In the absence of new material about B16, I'd like to continue re-posting the best and/or most interesting of the tributes/assessments made of his Pontificate at this time last year, when he had completed the Biblically significant first seven years as Pope, and when few really entertained the possibility that he could ever resign as Pope. And I start with this beautiful tribute from Luigi Accattoli, the retired senior Vaticanista of Corriere della Sera, who shows the absurdity of all the accusations that Benedict XVI chose to 'isolate' himself by focusing on his own reading and writing, as if the Vicar of Christ on earth was nothing but a self-indulgent, narcissistic, totally irresponsible slacker who simply neglected his duties to pursue his own personal interests...
On his blog, Luigi Accattoli reprints a center-spread article published in LIBERAL on April 17, which is among other things, an eloquent retort to those like his erstwhile fellow Vaticanista Marco Politi who obstinately and preposterously portray Benedict XVI as a self-absorbed man who has isolated himself by preference, abdicating his duties, as it were, by preferring to read and write.... And you can tell Accattoli worked on this article - he did not just toss it off...
Let me tell you about Benedict XVI:
He is not solitary, but
the soloist in an ensemble
by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from
April 17, 2012
Benedict XVI is not a Pope as many think who is surrounded by a hostile Curia. Nor is he a solitary Pope by temperament: But he is a soloist by choice and in his way of governing.
[Soloist in the musical sense, where one plays a distinct solo role in relation to but part of an ensemble performance.]
This soloist Pope turned 85 yesterday, years which he carries very well. We saw him move agilely, with slight assistance from his acolytes, during the long telecasts of the Holy Week and Easter liturgies - his eyes thoughtful and concerned, his steps light as usual but more careful now, and his words vivid as ever.
He suffers from a weakness in the right hip, and last October, started using the moving platform that had been used by Papa Wojtyla. And he is no longer able to perform the prostration before the Cross on Good Fridays as he did in his earlier years as Pope.
But all this merely speaks of his age: He was elected Pope at 78, and on Thursday, he enters the eighth year of his Pontificate. No other Pope in the past 100 years has lived to be 85. Pius X lived to 79, Benedict XV t0 67, Pius XI to 81, Pius XII to 82, John XXIII to 81, Paul VI to 80, Papa Luciani to 65, and Papa Wojtyla to 84.
Benedict XVI's overall physical shape is demonstrated by his travels and by his many public commitments. He withstood the recent trip to Mexico and Cuba very well. On Easter, we saw him celebrate Mass at night and then again in the morning, for a total of six hours within a 14-hour period.
He will be going to Milan for the World Encounter of Families the first three days of June, and on September 14-16, he will be in Lebanon. (Where he will deliver to the bishops of the Middle East his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation* that synthesizes the conclusions of the Synodal Assembly on the Middle East in October 2010).
The visit to Mexico, a country caught up in the tsunami of drug trafficking, and to Cuba in the twilight years of the Castro brothers, and to the Middle East next September, in the aftermath of what was supposed to be an 'Arab spring', are extraordinary undertakings, but the following months will see the maturation of other signal commitments on the Pope's agenda: from the Synodal Assembly on the new evangelization in October, to the opening of the Year of Faith to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican-II.
This year may also see the publication of his encyclical on faith to complete a trilogy on the cardinal virtues, after
Deus caritas est on love in 2006, and
Spe salvi on hope in 2007.
Also in 2012, we should be seeing the publication of the third and last volume of JESUS OF NAZARETH, signed Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, after the first two volumes published in 2007 and 2011. This will be dedicated to the birth and early years of the Nazarene, where the first two dealt with the public ministry of Jesus and then his passion, death and Resurrection.
This trilogy on Jesus is a work of major importance on which, first as cardinal and then as Pope, he has dedicated at least ten years of work. In his Preface to Volume 1, the Pope says he began writing the first volume during his summer vacation in 2004, and completed it after he became Pope, 'by using all his free time'. And so, we have the unprecedented fact, in the modern era, of a Pope who has published a theological work after becoming Pope.
It is relevant to how he has returned the figure of the Pope to its apostolic dimension and to preaching, with less emphasis on governing the Curia and the bishops - a displacement from governance to mission which has concerned all the Popes of our time, from Pius IX, and which made great progress with the Popes of the Council and after the Council.
His focus on Jesus is equally relevant to the degree of approval for the Pope within the Catholic world, where the appreciation of his teaching is great, whereas there persists a prejudice about his work of governance, despite the points he has gained in recent years with his excellent decisions regarding the pedophile-priest scandal and with the financial reforms in the Holy See.
Whoever still finds it difficult to like Benedict XVI - because of the image that the media had built of Cardinal Ratzinger as a 'fierce watchdog of the faith' for at least two decades before he became Pope - ought to read his books on Jesus. What greater thing can we expect of a Pope than to speak to us of the Nazarene?
Many point out that the Pope must 'nonetheless' govern, and that a Pope who publishes books and writes his homilies by hand ends up delegating governance to the Curia. It's a schematic idea that comes from the past.
It was said of Papa Wojtyla that he was busy being missionary to the world, leaving the routine governance of the Church to the Curia. And they say that now of Papa Ratzinger, that he keeps to his writing and relies on the Curia to do the work. But the analogy does not work.
I firmly believe that Benedict XVI must be given credit for having complete awareness at all times of the issues facing the Church - he spends hours at his desk studying files and reports - to take an example, in the naming of bishops.
It now seems clear that the uproar caused by the chattering crows at the Vatican - which seems to have quieted - was due to the Pope's decisions to institute financial reforms. In other words, it happened because the governance was too strong for some, not because there was no governance.
And in the matter of communications, as someone who is in the business, I can only find one difference of this Pontificate compared to the previous one, which however is not necessarily negative.
We have, as I said, a soloist Pope who nonetheless still has a Curia, substantially the same Curia as it has always been
[in terms of function, not in its major players) but it is no longer the sort of court that previous Popes had, who could trip up the Pope and impose their conditions, but rather help foresee, predispose and accompany papal activities.
I would say that the delta-like outflow of communications under Papa Wojtyla helped prepare the terrain for a detailed and relatively flexible reception of papal initiatives by media operators, whereas
the estuary-like outflow [i.e., narrower] characteristic of Papa Ratzinger predisposes to media outcomes in which he does not have a safety net - either the reception is successful because of surprise effect and/or by consensus, or it goes very badly because a lack of concerted effort prevents taking negative eventualities into account.
And on the fact that this Pope is a soloist but not solitary, we can cite what he told newsmen in March 2009 on the way to Cameroon:
"I don't feel alone in any way. Every time, I receive working visits from mu closest collaborators... I see all the Curial heads regularly, almost every day I meet with bishops visiting ad limina... Recently we had two plenary assemblies if these dicasteries. Then I have my contacts with friends, a network of friendship. Those who were ordained with me recently came to visit... So being alone is not one of my problems. I am surrounded by friends and I have a marvellous working relationship with bishops, my associates, and assorted laymen, and for this I am grateful". [Which should have been obvious to anyone who followed Benedict XVI's activities, as Vaticanistas should. But those who insisted against all evidence that Benedict XVI was 'isolated' are no better than Paolo Gabriele who claimed this out of sheer prejudice and the strange megalomania that he, although a simple-minded valet, could see and know things about the Church that a brilliant man like Joseph Ratzinger could not!]
He listens a great deal, to everyone, but he then decides by himself, and in this sense he is a soloist.
There are even those who claim that he does not have an adequate perception of the crisis in the Catholic Church, but this too is false.
We have the curious situation of a Pope who says more negative things about the Church in his homilies than even his critics do with their pamphleteering. [The important difference is that he couches these criticisms of the sins within the Church in gentle pastoral, 'tough love' terms, not as imprecations.]
These critics - let us say Hans Kueng, or the We are Church movement, or the Austrian priests who issued a 'Call for Disobedience'
[2013 P.S. Or the whole Church hierarchy that now seems to blame Benedict XVI singlehanded for all the ills of the Church, and would imply, by their panegyrics about his successor, that he did nothing at all about these ills, entirely as if they, these high-speaking hierarchs, cardinals and bishops, had been completely blameless for these ills!] - always say that things wouldn't be going so bad for the Church if only she had the courage to make some reforms - i.e., more democracy in Church affairs, a more active ecclesiastical role for the laity and for women, a more positive tone in preaching
[Surely no one can fault Benedict XVI for his preaching, which is always positive even when he criticizes! It's the dissident priests who are relentlessly negative - if not against the Church, then in pursuing their liberal political causes], and less preoccupation with the prevailing sexual culture and with bioethics.
On the contrary, Pope Benedict maintains that the crisis in the Church is even more profound and that
no organizational updating or preaching will remedy anything unless first there is a recovery of faith.
[2013 P.S. Obviously, this lesson was completely lost on the cardinals who, during the pre-Conclave congregations and the interviews they gave, seemed to think that the Roman Curia and Vatileaks constituted the be-all and end-all of the problems of the Church! Did I hear anyone talking about the faith? Even Cardinal Bergoglio, in his now-famous pre-Conclave intervention, thought the problem was in the narcissistic self-absorption of the ministers of the Church in their mundane quotidian problems, to the neglect of the mission of the Church. But his words were taken to mean, "He means business- he's going to change how things are done at the Vatican, he will upset the establishment". Sure, there was also "This is the man who will renew the Church", but it was said as if one man by himself could effect such a renewal, which is not possible unless everyone in the Church began renewing himself interiorly first. Remember Mother Teresa - "What must change to renew the Church?" Answwer: "You and I".]
He spoke about this strongly in his address last December 22 to the Roman Curia, which was already feverish over internal issues which would then come to the light with the seeming gusher of confidential documents that would be leaked from the Vatican.
[It only seemed 'massive' at the time, because of the undue feeding frenzy in the media, but in fact, there were at most eight such documents that have come out so far, none of which were really major, but by their nature 'scandalous' enough for the media to exploit them as such! The most headlines were generated by the three documents which are for the most part made up of wild partisan charges, gossip and absurd speculation - the Vigano letters and the anonymous memorandum alleging, among other things, a plot to kill the Pope.]
He spoke of 'the crisis of the Church in Europe' which arises from 'a crisis of faith', which he described as a 'fatigue' and 'the tedium of being Christian - strong terms, and hardly 'inadequate perception' by the Pope.
[Who, among other things, had already written quite a few books and many essays about the crisis of Europe, before he became Pope, in piercing analyses that leading intellectual figures in the secular world found spot-on perceptive a - precisely - and challenging.]
Last Maundy Thursday, with the same dramatic effect, he addressed the call to disobedience by some Austrian parish priests as 'a desperate urge to do something'.
So the poor Pope has, on the one hand, these 'disobedients', and on the other, the Lefebvrians who, up to this point at least, have appeared to reject the hand he has held out to them.
But the tragedy is not in such tensions and ruptures. Rather it lies in the abandonment of the faith by so many. and by the filth committed by those who have distorted the face of the Church.
It is the Pope's call to penitence and for reform to start with individual purification. From this critical overview of the state of the faith, he has taken the attitude of radical trust in God, which he expressed in a most explicit way in the invocation that he pronounced at this last Christmas Eve Mass, perhaps the most beautiful of the prayers he has proposed since he became Pope.
He developed it from a verse by the prophet Isaiah who announced the birth of a 'son' who would liberate the People from the oppressors' boots, cloaks and rods:
At this hour, when the world is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors’ rods and bloodstained cloaks, we cry out to the Lord:
O mighty God, you have appeared as a child and you have revealed yourself to us as the One who loves us, the One through whom love will triumph. And you have shown us that we must be peacemakers with you.
We love your childish state, your powerlessness, but we suffer from the continuing presence of violence in the world, and so we also ask you: Manifest your power, O God.
In this time of ours, in this world of ours, cause the oppressors’ rods, the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear of battle to be burned, so that your peace may triumph in this world of ours.
*[It's a bit off-topic, but this is an occasion to say something about the post-synodal exhortations which are typically published two years after the event. I think we all fail to appreciate the effort that the Pope must put into these exhortations. Moreover, Sacramentum caritatis, on the Eucharist, Verbum Domini, on the Word of God, and Africae munus, on the special assembly on Africa, are all major and powerful documents of the Papal Magisterium that have simply been overshadowed in attention by the encyclicals. But they are no less significant (and beautifully written) as Magisterium - and a truly collegial act, rather than just a personal one - since they incorporate what the bishops of the world have concluded and recommended.
Each document must require a great deal of work - hence the two years gestation - since the Pope has to explain each of the dozens of recommendations made by the Synod, tie them together theologically and doctrinally, and then make concrete pastoral directives to carry out the recommendations. It's daunting!
Sometimes I think that even the bishops and priests, to whom these exhortations are primarily addressed, forget to refer to them constantly as they should. Or may never have read them, just as the vast majority, I suspect, of all those who profess to be 'the spirit of Vatican II' have never bothered to read the Vatican II texts and have simply been attributing - wildly and without foundation - their own personal and ideological ideas about the Church to Vatican II.
Another significant item at the time was this interview with Peter Seewald.
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.
[2013 P.S. These are facts and statements that, of course, were conveniently ignored or forgotten by all who went into ecstasies because the new Pope chose to call himself Francis and expressed his desire for 'a poor Church that is a Church for the poor', as if no Pope had thought about the poor before, or showed himself to be simple and humble.]
Joseph Ratzinger used these very terms in a 1960s 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 endowment 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 mainstream.
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, who called reason '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.
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 23/04/2013 21:28]