the daunting task of appointing and guiding bishops and other leaders in the Church. The Lord told Peter to strengthen the brethren. Most people recognize that they need it. Many think this latter function is the most crucial and difficult of all.
Popes need to exercise courage in all three areas. The most difficult thing consists in telling the truth in a world, as Pope Ratzinger often says, that is relativist and is no longer willing to hear the truth of things, particularly divine things and increasingly of human things, lest it might affect the way they live.
Five years is rather a long time on the Throne of Peter. John Paul II was the second-longest reigning pope. Not a few of us would like to see Benedict at least tie that record. But it is not likely; John Paul II was a much younger man than Benedict when he left Poland to become pope. However Leo XIII (b. 1810) began his papacy in 1878 and died in 1903.
The present Pope is easily the most learned man in public life in the world today. I have the impression that academia and the media know this as a fact but dance gingerly around it, fascinated yet leery. They “feel” in their bones, however, that he cannot really know anything important. Nonetheless, scholarship and insight are not papal qualifications, although they help considerably.
For a long time I have thought that
the writings of Joseph Ratzinger are the best guide we have today to understanding the workings of God, not to say of man, in the contemporary world.
While certainly Benedict is the model of the “scholar Pope,” he is more than that. We are lucky to have him. Catholicism and intelligence go hand-in-hand in a way that puts too many things together to be ignored.
But one senses that a Pope is present in the House of Peter for reasons that are more than human. Something almost uncanny seems to hover about this Pope, because this is an age that promotes so much that is not true as if it were. Logos is surely the mark of Benedict.
When one looks at a schedule of the Pope, he realizes that in a given week, the Pope has talked to several new ambassadors, several episcopal conferences, any number of dicasteries in the Holy See, a head of state, a large Wednesday audience, many differing groups from all over the world. A leading orchestra has probably played for him.
He has also remained a reader. He still writes learnedly. Benedict’s book,
Jesus of Nazareth, the second volume of which is coming out shortly, represents a major reflection on Christ. It is presented as his own reflections on the evidence and how it all fits together to affirm that Jesus is the Christ who was in fact incarnate in this world. As a result, the world is different.
And these activities only scratch the surface.
I cannot imagine any other world figure who deals with such a variety of people and issues from all over the world on a regular basis. [And yet, even Vatican reporters who cover the Vatican on a daily basis seem to be blind to the range and variety of his contacts - not to mention all the in-country reports that he gets regularly from his nuncios around the world. It is daunting just to imagine what he must read daily to keep track of how the Church is doing and the specific local problems Catholics face!] And every so often the Pope shows up in Africa, or Australia, or Turkey, or an Italian city, or Paris, or Austria, or his native Bavaria.
What is the most important thing that Pope Benedict has done during his first five years? I would insist on two related endeavors. The first is his second encyclical,
Spe Salvi, the encyclical that explains the modern world. The second was the “Regensburg Lecture.”
One has to be careful not to confuse an “event” with a written document. But it has been more than necessary to understand just what modernity is about, and this in the context of modernity’s alternatives. In the modern world, politics have been confused with eschatology.
We need to understand our own souls. But Benedict is constantly at work on the central question of how to approach not merely the Western world, but all worlds. He knows the growing power of Islam. He looks at China and the other world religions. He is concerned about the lack of unity within Christendom, as well as its demographic decline and spiritual condition.
In conclusion, let me cite just one example of the profound insight Benedict has into things. At the end of his annual Lenten retreat in the Vatican chapel, Redemptoris Mater, Benedict gave a very brief talk of appreciation to the retreat master and the others making the retreat with him. The theme of the retreat was a saying of Solomon which tells us that prayer is “for a heart that listens.”
The Pope pondered this phrase. “It really seems to me that this sums up the whole Christian vision of the human being,” he said. “In himself, man is not perfect; he is a relational being. It is not his cogito (I think) that can cogitare (think) of the whole of reality. He needs listening, he needs to listen to the other and especially to the Other with a capital ‘O,’ to God. Only in this way does he know himself, only in this way does he become himself” (L’Osservatore Romano, March 3, 2010).
In that one rather familiar reflection, Benedict was able to spell out the meaning of our existence. I can count in these six lines references to the Old Testament, to Augustine, to Aquinas, to Buber, to the heart of modern philosophy, to Descartes, to John Paul II’s
Redemptor Hominis, and to Socrates himself.
As I say,
we have on the Throne of Peter a scholarly pope who also listens, who tells us about “the whole Christian vision,” how it fits into the whole of reality.
Benedict also encourages us to listen as the world has much to teach us. We must attend to it in awe. We are beings who first receive, receive even our power to listen. We do well to listen to the man who now, in God’s providence, occupies the Chair of Peter.
Retrieval and re-integration
Benedict’s efforts to let the past inform and guide the Church’s future
By Father Robert Sirico
Fr. Robert Sirico is president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
On March 18, 2005, having been at the Vatican to speak at a conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of
Gaudium et Spes, I found myself concelebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica with about 100 other priests. The principal celebrant was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. I was at the far end of the line of concelebrating priests and was surprised when, at the Offertory, the Master of Ceremonies approached me (I was conveniently at the end of the row) to assist at the ablution rites at the altar.
I had not realized until I sat down to write this reflection in honor of Pope Benedict’s election that the cardinal for whom I effectively served as an altar boy would be Pope within a month. Providence is sometime a sobering thing.
The priest with whom I concelebrated Mass that day in such close proximity is indeed the same priest I see celebrate the Sacred Mysteries as Successor to St. Peter. His focus and intense devotion are the same. It is almost as though depth and continuity are written into the man’s DNA.
By now the idea of a “hermeneutic of continuity” is beginning to permeate the Church universal. Gone, or at least soon gone, are the days when Catholics sing of “calling a new Church into being” with straight faces. Likewise, talk of a “pre-conciliar” versus a post-Vatican II Church seems dated.
Benedict has shown us how to retrieve what is authentically ours by Tradition, how not to fear that past, and how to permit the ancient liturgy to inform, guide, and deepen our worship today.
Yet, it is not only in the realm of ecclesiology or liturgy that this Benedictine effort toward re-integration is felt. One sees at as well in his effective and tireless effort in reaching out to the Eastern Churches (admittedly a dimension of ecclesiology) and in his development of the Church’s social teaching, evident in each of his encyclicals, but most especially in
Caritas et Veritate. All of this effort at retrieval and re-integration comprises what might be called the leitmotif of his papacy.
In each of these areas and others as well, one sees a very careful mind at work to rediscover and welcome disparate truths, skillfully bringing the parts together to demonstrate a deeper, richer whole.
And yet, Providence can also sometimes be cruel, as it might appear now, when Benedict presides as Pope in a moment of great difficulty and pain for the Church, owing largely to past negligence in the protection of the innocent and in the clarity of Catholic moral teaching.
Here, too, we affirm that the Church does not need to re-invent herself to address these grave matters; she does not need a new discipline for her priests or new standard of morality to propose to the faithful.
The Church simply needs to embrace that same faith that Christ taught to the Apostles and to represent it anew to a society — and at this time a Church — that seems in some places to have forgotten it.
I am grateful for the roundtable format of this presentation. The work of a Pope and the personality of Benedict XVI are both so multi-faceted it is difficult to comprehend all these facets even in a lengthy essay. The roundtable is one way to do it.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/04/2010 01:28]