Sorry for the delay in posting this, but it took some time to translate.
Benedict XVI and the time
of the authentic believer
An interview with Peter Seewald
Translated from
MUNICH-ROME, April 16 (kath.net/ps/rn) - Here is an exclusive interview with Peter Seewald on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI's 85th birthday:
Mr. Seewald, 85 years of Joseph Ratzinger. seven years as Pope Benedict XVI. Is that a reason for jubilation?
For jubilation, perhaps not. But certainly, for joy. No one more than this Pope has made it possible not just to gird the Church for the challenges of our time; to show how to defend herself, and how to find the way back after a time of disorientation. One must not overlook that the world is going through a crisis that is truly tragic. But the spread of unfaith is, of all the ailments of civilization, the most dangerous. Because when faith goes, society cannot do well.
Recently, an Italian Vaticanista ventured to say that perhaps Ratzinger should never have been elected Pope ]the usual villain - Marco Politi].
The truth is that there was no other choice. Joseph Ratzinger helped create John Paul II's Pontificate. He was the best known and most fascinating cardinal worldwide. No one had a better knowledge of the Curia. In almost 25 years, he had become a Roman. He speaks nine or 10 languages. He is a whole very well-rounded, educated person. He already had international renown as one of the greatest theologians and important thinkers of our time. And, and, and.
[And his personal holiness was clear to all and indisputable.]
Of course, there have been errors in the past seven years. But the very fact alone that, after a man like Wojtyla, he was able to shift in such a refined, almost elegant way to his own Pontificate without any gaps, is a herculean feat.
What distinguishes him especially?
A lot. His tirelessness, his fire, his self-sacrifice, his human kindness. At a time which is Godless and depressed, he places high value on praising God. Where believers and priests have fallen into activism, he shows the continuity and the true sources of Christian faith.
For him, catharsis is always the start of anything new. What can seem like a breakdown into mouldering rubble can also be seen as humus for new sowing.
Benedict XVI is not just the Pope of a Renaisssance of Christian origins - he also exercises the Petrine primacy in a very ecumenical way. which makes it easier for other confessions not to see the Bishop of Rome as a rival but as a symbol for the great mission of Christian unity.
It is said that public consensus was much greater for his predecessor.
Well, at least in his general audiences, he has attracted a much greater public. On his trips, even in Mexico, he is greeted enthusiastically by millions. No politician and no popstar is able to do that.
And it was quite a sight to see in Cuba the greying Commandant Fidel Castro - who appears to have come a long way from rejecting religion as a Marxist revolutionary to what appears to be a rediscovery - now requesting the Pope to recommend books for his spiritual reading!
The critics also say that Benedict XVI is not modern enough. [Too bad this interviewer seems limited to bringing up hoary chestnuts!]
But whoever can put aside the cliches and look more carefully will be surprised. At a time when nonsense. unreason and sheer lunacy are increasing exponentially, the Church is led by someone whom one can call the Pope of Reason.
In a time when the intellectual class is ruined and the public discourse has become even more dumb, an exceptional intellectual sits on Peter's Chair. Bu it is someone who does not stop at purely rational thought, but shows how out, of the symbiosis between knowledge and faith, come wisdom, beauty and truth.
And while the whole world appears to be intent on renouncing truth, the Pope stands firm, pointing to the eternal Truth that man should not lose sight of.
Benedict XVI is above all one of the humblest of Popes. He thinks that non-violence and love are the greatest forces that can work on earth. He is stripping the Papacy of its false attributes, of any lust for power. Indeed, here is one who asks of his Church to be powerless, to give up privileges that had always been sought.
Namely, „Entweltlichung“.
One wonders why this idea sounds so false to us or is not even understood. Nothing is farther from the Pope's mind than for the Church to build its own little special world. 'Enweltlichung' - giving up worldliness - does not mean running away from men, but a rejection of power, of Mammon, of cronyism, of counterfeit, of deception and self-deception.
Joseph Ratzinger used these very terms in an essay entitled „Vorgang der Entweltlichung der Kirche“ (A process to rid the Church of worldliness). He believes this is necessary so that the faith can once more unfold her active principles.
'Entweltlichung' is not about turning your back on social and political involvement, and certainly not a rejection of the Christian virtue of charity. It means to be able to resist the world, to show that Christianity is bound by an ideal that goes far beyond every purely worldly and material world view.
Benedict XVI embodies, in this respect, the time of the authentic faithful, who will no longer wave the standard of "We-are-only-doing-this-as-if...' but rather "We will do it', even when we feel weak, and even when we fall again and again, to always start again.
Der Spiegel had a cover picture of Benedict XVI in 2009 as 'Die Entrueckte' (Out of this world), in 2010, as 'Der (un)Fehlbare' [The (in)-Fallible); and in 2011, as 'Der Unbelehrbare' (The Unteachable).
The 2012 cover is still to come. It might well read „Der Starrsinnige“ (The Stubborn), because he does not dance to any piper's tune. He is one of the last representatives of a high culture of education and intellectual endowmen that was once known by the expression 'German genius' and was a worldwide wonder.
Today, what we have is the fear of not conforming enough. One lives to get nothing but flattering feedback, even if it should be at the cost of truth or fairness. The Pope is not tempted at all. In that way he is inconvenient to others, he does not fit; in fact, he is not in the main stream.
For him, the question is not, What is modern?, but What is appropriate for the future? And how can we manage to still have a future? Is it really progressive to follow ill-considered fashions which are not even compatible with the basic order of Creation? Don't we need a new age which will be distinguished by responsibility through a lifestyle that helps us save our souls and not bring an end to this wonderful and beautiful planet earth?
How about that Pope Benedict stands in the way of progress and that he is an enemy of the modern?
They also said that of Papa Wojtyla. Until almost everyone started to realize that his contribution to bringing down the man-hating systems of Eastern Europe cannot be appreciated enough.
Meanwhile, what does the 'modern' look like? In the face of so many mistakes, has it not become a bone of contention itself? Of course, the Pope is old. But precisely from the experience of the past century and his Biblical outlook, he stands by his judgments. Wherever man feels even more in distress, he can offer a a means of healing that basically cannot be beaten.
What do you mean?
The Church no longer has great institutional power. Her remaining spheres of influence are subject to feuds, to mockery, and increasingly, to persecution. The Church, in this way, will seem more Christlike. It's a paradox that she both wins and loses. But the institutional weaknesses of the Church correspond to an interior reinforcement of the papacy. People are looking for support, a spiritual father whom they can trust and whose word is reliable. Do not build on sand, Jesus said, but build on rock.
He found his fit in the Papacy quite fast.
And no one thought that possible. There is a significance in that Benedict's birthday and papal anniversary fall so close together. The three days in between were needed for the rebirth of Joseph Ratzinger from defender of the faith to the shepherd of believers.
It is noteworthy that all his work is in the sign of service. Humility - after the great signs of truth, faith and love - is a stamp of this Pontificate. Very much like the motto that he chose for his ordination as a priest: "We are not masters of your faith but servants of your joy".
He is also called the theologian-Pope.
But that is so inadequate. He personifies, on the one hand, a new intelligence in the announcement of the mysteries of the faith; and on the other hand, he is not a typical scholar, who writes weighty tomes with millions of footnotes, obsessively attentive to the least detail.
A primary concern for him is to reach the hearts of men. He takes that very seriously, but he does it easily - without taking away the mystery of what is great, and without trivializing the sublime.
Has he changed much in seven years as Pope?
With Joseph Ratzinger, everything seemed to have been just right from the earliest years. Not in the sense of being average, but that he early found his center of gravity. That goes for his teaching and his attitudes towards theological issues or questions of Church policy.
That goes also for his temperament. He is always 'in touch'. And with his equability, he is not only very incisive, he is also very efficient. He has hardly changed in this nor in his simplicity and likeable ways. On the other hand, the office and the person have become so fused together that they can no longer be distinguished.
How is that demonstrated?
He feels, as he himself has said, not just the singular grace of the office, but that he must transform his entire person, as much as he can, to become what he has accepted to be.
he defines the Vicar of Christ not as a function that has anything to do with might and fame, but rather as a chance to show exactly who Christ is. In the same way as one must see the Father in Christ, so one must see Christ in the Successor of Peter.
When he looks back at 85 years of his life, what would stand out especially?
Above all, an unparalleled continuity in his work from the very beginning to now. Whoever reads his early texts will already have a full-grown Ratzinger before him, one who never had to correct his texts which continue to read very contemporary today.
On the other hand, Joseph Ratzinger was also someone who had other sides - he could be rebellious, as his school certificate shows, despite his shyness. Someone who was confident enough to stand up to the harassment of a Nazi officer as he would later to a vain theology professor who was a star in his field.
He resisted the call to become a bishop, he resisted the earlier calls to come to Rome, he resisted the call to Peter's Chair. But precisely these road signs of developments which were totally against his will spelled a destiny that obviously someone else held in His hands.
What were his early concerns?
Two above all - truth and love, because for him there can be no love without truth, nor truth without love. Love was the central word of his theological North Star, Augustine, for which reason was called 'the genius of the heart'. And love was, of course, the subject of his first encyclical.
Was his work on Augustine also the basis for his ideas on the Church?
Yes. He sees the Church as a field in which both wheat and weeds grow. Augustine said that the Church is very often a 'church of sin', that one had to ask whether there was an upright man to be found. But this assembly is part of the Sacred Mystery. It is therefore necessary for the Christian to defend himself from temptation, in order to establish a Church of the pure, an exclusive community that excludes others and that can no longer keep the gates to God open.
What was his driving force?
He was never interested in building a career in the bourgeois sense. He has always lived with the simplicity of a monk who has never sought luxury, and it's all the same to him whether his environment only has the bare necessities or some degree of comfort.
The reality that interests him is the area that transcends the ordinary. This is where all desirable reality begins, about which most of his contemporaries have no idea. Joseph Ratzinger is, in this respect, a spiritual explorer in search of stars on earth and in heaven. Everything else is too little. Everything else is not really what is necessary in order to find true peace, inner and outer peace.
He saw early something that was hidden. This occupation was clearly not the Glass Bead Game of a virtuoso cultural connoisseur, nor a purposeless pastime, but it always had to do with service - to God and to men.
Is there a still unknown Ratzinger?
Basically, we really know very little about him. Something about the young genius who started to study his beloved Augustine when he was 23 - all the volumes of his work. The young professor whom during his holidays at home, would say Mass in the local jail. The unconventional cross-thinker who made friends with academic outsiders or even with a mystic like Hans Urs von Balthasar. The Curial Prefect who every Thursday after saying morning Mass at the Campo Teutonico would have breakfast with the portress. But mostly unknown are any details about his participation in the Second Vatican Council.
What exactly do you mean?
New research shows that the contribution of the then fairly young theological consultant to Cardinal Frings was far greater than he has let us know. He worked out strategies and final drafts of texts at the German college of Santa Maria dell'Anima on Piazza Navona with the German-speaking bishops. And without a doubt. he played a decisive part in drawing up
Lumen gentium and
Dei verbum. His intellectual and theological proficiency and his insistence were responsible for rejecting working drafts provided by the Council organizers that were too constricting.
In any case, he also recognized early on that some offshoots of the Council were bad suckers that would bear no fruit.
But there was always talk that he eventually took a conservative turn...
To this day, he has not changed his approaches: he is for dialog, openness, a rediscovery of the sources, and a focus on proclaiming Christ.
Consider his stand on the authenticity of Revelation, the rediscovery of the Sacraments, and especially, a liturgy that is able to bring the joy of the Word of God to the faithful, and of underscoring once more the mystery of the Mass.
He has always advocated a consciousness that comes from the entire breadth of Christian tradition contributing to the holism of faith. That his own thinking is not some sort of lager mentality but a critical analysis on the basis of Biblical thinking that is firmly anchored in the message of Jesus.
That also gives him freedom. He does not have to account to anyone, certainly to no guilds or associations, and least of all, to the spirit of the times. Only to the one with whom it all begins, Christ.
Is he then the preacher against the unfaith of the 20th century?
After the terror of the atheistic ideologies, he grasped this earlier than others. Already in 1967, he said in a lecture in Tuebingen that Christian faith was now surrounded by 'a fog of uncertainty' as it had never been at any time in history. That there were less and less people who would dare proclaim their religion of origin.
He considered his book
Introduction to Christianity in 1968 as an attempt to build a wall of reason and faith - it is an illuminating manifesto against the "oppressive power of unbelief" that he had seen arise early enough.
He seems to have closed a circle in his office now as leader of the universal Church.
One could say that. The young Ratzinger is like the older one - and this older one is like the young - helping the Church to return to her origins and to rediscover her authenticity.
The only prescription, Ratzinger has said, is to present in new ways the truthfulness of the Christian faith and its power of persuasion that arises from the Logos and the Mystery of Christ - without fripperies, without
aggiornamento in the sense of a religion-less Christianity. while adapting the announcement of Christ to the speech, thought and lifestyle patterns of the secular world.
In an interview you said that even now, Benedict is destined to count among the greats in the long list of Popes...
Of course, it is for history to decide how great he really is. But Benedict is above all the 'little' Pope - that is how he sees himself. At least in comparison to his overpowering predecessor.
We know that in Christian logic, ideas are usually reversed. The little can be great, the last in a past age can become the first in a new one.
The task he has given himself is the most difficult of all: inner renewal. And that is not about 'restoration' but rather a Christian 'renaissance', with a rediscovery of beauty, freedom, joy.
What has impressed you especially?
I find that the Pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI complement each other perfectly. If the other was a man of images, the other is a man of words. And when John Paul II, in a stormy time, put up a fortress to defend the Church against the winds, Benedict XVI is rebuilding what was destroyed within the fortress. He relies on God's help for this, and takes into account the reproach that he is doing too little to fix the exterior of the fortress.
It is impressive that a Pontificate that few had expected to be historical should see the character of salvation history so well expressed: precisely when it is no longer the Vicar of Christ who is in the foreground but Christ himself.
Will Benedict XVI become a symbolic figure?
Without a doubt. He comes from the old and embodies the new - a Church of which not so much her structures but her faith will live, and with it the center of the Christian message: love and the promise of eternal life.
As a Professor, Joseph Ratzinger, through his incisive and well-aimed analyses, could see far into the future. As Pope, he is virtually going ahead of the future in person - he goes for everyone, for life in itself, for our future in another existence.
What do you wish for him on his 85th birthday?
For anyone else at this age, one would wish a peaceful retirement. For Pope Benedict I wish that he may find many laborers for the vineyard of the Lord - priests, nuns and monks, simple laymen, who can still dare to swim upstream, whose dreams are not about consumership and career, who do not represent a weakening of the faith but its strengthening.
For him this is important: Nothing can change and be good if the hearts of men do not first change. The Church cannot be strong again unless the faith is strong again. She does not seek the strength for herself but so that her people can be salt of the earth, a blessing for mankind, and a light for the world.
In this respect, Happy Birthday, Pope Benedict!
VIVA IL PAPA!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/04/2012 17:18]