'Light of the World'
by Amy Welborn
November 19, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI’s third book-length interview with Peter Seewald,
Light of the World, will be released next week – the 23rd.
I’ve read it, having been asked to be part of a sort of advance team to be available to the press for any coverage of the book. I can’t talk about specific content yet – on Sunday, I will be able to write about material in a few of the chapters, and then on the 23rd, of course (at 4:30 AM!) the chains are loosed.
I’ve written an op-ed on the book that will appear next weekend – that was a challenge, because there’s simply so much here – a lot to talk about in that limited kind of space for a largely secular audience.
I’ll say this, though – in the past, when people have asked me where to start in understanding the Holy Father’s mind, I’ve always directed them to the previous two interview books plus his autobiography
Milestones. And then move on to some of the theological works.
Reading Ratzinger, you can waste a lot of time trying to insert him into your own ideological framework and agenda or
you can cut to the chase, read his own words and understand him on his own terms.
[Which is what I advocate, even for all his papal texts, including the 'routine' ones (that are hardly ever routine)! Leave the news reports for later - read the actual text whenever it is available. No paraphrase or attempt to report his texts are ever satisfactory!]
The interview books, I think, are really helpful on that score. Essential.
Light of the World fits in that same vein. Those who are familiar with Ratzinger’s thought, with his program, with his understanding of Church, the world and human existence will find this to be absolutely consistent.
Even the statements – and there are some – that are fairly hot and will garner headlines and puzzled blog posts on all sides – they’re consistent.
Obviously, I’ll have more to say on Sunday, but I’ll just say that for me, aside from all of the interesting insights into the papacy and recent controversies – the Legion, Regensburg, the Williamson affair, sexual abuse, liturgical reform - what drew me most strongly into this book was the spiritual quality.
As he always has, Pope Benedict articulates a framework for a spiritual life that is, in its simplicity, quite powerful.
LOTW: A book of hope and confidence
from an optimistic and courageous Pope
MUNICH, Nov, 19 (Translated from ADNkronos) - "History has demonstrated sufficiently how destructive the majority can be, for example, in systems like Nazism and Marxism-Communism, both of them ranged against the truth!"
This is one of the quotations from Peter Seewald's new interview-book with Pope Benedict XVI from an advance look at the book by ADNkronos.
The Pontiff expressed the same concept today, according to the account of his intervention this morning at the pre-consistory meeting with the College of Cardinals.
One of the chapters of the new book is, in fact, entitled 'The Dictatorship of Relativism'.
"Castel Gandolfo in summer. The road that lead to the Pontifical residence is a convergence of isolated country roads. The wheat in the fields wave under the breath of a light wind..."
This is how Seewald starts the book, the first face-to-face interview with a Pope. His first interview book,
Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church in the 21st century, with then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1996 also started similarly ["
Rome in winter. The people in St. Peter's Square were wearing coats and clasping their umbrellas..."].
That was in 1996. In 10 years, it had 14 editions in German, one in audio, 4 on CD, 19 editions in other languages including Chinese, Korean and Ukrainian.
And then in 2000 there was
God and the world: Faith and Christian living in our time, the outcome of interview sessions from February 7-11, 2000, held in the Benedictine abbey of Montecassino.
Seewald recalls the first two interviews in the new book, but says that things were different this time: "A cardinal is a cardinal; the Pope is the Pope".
In the fifth year of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, the Bavarian author asked the Pope for another chance for an interview book. And the Pope agreed. He received him daily for an hour at a time in Castel Gandolfo from July 26-31.
The Pope did not ask to see his questions beforehand. Therefore, it was a true and proper conversation, which the book clearly reflects. The Pope reviewed Seewald's transcripts and made a few minor corrections to better clarify his meaning. Sources close to Seewald claim that the German manuscript was shown by the Pope to his closest collaborators.
The book is in three parts, according to its title - on the papacy, the Church and signs of the times, articulated in 18 chapters, covering topics such as the sex abuse scandal, ecumenism, dialog with Islam, the Williamson case, etc.
And it concludes with man's ultimate destiny, with a chapter entitled "Of the ultimate realities'.
Those who have read it say it is a book of hope and confidence, from an optimistic and courageous Pope.
Starting Sunday, parts of the book will be anticipated in some German and Italian newspapers.
(One imagines that in the USA, Ignatius Press will follow the same PR and timing strategy.)
There's a major book about Benedict XVI that's also coming out in English on November 23. 2010. It must be a hefty book as it costs $95 - even with the 33% discount from Amazon, it's still $64.12. The blurb on it is certainly very intriguing, and the three reviewers are as good as you can get for work on theology.
The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI:
The Christocentric Shift
by Father Emery de Gaál, Ph.D.
Palgrave Macmillan
Many refer to Pope Benedict XVI as “the Mozart of Theology.”
Who are the personalities and thinkers who have informed his theology? What events, and which religious devotions, have shaped his personality? What are the central themes of his complex scholarship encompassing more than 1500 titles?
This study attempts to shed light on the unifying melody of the policies and positions of a pontificate charged with spiritual and theological depth. Especially in the 1970s an anthropocentric shift had occurred.
Emery de Gaál argues that, amid a general lack of original, secular ideas stirring public opinion, Benedict XVI inaugurates an epochal Christocentric shift; by rekindling the Patristic genius, he provides Christianity with both intellectual legitimacy and the scholarship needed to propel it into the twenty-first century.
Fr. de Gaál is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and located in Mundelein, Illinois. He studied theology in Munich and Pittsburgh and also published Theology: The Art of Equanimity. He is a Catholic priest of the diocese of Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany.
* * *
“Pope Benedict XVI’s theological work and his pastoral and spiritual writings are here placed in the perspective of the mystery of Christ. Father Emery de Gaal has beautifully and exhaustively clarified the fundamental interpretative key to the Ratzinger texts and to the life of Pope Benedict XVI.”
- Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago
“He was already one of the most important theologians of the past century before his election to the papacy as Benedict XVI in this century. But now Joseph Ratzinger must count as perhaps the most important postconciliar theologian, bar none. De Gaál gives us the most comprehensive study of the pope’s theology now available.
"But even more, he places the Pope’s thought in the context of the revolution in Catholic theology that started well before Vatican II and has continued on to this day: the revolution that abandoned neoscholasticism and shifted its focus to Christology. That story is indeed a dramatic one, and here it is dramatically and comprehensively told.
"This book is a ‘must purchase’ for every theological library – and for all admirers of that perhaps greatest of great theologians, Joseph Ratzinger.”
—Fr Edward T. Oakes, S. J.
Chester & Margaret Paluch Professor of Theology
University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary
“Father de Gaál’s work is indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand the Christocentric shift in the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI and in contemporary theological anthropology generally. It is the deepest analysis of the topic currently available.”
- Tracey Rowland, Professor and Dean
John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family
Melbourne, Australia
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/11/2010 05:00]