benedict xvi a guide for the perplexed

BENEDICT XVI: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

T&T Clark Guides for the Perplexed

T&T Clark’s Guides for the Perplexed are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

Guides for the Perplexed available from T&T Clark:

De Lubac: A Guide for the Perplexed, David GrumettChristian Bioethics: A Guide for the Perplexed, Agneta SuttonCalvin: A Guide for the Perplexed, Paul HelmTillich: A Guide for the Perplexed, Andrew O’NeillThe Trinity: A Guide for the Perplexed, Paul M. CollinsChristology: A Guide for the Perplexed, Alan SpenceWesley: A Guide for the Perplexed, Jason E. VickersPannenberg: A Guide for the Perplexed, Timothy BradshawBalthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed, Rodney HowsareTheological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed, Marc CortezBonhoeffer: A Guide for the Perplexed, Joel Lawrence

Forthcoming titles:

Interfaith Relations: A Guide for the Perplexed, Jeffrey BaileyEucharist: A Guide for the Perplexed, Ralph N. McMichael

BENEDICT XVI: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

TRACEY ROWLAND

Published by T&T Clark International A Continuum Imprint

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038

www.continuumbooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Copyright © Tracey Rowland, 2010

Tracey Rowland has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 13: 978-0-567-03436-6 (Hardback) 978-0-567-03437-3 (Paperback)

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, IndiaPrinted and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group

www.continuumbooks.com

In Memory of Peter Knowles OP

This page intentionally left blank

vii

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Romantic Antecedents 9

Chapter 2: The Humanist Culture of the Incarnation 25

Chapter 3: Revelation, Tradition and Hermeneutics 48

Chapter 4: The Theological Virtues 71

Chapter 5: History and Ontology after Heidegger 93

Chapter 6: Christianity in the Marketplace of Faith Traditions 114

Chapter 7: The Vision of Unity 129

Conclusion 152

Notes 161

Select Bibliography 182

Index 195

ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks are due to Alcuin Reid for recommending my name to Tom Kraft at Continuum and to Tom himself for the opportunity to write the Benedict XVI volume of the Guide for the Perplexed series. Unlike my earlier book, Ratzinger’s Faith: the Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (Oxford University Press, 2008) which was written for a general audience, this work offers a guide into the thought of Ratzinger for those who are already studying theology or embarking upon it. As my husband has explained to our friends, ‘the first Ratzinger book was Ratzinger for mice, this one is Ratzinger for rats’.

Chapter 2 is a development of a paper delivered at the 2009 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Conference in Providence, Rhode Island and Chapter 4 represents a development of material covered in ‘Variations on the Theme of Christian Hope in the Work of Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI’ which was published in Communio: Inter-national Catholic Review (Summer, 2008). I wish to thank the Communio editors and Kenneth D. Whitehead, the editor of the FCS Conference Proceedings, and Professor William E. May of FCS, for permission to use some of the earlier material in this work.

For information on the influence of John Henry Newman on the generation of Catholic Germans who came of age during the Nazi era, I am indebted to Jakob Knab, a leading authority on the German anti-Nazi movements. I am also grateful to Cyrus Olsen and Philip Endean for their help with material on the relationship between Rahner and Ratzinger, and to Stuart Rowland, Daniel Hill, Aaron Russell, Stratford Caldecott, Thaddeus Kozinski, Adam Cooper, David Schütz, Rev. Fraser Pearce, Fr Gregory Jordan SJ, Anna Krohn, Mary Taylor and Michael Lynch for reading various

x

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

drafts, to Angela Kolar of Campion College, Sydney, for her transla-tion of an early Ratzinger article on the concept of Bildung and to Patrick Sibly and Anthony Coyte for their administrative assistance.

The work is dedicated to the memory of Peter Knowles OP, an Australian Dominican, who shared Ratzinger’s preference for the Patristics over the Baroque Scholastics and his appreciation of the central importance of liturgical reform for the re-evangelization of the formerly Christian countries of the Western world. Fr Knowles was particularly kind to exiled Central Europeans throughout the cold war era and risked his own freedom smuggling medicines and religious books into the Communist bloc and samizdat publications out of it. In various eulogies he was described as the most handsome man of his generation, the most cultured, and the most aristocratic. He heroically maintained his joie de vivre amidst an ecclesial culture which was decidedly low-brow and philistine. I once heard him conclude a paper with the words: ‘though the days of our lives are numbered, the days of Israel shall live forever’. This capacity to live life from the perspective of eternity was his key to coping with the odd assortment of ecclesial types who crossed his path in the decades following the cultural revolution of the 1960s. He knew that the fashion of a decade is rarely, if ever, the truth of a century, and thus that there must be better times ahead. For these reasons and many others this work is in his memory.

Tracey Rowland Beechworth, Eastertide, 2009.

1

INTRODUCTION

In an interview given in 1997, Joseph Ratzinger stated that he had never tried to create a theological system of his own – ‘the aim is not an isolated theology that I draw out of myself but one that opens as widely as possible into the common intellectual pathways of the faith’.1 For this reason one does not find in his publications the presentation of a totally original theological synthesis, but rather a series of seminal interventions in theological debates thrown up by pastoral crises. Vincent Twomey, one of his former doctoral students, has written that his methodology is to take as his starting point contemporary developments in society and culture, and then he listens to the solutions offered by his fellow theologians before turning to a critical examination of Scripture and Tradition for pointers to a solution. He finally attempts a systematic answer by presenting the topic in the context of theology as a whole. As a consequence of this approach his academic output is fragmentary – it is ‘filled with brilliant insights into almost every subject of theology and yet it is not a fixed system’.2

Since there is no fixed system, the approach of this Guide is to focus on subject areas which Ratzinger has himself identified as critical fronts in contemporary Catholic theology. Among these, the one he described in Principles of Catholic Theology (1982) as having created the severest crisis, and which is in a sense the most fundamen-tal and far-reaching, is that of presenting a Catholic understanding of the mediation of history in the realm of ontology.3 In short, the Catholic theological establishment is yet to give an adequate response to the issues raised by Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927) and other twentieth-century works on the relationship between theology and metaphysics, anthropology and history, whose genealogies can

BENEDICT XVI

2

be traced to conceptions of truth and freedom in German Idealism and to the biblical scholarship of the nineteenth century. Linked to this is the need to get beyond the ahistorical temper of scholasti-cism without ending up in the ditch of moral and epistemological relativism.

These issues of the theological significance of history and culture were brewing from at least the late eighteenth century with the ascen-dancy of Romantic movements among intellectual elites across Western Europe and the United Kingdom. With them came a whole raft of hermeneutical questions. These in turn impinged upon the territory of theological anthropology, especially the question of how revelation is received and mediated from one generation to another.

The decidedly ahistorical temper of the pre-Conciliar theological establishment rendered it incapable of entering into these debates. In many instances those who dared to ask questions framed from within the concerns of the Romantic movement were tarred with the brush of ‘modernism’ and found themselves on the margins of ecclesial life. Even those who turned to Patristics for insights worked under a cloud of suspicion. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) removed the lid from this cauldron of theological conundrums though the issues were far from resolved in the Conciliar debates and documents. Almost half a century later the intellectual battles continue in Catholic academies.

When only in his 30s, Ratzinger attended the Council as a peritus or expert theological advisor to Josef Cardinal Frings of Cologne. In those years he was a typical member of his generation frustrated by the neo-scholasticism which had been fostered by the encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) of Pope Leo XIII. The encyclical called for a renaissance of the study of the medieval Dominican St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) as an antidote to various forms of rationalism and relativism. While it did produce works of genuine scholarship in places like Louvain, there was nonetheless a tendency of many seminary professors to rely upon secondary sources and summaries which were collated into manuals for the rote learning of seminari-ans. There was also a tendency to read Aquinas abstractly without regard to his historical context, or to read him as an interlocutor for post-medieval philosophers such as Descartes and Kant, and to sever the philosophical components of Aquinas’s synthesis from the theological and present them in separate intellectual packages. In many seminaries this Leonine Thomism became the only framework

INTRODUCTION

3

which was ever presented to students and the mode of its presenta-tion in manuals was of questionable pedagogical value. Moreover, this pre-Conciliar Thomism prided itself on being ‘above history’ and marketed itself as the ‘perennial philosophy’. One of the most helpful and even-handed accounts of it has been provided by Fergus Kerr in his Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism.4 Kerr observes that almost every significant Catholic theologian after the Second World War (including Ratzinger) was in some sense in rebellion against this, and that the most extreme rebel, Hans Küng, was the one who had been given the longest (seven-year) exposure to it at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. This is not to say that Kerr thinks it was all bad, merely that he makes the historical observation that while twentieth-century Catholic theology began in a neo-scholastic key, it ended with two successive papacies and their leading theolo-gians singing the not so baroque tune of the nuptial mystery. Thomas F O’Meara has presented the following snapshot of the pre-Conciliar period which goes some of the way to explaining the rebellion:

Late nineteenth-century repetitions of medieval thought and baroque scholasticism determined Catholic religious education from catechism to seminary textbook. This restoration was more particularly of philosophy than theology, of Aristotle than Thomas Aquinas, of logic than of Christology. A non-voluntaristic and free theology of grace found in Aquinas was re-formed into a theology of propositional faith, ontology, and church authority. A lack of sophistication in method, a questionable arrangement of disciplines, an absence of history, a moralistic interdiction of other theologies even when based upon Scripture and tradition characterised this theology.5

To this summary of O’Meara’s can be added the observation of Jean Daniélou that Scholastic theology locates reality in essences rather than in subjects, and by so doing ignores the dramatic world of persons, of universal concretes transcending all essence and only distinguished by their existence.6 It was precisely this world of persons, of subjects struggling with their self-identity, which was the common turf of nineteenth-century Romantics and twentieth-century existentialists and at the level of the average parish, it was the common turf of ordinary people trying to come to terms with

BENEDICT XVI

4

the impact of two world wars and an economic depression on their personal relationships.

It is not surprising therefore that in 1946 the young Bavarian seminarian Joseph Ratzinger found scholasticism to be too imper-sonal.7 According to Alfred Läpple, his seminary prefect, scholasticism ‘wasn’t his beer’.8 After a long and boring lecture from one of his professors on how God is the summum bonum, Ratzinger quipped to Läpple that ‘a summum bonum doesn’t need a mother’.9 Having found scholasticism to be uninspiring he turned his attention to the study of St Augustine, John Henry Newman and the mid-twentieth-century personalist scholars, including the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. He has described the encounter with Buber’s personalism as a spiri-tual experience that left an essential mark, especially as it resonated with his studies of St Augustine.10 When he did venture into schola-stic territory, it was St Bonaventure who captured his attention, and here it would seem to be precisely because Bonaventure had a strong interest in the theology of history. Similarly, when he did take an interest in a Thomist author, it was Josef Pieper, whose interests untypically extended to the philosophy of history.

His own memories of his intellectual interests in this period of his life are encapsulated in the following paragraph:

Our interests were varied. We wanted not only to do theology in the narrower sense but to listen to the voices of man today. We devoured the novels of Gertrude von Le Fort, Elisabeth Lang-gässer, and Ernst Wiechert. Dostoyevsky was one of the authors everyone read, and likewise the great Frenchmen: Claudel, Bernanos, Mauriac. We also followed closely the recent developments in the natural sciences. We thought that, with the breakthroughs made by Planck, Heisenberg, and Einstein, the sciences were once again on their way to God . . . . In the domain of theology and philoso-phy, the voices that moved us most directly were those of Romano Guardini, Josef Pieper, Theodor Häcker, and Peter Wust.11

During the Conciliar years Ratzinger was associated with other young periti who were critical of the theological establishment. These included Hans Küng, Karl Rahner (1904–1984), and Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–2009). However this association did not survive the 1960s. By the early 1970s a breach had developed between two

INTRODUCTION

5

groups of leading theologians which came to be associated with the names of the journals in which they published. The journal Concil-ium, founded in 1965, became the flagship for those offering the more liberal interpretations of the Second Vatican Council. Ratzinger was later to refer to their approach as the application of a ‘hermeneutic of rupture’. They had a tendency to interpret the documents as though they represented a complete break with the pre-Conciliar framework. The leading names associated with Concilium included: Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, Johann Baptist Metz, Yves Congar (1904–1995), Edward Schillebeeckx, Franz Böckle (1921–1991) and Gustavo Gutiérrez. Ratzinger was also for a time (from 1965–1972) a member of the Concilium board. The second journal, Communio, founded in 1972, was centred on the works of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988), Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) and Ratzinger himself.12 This involvement with the establishment of Communio followed upon the success of Ratzinger’s first book Introduction to Christianity which was published in 1968 and became an international best seller translated into 17 languages. Whereas Concilium approached the Conciliar documents with a hermeneutic of rupture, the Communio authors offered a hermeneutic of continuity, though the latter accepted that the documents were intended to have a remedial effect on elements of the pre-Conciliar theological outlook. According to the Communio scholars, the problems in contemporary and late-twentieth-century Catholicism had their origins at least as far back as the sixteenth century and certainly did not begin in 1962, as defenders of the pre-Conciliar establishment claim.

The publication of a Polish edition of Communio was facilitated by Karol Wojtyła when he was the Cardinal Archbishop of Cracow. In 1981 as John Paul II he called Ratzinger to Rome to be the Prefect for the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the President of the International Theological Commission and the President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. The history of their partnership goes back to 1974. At that time Josef Pieper wrote to Ratzinger and told him that he should get in touch with the Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Wojtyła. Pieper had heard Wojtyła speak at a philosophy conference and thought that he and Ratzinger should get to know one another. Ratzinger responded to the suggestion by sending Wojtyła a copy of his book Introduction to Christianity. Two years later in 1976, when Wojtyła was invited to preach the Lenten retreat to Pope

BENEDICT XVI

6

Paul VI, he based the retreat on ideas from that book by Ratzinger.13 From these beginnings the two developed a quarter-century partner-ship which lasted until the death of John Paul II in 2005.

In his preface to the 2004 edition of the Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger reflected on the two watershed years of the second half of the twentieth century: 1968 and 1989. He began with the observation that 1968 marked the rebellion of a new generation, which not only considered postwar reconstruction in Europe as inadequate, but ‘viewed the entire course of history since the triumph of Christianity as a mistake and a failure’.14 After noting the attraction of Marxism to the elite of this generation, he further observed that the collapse of Communist regimes in Europe in 1989 left behind them ‘a sorry legacy of ruined land and ruined souls’.15 Marxism ultimately failed the generation of ’68, but even so, at the moment of its collapse within Europe, Christianity ‘failed to make itself heard as an epoch-making alternative’.16

The Church in 1989, a decade into the pontificate of John Paul II, was still wallowing in post-Conciliar introspection and suffering the political side-effects of sharp internal theological divisions. The cultural and political weakness of the faith was also in part due to sociological factors. The emergence of a wealthy Catholic middle class in the US and the countries of the British Commonwealth, desperate for acceptance by Protestant elites and wanting to accom-modate its faith to the culture of modernity, including the adoption of a decidedly modern attitude to sexuality, created numerous intellectual and pastoral challenges which were simply beyond the capacities of many of the clergy to address.17

At the same time in Latin America social and economic problems were being addressed by a new generation of ecclesial leaders sym-pathetic to Marxism. Paradoxically, while Catholics in places like Poland, China, Korea and Vietnam were being persecuted by Com-munists, true believing Marxists could still be found in Catholic theology academies outside the Soviet bloc and its Asian derivatives. As Ratzinger noted, ‘in 1968 there was a fusion of the Christian impulse with secular and political action and an attempt to baptize Marxism’.18 This project labelled as liberation theology was particu-larly strong in countries which were formerly Spanish or Portuguese colonies such as the Philippines, Honduras, Nicaragua, Argentina and Brazil. However it was also popular among Catholic intellectual elites throughout Europe and the Anglophone countries. Ratzinger

INTRODUCTION

7

spent a number of his early years as Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith contending with theologies of liberation. In doing so, he was not trying to defend the economic order of the Latin American countries. He was never what today might be called a neo-conservative, the sort of person who attempts to tie together Christian beliefs with an enthusiasm for liberal market economics. He acknowledged the existence of terrible poverty and economic injustice in many of the above-mentioned countries and even described as ‘astounding’ the notion that the laws of the market are in essence good.19 None-theless, he believed that ‘whoever makes Marx the philosopher of theology adopts the primacy of politics and economics’ and as a result the redemption of mankind ends up occurring through the vehicles of politics and economics.20 He therefore concluded that ‘the real and most profound problem with the liberation theologies i[s] their effective omission of the idea of God, which, of course, also changed the figure of Christ fundamentally’.21 While the liberation theologians did not declare themselves atheists, their god ‘had nothing to do’ and their Christ was transformed into a political agitator.

Ratzinger argued that the ‘god who has nothing to do’ had been around for at least a century and so it was not surprising that there arose these theologies of political and economic liberation. In the past century ‘Christian consciousness acquiesced to a great extent – without being aware of it – in the attitude that faith in God is something subjective, which belongs in the private realm and not in the common activities of public life where, in order to be able to get along, people all have to behave now etsi Deus non daretur (as if there were no God).’22 He concluded:

It did not take any particular negligence, and certainly not a deliberate denial, to leave God as a God with nothing to do, espe-cially since his name had been misused so often. But the faith would really have come out of the ghetto only if it brought its most distinctive features with it into the public arena: the God who judges and suffers; the God who sets limits and standards for us; the God from whom we come and to whom we are going. But as it was, it really remained in the ghetto, having by now absolutely nothing to do.23

It was not only liberation theologians who contributed to this marginalization of God from public significance, but Catholics inspired

BENEDICT XVI

8

by Liberal philosophy were also complicit in fostering the same social trend. It suited their upward social mobility prospects to privatize their faith or to promote what Maurice Gauchet calls a ‘superstruc-tural faith’ that does not penetrate to the core of a person or culture itself.24 Each in their own way, the Marxist inspired Catholics, and the Liberal inspired Catholics, allowed their political and social interests to transform their theology, rather than allowing their theology to transform their political and social interests. With so many internal problems it is not surprising that Christianity was unable to present itself as a viable alternative to the various Marxist and Freudian inspired ideologies in 1968 or to the nihilist currents in post-modernism in 1989.

At the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century the issue is not so much liberation theologies (although they continue to be significant in some countries, including the US in the form of black liberation theology) as the emergence of post-modern theologies which challenge the very notion of Christianity as a master narrative, valid for all ages and cultures.25 For some of these Christ is no longer God incarnate, the one mediator, the eternal Word and so on, but merely someone who experienced God in a special way – a kind of Western analogue for Buddha.26 As the Church’s theologians grapple with the emergence of post-modern philosophy and its theological significance, what Ratzinger described as ‘the fundamental crisis of our age’ – developing a Catholic understanding of the mediation of history in the realm of ontology – becomes the central problem-atic around which and upon which so much of the structure of the narrative depends. It is not surprising therefore to find that many of Ratzinger’s theological interventions relate to this problematic.

9

CHAPTER 1

THE ROMANTIC ANTECEDENTS

In the popular imagination the phrase ‘Romantic movement’ conjures the sound of bells peeling from snow-topped steeples, images of cattle grazing on village greens and hillsides, the smell of smoke rising from the heaths of Scottish crofters and the lyricism of the English poets who set up camp in the Lake District. In short, the phrase is synonymous with rural beauty and pastoral content-ment and sometimes aching sexual passions, mostly unrequited. The collective common factor is an aversion to the ugliness of the industrialized world and its highly rationalistic and materialistic culture, and a reverence for the natural order and its beauty. The movement had strong appeal for artists and intellectuals, that is, for those who wanted their lives to be something more than a contri-bution to the cold god of industry and capital. It emphasized such concepts as individuality or the personal uniqueness of each and every human being, the importance of memory and the motions of the human heart, the significance of cultures and traditions and the transcendental of beauty, especially as the latter is revealed in nature. H. G. Schenk described it as ‘a half way house between nihilism and Catholicism’.1 It had the potential to be developed in both directions. Thus, Nietzsche and (according to some readings) Heidegger can be found at one end of the spectrum and Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar at the other. While the publication of Aeterni Patris in 1879 fostered a hyper-rationalist neo-scholasticism to out-reason the rationalists, in Baden-Württemberg and Lucerne and among English convert intellectuals and Anglo-Catholics, other currents of thought had been engaged with the concerns of the Romantics. While they did not eschew the importance of truth or the work of the intellect, their starting point was the whole human

BENEDICT XVI

10

person and the quest for self-transcendence. They chose to enter the controversy about the relationship between faith and reason only after deepening their understanding of the relationship between faith and history.2 History in turn opens onto the terrain of memory and tradition and ultimately hermeneutics.

In Germany the centre of this Catholic engagement with Romantic thought was to be found at the University of Tübingen.3 Its leading theologians were Johann Sebastian Drey (1777–1853); Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) and Johannes Evangelist von Kuhn (1806–1887). As Grant Kaplan has noted, they followed the lead of Schelling in rejecting Kant’s project of stripping the positive and historical from Christianity, of proclaiming Christianity as a pure religion of reason.4 They also eschewed the post-Kantian tendency to reduce Christianity to the level of an ethical framework. Drey emphasized that the Catholic faith is a religion of ‘sentiment’ (Gemüth) as well as of reason (Verstand) and that revelation is itself an historical event. This in turn highlighted the importance of the individual in the reception of revelation. Following the logic of Lessing’s Education of the Human Race, Drey concluded that what education is for the individual, revelation is for all of humanity.5 Similarly, von Kuhn described the philosophy of Christian revelation as ‘the presence of Christ revealed historically, not dialectically’.6 Meanwhile Möhler added to this accent on history by positing an organic unity between the Christian community and Christ. As Kaplan explained, for Möhler ‘the chain of history from nineteenth-century Swabia to first-century Palestine is unbroken. In order to be salvific, the saving truth of Christianity must have been present, even in a truncated form, for every generation of believers’.7 This is because access to the truth occurs by living the truth. In a work published in 1988, Joseph Ratzinger was to describe Möhler as ‘the great reviver of Catholic theology after the ravages of the Enlightenment’.8

In addition to the cluster of scholars at Tübingen there were other theologians focused on the issues of the Romantic movement. These included Johann Michael von Sailer (1751–1832), the Bishop of Ratisbon, described by some as ‘the Church father of Bavaria’, his disciple Heinrich Alois Gügler (1782–1827) who became the leader of the romantic school in Lucerne and one of those who influenced Möhler, Franz Xaver von Baader (1765–1841) the Professor of Speculative Theology at Landshut who argued against the Kantian severance of philosophy from religious traditions, and Matthias


11

Joseph Scheeben (1835–1888) a professor at the archdiocesan seminary of Cologne, author of works on nature and grace and the inter-relationship of the Christian mysteries, to name only a selection of the most prominent.9

Virgil Nemoianu has also drawn attention to the fact that in German-speaking lands there were circles of intellectuals who acted as a link between theologians and other members of the literati, such that theologians were not cut off from the currents of thought in the world of the arts, politics and literature, as sometimes happens when theological studies are left to clerics in seminaries. In this con-text he mentions the contribution of Countess Amalie von Gallitzin (1748–1806), along with Franz von Fürstenberg (1729–1810), whose salon in Münster acted as a kind of clearing-house connecting different circles of Catholic intellectuals.10 Their greatest achieve-ment was the conversion of Count Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg (1750–1819) who wrote a 15-volume theology of history from an anti-Enlightenment perspective.11

Such theological engagements with Romantic movement themes never took off in the Roman academies or in Belgium and Holland as they did in nineteenth-century Tübingen, Bavaria and Lucerne, though in Oxford the sermons and tracts of John Henry Newman were covering some of the same territory.12 The Munich-based Jesuit, Erich Przywara (1889–1972), editor of Stimmen der Zeit, had developed an interest in Newman as early as the 1920s and had encouraged Edith Stein to translate Newman’s pre-conversion letters and his Idea of a University into German.13 The cultural critic Theodor Haecker, who had converted to Catholicism in 1921, had also translated works of Newman into German and is one of those specifically cited by Ratzinger as a popular author for seminarians of his time. Haecker is also credited with introducing Sophie Scholl, martyr of the White Rose movement, and others in her circle, to the works of Newman.14 In particular, in the Advent of 1943 Haecker quoted from his translation of Newman’s Advent sermon on the Antichrist (Tract #83) to members of the anti-Nazi student group. Haecker believed Newman was especially valuable for demonstrating the legitimate role of reason in the act of faith and for explaining conscience in relation to other acts of the mind, making conscience an organ and mediator of knowledge.15 He praised Newman for his clear perception of the intellectual difficulties which exist for the faith in the modern world and in particular for his understanding

BENEDICT XVI

12

that these difficulties could not be overcome with ‘a naked syllogism’.16 In 1935 Haecker published Der Christ und die Geschichte which covered themes in the theology of history and in which he paid particular attention to the action of Divine Providence in history. In all, Haecker published some seven books on Newman, mainly translations into German.

When Ratzinger joined the seminary in Freising in 1946 his Prefect of Studies, Alfred Läpple, was working on a dissertation on con-science in the work of Newman.17 Ratzinger has since reflected that for seminarians of his generation ‘Newman’s teaching on conscience became an important foundation for theological personalism, which was drawing us all in its sway. Our image of the human being as well as our image of the Church was permeated by this point of departure’.18 Ratzinger was to take from Newman his understanding of papal authority as a power that comes from revelation to com-plete natural conscience and Newman’s rejection of the popularist interpretations of papal authority as something akin to absolute monarchy.

Not only Läpple was immersed in the works of Newman, but so too was Gottlieb Söhngen (1892–1971), Ratzinger’s teacher in fundamental theology and the director of both of Ratzinger’s theses (the doctorate and habilitationschrift).19 It was under Söhngen that Ratzinger studied Newman’s Grammar of Assent. Söhngen had also worked on the topics of the convertibility of truth and being, on sacramentality, and on the border issues between theology and philosophy, all of which reappear as perennial themes in Ratzinger’s publications.

In an address delivered to mark the centenary of Newman’s death, Ratzinger remarked that even deeper for him than the contribution of Söhngen for his appreciation of Newman was the contribution which Heinrich Fries published in connection with the Jubilee of Chalcedon.20 Here he found access to Newman’s teaching on the development of doctrine, which he regards, along with Newman’s doctrine on conscience, as Newman’s decisive contribution to the renewal of theology. It ‘placed the key in our hand to build historical thought into theology, or much more, [Newman] taught us to think historically in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all developments’.21

While the teaching on the development of doctrine opened a pathway for history in theological thought, the doctrine of conscience


13

gave weight to the emerging body of mid-twentieth-century scholar-ship presented as Christian personalism. Both John Paul II and Ratzinger were heavily influenced by personalist currents in their early academic years. Whereas the young Wojtyła was in contact with the French sources of the movement, and with the work of the Munich-born philosopher Max Scheler, the young Ratzinger came to personalism primarily through the Saarland philosopher Peter Wust (1884–1940) and the Austrian born Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber (1878–1965).

Wust was influenced by St Augustine and St Bonaventure, espe-cially Bonaventure’s doctrine of the concursus Dei, (according to which all created substances have causal powers which cannot be exercised without the concurrence of God), as well as by the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler (1874–1928) and Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). His most famous works were Die Auferstehung der Metaphysik (1920), Naivität und Pietät (1925) and Ungewissheit und Wagnis (1937). In Naivität und Pietät Wust offered an anthro-pology in which the unity of the soul is pre-eminently displayed in the work of memory and conscience and which emphasized the importance of Vernunft (intuition) as a necessary supplement to Verstand (analytic reason) in the apprehension of a hierarchy of values and by which Vernunft is itself conditioned by an attitude of faith. This attitude of faith or piety is in turn understood as the reception of a natural revelation of God to the soul. E. I. Watkin, Wust’s English translator, compared him to Wordsworth: ‘Words-worth’s reverence for things, for human ties, for the soul, as vehicles of a divine power is precisely what Wust describes and demands especially in his use of the word Pietät’.22 Watkin noted that unlike some of the English Romantics, particularly Blake, who represented the deliberate rejection of discursive reason in favour of intuition, or imagination, Wust regarded both Vernunft and Verstand as necessary elements of judgment.

Just as Wust regarded piety or what might otherwise be called a disposition of receptivity to the will of the divine as a necessary element for the proper function of Vernunft, Martin Buber believed that every great culture rests on an original relational incident, on a response to a Thou made at its source. (As John Francis Kobler observed in his Vatican II and Phenomenology: Reflections on the Life-World and the Church the categories of being and existence in scholastic philosophy are expressed by Martin Buber and other

BENEDICT XVI

14

philosophers of dialogue such as Levinas, through the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’).23 This original relational incident creates a special concep-tion of the cosmos which is then handed down to succeeding generations. If however a culture ceases to be centred in the living and continually renewed relational event, in Wust’s terms, if it suffers a loss of piety, then it hardens into a world of disenchanted commodities.24

Buber also drew the young Ratzinger’s attention to the significance of St Augustine for understanding what the Romantics called Bildung or the development of the individual soul. In Between Man and Man (1947) Buber noted that the first philosopher to pose anthropological questions, more than seven centuries after Aristotle, was Augustine. Whereas Aristotle reflected on those things that can be discerned about human beings in general, Augustine was interested in his own self-experience.25 Buber also noted that with Aquinas some nine centuries after Augustine there is a return to a more panoramic vision:

In Aquinas’s world system man is indeed a separate species of a quite special kind, because in him the human soul, the lowest of the spirits, is substantially united with the human body, the highest of physical things, so that man appears as it were as ‘the horizon and the dividing line of spiritual and physical nature’. But Aquinas knows no special problem and no special problem-atic of human life, such as Augustine experienced and expressed with trembling heart. [With Aquinas] the anthropological ques-tion has here come to rest again; in man, housed and unproblematic, no impulse stirs to questioning self-confrontation, or it is soon appeased.26

It was in part this ahistorical character of the work of St Thomas which left Ratzinger with the impression that Thomism is too dry and impersonal, in contrast to the works of Augustine, for whom, ‘the passionate, suffering, questioning man is always right there, and one can identify with him’.27 The impersonal and ahistorical character of Thomism meant that it was not well equipped to deal with mid-twentieth-century existential angst. It needed to be supple-mented with a personalist dimension as Karol Wojtyła and his colleagues at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) had also concluded.28


15

Not only had Buber identified a key focal difference between Augustine and Aquinas which resonated with the pastoral concerns of the young Ratzinger, but Buber was also hostile to a conception of religion as ritualism and dogmatism, and this was another of Ratzinger’s pastoral preoccupations. Instead of writing about Juda-ism from the perspective of dogma and ritual, Buber tried to present the essential qualities of Judaism in terms of a philosophical anthro-pology with an emphasis on how the human person can bridge the gulf between the sacred and profane. Indeed, von Balthasar sug-gested that Buber was driven by a quest to understand what Catholics would call sacramentality – the way that God relates to his people in signs and actions – and that this led him to accept and defend the body of thought that is common to the romantic movement and modern psychology that stresses the significance of the myth-making faculty of the creative imagination.29 In his 1968 bestseller, Introduc-tion to Christianity, Ratzinger was also to approach the topic of Christianity from the perspective of philosophical anthropology. Like Buber he was keen to emphasize the importance of relationality – that dimension of the person which makes him or her unique and unrepeatable.30 He has written that the era of defining the person solely in terms of substantiality (those elements human persons share in common– the human ‘hard drive’ as it were) is over.31

Buber’s affirmation of the need for ‘original relational incidents’ as the source of the human understanding of the cosmos and as the foundations for human cultures also resonated with the thought of Josef Pieper (1904–1997) a professor of philosophical anthropology at the University of Münster who eventually became a friend of Ratzinger. Although a scholar of Aquinas and commonly described as a Thomist, Pieper never accepted the sharp dichotomy between theology and philosophy which was so typical of pre-Conciliar Thomism. In his introduction to the 2008 English translation of Pieper’s Überlieferung: Begriff und Anspruch (On the Concept of Tradition) which was first published in 1970, E. Christian Kopff claimed that Pieper never felt comfortable with the label ‘Thomist’ and could never satisfactorily answer requests from American colle-agues to identify the school of neo-Thomism to which he belonged.32 Nonetheless Pieper was certain that his work was running on a differ-ent trajectory from what he called the ‘Cartesian-hued rationality’ of twentieth-century French neo-Thomism.33 A key to this differ-ence was Pieper’s acceptance of Werner Jaeger’s interpretation of

BENEDICT XVI

16

Aristotle in his Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of his Develop-ment (Oxford University Press, 1934). Pieper believed that the most exciting conclusion of Jaeger’s Aristotle book was that behind Aristotle’s metaphysics there lies the credo ut intelligam.34 Against the ‘Cartesian-hued Neo-Thomists’ Pieper wrote:

The very moment someone engaged in philosophizing ceases to take his bearing from sacred tradition, two things happen to him. First, he loses sight of his true subject, the real world and its structure of meaning, and instead talks about something entirely different, namely, philosophy and philosophers. Second, having forfeited his legitimate hold on the only authoritative tradition, he must illegitimately and (by the way) vainly seek support in the mere facts handed down, in randomly chosen historical ‘material’.35

Echoes of Pieper can be found throughout Ratzinger’s publica-tions, particularly in his treatments of the theological virtues, of hope and history and of faith and reason. Ratzinger has also acknowl-edged that he sought to extend Pieper’s philosophical reflections on faith, hope and love into the theological and spiritual spheres and his Spiritual Exercises were dedicated to Pieper on his 85th birthday.36 Like both Pieper and Söhngen, Ratzinger is interested in the border zones between philosophy and theology and he encour-ages philosophers to take their bearings from sacred tradition. Unlike the Cartesian-hued Thomists or those influenced by Kant, Ratzinger has argued that there is no such thing as pure reason or rationality unencumbered by theological presuppositions. As he expresses the idea, ‘reason has a wax nose’.37

More specifically Pieper argued that it makes an enormous difference to human conduct whether or not one accepts the tradi-tion of the created character of the world and humanity. Only someone who accepts it, who ‘understands mankind essentially as something designed, can stand up against Jean-Paul Sartre’s thesis, which is equally derived from a dogma, has very serious conse-quences, and is by no means purely abstract’.38 For Sartre, and now one might add most contemporary postmoderns, there is ‘no human nature and human beings have no pre-established purpose or meaning’.39 This is a theme to which Ratzinger returns again and


17

again in his treatment of contemporary western culture and the problems generated by contemporary biotechnology. For example, the issue of the morality of creating human embryos for research purposes is ultimately resolved by recourse to theology – either by concluding in the negative, that human life is sacred or concluding in the positive that it is a commodity. In his Foreword to Introduction to Christianity Ratzinger wrote:

If the world and man do not come from a creative intelligence, which stores within itself their measures and plots the path of human existence, then all that is left are traffic rules for human behaviour, which can be discarded or maintained according to their usefulness.40

Josef Pieper’s first book was inspired by a lecture on Goethe and Thomas Aquinas, which was delivered by Romano Guardini (1885–1968) at the Castle Rothenfels on the Main in 1924. The lecture was titled ‘About the Classical Spirit’. Guardini held posts at the University of Berlin (1923–1939), Tübingen (1945–1948) and Munich (1948–1962) and was one of the great scholars of twentieth-century Catholic Germany. He was forced to resign his post in 1939 and for a time was silenced by the Nazis. Karl Rahner described him as a ‘Christian humanist who led Germany’s Catholics out of an intellectual and cultural ghetto and into the contemporary world’.41 Similarly, Ratzinger remarked:

His flair for seizing upon philosophical questions of life and existence of the time between and after the world wars, and illustrating them with literary themes or with great figures of the faith, enabled theology in its Catholic form to remain a dialogue partner in the academic world . . . . He penetrated areas shunned by scholastic theology.42

Guardini wrote both his doctoral and habilitation theses on St Bonaventure. The doctorate was on salvation in St Bonaventure and the habilitation thesis was on the illumination of the mind in St Bonaventure. Both of these topics and the general theological place of St Bonaventure made an impact on the young Ratzinger whose own habilitationschrift became a study of the theology of

BENEDICT XVI

18

history in St Bonaventure. This however is not the only contribution of Guardini to Ratzinger’s intellectual formation. Guardinian themes appear like a watermark on the pages of Ratzinger’s essays.

One of the first books Ratzinger read when he began his theologi-cal studies was Romano Guardini’s The Spirit of the Liturgy. In the year 2000 he published his own work with the same title with ‘the intention of translating what Guardini did at the end of the First World War, in a totally different historical situation’.43 In the preface he described Guardini’s work as having helped him and others of his generation to ‘rediscover the liturgy in all its beauty, hidden wealth and time-transcending grandeur’.44 Guardini’s book The Lord (1937) also offered Ratzinger’s generation a new approach to the spiritual interpretation of Scripture. Of this Ratzinger has written:

Guardini recognized that the liturgy is the true, living environ-ment for the Bible and that the Bible can be properly understood only in this living context from which it first emerged. The texts of the Bible, this great book of Christ, are not to be seen as the literary products of some scribes at their desks, but rather as the words of Christ himself delivered in the celebration of holy Mass.45

Further, Guardini’s The Essence of Christianity (1938) can be read as a precursor to Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity (1968). As Ratzinger was later to write, ‘we were taught by Guardini, [that] the essence of Christianity is not an idea, not a system of thought, not a plan of action. The essence of Christianity is a Person: Jesus Christ himself ’.46 This principle became enshrined in the Conciliar docu-ment Dei Verbum (1965) which Ratzinger helped to draft and formed the central theme of his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (2007).

In his criticisms of liberation theology Ratzinger also made use of Guardini’s reflections on the relationship between thought and being, especially Guardini’s emphasis on the priority of logos over ethos and in various places he has used the Guardinian concepts ‘concrete-living’ and ‘polarities’ (a concept also used by Erich Przywara). In Perché siamo ancora nella Chiesa, Ratzinger wrote:

Man is open to the truth, but the truth is not in some place but rather in the concrete-living, in the figure of Jesus Christ. This concrete-living demonstrates truth precisely through the fact that


19

it is the unity of what are apparent opposites, since the logos and the a-logon are united in it.47

Not only did Guardini inspire Pieper and the young Ratzinger but he also taught Hans Urs von Balthasar at the University of Berlin. Balthasar was later to publish a work of tribute to him under the title Romano Guardini. Reform aus dem Ursprung.48 As a Jesuit student in the years 1931–1937 von Balthasar had his own taste of the dryness of scholastic theology and through the inspiration of his confrères Erich Przywara and Henri de Lubac, he set his studies on a radically different course. Przywara, one of those responsible for introducing Newman to a German audience, empathized with von Balthasar’s intellectual frustration and counselled him to learn the scholastic philosophy with ‘an attitude of serene detachment’. Accordingly, von Balthasar claims to have sat through classes on scholasticism, with his nose defiantly glued to the works of the non-scholastic Augustine, and with his ears plugged.49 While Przywara got him through his studies of pre-Conciliar scholasticism, de Lubac, he wrote, ‘showed us the way beyond the scholastic stuff to the Fathers of the Church’, and ‘while all the others went off to play football’, he, Jean Daniélou and Henri Bouillard read Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor.50

De Lubac was influenced by Maurice Blondel’s account of tradi-tion as presented in his History and Dogma (1903) and Blondel in turn had been influenced by Newman whose work had been intro-duced to a French audience by Henri Bremond. Blondel also came to know of the Tübingen school through Georges Goyau, who was an author of an important study on Johann Adam Möhler. In his introduction to the English translation of Blondel’s The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, Alexander Dru (a close friend of Theodor Haecker thanks to their mutual dedication to Kierkeg-aard) noted that the very first edition of Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne (a journal owned by Blondel and to which he was a frequent contributor) ‘pointed to the need to break away from the narrow Latin, Roman and Mediterranean conception of Catholicism by pointing to the relevance of the German Catholic writers of the Romantic period’.51 He also noted that Blondel, Bremond and Goyau – among others – were ‘carrying on (unbeknown, at first, to themselves) the tradition of Tübingen (and in some respects therefore of Newman)’.52

BENEDICT XVI

20

Thus the Catholic engagement with Romantic movement themes was to reach France in the first half of the twentieth century, and it found expression not only in journals like Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne but also in the publications of the great literary laymen such as Charles Péguy, Georges Bernanos, François Mauriac and Paul Claudel. While studying under de Lubac in Lyon-Fourvierve (1933–1937), von Balthasar was introduced to the literature of Péguy, Bernanos, Mauriac and Claudel and he set about translating their works, as well as de Lubac’s Catholicisme, into German. The last three of these authors have been cited by Ratzinger as popular with German seminarians of his generation. Mark Bosco has argued that these lay Catholic literati became fashionable in the intellectual salons of Paris between the two world wars precisely because their Catholicism was ‘never served up with triumphant, epistemological certainty or as morally uplifting drama’ but rather as ‘a place where the mysterious irruptions of grace might shine forth or manifest in profound ways’.53 These artists created ‘a specific vision of French Catholicism, one which was prophetic in denouncing both the rationalism of the state as well as the bourgeois Christianity that made a too-easy concourse with industrial society’ and one might add, Vichy.54 With an emphasis on aesthetic considerations over rational modes of discourse this vision ‘offered both a critique of the modern state and a powerful philosophical and artistic alternative’.55 It addressed itself to the whole range of human experience, including, but not exclusively, the intellectual.

The common theme running from Newman and the Tübingen scholars through to the names of Guardini, Blondel, de Lubac, Przywara, von Balthasar, Péguy, Bernanos, Mauriac, Claudel and ultimately Ratzinger is an interest in how the human being situated in time and in a specific cultural milieu connects to the divine. They were all interested in the Romantic theme of Bildung or the develop-ment of the soul in all of its multi-dimensional complexity. The Boethian definition of a person as an ‘individual substance of a rational nature’, though accurate as definitions go, was a dry husk with which to confront the existential trauma of the twentieth century. In the late 1960s, with the arrival of the sexual revolution and wide-scale revolt from magisterial teaching, the questioning of the very structures and traditions of the Church, and clerical enthusiasm for pastoral projects aimed at accommodating the litur-gical practices of the Church to those of contemporary pop culture,


21

a new intellectual coalition was formed around de Lubac, von Balthasar and Ratzinger. It took a concrete form in the creation of the journal Communio in 1972. In addition to re-publishing the literary works of the great twentieth-century laymen (Claudel et al.) in some dozen languages, the Communio circle of scholars offered a hermeneutic of continuity for the interpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

One of the earliest examples of the application of this ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ can be found in Ratzinger’s 1969 critique of the treat-ment of freedom and anthropology in the Conciliar document Gaudium et spes (1965).56 He argued that while the document offered a daring new theological anthropology which was to be celebrated, the presentation of the anthropology was poor, and indeed he went so far as to observe that some of the language in the section on free-dom was ‘downright Pelagian’.57 The sections of the document he strongly affirmed were those owing their inspiration to the work of Henri de Lubac, particularly de Lubac’s Catholicisme (1938), which he described as ‘a key reading event’ that gave him ‘a new way of looking at theology and faith as such’.58 By emphasizing the Christocentric paragraphs in Gaudium et spes influenced by de Lubac’s Catholicisme, he effectively closed off the secularizing loopholes in the document.59

While de Lubac’s ecclesiological works form much of the founda-tion of the Communio ecclesiology, they are buttressed by von Balthasar’s work on the Petrine Office and his notion of a symphony of different missions in the life of the Church. Since the symphony needs many sections (different intellectual or spiritual charisms), von Balthasar’s ecclesiology exhibits a quality of being both anti-clericalist in orientation while at the same time defending the sacred hierarchy by finding a place for it within the whole. As Ratzinger himself has written, ‘von Balthasar had a great reverence for the Petrine, for the hierarchical structure of the Church. But he knew, too, that this is not her entire nor her deepest aspect’.60

The influence of the ecclesiology of de Lubac and von Balthasar is palpable in Ratzinger’s treatment of issues in this territory but one finds that de Lubac and von Balthasar have also influenced Ratzinger’s understanding of revelation and in the case of de Lubac, of scripture. Above all Ratzinger shares with von Balthasar an interest in beauty as a transcendental property of being, and in love as a theological virtue, and indeed the form of all virtue. In 1985

BENEDICT XVI

22

it was Ratzinger who hosted von Balthasar’s 80th birthday party in Rome and in 1988 it was Ratzinger who delivered von Balthasar’s funeral homily in Lucerne.61 In Milestones – Memoirs 1927–1977, Ratzinger remarked that meeting Balthasar was for him the begin-ning of a lifelong friendship and that never again has he found anyone with such a comprehensive and humanistic education as Balthasar and de Lubac. He concluded, ‘I cannot even begin to say how much I owe to my encounter with them’.62

One final figure who deserves to be mentioned in any account of the intellectual antecedents and mentors of the young Ratzinger is the German philosopher and theologian, Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889–1977). Von Hildebrand was brought up in a Protestant family but converted to Catholicism in 1914 and became a prominent Catholic intellectual opposed to Hitler’s plans for the future of Europe. He was one of those German scholars who spent the late 1930s and early 40s on the run from Nazi assassination squads and ultimately reached safety in the United States. By the 1950s he was back in Munich as a member of the parish of St Georg where the young Fr Ratzinger was an assistant priest. He and his wife Alice ran a salon that sounds rather like that of the Countess Amalie von Gallitzin. They brought together intellectuals from across the world and Ratzinger would attend their meetings from time to time. In 2000 he wrote the preface to Alice von Hildebrand’s A Soul of a Lion, her biography of her husband, and in it he referred to his attendance of the occasional lectures given at the Hildebrand home in Munich. He specifically remembered one of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s lectures on beauty’s philosophical and spiritual signifi-cance and he concluded that ‘the joy and freshness of his under-standing of Catholic doctrine was contagious and stood in marked contrast to the dryness of a type of scholasticism that seemed to have become stale and brittle’.63

Von Hildebrand’s popularity as a heroic anti-Nazi intellectual fell into decline in the 1970s following his defence of the traditional Latin Mass which was in most places suppressed between 1969 and 1987. Von Hildebrand never questioned the legitimacy of the rite of 1969 but he did regard aspects of its use as problematic. He rhetori-cally asked whether people better meet Christ by soaring up to Him, or by dragging Him down into their workaday world? Ratzinger was later to be critical of the tendency in contemporary liturgy to


23

‘bring God down to the level of the people’ and was to describe such actions as a form of ‘apostasy’. In The Meaning of Christian Brother-hood and in Principles of Catholic Theology Ratzinger also gave significant space to what he described as the authentically ‘biblical’ inspiration of von Hildebrand’s depiction of the Christian attitude of readiness to change and convert to the radical newness of Christ. This topic pervades von Hildebrand’s publications but its most extensive treatment can be found in his Transformation in Christ.64 Ratzinger’s criticisms of Karl Rahner’s account of human freedom in Hearers of the Word are focused on this theme of conversion and transformation in Christ.

The expression ‘the Rhine flowed into the Tiber’ is a well-worn cliché used to explain what happened within the Catholic Church in the first half of the 1960s. Many ideas which had been percolating in the theology academies of Munich, Lucerne and Tübingen rose to the surface as the bishops of the world, or at least a significant majority of them, came to accept that neo-scholasticism had its limitations.65 It was the ideas of those who were humanists by disposi-tion, interested in anthropological questions, often multidisciplinary and above all concerned to understand the theological significance of history and tradition, which became ascendant.

None of the above is intended to suggest that Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is neatly pigeon-holed as the Tübingen School’s most illustrious heir, or a German apogee of John Henry Newman, or the Bavarian soul mate of the Swiss von Balthasar. Like all great scholars, he is not so easily labeled and packaged. However, one might at least conclude that there is some degree of truth in these tags, and that it is not possible to understand Ratzinger without a certain familiarity with the Romantic reaction against the rationalism of the Enlighten-ment and with the Catholic wing of the Romantic tradition. Indeed, it helps to have knowledge of the Romantic movement generally, including the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, with whom Ratzinger is a frequent interlocutor.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner has suggested that Ratzinger is the ‘Mozart of theology’, and while it is true that Ratzinger does not jettison the classical repertoire, given the influence of the Romantic movement on German theology, coupled with Ratzinger’s recogni-tion that the failure to provide an adequate account of the mediation of history in the realm of ontology represented the single greatest

BENEDICT XVI

24

crisis for Catholic theology in the twentieth century, a more appro-priate analogy might be that of a more romantically-inclined composer, such as Carl Maria von Weber or Bruckner. Nonetheless, Ratzinger’s work does have the luminosity and directness of Mozart, and, of course, a Mozart composition like the 40th symphony in G minor has its romantic moments.66 Ratzinger permits the intro-duction of Romantic themes into the classical repertoire without abandoning its essential elements.

25

CHAPTER 2

THE HUMANIST CULTURE OF THE INCARNATION

A significant attribute of theologians influenced by the Romantic movement is an interest in culture, understood in all three German senses of the term, as Kultur or civilization, Geist, or the spirit or ethos of institutions, and Bildung, as self-cultivation or education. Whereas the neo-scholastics tended to ignore the concept altogether, and to respond to the rationalism of the eighteenth century with a scholastic counter-rationalism, the Romantics were more interested in understanding the social and liturgical embodiment of Christian ideas or what might be called the ‘lifestyle’ implications of the choice for or against Christianity. While the scholastics tried to prove that Christianity was more rational than any alternative on the market, the Catholic romantics tried to prove that the opportunities for self-development (Bildung), were greater with the Christian, in particular, Catholic, option. However the Catholic tradition is itself complex. It is the home of more than one spiritual family. Balthasar compared it to a symphony. There are, for example, Carmelite, Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan, Ignatian and Salesian spiritualities for those in religious Orders and many derivatives of these in the lay ecclesial movements. The approach to the realm of culture, especially culture as Bildung, varies both across and within the spiritual families.

In his essay Zwischen Religion und Kultur written in the twilight moment of scholasticism in 1962, Erich Przywara observed that there is a tension or polarity between religion and culture which has run through the whole history of Christianity.1 Beginning with Justin and Tertullian, he noted that their opposition might be categorized as the either/or between religion as the ultimate strength of culture

BENEDICT XVI

26

and culture as religion’s opponent. Similarly, in the early Middle Ages, he noted the acute contrast between the monasteries of Cluny and Clairvaux and the still more acute contrast between Peter Abelard and St Bernard. Cluny is renowned for the visual splendour of its architecture, Clairvaux is famous for its austerity. Abelard is remembered for his sensuality (not only because of his affair with the beautiful and brilliant Héloïse but also for the sensual beauty of his musical and poetic compositions), while it is known that it took a decision of a General Chapter of St Bernard’s Order to make him mitigate the austerities of his regime at Clairvaux. Przywara observed that these polarities fed into the chaos of the Reformation, when the contrast is between the culturally resplendent church of the Renais-sance and later the Baroque and the iconoclastic ‘imperceptible and invisible God’ of the Protestants. Finally, Przywara concluded that nineteenth-century intellectual history was characterized by a division between the idea of the pursuit of scientific and cultural knowledge as a kind of religion in itself, and the gradually ascendant ideals of the Catholic romantics of science and culture which have their immanent ideals in religion, especially in Christendom.

Przywara’s summary may be brought up to date by adding to it the fact that in the post-Conciliar Church there has been a division between those who want to baptize contemporary mass culture and those who regard this strategy as a major cause of the dramatic decline in the numbers of those participating in the sacramental life of the Church after the Council. Indeed, in the post-Conciliar era these two positions have grown so far apart that it is no longer accu-rate to describe them as poles held in tension. While whole diocesan liturgical commissions spend their time trying to make the liturgical practices of the Church more closely embody elements of contempo-rary popular culture, there are those like Cardinal James Stafford who claim that ‘every world religion is trembling before the advances of American pop culture’, and thus that pop culture is actually toxic to the flourishing of the faith.2 Today the contrast is no longer between austerity and sensual splendour but between those who regard beauty as something objectively discernible and those who regard it as a mere matter of taste or personal preference.

Ratzinger is firmly on the side of those who think like Stafford and indeed his opposition to the project of accommodating the cultural life of the Church to that of contemporary mass culture is possibly


27

that element of his intellectual work for which he is most famous. Certainly no other Cardinal of his generation has written so exten-sively on this topic. He has cautioned that where the imprint of the Catholic faith remains in a culture one should not try to destroy it in the zeal for renewal – it should not be pushed aside as ‘outmoded junk’.3 In taking this stance, he has been one of the very few theolo-gians of his generation not to follow the so-called ‘correlationist’ pastoral strategies associated with the theology of Karl Rahner, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Edward Schillebeeckx and David Tracy which sought to attach the faith to some pierres d’attente (toothing stones) jutting out from modern and post-modern cultural formations.

Often the argument is made that some element of these modern and post-modern formations actually had a Christian foundation and thus that there is some point within them to which the Christian faith can graft itself. However Balthasar and many of the Catholic literary leaders of the first half of the twentieth century have been sceptical of this kind of strategy. In the following passage which starkly illus-trates the difference between the Communio theologians and the cor-relationists, Balthasar dismissed the idea of attaching the faith to anything which is a mere mutation of a Christian idea or practice:

The Gospel and the Church are plundered like a fruit tree, but the fruits, once separated from the tree, go rotten and are no longer fruitful. The ‘ideas’ of Christ cannot be separated from Him, and so they are of no use to the world unless they are fought for by Christians who believe in Christ, or at least by men who are inwardly, though unconsciously, open to Him and governed by Him. Radiance is only possible when the radiant centre is permanently active and alive. There can be no shining from stars long dead.4

Although Ratzinger has not explicitly endorsed this judgment of Balthasar, his comments on the theme of culture strongly resonate with it. In his own analysis Ratzinger begins with the observation that the slate of the human mind is never blank. It bears the stamp of a community that provides patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. In a statement that sounds evocative of Michael Polanyi’s tacit theory of knowledge, Ratzinger defines culture as the ‘system of notions and thought patterns that preconditions the individual

BENEDICT XVI

28

human being to judge in certain ways’.5 With Henri de Lubac he rejects the proposition that the realm of culture can ever be theologically neutral. Culture at its core means an opening to the divine.6 If the divine is not the Holy Trinity it will be some substitute for it. The Catholic faith is not some intellectual system which can be tied on to and expressed in any cultural form. For Ratzinger, ‘the Church is its own cultural subject for the faithful’.7 He expressly rejects the idea that national or historical cultures might allocate their own body to the faith. According to such a vision the faith would always have to live from borrowed cultures, which remain in the end somehow external and capable of being cast off. The culture of such a faith, its practices, would be debased, becoming ‘a mere exchangeable shell’ and the faith itself would be reduced to the standing of ‘a disincar-nated spirit ultimately void of reality’.8 Such modes of thinking are typical of the eighteenth century, reducing culture to mere form and religion to either pure emotion or pure thought.9 Ratzinger prefers the expression ‘interculturality’ (the meeting of two different cultures and a constructive search for the truth embodied in both) to ‘incul-turation’ (which may imply the notion of hooking up the faith to a new exchangeable shell).

Ratzinger believes that the uniqueness of Christian culture is rooted in the Incarnation and that all of its specific characteristics disintegrate when this belief is eclipsed.10 The Incarnation means that the invisible God enters into the visible world so that those who are bound to matter can know him. In paragraph 22 of the document Gaudium et spes of the Second Vatican Council, the significance of the Incarnation is expressed in the following manner:

The Truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father, and His Love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.

Ratzinger further observes that the Incarnation is rightly under-stood only when it is seen within the broader context of creation, history, and the new world. Only then does it become clear that the senses belong to faith, that the new seeing does not abolish them, but leads them to their original purpose.11 The International Theological


29

Commission under Ratzinger’s leadership expressed the position in the following paragraph:

In the last times inaugurated at Pentecost, the risen Christ, Alpha and Omega, enters into the history of peoples: from that moment, the sense of history and thus of culture is unsealed and the Holy Spirit reveals it by actualizing and communicating it to all. The Church is the sacrament of this revelation and its communication. It recenters every culture into which Christ is received, placing it in the axis of the world which is coming, and restores the union broken by the Prince of this world. Culture is thus eschatologically situated; it tends towards its completion in Christ, but it cannot be saved except by associating itself with the repudiation of evil.12

Aidan Nichols has summarized the metaphysical foundations of what Ratzinger calls the ‘humanism of the Incarnation’ in the following manner:

This polarity structure of all existence, while manifesting the ontological difference between the being of the creature and that of the Creator, also suggests a positive moment where the creature displays a certain likeness and so comparability with its God. For between these poles there plays a fullness of inner life – a continuous epiphany of the divine likeness.13

Nonetheless, not every variety of Catholic culture has breathed this humanism. There periodically arise spiritual movements which are suspicious of these positive moments and exaggerate humanity’s fallen condition. The concern is that people will grow to love the world too much or claim too much for human nature. Jansenism was one such movement in the modern era which had a particularly destructive effect on Catholic culture in eighteenth-century France and nineteenth-century Ireland and countries of the New World that came under the influence of Irish Orders of religious. The two areas it affected most deeply were liturgy and sexuality. The Jansenists favoured austerity in both of these areas of social life and were to cause what French psychologists called La Maladie Catholique – an inability to successfully integrate one’s sexuality into one’s overall personal development. The late twentieth-century liberation theo-logy movement also had a tendency to suppress the role of the sensual

BENEDICT XVI

30

in Catholic culture and to treat an interest in the transcendental of beauty as a peculiarly bourgeois vice, inconsistent with a preferential option for the poor.

In a reflection on the earliest disputes within the Church about art and beauty, Ratzinger observed that ‘iconoclasm rests on a one-sided apophatic theology, which recognizes only the Wholly Other-ness of the God beyond all images and words, a theology that in the final analysis regards revelation as the inadequate human reflection of what is eternally imperceptible’.14 He concluded that ‘what seems like the highest humility toward God turns into pride, allowing God no word and permitting him no real entry into history . . . matter is absolutized and thought of as completely impervious to God, as mere matter, and thus deprived of its dignity’.15 One might say, using Przywara’s metaphors, that Ratzinger is personally closer to the spirit of Cluny than Clairvaux. He suggests that a ‘theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous’ because ‘blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental: they necessarily are reflected in his theology’.16 He believes that ‘the only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two argu-ments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb’.17 Thus, ‘[n]othing can bring us into close contact with the beauty of Christ Himself other than the world of beauty created by faith, and light that shines out from the faces of the saints, through whom His own light becomes visible’.18 Even more specifically he has written that the ‘greatness of Western music from Gregorian chant to polyphony to the Baroque age, to Bruckner and beyond’ is, ‘the most immediate and the most evident verifica-tion that history has to offer of the Christian image of mankind and of the Christian dogma of redemption’.19

This is not a novel position in the Catholic tradition but follows a long line of authorities, including St Augustine, St Bonaventure, Hugh of St Victor, John Henry Newman and Hans Urs von Balthasar who have regarded the aesthetic moment as essentially theophanic. Behind these stand the influence of Plato for whom the beautiful and the good coincide. In this context Ratzinger has been influenced by what he terms ‘the magnificent interpretation of Platonic eros in Josef Pieper’s Begeisterung und göttlicher Wahnsinn: Über den platonischen Dialog Phaidros’.20 As Ratzinger summarizes Plato: ‘through the appearance of the beautiful we are wounded in our innermost being, and that wound grips us and takes us beyond ourselves; it stirs


31

longing into flight and moves us toward the truly Beautiful, to the Good in itself ’.21 Ratzinger also quotes the fourteenth-century Byzantine theologian Nicholas Cabasilas:

When men have a longing so great that it surpasses human nature and eagerly desire and are able to accomplish things beyond human thought, it is the Bridegroom himself who has wounded them. Into their eyes he himself has sent a ray of his beauty. The rise of the wound is evidence of the arrow, and the longing points to the one who has shot the arrow.22

Ratzinger further notes that Cabasilas distinguished between two different kinds of knowledge: one is knowing through instruction, which remains second-hand and does not put the knower in contact with reality itself. The second kind of knowledge, in contrast, is through personal experience, through contact with the things them-selves.23 Ratzinger acknowledges the importance of the first form of knowledge which he associated with the discipline of theology, but adds that we must not despise the impact produced by the heart’s encounter with beauty, or to reject it as a true form of knowledge. To do so, he suggests, would be to ‘dry up both faith and theology’.24 This was essentially von Balthasar’s criticism of post-Tridentine theology. It became too rationalistic. The head was severed from the heart. Piety was regarded as something emotional and not subject to rational scrutiny and theology was something rational and not really associated with matters of the heart.

In The Spirit of the Liturgy Ratzinger applies this Platonic theory to a broad-brush history of Western art. He argues that in the art of icons, as well as in the great Western paintings of the Romanesque and Gothic periods, the experience described by Cabasilas has gone from being an interior event to being an external form and thus has become communicable.25 However, he observes that ‘this kind of Platonism, transformed as it is by the Incarnation, largely disappears from the West after the thirteenth century, so that now the art of painting strives first and foremost to depict events that have taken place, rather than being essentially epiphanic’.26 With the Renaissance ‘we see the development of the aesthetic in the modern sense, the vision of a beauty that no longer points beyond itself but is content in the end with itself, the beauty of the appearing thing’.27 At the same time ‘a nostalgia for the pre-Christian gods emerges, for a world

BENEDICT XVI

32

without the pain of the cross and the fear of sin’, which Ratzinger suggests may have become ‘too overpowering in the images of the late Middle Ages’.28 Today, he concludes, Christian art stands between two fires:

It must oppose the cult of the ugly, which says that everything else, anything beautiful, is a deception and that only the depiction of what is cruel, base, and vulgar is the truth and true enlightenment. And it must withstand the deceptive beauty that diminishes man instead of making him great and that, for that very reason, is false.29

For there to exist both an emotional and theological equilibrium in specifically religious art, Ratzinger argues that every image of Christ must contain a reference to his crucifixion, resurrection and return in glory. While different emphases may be possible one of the three aspects should never be eclipsed by another, and in the different emphases the Paschal Mystery as a whole must be plainly evident.30 Spiritual pathologies arise when there is a lop-sided emphasis on one or other of the Paschal mysteries. Jansenism, for example, could be described as a spiritual disposition fixated on Good Friday.

The fact that both the crucifixion and the return in glory can be represented highlights the paradoxical nature of beauty. In Holy Week, the Church uses an antiphon taken from Isaiah 3:2: ‘He had no beauty, no majesty to draw our eyes, no grace to make us delight in Him’, and yet Psalm 44 speaks of ‘the fairest of the children of men upon whose lips graciousness is poured’. In a reflection on these dramatically contrasting scriptural passages, Ratzinger concludes that ‘the beauty of truth appears in him [Christ], the beauty of God himself, who powerfully draws us and inflicts on us the wound of Love, as it were, a holy Eros that enables us to go forth, with and in the Church, his Bride, to meet the Love who calls us’.31

While the art of painting in the post-Renaissance era has to some degree lost this erotic quality, music has suffered an even greater diminution of its epiphanic potential and in the particular case of rock music Ratzinger believes that it represents a regression to the paganism of the Dionysian cults. He rejects the idea, popular with contemporary evangelical Protestants and even Catholic liturgists, especially those formed in the 1970s, that form and substance can be easily separated, and thus that the only problem with rock music


33

from a Christian point of view is the explicitly sexual and sometimes crude lyrics. He finds the music itself objectionable and claims that it has no place in the liturgy. In various publications he recommends Calvin M. Johansson’s, Music and Ministry: A Biblical Counterpoint.32 In this work Johansson identifies a tendency of liturgists to oscillate between the poles of aestheticism and pragmatism. He defines aes-theticism as a preoccupation with beauty for its own sake which runs into the danger of idolatry, while pragmatism creates a false dichotomy between medium and message, music and gospel, in which each may go its own way without regard for the other.33 The pragma-tist ‘uses music uncritically as a message lubricator, sweetener or psychological conditioner’ and ‘emasculates the gospel by using commercialized music to sell it’.34 Such a medium, he argues, ‘kills the message’.

Similarly, Ratzinger uses the expression ‘utility music’ to describe popular music which is used in Church services as a carrot to entice worshippers and the intellectual defence of this practice as ‘pastoral pragmatism’. He also uses the expression ‘sacro-pop’ which he takes from H. J. Burbach’s articles in the Internationale katholische Zeitschrift.35 In his books The Feast of Faith and a New Song for the Lord one can find passionate criticisms of ‘sacro-pop’, ‘parish tea-party liturgies’, ‘pastoral pragmatism’, ‘primitive emotionalism’ and ‘utility music’. In a lecture on ‘Theological Problems in Church Music’ delivered to the Church Music Department of the State Conservatory of Music at Stuttgart, he further spoke of puritanical functionalism as a first millstone around the neck of Church music and the functionalism of accommodation (presumably to the norms of contemporary mass culture) as the second millstone.36 In making these judgments he acknowledged his debt to the arguments of Hugo Staudinger and Wolfgang Behler, the authors of Chance and Risk of the Present, to the effect that the machine has become the universal stereotype for human beings and thus all of reality, including art, is reduced to quantitative dimensions and has fallen under the laws of the marketplace.37 He acknowledges that Karl Rahner and many other Catholic intellectuals of the Conciliar generation were of the view that there is nothing wrong with the use of utility music, but he disagrees. He quotes Adorno’s judgement that ‘the fundamental characteristic of popular music is standardization’ and describes this as ‘incompatible with the culture of the Gospels, which seek to take us out of the dictatorship of money, of making, of mediocrity, and

BENEDICT XVI

34

brings us to the discipline of truth, which is precisely what pop music eschews’.38 He rhetorically asks whether it is a pastoral success when Catholics are capable of following the trend of mass culture and thus share the blame for its making people immature or irresponsible.39 Even more dramatically, Ratzinger has declared that the trivializa-tion of the faith by following the trends of mass culture ‘is not a new inculturation, but the denial of its culture and prostitution with the non culture’.40 He observes that disputes about music are at least as old as the conflict between Dionysian and Apollonian music in classical Greece, and that while Apollo is not Christ, Plato’s concern about the music of the Dionysian cults remains relevant today since contemporary musical forms have become a ‘decisive vehicle of a counter religion’.41 Rock concerts are ‘anti-liturgies where people are yanked out of themselves and where they can forget the dullness and commonness of everyday life’.42 They are enterprises to make money out of the human need for an experience of self-transcendence:

People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit’s sober inebriation seems to have little chance when the self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments.43

In a dissertation on dogmatic theology and the ecclesial practice of music, J. Andrew Edwards concluded that Ratzinger’s concern with the philosophical anthropology reflected in Dionysian music leads into his concern that music’s portrayal of subjectivity may point toward a soteriology that is alien to the Christian position.44 In other words, rock music is seeking freedom in ways that are contrary to Christian notions of freedom and responsibility. Edwards notes that Ratzinger’s antagonism toward rock music is ‘not therefore an aesthetic decision based on his own subjective taste, but is rooted in his detection of theological doctrines lying beneath the surface of these musical practices which are diametrically opposed to the Christian faith’.45 In particular Edwards concluded that Ratzinger’s use of the Apollonian-Dionysian paradigm flows from his concern


35

that rock music’s engagement with the body may contradict the incarna-tional emphasis on the rational Word redeeming the sensual.46

It is difficult to find other such sustained critiques of the rock music industry in Catholic theological circles, though the non-Catholic English philosopher Roger Scruton has reached similar conclusions to Ratzinger in his cultural studies and the Anglican theologian Catherine Pickstock has written theological analyses of recent music history which resonate with some of Ratzinger’s concerns.47 In a lecture delivered in Cambridge on the morality of pop, Scruton argued that much contemporary pop music arrests its listeners in a state of adolescent psychological development. In the essay ‘Youth Culture’s Lament’ he described the pop star as someone who excites his fans to every kind of artificial ecstasy, knowing that nothing will change for the fan, that the void will always remain unfulfilled. In words that could have been written by Ratzinger he concluded:

This music is not designed for listening. It is the accompanying soundtrack to a drama, in which the singer, strange as it may seem, becomes something like the sacred presence of a cult, the incarna-tion of a force beyond music, which visits the world in human form, recruiting followers the way religious leaders recruit their sects. The pop star’s appearance on stage is not like that of an orchestra or an actor: it is a ‘real presence’, an incarnation of an otherworldly being, greeted by a release of collective emotion comparable to the Dionysiac orgies depicted by Euripides.48

Scruton also argues that to possess a culture is not only to possess a body of knowledge or expertise; it is not simply to have accumu-lated facts, references and theories. It is to possess a sensibility, a response, a way of seeing things, which is in some way redemptive.49 Thus culture is not merely a matter of academic knowledge but of a mode of participation which changes not only thoughts and beliefs but perceptions and emotions. This is especially so of one’s musical culture.

While Scruton and Ratzinger reached the same sociological conclusions about the rock music industry, the Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton has made some very similar observations to Ratzinger about the banality of mass culture, and its tendency to foster the psychological conditions of alienation and homelessness.

BENEDICT XVI

36

In the following paragraph de Botton compared McDonald’s to Westminster Cathedral:

The restaurant’s true talent lay in the generation of anxiety. The harsh lighting, the intermittent sounds of frozen fries being sunk into vats of oil and the frenzied behaviour of the counter staff invited thoughts of the loneliness and meaninglessness of existence in a random and violent universe. Conversely, after 10 minutes in [Westminster] cathedral, a range of ideas that would have been inconceivable outside began to assume an air of reasonableness. Under the influence of the marble, the dark-ness and the incense, it seemed entirely probable that Jesus was the son of God and had walked across the Sea of Galilee. In the presence of alabaster statues of the Virgin Mary set against rhythms of red, green and blue marble, it was no longer surprising to think that an angel might at any moment choose to descend through the layers of dense London cumulus, enter through a window in the nave, blow a golden trumpet and make an announcement in Latin about a forthcoming celestial event.50

Similarly, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ratzinger wrote:

The windows of the Gothic cathedrals keep out the garishness of the light outside, while concentrating that light and using it so that the whole history of God in relation to man, from creation to the Second Coming, shines through. The walls of the church, in interplay with the sun, become an image in their own right, the iconostasis of the West, lending the place a sense of the sacred that can touch the hearts even of agnostics.51

Paradoxically, this reflection of Ratzinger on Gothic architecture resonates more with the ideas of prominent non-Catholic philoso-phers like de Botton and Scruton, than with the ideas of many of Ratzinger’s fellow theologians. For example, on the so-called ‘right’ of the theological spectrum, Thomists ‘of the strict observance’ tend to be rather unmoved by concerns about mass culture. Many are of the view that since St Thomas did not spend any time on the topic of culture, it really cannot be all that important. They also have a tendency to draw distinctions between form and substance and to regard only matters of substance as important. Ratzinger’s aesthetic


37

judgments are then treated merely as matters of taste. Implicitly, in this context, a Cartesian metaphysics is joined together with a Kantian aesthetics. At the same time, on the ‘left’ of the theological spectrum, the liberation theologians have been completely hostile to this aspect of Ratzinger’s theology. They regard it as Euro-centric and elitist. Minlib Dahll’s claim that the majority of Catholics do not listen to Mozart or Beethoven, nor do they have any interest in classical Greek and Roman culture and that the Credo of the B Minor Mass by Bach is not holier or more beautiful than a Zulu dance is an expression of this perspective.52

Whenever Ratzinger addresses the topic of culture it is often helpful to ask whether he is speaking primarily of European cultures which are modern and/or post-modern, or the pre-modern and modernizing cultures of the post-colonial countries of Asia, Africa and the Pacific. In relation to the second, the macro level theological issue is that of the criteria to be applied to the baptism of elements of pre-Christian cultures. One of the most famous examples of the Church contending with this issue comes from the period of the first Jesuit missions in China. Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) argued that Christian missionaries would be well advised to dress in the robes of Chinese scholars, and instead of presenting Christianity as some-thing intrinsically linked to European culture, they should try to graft Christianity onto compatible stems in the Confucian tradition. Ratzinger has only addressed the question in passing and has flagged with approval the more extensive treatment of the subject by Christian Gnilka in Chrêsis: Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur.53 He has specifically referred to the idea of St Basil the Great that when Christianity meets a pre-Christian culture it must make a slit (or wound) in that culture, as one makes a slit in the bark of a tree to graft another onto it, and such grafting processes are extremely delicate.54 The slit must be made at the right time and in the right place, and at the right angle. This ‘slit’ is also a kind of purification.

Ratzinger acknowledges that both the Constitution on the Liturgy and the Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity of the Second Vatican Council explicitly allow for the possibility of far-reaching adaptations to the customs and cultic traditions of peoples. None-theless, he has written that it seems to him ‘very dangerous that missionary liturgies could be created overnight, so to speak, by deci-sions of bishop’s conferences, which would themselves be dependent

BENEDICT XVI

38

on memoranda drawn up by academics’.55 He suggests that it is ‘not until a strong Christian identity has grown up in the mission coun-tries can one begin to move, with great caution and on the basis of this identity, toward christening the indigenous forms by adopting them into the liturgy and allowing Christian realities to merge with the forms of everyday life’.56

At the same time, within the regions of the world that have been Christian for centuries, Ratzinger observes that ‘traditional culture is pushed aside into a more or less museum-like state of preservation in the concert hall’ and ‘the contemporary world is conceived so completely in terms of the functional that the link with history is broken, and history itself can only retain any value at all as a func-tion, namely as an object in a museum’.57 A mutual concern over this state of affairs represents a point of convergence between Ratzinger and the more intellectually inclined of the Catholic tradi-tionalists. Ratzinger’s statement that ‘culture without ritual loses its soul; [while] ritual without culture fails to recognize its own dignity’ resonates well with those of a traditionalist disposition.58 So too does his judgement that since liturgy is the encounter with the beautiful itself, with eternal love, there must be no surrender to phi-listinism within the Catholic faith, and particularly not in seminaries where men are prepared for the priesthood.59 Any dialogue between the Church and contemporary Western culture ‘cannot consist in the Church finally subjecting herself to modern culture, which has been caught up to a large extent in a process of self-doubt since it lost its religious base’.60

Such a negative judgment on the culture of modernity or what Paul de Man calls ‘the culture of forced forgetting’ was strong in the publications of Guardini and Bernanos, two of the intellectual heroes of Ratzinger’s youth. In his collection of essays on The End of Modern World, Romano Guardini drew a connection between the character of ‘mass man’ and the problems of evangelization in the contemporary world. He described ‘mass man’ as having no desire for independence or originality in either the management or the conduct of his life – neither liberty of external action nor free-dom of internal judgment seem for him to have unique value; and this is understandably so, for he has never experienced them’.61 He identified the problem as a causal relationship between the lack of a ‘fruitful and lofty culture’ that provides the sub-soil for a healthy nature, and a spiritual life that is ‘numb and narrow’ and develops


39

along ‘mawkish, perverted and unlawful lines’.62 Similarly, in the context of his appraisal of the work of Georges Bernanos (1888–1948), von Balthasar observed that for Bernanos nothing could be more devastating than a confusion, or even an approximation, of the phenomena of strong ecclesial obedience (typical of an ultramon-tanist Jansenism) and the narrowing of human horizons by machines and social conditions (typical of the institutional practices within the culture of modernity). Bernanos wrote of a ‘flight to conformism’ – ‘the blissful servitude that dispenses one from both willing and acting, that doles out a little task to each one and that, and in the near future, will have transformed man into the biggest and most ingenious of insects – a colossal ant’.63 He believed that modern man adores systems because it dispenses him from the daily risk of judging. His choices are made by the system for him.

Common to Ratzinger, Guardini, von Balthasar and Bernanos is the idea that ‘in the crisis of culture we are experiencing, it is only from islands of spiritual concentration that a new cultural purification and unification can break out’.64 This is one of the two reasons given for Ratzinger’s choice of the papal name Benedict. In part he wanted to honour Benedict XV who tried so hard to bring an end to the First World War before it claimed the lives of millions of Christians on both sides of the trenches, but his second reason was his belief that Western culture needs a new Benedictine moment. Just as it was the formation of Benedictine monasteries across the map of Europe which created the first high Christian culture, today, he believes, the banality of mass culture and the anti-memory orien-tation of modernity will only be transcended by islands of spiritual excellence. Today such islands need not be restricted to monastic enclosures but may be found within the many new ecclesial move-ments which arose in the second half of the twentieth century. Balthasar somewhat poignantly expressed the idea when he wrote that those who withdrew to the heights to fast and pray in silence are ‘the pillars bearing the spiritual weight of what happens in history. They share in the uniqueness of Christ . . . in an untamed freedom which cannot be caged or put to use. Theirs is the first of all aristo-cracies, source and justification for all the others, and the last yet remaining to us in a most unaristocratic world’.65

The belief in the need for such spiritual elites to create com munities in which the culture of modernity can be transcended and supplanted with a high Christian culture is another point of convergence between

BENEDICT XVI

40

Ratzinger and the more intellectually inclined members of the tradi-tionalist movement. The movement has its administrative centre in Ecône, Switzerland, where opposition to aspects of post-Conciliar theology and practice was led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The Lefebvrists were particularly opposed to the liturgical changes of Paul VI which had the effect of fostering ‘folk liturgies’ that made use of utility music and sacro-pop. In France there was also strong opposition to Dignitatis Humanae, the Conciliar decree on religious freedom, which was marketed and received by many as the Church’s endorsement of the political philosophical principles underpinning the French and American Revolutions. For many of the French Catholic families, the revolution was freshly remembered as murder-ous, anti-Catholic and a general movement of debasement and thus anything which appeared to be affirming it was approached with grave reservations. Moreover, the traditionalists were hostile to the new theological projects endorsed by the theological experts of the Second Vatican Council, including Ratzinger himself, as dangerous flirtatious with the gods of nineteenth-century Germany – history and hermeneutics, in particular – and thus the contamination of the Tiber by the Rhine. For many traditionalists, the demise of pre-Conciliar scholasticism (the theological framework regarded by Ratzinger, Balthasar and many others of their generation, as too dry and rigid) is a major cause of the post-Conciliar crisis. In 1988 Archbishop Lefebrve performed schismatic acts by ordaining four priests as bishops without the authority of the Pope. John Paul II deployed Ratzinger to negotiate with Archbishop Lefebvre but all of his diplomacy and intellectual skill failed to deter Lefebvre from going ahead with the ordinations.

Since the beginning of his papacy Ratzinger has gone to great lengths to restore the Lefebvrists to full Communion with the Church. In line with his many statements on the problems of post-Conciliar liturgical practices, on the 7th of July 2007 he issued the Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which lifted the canonical hurdles to the celebration of the older liturgical rites preferred by the tradi-tionalists.66 In 1969 Paul VI had attempted to supersede the usage of the so-called Tridentine or traditional rite and publicly acknowl-edged that in doing so he was ‘parting with the speech of Christian centuries’. He also acknowledged that some Catholics would be ‘bewildered’ by this.67 Nonetheless, he claimed that ‘modern man’ is ‘fond of plain language’. This pastoral judgment was the only reason


41

given in his famous General Audience Address of November 26, 1969, for his decision to introduce what became known as the Novus Ordo or new rite. Some three years earlier in an article published in the 22 October 1966 issue of America magazine, Gareth Edwards had argued that if ‘the Church wants to sweep the world like the Beatles, it must use language as contemporary as theirs’.68 There was thus something of a ‘plain language’ attitude about in the mid-1960s as the linguistic equivalent of the abandonment of hats and gloves and the use of formal titles in social discourse. Indeed, another of Edwards’ ideas was that people should think of God as their friend, and that the Church should drop all references to his Kingship, which was now completely out of step with a common preference for democratic republics.69

Why Paul VI decided to ‘go with the Beatles’ as it were, rather than with those he acknowledged would be ‘bewildered by this’ remains an interesting historical question. It may be that he thought it was a way of appearing ‘liberal’ and ‘open to modernity’ at a time when he was enduring a wide scale rebellion over his ‘conservative’ stance against contraception in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. What-ever his reasons for supporting those calling for a more ‘no frills’ liturgy, in the United Kingdom where many of the Elizabethan martyrs were sent to the scaffold for attending the Mass that Paul VI now regarded as not pastorally suitable for ‘modern man’, a signifi-cant pro-traditional rite movement was led by prominent members of the laity, including Harold Acton, David Jones, Graham Greene, Cyril Connolly and Evelyn Waugh. Waugh was particularly distressed by the thought of a new vernacular rite which would make no dis-tinction between American and British English.70 A petition presented to Paul VI, signed by members of the British literary and theatrical establishment, including non-Catholics like Nancy Mitford and Agatha Christie, led to the “Heenan Indult” – a special privilege granted by Paul VI to Cardinal Heenan of Westminster to allow a limited usage of the older rite in the United Kingdom.71 In practice however, the usage of this rite was always tainted by the opposition of many tra-ditionalists to the Second Vatican Council. Those who preferred this traditional rite were tarred with the brush of Lefebrvism which was a much larger and more complex theological package than a mere preference for a more solemn and transcendent rite by those who found sacro-pop repulsive. Also problematic was the fact that in many places the traditional rite became more of a heritage piece than

BENEDICT XVI

42

a living rite, since its organic development was brought to an abrupt end in 1969. This ‘heritage piece’ quality of the traditional rite also had the effect of deterring Catholics who were fully supportive of the theological renewal brought about by the Second Vatican Council from its attendance. Many found themselves faced with a choice between museum-piece liturgy or banal sacro-pop.

Although Ratzinger was influenced by the new liturgical move-ment of the first half of the twentieth century and enthusiastic about the potential for liturgical renewal in the early 1960s, he came to regard the liturgical experiments of the post-Conciliar period in a largely negative light. In The Spirit of the Liturgy he argued that litur-gists who sought to bring God down to the level of the people were engaging in behaviour analogous to the Hebrew’s worship of the golden calf, which was nothing less than an act of apostasy.72 Aidan Nichols, the leading English authority on the thought of Ratzinger, has explained the theological problem with ‘bringing God down to the level of the people’ in the following terms:

The Liturgy as saving action is ‘catabatic’ coming down from God to human beings. What by contrast is anabatic – going up to God – about the liturgy is the glorification of God by men. But notice that, while the catabatic aspect of the Liturgy must come first, it is to such anabatic glorification that the sanctifying divine action is ultimately directed. The example of our great High Priest tells us so. Christ’s entire life and passion was directed chiefly to the glorification of the Father: even the salvation of the human race was subordinated to this goal. So also in the Liturgy the sote-riological intent of the rite, aiming as it does, at our sanctification, is itself subordinated to its doxological purpose. This may seem an unnecessary exaltation of God at the expense of man, shades indeed, of a Feuerbachian nightmare. But we see that things cannot be otherwise, once we realize that our sanctification is nothing other than our incorporation into the glorification of God through Jesus Christ Our Lord.73

Therefore, what are regarded by many as ‘mere matters of form’ are regarded by Ratzinger as front line issues in the battle for the re-evangelization of the formerly Christian countries of the Western world. In Sacramentum Caritatis, his first Apostolic Exhortation,


43

he wrote that everything associated with the Eucharist must be marked by beauty:

The beauty of the liturgy is part of this mystery; it is a sublime expression of God’s glory and, in a certain sense, a glimpse of heaven on earth. The memorial of Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice contains something of that beauty which Peter, James and John beheld when the Master, making his way to Jerusalem, was trans-figured before their eyes (cf. Mk 9:2). Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.

Moreover, in his preface to Alcuin Reid’s The Organic Develop-ment of the Liturgy Ratzinger noted that no one, not even the pope, has the authority to create new liturgies out of the fabric of their own imaginations. The pope, he said, is rather like a gardener, who can do some pruning and oversee the liturgy’s organic development.74 For Ratzinger the most important principle for any rite to enjoy validity is that it be an organic development of a rite of apostolic provenance. Providing this criterion is met, he is not disturbed by the use of more than one official rite. He is not a bureaucrat with a passion for uniformity. The existence of a plurality of rites associated with different linguistic groups such as the Maronite and Ukrainian, and different spiritual groups, such as the Carmelite and Dominican, has been a long standing element of Catholic liturgical life. Since all of these are organic developments of rites of apostolic provenance, they are acceptable. By virtue of the same principle, Summorum Pon-tificum stated that the traditional Mass must be given due honour for its venerable and ancient usage. Since the Motu Proprio of 7 July 2007, it has thus become a perfectly legitimate, but ‘Extraordinary Form’ of the Roman rite. Ratzinger has stated that he hopes that the simultaneous existence of the two Roman rites will be ‘mutually enriching’.75 What seems to be implied in this statement is the idea that the sense of mystery and transcendence which is pervasive in the Extraordinary Form might offer a corrective to the more mundane orientation of many celebrations of the Novus Ordo, while aspects of the Novus Ordo (perhaps the presentation of the scripture readings

BENEDICT XVI

44

in the vernacular) might foster the organic development of the Extraordinary Form. Ratzinger prefers the scripture readings to be in the vernacular, but believes that a knowledge of the Greek Kyrie, and the Latin Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnes Dei, should be a standard share in the cultural capital of any Catholic, regardless of national identity.

In order to further ‘heal a wound in the ecclesial fabric’ in January 2009 Ratzinger released from the penalty of ex-communication the four men who had been illicitly ordained bishops by Archbishop Lefebvre. This gesture does not mean a return to full Communion with the Church of the traditionalist groups since this would require such groups to accept that the documents of the Second Vatican Council are capable of a theologically sound interpretation and many individuals within this movement continue to resist this judgment. As Ratzinger wrote in paragraph 4 of the Motu Proprio Ecclesiae Unitatem, issued in July 2009, ‘doctrinal questions remain and until they are clarified the Society has no canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry’.76 Accord-ing to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, in lifting the decrees of ex-communication the pope was intending to remove all possible pretexts for infinite arguing in his negotiations with mem-bers of Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St Pius X.77 In the process he suffered the humiliation of discovering after the event, that one of the four bishops, Richard Williamson, is a holocaust denier. Archbishop Lefebvre’s own father, René Lefebvre, fought for the French Resistance and died in the Nazi concentration camp of Sonnenburg. Why he thought Williamson worthy of Episcopal con-secration remains an enigma, but suffice to say that Ratzinger was extremely embarrassed by this discovery. In an apologetic letter to the bishops of the world he wrote:

A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconcili-ation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council – steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the begin-ning to take part in and support. That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore.78


45

In summary, Ratzinger’s understanding of the importance of history, memory and a Catholic culture which is at once both high and popular, and his aversion to the accommodation to the mass culture of modernity pastoral strategies of many of his generation, do represent points of convergence between he and the traditional-ists and also many members of the new ecclesial movements which have mushroomed since the Second Vatican Council. His critiques of the problems of mass culture also converge with those of non-Catholic social philosophers such as Scruton and de Botton and from a more popular literary level one finds some strong resonances between the academic Ratzinger and the more popularist Alexander Boot, author of How the West was Lost.79 Boot traces the emergence of “modern man” whom he calls “Modman” to the Reformation and contrasts him with the Catholic ‘Westman’. According to Boot, ‘Modman’, an evolutionary development from Reformation man, today comes in two species: ‘Modman Philistine’ and ‘Modman Nihilist’. The central message is that the only resistance to philis-tinism and nihilism within contemporary Western culture is coming from the Catholic Church and those of her intellectuals who under-stand that the main weapon of Modman is a ‘slow imposition of philistine values on society’, accompanied by a gradual imposition of political and economic power that can force ‘Westman’ into com-pliance.80 Included within the strategy is the replacement of the historic role of the father by the state bureaucracy, and the eventual abolition of the family itself. Ratzinger’s concerns about philistines being in charge of seminary formation are consistent with Boot’s sociological diagnosis. Seminarians who receive an impoverished education will graduate to ordination without the necessary cultural capital with which to contend with mass culture. A priest who is himself unable to rise above this culture will not be able to liberate others and he will be rejected by those of a nihilist disposition as a typical member of the herd from which the nihilist is trying to escape.

French Catholics who refer to EuroDisney as a ‘cultural Chernobyl’ and deliberately give tourists the wrong directions to McDonald’s and prefer that their families attend solemn liturgy, preferably in Latin, have at least an intuitive grasp of the problems generated by ‘Modman Philistine’. The problem for Ratzinger is that precisely because the Second Vatican Council is popularly seen as having given its approval to the culture of modernity, those who have a sense that

BENEDICT XVI

46

Catholicism and Philistinism are enemies, have a tendency to turn their hostility onto the Council. Against such tendencies Ratzinger does insist that the documents of the Second Vatican Council are perfectly capable of orthodox and hostile-to-philistinism interpreta-tions, providing one uses what he calls ‘a hermeneutic of continuity’ rather than a ‘hermeneutic of disruption’. While it is true that Ratzinger has been interested in the Rhineland or Romantic move-ment theological themes and critical of pre-Conciliar scholasticism, these themes can be developed, as Schenk recognized, in either a Catholic or nihilist direction, and Ratzinger obviously occupies the Catholic end of the spectrum. He does not accept (as many of the traditionalists do), that the mere interest in the question of the rela-tionship between history and ontology evinces dangerous modernist and ultimately nihilist dispositions. He further believes that it is not possible to defend tradition while eschewing the importance of history, as the pre-Conciliar Thomists tended to do. His answer to the nihilist Romantics of the nineteenth century and the marke-teers of nihilism and philistinism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is the humanism of the Incarnation, poetically expressed in his following statement:

The Magi of the Gospel are but the first in a vast pilgrimage in which the beauty of this earth is laid at the feet of Christ: the gold of the ancient Christian mosaics, the multi-coloured light from the windows of our great cathedrals, the praise of their stone, the Christmas songs of the trees of the forest are all inspired by him, and human voices like musical instruments have found their most beautiful melodies when they cast themselves at his feet. The suffering of the world too – its misery – comes to him in order, for a moment, to find security and understanding in the presence of the God who is poor.81

This humanism is something dynamic. Since its dynamism is generated by the work of grace in the lives of Christians its potential social and cultural achievements are almost infinite. It is far from fostering a museum-piece Catholic culture or ghetto. Ratzinger him-self has remarked that Catholics cannot live in some kind of spiritual nature reserve.82 However what is static is the theological foundation for this: the once and for all events of the creation of the world, the Incarnation, and the Paschal Mysteries, which make possible


47

the intimacy between the Divine and the human, the sacramental presence of God in the world. As David S Yeago has explained the theory:

Because the encounter of nature and grace is a meeting of con-tingencies in freedom, the encounter of theological reflection with human culture cannot be governed by any general method or forced a priori into an invariant theoretical framework. In a dra-matic narrative configuration, both the developing plot, with its situations, characters and themes, and the resolution that bestows on the drama its final sense and significance, are contingent, unpredictable, characterized by freedom and surprise. It is impos-sible to tell in advance of its occurrence just how the resolution of the story will relate to the various elements of the plot in their concrete diversity; one has to watch the story unfold and see.83

The only qualification one might add to Yeago’s summary is that what humanity has learned about God through the Incarnation and the Paschal Mysteries is not something which is subject to change over time. Precisely how in Ratzinger’s theology this eternal element is handed down from one generation to another is the subject of the following chapter.

48

CHAPTER 3

REVELATION, TRADITION AND HERMENEUTICS

The conflict over the liturgical changes in the pontificate of Paul VI and the correlationist pastoral strategies of leading theologians of the Conciliar generation are but individual elements of the wider issue of the theological significance of tradition. Tradition can mean something like the word ‘customs’ or ‘practices’ such as decorating trees and building nativity sets in Christmastide, or it can mean something like a body of beliefs. The two usages of the term are often distinguished by the concepts of capital T tradition, referring to the body of beliefs, and lower case t traditions, referring to cus-toms and practices. The two meanings of the word intersect in the liturgy where the practices embody the beliefs. In his commentary on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation promulgated at the Second Vatican Council, Ratzinger rather acutely observed that whereas the Council of Trent was more concerned with lower case t traditions, (the customs and practices) the Second Vatican Council only addressed capital T tradition.1 This is notwith-standing the fact that at the level of the parish community and in seminaries, the Council was widely interpreted as a call to overhaul and update all lower case traditions in the name of aggiornamento (renewal). Ratzinger noted that Cardinal Meyer of Chicago in one of his speeches to the Council raised the issue of the importance of having some guidelines for the purification of traditions that have ceased to be living traditions, but he also observed that Cardinal Meyer’s concerns were not taken up by other Conciliar fathers or their periti. Accordingly the chance to address this issue was lost. What did occur however, in the drafting of the document Dei Verbum, was the presentation of an account of revelation and its relationship to Tradition which represented a return to a more


49

Patristic and authentically Scholastic understanding of the topic than that which came to dominance in the post-Tridentine era and which is strongly associated with the theology of the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). In Dei Verbum, the standard pre-Conciliar Suárezian account of revelation was overhauled, along with a popular account of Tradition associated with the thought of a fourth-century monk called Vincent of the monastery of Lérins, located near Cannes on the French Riviera. Indeed, a shorthand way of reading Dei Verbum is to say that the account of revelation found in Suárez and the account of tradition found in Vincent de Lérins were ditched, in favour of a new synthesis combining insights of Newman, Guardini, de Lubac, Blondel and Yves Congar. The two themes come together in paragraph 10 of Dei Verbum, where the ‘two sources’ theory of revelation (Scripture and Tradition) are united into one:

Sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move as towards one goal.2

An in depth account of how the Suárezian approach to revelation is a modern (Baroque) invention can be found in the essay by John Montag entitled ‘The False Legacy of Suárez’.3 Montag argues that although Suárez was working within the intellectual tradition of Thomism as taught at the University of Salamanca, his account of revelation is actually different from that of classical Thomism. For Suárez, revelation does not disclose God himself, rather it con-cerns pieces of information which God has decided to disclose and whereas for St Thomas, things revealed led to faith, for Suárez faith confirms what is revealed. St Thomas also understood the mediation of revelation differently from Suárez:

Thomas never had cause to reify the mediation into words or propositions through which God hands over ‘things to be believed’. Nor does Thomas separate the moment of belief or assent from some prior moment of apprehension. We have seen, too, that for Thomas, revelation takes place in the judgment and understand-ing, as part of the assent of faith. Revelation does not occur ‘on its own’, as if it were a thing apart, before becoming part of

BENEDICT XVI

50

human thought and experience. But, for Thomas, what God reveals has precisely that quality which Luther sought to recover in his translation – that is, the intimate self-manifestation, the word which pours from the heart, and which animates faith.4

According to Montag, these reversals between Aquinas and Suárez assume the loss in the late Middle Ages of the metaphysical framework of participation, and the concomitant loss of an intrinsic link between the sign and the thing signified:

As a result, the content and the authorization of revelation are prised apart, and both aspects are thought of as isolated occur-rences grounded in the will rather than a necessity intrinsic to the real. Revelation is now something positive in addition to reason, precisely because a rational metaphysics, claiming to comprehend being without primary reference to God, frames all discourse, including the theological. Ironically, revealed truth becomes some-thing ineffably arbitrary, precisely because this is the only way it can be construed by an already intrinsically godless reason.5

Ratzinger’s attempt to deal with the Suárezian treatment of revela-tion as an object to which faith assents, rather than in terms of the power of judgment and perception, provides a case study of a theological intervention to overcome a pastoral crisis. As a young priest he was often shocked to find Catholics who obeyed all the ecclesial rules and regulations and assented to all the doctrines but did not experience any joy in the faith because the whole affective side of their souls was not integrated with the intellectual side. Their faith as such was an intellectual assent they gave to a series of dog-matic propositions. This is not to suggest that Ratzinger sees no place for dogma, he clearly does believe that it has its own place and importance, but he believes that primarily what was revealed was the person of Christ, and that the dogma follows after this primary event. His concern with this issue was such that one whole section of his habilitationschrift was initially devoted to a critique of the Suárezian account of revelation. It had to be jettisoned however when one of the examiners, Michael Schmaus, indicated that he would fail the dissertation because of this criticism of Suárez. The point that the young Ratzinger was making was that the Suárezian account was a Baroque initiative which differed from the understanding of the


51

scholastics, particularly from St Bonaventure. Following Guardini, Ratzinger argued that ‘Revelation does not reveal something, nor does it reveal various kinds of things, but in the man Jesus, in the man who is God, we are able to understand the whole nature of man’.6

With specific reference to Dei Verbum, which he, Rahner and de Lubac, helped to draft, Ratzinger has stated that the Conciliar fathers were ‘concerned with overcoming neo-scholastic intellectualism, for which revelation chiefly meant a store of mysterious supernatural teachings, which automatically reduces faith very much to an accep-tance of these supernatural insights’.7 In the words of Cardinal Albert Vanhoye: ‘revelation in Dei Verbum is presented in a perspec-tive that is not simply intellectual, but one of interpersonal existential relationships, a perspective of communion between the human per-son and the divine persons’.8 In his biography Milestones Ratzinger wrote:

The word [‘Revelation’] refers to the act in which God shows Himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of ‘Revelation’. Where there is no one to perceive ‘Revelation’, no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, Revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained through my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of the Conciliar discussion on Revelation. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then Revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that Revela-tion is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura (‘by Scripture alone’), because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.9

In another commentary on Dei Verbum, Ratzinger noted that there were three motifs that came together in the struggle for this Constitution on Revelation. The first was the view of tradition as an organically developing process by which tradition had to be understood in terms of the categories of growth, progress and the knowledge of faith that Romantic movement theologians had deve-loped. The second was the problem of the application of critical

BENEDICT XVI

52

historical methods to the interpretation of Scripture and the third was the growing interest in biblical scholarship in Catholic circles.10

With respect to the first of these, and in particular, in relation to article 8 of Dei Verbum which addresses the handing on of apostolic preaching from one generation to another, Ratzinger observed that it is not difficult ‘to recognize the pen of Yves Congar in the text and to see behind it the influence of the Catholic Tübingen School of the nineteenth century with, in particular, its dynamic and organic idea of tradition, which in turn was strongly impregnated by the spirit of German Romanticism’.11

Yves Congar was a French Dominican and author of the two volume La Tradition et les traditions (1960–1963) which remains a classic text in the field. The subject of tradition was of special signifi-cance for the French given that it was among the eighteenth-century French philosophes that hostility to the concept first erupted in the period of the Revolution. In his preface to Maurice Blondel’s History and Dogma, Alexander Dru offered the following observations of the treatment of tradition in French intellectual life after the Revolution:

Tradition was viewed in a political light and, regardless of what it was applied to, came to mean the conservation of a heritage, of an object, and in Christianity of a clearly defined object, ‘the deposit of the faith’. The handing down of the ‘deposit’ was looked upon as an impersonal process; the whole emphasis fell on what was handed down, and no thought was given to how it was handed down. The common view of Tradition was mechanical, and it would hardly be a caricature to say that it was so objective as not to imply any believers to hand down the deposit. This impersonal way of conceiving Tradition led inevitably to what Blondel calls fixisme, the notion that nothing whatsoever should change and therefore in practice to un rétrogradisme meurtrier, a fatally retro-grade attitude towards intellectual questions . . . . Blondel’s notion of Tradition [in contrast] was conceived not in a political light or context, but in a cultural or aesthetic one. He was not trying to defend continuity; he was not concerned in the first place with what was handed down, but with how it was handed down.12

Blondel thus stands as a bridge between the nineteenth-century Romantics and late twentieth-century Catholic scholars of tradition such as Alasdair MacIntyre. As with MacIntyre, Blondel was keen to


53

understand the dynamics of the transmission of a tradition and the role of practices in the transferal of meaning. He also emphasized the personal element in the handing on of a tradition, against the eighteenth century’s tendency to regard as rational only that which is universal and impersonal. In History and Dogma, Blondel wrote:

[W]hen it is a question of finding the supernatural in Sacred History and in dogma, the Gospel is nothing without the Church, the teaching of Scripture is nothing without the Christian life, exegesis is nothing without Tradition – the Catholic Tradition which is now seen to be not a limitative and retrograde force, but a power of development and expansion. Careful not to hide its talent safely away, and faithful to the injunction to make it bear fruit, Tradition is less concerned to conserve than to discover: it will only attain the α at the ω.13

Such typically Blondelian and Tübingen-style motifs and treat-ments of tradition regularly surface in the works of Ratzinger. In his Wednesday audience address of 26 April 2006, he stated that ‘this communion we call “Church,” does not only extend to all believers in a specific historical period, but also embraces all the epochs and all the generations’.14 Due to the work of the Holy Spirit ‘it will always be possible for subsequent generations to have the same experience of the Risen One that was lived by the apostolic community at the origin of the Church, since it is passed on and actualized in the faith, worship, and communion of the People of God, on pilgrimage through time’.15 Moreover, ‘Tradition’ is ‘not merely the material transmission of what was given at the beginning to the Apostles, but the effective presence of the Crucified and Risen Lord Jesus, who accompanies and guides in the Spirit the community he has gathered together’.16 It is not ‘the transmission of things, or words, a collection of dead things [but] the living river that links us to the origins . . . the great river that leads us to the gates of eternity’.17

Cyril O’Regan has also described von Balthasar’s oeuvre as a cri-tical recapitulation of the view of tradition offered by the Tübingen School: ‘the commitment to plurality, variety and heterogeneity, illustrated in the Glory of the Lord and Theo-Drama makes it appar-ent that Balthasar is involved in an essential revision of the model of tradition as that which is one and the same everywhere and at all times’.18 The reference here is to the model of tradition offered in

BENEDICT XVI

54

the famous Commonitory of Vincent de Lérins written in 434. The three basic principles offered by Lérins to distinguish the true tradi-tion from heresy were that something had to have been held by everyone, everywhere in the Church from the earliest times. The prin-ciple is often summarized by the Latin phrase Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus. Both Ratzinger and von Balthasar have been critical of de Lérins’ principle. In his essay on the Transmission of Divine Revelation, Ratzinger wrote:

He [Lérins] no longer appears an authentic representative of the Catholic idea of tradition, but outlines a canon of tradition based on a semi-Pelagian idea. He attacks Augustine’s teaching on grace as going beyond ‘what had always been believed’, but against this background this proves to be an inappropriate attempt to express the relationship between constancy and growth in the testimony of faith. The rejection of the suggestion to include again Vincent de Lérin’s well known text, more or less canonized by two coun-cils, is again a step beyond Trent and Vatican I . . . It is not that Vatican II is taking back what was intended in those quotations: the rejection of a modernistic evolutionism, an affirmation of the definitive character of the revelation of Christ and the apostolic tradition, to which the Church has nothing to add, but which is its yardstick, but it has another conception of the nature of historical identity and continuity. Vincent de Lérin’s static semper no longer seems the right way of expressing the problem.19

At the end of this text Ratzinger noted that it is not an easy matter to distinguish between the simple ideas of a given fact and its explanation, because the explanation, as the process of understand-ing, cannot be clearly separated from what is being understood.20

While Ratzinger’s criticisms focused more on fundamental principles of hermeneutics, O’Regan described the opposition of von Balthasar in the following terms:

From a Balthasarian point of view, the position advocated by Vincent of Lérins, which throughout the history of Catholicism has had considerable support, is flawed . . . Excluded is the variety of theological perspectives that is constituitive of the depth of the Catholic tradition. Excluded also is the praxis of the saints as forms of language that emerge unanticipated, yet answer specific


55

communal and historical needs . . . Balthasar is persuaded that Lérin’s univocal and static view of tradition does not correspond to the palpable fact of the development of doctrine. Just as impor-tantly, however, Lérin’s definition is in danger of denying the symbolic nature of all language with respect to the divine and promoting the view that doctrine is adequate to the mystery to which it refers. 21

O’Regan summarized von Balthasar’s account of tradition with the statement: ‘truth is objective, yet refracted over time through Christian communities, and exemplary members of these communi-ties’.22 In his own account, Balthasar endorses the notion of the development of Tradition but states that it is wrong to think of this process as something like filling in pieces of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle:

The truths that come into new prominence can never contradict the old, but nevertheless the Spirit can in every age blow where he will, and in every age can bring to the fore entirely new aspects of Divine Revelation. What is entirely intolerable is the notion that the ‘progress of dogma’ gradually narrows down the unex-plored area of divine truth, continually allowing less and less space to the free play of thought within the faith, as though ‘pro-gress’ consisted in first of all establishing the main outlines of the faith, and then proceeding to the more and more detailed work required to complete the edifice until finally – shortly before the Last Judgment, perhaps? – the structure would stand there complete, consisting in all its aspects of fully ‘used up’ defined dogma.23

In an essay on Bonaventurian resonances in Ratzinger’s theology of revelation, Aaron Canty summarized much of the above in the following paragraph:

The fact that revelation and the response to revelation that is faith both occur in time and space implies that both revelation and faith grow over time. This process is true both for the indi-vidual believer and for the Church as a whole. As the individual advances in contemplation, the soul perceives more profoundly the truths that Scripture contains; likewise in the Church, the

BENEDICT XVI

56

contemplative part of the Church learns more and more about the revelation contained in Scripture. Scripture contains an infinite number of ‘seeds’ or interpretations that require time to unfold them.24

This leads to the second and third motifs mentioned by Ratzinger as matters driving the deliberations of those who worked on the drafting of Dei Verbum. Catholic scholars required more sophisti-cated intellectual tools with which to respond to the rise of the study of hermeneutics and the conclusions drawn by the application of the historical-critical method to Scripture. The names most strongly associated with the method are those of Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) and Martin Dibelius (1883–1947). Bultmann denied that readers of the scriptures had any hope of an objective understanding of the events depicted there, and suggested that the important factor was the existential impact of Scripture which could not be spelt out in a dogmatic form. His approach represented the adoption of themes in the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger to biblical hermeneutics.

Linked to the historical-critical method was a body of research described as the search for the historical Jesus. The initiator of this quest was the German Deist philosopher H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768) who offered rationalistic explanations for miracles. He was followed by the German theologian D. F. Strauss (1808–1874), author of The Life of Jesus: Critically Examined, for whom Christianity is a myth which encodes a philosophical concept of the unity of the divine and human consciousness. Strauss was followed by Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) who denied the historical existence of Christ and argued that Christianity represents a synthesis of the Stoicism of Seneca the Younger and the Jewish theology of Philo. K. F. Bahrdt (1741–1792) developed the argument that Jesus was a member of the Essene sect and tried to develop a rationalist religion to suit their purposes, while Ernest Renan (1823–1892), a Breton philosopher, wrote an enormously popular Life of Jesus which traced his development as a revolutionary.25

With reference to these different versions of the historical Jesus, Ratzinger rhetorically asked:

How is it possible to come to an understanding which on the one hand is not based on some arbitrary choice of particular aspects,


57

but on the other hand allows me to hear the message of the text and not something coming from my own self ? Once the methodo-logy has picked history to death by its dissection, who can reawaken it so that it can live and speak to me? Let me put it another way: if ‘hermeneutics’ is ever to become convincing, the inner harmony between historical analysis and hermeneutical synthesis must be first found.26

As a general principle Ratzinger concluded that what is needed is a self-criticism of the historical method which can expand to an analysis of historical reason itself.27 He recommended Reiner Blank’s Analyse und Kritik der formgeschichtlichen Arbeiten von M. Dibelius und R. Bultmann (Basel: 1981) as a model of this kind of research. He suggests that the self-critique of historical method would have to begin by reading its conclusions in a diachronic manner so that the appearance of a quasi-clinical-scientific certainty is avoided and exegesis is recognized as an historical discipline:28

Certainly texts must first of all be traced back to their historical origins and interpreted in their proper historical context. But then, in a second exegetical operation, one must look at them also in light of the total movement of history and in light of history’s central event, Jesus Christ. Only the combination of both these methods will yield understanding of the Bible.29

Ratzinger further argues that it is necessary to re-examine the relationship between event and word. For Dibelius and Bultmann and the mainstream of modern exegesis, the event is the irrational element.30 Against this principle Ratzinger holds that both word and event have to be considered equally original since ‘a dualism which separates them leads to a docetic Christology in which the fleshly existence of Christ is removed from the realm of reality’.31 In the following passage Ratzinger offers a summary indictment of the problems associated with the methodology of Bultmann and Dibelius:

Despite all the differences between Dibelius and Bultmann in matters of detail, one can detect here a whole series of fundamen-tal assumptions they hold in common and that both unquestion-ably regard as trustworthy. Both of them assume the primacy of preaching over event: in the beginning was the word. Everything

BENEDICT XVI

58

else unfolds out of preaching. Bultmann pushes this thesis to the point that only the word can be original for him; the word generates the scene. Everything that is an event is accord-ingly by definition secondary, a clothing of the word in mythical form.32

Ratzinger then suggests that the thesis that the word has priority over the event gives rise to two further pairs of antitheses: ‘the playing off of word against cult and of eschatology against apo-calypse’.33 Closely connected to this is the tendency to oppose the Jewish to the Hellenistic and among those things that Bultmann considered Hellenistic were the idea of the cosmos, mystical religio-sity and cultic piety.34 What remains of Christ after he has been de-Hellenized is a ‘strictly eschatological prophet who at bottom proclaims no substantive message’.35 Christianity is thereby reduced to a syncretic mixture of Jewish eschatology, stoic philosophy and Greek mystery religion:

If we may characterise somewhat crudely Bultmann’s method of appropriating Jesus’ message for the present, we could say that he sets up a correspondence between non-apocalyptic prophetism and certain fundamental ideas of the early Heidegger. To be a Christian according to the mind of Jesus was therefore substan-tially the same as the way of existing in openness and vigilance that we find depicted in Heidegger.36

Notwithstanding the Heideggarian contribution Ratzinger believes that behind the whole enterprise of Bultmann and Dibelius lies the Kantian turn, which he defines as the reduction of history to and by philosophy.37 He further argues that the debate about modern exegesis is not at its core a debate among historians, but among philosophers, and that the exegete must refrain from approaching the interpretation of the text with a ready-made philosophy. None-theless he believes that Christians cannot simply return to the Scholastics and Patristics as a shield against modernity. While aspects of their approach to scripture need to be retrieved, the hermeneutical questions of the past couple of centuries cannot be set aside.

As Chairman of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Ratzinger presided over the drafting of two significant documents: The Inter-pretation of the Bible in the Church (1993) and The Jewish People and


59

their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible (2002). These built on principles set out in Dei Verbum, as well as the encyclical Providentis-simus Deus of Leo XIII and Divino afflante Spiritu of Pius XII. The latter was the document in which the Church definitively accepted the use of the philological and historical method in the study of the Bible. In the Interpretation of the Bible in the Church the historical-critical method is praised for its contribution to a deeper understand-ing of the ‘intention of the authors and editors of the Bible as well as the message which they addressed to their first readers’ and it is described as ‘implying no a priori if used in an objective manner’. Words of caution are however sounded over the practice of some exegetes of hooking the method up to ‘certain hermeneutical choices’ which can be ‘tendentious’. Reading scripture through the lens of Marxism or Feminism are two specific examples of this practice given in the document. With respect to the particular issue of Wirkungsgeschichte (the study of the history of the influence of a particular text) the following observation is made:

The mutual presence to each other of text and readers creates its own dynamic, for the text exercises an influence and provokes reactions. It makes a resonant claim that is heard by readers whether as individuals or as members of a group. The reader is in any case never an isolated subject. He or she belongs to a social context and lives within a tradition. Readers come to the text with their own questions, exercise a certain selectivity, pro-pose an interpretation and, in the end, are able either to create a further work or else take initiatives inspired directly from their reading of Scripture.

Essentially the same hermeneutical principles underpin the docu-ment Memory and Reconciliation: the Church and the Faults of the Past, a statement of the International Theological Commission, also under Ratzinger’s chairmanship:

Bringing to light the communality between interpreter and the object of interpretation requires taking into account the questions that motivate the research and their effect on the answers that are found, the living context in which the work is undertaken, and the interpreting community whose language is spoken and to whom one intends to speak.38

BENEDICT XVI

60

Most significant here is the reference to an interpreting commu-nity. Contemporary hermeneutical scholarship has emphasized the principle that thinking always involves thinking in the context of some particular and specific public, which will normally have its own institutional structure.39 Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, has referred to the institutional structure of Plato’s Academy and Aqui-nas’s Dominican Order and to the differences between English culture and Highland Gaelic culture and the ‘public’ of each of these. Similarly Hans Georg Gadamer argued in Truth and Method that human beings always operate from within the horizons of particular languages and traditions and thus ‘meaning is not an objective pro-perty of the text that the interpreter discovers so much as an event in the present, a “fusion of horizons”’.40 When applied to the scrip-tures, this means that the scriptures must be interpreted from within the horizon of faith itself and, from Ratzinger’s point of view, the institution of the Church and her interpretations of the passages, forms part of that horizon. Ratzinger has written that ‘the exegete must realise that he does not occupy a neutral position above or outside Church history and he must acknowledge that the faith is the hermeneutic, the locus of understanding, which does not dog-matically force itself upon the Bible, but is the only way of letting it be itself ’.41 This principle is something which he has taken from Guardini’s Das Christusbild der paulinischen und johanneischen Schriften (Würzburg, 1961). He has stated that ‘the reflections on method that Guardini develops on pages 7–15 are among the most important things that have ever been said on the problem of methodology in scriptural interpretation’.42 Ratzinger was also influ-enced by Guardini’s article ‘The Science of Faith’ published as ‘Heilige Schrift und Glaubenswissenchaft’.43 Guardini referred to the Pauline text (1 Cor. 2:14–15): The things of the Spirit of God can only be judged spiritually; and Hebrews 11: 27 – faith is the means to see the invisible. Ratzinger has summarized Guardini’s horizon in the following terms:

For Guardini the first step is always attentive listening to the message of the scriptural text. In this way the real contribution of exegesis to an understanding of Jesus is fully acknowledged. But in this attentiveness to the text, the listener, according to Guardini’s understanding, does not make himself to be the Mas-ter of the Word. Rather, the listener makes himself the believing


61

disciple who allows himself to be led and enlightened by the Word. It is precisely by repudiating a closed merely human logic that the greatness and uniqueness of his Person becomes apparent to us. It is precisely in this way that the prison of our prejudice is broken open; it is in this way that our eyes are slowly opened, and that we come to recognize what is truly human, since we have been touched by the very humanity of God himself.44

The same recognition of faith as a necessary preambula to exegesis has been defended by von Balthasar in the following terms:

Christ’s divinity cannot be wholly comprehended through his humanity, and no more can the divine sense of Scripture ever be fully plumbed through the letter. It can only be grasped in the setting of faith, that is to say, in a mode of hearing that never issues in final vision, but in a profession without end, a progres-sion ultimately dependent, in its scope, on the Holy Spirit. Faith, the foundation of all our understanding of revelation, expands our created minds by making them participate in the mind of God, disclosing the inward divine meaning of the words through a kind of co-working of God. (I Cor. 2.9–16)45

In this analysis scriptural interpretation becomes part of the work of the Holy Spirit. As Kevin Vanhoozer expresses the principle: ‘Scripture is not merely “writing” but rather a key instrument in the communicative economy of the triune God in which the Father is revealed, the Son reveals, and the Spirit is the agent of revelation’s perfection’.46 In the following paragraph Ratzinger draws this link between scriptural hermeneutics and theological anthropology:

Man cannot get out of himself, but God can get into him. In the dynamism of his being, man can also transcend himself; he becomes more like God, and likeness is knowing – we know what we are, no more and no less. This first idea is paired with a second one in Gregory: God’s entrance into man has taken historical form in the Incarnation. The individual human monads are broken open into the new subject that is the new Adam. God wounds the soul – the Son is this wound, and by this wound we are opened up. The new subject, the Adam who finds his unity in the Church, opens from within to be in contact with the Son,

BENEDICT XVI

62

and so with the triune God himself. Thomas gave these two ideas a metaphysical turn in the principles of analogy and parti-cipation. By doing so, he made possible an open philosophy that is capable of accepting the biblical phenomenon in all of its radicalism.47

Among theologians the major criticisms of an approach to scrip-ture and tradition derived from the works of de Lubac, Guardini, von Balthasar, Blondel and Ratzinger come from those who want to approach the scriptures with a foundation in a particular philosophy that is somehow inconsistent with the ideas presented above. Typi-cally they are scholars with an attachment to Marxism, Feminism or postmodernism. Each of these three traditions has its own internal sub-divisions and there are points of convergence, as well as con-tradiction, with elements of the classical Christian framework or narrative. Since 1989 the Marxist tradition has been on the wane, though it continues to provide something of a hermeneutical horizon for the study of scripture by liberation theologians. Feminist and postmodern theologians are now the most common critics of Ratzinger and there are, of course, postmodern Feminists. The standard criticisms from both Feminist and postmodern quarters are that Ratzinger believes that Christianity is a ‘master-narrative’ (a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge) valid for all times and all peoples and that his anthropology is ‘essentialist’, that is, that he sees an intrinsic relationship between biology and sexual identity.

Lieven Boeve of Leuven is a prominent theologian engaged with postmodern philosophy and also with the theology of Ratzinger. His account of Tradition brings into relief the specific difference of Ratzinger’s position. Boeve begins from the principle that those who inherit a Tradition are not only its heirs but also its testators, and that Tradition develops when there has been a change in context by those who receive it.48 Boeve notes that the ‘change of context brought about by modernity does not so much confront the Christian tradi-tion with new questions (similar to former context shifts), rather it presents a fundamental challenge to the very right to existence of a “tradition-based” Christian narrative’.49 Modernity, in other words, represents an attack on the very notion of the relevance of Tradition. Boeve then argues that both the correlation-to-modernity theorists


63

and Catholic traditionalists generate problems because they only adhere to a single pole of the relationship with Tradition – either to the pole of being an heir, or to the pole of being a testator:

Traditionalists over emphasize the idea of being heirs: the inheri-tance is preserved and passed on as a whole, undifferentiated; a creative and life-giving reception of the tradition is rarely men-tioned. The modernizing tendency emphasized the idea of being contextual benefactors: the inheritance was streamlined, adapted, and where necessary, corrected in the light of the modern critique of tradition. In the first instance, the tradition as a dynamic process of recontextualisation was abandoned. In the second instance, the tradition as bestower of meaning was neglected; the Christian narrative ran the risk of becoming a (legitimating) reduplication of the modern master narratives.50

Boeve juxtaposes the notions of correlation (in short hand terms, the pastoral projects of correlating the faith to the culture of moder-nity, popular in the immediate post-Conciliar era and associated with Rahner, Schillebeeckx, Küng and Tracy), rupture or discontinuity (the highly critical of secularism stance of Ratzinger, Barthians, Radical Orthodoxy scholars, traditionalists and many young Catholic schol-ars who came of age during the pontificate of John Paul II) and interruption (his own project) which requires an intellectual engage-ment between Christianity and postmodern philosophy which is in some sense different from that in which the Radical Orthodoxy scholars and Catholic scholars supportive of magisterial teaching are involved. Whereas the correlationists were seeking to correlate the Catholic faith and modernity, Boeve’s project is one of recontex-tualizing the Catholic faith with reference to postmodernity. Boeve concludes that for Ratzinger:

It is not dialogue with the world that one should expect to find on the theological agenda, but rather conversion of a world characterized by the absence of faith and declining values. The current context, certainly the European context, has alienated itself to such a degree from the Christian faith that an emphasis on the Christian alternative as a rupture with the world is the only approach that can claim legitimacy.51

BENEDICT XVI

64

Ratzinger would probably argue in response that while he is not opposed to dialogue, the purpose of dialogue is conversion. More-over, the Church herself, according to the ecclesiology of Vatican II, is the Universal Sacrament of Salvation. Her whole reason for being is to mediate Christ to the world, to be the light for the nations. This is what she does in her dialogue with the world. Ratzinger would also probably emphasize that he does believe in the organic development of tradition. However it might be argued that he and Boeve have a different idea about development itself. For Ratzinger Christianity is the master-narrative in the sense that other narratives are usually either pre-figurements or post-Christian mutations of the Christian narrative. He also approaches dialogue with the proponents of other traditions from within the horizon of Christian revelation. As he expressed the point in the context of Jewish-Christian dialogue:

To be sure, the point of this dialogue was not simply to repeat nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship in comparative religion, which, from the lofty height of a liberal-rationalistic standpoint, had judged the religions with the self-assurance of enlightened reason. Today there is a broad consensus that such a standpoint is an impossibility, and that, in order to understand religion, it is necessary to experience it from within, indeed, that only such experience, which is inevitably particular and tied to a definite historical starting-point, can lead the way to mutual understanding and thus to a deepening and purification of religion.52

To extend Boeve’s testator metaphor, one might say that Ratzinger is highly sensitive to the intentions of the deceased as expressed in the testamentary document. Neither Christ’s divinity, nor his humanity, can be denied, nor can doctrines like the Trinity or creation in time. However, the individual’s participation within the life of the Trinity can lead to a deepening of a knowledge of the narrative, both for the individual, and for the community of believers who share the same horizon of faith. New historical contexts may exercise an influence over the appropriation of the Tradition. Some elements of the Tradi-tion may be more or less easily appropriated in different cultural contexts. However this is not to say that history or culture itself con-stitutes the Tradition. As Kaplan explained Adam Möhler’s account of the development of tradition, the faith of those in first-century


65

Palestine is not a different faith from those in nineteenth-century Swabia. De Lubac in his essay Le Révélation Divine was quite emphatic about this principle. He argued that history is not the medium of revelation or salvation: ‘whether we are talking about profane or ecclesiastical history, by themselves, historical events bring us no increase in supernatural revelation’.53 They must be enlightened by the light that comes from the Gospel. In taking such a stance Ratzinger is actually much closer to the postmoderns than the moderns since he rejects the idea that there can be a neutral view from somewhere external to the tradition.

Boeve however argues ‘that Christian faith and tradition are not only contained in a specific historico-cultural context, but are also co-constituted by this context’.54 He adds that this is not to reduce faith solely to its context or to suggest that the development of tradi-tion is a mere adaptation to the context. Ratzinger would no doubt acknowledge that changes in the cultural context, such as occurred to Jewish Christians finding themselves in far-flung posts of the Roman empire, or Catholics finding themselves in the midst of a Protestant province during the Reformation, do foster developments within the tradition as social conditions encourage a deeper reflec-tion on some particular aspect of revelation. However, for Ratzinger revelation occurred at a particular once-and-for-all moment in history. While the Christian’s understanding of it may deepen and be encouraged by a particular historical condition to deepen in a particular way, nothing new can be added to revelation itself.

These themes were addressed by Ratzinger during a meeting with organizations involved in Interreligious Dialogue at the Auditorium of the Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem. At this meeting he acknowl-edged that ‘faith is always lived within a culture’ and that believers ‘draw from and shape the culture’ they meet. However he added that ‘the individual is never fully expressed through his or her own culture, but transcends it in the constant search for something beyond’. Moreover, ‘lives of religious fidelity echo God’s irruptive presence and so form a culture not defined by boundaries of time or place but fundamentally shaped by the principles and actions that stem from belief’.55 This stance was also taken by another German Cardinal, Paul J. Cordes, in a 2009 address in Sydney to Catholic academics and representatives of Church agencies. Cordes stated that ‘the theologian misinterprets the concept of Revelation when he suggests that human life situations might acquire the quality of

BENEDICT XVI

66

Revelation. The Church holds that Revelation is complete with the death of the last Apostle’.56

The baseline question thus seems to be: how do theologians distinguish between elements of revelation that are of eternal signifi-cance, and those which were mere historical stage props? The fault lines between the various groups labelled by Boeve as correlationists, discontinuity theorists and proponents of a theology of interruption are often defined by a different judgment about what is a mere stage prop and what must remain essential to the script. There exist huge divisions between those who judge elements of the cultures of moder-nity and postmodernity as hostile to the basic principles enshrined in the testamentary documents and those who want to read-down sections within the documents as mere historical baggage which can be safely jettisoned in the new cultural context. For example, Hans Küng’s ecclesiology as presented in his Structures of the Church, fosters the notion that the governance structures of the Church should change throughout history to keep pace with other forms of social organiza-tion. This effectively classifies the Episcopal hierarchy as an historical stage prop. Against this classification, Ratzinger has written:

Authority in the Church stands on faith. The Church cannot conceive for herself how she wants to be ordered. She can only try ever more clearly to understand the inner call of faith and to live from faith. She does not need the majority principle, which always has something atrocious about it . . . the sacramental order guarantees more freedom than could be given by those who would subject the Church to the majority principle.57

Thus we return to Ratzinger’s observation that the most serious crisis for twentieth-century Catholic theology is coming to an under-standing of the mediation of history in the realm of ontology, and one might add, the role of history in the interpretation and transmis-sion of Tradition. For Ratzinger history and context are important but revelation is not just another ‘master-narrative’. The Incarnation and Pascal Mysteries are either Divine Revelation or they are mere myths associated with a particular Semitic tribe which because of its incorporation within the Roman empire, spread throughout the Roman colonies and eventually became the dominant myth of Europe. If however they are Divine Revelation, then all the other myths are in a sense redundant. As he wrote, when he was still a young professor,


67

‘the faith in the one God, who has created the whole world through the Word, does not tolerate the religious appearance of myths, it rather enlightens the world’.58 It is precisely for this reason that Balthasar argued that the real battle between religions begins after the Incarnation. More recently as Benedict XVI, Ratzinger wrote in paragraph 5 of Spe Salvi:

[Saint Gregory Nazianzus] says that at the very moment when the Magi, guided by the star, adored Christ the new king, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ. This scene, in fact, overturns the world-view of that time, which in a different way has become fashionable once again today. It is not the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, which ultimately govern the world and mankind, but a personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say, but reason, will, love – a Person. And if we know this Person and he knows us, then truly the inexorable power of material elements no longer has the last word; we are not slaves of the universe and of its laws, we are free. In ancient times, honest enquiring minds were aware of this. Heaven is not empty. Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love.

The reference here to the Holy Spirit is significant. If one asks the question of Möhler and Newman about how they can be certain the faith of a nineteenth-century Bavarian is the same as a first-century Roman the role of the Holy Spirit becomes a central factor. As Balthasar noted the ‘task of making the historical existence of Christ the norm of every individual existence is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not issue a further revelation, he exposes the full depth of what has been completed, giving it a total relevance for every moment in history’.59

Such an account of the work of the Holy Spirit is contained in paragraph 7 of the Conciliar document Lumen Gentium: ‘In order that we might be unceasingly renewed in Him [cf. Eph. 4:23], He has shared with us His Spirit who, existing as one and the same being in the Head and in the members, gives life to, unifies and moves through the whole body’. The theme is also strong in the Pauline scriptures.

BENEDICT XVI

68

As Ormond Rush explains in his essay ‘The Holy Spirit and Revela-tion’, for St Paul, the understanding of the Gospel and the event of preaching, including the hearing that leads to faith, are all the work of the Holy Spirit:

[In First Corinthians], Paul affirms the revelatory role of the Spirit who knows the depths of God, and, because believers are taught by the Spirit, they now have the mind of Christ, enabling them to understand the gifts of God . . . Paul also witnesses to the graced quality of his re-reading of the Jewish Scriptures; it is the Holy Spirit who enables him to properly interpret them. He believes that his proclamation of the Gospel is a divinely-assisted inter-pretation of the tradition. For example, in 2 Cor. 3:12–18, he writes of understanding the reading of Scripture in the light of Christ, and of the Spirit’s role in removing the veil that would prevent proper interpretation. Paul is here naming the Christian experience of the Holy Spirit as the source of the capacity to interpret the new in terms of the old, and the old in terms of the new.60

Ratzinger would no doubt endorse these Pauline themes as a key to any viable account of the transmission of revelation from one generation to another and he would underscore the fact that in this context the interpretative community is the Church and in a special way the sacred hierarchy. In many places, but especially in Principles of Catholic Theology, Ratzinger is critical of the idea that one can learn to be a Christian on one’s own as one might pursue a degree in Christian Studies. In a Wednesday audience catechesis he illustrated his argument with reference to St Paul’s treatment of baptism in his 6th Letter to the Romans. He noted that St Paul uses the passive tense in the statement ‘we have been baptized’. This means that no one can baptize himself and that an ‘autonomous, self-produced Christi-anity, is a contradiction in itself ’61. Moreover, Ratzinger observes that the Christian community does not act on its own either, accord-ing to its own ideas and desires. The community also lives in the same passive process: Christ alone can constitute the Church and be the true giver of the sacraments.62 Thus, faith is not a product of human thought and reflection, it cannot be invented, it can only be received as a gift from God.63


69

On the Feast of St Paul 2008 Ratzinger, as Benedict XVI, pro-claimed a special ‘Pauline Year’ dedicated to the study of the Pauline scriptures. He also praised St Paul for not putting his own spin on what he had learned from those who had known Christ. He argued that St Paul’s Christology is never original at the expense of faithful-ness to the tradition: ‘the kerygma of the apostles always presides over the personal re-elaboration of Paul; each of his arguments moves from common tradition, and in them he expresses the faith shared by all the Churches’.64 In this way he suggested that St Paul offers a model for all time of how to approach theology and how to preach – ‘the theologian, the preacher, does not create new visions of the world and of life, but he is at the service of truth handed down’.65

One might say that Ratzinger shares the attitude of many of the postmoderns that there is something sophistic about writing, that is, about texts de-coupled from their author, and that he also shares the classical mentality that pedagogy requires as a starting point, the submission to the guidance of a teacher. In 1986, in a reflection on the effects of the Second Vatican Council, he wrote:

A body remains identical precisely by being continually renewed in the process of living. For Cardinal Newman the idea of deve-lopment was in fact the bridge that made his conversion to Catholicism possible. My own belief is that it belongs in fact to the decisive fundamental concepts of Catholicism . . . Anyone who wants to cling merely to the words of scripture or the patterns of the early Church banishes Christ to the past. The result is either a faith that is completely sterile and has nothing to say to today or an arbitrariness that jumps over two thousand years of history and throws it into the dustbin of failure while dreaming up for itself how Christianity was really meant to appear according to scripture or according to Jesus . . . Genuine identity with the origin is only to be found where there is also the living continuity that develops it and thus preserves it.66

Moreover, in Principles of Catholic Theology, Ratzinger wrote that the central mystery of salvation, namely, the death and resur-rection of the Lord, is not some mere ‘timeless truth’ hovering independently over a realm of changing facts, but this mystery

BENEDICT XVI

70

introduces Christians into ‘the dynamic circle of Trinitarian love that not only unites subject and object but even brings individual subjects together without depriving them of their individuality’.67 This par-ticipation in the life and love of the Trinity safeguards the tradition against becoming radically historicist in the sense of being mere written words to be construed in dependence on changing social conditions. In his address to the participants in the conference to mark the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of Dei Verbum, Benedict XVI reiterated the theme of II Pet. 1: 20, that prophecy has never been put forward by man’s willing it. It is rather that those impelled by the Holy Spirit have spoken under God’s influence. Prophecy contained in Scripture cannot therefore be the subject of a purely personal interpretation.68

A summary of these various themes in Ratzinger’s attempt to find a legitimate place for history within tradition can be found in the following paragraph of Aaron Canty:

First, Benedict gives priority to God’s initiative in revealing him-self to humanity. Second, this revelation transcends the text of Scripture in such a way that faith must precede its reading for it to be transformative. Third, faith, that is, humanity’s response to God necessarily possesses a corporate dimension. Revelation is given to individuals who, because of their faith, form a commu-nity that continually communicates God’s revelation. An ongoing dialectic of reception and communication continues throughout history so that ‘the individual [authors] of the Bible are inspired, and thus the Church is active in speaking through them, and God is speaking through the Church’. Fourth, Benedict’s theology of revelation maintains a strong historical and even eschatological orientation which involves not only an emphasis on God’s plan of salvation and history, but also on the very theological significance of history and its relationship to the future.69

71

CHAPTER 4

THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES

In theological parlance faith, hope and love are known as the theological virtues. Faith is especially related to the intellect and its pursuit of truth, hope to the memory and its experience of beauty and love to the will and its appetite for goodness. Since all of creation is in a sense marked by the form of the Trinity, these virtues, like the Trinity itself, are said to be related in the manner of a circular dance or perichoresis. The theological virtues are also related to the Gifts of the Holy Spirit with wisdom, understanding and knowledge having a particular association with faith, fortitude with hope, and fear of the Lord and piety with love. These relationships are drawn out in the works of the early Church Fathers and Scholastics. Their precise treatment varies from theologian to theologian but there is a general agreement that any account of theological anthropology will include some analysis of the relationships between faculties of the soul, theological virtues, transcendental properties of being (truth, beauty and goodness) and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Fortitude, Piety and Fear of the Lord). In such a scheme the absence of one or more theological virtue will give rise to a spiritual disorder. Conversely, understanding these various components of the human soul and their relationships with one another and their potential to develop the theological virtues and receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, gives one a framework for a Catholic approach to what the German Romantics called Bildung.

The significance of the theological virtues has been a perennial theme in Ratzinger’s thought from his earliest years as a professor through to the earliest years of his papacy. His first papal encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, dealt with the relationship between faith and love,

BENEDICT XVI

72

and his second encyclical Spe Salvi dealt with the relationship between faith and hope. The first half of Deus Caritas Est built upon Guardini’s theme that Christianity is primarily about a personal relationship with the Trinity and Balthasar’s theme, expressed most strongly in Love Alone is Credible, that it is the reality of love rather than clever dialectics that will ultimately convince ‘modern man’ of the truth of Revelation. Motifs which appear in Spe Salvi were also foreshadowed in Ratzinger’s earlier academic works including: Faith and the Future (1971), The Theology of History in St Bonaventure (written as an Habilitationsschrift in the 1950s and published in an English translation in 1971), Principles of Catholic Theology (1982); Politik und Erlösung (1986); Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope and Love: The Yes of Jesus Christ (1991); and The End of Time? (2004) – a paper delivered at a meeting with Johann Baptist Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and Eveline Goodman-Thau.1 In the shadows behind many of these publications there stands the influence of Josef Pieper’s works on Glaube, Hoffnung and Liebe published together with a translation in English in 1997 and his Über das Ende der Zeit published in an English translation in 1999.2 Behind Pieper there stands the works of Paschasius Radbertus (c.790–865) – a Frankish theologian of the Carolingian era, as well as critiques of despair and presumption and the spiritual malady of acedia in the moral theology of Augustine and Aquinas. To these Ratzinger adds reflec-tions on hope from St Bonaventure’s Advent Sermons and insights from more contemporary, predominately Marxist authors, such as Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) of the Institut für Sozialforschung, known colloquially as the Frankfurt School. The significance of these non-Christian authors is that they provide insights into post-Christian analogues for the theological virtue of hope. The third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, also builds on the critique of liberal notions of progress in Spe Salvi, but shifts its application from eschatology to the intersection of theology with social theory. The core theological ideas of Caritas in Veritate were all present in Ratzinger’s essay (published in 1969) on the notion of human dignity in the Conciliar document Gaudium et Spes and these in turn reiterate themes in de Lubac’s The Drama of Atheistic Humanism (1944), specifically the notion that all secular visions of a perfected humanity are ultimately tragic.


73

In many of these papal reflections on the theological virtues Ratzinger’s accent is on how the particular theological virtue under examination has undergone a secularist mutation. The general idea is that faith, hope and love have not disappeared in post-Enlightenment cultures but they have been mutated, losing their Christian meaning. Faith still exists but in Science rather than Christ, love is either something completely Platonic (in the mind) or completely sensual (without a rational component), and hope becomes hope in material and technical progress, which is linked to faith in science, just as faith in Christ was formerly linked to hope in Christ. Whereas other scholars have tended to examine the cultures of modernity and post-modernity from the perspective of what they have done to the unity of the transcendentals (von Balthasar), or to an understanding of the faculties of the soul and the formation of the ‘self ’ (Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor), or to configurations of the nature, grace and culture relationship (Louis Dupré), or to conceptions of good government (Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, James V. Schall and Robert P. Kraynak), Ratzinger has tended to focus his analysis on its treatment of the theological virtues. In paragraph 22 of Spe Salvi (an encyclical which can be taken as an antidote to the uncritical affirmation of modernity readings of Gaudium et spes) he stated that ‘a self-critique of modernity is needed in dialogue with Christianity and its concept of hope’.

Central to his reading of this topic is the notion that since the time of the French Revolution the Christian understanding of hope has been mutated first into Liberal, secondly into Marxist and thirdly into broader Social Darwinist notions of progress. He partly came to this judgment through reading the three-volume work of Ernst Bloch on The Principle of Hope which he believes exemplifies the mutation. A critique of the notion of progress as a Liberal and Marxist neo-Gnostic heresy has also been a recurring theme in the works of such decided non-Marxists as James V. Schall and Eric Voegelin. Schall speaks of a ‘re-location of the supernatural virtue of hope’ in the political philosophy of modernity and recalls that Eric Voegelin characterized the logos of modernity as the ‘immanentiza-tion of the eschaton’. Schall argues that as a result of the tremendous effort of modernity to make philosophy ‘practical’, the classical notions of the last things – death, purgatory, heaven and hell – have not disappeared altogether but have been relocated within this world

BENEDICT XVI

74

and reappear in new forms.3 Liberalism and Marxism thereby parody creedal Christianity rather than transcending it. With Voegelin and Schall, Ratzinger concludes that both the Liberal and the Marxist image of the world share a ‘strange eschatological consciousness’ ultimately shaped by the idea of progress.4 He describes the Liberal faith in continuous progress as ‘the bourgeois substitute for the lost hope of faith’ and the replacement of the concept of truth by the concept of progress as the ‘neuralgic point of the modern age’.5 He suggests that ‘Liberalism and the Enlightenment want to talk us into accepting a world without fear: they promise the complete elimina-tion of every kind of fear’, through the application of so-called scientific rationality.6 Similarly, for Marxists, optimism is the theo-logical virtue of a new god ‘history’ and a new religion. Heaven becomes the Communist Utopia which is achieved by means of the ‘revolution’, which for its part represents a kind of mythical god-head, as it were a ‘God the Son’ in relation to the ‘God the Father’ of history.7 Hope thereby becomes ‘the virtue of an aggressive ontology, the dynamic force of the march towards Utopia’.8

The academic merit of the Frankfurt School theorists is that they offer an immanent critique of the failure of the various post-Enlightenment attempts to ground hope in something other than Christian faith. The major work of value here is Dialectic of Enlight-enment, co-authored by Adorno and Horkheimer. It is one of the classics of twentieth-century social theory. The following is an excerpt from an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on its central theses:

Long before ‘postmodernism’ became fashionable, Adorno and Horkheimer wrote one of the most searching critiques of moder-nity to have emerged among progressive European intellectuals. Dialectic of Enlightenment is a product of their wartime exile . . . Their book opens with a grim assessment of the modern West: ‘Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of “disaster triumphant”’ . . . How can this be, the authors ask. How can the progress of modern science and medicine and industry promise to liberate people from igno-rance, disease, and brutal, mind-numbing work, yet help create a


75

world where people willingly swallow fascist ideology, knowingly practice deliberate genocide, and energetically develop lethal weapons of mass destruction? Reason, they answer, has become irrational.

In referring to Adorno and Horkheimer, Ratzinger was not endorsing all the principles and conclusions of their Institute for Social Research but he does demonstrate a knowledge of the secular critiques of modernity which converge with the Catholic criticisms at various junctions. He is sympathetic to their argument that the rationality of the so-called Age of Enlightenment has evinced a pro-pensity for violent applications. These conceptual changes are charted by Ratzinger through the works of Immanuel Kant, particularly his notion of a transition from an ecclesiastical faith to a rational faith presented in 1792, and his later 1794 warning about the consequences if even this so-called rational faith were to be found wanting. In this context Ratzinger cites Henri de Lubac’s ecclesiological masterpiece, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, as a place to gain an understanding of this point. He also provided a preface to the 1988 English translation of the work in which he described it as ‘an essential milestone on my theological journey’ in which de Lubac demonstrated ‘how the idea of community and universality, rooted in the trinitarian concept of God, permeates and shapes all the individual elements of Faith’s content’. Part of Ratzinger’s concern here is the power of what in other places he has called ‘pious Pelagianism’ and a ‘narrow-minded individualistic Christianity’. He has complained that pious Pelagians think of the Christian life as something like taking out an insurance policy against spending eternity in hell. They want security, not hope:

By means of a tough and rigorous system of religious practices, by means of prayers and actions, they want to create for them-selves a right to blessedness. What they lack is the humility essential to any love – the humility to be able to receive what we are given over and above what we have deserved and achieved. The denial of hope in favour of security that we are faced with here rests on the inability to bear the tension of waiting for what is to come and to abandon oneself to God’s goodness. This kind of Pelagian-ism is thus an apostasy from love and from hope but also at the

BENEDICT XVI

76

profoundest level from faith too . . . . The core of Pelagianism is a religion without love that in this way degenerates into a sad and miserable caricature of religion.9

While the pious Pelagians err by focusing on their own salvation and turning it into a project to be realized by a strategic plan which, once enacted, should evoke a predictable reward from God, others can err in the opposite direction. They want to believe that there are no eternal consequences of our life choices here and now, that everyone is automatically guaranteed an entry ticket to an egalitarian heaven where it does not matter what one has made of the gift of life on earth. Against this mentality Ratzinger offers the following words of caution:

Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened.10

Ratzinger also uses Spe Salvi as an opportunity to reaffirm the Church’s teaching on the existence of an intermediate state between heaven and hell, usually called purgatory. Here he affirms the idea of some recent theologians, including Joachim Gnilka, who are of the opinion that the fire which burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour:

This encounter with Him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves . . . His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire’.11

In Jesus of Nazareth, Ratzinger further stated that Christ’s descent into hell on Holy Saturday was not ‘merely in the role of a spectator, as in Dante’s Inferno’. Rather he goes down ‘in the role of one whose suffering-with-others is a transforming suffering that turns the underworld around, knocking down and flinging open the gates of


77

the abyss’.12 Without going so far as to endorse universal salvation-ism, Ratzinger nonetheless offers a very hope-filled reading of the events of Holy Saturday.

A variation on the presumption of a universal sponging is what Ratzinger calls ‘bourgeois Pelagianism’. He describes it as sympto-matic of the following attitude: ‘if God really does exist and if he does in fact bother about people he cannot be so fearfully demanding as is described by the faith of the Church. Moreover I’m no worse than the others: I do my duty, and the minor human weaknesses cannot really be as dangerous as all that’. 13 Here his use of the adjec-tive ‘bourgeois’ should not be construed to mean literally ‘middle class’ but rather having a preference for that which will get one by, rather than striving for excellence. A number of European sociolo-gists have used the expression in this way, including Werner Sombart, who argued that Protestant cultures tend to be bourgeois, while Catholic cultures tend to be ‘erotic’ and aristocratic. Here ‘erotic’ does not mean ‘explicitly sexual’ but rather passionately driven by transcendent ideals. The bourgeois personality type makes do with what is serviceable and is content to just get across the line while the aristocratic personality type always wants the best. The corrosive effect of the bourgeois mentality on Catholic spirituality and the theological virtue of hope was a recurring theme in the novels of Georges Bernanos and thus reading Bernanos helps to place Ratzinger’s use of this expression into a richer spiritual context. One example of Bernanos’ treatment of this theme which includes elements of both pious and bourgeois Pelagianism can be found in the following paragraph taken from We, the French:

There exists a Christian order. This order is the order of Christ, and the Catholic tradition has preserved its essential principles. But the temporal realization of this order does not belong to the theologians, the casuists, the theologians or the doctors, but to us Christians. And it seems that the majority of Christians are forgetting this elementary truth. They believe that the Kingdom of God will happen all by itself, providing they obey the moral rules (which, in any event, are common to all decent people), abstain from working on Sunday (if, that is, their business doesn’t suffer too much for it), attend a Low Mass on this same day, and above all have great respect for clerics . . . . This would be tantamount to saying that, in times of war, an army could quite

BENEDICT XVI

78

fulfill the nation’s expectations if its men were squeaky clean, if they marched in step behind the band, and saluted their officers correctly.14

Implicit within the mentality of the bourgeois Pelagian is a failure to critically analyse contemporary culture from a theological stand-point, and a concomitant tendency to blend in with the norms of the surrounding culture rather than being a sign of contradiction to a secular world view. Ratzinger however has consistently rejected all the versions of belief in cumulative progress which might validate such dispositions of an uncritical openness to prevailing social trends. With reference to the Revelation of St John in the New Testament, he remarks that ‘the vision of history that is displayed there repre-sents the greatest possible antithesis one can imagine to faith in perpetual progress’:15

The Apocalypse is far removed from the promise of continual progress: still less does it recognise the possibility of establishing a once and for all fortunate and definite form of society through our own human activity. Despite or rather precisely because of this rejection of irrational expectations it is a book of hope.16

Contrary to much of the post-Conciliar Whiggish thinking which saw in contemporary Western liberalism a qualitative ethical advance-ment over previous forms of social organization, in both Spe Salvi and Caritas in Veritate Ratzinger reiterated the principle that faith in perpetual progress is hubristic. Whereas in the late 1940s Jacques Maritain spoke of a ‘kind of plant-life formation and growth of moral knowledge and feeling, in itself independent of philosophic systems and the rational justifications they propound’, in paragraph 24 of Spe Salvi Ratzinger offered the following reflections:

Let us ask once again: what may we hope? And what may we not hope? First of all, we must acknowledge that incremental progress is possible only in the material sphere. Here, amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature. Yet in the field of ethical aware-ness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man’s freedom is


79

always new and he must always make his decisions anew . . . . Naturally, new generations can build on the knowledge and expe-rience of those who went before, and they can draw upon the moral treasury of the whole of humanity. But they can also reject it, because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions. The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it.

Much of the above can be succinctly summarized in Pieper’s state-ment that ‘the classical theology of the Church is equally removed from both the over simplification of liberalism and the desperate rigidity of stoicism’.17

These two Pelagian spiritual pathologies can also be read as particular manifestations of what Augustine and Aquinas identified as the sins of despair and presumption. Ratzinger has noted that both attitudes are very close to one another and inwardly coincide. The error they share is the idea that one does not need God for the realization and fulfilment of one’s own being.18 Thus, ‘those who despair do not pray any more because they no longer hope: those who are sure of themselves and their own power do not pray because they rely only on themselves’.19 Despair and depression, common conditions in the contemporary Western world, are directly linked by Ratzinger to secularism. This is not to say that Ratzinger denies that there can be bio-chemical causes of depression, merely that he believes that those who have no relationship with Christ are bound to experience a certain emptiness and hopelessness which may be linked to the unusually high incidence of depression in contempo-rary society. A secularist culture impoverishes spiritual horizons and diminishes opportunities for self-transcendence. Such a void is never successfully filled by the pseudo-liturgies of rock concerts and the pseudo-models of exemplary humanity presented to youth by those who make their fortune marketing celebrities. The evangeliza-tion of youth thus requires their liberation from the horizons of mass culture and an encounter with Christ which is authentically sacra-mental. Ratzinger paternally diagnoses the condition of contemporary youth culture with specific reference to the theological virtues:

Thus today we often see in the faces of young people a remarkable bitterness, a resignation that is far removed from the enthusiasm

BENEDICT XVI

80

of youthful adventures into the unknown. The deepest root of this sorrow is the lack of any great hope and the unattainability of any great love: everything one can hope for is known, and all love becomes the disappointment of finiteness in a world whose monstrous surrogates are only a pitiful disguise for profound despair.20

Although Ratzinger often defers to the wisdom of Augustine rather than Aquinas, in this context he closely follows Pieper’s judg-ment that acedia (a kind of spiritual slothfulness) is a symptom of secularization and the underlying Thomist analysis that it stems from a lack of greatness of soul (magnanimitas), from a blindness to the divine pedigree of human nature. In his Spiritual Exercises, Ratzinger quoted extensively from St Thomas’s treatment of hope, and listed each of the ‘daughters of acedia’ whose pedigree was tracked by Aquinas:

Along with despair there is the ‘footloose restlessness of the mind’, for, as Thomas says, ‘no man can dwell in sorrow’. If the founda-tion of the soul is sorrow we are faced with a continual flight of the soul from itself, with a profound restlessness man is afraid to be alone with himself. He loses his center and becomes a mental and spiritual vagabond who is always out. The symptoms of this footloose restlessness are garrulousness and inquisitiveness. Further there is inward restlessness (importunitas – inquietudo) and changeability of will and purpose (instabilitas loci vel propositi).21

Other ‘daughters’ include: apathy (torpor) with regard to the things necessary for salvation, faintheartedness (pusillanimitas), nursing grudges (rancour) and spitefulness (militia).22

In many of his works, but particularly in his Christmas reflection on art in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, Ratzinger linked the theological virtue of hope to the transcendental of beauty, and its absence to a rationality severed from all affectivity. He noted that ‘depression and despair result when the balance of our feelings becomes disordered or even suspended, when we no longer perceive with our hearts, but merely with a knowledge that has lost its roots’.23 This is Ratzinger in a very Augustinian moment. In other places he has commended Augustine for his recognition that ‘the necessary


81

purification of sight takes place through faith (Acts 15:9) and through love, at all events not as a result of reflection alone and not at all by man’s own power’.24 In this Christmas reflection he added a criticism of Cartesian rationality or what Bernanos has called ‘the logos of the machine’:

Some things are discerned, not through domination, but only through service, and these are the higher ways of perception. For what we are able to dominate is beneath us. A thinking that persists in dissecting and putting together is in its essence materi-alistic and reaches only to a certain threshold. So beyond dissecting and analysing, the physician needs dedication to the person in whom the characteristics of the sickness appear.25

Speaking of the arch of triumph in the Basilica which stands above a crypt that was originally built as a replica of the cave of Bethlehem, Ratzinger reflected:

The interaction of arch of triumph and cave teaches us to pass from aesthetics to faith . . . The transition to this image can lead us a step further still. It helps us to loosen faith from the strain of will and intellect and allow it to enter into the whole of our existence. It gives aesthetics back to us in a new and greater way: if we have followed the call of the Saviour, we can also receive anew the language of the earth, which he himself assumed.26

This epistemology is of course deeply Trinitarian. The theological virtues and the transcendentals work together in symphonic har-mony. Pieper, quoting from St Thomas’ questions on hope, says that the theological virtues flow back upon themselves in a sacred circle: one who is led to love by hope has thereafter a more perfect hope, just as he also believes now more strongly than before. Moreover,

The existential relationship of these three – faith, hope, and love – can be expressed in three sentences. First: faith, hope and love have all three been implanted in human nature as natural inclinations (habitus) conjointly with the reality of grace, the one source of supernatural life. Second: in the orderly sequence of the active development of these supernatural inclinations, faith takes precedence over both hope and love; hope takes precedence over

BENEDICT XVI

82

love; conversely, in the culpable disorder of their dissolution, love is lost first, then hope, and last of all, faith. Third: in the order of perfection, love holds first place, with faith last, and hope between them.27

Similarly, Balthasar observed that St Paul binds faith, hope and love together in a sort of perichoresis.28 Just as he traced the sever-ance of the beautiful from the true and the good in the transition from Christendom to the culture of modernity, so too one could trace the severance of each of the theological virtues from their perichoretic relationship, and their subsequent secularist mutations.

In Deus Caritas Est Ratzinger broke the ground on this genealogy with his reflections on the severance of eros from agape and in doing so, sought to refute the claim of Nietzsche that Christianity had killed eros. As Serge-Thomas Bonino summarized the argument:

[For those who separate eros and agape] the person’s subjectivity imposes a meaning on the body which each person technically manipulates in a way that treats it as a purely physical and exterior reality. This vision of things is ultimately destructive for authentic love: It disconnects the spiritual dimension of love, often reduced to a chaste amorous feeling, from sexuality, which is reduced to a purely biological function, ceasing to be a sacrament of love.29

In the third of his encyclicals Caritas in Veritate Ratzinger fol-lowed through the emphasis of Spe Salvi on the secularist mutation of the virtue of hope, with a general criticism of secularist concep-tions of social development. The intellectual centre of Caritas in Veritate is that ‘Life in Christ is the first and principal factor of deve-lopment’ and thus that ‘a humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism’. It rests a notion of authentic human develop-ment upon the principle enshrined in Gaudium et Spes 22, that the human person only has self-knowledge to the extent that he or she knows Christ and participates in the Trinitarian communion of love. The whole document is a plea to understand the limitations of a secularist notion of development. Behind secularism lies the error of Pelagius which in contemporary times takes the form of trust in education and institutions without reference to God or the interior dynamics of the human soul. A purely secularist notion of develop-ment reduces the human person to an economic machine somehow


83

designed for the accumulation of wealth. Such a truncated concept of development has fostered government policies hostile to the more spiritual elements of human life, including relationships of recipro-cal self-giving in love. Abortion is encouraged, couples in some countries are punished for having more than one child, and interna-tional aid is linked to the acceptance of contraceptives. The questions covered in Humanae Vitae (the 1968 encyclical of Paul VI which reiterated the magisterial teaching against the use of contraception) are much broader than matters of personal morality. For Ratzinger there is a strong link between life ethics and social ethics. This point has been made in all three of his encyclicals. The concept he uses to combine the two is that of a ‘human ecology’.

The deficiencies of thinking about social development within the horizons of secularism was a much discussed topic at the time of the collapse of European Communism, when dissident intellectuals, many of them Catholic, reflected on the most desirable cultural foundations for their post-Communist future. It is in their publi-cations that one finds the kind of critique of secular models of social development which Ratzinger presents in Caritas in Veritate.30 In an essay entitled ‘Waiting for Supermarkets’ Zdzisław Krasnodebski observed that given the contemporary liberal presumption that it is wrong to assume that the distinction between good and evil may be clearly discerned, or that we could have any claim to know the whole and be the advocate for the universal subject, all that Poland could expect from a Western culture penetrated by such ideas was some-thing as mundane as a supermarket.31 He lamented that the lost paradise of Europe could not be rejoined because the Western Europeans had sold their souls to utilitarian currents of philosophy, no less than the Communists. Krasnodebski concluded that there was no archaic Ithaca to which Poland might return, because Penelope did not wait faithfully. She had submitted to some very materialistic suitors. Using Alexander Boot’s terms one might say that she had allowed herself to be taken by both sub-species of Modman, but particularly by Modman Philistine. Similarly, in a 2008 interview with Poland’s Adam Michnik, the former Czech leader Vaclav Havel had this to say about contemporary Western culture:

On the one hand everything is getting better all the time – a new generation of mobile phones is being released every week. But in order to make use of it you need to follow new instructions.

BENEDICT XVI

84

So you end up reading instruction manuals instead of books and in your free time you watch TV where handsome tanned guys scream from advertisements about how happy they are to have new swimming trunks by fashion house X.32

Ratzinger’s argument in Caritas in Veritate is expressed somewhat more theologically but he is making the same kind of criticism of Western notions of development. He believes that the general tendency for Western government institutions to equate human development with the success of capitalism and democracy or material progress is utterly inadequate when measured against the Gospel’s standard. In particular, as he says in paragraph 34, Western consumers need to recover an understanding that truth is some-thing which is given as a gift: ‘In every cognitive process, truth is not something that we produce, it is always found, or better, received. Truth, like love, is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings’.

Many of these criticisms of liberal models of development were foreshadowed in Ratzinger’s 1969 essay on the idea of human dignity in the Conciliar document Gaudium et spes.33 In this paper, written at the height of the post-Conciliar chaos era, Ratzinger explicitly rejected the idea that it is possible to construct ‘a rational philosophi-cal picture of man intelligible to all and on which all men of goodwill can agree, to which can be added the Christian doctrines as a sort of crowning conclusion’.34 He described the theory as a ‘fiction’. It rested upon a construction of the relationship between nature and grace which was dominant in the pre-Conciliar era, and which was heavily criticized by Przywara, Guardini, de Lubac, Rahner and von Balthasar as a Baroque distortion of Patristic and Scholastic thought. De Lubac, with the support of the French intellectual historian, Etienne Gilson, led the charge against what was called the extrinsicist account of the relationship, such that nature and grace occupied two completely separate ontological spaces.35 The main targets of de Lubac’s critique were Cajetan and Suárez and their contemporary exponents in the Dominican and Jesuit Orders, such as Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and Louis Billot. Fergus Kerr has described these theological battles over the relationship between nature and grace as the most bitter of the twentieth century.36 Rahner actually described the extrinsicist account as the ‘original and mortal sin of Jesuit theology’.37 Romano Guardini was also critical of this


85

Suárezian movement in anthropology. In a work on the conversion of St Augustine he wrote that natural man ‘cut off from the world of revelation and reduced to an object of critically departmentalized questionings’, did not interest St Augustine:

What does, is man as God intended him to be, hence as he should be: whole. Such a man is made, irrevocably, to exist by God for God. To Augustine’s way of thinking, ‘merely natural’ man simply does not exist. Even man outside faith and obedience to God exists not ‘naturally’ (in a closed world, autonomous-hence-significant-in-itself). But contrarily: against God’s will and away from Him, his existence too is ‘supernatural’ – only negatively.38

Jean Borella diagnosed the problem with the extrinsicist account as an overemphasis on the Aristotelian idea of the natural order as a rigid system of natures complete-in-themselves, which exclude the supernatural just as the circle excludes the square.39 Robert Spaemann has also observed that ‘all of the Thomists of the six-teenth century cite Aristotle in this context’.40 They ‘superimposed a hypothetical purely natural destiny of man, a “finis naturalis” onto the actual destiny given in salvation history; and the fateful construc-tion of a “natura pura” came into being’.41 Thus associated with the extrinsicist account of nature and grace there developed a two ends theory of human nature – the idea that there exists a natural end and a separate and distinct supernatural end. In dramatic contrast, Nicholas J. Healy has observed that in Eschatology and Eternal Life Ratzinger shows how Thomas’s ‘theology of creation’ entails a ‘complete transformation of Aristotelianism’.42

The theory of there being two ends to human nature was embraced by Thomists in the twentieth century who sought to find some com-mon ground with non-Catholics in liberal societies on the territory of ‘pure nature’. The hope was that Catholics and non-Catholics could work together on the basis of shared understandings about what constitutes human nature and thus its natural end, while more contentious theological propositions about the supernatural end could be relegated to the territory of private belief. De Lubac argued that this strategy had opened the formerly Christian societies of the Western world to the ascendance of a secularist ideology. As Serge-Thomas Bonino has noted, secularism reduces revelation ‘to a mere anticipation of the conquests of reason, and the charitable works of

BENEDICT XVI

86

the Church [are reduced] to a rough sketch of the pure rationality of the providence of the State’.43

There is thus a consistently anti-secularist line running through Ratzinger’s publications from the commentary on the treatment of human dignity in Gaudium et spes, to the first three encyclicals of his pontificate. Its theological foundation is found in the acceptance of de Lubac’s anthropology as expressed in his Catholicisme and as it was taken up in paragraph 22 of Gaudium et spes at the Second Vatican Council. Without Christ there can be no integral human development. In a speech on the clarification of the Church’s self-understanding of social doctrine with particular reference to Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Cardinal Cordes argued that the Church in her presentation of social doctrine cannot do without the truth of Revelation, despite its emphasis on the empirical reality:

It will not forget the Logos made flesh as its ‘ratio’ and look for it within its discourse. It will not hide this light for its certainty, its reasonableness. Sometimes Church discussion gives the impres-sion that we could construct a just world through the consensus of men and women of good will and through common sense. Doing so would make faith appear as a beautiful ornament, like an extension on a building – decorative, superfluous. And when we look deeper, we discover that the assent of reason and good will is always dubious and obstructed by original sin – not only does faith tell us this, but experience, too. So we come to the realization that Revelation is needed also for the Church’s social directives: the source of our understanding for ‘justice’ thus becomes the Logos made flesh.44

Such critiques are destined to cause tension with currents in American Catholic thought where an enormous amount of effort has been devoted to defending the compatibility of Catholic theo-logy with the liberal political and economic theory underpinning the US constitutional and economic order. This has been pursued on the basis of an alleged theologically neutral neo-Aristotelian notion of nature. As David L. Schindler has argued there is a sharp differ-ence between the political implications of de Lubac’s account of nature and grace and those of scholars who base their jurisprudence and political theory upon the extrinsicist accounts of nature and


87

grace and the two ends theory of human nature. Among the latter, prominent twentieth-century Americans included the Conciliar peritus, John Courtney Murray, and the ethicist, Germain Grisez. Schindler has summarized the difference between the political impli-cations of the accounts of nature and grace represented by de Lubac and Murray in the following statements:

According to Murray: faith and grace do not determine the structures and processes of civil society: these are determined by reason, in the light of the lessons of experience . . . [The Church] does not aim to alter the finality of the state, but to enable the state to achieve its own finality as determined by its own nature. Conversely, for de Lubac, the state occupies no special ‘secular’ space beyond the operation of the law of the relations between nature and grace. It is from within that grace seizes nature . . . It is from within that faith transforms reason, that the Church influences the state.

For Murray, grace’s influence on nature takes the form of assisting nature to realize its own finality; the ends proper to grace and nature otherwise remain each in its own sphere. For de Lubac, on the contrary, grace’s influence takes the form of directing nature from within to serve the end given in grace; the ends proper to grace and nature remain distinct, even as the natural end is placed within, internally subordinated to, the supernatural end. For Murray then, the result is an insistence on a dualism between citizen and believer, and on the sharpness of the distinction between eternal (ultimate) end and temporal (penultimate) ends. For de Lubac, on the contrary, the call to sanctity ‘comprehends’ the call to citizenship and all the worldly tasks implied by citizen-ship. The eternal end ‘comprehends’ the temporal ends.45

The most prominent intellectual heirs to the tradition of Murray have been Michael Novak, the late Richard John Neuhaus, and George Weigel. Novak has coined the term ‘Whig Thomism’ to refer to their common project of promoting the compatibility of US-style liberalism with Catholic social thought. They are also collectively described as ‘neo-conservatives’. Their flagship is the journal First Things which Neuhaus edited until a short time before his death. Novak and Weigel were both critical of elements of

BENEDICT XVI

88

Caritas in Veritate. Weigel argued that some statements within it could actually be read down as having been inserted by officials from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace against the better judgment of Ratzinger himself.46 This is a novel approach to the interpretation of papal encyclicals. The normal attitude is to acknowl-edge that while such documents are often put together by a team of consultants under the direction of the pope, and while it is often possible to detect the ‘paw prints’ so to speak, of particular theolo-gians on papal documents, the final product is taken as a faithful representation of the mind of the pontiff, and those who were consulted are usually constrained by principles of ecclesial etiquette from identifying their own contributions. Weigel particularly opposed those sections of the encyclical endorsing ideas from Paul VI’s social encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967), which he described as the ‘odd duck’ in the roll-call of papal social encyclicals of the last century. In a somewhat more opaque metaphor he further described Caritas in Veritate, taken as a whole, as having the form of a ‘duck-billed platypus’ (an Australian monotreme that lives along river banks and looks somewhat like a small otter with the bill of a duck. Still more curiously it lays eggs but feeds its hatchlings on breast milk). Weigel was also critical of the encyclical’s introduction of themes taken from contemporary theological anthropology, espe-cially the notions of ‘communion’ and ‘gratuitousness’. He claimed that the expression a ‘necessary openness, in the world context, to forms of activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and commu-nion’ was difficult to comprehend.

These concepts are not however taken from liberation theologians ‘burrowed into the woodwork at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’ but from many completely mainstream theologians who have nothing very positive to say about really existing Marxism or its derivatives. Traces of these themes can, for example, be found in the works of Karol Wojtyła – both in pre-papal essays like ‘The Constitution of Culture through Human Praxis’, and papal docu-ments such as Sollicitudo rei Socialis (1987) in which he deve loped the concept of solidarity and Laborem Exercens (1981) wherein he discussed the transitive and intransitive effects of human actions, which in other places he related to the transcendentals of truth, beauty and goodness. One of the most dramatic of Wojtyła’s inter-ventions on social topics was precisely the idea that the subjective


89

(intransitive) dimension of human labour is more important than the objective (transitive):

[T]hat which is transitive in our culturally creative activity and is expressed externally as an effect, objectification, product, or work can be said to be a result of the particular intensity of that which is intransitive and remains within our disinterested communion with truth, goodness and beauty. This communion, its intensity, degree, and depth, is something completely internal; it is an imma-nent activity of the human soul, and it leaves its mark and brings forth fruit in this same dimension. It is from this communion that we mature and grow inwardly.47

This attempt to treat labour practices as an element within a larger theological vision of the development of the human person was a key theme in Wojtyła’s approach to social issues and Ratzinger in Caritas in Veritate clearly sought to situate himself within the traditions of Montini and Wojtyła. Concepts like gratuitousness and communion are not foreign words in his theological vocabulary. They are com-monly used by Communio circle scholars. For example, in an essay on the ‘poverty of liberal economics’, Adrian Walker argued that ‘the best, most central paradigm for understanding free economic exchange is not a contract among self-interested strangers, but gift-giving among neighbours’.48 Moreover, Ratzinger has never been sympathetic to the US neo-conservative stance on economics. One would not need to place him under political pressure to get him to endorse themes in Populorum Progressio. In pre-papal essays he described as astounding the idea that the laws of the market are either neutral or in essence good and in the context of the problem of Third World poverty he referred to the ‘tragic legacy’ and ‘cruelty of the liberal capitalist system’.49 In an interview with the Italian Catholic agency SIR given in 2004 he said that he believed that economic affairs are often driven by a form of liberalism which ‘specifically excludes the heart’ and the ‘possibility of seeing God, of introducing the light of moral responsibility, love and justice into the worlds of work, of commerce and of politics’.50

There is a strong link between the second part of Deus Caritas Est and themes in Caritas in Veritate, particularly the idea that the Christian service of material needs is different from any other form

BENEDICT XVI

90

of humanitarianism. In paragraph 31 of Deus Caritas Est Ratzinger wrote that while professional competence is a primary, fundamental requirement of those entrusted with the provision of the material needs of others, it is not of itself sufficient:

We are dealing with human beings, and human beings always need something more than technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt concern. Those who work for the Church’s charitable organizations must be distinguished by the fact that they do not merely meet the needs of the moment, but they dedicate themselves to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to experience the richness of their humanity. Con-sequently, in addition to their necessary professional training, these charity workers need a ‘formation of the heart’: they need to be led to that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others.

Ratzinger concludes paragraph 33 by saying that ‘with regard to the personnel who carry out the Church’s charitable activity on the practical level, the essential has already been said: they must not be inspired by ideologies aimed at improving the world, but should rather be guided by the faith which works through love’. In other words, there is a qualitative difference between Christian charity and every other form of humanitarianism:

My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.

The essential difference of Christian charity is therefore the personal spiritual dimension. It is a two-way participation in the love of the Holy Trinity. Precisely because of this personal element Ratzinger warns against a ‘growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work’ and he concluded Deus Caritas Est with an honorary roll call of saints who in their lives gave witness to this essential difference of Christian charity. They included Francis of Assisi, Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, John Bosco and Teresa of Calcutta.


91

The inverse side of this accent on the spiritual is that Ratzinger has often commented that the Church should not seek to imitate the corporate world wherein this element is not primary. Some of these comments include the following:

1. Saints, in fact reformed the Church in depth, not by working up plans for new structures, but by reforming themselves. What the Church needs in order to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management.51

2. The saints were all people of imagination, not functionaries of apparatuses.52

3. I have said very often that I think we have too much bureaucracy. Therefore, it will be necessary in any case to simplify things. Everything should not take place by way of committees; there must even also be the personal encounter.53

4. Paul was effective, not because of brilliant rhetoric and sophisti-cated strategies, but rather because he exerted himself and left himself vulnerable in the service of the Gospel.54

In summary, Ratzinger does not think that Christianity is just about alms giving – if it were then the Vatican should be running its own Live Aid concerts and similar secular events. Rather he sees Christian charity as intimately connected with personal love and personal encounters with the grace of Christ. This is what gives Christian social service its distinctive character and makes it different from secular forms of humanitarian aid. He is also concerned about the ways in which modern corporate practices preclude the flourishing of this personal dimension. Following the treatments of the theological virtues in Pieper and Aquinas, which themselves have strong scriptural foundations, Ratzinger regards a specifically Christian account of faith, hope and love not merely as radically different from all the contemporary secularist alternatives, but, precisely because of this, capable of giving rise to a completely differ-ent kind of political and economic culture from anything imagined in secular social theory. In his Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope and Love, he concluded:

A society that turns what is specifically human into something purely private and defines itself in terms of a complete secularity (which moreover inevitably becomes a pseudo-religion and a new

BENEDICT XVI

92

all-embracing system that enslaves people) – this kind of society will of its nature be sorrowful, a place of despair: it rests on a diminution of human dignity. A society whose public order is consistently determined by agnosticism is not a society that has become free but a society that has despaired, marked by the sorrow of man who is fleeing from God and in contradiction with himself. A Church that did not have the courage to under-mine the public status of its image of man would no longer be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set on a hill.55

93

CHAPTER 5

HISTORY AND ONTOLOGY AFTER HEIDEGGER

The issue of the severance of the trinitarian relationships between faith, hope and love and their secularist mutations, is only one aspect of the much larger problem, identified by Ratzinger in his Principles of Catholic Theology as no less than the ‘fundamental crisis of our age’. As has been stated earlier he summarizes this crisis as ‘coming to an understanding of the mediation of history within the realm of ontology’.1 He believes that history always becomes problematical when a particular historical configuration is in a state of crisis as Western culture appears currently to be. At such times people become more highly conscious of the difference between their historical and ontological nature.2 The dramatic change in historical context fosters an awareness of a multitude of different lifestyle options. The Roman-tic dream of cultivating a beautiful soul (Die schöne Seele) is no longer an isolated preoccupation of a small intellectual elite but on a more popularist, far less philosophical level, so-called ‘plain persons’ are engaged in an enterprise of artistic self-creation. Today the horizons or options on the lifestyle menu are almost infinite and the Christian churches are thus placed in a position where they need to offer some criteria to their faithful for making their selections. This requires the development of a theological anthropology that is sufficiently multidimensional to include within it both substantiality (the notion of a universal human nature), and relationality (an appreciation of the uniqueness of each and every human life, its individuality, determined by its relations with similarly unique others). It requires, in other words, an account of the human being as a being in time, but in such a way that the two dimensions are held together rather than eclipsing either the historical or the ontological end of the pole.

BENEDICT XVI

94

The impetus for examining the historical end of the pole can be found at least as far back as Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), however it became a driving force in theological speculation in the twentieth century following the publication of Heidegger’s Being and Time in 1927. Heidegger had abandoned his Catholic faith in 1919 and in the 1920s he turned to Protestantism, particularly to Martin Luther’s criticisms of scholastic metaphysics. This was at a time when neo-scholasticism was the dominant theological tradition in Catholic academies, in particular in the pontifical academies in Rome and Belgium. Heidegger was in full rebellion from the anti-historical spirit of the scholasticism of his youth. While later scholars would defend Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure from the charge of having ignored history, it is generally acknowledged that post-Tridentine scholasticism prided itself on its rejection of what was perceived to be a Protestant fixation on history. Rudolf Voderholzer noted, for example, that Cajetan skipped whole passages in his commentary on the Summa of St Thomas precisely because they concerned mere history and so, in Cajetan’s understanding, resisted systematization and as such were of no interest to him.3 However what interested the young Heidegger was precisely what he called the ‘hermeneutics of facticity in concrete life’ or being as it is in time, which became known as an ‘existential analytic’ in Being and Time. The key categories of this analytic were care and existence, concern and instrumentality, temporality and historicity.

In the 1920s these categories were appropriated by Rudolf Bultmann, one of Heidegger’s colleagues in Marburg, and applied to his deconstruction and demythologization of the Gospels. Later, in the 1930s, Heidegger’s attention was drawn away from Luther to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843). Notwithstanding the fact that as Rector of the University of Freiburg between April 1933 and April 1934 Heidegger had allowed himself to be publicly associated with the Nazi ideology, during the decade of the 1930s a whole generation of Catholic scholars were attracted to the study of his philosophy. These included Max Müller, Gustav Siewerth, Johannes B. Lotz and Karl Rahner. His impact was such that in 1969 Rahner was to write that ‘Catholic theology can no longer be thought of without Martin Heidegger, because even those who hope to go beyond him and ask questions different from his, nonetheless owe their origin to him’.4 He also remarked that although he had had many professors in the


95

classroom, ‘there is only one whom I can revere as my teacher, and that is Martin Heidegger’.5 Nonetheless, three of the most prominent scholars on the thought of Rahner and Heidegger (Karen Kilby, Cyril O’Regan and Laurence Paul Hemming) are in agreement that Rahner’s appropriation of the philosophical apparatus of Heidegger was merely strategic or opportunistic. He was making use of the conceptual apparatus of Heidegger’s philosophy without necessarily buying into Heidegger’s theological positions. Precisely what these theological positions were remains a matter of academic discussion. In general, it seems he went from being a devout Catholic to a generic Christian with a strong interest in Luther, to a scholar interested in pre-Christian paganism, then to someone with an interest in some-thing akin to Buddhism or what John D Caputo describes as ‘a meditative, silent world reverencing’ and finally he asked to be buried with the full rites of the Catholic Church.6 Thus Rahner’s appropria-tion of elements of Heidegger’s philosophy was a contemporary case of ‘plundering the spoils of the Egyptians’, of placing ideas from rival, or at least external traditions, at the service of Christianity. As Hans Küng has argued, Rahner was the last in the line of the great neo-scholastics.

In stark contrast to Rahner, Ratzinger, who was born some 23 years later in 1927, the year that Being and Time was first pub-lished, was not formed in a strong scholastic mould. Ratzinger’s list of those who were intellectuals popular with seminarians of his generation did not include members of the immediately previous generation who were working to develop scholasticism (apart from Pieper who was atypical of this academic breed) and there was no one on his list who was particularly inspired by Heidegger. Those he regarded as mentors or intellectual heroes were all non-scholastics. Moreover, many, like Theodor Haecker whom Heidegger had pub-licly ridiculed, had paid a high price for their opposition to Hitler. Martin Buber was however on his list of seminarian ‘top ten’ favou-rites and Buber was famously critical of Heidegger. Buber traced the contemporary cosmological and anthropological crises through Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Hegel, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Scheler. He concluded that after Nietzsche ‘nothing more remains to the solitary man but to seek an intimate communication with himself ’ and that this is the basic situ-ation from which Heidegger’s philosophy arises.7 In Buber’s reading, Heidegger’s existence is monological, notwithstanding his interest in

BENEDICT XVI

96

being in the world.8 In Heidegger’s world there is no true Thou spoken from being to being.9

Ratzinger is clearly post-Heideggerian in the sense that he acknowl-edges the importance of the macro level issues about the relationship between history and ontology which Heidegger made so central to twentieth-century thought. In his own analysis Ratzinger traces the contemporary crisis in the understanding of the relationship between the two to the collapse of the prevailing Christian historical consciousness at the time of the Reformation. The effect of the Reformation was ‘to make the individual person’s orientation deter-minative, and responsibility for the Christian order was deliberately referred to the world, to the princes, in order, precisely in this way, to expose the lack of historical actuality in the Church that was herself unable to form her own history or communicate salvation by her continuity’.10 In place of the concept of succession there appeared the emphasis on the charismatic authority of the Holy Spirit, and in place of typology, which pointed to the continuity of history in promise and fulfilment, there appeared the appeal to what was in the beginning.11 Since ontology is the basic philosophical expression of the concept of continuity, Ratzinger observes that it was rejected by Protestants, particularly Lutherans, first as a Scholastic and later as a Hellenistic perversion of Christianity and contrasted with the idea of history.12

In the early part of the twentieth-century Catholic theology thereby faced the question of the relationship between salvation history as presented in the Scriptures and the metaphysical heritage in Catholic theology, with a subsidiary question of the extent to which scriptural mediation could exist together with ecclesial mediation, as well as the anthropological question about the value to be given to human achievements in the whole economy of salvation.13 Karl Barth and Oscar Cullmann led the Protestant ‘salvation history’ side of the debate, while Gottlieb Söhngen in Germany and Jean Daniélou in France, led the Catholic side of the discussion.14 According to Ratzinger, Söhngen ‘attempted to approach the first question by con-structing two philosophical models – the abstract-metaphysical and the concrete-historical – whose mutual complementarity became for him the key to the Catholic-Protestant debate as well as a kind of hermeneutic for disclosing the relationship between history and dogma’.15 The second question had in various ways occupied the attention of de Lubac, Rahner and Ratzinger and their ideas on this


97

theme fed into the drafting of Dei Verbum, as discussed in Chapter 3. The third, more anthropological question, was directly addressed by Daniélou. He argued that history is primarily ‘the great works of God, accomplished by preaching and the sacraments’.16 This is ‘what constitutes history in its most real and most hidden substance’.17 The successive Christian cultures constitute only ‘the outer garment’ of this history, they are, as it were, epiphenomena. The mission of the Church is not primarily to ‘humanise civilization, to make pleasures more moral, salaries more just’.18 These things are important, but secondary and not the essential. What is primary is ‘liberating souls from spiritual captivity’ and if she succeeds in this mission, the improvements to the social order will follow.19 For this reason Daniélou spoke of a dramatic tension between two successive epochs of total history – the already of the Kingship of Christ which had been won on the Cross, and the not yet of the New Jerusalem.20

These terms, ‘the already’ and the ‘not yet’ were also employed by Cullmann. Of those on the Protestant side of the discussion, Cullmann was closest to the positions represented by Daniélou and Söhngen, at least in his understanding of salvation history (though not in his hostility to the Greek side of the Catholic intellectual heritage). In Revelation Theology: a History, Avery Dulles summa-rized the Cullmann project in the following terms: ‘In focusing on redemptive history as the chief content of revelation, Cullmann opposes the Rationalists, who conceive of revelation as timeless truth, the Barthians, who take refuge in primal history or meta-history (Urgeschichte and Übergeschichte); and the Bultmannians, who tend to separate faith from belief in past historical occurrences’.21 In Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, Ratzinger concluded that Cullmann’s mature position as represented in his Salvation as History is both more concrete and closer to the actual content of Scripture than to the other Protestant models offered by Barth and Bultmann.22 Ratzinger also praised Cullmann for drawing out the ‘existential’ content of salvation history:

Faith means entering into solidarity with salvation history, taking up its ‘already’ and, on that basis, working towards the ‘not yet’. The ‘existential’ categories of faith, hope and love are brought into relation with salvation history’s own constituitive dimensions. Faith is the appropriation of past history, which finds itself trans-posed through love into the present and so becomes once more

BENEDICT XVI

98

hope for the future. Salvation history is, therefore, not merely the past, it is also the present and the future, as we continue on our pilgrimage till the Lord’s return.23

Nonetheless, while Ratzinger approved of Cullmann’s attention to the existential content of salvation history and his notion of the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of Christian life in history, he also concluded that Cullmann’s account of the relation-ship between time and eternity was ‘somewhat problematic’ and that the question of how the biblical message is mediated was ‘treated much too cavalierly’.24

Commentaries on these discussions published in the 1950s often divided scholars into ‘eschatological’ and ‘incarnational’ camps, with Barth representing the most extreme end of the eschatological pole, associated with a disposition of indifference to culture and human progress, while the disposition of those who tended toward the ‘incarnational’ end was summarized in the following paragraph by Martin D’Arcy:

We ought not, therefore, to leave history in the ditch while we travel with our hidden treasure to our last end. To think in this way [like Barth] is to undervalue the Incarnation. The new Adam, like the old, gives a name to creatures, a new name, and His re-creative act has become part of the texture of history. It does not abolish but transfigures historical values.25

Ratzinger later summarized the positions with the rhetorical question: do the phenomena which typically accompany the reality of man, such as beauty and art, exist in the Christian scheme, and is their existence in it justified, or is the nakedness of the Cross the sheer negation of all these things?26

A second wave of these debates followed upon Rudolf Bultmann’s 1954–1955 Gifford Lectures, published as History and Eschatology (1957). These debates centred upon Bultmann’s emphasis on the pre-eminence of word over event. In Ratzinger’s analysis the effect of the primacy of the word in Bultmann’s theology was to ‘cancel the notion of a continuous series of salvation-historical events; salvation is to a large extent detemporalized just as the notion of the eschato-logical is expressly divested of all temporal determinatives’.27 While initially it was a lapse from salvation history into metaphysics that


99

was branded as the Catholic error, after Bultmann it became ‘the preoccupation with a continuous line that progresses by way of a determinable sequence of events that is regarded as the Catholic misinterpretation of the original intention of the New Testament’.28

In the 1960s a new element entered into the discussion with the ascendance of Marxism in university departments, predominantly in Western European countries and countries of the British Com-monwealth. Intellectual Marxism arrived with its own version of ‘salvation history’ and its own ontology, including dialectical materi-alism with its promise of the abolition of class conflict and the division of labour. The ideologues of the Soviet establishment even spoke of a ‘New Soviet Man’ who came to be ridiculed in literature as Homo Sovieticus. Marxist feminists also promised the abolition of patriarchy and for some, the family itself. As Paul Henry described it: ‘Marxism represented the materialistic messianism of a laicized Christian hope, for whom Christ is only a stopover from which to pass beyond, a dialectical moment of the historical becoming’.29 Ratzinger noted that ‘the view that the Bible speaks exclusively in terms of salvation history (and thus, anti-metaphysically) facilitated the fusing of the biblical horizon with the Marxist idea of history’.30 Accordingly, history is a progressive liberation and it thereby becomes the real revelation and the real interpreter of the Bible. In effect ‘it swallows up the concepts of God and Revelation and takes over the role of God’.31 This not only affected political theory but Ratzinger also associates its influence with the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In an essay on the concept of Bildung published in 1975, he described the idea of eliminating the problem of sexuality and eros through a process of enlightenment as an example of the pursuit of redemption through knowledge. He also suggested that for a Marxist or libera-tion theologian, guilt is the experience of having retarded human progress.32

The final years of the pontificate of Paul VI thus saw the rise in popularity of theologies of liberation built upon these earlier debates about salvation history, particularly the contributions of Bultmann and his followers, spliced with Marxism. However in 1978, Karol Wojtyła, a Polish phenomenologist with 30 years experience of really existing Marxism was elected to the papacy. In 1979 he issued the first encyclical of his pontificate – Redemptor Hominis – which began with the words, ‘Jesus Christ, the redeemer of man, is the center and purpose of human history’. This was popularly received as a direct

BENEDICT XVI

100

refutation of the opening words of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, that the history of the world, is the history of class conflict. In his Apostolic Letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Wojtyła set out the Catholic conception of time and history in the following manner:

In Christianity time has a fundamental importance. Within the dimension of time the world was created; within it the history of salvation unfolds, finding its culmination in the fullness of time of the Incarnation, and its goal in the glorious return of the Son of God at the end of time. In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, time becomes a dimension of God, who is himself eternal . . . Christ, true God and true man, the Lord of the cosmos, is also the Lord of history of which he is ‘the Alpha and the Omega’ (Rev. 1:8; 21:6), the ‘beginning and the end’ (Rev. 21: 6). In Him the Father has spoken the definitive word about mankind and its history.

This Christocentric theology of history was promoted throughout Wojtyła’s pontificate, alongside a Christocentric anthropology rooted in the theme of Gaudium et spes 22 – the idea that Christ is the model of a perfected humanity. Ratzinger consistently endorsed this approach and described Christ as the ‘directional arrow, as it were, that indicates what being human tends toward, although as long as history is still on the way, this goal is never fully realised’.33

Early in Wojtyła’s pontificate Ratzinger published Principles of Catholic Theology in which he surveyed the various approaches to the relationship between history and ontology. In particular, he traced the treatment of issues such as Hellenization and de-Hellenization, ontology and history, institution and event, incarnational theology and the theology of the cross, and the emergence of a theology of liberation in which history is salvation on the basis of hope in human progress and past history is rejected as an inferior form of existence.34 The first series of debates tended to highlight distinctions between a Catholic and Protestant understanding of the relationship between nature and grace and the place of the world in the economy of salva-tion, while the issues that arose with Bultmann, liberation theologians, and now one could add post-moderns, are essentially engagements with post-Christian constructions of the relationship between being and history.


101

In his response to the Protestants, Ratzinger acknowledges that at first glance, except in a few passages, the Bible contains no onto-logical reflection, that it appears in fact to be antithetical to the Greek mode of ontological thought. However upon a closer inspection he concludes this is a superficial reading and he suggests that Scripture actually has significant things to say about being as such.35 In con-trast to the Greek concept of being however, Ratzinger suggests that the Biblical idea of creatureliness means having one’s origin, not in a passive idea, but in a creative freedom:

Decisive for the Greek concept of God was the belief in God as a pure and changeless being of whom, consequently, no action could be predicated; his utter changelessness meant that he was completely self-contained and referred wholly to himself without any relationship to what was changeable. For the biblical God, on the other hand, it is precisely relationship and action that are the essential marks; creation and revelation are the two basic statements about him, and when revelation is fulfilled in the Resurrection, it is thus confirmed once again that he is not just one who is timeless but also one who is above time, whose exis-tence is known to us only through action.36

In Principles of Catholic Theology Ratzinger did not attend to the task of providing his own definitive account of the mediation of history in the realm of ontology, though he did argue that Karl Rahner’s attempt to deal with the issue in Hearers of the Word (first published in 1941) made the mistake of making man’s being itself historical in character. In this critique of Rahner he follows Pieper’s criticisms of the influence of Heidegger. In his essay on hope, Pieper wrote:

Present day existential philosophy, which regards human existence exclusively in its temporality as a ‘being in time’ is right to the extent that it opposes an idealistic doctrine of man in which the status viatoris seems transformed, against its nature, into a permanent likeness to God. But to the extent that this existential philosophy conceives of man’s existence as essentially and ‘in the foundation of its being temporal’ (Heidegger), it too fails to comprehend the true nature of its subject.37

BENEDICT XVI

102

More fundamentally, Pieper observed that ‘existentialism fails to recognise the true nature of human existence because it denies the “pilgrimage” character of the status viatoris, its orientation toward fulfilment beyond time, and hence, in principle, the status viatoris itself ’.38 While Rahner did not himself deny the status viatoris he tended to conflate salvation history with world history. As Ratzinger expressed the problem:

Rahner appropriated universal reason for Christianity and tried to prove that universal reason leads ultimately to the teachings of Christianity and that the teachings of Christianity are the univer-sally human, the rational par excellence. In the generation that followed Rahner the direction of his thought was reversed. If the teachings of Christianity are the universally human, the generally held views of man’s reason, then it follows that these generally held views are what is Christian. If that is the case, then one must interpret what is Christian in terms of the universal findings of man’s reason.39

In the 1970s and most of the 1980s until the collapse of European Communism in 1989, this approach nurtured the liberation theology movement since in those decades Marxism was seen by many mem-bers of the international intellectual elite as the embodiment of human reason. In his response Ratzinger asked whether it is true that Christianity adds nothing to the universal but merely makes it known:

Is the Christian really just man as he is? Does not the whole dynamism of history stem from the pressure to rise above man as he is? Is not the main point of the faith of both Testaments that man is what he ought to be only by conversion, that is, when he ceases to be what he is? Does not such a concept which turns being into history but also history into being, result in a vast stagnation despite the talk of self-transcendence as the content of man’s being?40

James V. Schall recently put such propositions in the form of a statement rather than a question: ‘If we treat man as only natural, he will no doubt end up being less than natural . . . the principle is not, get man’s natural end right and you will be happy, but get man’s


103

supernatural end right or you will not be able to get his natural or this worldly end right’.41

Against Rahner’s treatment of the relationship between history and ontology, Ratzinger suggested that ‘we must comprehend why God’s universalism (God wants everyone to be saved) makes use of the particularism of the history of salvation (from Abraham to the Church)’, and further, that ‘concern for the salvation of others should not lead to this particularism being as good as completely deleted: the history of salvation and the history of the world should not be declared to be simply identical because God’s concern must be directed at everyone’.42 Moreover, Ratzinger argued that Christianity does represent a very particular intervention in the history of being and the being of history since how otherwise could it be such a sign to be rejected (Lk. 2: 34)?43

Referring to passages in Rahner’s Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, Ratzinger concluded that the real problem with Rahner’s synthesis is that he ‘sought for a phi-losophical and theological world formula on the basis on which the whole of reality can be deduced cohesively from necessary causes’.44 Ratzinger believes that at the root of this approach is a concept of freedom taken from idealistic philosophy, and while he believes that such a concept is appropriate for an understanding of divine free-dom, he thinks it does not work for human freedom. He notes that Rahner defines freedom as the ‘ability to be oneself ’ and that it is nothing less than the ‘the ultimate self-responsibility of the person’.45 He described such a concept of freedom as ‘an almost godlike ability for self-action’ and suggested that ‘wanting to be like God is the inner motive of all mankind’s programs of liberation’.46 He also recom-mended the work of M. Kriele, Befreiung und politische Aufklärung, for an exposition of the alternative accounts of human freedom on the intellectual market.47

The specific difference of a Christian conception of freedom was addressed by Jean Daniélou in his essay, ‘The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition’. Daniélou wrote:

In order that there should be history, it is not enough that events have importance; there must be as well a continuity in them. It is precisely this which makes the difference between the concept of ‘historicity’, such as is represented by the Existentialist philosophy and which is merely the present act of individual liberty, and that

BENEDICT XVI

104

of sacred history, where the individual inserts himself into the web of an economy which goes beyond him and which constitutes an objective plan.48

Accordingly, in Principles of Catholic Theology, Ratzinger rejected accounts of freedom which derived their content from German Idealism:

Man finds his centre of gravity, not inside, but outside himself. The place to which he is anchored is not, as it were, within himself, but without. This explains that remnant that remains always to be explained, the fragmentary character of all his efforts to com-prehend the unity of history and being. Ultimately, the tension between ontology and history has its foundation in the tension within human nature itself, which must go out of itself in order to find itself; it has its foundation in the mystery of God, which is freedom and which, therefore, calls each individual by a name that is known to no other. Thus, the whole is communicated to him in the particular.49

This notion of the communication of the whole in the particular was a dominant theme in von Balthasar’s 1963 work Das Ganze im Fragment which was published in English as A Theological Anthro-pology. In that work von Balthasar addressed the theme of the frag-mentary nature of the human perception of the world with reference to the theological virtues:

Faith, hope and charity move through a fragmentary existence towards an unforeseeable perfection. Therefore, they can become suspicious if wholeness is offered recognizably and tangibly to them in advance. In the fragmentary nature of man and the world they have a guarantee of the genuine. As a blind man feels with knowing hands the sharp edges of broken pottery, so they learn from the fragments of existence in what direction toward whole-ness God points them. Such a fragment is, for groping human hands, the cross of Christ: innumerable lines of significance inter-sect at it, disentangle, then entangle themselves again. A synthesis that can be grasped at a glance is all the less possible in that the synthesis that God brought about manifested itself in the ulti-mate shattering of all human plans, demands and longings. Faith,


105

love and hope grope their way through the darkness: they believe the incredible; they love that which withdraws itself, abandoning them; they hope against hope. The darkness with its withdrawal of all available unity makes them one.50

Von Balthasar thereby offers an account of Bildung or self-development in which God and the human person are the two primary actors or agents. The two exist in a dialogical relationship where prayer and sacraments are the primary mode of communica-tion within the relationship. In his work on the nineteenth-century French Carmelite, Thérèse of Lisieux, von Balthasar argued that ‘for each Christian, God has an idea which fixes his or her place within the membership of the Church, and that this idea is unique and personal, embodying for each his or her appropriate sanctity’. Thus the vocation of each individual is to ‘transform his life into this Idea of himself secreted in God, this “individual law” freely promulgated for him by the pure grace of God’.51 This means that there is no ‘one size fits all’ blueprint for Christian spirituality. There are rather many missions and charisms in the life of the Church. It is through the work of prayer and grace that the individual comes to an under-standing of the divine will for him or her and for each person there will be both ‘constants’ and unique gifts and special graces. Among the ‘constants’ will be the work of the theological virtues, that is, of faith, hope and love, and a life of prayer and participation in the sacramental life of the Church, but beyond this each person enjoys what the Romantics called individualität (individuality) which is forged in the theo-dramatic relationship. In his one publication which directly addresses the topic of Bildung, Ratzinger argued that while the Christian doctrine of creation can be used to defend a notion of human equality in the sense that all have been created in the same image of God, it should not be used to imply a general sameness between persons. The Christian faith, he said, would rather bring to the fore the equality of the different pathways (vocations) and recognize the dignity of all human beings in the symphony of the various callings.52 He also noted that the contemporary quest for sameness or uniformity (one might say ‘a one size should fit all attitude’) in educational policy, has been driven by the sin of envy.

Thus the difference between the account of Bildung to be found at the nihilist end of the Romantic spectrum and the account to be found at the Catholic end is not related to any Catholic indifference

BENEDICT XVI

106

to individuality or desire for social uniformity. It is rather the case that at the Catholic end the image of the beautiful soul is an image known to God and discerned by the human person through prayer, whereas at the nihilist end, the image is self-created by the person without any reference to God. As R. E. Norton concluded in his work The Beautiful Soul: Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century, for most of the nineteenth-century advocates of Bildung, the whole process came to be seen as a sovereign and independent good.53 For the contemporary postmoderns who occupy the nihilist end of the Romantic tradition, there are no criteria by which one should go about the process of artistic self-creation. There is no ideal or exem-plary model of humanity. What matters is not any quality of the self which is ultimately created, but the freedom of the process by which the self (whatever its ultimate character) was created.

Ratzinger’s criticism of elements of Rahner’s treatment of the relationship between history and ontology not only relies on Pieper’s criticisms of Heidegger and basic principles of Balthasarian theo-dramatics as outlined above, but it also echoes Pieper’s earlier criticisms of the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin. In the 1960s one of the sources of authority for the more Concilium style inter-pretation of the Second Vatican Council as a positive embrace of the culture of modernity was to be found in the theology of history of Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard tried to solve the tension between the incarnational and eschatological perspectives with an evolutionary account of salvation history. Ratzinger’s reflections on Teilhard appear in the publication of the proceedings of a symposium to mark the 70th birthday of Johann Baptist Metz who was arguably Rahner’s most illustrious student. Ratzinger’s contribution was published under the title ‘The End of Time’. The following is his summary of Teilhard’s thesis:

He [de Chardin] described the cosmos as a process of upward development, as a journey of unification. From the very simple, this journey leads to ever greater and more complex units in which multiplicity is not cancelled out but integrated into a growing synthesis, culminating in the Noosphere, where spirit and its under-standing comprehend the whole, and everything is integrated into a kind of living organism. Based on Ephesians and Colos-sians, Teilhard envisages Christ as the energy that drives towards the Noosphere, an energy that finally incorporates everything


107

into its fullness . . . For Teilhard all of evolution’s terrible aspects and so too, finally, all of history’s atrocities, are inevitable mishaps in the process of upward movement toward the definitive synthe-sis. . . .Thus, in the end human beings in their suffering appear as the material for evolution’s experiment, the world’s injustices as mishaps that you have to reckon for such a journey.54

On this view reality becomes a sort of inevitable Wagnerian fate which does not end in Götterdämmerung but in the Noosphere. Against the logic of this orientation, Ratzinger argues that ‘the cosmos is not neutral when it comes to human beings. Human beings are not beg-garly parasites of being; rather, the cosmos is created with freedom in mind, a freedom that takes up its inner trajectories and alone can bring them to their goal’.55 Similarly, Pieper was critical of Teilhard’s theology on the grounds that it could not account for the meaning of martyrdom. In Pieper’s words, ‘evolution knows no martyrs’.56 If one is living in a low stage of historical or ‘cosmic’, development, why die for something which might turn out not to be an eternal value or principle after all? Why die for the papacy when it may be just a pre-modern institution at a low stage of evolutionary development?

Ratzinger refuses to accept a theology of history which reduces centuries of Christian sacrifice to the status of a mere preparatory phase in the evolution of the cosmos with a Christian impetus. For Ratzinger, as for John Paul II, the centre of human history is the Incarnation. There is nothing in Scripture to suggest an evolutionary perfection of human nature or the social order. All that can be known for certain is Christ’s warning recorded in the Gospel of St John – if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you – and his promise in the Gospel of St Matthew that the gates of hell will not ultimately prevail against the Church.

Nonetheless, while Ratzinger clearly regards human nature as a constant in creation which does not cumulatively develop to some higher ontological stage, either in its capacity for love or for knowl-edge (at least not before the Last Judgment and the renewal of the cosmos), he also recognizes that the possibilities for participation in the life of the Trinity, for deepening love and knowledge, can be either thwarted or enhanced by cultures which are more or less impervious or receptive to grace and the cultivation of virtue. It is the element of creative freedom within human nature that is so vulnerable to damage from a secularist culture. The severance of the links between

BENEDICT XVI

108

notions of God, human nature, ethos and religion and the emergence of counterfeit notions of faith, hope and love, set limits on the intel-lectual horizons of people at the same time as encouraging social and institutional practices which require a capacity for vice rather than virtue and thereby diminish a person’s ability to love. As Bonsor has expressed the idea in Heideggerian terms, ‘the play of historical contexts continually opens what can be seen, what can be thought’ and conversely, whatever ‘is said and thought is intrinsically bound to the opening, to the context which makes it possible’. 57 However, for Ratzinger, unlike Heidegger, the whole purpose of the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation is to act as the agent by which the eternal is mediated to the present. Self-transcendence, including the transcendence of one’s culture, is made possible by grace given by a personal God. Some cultures however are more or less hospitable to the humanism of the Incarnation than others. As de Lubac argued, no culture is ever theologically neutral.

It is sometimes remarked by those writing from a liberation theo-logy perspective, that Ratzinger appears closer to the eschatological end of the spectrum than to the incarnational. This is because of his scepticism about the possibility of a moral ‘leap forward’ in human behaviour and organization. He is wary of neo-Pelagian presump-tions about the perfectibility of human nature through education and he regarded the terminology in the discussion of freedom in Gaudium et spes as ‘downright Pelagian’. Education however valuable it might be in eliminating ignorance, cannot eradicate sin. Nonethe-less his disposition is never to occupy one extreme end of a theological spectrum but rather to try and balance the poles in a creative tension. One might say that his tendency is to think of Good Friday from the perspective of Easter Sunday and Easter Sunday from the perspec-tive of Good Friday. In his Introduction to Christianity, he wrote:

Christian belief is not merely concerned, as one might at first suspect from all the talk of belief or faith, with the eternal, which as the ‘entirely Other’ would remain completely outside the human world and time; on the contrary, it is much more concerned with God in history, with God as man. By thus seeming to bridge the gap between eternal and temporal, between visible and invisible, by making us meet God as man, the eternal as the temporal, as one of us, it understands itself as revelation.58


109

In A Theology of History, von Balthasar drew out the consequences of this approach in the following paragraph:

The value of the historical pole of human existence is thus heightened by the historical character of Christ’s revelation and to some extent liberated from its unjust imprisonment within an unhistorical philosophy of essences, raised, to some extent, from the sphere of pure philosophy to a participation in the factuality of theology. Contemporary religious existential philosophy has, indeed, gone a step beyond the Platonic scheme of thought, by as it were turning it around to leave the sphere of essences, of the Logos, open in its depths to that in which it is grounded: the sphere of existence as ek-sistence, the surging out of essence into time and history; this insofar as the coming-to-be of being (esse accidens in Arab scholasticism), its time dimension, which at the religious level is its openness to the encounter of God’s will and command, is the ultimate ground of man’s being human.59

By the 1950s, the need for Catholic theologians and philosophers to attend to the significance of time and history was well appreciated, at least by the more intellectual of the Europeans, which explains the surge of interest in personalism, existentialism and phenomenology among those who were to become the Conciliar generation. Albert Dondeyne, a Conciliar peritus from Belgium, saw the task of his generation as one of combating the materialism of the Marxists, on the one side, and the intellectualism of the neo-scholastics, on the other. He noted that by emptying man of his interior life and by stripping the interior life of its bodily exteriority, materialism and intellectualism make inter-subjectivity something incomprehensible. As a result the true historical character of human existence evapo-rates.60 He added that the neglect of the human person’s embodiment within the world exercised a disastrous influence on the ontological interpretation of human existence:

Thinkers like Newman, Marcel and Jaspers have shown that by eliminating from man’s inheritance corporeity as well as the inter-subjectivity and the being-in-history that follow from it, rationalism must end up by emptying human reality of its onto-logical content and of its intrinsic reference to the Transcendent.

BENEDICT XVI

110

To reduce the human person to a bloodless and anonymous spectator is to destroy the very idea of a ‘person’ and make man a being without soul or destiny, for whom life has neither rhyme nor reason, since there is really nothing he can do. Hence, the importance in metaphysics of Blondel’s theme of action . . . Embodiment contributes to our insertion in being, towards making us participate in . . . the mystery of being.61

Ratzinger addressed these themes in an essay first published as a chapter in Dogma und Verkudigung in 1973 and then re-published in the Communio journal in 1990 with the title ‘Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology’. The whole article is based on a rejection of the classical definition of the person, coined by Boethius, as the indi-vidual substance of a rational nature. This is an understanding of the person defined entirely in terms of substance. Ratzinger believes that it ‘cannot clarify anything about Christology or the Trinity’ and is ‘an affirmation that remains on the level of the Greek mind which thinks in substantialist terms’. Instead, he argues that the notion of ‘relation’ or ‘relationality’ needs to be recognized as a third specific fundamental category between the Greek categories of substance and accident and he believes that it is impossible to approach the Trinity without this category. Within Trinitarian theology, the notion of person only makes sense when understood as relation. According to Augustine and late Patristic theology, the three persons that exist in God are in their nature relations. They are, not therefore, ‘sub-stances that stand next to each other, but they are real existing relations, and nothing besides’.62 Ratzinger concludes that ‘relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but it is the person itself ’.63 Moreover, echoing Dondeyne and countering Descartes, Ratzinger observes that the body is not something exter-nal to the spirit; it is the latter’s self-expression, its ‘image’. The constituents of biological life are also constituitive of the human person: ‘Since the body is the visible form of the person, and the person is the image of God, it follows that the body, in its whole context of relationships, is the place where the divine is portrayed, uttered and rendered accessible to our gaze’.64 For Ratzinger, the era of defining the person solely with reference to the dimension of substantiality is over.

Nonetheless Ratzinger is aware that an explicit appreciation of the dimension of relationality was a long time coming in Christian


111

anthropology. He acknowledges that at the beginning of the Middle Ages, Richard of St Victor found a concept of the person derived from within Christianity when he defined the person as ‘the proper existence of spiritual nature’ and he praises the Victorine for this insight which ‘correctly sees that in its theological meaning “person” does not lie on the level of essence, but of existence’.65 Scholastic theology was thereby able to develop categories of existence out of this contribution. Its defect was that it limited these categories to Christology and to the doctrine of the Trinity and did not extend them to the human person. This was somewhat short-sighted and corresponded to an eclipse of the notion of deification in the theo-logy of the West which was brought back into focus by the ressource-ment scholarship of the mid-twentieth century. The whole point of Gaudium et spes 22 is that Christ is the Second Adam, the true fulfilment of the idea of the human person:

In Christ, in the man who is completely with God, human existence is not canceled, but comes to its highest possibility, which consists in transcending itself into the absolute and in the integration of its own relativity into the absoluteness of divine love.66

Prescriptively Balthasar observes that the task of making the historical existence of Christ the norm of every individual existence is the work of the Holy Spirit:

This carving out of a section of history in order to make it relevant to the whole of history is a process involving several factors, all interconnected in their dependence upon the Holy Spirit, but nonetheless distinguishable. The first concerns the working of the Spirit upon the Incarnate Son himself . . . A second factor is the working of the Spirit as he relates to Christ, thus transformed, to the historical Church of every age, which is expressed typically in the sacraments, and most fully in the Eucharist. A third completes this relation by creating the missions of Church and individual as applications of the life of Christ to every Christian life and the whole life of the Church . . . If the first and the third is primarily personal and the second is primarily sacramental, it is important to see from the start how the two aspects are interwoven . . . everything in the sacramental order has to be embedded in the personal level, as mediation and encounter,

BENEDICT XVI

112

as a gesture expressing personal intention, and hence it always communicates personal, historical graces, and creates personal, historical situations.67

This is another dimension of the paradox that the human person perceives the whole only through fragments. Ratzinger’s concerns about Rahner’s attempt to address the relationship between history and ontology in Hearers of the Word being neglectful of this element is perhaps further evidence that Ratzinger’s theology is in the tradi-tion of Augustine, Newman and Guardini with their emphasis on the very personal response of the human heart to a divine conversation. Rahner’s theology could lead to the positing of the existence of an anonymous Christian, but it would be difficult to reach such a posi-tion from reading Augustine, Newman or Guardini. Throughout his publications Ratzinger frequently refers to the fact that the event of love is always linked to an encounter with a person. This is one of those Guardinian watermarks. As Livio Melina, a former colleague of Ratzinger’s in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has observed:

This singular correlation between love and person was perceived and expounded systematically by the personalism of the last cen-tury, which defended, on the one side, the irreducible subjective singularity of the person that emerges in love and, on the other side, the originality of the knowledge that love permits and that is qualitatively distinguished from other forms of knowledge.68

In keeping with the Patristic tradition, Maximilian Heinrich Heim argues that Ratzinger’s theology ‘is defined, not by an opposition between salvation history and its ontological unfolding, but rather by a mutual ordering of the two that constantly adheres to the prae [logical and temporal priority] of God’s action’, and one might add that this action, although directed to the whole of creation, is always individually and personally mediated.69 These are insights he owes to Guardini, Söhngen and Buber and principles he shares with von Balthasar.

In a preface to the second volume of his collected publications, published in 2009, Ratzinger reflected that ‘if neo-Scholastic theo-logy essentially understood Revelation as the divine transmission of mysteries, which remain inaccessible to the human mind, today


113

Revelation is considered as God’s manifestation of himself in an historical action, and salvation history is seen as a central element of Revelation’.70 The fact that this is so within the field of Catholic theology is largely due to the efforts of Söhngen, von Balthasar, Daniélou, Rahner and Ratzinger himself. His habilitationsschrift topic, recommended by Söhngen, brought him into the territory of the scholarly debates about St Bonaventure’s criticisms of the influence of Aristotle in theology.71 From these he concluded that the anti-Aristotelian elements in St Bonaventure’s thought are related to his theology of history and that his theology of history was thor-oughly Christocentric. Such Christocentrism becomes emblematic for all of the mature Ratzinger’s work, beginning with his criticisms of the 1960s enthusiasm for an allegedly benign secularism. It is consistent with his youthful enthusiasm for the works of de Lubac and his intellectual affinities with von Balthasar and ultimately Wojtyła. It might also be argued that it inoculated him against the positions of Teilhard de Chardin and the liberation theologians for whom history is a progressive movement, either toward the noosphere or the immanentization of the eschaton.

In the final analysis Ratzinger’s theology cannot accommodate either the Liberal (Whig) or Marxist accounts of history or ontology. The Liberal he rejected in various works from his 1960’s criticism of the account of human freedom in Gaudium et spes through to the papal encyclicals Spe Salvi and Caritas in Veritate. Education and technology, though capable of being put to a good use, cannot in themselves bring about an improvement of the human condition, and freedom is only freedom if it is linked to truth and love. The Marxist he rejected as a professor at Tübingen in 1968, later as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and finally as pope in his first two encyclicals. Within his theology there can be no other ‘ends’ to history than Christ, who is simultaneously the alpha and omega, and no other end to human nature than eternal beatitude in the presence of the triune God.72 Among fellow Chris-tians this leaves him in a position that is closer to Barth than Bultmann, closer to Cullmann than to Barth, but ultimately with Daniélou, Söhngen and von Balthasar. Within his humanism of the Incarnation there is a place for beauty and art and other human works which is not negated by the nakedness of the Cross.

114

CHAPTER 6

CHRISTIANITY IN THE MARKETPLACE OF FAITH TRADITIONS

In November of 1999 to mark the arrival of the millennium the Sorbonne held a colloquium entitled Deux mille sans après quoi? Eighteen speakers were invited, including Ratzinger. His address was framed by the question of how Christianity originally saw itself in the marketplace of faith traditions. He began by observing that in the year 2000 Christianity is in deep crisis, especially in Europe. He further identified the foundation of the crisis as the loss of belief in the idea that reason and religion have anything to do with one another. He also noted the popularity of the Buddhist fable which compares the different faith traditions to different perceptions of an elephant as given by blind men, some having caught hold of its trunk, others its tail, others its ears and so on. The fable is often quoted by people who believe that there is no possibility of one true religion. There is simply a kind of basic human quest for contact with some-thing divine, some force that is supra-human. Different faith traditions merely represent different human experiments fostered by this basic psychological need. Human beings have no capacity to understand the supra-human, no faculty for contact with the divine. They are like blind men grasping parts of an elephant.

In his response to the fable, Ratzinger suggested that the best place to find an answer to the question of how Christianity originally saw itself in the marketplace of faith traditions, is in Augustine’s work on the philosophy of religion according to Marcus Terrentius Varro (116–27BC). Varro identified 3 different approaches to theology: what might be termed mystical theology, political theology and natural theology or physics. Within Varro’s framework, the classical poets were the mystical theologians; they composed hymns to the


115

gods. Their natural habitat was the theatre which in classical times was thoroughly religious and cultic in character. According to popular conviction theatre shows were established in Rome on the orders of the gods. The content of mystical theology was thus the myths of the gods. The natural theologians were the philosophers, those who went beyond the mundane and searched to understand reality as such. Their natural habitat was in the academies and the content of their theology focused on the subject of what the gods are made. The political theologians were those whose natural habitat was found in the organs of government and the content of their theology covered cult worship.

From these sets of distinctions Varro concluded that natural theo-logy deals with the nature of the gods and the remaining theologies deal with the godly institutions of men. Civil theology does not ultimately have any god, only religion; while natural theology has no religion, but only some deity. Moreover, within this triad the order of worship, the concrete world of religion, does not belong to the order of reality as such, but to the order of mores, or customs. The gods did not create the state, rather the state instituted its own gods, and their worship is important to the state in order to maintain the good conduct of its citizens. According to this view, religion is essen-tially a political phenomenon or what today would be called an ideology. Ratzinger noted that within this triad of theological types, Augustine placed Christianity in the realm of physical or natural theology. Christianity therefore has its antecedents in philosophical rationality, not in mythical cults which have their ultimate justifi-cation in their political usefulness.

From this foundation Ratzinger concluded that precisely because Christianity understood itself as the triumph of knowledge over myth, it had to consider itself universal – ‘it had to be taken forth to all peoples not as a specific religion elbowing its way among others, not through any sort of religious imperialism, but as truth which makes illusion superfluous’.1 Since it did not concur with the relati-vity and changeability of the civic gods it frustrated the political usefulness of religion and as a result its adherents were subjected to successive waves of persecutions by Roman emperors.

Nonetheless, while Ratzinger, following Augustine, classified Chris-tianity under the banner of a natural religion, he observed that with Christianity there is a profound modification of the philosophical image of God: the God in whom the Christians believe is truly a

BENEDICT XVI

116

natural God, in contrast to the mythic and political gods; but not everything which is nature, is God. God is God by his nature, but nature as such is not God. There is a certain separation between all embracing nature and the Being which affords it its origin and beginning. Further, this God is not a silent God. This God entered human history.

According to Ratzinger’s reading of history, Christianity was convincing precisely because it joined faith and reason and because it directed action to caritas, to charity – the moral practices which were a part of the Christian package placed an accent on the loving care of the suffering, the poor and the weak:

We have seen that in the conception of Early Christianity the notions of human nature, God, ethos and religion were inextri-cably linked to one another and that precisely this bond helped Christianity to see and navigate clearly amid the crisis of the gods and the crisis of ancient rationality.2

In a more recent work Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, Ratzinger observed that there are essentially three ways of moving beyond the realm of primitive human religious expe-rience and myth. He identified these as mysticism, monotheistic revolution and enlightenment. He further argued that the real ques-tions concerning relations between religions arise between mysticism and monotheistic revolution and that no choice can be made in favour of one or the other on rational grounds since to do so would be to presuppose the absolute validity of the rational way. Accord-ingly, the choice is, in the final analysis, one of faith, albeit, in the case of a choice for monotheistic revolution, a faith that makes use of rational standards.3

Ratzinger identifies the difference between the mystical and mono-theistic ways as a different understanding of God. For the mystical traditions, such as Buddhism, God is entirely passive and the decisive element is human experience, whereas for the monotheistic traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, God is active and in some sense invites the person into a relationship.4 What results from this difference is that the beliefs of the monotheistic traditions are his-torical in character, whereas the mystical traditions are unhistorical in character.5 With reference to the work of Jean Daniélou, Ratzinger emphasizes that Christianity is essentially faith in an event, whereas


117

the mystical traditions believe in the existence of an eternal world that stands in opposition to the world of time.6 He concludes:

We could say that biblical ‘mysticism’ is not a mysticism of images but of words and that its relation is not contemplation by man but the word and the act of God. It is not primarily the discovery of some truth; rather, it is the activity of God himself making history. Its meaning is, not that divine reality becomes visible to man, but that it makes the person who receives the revelation into an actor in divine history.7

In Principles of Catholic Theology, Ratzinger further argues that the revelation of Christ presumes a loss of credibility on the part of the late Judaic concept of history:

Its interpretation by Paul gives radical expression to the historico-critical fact; it completes the break with the former concept of history and, at the same time, understands Jesus’ message as the foundation of a new history, which paradoxically, is experienced as the end of all history and, for that reason, affects all mankind. It would not be difficult to identify, on this basis, two criteria of the rising Christian historical consciousness, which, in their para-doxical tension, bring into focus the paradox of this consciousness itself: it is characterized simultaneously by both personalization (individuation) and universalisation. The beginning and end of this new history is the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, who is recog-nized as the last man (the second Adam), that is, as the long-awaited manifestation of what is truly human and the definitive revelation to man of his hidden nature; for this very reason, it is oriented toward the whole human race and presumes the abrogation of all partial histories, whose partial salvation is looked upon as essentially an absence of salvation.8

Having agreed with Augustine that Christianity emerged in classi-cal times as a type of natural theology, that is, a claim about what God is, Ratzinger suggests that Christianity today must meet the challenge of a new ‘first philosophy of sorts’, which is found in the theory of evolution. Today Christian thought is itself being construed to be unscientific since the popularist theory of evolution holds that there is no creator in the Christian, Jewish or Islamic sense of the

BENEDICT XVI

118

term, nor is there any ‘soul of the world’ or interior dynamic in the classical Stoic sense.

While accepting that there are micro-evolutionary processes at work, Ratzinger believes that the world was created in time by God and that Christians cannot surrender this principle if Christianity is not to mutate into some kind of Gnosticism. He believes that all the monotheistic traditions share this basic belief that the world was created by God according to his own principles, giving the natural order an internal coherence and beauty. In a series of essays pub-lished in 1995 under the title of A Catholic Understanding of the Fall and Creation he wrote:

I see the common core of Gnosticism, in all its different forms and versions, as the repudiation of creation. This common core has a common effect on the doctrine of humankind to be found in the various models of Gnosticism: the mystery of suffering, of love, of substitutionary redemption, is rejected in favour of a control of the world and of life through knowledge. Love appears too insecure a foundation for life . . . It means one has to depend on something unpredictable and unenforceable, something we cannot certainly make ourselves, but can only wait and receive . . . instead of being a beautiful promise, love becomes an unbearable feeling of dependence, of subjection . . . In the Gnostic view of the world, whether ancient or modern, creation appears as dependence, and God as the reason for dependence . . . [this is] the reason why Gnosticism can never be neutral in matters concerning God, but rather aggressively anti-theistic . . . .Gnosticism will not entrust itself to a world already created, but only to a world still to be created.9

Thus the place occupied by love in the Christian framework finds its analogue within the evolutionary ethos with the concepts of power and adaptability. As a consequence,

Amidst this contemporary crisis of humanity, the effort to restore an understanding of Christianity as the true religion or religion of truth in the classical sense, must be based equally upon ortho-praxis as well as orthodoxy. Today as in the past, its deepest aspect must consist in love and reason converging with one another as the essential foundation pillars of reality: real reason is love and


119

love is real reason. In their unity, they are the real basis and goal of all reality.10

This notion of the convertibility of being and love was emphasized in Ratzinger’s first papal encyclical Deus Caritas Est. Many of the themes to be found in this encyclical can be traced back to von Balthasar’s 1963 work Love Alone is Credible. In its preface von Balthasar wrote that never in the history of the Church have Chris-tian thinkers thought it adequate to answer the question of what specifically is Christian about Christianity with reference to a series of mysteries one is required to believe. Instead they have always aimed at a point of unity that would serve to provide a justification for the demand for faith. He further argued that it was only an account of revelation based on the notion that God is love which can provide such a point of unity.

In the first two sections of Love Alone is Credible Balthasar offered an intellectual history of two approaches to a defence of the reasonableness of Christian revelation: one he called the cos-mological reduction, the other the anthropological reduction. He believed that both are inadequate in the intellectual climate of today. A nutshell summary of his account of the cosmological reduction is as follows:

In order to bring home the credibility of the Christian message to the ancient world, the early Church fathers presented this message against the backdrop of the then powerful world religions . . . Christianity stood out against this background as the fulfillment of the fragmented meaning of the world . . . [Against the pagan backdrop], Christianity could be made credible, both because it unified what was fragmented and also because it ransomed what was held captive by converting what was perverted.11

This is a sophisticated way of presenting the standard account of Christianity as the union of Athens and Jerusalem (faith and reason) and the resolution of the aporia of the Greek achievement. Balthasar believed that this approach was possible in classical times because Christian thinkers took over the identity between philosophy and theology that had prevailed in the ancient cultures as a self-evident fact, however he believed that this self-evidentiary quality of the nexus between faith and reason began to break down during the

BENEDICT XVI

120

Renaissance when it was gradually replaced with so called natural ethics, natural religion and philosophy.

A central villain in Balthasar’s genealogy is Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury (1582–1648), a graduate of University College, Oxford, and one time ambassador to Paris (1619–1624). Of Cherbury’s work, Balthasar noted that while his concept of God remains saturated with content from the Christian tradition he presents this content as something that can be established and justified by pure reason.12 In the following generations, others were to pursue the pure religion of reason shifting the criterion from the cosmological to the anthro-pological. This anthropological reduction culminates in Kant and indeed Balthasar argued that all the pathways of modernity intersect in the thought of Kant:

Luther deposes Aristotelian reason in order to make room for faith, but this rejected reason acquires a Cartesian structure and Kant tries to tame it by bringing it under human control. Being thus limited, reason no longer has anything to do with religion and it becomes what Karl Barth called an ‘idol factory’.13

In the book Balthasar and Ratzinger jointly published as Princi-ples of Christian Morality, Ratzinger was critical of the idea that morality is a function of pure reason. He wrote:

The originality of Christianity does not consist in the number of propositions for which no parallel can be found elsewhere . . . It is impossible to distill out what is specifically Christian by excluding everything that has come about through contact with other milieu. Christianity’s originality consists rather in the new total form into which human searching and striving have been forged under the guidance of faith in the God of Abraham, the God of Jesus Christ. The fact that the bible’s moral pronounce-ments can be traced to other cultures or to philosophical thought in no way implies that morality is a function of mere reason – this is a premature conclusion we should not allow to pass unchal-lenged any longer.14

Von Balthasar’s third way, or preferred alternative to the cosmo-logical and anthropological reductions, is to make the notion that


121

God is love the key to understanding the originality of Christian revelation. He began this section of his work with an analysis of the relationship between eros and agape and beauty. He observed that ‘already in the realm of nature, eros is the chosen place of beauty: whatever we love always appears radiant with glory; and whatever is objectively perceived as glorious does not penetrate into the onlooker except through the specificity of an eros’.15 He concluded that the poles of eros and agape are transcended in the realm of revelation, wherein God’s kenotically condescending Logos expresses himself as love, Agape, and thus as Glory.16 He also concluded that the designa-tion of Christ in the Gospel of John as the Logos points to the fact that the evangelist envisions him as fulfilling the role of cosmic reason, in the Greek sense, as that which grants all things their intelligibility. Significantly, however, he argued that the subsequent events of the Gospel reveal that John does not seek to demonstrate this by projecting the life of Jesus onto the level of Greek wisdom, but rather by allowing the incarnate Logos to interpret himself.17

Ratzinger began his first encyclical with the passage from scrip-ture so emphasized by Balthasar (1 Jn 4:16) – ‘God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him’ – and he noted that it is very difficult to find texts of this kind in other reli-gions, that this notion is an element that is peculiar to Christianity.18 In the first paragraphs of Deus Caritas Est he also reiterated the principle which he had learned from Guardini, that for Christians, truth is a person. According to Guardini:

This Logos, which is perfectly simple and yet immeasurably rich, is no order of forms and laws, no world of prototypes and arrangements, but Someone, He is the living son of the eternal Father. We can stand before Him, face to face. We can speak to Him and He answers, indeed, He Himself gives us the power to stand before Him and He can grant our request. We can love Him and He is able to give us a communion which reflects the intimacy in which He lies upon the bosom of the Father, and which St John experienced when His Master permitted him to lay his head upon His heart. This fact established a contrast to everything which natural philosophy and piety can experience or invent. This Logos, this one and all, steps into history and becomes man.19

BENEDICT XVI

122

Guardini went on to say that if one tries to mute this personal and historical side, ‘then all depth of thought, all intellectual keenness, all ecstasy that you may have is nothing’ since one will have ‘dissolved Christ’.20

In his own genealogy of the destruction of the classical-theistic synthesis of faith and reason Ratzinger agrees with the view that all roads to modernity run through the Kantian intersection, but he is also interested in the side-road of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744). Against the Scholastic equation verum est ens (being is truth), Vico advanced a new formula, verum quia factum (the true is what we make).21 Vico thereby introduced the problematic of the relationship between being and history. Ratzinger notes that through Hegel and Comte being itself came to be understood as an historical process. Marx then gave economics an historical slant and Darwin gave biology an historical slant. With F. C. Baur theology turned into history.22 By the end of the twentieth century Ratzinger suggests that Vico’s verum quia factum had been replaced with verum quia faciendum with the result that the truth with which we are now concerned is feasibility. The dominance of history is being replaced by the dominance of techne.23

This theme is treated in the series of essays Ratzinger published as Values in a Time of Upheaval. In these he traced the transition from mutations in the concept of God in the eighteenth century (from God the Creator to god the mechanic) to a ‘second Enlighten-ment’ which renders all conceptions of God and even of Marxist eschatology and epistemology obsolete. It takes as its criterion of rationality the experience of technological production based on science. This more contemporary conceptual mutation markets itself under the label of a ‘new world order’. Ratzinger observes that proponents of this concept share with Marxism ‘the evolu-tionistic idea that the world we encounter is the product of irrational chance’ and ‘cannot bear any ethical directives in itself as the old idea of nature envisaged’.24 The principles of this new order are therefore not derived from considerations of what is according to nature but from the dreams of scientific and entrepreneurial elites who represent a new ruling class and bring with them new forms of coercion. The greatest scope for their operation lies in the fields of biotech nology. Human life becomes a product and hope is


123

reduced to something like trust in the future promises of genetic manipulation.

Contrary to all conceptions of rationality which seek to isolate themselves from faith and theology, in paragraph 23 of his second encyclical, Spe Salvi, Ratzinger reiterates his often repeated state-ment that ‘reason needs faith if it is to be completely itself: reason and faith need one another in order to fulfil their true nature and mission’; while in paragraph 26, against the Social Darwinist values of the new managerial and scientific elites, he makes the point that it is not science but love that redeems the human person.

The cultures of modernity and post-modernity are thus held together by numerous concepts, values and institutional practices many of which are either severed fragments of an older Christian culture or mutated variations on creedal Christian themes, as with the example of the Christian theological virtue of hope and its liberal mutation in the concept of progress addressed in Chapter 4. In his millennium address to the scholars of the Sorbonne Ratzinger noted how the links or ‘intellectual glue’ uniting faith and reason have in successive centuries been detached or, as Alasdair MacIntyre argues, ‘severed’. He believes that a restoration of these links is a necessary component of the work of evangelization and that one of the most important Patristic insights which requires restoration is the notion that ‘within the ordering of religion to a rational view of reality, the primacy of the Logos and the primacy of love were revealed to be one and the same’:

The Logos was revealed to be not only the mathematical reasoning at the basis of all things, but as creative love to the point of becom-ing com-passion, co-suffering with creation. The cosmic aspect of religion which worships the Creator in his power of existence and its existential dimension, the question of Redemption, have co-penetrated one another and become one . . . [The] evolutionary ethos [of the second Enlightenment], however, which by necessity identifies its key concept in the selection model, hence in the struggle to survive, in survival of the fittest, survival grounded in successful adaptation – has little comfort to offer.25

The linking of love and knowledge is a common Augustinian and Balthasarian motif. In A Theological Anthropology, a work praised

BENEDICT XVI

124

by Ratzinger, Balthasar linked the logos of love and knowledge with the theological virtues in the following manner:

Such unity of the Christian attitude of faith, hope and love is the ultimate basis of Christian understanding or knowledge whose nearest analogy is the knowledge of a beloved human being . . . The mediator of such understanding in love is the Holy Spirit which, as the ‘Spirit of Childhood’ encourages two attitudes. The first is the immediate, open approach to all the treasures and secrets of God; the second is the childlike spirit which does not presume to take what does not belong to it.26

This notion of the need for childlike receptivity to the work of the Holy Spirit steers the Catholic faith away from the danger of presenting itself as an intellectual system requiring mostly sound philosophical foundations for its comprehension. While not dismiss-ing the need for sound philosophy, in his encyclicals Ratzinger has emphasized the more personalist or affective dimensions of the act of comprehension. In Spe Salvi he adds to this accent on the response of the human heart to God, the theme that love transcends time: ‘the saints way of acting and living is de facto a “proof” that the things to come, the promise of Christ, are not only a reality that we await, but a real presence’.27 Christians believe not only because something is logically coherent but because they have seen the beliefs embodied in the practices of the lives of the saints whose love for others is what makes belief plausible and persuasive and even compelling. The epistemic rôle of the saints as the most authentic witnesses to the truth about existence to which reference was made by John Paul II in Fides et ratio is here reaffirmed.

As was made evident in Ratzinger’s various anti-Suárezian inter-ventions, he believes that the movement of Revelation proceeds from God (the Father), to humanity through Christ, and admits the faithful into the fellowship of God in the Holy Spirit; and that the purpose of this dialogue between God and the human person is not so much the transmission of information but rather the transfor-mation of the person in the life of the Trinity. For Ratzinger, this is not a matter of removing the intellectual component of faith but understanding it as a component in a wider whole.28 He believes that ‘the act of faith is an event that expands the limits of individual reason’ and ‘brings the isolated and fragmented individual intellect


125

into the realm of Him who is the logos, the reason, and the reason-able ground of all being, all things, and all mankind’.29 Thus ‘Man can rethink the logos, the meaning of being, because his own logos, his own reason, is logos of the one logos, thought of the original thought, of the creative spirit that permeates and governs his being’.30

The model of reason members of Western cultures have received from the eighteenth century, especially from Kant, cannot, however, accommodate the structure of the faith by such an expansion of the range of reason. Like MacIntyre, Ratzinger believes that there are different rationalities associated with different theological traditions and thus that some theological frameworks may be more or less open to fostering the expansion of reason’s range. He has also stated that he prefers the epistemology of St Augustine because Augustine ‘is well aware that the organ by which God can be seen cannot be a non-historical “ratio naturalis” [natural reason] but only the ratio pura, that is, purificata [purified reason] or, as Augustine expresses it echoing the Gospel, the cor purum [pure heart]’.31 Belief in the sense intended by the Creed is not an incomplete kind of knowledge, an opinion that subsequently can or should be converted into practical knowledge. It is rather an essentially different kind of intellectual attitude, which stands alongside practical knowledge as something independent and particular and cannot be traced back to it or deduced from it.32 Ratzinger is also of the opinion that ‘neo-Scholastic rationalism failed in its attempts to reconstruct the “preambula fidei” with wholly independent reasoning, with pure rational certainty’.33 Karl Barth, he says, was ‘right to reject philosophy as the foundation of faith independent of faith’, since if that were so, ‘our faith would be based from the beginning to the end, on the changing philosophi-cal theories’.34 Nonetheless, he believes that Barth was wrong to propose faith as a pure paradox that can only exist against reason and totally independent of it. For Ratzinger faith and reason need one another and their relationship is an intrinsic one: ‘Reason will not be saved without the faith, but the faith without reason will not be human’.35

In his Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger wrote that ‘the Christian corrects philosophy and lets it know that love is higher than mere thought’.36 With the arrival of Christianity, purely philo-sophical thinking was transcended on two fundamental points: whereas the philosophical God is essentially self-centred, thought

BENEDICT XVI

126

simply contemplating itself; the God of faith is basically defined by relationship; and whereas for the philosophical god, thought is divine, for Christianity, love is divine.37 He further argued that the fact that the Christian God is personal is at the same time an option for the primacy of the particular over the universal, and of freedom as against the primacy of some cosmic necessity.38 Christian belief is also the option for the view that the receiving precedes the making and that what cannot be seen is more real that what can be seen – it is an avowal of the primacy of the invisible as the truly real.39 The Christian sees in man, not an individual, but a person. According to Ratzinger, ‘this passage from individual to person contains the whole span of the transition from antiquity to Christianity, from Platonism to faith’.40 It completely transcends the logos of the Stoics since a ‘world created and willed on the risk of freedom and love is no longer mathematics’.41

In Spe Salvi Ratzinger as Benedict XVI drew attention to the similarities between the state of society when the First Letter to the Corinthians was written and the state of contemporary western culture. At the time of St Paul, myth had lost its credibility, the Roman state religion had become fossilized into simple ceremony which was scrupulously carried out, but by then it was merely a ‘political religion’, and philosophical rationalism had confined the gods within the realm of unreality. Today Christians find themselves in a position where they are struggling to defend the reasonableness of their beliefs since many people no longer accept there is any order in the cosmos, any design, end or purpose. Accordingly, it is difficult for Christianity to present itself as it did in classical times as the natural theology, to use Varro’s terminology. At the same time there is a return to treating the state as a highest good and secularism is emerging as a political theology to underpin this. Moral neutrality is the new civic virtue required to give effect to this political theology. Meanwhile many people do conclude that God is like an elephant with different faith traditions representing a glimpse of only one side of his divinity.

While this is the situation in the West, in his 1996 lecture to the bishops of Mexico, Ratzinger spoke of a ‘strange closeness between Europe’s post-metaphysical philosophy and Asia’s negative theo-logy’. While noting that the two philosophies are fundamentally different both for their departure point and for the orientation they imprint on human existence, Ratzinger suggested that they seem to


127

mutually confirm one another in their metaphysical and religious relativism:

The a-religious and pragmatic relativism of Europe and America can get a kind of religious consecration from India which seems to give its renunciation of dogma the dignity of a greater respect before the mystery of God and man. In turn, the support of European and American thought to the philosophical and theo-logical vision of India, reinforces the relativism of all the religious forms proper to the Indian heritage . . . In this way, it also seems necessary for Christian theology in India to set aside the image of Christ from its exclusive position – which is considered typically Western – in order to place it on the same level as the Indian salvation myths. The historical Jesus – it is now thought – is no more the absolute Logos than any other saving figure of history.42

While this represents a kind of decline to what Varro would call mystical religion, in the same article Ratzinger also noted another kind of permutation and combination which he illustrated by refer-ence to the work of Paul Knitter. Knitter joins the theologies of pluralist religion (God is like an elephant) with the theologies of liberation and their primacy of praxis over belief. This emphasis on praxis and in particular political practices is evocative of the political theologies of the classical world. Finally, in this Mexican address, Ratzinger also situated the New Age movement into the category of a mystical religion. For the New Age movement’s adherents:

[T]he solution to the problem of relativity must not be found in a new encounter of the self with another, or others, but by over-coming the subject, in an ecstatic return to the cosmic dance. The Absolute is not to be believed but to be experienced. God is not a person to be distinguished from the world, but a spiritual energy present in the universe. The primitive rites must be renewed in which the self is initiated into the mystery of the Whole and is liberated from itself.43

Ratzinger therefore wishes to present Christianity as a natural religion, as something which is philosophically defensible, and he wishes to distinguish it from a mere political ideology, as he believes secularism is, and from a mystical religion as he believes various

BENEDICT XVI

128

Asian and New Age religious movements are. However to do so, he has to demolish eighteenth-century conceptions of rationality. As Adriaan Peperzak and others have argued, philosophy in the Hellenistic epoch is not identical with the modern project of scien-tific and autonomous rationality. It is much more religious and ethical. It is intimately connected with the existential search for meaning and ultimate wisdom.44 It is this more classical under-standing of philosophy which Ratzinger seeks to restore as a kind of preambula fidei.

129

CHAPTER 7

THE VISION OF UNITY

In an essay on inter-religious dialogue Ratzinger posed the question: What sort of unity, if any, can there be? What standard can we use to seek this unity?1 As in his Sorbonne Address, Ratzinger then observed that there are two basic types of universal religions – the mystical and the theistic. As a logical consequence he believes that inter-religious dialogue can adopt one of two strategies: ‘it can attempt to assimilate the theistic into the mystical type, which implies regarding the mystical as a mere comprehensive category ample enough to accom-modate the theistic model, or it can pursue the opposite course’.2 Alternatively, both religious types could decide that their real goal is orthopraxy, that is, they could retain all their formulas, forms and rites, but be ordered to a particular common praxis.

Ratzinger rejects both the project to reduce religion to orthopraxy and the project of assimilating the theistic religions into the mystical type and conversely of assimilating the mystical into the theistic. Those who foster some version of the orthopraxy alternative gloss over the fact that concepts like justice and peace and the integrity of creation do not come with a ready-made definition and praxis but rely for their very meaning on presuppositions, often of a theological nature. Ratzinger describes such projects as an attempt to reduce religion to a political moralism or ideology and he has referred his readers to Robert Spaemann’s criticisms of Hans Küng’s Weltethos project which carries some of these hallmarks.3 He believes that ‘religions can encounter one another only by delving more deeply into the truth, not by giving it up’.4 In one speech, he noted that Jesus never resorted to sugar-coating his message and even preferred the defection of his own disciples to any dilution of his teaching.5 With respect to the project of assimilating the theistic religions to the

BENEDICT XVI

130

mystical, Ratzinger concludes that ‘such a reduction means that the world of the senses drops out of our relation to the divine’ and the cosmos and history no longer have anything to do with God.6 Such a form of religion loses its power to form a communion of mind and will, becoming a matter of individual therapy.7 Central to the theistic religions is the idea that ethics is in some sense linked to the will of God and with this comes the notion that faith in God cannot do without truth which must have a specifiable content.8 For these reasons he rejects the ideas of those who wish to call an end to the Catholic Church’s centuries-long commitment to converting those of other religious traditions. He emphatically rejects the idea that missionary work is wrong-headed, but argues that preaching must be a dialogical event.9 Also rejected is the notion that somehow a pure enlightened reason might be able to stand outside of all reli-gious traditions and judge them from a neutral standpoint. Consistent with his belief that the Scriptures need to be read from within the horizon of faith itself, he states that there is a ‘broad consensus that such a standpoint is an impossibility’ and thus, ‘in order to understand religion, it is necessary to experience it from within, indeed, that only such experience, which is inevitably particular and tied to a definite historical starting-point, can lead the way to mutual understanding and thus to a deepening and purification of religion’.10 With respect to the particular issue of doctrine, Ratzinger has further warned that one needs to guard against any temptation to view doctrine as divisive and hence an impediment to the seemingly more pressing and immediate task of improving the world. He argues that the history of the Church demonstrates that praxis is not only inseparable from, but actually flows out of didache or teaching.11 In Principles of Christian Morality he wrote:

Christian praxis is nourished by the core of Christian faith, that is, the grace that appeared in Christ and that is appropriated in the sacrament of the Church. Faith’s praxis depends on faith’s truth, in which man’s truth is made visible and lifted up to a new level by God’s truth. Hence, it is fundamentally opposed to a praxis that first wants to produce facts and so establish truth.12

Ratzinger’s emphasis on the importance of doctrine and the continued relevance of the Church’s missionary works is consistent with the stance of his papal predecessor in Redemptoris Missio.

THE VISION OF UNITY

131

Gavin D’Costa, an advisor to the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, has noted that within Redemptoris Missio, the 1990 encyclical of John Paul II which was written as an affirmation of the Church’s missionary activity, one can find a critique of the types of theology and approaches to dialogue that have come to be advanced by Paul Knitter, Raymond Panikkar and Jacques Dupuis. Respectively, these are notions whereby ‘the Spirit is shorn of its relationship to Christ or the Church, or when Jesus is seen as one of many instantiations of the eternal Logos, or when the trinity is potentially envisaged within the economy of history as apart from, or out of relation to, the historical church and the kingdom’.13 In particular D’Costa describes Paul Knitter’s position as one of a ‘liberation-cum-theological form of pluralism’ in which ‘the divine is to be found in socio-political-ecological emancipatory movements and “mother-earth” affirms and guides this process’.14 He suggests that this amounts to a proposal wedded to the Enlightenment project begun by Kant, such that a universal ethical imperative is prioritized over metaphysics and religion’, and he notes the affinity of this project with that of John Hick.15

As D’Costa describes the early Hick’s position: ‘basically, [his] argument has been that Jesus should not be seen as God incarnate, but rather the divinity of Christ should be viewed mythologically’.16 By mythologically he means ‘a story which is told but which is not literally true, or an idea or image which is applied to something or someone but which does not literally apply, but which invites a particular attitude in its hearers’.17 D’Costa notes that in the later Hick, the notion of myth ‘is applied not only to the incarnation, but to the very idea of God and is further extended to the ultimate reali-ties designated by the various religions, such as the Hindu Brahman, or Allah in Islam, Yahweh in Judaism, and so on’.18

Ratzinger’s frequent affirmations of the personal nature of the Christian God such as one finds in the opening paragraphs of Deus Caritas Est are related to his opposition to the eighteenth-century Kantian project of reducing Christianity to the dimensions of a moral framework. For Ratzinger what is primary is the individual person’s participation in the life of the Trinity, and while the ethical practices assist this, they are not an end in themselves. He uses the term ‘moralism’ to describe projects which focus on ethics as ends in themselves. His criticisms of the shared praxis projects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are of a similar mind-set to those

BENEDICT XVI

132

found in John Milbank’s ‘The End of Dialogue’ essay.19 Milbank argues that the emphasis on justice and liberation one finds in the ‘praxis solution’ glosses over the fact that religions have differed as much over political and social practices as they have over notions of divinity. He also draws attention to the paradox that those who are most vocal about the need for religious pluralism and building a new world order based upon shared ethical practices tend to be basing their stance on Enlightenment values and attitudes, that is, Western liberal values and attitudes, which run counter to their very project of affirming the non-Western ‘others’. Milbank concludes that the ‘praxis project’ has tended to disguise two important facts: ‘first, that the characteristic “liberal” values of the modern West are in specific yet complex ways related to its Hellenic-Roman-Christian-Jewish inheritance; second, that they are also related to certain pragmatic necessities and reconfigurations of power, which ensured upon the disintegration of Christendom’.20

Ratzinger acknowledges that the approach to dialogue one finds in documents such as Redemptoris Missio are not universally accepted. There is an alternative reading, what he calls the ‘relativist reading’ which requires placing one’s own faith on the same level as the convictions of others. Such dialogue becomes an exchange between positions which are mutually relative and in his judgment requires a relativist dissolution of Christology and even more so of eccle-siology.21 However, one consequence of Ratzinger’s understanding of preaching and missionary work as dialogical events is that he is genuinely open to acquiring a deeper understanding of his inter-faith interlocutors’ traditions and he is certainly open to finding aspects of other traditions which are perfectly consistent with the Catholic faith. This is a matter of intellectual and spiritual development and is most evident in Ratzinger’s engagements with Jewish scholarship.

In a meeting with representatives of the Jewish community in the Elysée Palace, Paris, in 2008, Ratzinger stated that ‘the Catholic Church feels obliged to respect the Covenant made by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ and indeed ‘the Church herself is situated within the eternal Covenant of the Almighty, whose plans are immutable, and she respects the children of the Promise, the children of the Covenant, as her beloved brothers and sisters in the faith’.22 In this address Ratzinger also reiterated the 1938 statement of Pius XI to Belgian Pilgrims, that spiritually, Christians are also Semites, and the 1939 statement of Henri de Lubac, that to be

THE VISION OF UNITY

133

anti-Semitic also signifies being anti-Christian. The issue of the relationship between the covenant made by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the new revelation of Christ is obviously the most theoretically complex and controversial in the territory of Jewish-Christian dialogue and thus Ratzinger’s description of it, as stated above, represents a very precise and highly nuanced exposi-tion. It implicitly rejects the ‘two covenants’ approach for Jews and Christians and prefers to use the terminology of a single covenant stemming from Abraham and fulfilled in Jesus.

At an even deeper theological level Ratzinger defines the faith of Israel as consisting in the commitment to God’s will as expressed in the Torah, and the expectation of the Messiah in such a way that the three dimensions of time are connected: ‘obedience to God’s will bears an already spoken word that now exists in history and at each new moment has to be made present again in obedience’ and this obedience is ‘oriented toward a future when God will gather up the fragments of time and usher them as a whole into his justice’.23 He then observes that Christianity follows this basic configuration:

The trinity of faith, hope and love corresponds in a certain respect to the three dimensions of time: the obedience of faith takes the word that comes from eternity and is spoken in history and trans-forms it into love, into presence, and in this way opens the door to hope. It is characteristic of the Christian faith that all three dimensions are contained and sustained in the figure of Christ, who also introduces them into eternity. In him, time and eternity exist together, and the infinite gulf between God and man is bridged. For Christ is the one who came to us without therefore ceasing to be with the Father; he is present in the believing com-munity, and yet at the same time is still the one who is coming. The Church too awaits the Messiah . . . For Christians, Christ is the present Sinai, the living Torah . . . 24

In an earlier address given in Jerusalem in 1994 at the invitation of Rabbi Rosen, Ratzinger described Christ’s death on the cross as an act endured in ‘innermost solidarity with the Law and with Israel’ and noted that the Catechism of the Catholic Church understands Christ’s death as the perfect realization of what the signs of the Day of Atonement signify.25 Similarly, in an address to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in Paris he noted that ‘both the Letter

BENEDICT XVI

134

to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John (in Jesus’ high-priestly prayer) go beyond the traditional link between the Last Supper and the Pasch and see the Eucharist in connection with the Day of Atonement’.26 One might say that just as Ratzinger likes to employ a hermeneutic of continuity in his presentation of the Church’s teaching before and after the Second Vatican Council, he likes to emphasize an analogous hermeneutic of continuity between the Old and New Testaments, in which the New Testament is the fulfilment, not the abrogation, of the Old Testament. This theme is strong in paragraph 1968 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church which Ratzinger helped to draft:

The Law of the Gospel fulfils the commandments of the Law [= the Torah]. The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, far from abolish-ing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands arise from them: it reveals their entire divine and human truth. It does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to renew the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure, where faith, hope and charity are found . . . The gospel thus brings the Law to its fullness through imitation of the perfection of the heavenly Father.27

Accordingly Ratzinger is keen to emphasize that Jesus did not act as a liberal reformer recommending a more enlightened inter-pretation of the Torah. The view, popular with some liberation theologians, that Jesus was a liberal confronting an ‘ossified tradi-tionalist hierarchy’, ‘fundamentally misunderstands the conflict of the New Testament and does justice to neither Jesus nor to Israel’.28 In Ratzinger’s judgment the fundamental nature of the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities of his day was his claim to be acting on the authority of God himself. This left the authorities with only two logical choices: either he was the Son of God as he claimed, in which case they were witnessing the birth of a new revelation, or he was a blasphemer. In Ratzinger’s words, this was the ‘tragic depth of the conflict’.29 Obedience clashed with obedience leading to a conflict that had to end on the Cross:

In the Catechism’s theology of the New Testament, the Cross cannot simply be viewed as an accident that actually could have

THE VISION OF UNITY

135

been avoided or as the sin of Israel with which Israel becomes eternally stained in contrast to the pagans, for whom the Cross signifies redemption. In the New Testament there are not two effects of the Cross: a damning one and a saving one, but only a single effect, which is saving and reconciling.30

According to Ratzinger, in this event of the Cross, all the sacri-ficial symbols of the Old Testament are brought to their deepest meaning – the symbols themselves can ultimately be laid aside as Jesus himself becomes the sacrificial lamb – but in such a way that not one iota of their meaning is lost:

The universalizing of the Torah by Jesus, as the New Testament understands it, is not the extraction of some universal moral pre-scriptions from the living whole of God’s revelation. It preserves the unity of cult and ethos. The ethos remains grounded and anchored in the cult, in the worship of God, in such a way that the entire cult is bound together in the Cross, indeed, for the first time has become fully real. According to Christian faith, on the Cross Jesus opens up and fulfils the wholeness of the Law and gives it thus to the pagans, who can now accept it as their own in this its wholeness, thereby becoming children of Abraham.31

Jews are thus the ‘older brothers’ of Christians and this expression of solidarity is one which has been well received in Jewish quarters. In 2008 when Ratzinger invited Shear-Yashuv Cohen, Head Rabbi of Haifa, to address the Synod on the Word, the Rabbi gave a positive response to the invitation and in this he stated that the policy and doctrine of describing the Jewish people as G-d’s Chosen People and the Older Brothers of Christians is something deeply appreciated. Ratzinger frequently uses this older sibling language and emphasizes that together Christians and Jews can offer a shared witness to the One God and his commandments, the sanctity of life and the promo-tion of human dignity and the rights of the family.32 Thus, in his 2009 Address to the two chief Rabbis of Jerusalem, Ratzinger reiterated his commitment to the path chosen at the Second Vatican Council for a ‘genuine and lasting reconciliation between Christians and Jews’ which ‘continues to value the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews and desires an ever deeper mutual understanding

BENEDICT XVI

136

and respect through biblical and theological studies as well as fraternal dialogues’.33

While the Jews precede Christians in the order of salvation history, Muslims belong to a tradition which arose after the time of both the Old and New Testaments. It is thus not possible (at least not from a Christian perspective) to situate Christianity within the Islamic tradition the way that it is possible to situate it within the Jewish tradition. Islam regards itself as a correction of the distorted inter-pretations of the Jewish prophets, and of Christ, who in turn is regarded as merely another prophet. As a consequence, Ratzinger’s addresses to representatives of the Islamic world tend to focus on the themes of a common interest in peace and tolerance and on a reiteration of paragraph 3 of Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II Declara-tion on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the Day of Judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

By far the most dramatic of Ratzinger’s engagement’s with the Islamic world occurred with the delivery of an address at Regensburg University on 12 September 2006. His analysis took the form of a discussion about the relationship between faith and reason in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. It included drawing atten-tion to the common element in militant Islam and contemporary Western liberalism – the fact that both ideologies have a philosophi-cal foundation in voluntarism. Ratzinger cited the Muslim theologian Ibn Hazm as saying that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to mere humans, and further, that were it God’s will, humans would even

THE VISION OF UNITY

137

have to practice idolatry. In his reflection on this section of the Regensburg Lecture, James V. Schall wrote:

The logic of this position is that obedience to Allah is absolute even when unreasonable. Revelation is not itself ‘obliged by God’s own truth’. This position affirms that God is not Himself bound by His own truth. It would limit His glory to impose any restric-tions, even that of contradiction. The effect of this view is to eliminate any secondary causality which would attribute to non-divine things an inherent order. Thus, in principle anything could be otherwise. What it is has no foundation, no guarantee of its own truthfulness in being. Reality becomes both enormously mysterious and intrinsically arbitrary. The Pope sees this exact same problem in later Western thought, which is no doubt one of the reasons he brought the issue up in the first place.34

The term Ratzinger uses to describe the West’s version of volunta-rism is that of ‘de-Hellenisation’ – the tendency from the Reformation through to the eighteenth century and beyond of severing the sym-biotic relationship between faith and reason through the rejection of the Greek conception of philosophy and the medieval classical-theistic syntheses. In the Regensburg Lecture he noted that the voluntarism of the West did not however begin in the eighteenth century when philosophers self-consciously started to reconstruct the relations between faith and reason but its origins may be traced back earlier to the ideas of Duns Scotus (c.1266–1308). Scotus is regarded by many scholars of political theory as the father of Western liberalism with its emphasis on the freedom of the human will. In drawing this comparison between militant Islam and militant liberal-secularism, Ratzinger was making the point that both neglect the search for truth itself. For the militant Islamicist, the truth is whatever Allah decides it will be, for the militant liberal-secularist, either there is no truth as such, merely ‘my will’ and ‘my own per-sonal values’ or there is ‘truth’ but it is whatever I decide it will be. Such a truth is personally constructed; it is not a ‘given’ in a divinely created order of reality.

Notwithstanding the militant Islamic protests and random acts of violence against Christians following the Regensburg Address, Ratzinger’s apostolic journey to Turkey in November 2006 was not, as some portray it, an ‘exercise in damage control’. It was already

BENEDICT XVI

138

planned long before the Regensburg Address and the main intention was for the pope to participate in the annual St Andrew’s Day delega-tion of the Holy See to the Fanar. The basic message of this visit was papal support for those Muslims and Christians who live in a political culture deeply ingrained with secularist ideologies and opposed to any religious expression in the public square. In a meeting with members of the Diplomatic Corps to the Republic of Turkey Benedict XVI remarked that ‘Christians and Muslims, following their respective religions, point to the truth of the sacred character and dignity of the person’.35 Like many world leaders Ratzinger makes a distinction between violent religious fanatics and pious people of good will, and implores members of the Islamic world not to follow those who fit into the first category.

In summary one might argue that when addressing members of the Islamic tradition he makes appeals to reason and to a common belief that human beings have been created by God, when addressing members of the Jewish tradition he appeals to common theological elements in the Jewish and Christian traditions such as atonement, sacrifice, priesthood and covenant and when confronted with the various versions of the ‘praxis project’ he makes MacIntyresque noises about how notions like justice are themselves tradition-dependent and Milbank-sympathetic observations about how eighteenth-century Western liberal philosophical presuppositions lie dormant at their foundations.

When one moves from inter-faith dialogue to ecumenical dialogue Ratzinger tends to emphasize the primacy of prayer for unity and the path of ‘spiritual ecumenism’ – a theme which was prominent in John Paul II’s encyclical Ut Unum Sint (1995). For example in his Letter to the Participants in the Third European Ecumenical Assembly he wrote that ‘two elements must guide us in our commitment: the dialogue of truth and the encounter in the sign of brotherhood. Both need spiritual ecumenism as their foundation’.36 Similarly, in his Catechesis on the Work of Prayer for Christian Unity, he wrote that common prayer is what ‘distinguishes the ecumenical movement from any other initiative of dialogue and relations with other reli-gions and ideologies’.37 On the occasion of the Feast of Saint Henrik he even described the joint prayer of Lutheran and Catholic Finns as ‘the royal door of ecumenism’, which ‘reinforces our bonds of com-munion; and enables us to face courageously the painful memories,

THE VISION OF UNITY

139

social burdens and human weaknesses that are so much a part of our divisions’.38 Since grace is the most effective healer of the wounds of the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, prayer is the primary element of ecumenical efforts.

Ratzinger’s most significant ecumenical achievement as a Cardinal was to be instrumental in saving the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with the Lutheran World Federation (which the Methodist World Council has now also signed as its own confession of faith on this matter). Bishop George Anderson, head of the Evan-gelical Lutheran Church of America, publicly acknowledged that it was ‘Ratzinger who untied the knots’ when it looked as though the document would be shipwrecked by officials from the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. Ratzinger got the agreement back on track by organizing a meeting with the Lutheran leaders at his brother Georg’s house in Regensburg. It is said that at that meeting Ratzinger made three concessions that salvaged the agreement. First, he agreed that the goal of the ecumenical process is unity in diversity, not structural reintegration. Secondly, he acknowl-edged the authority of the Lutheran World Federation to reach agreement with the Vatican (this was something which the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity had questioned). Thirdly, Ratzinger agreed that while Christians are obliged to do good works, justification and final judgment remain God’s gracious acts. The actual wording of the key sentence of the declaration is: ‘By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to do good works’.39

Consistent with his first concession above, that the ecumenical process is one of acquiring unity in diversity, not structural reintegra-tion, in his Ecumenical Meeting Address during World Youth Day at Cologne Ratzinger remarked that ‘Ecumenism does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history – it does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline’.40 In this address he also spoke of dialogue as an exchange of gifts in which the Churches and Ecclesial Communities can make available their own riches. This theme was reiterated in a parallel address in the Crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, at the Second

BENEDICT XVI

140

World Youth Day of his pontificate. He noted that whereas an idea aims at truth, a gift expresses love. Both, he concluded, were essential elements of dialogue.

A dramatic example of these principles in operation has been the announcement of the establishment of a Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans who wish to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the Petrine Office, but otherwise retain their own liturgical forms and perhaps even, to some degree, their practice of ordaining married clergy. According to Cardinal Levada:

It is the hope of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, that the Anglican clergy and faithful who desire union with the Catholic Church will find in this ecumenical structure the opportunity to preserve those Anglican traditions precious to them and consis-tent with the Catholic faith. Insofar as these traditions express in a distinctive way the faith that is held in common, they are a gift to be shared in the wider Church. The unity of the Church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows.41

In his published commentary Levada noted that this proposal of a Personal Ordinariate was consistent with earlier twentieth-century ecumenical efforts of Cardinal Mercier of Belgium who explored the possibility of an Anglican union with the Catholic Church under the principle of an Anglicanism ‘reunited but not absorbed’. Levada also noted that paragraph 13 of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism recognised the special place of the Anglican Communion as a body in which Catholic traditions and institutions were to some degree retained after the Reformation. For Anglo-Catholics the barriers to full communion with the See of Peter have tended to be primarily juridical and cultural rather than doctrinal. Although the Pope has not made any public statements about what he thinks might be the ‘gifts’ such Anglicans could bring home to the Church, many commentators have observed an affinity between the Anglo-Catholic approaches to liturgy and Ratzinger’s concern about banal and pathetic home-made ‘parish tea party’ liturgy. Many such Angli-cans have long held that for them the major barrier to their return to full Communion with the Catholic Church is precisely the banality of many post-Conciliar parish liturgies and what Digby Anderson has dared to call the ‘oikish translation of the Mass’.42 In response to

THE VISION OF UNITY

141

the question, ‘what is it that Anglican Catholics could bring with them as a small gift on their trip to Rome?’ Anderson suggests better translations and the moral sensibility associated with the idea of the gentleman, including the cult of understatement and self-deprecation and traditional manners.43 Ratzinger is likely to recognize such attri-butes in the character of John Henry Newman, one of the intellectual heroes of his youth.

Even higher on the list of Ratzinger’s concerns than the Anglicans is his hope of healing the 1,000-year rift with the Orthodox Church. In his first pastoral visit outside of Rome in the Italian city of Bari in which the remains of St Nicholas of Myra are venerated by Orthodox pilgrims, Ratzinger described ecumenical outreach to the Orthodox Church as a fundamental commitment of his papacy.44 To this end he has cultivated a very strong relationship with the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I. He made a visit to the Fanar in November 2006 and invited the Ecumenical Patriarch to address the Synod on the Word held in 2008. This was the first time in history that a Patriarch of Constantinople has been present to address a Synod in Rome. Patriarch Bartholomew described the gesture as ‘an important step towards restoration to full communion’.45 This was in part due to the fact that the Orthodox Church attaches a fundamental ecclesial importance to the synodical system.

In his pre-papal theological works Ratzinger noted that one source of the conflict between the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the papacy has been the difficulty in distinguishing between patriarchal and apostolic primacy. In the Episcopate and Primacy, he observed ‘that confusion between the primitive claim of the apostolic see and the administrative claim of the patriarchal city characterizes the tragic beginning of conflict between Constantinople and Rome’.46 Ratzinger believes that the patriarchal principle is post-Constantinian, its instinct administrative and its application closely tied up with poli tical and geographic data, while the apostolic principle relates to matters of faith. Since the patriarchal principle is essentially administrative he believes that ‘extensive patriarchal ‘autonomy’ is compatible with the true essence of primacy, and perhaps the Eastern Churches would hardly need to change anything in terms of concrete juridical structure’.47

Ratzinger has also been seeking to improve relations with the Russian Orthodox Church and in September 2009 he met with Arch-bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the head of the Department of External

BENEDICT XVI

142

Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, who is often described as the Russian Church’s ‘Foreign Minister’. Archbishop Alfeyev described the goal of his work as ‘bridging the gap between Catholics and Orthodox by means of cultural collaboration, in the hope of hastening the time of closer doctrinal and ecclesial relations between Catholics and the Orthodox worldwide’. He has also been quite open in conversations with journalists about his admiration for Ratzinger’s stance against secularism and he has recommended the establishment of a European Catholic-Orthodox Alliance to form a common front to protect Europe from being ‘irrevocably devoured by secularism, liberalism and relativism’.48 To this end, Archbishop Alfeyev has most recently presided over the establishment of the St Gregory Nazianzus Foundation to work together with Catholics and others in the West to support traditional Christian values. Like members of the Traditional Anglican Communion, the Russian Orthodox find the official Catholic magisterial teaching against the ordination of women and homosexual marriage a reason for respect-ing the Petrine Office and establishing closer relations with it.

Underpinning Ratzinger’s approaches to inter-faith dialogue and ecumenism is his ecclesiology which represents a mixture of ingredients taken from St Augustine, de Lubac and von Balthasar, with dashes of Louis Bouyer, Jean Daniélou and Yves Congar. Behind Congar there stands the influence of Russian Orthodox ecclesiology, including elements from A. S. Khomiakor, Sergei Bulgakov, George Florovsky, Nicholas Afanasiev and Vladimir Lossky. Of all these elements arguably the most seminal was Henri de Lubac’s presentation of the relationship between the Eucharist and the understanding of the Church as the mystical body of Christ. Ratzinger has described de Lubac’s Corpus Mysticum as a work of ‘imposing and comprehensive scholarship’ in which he found ‘a new understanding of the unity of the Church and the Eucharist’ which further helped him to enter into ‘the required dialogue with Augustine’.49 An interest in these relationships between ecclesiology and Eucharistic theology was also strong among the Russian émigré theologians of the Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge in Paris who exerted an influence over the work of Congar. Francesca Murphy has also noted that Communion ecclesiology (the label generally used to cover this cocktail of influences) has its origins in the appropriation of the insights of German Romanticism by nineteenth-century theologians. While the dominant post-Tridentine

THE VISION OF UNITY

143

ecclesial model was juridical, Johann Adam Möhler in his Die Einheit in der Kirche oder das Princip des Katholicismus (1825) described the Church as a community whose growth is conditioned by the presence of the Holy Spirit.50 Murphy writes:

What was important to Möhler’s immediate heirs, such as Newman in his Essay on Development (1848) and Matthias Scheeben in Die Mysterien des Christentums (1865) was that the church is the organic outgrowth of the Incarnation. But the element of Möhler’s ecclesiology which outlived Romanticism was the conception of the church as the mystical Body of Christ. The nouvelle théologie which emerged in the late 1930s promoted the notion of church fellowship as common life within the mystical Body of Christ. Yves Congar built on his own historical scholarship to show that Thomas Aquinas understood the Church in terms of the grace flowing from the Head (Christ) to members, and labored to make the more recent sources of this ecclesiology available: the pilot volume in the Unam Sanctum series which Congar edited was a French translation of Möhler’s Die Einheit der Kirche.51

Ratzinger argues that Communio or communion is anchored first and foremost in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is why, in the language of the Church, the reception of the sacrament is still described as ‘going to Communion’. Through this sacrament Christians enter into a blood relationship with Jesus Christ. In his Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis he reiterated the words of John Paul II in his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia that the memorial of Christ is ‘the supreme sacramental manifestation of communion in the Church’.

In Lumen Gentium, the ecclesiological document of the Second Vatican Council, the Church is defined as an ‘instrument for the redemption of all, sent forth into the whole world as the light of the world and the salt of the earth; and also as the sacrament (that is, efficacious sign and embodied form) by which Christ’s mission is extended to include the whole of man, body and soul, and through that totality the whole of nature created by God’. As the mystical body of Christ, the Church is thus the instrument for God’s plan to gather ‘all things’ (Eph. 1:10) in Christ, as well as the eschatological form of redeemed creation. Ratzinger’s argument in Sacramentum Caritatis is that the Church embodies this end above all in her

BENEDICT XVI

144

celebration of the Eucharist. In the gift of the Eucharist Christ endows the Church with the ‘real presence’ of his body and blood together with an inner participation in his mission to the world. Ratzinger describes the miracle of the conversion of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood as a ‘sort of “nuclear fission” which penetrates to the heart of all being’.52

The two most important documents authored by Ratzinger on the Communio ecclesiology theme are a 1992 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith publication entitled ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church understood as Communion’, and an article published in L’Osservatore Romano in 2000 as ‘The Ecclesiology on the Constitution on the Church, Vatican II, Lumen Gentium’.53 In the CDF document he summarized the Communio ecclesiology in the following terms:

Ecclesial communion is at the same time both visible and invisible. As an invisible reality, it is the communion of each human being with the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit, and with the others who are fellow sharers in the divine nature, in the passion of Christ, in the same faith and in the same spirit. In the Church there is a relationship between the invisible communion and the visible communion in the teaching of the Apostles, in the sacra-ments and in the hierarchical order. By means of these divine gifts, which are very visible realities, Christ carries out in different ways his prophetical, priestly and kingly function for the salva-tion of mankind. This link between the invisible and the visible elements of ecclesial communion constitutes the Church as the Universal Sacrament of Salvation.54

Often these ideas are expressed in the Pauline language of the nuptial mystery (the spousal relationship between Christ and the Church), particularly in the works of Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Archbishop of Quebec City, both of whom were strongly influenced by von Balthasar. Ratzinger also frequently uses the nuptial imagery in his references to the Church. In Sacramentum Caritatis he wrote that the Eucharist, as the sacrament of charity, has a particular relation-ship with the love of man and woman united in marriage and that the entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. He also described baptism as the nuptial bath

THE VISION OF UNITY

145

which precedes the wedding feast, which is the Eucharist. At the final Mass of World Youth Day in Sydney he explained to the half a million youth assembled before him that the annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary was ‘God’s marriage proposal to humanity, accepted on our behalf by the Virgin Mary’.

Other Pauline motifs can also be found in Ratzinger’s ecclesiolo-gical essays. Sometimes he refers to Paul alone, at other times it is Paul refracted through Augustine. Two of his most common ecclesio-logical themes are the ontological priority of the universal Church over that of the local Church and the inadequacy of all merely socio-logical accounts of the Church. Ratzinger notes that the term ekklesia comes for the first time from the pen of St Paul and makes its first appearance in the First Letter to the Thessalonians. In other Letters St Paul speaks of the Church of God which is at Corinth and of the Churches of Galatia, particular churches therefore, but he also says he persecuted the Church of God: not a specific local community. From these observations Ratzinger concludes that we see that for St Paul the word, ‘Church’ had a multi-dimensional meaning: it indi-cated a part of God’s assembly in a specific place (a city, a country, a house) but it also referred to the Church as a whole. Thus, the Church of God is not only a collection of various local Churches but these various local Churches in turn make up one Church of God. All together they are ‘the Church of God’ which precedes the individual local Churches and is expressed or brought into being in them.55 This was the central point in the pre-papal debates between Ratzinger and Cardinal Walter Kasper. Kasper wanted to give prior-ity to the local church.

The article by Kasper originally appeared in the Jesuit journal Stimmen der Zeit in 2000. It was then translated and published in the journal America of the American and Canadian Jesuits and in the London Tablet. Kasper noted that ‘many Catholics and their clergy can no longer understand certain rules imposed by the universal Church and hence disregard them. This applies both to moral questions and to questions of sacramental and ecumenical practice, such as the admission of remarried divorcees to Communion or the extension of Eucharistic hospitality’. Kasper further argued that Ratzinger ‘has not tackled pastoral concerns’ and ‘comes from the theoretical point of view of systematic theology’. Ratzinger’s doctrinal point was that ‘in its essential mystery’ the universal Church is a reality ‘ontologi-cally and temporally prior to every individual Church’.56 To defend

BENEDICT XVI

146

this principle Ratzinger quoted paragraph 9 of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document entitled Some Aspects of the Church understood as Communion. In paragraph 9 there is a reference to the Church being manifested in time, on the day of Pentecost, in the community of the 120 gathered around Mary and the 12 apostles. Kasper regarded this line of argument as ‘questionable’. He claimed that many exegetes are convinced that this report in Acts is a construction of Luke. Professor Michael Theobald claims that at Pentecost the focus is not on the universal Church but on the Jewish diaspora gathered there. Kasper asked why the one Church should not pre-exist as a Church ‘in and from’ the local Churches?57 He sug-gested a psychological explanation for Ratzinger’s stance. He believes that Ratzinger has a pre-disposition to think Platonically, that is, in terms of ideas, rather than in a more Aristotelian mode, or empiri-cally. Cardinal Dulles then weighed into the debate on the side of Ratzinger and said that while he suspected that Ratzinger ‘had a cer-tain affinity for Christian Platonism’ in the present debate he believed that Ratzinger’s arguments came from Scripture and Tradition rather than from Platonic philosophy.58 Dulles added:

The ontological priority of the Church universal appears to me to be almost self-evident, since the very concept of the particular church presupposes a universal Church to which it belongs, whereas the concept of the universal Church does not imply that it is made up of distinct churches . . . Historically, too, the priority of the universal Church is evident because Christ unquestionably formed the community of the disciples and prepared the apostles for their mission while they were still fathered together. Particular churches emerged only after the Church became dispersed, so that it became necessary to establish local congregations with their own hierarchical leaders.59

In a pre-papal chapter on ‘Pluralism as a Problem for Church and Theology’, Ratzinger addressed the topic of pluralism within the Church with reference to the notion of symphonia which he described as offering an understanding of the synthesis of unity and multipli-city within the ecclesial community.60 He suggested that the concept functions on four levels: (i) it serves to express the unity of the Old and New Testaments – which is the unity of law and gospel, of prophets and apostles, but also the unity of the diverse writings of

THE VISION OF UNITY

147

the New Testament authors among themselves; (ii) it describes the unity of Christians with one another through the work of the Holy Spirit; (iii) it describes the unity between the Creator and the crea-ture; and (iv) it describes the internal unity of the person within the life of grace. The faith itself he describes as a ‘polyphonic melody composed of many apparently quite discordant strains in the contra-puntal interplay of law, prophets, Gospels and apostles’.61 Following de Lubac he emphasized that the Church is built up by the sacrament of the Eucharist and that the Church is wholly present wherever the Eucharist is present. He then expounded on this theology with reference to the tension between the local and universal Church:

On that account [the notion that the Eucharist makes the Church], the local churches have the whole reality of the Church, not merely a parcel of the whole. On the other hand, the fresh discovery that Christ can exist only as a whole must not lead us to forget the complementary truth that he can only be one and that we accord-ingly possess him in his entirety only when we possess him together with others, when we possess him in unity. The unity of the uni-versal Church is in this sense an inner moment of the local church, just as the multiplicity and inherent dignity of the local churches is an essential component of ecclesiastical unity.62

In this same essay and in the context of the idea of pluralism among theologians, Ratzinger argued that genuine pluralism hap-pens not when one makes it an object of desire, but when the truth itself is sought. He noted that the achievements of ‘the great French theology’ (presumably here a reference to de Lubac, Congar, Bouyer and Daniélou) was born, not because these theologians wished to do something French, ‘but because they expected nothing less from themselves than to find the truth and to express it as adequately as possible’.63 The truth, he concluded, ‘is never monotonous, nor is it ever exhausted in a single form, because our mind beholds it only in fragments, yet at the same time it is the power which unifies us. And only pluralism in relation to unity is great’.64

In his account of a legitimate pluralism within the Catholic theo-logical tradition, Aidan Nichols has described theological projects as representing a ‘refraction of revelation, which presents a part at least of revelation’s own content in a new medium of thought’ and he suggests that ‘the richness and complexity of the internal structure

BENEDICT XVI

148

of Christian revelation is able to suggest an infinite number of theological approaches to revelation’s content’.65 Thus, ‘the themes, motifs, models, metaphors, found in the New Testament can and do suggest entire perspectives on the Christian mystery as a whole’.66 He gives as examples the idea of theology as mystical exploration (Denys), as the construction of a Christian wisdom (Augustine), as a science (Aquinas), and a divine aesthetics forming the foundation for a ‘dramatics’ and finally a ‘logic’, an account of the divine-human mode in which we understand the beauty communicated in that action (von Balthasar). This account of a plurality or symphony of different refractions of revelation would seem to be a more concrete exposition of the position put forth by Ratzinger. This means that for Ratzinger there is not one officially approved Catholic theology, but a variety of different theologies, each refracting different lights of revelation but all capable of a harmonious interaction and application to particular pastoral needs.

Ratzinger’s interest in restoring the Christian unity which was lost through centuries of human error, political and theological conflicts and poorly managed cultural sensitivities was evident in his early academic life. In the 1960s at the University of Bonn he had directed a thesis by Vinzenz Pfnür on the doctrine of justification in Luther and in the circle of those taking doctorates under him there were two Orthodox students, Damaskinos Papandréou and Stylianos Harkianakis, who today are both metropolitans of the Ecumenical Patriarchy of Constantinople.67 The young Ratzinger also had a number of Lutheran convert academic friends, including Heinrich Schlier who had been a student of Rudolf Bultmann, and Paul Hacker, who was a scholar of Hinduism and who influenced Ratzinger’s understanding of the history of religions (though Hacker was later to be highly critical of the Second Vatican Council, the Jesuit Order in general, and the theology of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar in particular).68 Thus, there was always an openness to a genuine intellectual dialogue with those who came from other tradi-tions, but never from a position of indifference or prejudice to matters of doctrine. Ratzinger was always deeply convinced that the Chris-tian ‘myths’ so to speak, the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, are true, and there has obviously never been any experience intellectual or emotional which has shattered his belief in this. Nor has he ever lost faith in the Catholic Church as the universal sacrament of this salvation.

THE VISION OF UNITY

149

In 2000 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published the Declaration on the Unity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church, otherwise known by its Latin title Dominus Iesus. This Declaration issued under Ratzinger’s leadership of the CDF, reiterated the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the single Church of Christ ‘subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in Communion with him’. The expression ‘subsists in’ was taken directly from Lumen Gentium. According to Dominus Iesus, this expression sought to harmonize two doctrinal ideas: that the Church of Christ exists fully only in the Catholic Church, but that nonetheless outside of her Communion there exists many elements of sanctification and truth in other eccle-sial communities. In other words, rejected is the notion that each ecclesial community might have its own little piece of the truth, which through dialogue, might form a much larger theological jigsaw as each party comes to the table with its own pieces of the puzzle. To extend this metaphor, Ratzinger’s position is that only in the Catholic Church is the full picture with all of its hues and shades of light vis-ible, but nonetheless that those outside the Church, when they left, took with them parts of the picture which continue to provide them with ‘elements of sanctification and truth’. Further, there is nothing in his writing to suggest that he would not concur with the assess-ment that these external ecclesial communities may have done an excellent job at conserving particular pieces of the jigsaw. For exam-ple, one might argue that the returning Anglicans are coming home, so to speak, with the gift of a great tradition of choral music, and the returning Lutherans are returning with volumes of valuable scriptural studies.

In an article published in 1986 just a few years into the pontificate of John Paul II, Aidan Nichols quoted from an unpublished paper delivered by Ratzinger at the Centre d’Etudes saint-Louis de France in Rome. It conveys something of the spirit that animates so much of Ratzinger’s work in the ecumenical field and his approach to the different spiritual and theological traditions internal to the Catholic Church:

In the Church, the debate (about freedom) concerns liberty in its deepest sense, as openness to the divine Being in order to become a sharer in its life . . . The fundamental right of Christians is the right to the whole faith . . . All other liberties in the Church

BENEDICT XVI

150

are ordered to this foundational right. Under this common deno-minator of faith we must leave a wide space for differing projects and forms of spiritual life, and, analogously, to differing forms of thought, so that each with its own richness may contribute to the faith of the Church . . . What is in question is, on the one hand, the basic right of the faithful to a faith which is pure, and, on the other, the right to express that faith in the thought and language of their own time.69

Paradoxically, Ratzinger’s ecumenical achievements, such as the creation of the Anglican Ordinariate, have not been well received by those who have spent much of their academic careers writing about dialogue. Those who have been advocates for the ‘praxis projects’ which bracket out doctrine and considerations of what is true, and simply try to boil down the great religious traditions to a few ethical principles, find that the kind of healing that is taking place through declarations like the one on justification which Ratzinger brokered with representatives of the Lutheran tradition, undermines their own projects. It demonstrates that an approach which takes doctrine seriously does not necessarily lead to more conflict but can lead to a deeper understanding on both sides. Thus Hans Küng responded to the announcement of the Anglican Ordinariate with a polemical attack on Ratzinger published in Italian in La Repubblica and in English in The Guardian in which he accused Ratzinger of fishing for converts in the muddy waters of right-wing extremists.70 Here the reference to ‘right-wing extremists’ is a reference to the 400,000 strong membership of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a body which is composed of what might be called common garden variety God, Queen and Country Anglicans who oppose the ordination of women and the appointment of practicing homosexual clergy and bishops. While Küng lamented the gift of a personal ordinariate to the tradi-tional Anglicans, Robert Moynihan in an editorial for Inside the Vatican, drew the following conclusion:

Benedict is rallying his troops. He is trying to reunite all those factions and denominations and groups in the West that share common beliefs in the eternal destiny of human beings, in the sacredness of human life (since human beings are ‘in the image and likeness of God’), in the existence of a moral standard which is true for all times and in all places (against the relativism of the

THE VISION OF UNITY

151

modern secular culture), in the need for justice in human affairs, for the rule of right, not might. And so he is doing his best, in what seems perhaps to be the ‘twilight of the West’, to build an ark, centered in Rome, to which all those who share these beliefs about human dignity may repair.71

Significantly, he is trying to be hospitable by finding a place on the ark for those with attachments to different liturgical and ecclesial cultures. He has made it clear that Anglicans, for example, do not necessarily have to drop their liturgical baggage into the Tiber before applying for admission, and there is no reason to believe that the same principle would not apply to other Christian communities who wanted to join as a group. So long as there is no doctrinal incon-sistency if people want to come with prayers written in King James English and hymns in seventeenth-century German, Ratzinger has demonstrated that he will use the power of his office to cut through the bureaucratic barriers to make their reception as painless as possible.

One might conclude therefore that from Ratzinger’s perspective, his duty is to teach and defend the Catholic faith, to intellectually engage with those outside that faith who are open to dialogue, and to find ways of healing the wounds and divisions among Christians and drawing all those who bailed out in the eleventh and sixteenth centuries into Communion with the See of Peter. As he showed by his action in regard to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999, Ratzinger believes this can be done in a way that is sensitive to the historical memories of the wound, sensitive to cultural and linguistic differences and aware that the formulae in which doctrines are expressed can sometimes be so problematic that new language, new formulae, need to be considered without doing violence to the doctrinal concerns on either side.

152

CONCLUSION

Speaking of Martin Buber, von Balthasar wrote that ‘those of us who know him at all realize that he is not simply another writer of Jewish race who has been admitted into the German pantheon, but the man, and, what is more, the only one, who remained in the forefront of German literature throughout the last half-century, representing the Jewish race in the face of a blind hatred of every-thing Jewish’.1 Unlike so many others he did not pursue a strategy of assimilation but he endeavoured to ‘recapture the essential spirit of Judaism’. A parallel judgment can also be made of Ratzinger. For the second half of the twentieth century (especially since 1968) and the beginning of the twenty-first he has represented Catholic theology in the face of a militant secularism and various crises inter-nally created within the Catholic Church. With respect to the latter, Philip Blosser offered the following indictment of post-Conciliar Catholic culture:

For more than two generations now, we [Catholics] have been robbed of the fullness of Catholicism, which is our birthright. With a few thankful exceptions, our collective acquaintance with Scripture is piecemeal, our knowledge of tradition is pathetic, our hymns are embarrassing, our religious art is ugly, our churches look like U.N. meditation chapels, our ethics are slipshod, and our aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities are so far from being sublime that they almost look ridiculous . . . For over two generations our faith formation has been shaped by a media culture that has portrayed our Church as a dinosaur that is either an impediment to social progress or simply irrelevant.2

Amidst this general condition of cultural poverty, Ratzinger never pursued a strategy of accommodation to the culture of modernity, as was the preferred option of so many of his generation, but he

CONCLUSION

153

did set about in works such as An Introduction to Christianity, Principles of Catholic Theology and The Spirit of the Liturgy to recapture the essential spirit of Christianity. Drawing inspiration from the theological works of Sts Augustine and Bonaventure and John Henry Newman, Guardini, de Lubac and von Balthasar, as well as the personalism of philosophers like Buber and Wust, and the treatment of virtue in Pieper, with a direct engagement with Scripture, he wove together a synthesis of insights into successive theological crises. In every instance he highlighted the sui generis character of Christian Revelation, particularly its insistence on the convertibility of being and love. The development of a Christian per-sonalism, in Ratzinger’s case, one heavily indebted to St Augustine and Guardini, has been one of the positive post-Conciliar develop-ments helping to counter balance Blosser’s long list of humiliating failures.

Significantly, Ratzinger belongs to a tradition of thinking which traces the failures, not to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, but to a whole series of intellectual derailments stretching all the way back to the rise of nominalism in the fourteenth century and to the many scholastic distinctions which were hardened into dualisms in the post-Tridentine era. The separation of spirituality from dogma, liturgy from scripture, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the theological virtues from an ethics that became deeply casuistic are also part of the story behind the impoverished condition of contemporary Catholic culture. In the first half of the twentieth century those who understood these things were often members of the laity, including a large number of converts, whose intellectual formation took place outside of seminaries. Some like Wust, Blondel and Gilson were philosophers employed in secular institutions, others were literary types like Paul Claudel and Georges Bernanos. The Germans were particularly creative and tried to take seriously the arguments of their Lutheran colleagues and engage with the leading intellectuals of their time. The French were determined to overcome both secular-ism and Jansenism. Claudel wrote that perhaps it is because Jansenism ‘held one part of God’s work in contempt, the noble faculties of imagination and sensibility, to which certain lunatics would have added reason itself, that religion has been through a long crisis, from which it is barely beginning to emerge’.3 For Claudel, the crisis was not primarily an intellectual crisis, but ‘the tragedy of a starved imagination’.4

BENEDICT XVI

154

The rise of Catholic Inc. – the model of the Church as a modern corporation – has in recent times fostered this ‘tragedy of a starved imagination’. The pneumatological dimension of the Church is con-stantly suppressed by people with narrow imaginations focused on figures, annual reports and mission statements. Against this contem-porary sociological development Ratzinger constantly reiterates the importance of the prophetic Pauline charism and the personalist nature of Catholic welfare and community service. Ratzinger’s use of the phrase ‘our bureaucratized faith’ and his many warnings against this tendency of the Church to ape the managerial processes of the corporate world represent an acute sociological observation about the source of pastoral problems in the contemporary Church. His treatment of the Lefebrvist problem (in part but not entirely a cre-ation of the hermeneutic of discontinuity and its self-secularizing pastoral strategies) and the situation of Anglo-Catholics who retain an attachment to their high English cultural heritage but nonetheless concur with all elements of Catholic doctrine, provide case studies of his interventions against what could otherwise be bureaucratically insurmountable pastoral disaster zones.

In his Crisis of the West, Peter Wust concluded that since the forces of anti-Christian destruction broke forth in their fullest fury from the region of Teutonic culture, ‘we may say that the brunt of respon-sibility rests on the shoulders of German Catholicism, on that section of the Catholic people which lives in the heart of Europe, and which, ever since Luther and the Council of Trent, has had to put up one single unbroken struggle to preserve its Christianity and Catholicism’.5 Those words were written in 1931 before the numerous martyrdoms in the concentration camps and the flamboyant opposition of those like Clemens-August Graf von Galen, the ‘lion of Münster’, whose moral authority was such that the Nazis dare not arrest him, (though dozens of his priests were sent to Dachau). If he were still alive Wust would no doubt appreciate the prophetic nature of his words com-posed during the prelude to the Nazi era. It is as if the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI represent a double act of Divine Providence, with a Pole being chosen to see off European Commu-nism and a German succeeding him to begin healing the fractures of the sixteenth century and offer a sustained intellectual response to the nihilist wing of nineteenth-century Romanticism which reached its extreme in the Nazi death camps. It may also be providential that this particular German pontiff is not deeply wedded to Baroque

CONCLUSION

155

scholasticism and actually regards extrinsicist accounts of nature and grace as highly problematic.

Ratzinger’s love of the early Church fathers and of Newman, and his interest in the nineteenth-century Romantic movement themes like history, hermeneutics and tradition, give him an affinity with the more intellectually inclined Lutherans and Anglicans for whom Baroque scholasticism is alien territory, and provide him with the intellectual capital with which to engage the concerns of the post-moderns. Since postmodern thought is very much rooted in the Romantic reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century and focused on topics like the uniqueness of each and every human being, it is impossible to deal with it unless one moves beyond the boundaries of Aristotelian categories. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI understood this from their earliest pastoral years and while one worked on developing the Thomist tradition in a more personalist direction, the other worked on mining the Augustinian tradition with reference to the same pastoral ends. Wojtyła was working on the Aquinas-John of the Cross-Mounier-Scheler line, while Ratzinger was working on the Augustine-Newman-Guardini-Buber-Wust line. Wojtyła’s spirituality was more Carmelite, Ratzinger’s more Benedic-tine. Both however were concerned to re-establish relations between intellectual judgment and the movements of the human heart. Wojtyła spoke of the ‘theatre of the inner self ’, Ratzinger more often, simply of the heart. Both sought to shift Catholic theology from a preoccupation with a notion of life as duty parade and obedience to moral precepts (what Ratzinger calls ‘moralism’), to an understand-ing of life as a theo-drama in which obedience is always linked to love and truth and beauty – ultimately to participation in the life of the Trinity. Wojtyła’s flagship moral encyclical was titled Veritatis Splen-dor (the Splendour of the Truth) and Ratzinger’s first encyclical was titled Deus Caritas Est (God is Love). Both encyclicals in their own way offered a critique of utilitarian and pragmatic approaches to rela-tionships, including the human-divine relationship. While Lutherans are wary of those who think that they can earn their passage to heaven through good works, Ratzinger similarly cautions against a pious Pelagianism in which one tries to notch up spiritual credit with which to ‘buy’ grace. The deepest lesson Ratzinger learned from Guardini is that spirituality is intimately personal, not contractual.

At the intellectual centre of the Romantic movement is the intersection between being and history. The difficulty of navigating

BENEDICT XVI

156

Catholic theology through this intersection can be seen to be behind almost all the theological controversies of the twentieth century, resting as it does, on conceptions of the relationship between nature and grace and culture. It was central to the modernist controversy at the turn of the century, and to the conflicts over nature and grace which arose in the 1940s and still remain controversial. It is also an essential component of conflicts in the territories of ecclesiology and moral theology. Included within this general problematic is the theological significance of experience. In his L’experience chretienne (1952), Jean Mouroux argued that the most serious crises faced by the Church in the modern era all deal with this issue, including the crisis of Protestantism and the experience of Justification, Jansenism and the experience of delectation; the crisis of Quietism and the experience of purity of spirit; the crisis of Traditionalism and the reaction of ‘experience against reason’; the crisis of Modernism and the experience of ‘the heart against the head’.6

Ratzinger has not himself offered the ultimate theoretical resolu-tion for those trying to find an orthodox path through the intersection, but he has helped to steer the barque of Peter around various icebergs and he has signalled strong reservations about Rahner’s approach to the problem in Hearers of the Word. He has also signalled his preference for the theological anthropology of von Balthasar over that of Rahner and for the philosophy of Buber and Blondel over that of Heidegger. Nonetheless, in union with Rahner, de Lubac and Congar, he managed to inject some of the insights of Guardini, Newman and Blondel into Dei Verbum, thereby overcoming some of the problems in the fields of revelation and tra-dition, generated by a narrow reliance upon Lérins and an uncritical acceptance of Suárez. Dei Verbum can be read as a vindication of the anti-Suárezian arguments made in Ratzinger’s controversial habilitation thesis on the theology of history in St Bonaventure and a vindication of the notion of an organic development of tra-dition which is strong in the works of Newman, the Tübingen theologians and Blondel and which represents a much more theo-logically sophisticated treatment of tradition than the framework offered by Lérins.

In recognizing the importance of history and the organic develop-ment of the tradition Ratzinger has not however embraced the attitude that all meta-narratives, all claims to know the whole and to be an advocate for the universal subject, are flawed and oppressive.

CONCLUSION

157

The burdens of his various offices – Theology Professor, Archbishop, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and now Supreme Pontiff – place him in a position where he either accepts the thesis that the human capacity for knowledge of the divine is so limited it is like asking a group of blind men to describe an elephant, or continue to hold that the Catholic faith is the master narrative, under the trusteeship of the hierarchy and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. His contemporary, Hans Küng, reached the first conclusion, that in effect the hierarchy is no guarantor of the truth. Accordingly his global ethic projects are focused on an analysis of the practices which the different world religions commonly uphold and can be distilled to a corporate moralism. In Varro’s terminology, Küng’s projects fall into the category of ‘political theology’. They are about the pursuit of social consensus rather than about the pursuit of truth or what Varro would identify as a natural theology. Ratzinger repre-sents the choice for the alternative path. He insists that Christianity is the natural theology. Following the lead of Newman, Ratzinger has opened Catholic theology to a consideration of the problem of history, but he does not allow the Tradition to be constructed from historical elements external to revelation itself. Consistent with de Lubac and Möhler he believes that the faith of a twenty-first century Catholic in any diocese of the world is not essentially different from that of a first-century Christian. He does however acknowledge that some dimensions of the Tradition may now be more deeply appreciated through the interventions of scholar-saints and the work of the magisterium under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As Newman noted, such developments usually take place in moments of cultural crisis. In this sense it can be said that history is a major factor in the development of the Tradition. One can, for example, read John Paul II’s collections of scholarly interventions in the field of sexuality, published under the banner of a ‘theology of the body’, as a development of the Tradition in the wake of the pastoral crises thrown up by the Jansenist heresy and its maladie catholique as well as by the sexual revolution of the 1960s. In this way history can be a catalyst for the development of the Tradition but it is always (from Ratzinger’s perspective) a matter of judging the new historical reali-ties with reference to the Tradition itself, not bringing the Tradition before the tribunal of the Zeitgeist.

One context in which the contemporary Catholic Church has been very open to the spirit of the times has been that of music and

BENEDICT XVI

158

the arts in general. One of the most popular pastoral initiatives of the 1970s was that of accommodating liturgical practices to the standards of mass culture. This strategy has not however succeeded in increasing the numbers attending Church services. Although he was in favour of liturgical reform, Ratzinger was never in favour of any movement to dumb down the liturgical language to the lowest common denominator expressions or to introduce rock and sacro-pop music into the liturgical context. Here it would seem that this is partly because of the importance that the transcendental of beauty plays in his spirituality and theological judgments. It is arguably in this context that he is at his most Augustinian. He believes that good liturgy requires more than the use of the correct words. For Ratzinger everything associated with the Eucharist must be marked by beauty. It is in this context that he finds himself least understood by both Thomists in the pre-Conciliar mould, and liberation theo-logians influenced by Marxism. While a new generation of Thomist scholars is emerging which is more sensitive to the importance of beauty (one thinks, for example, of the works of Thomas Hibbs and Graham McAleer), it nonetheless remains the case that for Ratzinger’s generation of Catholic theologians, Aquinas was rather hard to place in the line of authorities for whom beauty was a significant transcendental.

Given the traumatic history of twentieth-century experiments with allegedly ‘rational’ ideologies, a wide variety of scholars has reached the conclusion that the culture of modernity with its foundations in the notion of reason severed from all theological presuppositions is hostile to human flourishing and as such far from liberating. Many agree with Jean-François Lyotard that the summer of 1968 repre-sented a moment in history when the elite of a whole generation rebelled against the idea of ‘pure reason’ and its social embodiments and inaugurated the era of postmodernity. However precisely the same generation of Catholic scholars had a tendency to hop on board the modern project as everyone else was leaving it. The tragic and humiliating nature of this was a common theme in the reflections of the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge. Catholic intellectuals gave themselves up to modernity just as the real avant-garde was beginning to critique it. They came out of their bunkers with their hands in the air as the enemy was departing for a new battlefield. The Catholic elite of this generation was left to look effete and irrelevant. Speaking of Rahner, Metz, Küng, Tracy and Schillebeeckx,

CONCLUSION

159

Boeve noted that they all presupposed that it was possible to identify continuity between modernity and Christian faith as a point of departure.7 However, ‘the modern context, has passed into history’.8 With reference to the transition to postmodernity, Boeve concludes that the most relevant theological question no longer appears to be: ‘how can the Christian tradition be productively involved in a dialogue with modern secularity, resulting in a relevant and plausible modern Christian mode of existence’, but rather ‘how does the Christian narrative relate to the plurality of religious and non-religious fundamental life options?’9

Ratzinger has also asked this question in the various articles about how Christianity sees itself in the market place of faith traditions. The most significant of these was the Sorbonne address delivered in the context of the millennium celebrations. Themes in this address have subsequently been taken up in his papal encyclicals with par-ticular emphasis given to the centrality of the Christian doctrine that God is love. For Ratzinger Christianity is the natural theology in the classical Roman sense. It rests on what he calls the ‘twin pillars’ of love and reason and because of this belief Christians cannot place Christ in some post-modern pantheon of the gods. They can cer-tainly dialogue with those who worship other gods, and through this dialogue they can deepen their understanding of alternative tradi-tions, but what Ratzinger does not accept is that one might through this process of dialogue discover some element of truth in an alter-native tradition which was not already present and available to Christians through their own Tradition. He believes that everything necessary for salvation has already been revealed.

With reference to the multiple dialogues going on with Lefebvrists, Anglicans, and the Orthodox, Robert Moynihan, (the editor of Inside the Vatican), has quipped that this pontificate has become one of ‘all dialogue, all the time’. However Ratzinger’s conclusions to this question do not appeal to those who remain in some sense wedded to the view that secularism is a benign and theologically neutral or even welcome social development or who are committed to one or other of the praxis projects. His belief that doctrine matters, that the dream of unity based on practices without any reference to theo-logical foundations is futile and that secularism is just the latest in a long list of atheistic ideologies which end up destroying human freedom places him on a collision course with those who would pri-vatize faith and eliminate it from the public sphere. One might say

BENEDICT XVI

160

that he is at war with the mentality that wants to remove crucifixes and nativity sets from public spaces and regulate the teaching of Christmas carols in kindergartens. He is also at war with the official European Union ideology which suppresses any acknowledgment that Christianity is the cultural glue which holds the concept of Europe together. He would no doubt warmly endorse Roger Scruton’s judgment that ‘the high culture of Europe acquired the universality of the Church which had engendered it’ and that the ‘core experience of membership survived to be constantly represented in the Mass – the “communion” which is also an enactment of community’. 10 This theme was rather poignantly presented in the Belgian movie Joyeaux Noël which recalled the Christmas truces in the battlefields of the Somme and the celebration of midnight Mass by soldiers from opposing armies. Scruton’s conclusion that the art of European culture bears witness to this communion of the European peoples ‘either by honoring or by defiling the thought of God’s incarnation’, is precisely the idea at the centre of Ratzinger’s humanism of the Incarnation. For Ratzinger and Scruton it is the Eucharist rather than economics that holds Europe, and indeed any Christian civiliza-tion, together. Catherine Pickstock and William T. Cavanaugh have also argued this point. According to Cavanaugh’s reading of the intellectual and social history, the modern state arose not by secular-izing politics but by supplanting the imagination of the body of Christ with an heretical theology of salvation through the state.11 While modernity represents salvation through the state, post-modernity is coming to represent salvation through the globalization of capital and universal access to commodities. Though Ratzinger is not opposed to advances in the material order, he believes that salvation will never come through the market or through the state but only through Christ, and thus, as he wrote in Caritas in Veritate, ‘a humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism’.

Secularism, far from being theologically indifferent, is rather the political theology which provides the intellectual infrastructure for what his papal predecessor called the ‘culture of death’. The myth of a purely secular rationality not only ‘lied’ but it failed to liberate and incite to love. Death in Darwin’s jungle is not the reason of being and creation.12 In Benedict XVI, the nihilist wing of the Romantic movement is being confronted with the alternatives of the Catholic wing, based on what he described in the late 1960s as a ‘daring new’ presentation of Trinitarian anthropology.

161

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1 Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium an Interview with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997), p. 66.

2 C. E. Olsen, Interview with Fr D. Vincent Twomey, Ignatius Insight, 7 June; ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/vtwomey_interview_jun07.sp

3 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), p. 158.

4 Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).

5 T. F. O’Meara, Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology, 1860–1914 (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), p. 50.

6 Jean Daniélou, ‘Les orientations présentes de la Pensée religieuse’, E.tudes 249 (1946), p. 14. For a short essay on the debates and personali-

ties of this period, see: Aidan Nichols, Beyond the Blue Glass: Catholic Essays on Faith and Culture (London: Saint Austin Press, 2002): 33–53.

7 Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth; p. 61. 8 G. Valente, and P. Azzardo, ‘Interview with Alfred Läpple’, 30 Days,

1 (2006), p. 60. 9 Ibid. p. 60.10 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 1998), p. 44.11 Ibid. pp. 42 & 43. Note in this publication Haecker was written with

an umlaut over the “a”, but Haecker himself used the “ae” rather than “ä”. Both styles of spelling are found in the literature.

12 For an account of the formation of Communio which includes direct quotations from Ratzinger see: M. Bardazzi, In the Vineyard of the Lord: the Life, Faith, and Teachings of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI (New York: Rizzoli, 2005), pp. 50–55.

13 George Weigel, God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), p. 178.

14 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), p. 11.

15 Ibid. p. 11.16 Ibid. p. 11.17 E. Michael Jones, Living Machines (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995).

NOTES

162

18 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 14.19 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Church and Economics’, Communio: Interna-

tional Catholic Review, 13 (1986): pp. 199–201.20 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 15.21 Ibid. p. 16.22 Ibid. p. 16.23 Ibid. p. 17.24 Maurice Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History

of Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).25 Black Liberation Theology was pioneered in the United States by James

H Cone, Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary at New York College.

26 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 21.

CHAPTER 1

1 H. G. Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. xviii.

2 In this context it is interesting to note that arguably the country in which Aeterni Patris has had the greatest long-term popularity is the US, and which, as John Milbank has noted, ‘in a sense never had a 19th century – never had historicism and the cult of society and culture and socialist popularism’. See; John Milbank, ‘The Gift of Ruling: Secularization and Political Authority’, The Dominican Council, 2004: 212–38 at 235.

3 For histories of the Catholic Faculty of Theology at Tübingen see: J. R. Geiselmann, Die Katholische Tübinger Schule. Ihre theologische Eigenart (Freiburg, 1964) and Reinhardt, R, (ed.); Tübinger Theologen und ihre Theo logie. Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Katholisch-theologischen Fakultät Tübingen; Contubernium, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen 16. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1977; and D. D. Dietrich and M. J. Haines (eds), The Legacy of the Tübingen School: The Relevance of Nineteenth-Century Theology for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Crossroad, 1997).

4 Grant Kaplan, Answering the Enlightenment: The Catholic Recovery of Historical Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder, 2006), p. 80.

5 J. S. Drey, ‘Aphorismen über den Ursprung unserer Erkenntnisse vonGott – ein Beitrag zur Entscheidung der neuesten Streitigkeiten über den Begriff der Offenbarung’, Die theologische Quartalschrift 8 (1826): 237–84. Quoted by Grant Kaplan, Answering the Enlightenment, p. 107.

6 J. E. Kuhn, ‘Über den Begriff und das Wesen der speculativen Theologie oder christlichen Philosophie’, Die theologische Quartalschrift 14 (1832) 411 f. Quoted in T. F. O’Meara, Romantic Idealism and Roman Catho-licism: Schelling and the Theologians (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), p. 154.

7 Grant Kaplan, Answering the Enlightenment, p. 104.8 Joseph Ratzinger, The Church, Ecumenism and Politics (New York:

Crossroad, 1988), p. 4.

NOTES

163

9 For an overview of the intellectual milieu of these times, see: Virgil Nemoianu, ‘Sacrality and the Aesthetic in the Early Nineteenth Century’ in M. Ferber (ed.) A Companion to European Romanticism, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005): 393–412; T. F. O’Meara, Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the Theologians (Indiana: Univer-sity of Notre Dame Press, 1982).

10 Virgil Nemoianu, ‘Sacrality and the Aesthetic in the Early Nineteenth Century’, in M. Ferber A Companion to European Romanticism, (ed.); (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 406.

11 Ibid. p. 406.12 The affinity between Newman and von Balthasar has been examined

by Aidan Nichols, see: Aidan Nichols, Beyond the Blue Glass (London: Saint Austin Press, 2002): 67–86.

13 Edith Stein, (trans.); John Henry Newman: Briefe und Tagebucher bis zum Übertritt zur Kirche 1801–1845. Band I. (München: Theatiner Verlag, 1928).

14 Simon Caldwell, ‘Woman who defied Hitler was inspired by Newman’, The Catholic Herald, 3 April 2009.

15 G. Biemer, ‘Theodor Haecker: In the Footsteps of John Henry Newman’, New Blackfriars, Vol. 81. Number 957, July 2007, pp. 414 and 416; Jakob Knab, ‘Wir schweigen nicht, wir sind Euer böses Gewissen: Die Newman-Rezeption der Weissen Rose – und ihre Wirkungsgechichte’, in Bernd Trocholepczy (ed); Wirklichkeit, Verwirklichung und Wirkungs-geschichte. John Henry Newmans ‘Realizing’ als Basis einer praktisch-theologischen Theorie (Newman Studien vol. XX) (Frankfurt am Main: 28-01-2010).

16 Theodor Haecker, Vorwort zu Satire und Polemik (Innsbruck: 1922). 17 This was published in 1952 with the title Der Einzelne in der Kirche.18 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Newman belongs to the Great Teachers of the

Church’, 1990 Centenary Symposium paper, as published in Benedict XVI and Cardinal Newman, Jennings, P. (ed.); (Oxford: Family Publica-tions, 2005).

19 Gottlieb Söhngen, Kardinal Newman, sein Gottesgedanke und seine Denkergestalt (Daun: Aurel Verlag, 1946).

20 Heinrich Fries, Die Religionsphilosophie Newmans (Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag 1948).

21 Joseph Ratzinger, Presentation on the Occasion of the First Centenary of the Death of Cardinal John Henry Newman, 28 April, 1990, Rome.

22 E. I. Watkin, Introduction to Crisis in the West by Peter Wust: (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931), p. xxxiv.

23 J. F. Kobler, Schillebeeckx, Phenomenology and Vatican II: A Review of Eric Borgman’s Edward Schillebeeckx: A Theologian in His History: Vol. 1, A Catholic Theology of Culture (1914–1965) Trans. By John Bowden; Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, (Spring, 2005), p. 26.

24 Martin Buber, I and Thou (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1937), p. 75.25 Martin Buber, Between Man and Man (London: Fontana, 1971),

pp.159–60.26 Ibid. p. 101.

NOTES

164

27 Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium. An Interview with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997), p. 61.

28 For example, see Karol Wojtyła, Person and Community: Selected Essays, Theresa Sandok (trans.) (New York: Peter Lang, 1993) and M. A. Krapiec, I-Man: An Outline of Philosophical Anthropology (New Britain, CT: Mariel Publications, 1983).

29 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Martin Buber and Christianity: A Dialogue between Israel and the Church (London: Harvill Press, 1960), pp. 34–5.

30 For an entire work which compares the theme of relationality in the works of Buber and Ratzinger see: M. Rutsche, Die Relationalität Gottes bei Martin Buber und Joseph Ratzinger (Munich: Grin Verlag, 2008).

31 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Concerning the Notion of the Person in Theology’, Communio: International Catholic Review 17 (3) (1990): 439–54.

32 E. C. Kopff, Introduction to Josef Pieper, Überlieferung: Begriff und Anspruch (Munich: Kösel, 1970) and the English version Tradition: Concept and Claim (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2008), p. xxiv.

33 Josef Pieper, No One Could Have Known: An Autobiography: the Early Years 1904–1945 (San Francisco, 1987), p. 46, as quoted in E. C. Koppf’s introduction to Tradition: Concept and Claim, p. xxiv.

34 E. C. Koppf, Introduction to Josef Pieper, p. xxv.35 Josef Pieper, Scholasticism (New York: 1960), p. 126.36 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith,

Hope and Love (New York: Crossroad: 1991).37 Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius,

2005), p. 37.38 Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim, p. 44.39 Ibid. p. 44.40 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius,

1990), p. 27.41 R. A. Krieg, Romano Guardini: the Precursor of Vatican II (Indiana:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) 42 V. Consemius, ‘The Condemnation of Modernism and the Survival

of Catholic Theology’, in Gregory Baum (ed.); The Twentieth Century: A Theological Overview (London: Continuum, 1999), p. 21.

43 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco, Ignatius, 2000), p. 8.

44 Ibid. p. 7.45 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Guardini on Christ in our Century’, Crisis Magazine,

(June, 1996): 14–15 at p. 14.46 Ibid. p. 15.47 Joseph Ratzinger, Perché siamo ancora nella Chiesa,(Rome: Rizzoli,

2008), p. 261.48 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Romano Guardini: Reform aus dem Ursprung

(München: Kösel-Verlag, 1970).49 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prüfet alles – das Gute behaltet (Ostfildern:

Schwabenverlag, 1986), p. 9.50 Ibid. p. 9.

NOTES

165

51 Alexander Dru, Introduction to Maurice Blondel: A Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 60.

52 Ibid. p. 48. It should be noted that Przywara did not entirely agree with Bremond’s

appropriation of Newman, regarding aspects of it as too modernist. See: Erich Przywara, ‘Zur Geschichte des ‘modernistischen’ Newman in Ringen der Gegenwart: Gesammelte Aufsätze 1922–1927 (Augsburg: Benno Filser Verlag, 1929).

53 Mark Bosco, ‘Georges Bernanos and Francis Poulenc: Catholic Con-vergences in Dialogues of the Carmelites’, Logos, 12:2, Spring, 2009: 17–40 at 21.

54 Ibid. p. 21.55 Ibid. p. 22.56 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Dignity of the Human Person’ in H. Vorgrimler

(ed.); Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969).

57 Ibid. p. 138.58 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs (1927–1977), (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 1998), p. 98.59 An extensive analysis of Ratzinger’s critique of Gaudium et spes can be

found in Chapter 2 of Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger’s Faith: the Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

60 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Homily at the Funeral Liturgy of Hans Urs von Balthasar’, in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, D. L. Schindler, (ed.); (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991), p. 293.

61 David Schindler on Cardinal Ratzinger’s Ecclesiology: Interview with Editor of Communio: International Catholic Review, Zenit, 1 May 2005.

62 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones – Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius , 1998), p. 143.

63 Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to Alice von Hildebrand, A Soul of a Lion (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), pp. 11–12.

64 Joseph Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (London: Sheed and Ward, 1966), p. 53 and Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982), pp. 60–2.

65 Aidan Nichols makes the observation that it was not so much the Rhine flowing into the Tiber, as the Neckar flowing into the Tiber – Tübingen is situated on the Neckar.

66 The author is indebted to David van Gend for his knowledge of the relationship between Mozart and the Romantic composers.

CHAPTER 2

1 Erich Przywara, Weg zu Gott (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1962), p. 502.2 James Cardinal Stafford, ‘Knights of Columbus-States Dinner Keynote

Address”, Washington DC, 3 Aug. 2004.3 Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius,

2005), p. 45.

NOTES

166

4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Das Ganze in Fragment. Aspekte der Geschich-testheologie (Einsiedeln, 199), p. 198f as quoted in John Saward, ‘Chesterton and Balthasar: the Likeness is Greater’, Chesterton Review, Vol. XXII, No. 3, Aug. 1996, p. 314. The author is indebted to Karl Schmude for this reference.

5 Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, p. 44. 6 Ratzinger, ‘Christ, Faith and the Challenge of Cultures’, Address to

the Presidents of the Asian Bishops’ Conference, 2–5 March 1993. www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZHONG.HTM.

7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid.10 Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day

of the Year (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), pp. 18–19.11 Aidan Nichols, Say It is Pentecost (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2001), p. 3.12 International Theological Commission, ‘Faith and Inculturation’,

Origins 18 (1989): 800–7.13 Aidan Nichols, Say It is Pentecost, p. 3.14 Joseph Ratzinger, J The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius,

2000), p. 124.15 Ibid. p. 124.16 Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report: An Interview with Vittorio

Messori (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985), p. 130.17 Ibid. p. 129.18 Joseph Ratzinger, Message to Comunione e Liberazione, August 2002,

Rimini, Italy – published in Adoremus, Oct. 2006 Vol. XII, No. 7, p. 1.19 L’Osservatore Romano, 16, No. 6, (1986), pp. 10ff.20 Josef Pieper, Darstellung und Interpretationem: Platon, Vol. I, ed. B. Wald

(Hamburg, 2002). 21 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 126–7.22 Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, p. 35.23 Ibid. p. 36.24 Ibid. p. 36.25 Ibid. p. 37.26 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Art, Image and Artists’, Adoremus Bulletin; Vol. Viii

(1) Mar. 2002, p. 1.27 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 129.28 Ibid. p. 129.29 Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, p. 40.30 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 132–3.31 Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, pp. 32–3.32 C. M. Johansson, Music and Ministry: A Biblical Counterpoint (Peabody,

MA: Hendrickson, 1998).33 Ibid. p. 55.34 Ibid. p. 5.35 H. J. Burbach, ‘Sacro-pop’, Internationale katholische Zeitschrift,

3:148–57 (1974).

www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZHONG.HTM

NOTES

167

36 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Theological Problems of Church Music’ Crux et Cithara (1983): 214–22 at p. 214.

37 Hugo Staudinger and Wolfgang Behler, Chance und Risiko der Gegenwart: Eine kritische Analyse der wissenschaftlichtechnischen Welt (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1976).

38 Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord, p. 10839 Ibid. p. 109.40 Ibid. p. 109.41 Ibid. pp. 123–4.42 Ibid. p. 32.43 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Liturgy and Sacred Music’, Communio: International

Catholic Review 13 (1986): 377–91 at p. 387.44 J. A. Edwards, ‘Fides ex Auditu: Dogmatic Theology and the Ecclesial

Practice of Music’, MPhil dissertation, University of St Andrews (2008), p. 95.

45 Ibid. p. 97.46 Ibid. p. 97.47 Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1999); Catherine Pickstock, ‘God and Meaning in Music: Messi-aen, Deleuze and the Musico-Theological Critique of Modernism and Postmodernism’, Sacred Music, Vol. 134 (4), (Winter 2007) 40–62.

48 Roger Scruton, ‘Youth Culture’s Lament’, City Journal, (Autumn, 1998) 12–25.

49 Roger Scruton, The Philosopher on Dover Beach (Manchester: Carcanet, 1990) 113–27.

50 Alain de Botton, ‘Feeling Beauty’ The Age Good Weekend, 29 April 2006, pp. 27–8.

51 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 128–9.52 Minlib Dahll, Review of Ratzinger’s Faith: the Theology of Benedict

XVI in Conversations in Religion and Theology 7 (2) (2009) 172–84.53 Christian Gnilka, Chrêsis: Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der

Antiken Kultur: Vol II Kultur und Conversion (Basel: Schwabb & Co, 1993).54 Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ, p. 46.55 Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith, p. 81.56 Ibid. p. 82.57 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Theological Problems of Church Music’, p. 214.58 Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord, p. 175.59 Ibid. p. 175.60 Ibid. p. 9661 Romano Guradini, The End of the Modern World, (London: Sheed &

Ward, 1957), p. 78.62 Ibid. p. 88–9.63 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence, (San

Francisco: Ignatius, 1996), p. 588.64 Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord, p. 126.65 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius,

1994), p. 125.

NOTES

168

66 This Rite was slightly amended by Blessed John XXIII.67 Paul VI, Wednesday Audience Address, 26 Nov. 1969, L’Osservatore

Romano, 4 Dec. 1969, p. 12.68 Gareth Edwards, ‘Modern English in the Mass’, America, 22 Oct. 1966;

see also a reference to Edwards in ‘Distant Early Warning: Translation Hazards’, Adoremus Bulletin, Vol. XIV (5), July–Aug., 2008, p. 2.

69 Gareth Edwards, ‘Modern English in the Mass’, America, 22 Oct. 1966; see also a reference to Edwards in ‘Distant Early Warning: Translation Hazards’, Adoremus Bulletin, Vol. XIV (5), July–Aug., 2008, p. 2.

70 S. M. P. Reid, A Bitter Trial (Curdridge: Saint Austin Press, 1996), p. 34.71 A widely held belief, which is impossible to substantiate with reference

to any document, is that Paul VI was impressed by the name Agatha Christie on the petition begging for a reprieve of the suppression and promptly granted the indult.

72 Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 22.73 Aidan Nichols, ‘St Thomas and the Sacramental Liturgy’, The Thomist

72 (2008): 569–95 at p. 590.74 Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy 2nd

edition, (Farnborough: St Michael’s Abbey Press, 2004).75 Ibid.76 Benedict XVI, Ecclesiae Unitatem (4). Acta Apostolica Sedes forthcoming.77 Editorial, ‘Benedict XVI’s Bold Move for Church Unity’ L’Osservatore

Romano, 26 January 2009.78 Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops of the Catholic

Church Concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, 10 March 2009.

79 Alexander Boot, How the West was Lost (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006).80 Ibid. p. 119.81 Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth, p. 16.82 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Christ, Faith and the Challenge of Cultures’.83 David S. Yeago, ‘Literature in the Drama of Nature and Grace: Hans

Urs von Balthasar’s Paradigm for a Theology of Culture’ in Ed. Block Jnr (ed.) Glory, Grace and Culture: the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press: 2005).

CHAPTER 3

1 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Commentary on the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Origin and Background’, in Herbert Vorgrimler (ed.), Com-mentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. III (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) pp. 155–272.

2 Casarella, P, Introduction to the 2000 edition of Scripture in the Tradition (New York: Herder and Herder, 2000), p. xvi.

3 John Montag, ‘The False Legacy of Suárez’, in John Milbank , Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (eds) Radical Orthodoxy (London: Rout-ledge, 1999) pp. 38–64.

4 Ibid. p. 57.

NOTES

169

5 John Milbank, Introduction to Radical Orthodoxy (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 5.

6 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Origin and Background’ in Herbert Vorgrimler (ed.), p. 176.

7 Ibid. p. 172. 8 Albert Vanhoye, ‘The Reception in the Church of the Dogmatic

Constitution “Dei Verbum”’ in J. Granados, Carlos Granados and Luis Sanchez (eds), Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 113.

9 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998), pp. 108–9.

10 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church’ in Herbert Vorgrimler (ed.), pp. 155–6.

11 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Transmission of Divine Revelation’ in Herbert Vorgrimler (ed), p. 184.

12 Alexander Dru, Prefatory Note to Maurice Blondel: History and Dogma (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 214.

13 Maurice Blondel, History and Dogma (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 276.

14 Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), p. 24.

15 Ibid. pp. 24–5.16 Ibid. p. 27.17 Ibid. p. 28.18 Cyril O’Regan, ‘Balthasar: Between Tübingen and Postmodernity’,

Modern Theology 14:3 (July 1998) 325–53 at pp. 329–30.19 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Transmission of Divine Revelation’ in Herbert

Vorgrimler (ed.), p. 187.20 Ibid. p. 188.21 Cyril O’Regan, ‘Balthasar: Between Tübingen and Postmodernity’,

p. 330.22 Ibid. p. 337.23 Hans Urs von Balthasar, On Theology of Revelation: A Theology of

History (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1963), pp. 102–3.24 Canty, A, ‘Bonaventurian Resonances in Benedict XVI’s Theology of

Revelation’, Nova et Vetera, Vol. 5 (2), (Spring 2007) 249–67 at p. 254.25 Joachim Gnilka, Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History (Peabody, MA:

Hendrickson Publishers, 1997) pp. 1–12.26 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of

the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today’, in Richard John Neuhaus (ed.), Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 4.

27 Ibid. p. 6.28 Ibid. p. 22.29 Ibid. p. 20. 30 Ibid. p. 19.

NOTES

170

31 Ibid. p. 20.32 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of

the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today’ in Jose Granados, Carlos Granados and Luis Sanchez (eds), Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 11.

Note this particular essay of Ratzinger’s has been published in English twice, first in the work edited by Neuhaus, and secondly in the work edited by Granados. The translations are different, so that while they remain the same in substance, the precise words used vary.

33 Ibid. p. 14.34 Ibid. p. 14.35 Ibid. p. 15.36 Ibid. p. 16.37 Ibid. p. 19.38 International Theological Commission: ‘Memory and Reconciliation:

the Church and the Faults of the Past’, The Pope Speaks 45, 4, (2000) 208–49 at p. 224.

39 See for example: Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Some Enlightenment Projects Reconsidered’, in R. Kearney and M. Dooley (eds), Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, (London: Routledge, 1998) pp. 245–58 at p. 250.

40 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Scripture and Tradition’ in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge University Press: 2003), pp. 152–3.

41 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Biblical Interpretation in Crisis’ in Jose Grenados, Carlos Granados and Luis Sanchez (eds), p. 29.

42 Joseph Ratzinger, footnote 25 of ‘Biblical Interpretation in Crisis’ in Richard John Neuhaus (ed.), Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, p. 18.

43 Romano, Guardini, ‘Heilige Schrift und Glaubenswissenschaft’, Die Schildgenossen 8 (1928) 24–57.

44 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Guardini on Christ in our Century’, Crisis Magazine, (June 1996) 14–16 at p. 15.

45 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology Vol. I: The Word Made Flesh (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), p. 21.

46 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Scripture and Tradition’ , p. 165.47 Joseph Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis’, in J. Granados, Carlos

Granados and Luis Sanchez (eds), p. 23.48 Lieven Boeve, Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in a

Postmodern Context (Louvain: Peeters Press, 2003), p. 24.49 Ibid. p. 35.50 Ibid. p. 49.51 Lieven Boeve, God Interrupts History: Theology in a Time of Upheaval

(London: Continuum, 2007), p. 6.52 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Interreligious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian

Relations’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 25, (1998) 29–41 at p. 31.

NOTES

171

53 Henri de Lubac, Le Révélation Divine (Paris: Cerf, 1968), p. 101.54 Gregory Hoskins, ‘An Interview with Lieven Boeve: “Recontextualizing

the Christian Narrative in a Postmodern Context”’, Journal of Philoso-phy and Scripture Vol. 3 (2) (Spring 2006) 31–7.

55 Benedict XVI, ‘Address during Meeting with Organizations involved in Interreligious Dialogue at the Auditorium of Notre Dame Center in Jerusalem’, (Sydney: Columban Mission Institute), p. 22 and p. 23.

56 Paul J. Cordes, ‘Not without the Light of Faith: Catholic Social Doctrine Clarifies Its Self-Understanding’, Address at the Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, 27 November 2009, p. 4.

57 Joseph Ratzinger, Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), p. 34.

58 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Bildung und Glaube in unserer Zeit: drei Thesen zur christlichen Bildung’ in Informationsdienst des deutschen Instituts für Bildung und Wissen, Heft 8/9 (15 September 1975), pp. 113–16.

59 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History, p. 82.60 Ormond Rush, ‘The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and

the Church’s reception of Revelation’, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), pp. 18–19.

61 Joseph Ratzinger, Saint Paul: the Apostle (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 2009), p. 91.

62 Ibid. p. 91.63 Ibid. p. 90.64 Ibid. p. 63.65 Ibid. p. 63.66 Joseph Ratzinger, The Church, Ecumenism and Politics: New Essays

in Ecclesiology Trans. Robert Lowell and Dame Frideswide Sandemann, O. S. B. (New York: Crossroad, 1988), pp. 6–7.

67 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), p. 26.

68 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Address to the International Congress for the 40th anniversary of Dei Verbum’, L’Osservatore Romano, 21 September 2005, 7.

69 Aaron Canty, ‘Bonaventurian Resonances in Benedict XVI’s Theology of Revelation’, Nova et Vetera, Vol. 5 (2), (Spring, 2007) 249–67 at 266.

CHAPTER 4

1 See also: Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Eschatology and Utopia’, Communio: Inter-national Catholic Review, 5 (1978) 211–27; ‘Vorfragen zu einer Theologie der Erlösung’ in L. Scheffczyk, (ed.), Erlösung und Emanzipation (Munich, 1982) pp. 167–79; ‘Gottes Kraft – unsere Hoffnung’ in Klerusblatt 67 (1987) 342–47; ‘On Hope’ Communio: International Catholic Review, 12 (Spring, 1985) 71–84.

2 Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope and Love, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997) and Josef Pieper, The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999).

3 James V. Schall, ‘The Encyclical on Hope: On the De-immanentizing’ of the Christian Eschaton’, Ignatius Insight, 3 December 2007; James

NOTES

172

V. Schall, The Politics of Heaven and Hell: Christian Themes from Classical, Medieval and Modern Political Philosophy (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984).

4 Joseph Ratzinger, The End of Time? The Provocation of Talking about God (Co-authored with J. B. Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and Eveline Goodman-Thau) (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), p. 14.

5 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope and Love (New York: Crossroad, 1991), p. 41; Joseph Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), p. 88.

6 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, p. 84. 7 Ibid. p. 42. 8 Ibid. p. 42. 9 Ibid. p. 82.10 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, paragraph 44.11 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, paragraph 47.12 Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to

the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 20.13 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, p. 81.14 As quoted by von Balthasar in Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence (San

Francisco: Ignatius, 1996), p. 555. 15 Ibid. p. 53.16 Ibid. p. 55.17 Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope and Love (San Francisco: Ignatius: 1997),

p. 130.18 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, p. 81.19 Ibid. p. 67.20 Ibid. p. 73.21 Ibid. p. 78.22 Ibid. p. 78.23 Joseph Ratzinger, Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts (San

Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), p. 22.24 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Dignity of the Human Person’ Commentary on

Gaudium et spes, H. Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. III (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 155.

25 Joseph Ratzinger, Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts, pp. 39–40.

26 Ibid. pp. 21–2.27 Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope and Love, p. 103.28 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius,

1994), p. 44.29 Serge-Thomas Bonino, ‘Nature and Grace in Deus Caritas Est’, Nova

et Vetera, Vol. 5 (2) (Spring 2007) 231–48 at p. 237.30 For an English language survey of these ideas see: T. A. and

S. A. Rowland, ‘Contemporary Central European Reflections on Civic Virtue’, History of European Ideas Vol. 21 (4): 505–13.

31 Zdizsław Krasnodebski, ‘W oczekiwaniu na supermarkety, czyli upadek komonizmu w swietle postmodernistycznej filozofii widziany’, Res Publica, No. 4. 1991.

NOTES

173

32 Ibid.33 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Dignity of the Human Person’ in Herbert

Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II Vol. V, (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 115–64.

34 Ibid. p. 120.35 Henri de Lubac, ‘Duplex Hominis Beatitudo’, Communio: International

Catholic Review 35 (Winter 2008) 599–612.36 Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell,

2002), p. 134.37 Karl Rahner, Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons, Faith in a Wintry

Season: Conversations and Interviews with Karl Rahner in the Last Years of His Life, (New York: Crossroad, 1991), p. 49.

38 Romano Guardini, The Conversion of Augustine (London: Sands & Co., 1960), pp. 68–69.

39 Jean Borella, The Sense of the Supernatural (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), p. ix.

40 Robert Spaemann, Philosophische Essays (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1983), pp. 26–7.

41 Ibid. pp. 26–7.42 Nicholas Healy, ‘Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace’, Communio:

International Catholic Review (Winter 2008), 535–65 at p. 546.43 Serge-Thomas Bonino, ‘Nature and Grace in Deus Caritas Est’, Nova

et Vetera, Vol. 5 (2), (Spring 2007) 231–48.44 Paul J. Cordes, ‘Not Without the Light of Faith: Catholic Social

Doctrine Clarifies Its Self-Understanding’, Address at the Australian Catholic University, Sydney, 27 November 2009, p. 6.

45 David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism and Liberation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), p. 79.

46 George Weigel, ‘Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red’, National Review On-Line, 7 July 2009.

47 Karol Wojtyla, Person and Community: Selected Essays, translated by Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 270–1.

48 Adrian Walker, ‘The Poverty of Liberal Economics’, in Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler (eds), Wealth, Poverty and Human Destiny (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003), p. 23.

49 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Church and Economics’, Communio: Interna-tional Catholic Review 13 (1986): 199–204 and On the Way to Jesus Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius: 2005), p. 121.

50 Joseph Ratzinger, Interview with the Italian Catholic Agency SIR, Rome, 7 May 2004.

51 Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report: An Interview with Vittorio Messori (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985), p. 53.

52 Ibid. p. 67.53 Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the

Millennium (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996), p. 266.54 Joseph Ratzinger, Images of Hope, p. 26.55 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, p. 77.

NOTES

174

CHAPTER 5

1 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), p. 160.

2 Ibid. p. 153. 3 Rudolf Voderholzer, ‘Dogma and History: Henri de Lubac and the

Retrieval of Historicity as a key to Theological Renewal’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 28 (Winter 2001) 648–68 at p. 651.

4 Karl Rahner, cited in Thomas Sheehan, Karl Rahner the Philosophical Foundations (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987), p. xi.

5 Ibid. p. xi. 6 John D. Caputo, ‘Heidegger and Theology’ in Charles Guignon (ed.),

The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 284.

7 Buber, M. Between Man and Man (London: Fontana, 1971), p. 203. 8 Ibid. p. 208. 9 Ibid. p. 210.10 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 157.11 Ibid. p. 157.12 Ibid. p. 158.13 Ibid. p. 174.14 See, for example: Oscar Cullman, Salvation in History (London: SCM

Press, 1967); Christ and Time (London: SCM Press, 1962); Gottlieb Söhngen, Die Einheit in der Theologie (Munich: Karl Zink, 1952), Aus der Theologie der Zeit (Regensburg, 1948).

15 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 174.16 Jean Daniélou, ‘The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition’,

Journal of Religion Vol. 30 (3) (1950) 171–9 at p. 177.17 Ibid. p. 177.18 Ibid. p. 177.19 Ibid. p. 177.20 Ibid. p. 177.21 Avery Dulles, Revelation Theology: A History (New York: Herder and

Herder, 1969), p. 124.22 Joseph Ratzinger, Dogmatic Theology: Eschatology: Death and Eternal

Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988). p. 54.23 Ibid. p. 54.24 Ibid. p. 55.25 Martin C. D’Arcy, The Sense of History: Secular and Sacred (London:

Faber & Faber, 1959), p. 182–3.26 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Christian Universalism: On Two Collections of

Papers by Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Communio: International Catholic Review (Fall 1995) 545–57 at p. 546.

27 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 176.28 Ibid. pp. 177–8.29 Paul Henry, ‘Christian Philosophy of History’, Theological Studies,

Vol. XIII, No. 1 (March, 1952) 419–32 at p. 430.

NOTES

175

30 Joseph Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report: An Interview with Vittorio Messori (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985), p. 182.

31 Ibid. p. 182.32 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Bildung und Glaube in unserer Zeit. Drie Thesen zur

christlichen Bildung’, IBW (Institute für Bildung und Wissen) Journal, 13, (1975), 113–16 at p. 114.

33 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology’, Communio: International Catholic Review (Fall 1990): 439–55 at p. 452.

34 Ibid. p. 158.35 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 160.36 Ibid. p. 185.37 Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope and Love, p. 95.38 Ibid. p. 95.39 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 168.40 Ibid. p. 166.41 James V. Schall, ‘Certain Fundamental Truths’, Ignatius Insight, 6 Oct.

2009.42 Joseph Ratzinger, The Yes of Jesus Christ, p. 92.43 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 166.44 Ibid. p. 162.45 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 169.46 Ibid. p. 169.47 Joseph Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One (San Francisco: Ignatius,

1986), p. 33.48 Jean Daniélou, ‘The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition’,

p. 172.49 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, p. 171.50 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theological Anthropology, pp. 95–6.51 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Thérèse of Lisieux: A Story of a Mission, trans.

by D. Nicholl (London: Sheed and Ward, 1953), p. xii–xiii. See also for an extensive treatment of this subject Victoria S. Harrison, ‘Homo Orans’: Von Balthasar’s Christocentric Philosophical Anthropology’, The Heythrop Journal, Vol. XL (1999): 280–300.

52 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Bildung und Glaube in unserer Zeit. Drie Thesen zur christlichen Bildung’, IBW (Institute für Bildung und Wissen)Journal13 (1975), 116.

53 R. E. Norton, The Beautiful Soul: Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 250.

54 Joseph Ratzinger, The End of Time?: The Provocation of Talking about God, (Co-authored with J. B. Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and Eveline Goodman-Thau), (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004). p. 15.

55 Ibid. p. 22.56 Ibid. p. 16.57 Jack A. Bonsor, ‘Truth and History: The Question’, Philosophy and

History, p. 53.58 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius,

1990), p. 54.

NOTES

176

59 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), pp. 34–5.

60 Albert Dondeyne, Contemporary European Thought and Christian Faith (Pittsburg, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1962), p. 83.

61 Ibid. p. 83.62 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology’,

Communio: International Catholic Review (Fall 1990) 439–55 at p. 444.63 Ibid. p. 444.64 Joseph Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One (San Francisco: Ignatius,

1986), p. 52.65 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology’,

Communio: International Catholic Review (Fall 1990) 439–55 at p. 449.66 Ibid. p. 452.67 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History, p. 82.68 Livio Melina, ‘Love: the Encounter with an Event’ in Livio Melina and

Carl Anderson (eds), The Way of Love: Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), p. 22.

69 Maximilian Heinrich Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology: Fundamentals of Ecclesiology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), p. 10.

70 Joseph Ratzinger, Preface to the 2nd volume of his Opera Omnia, Offenbarungsverständnis und Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras Herder, Freiberg 2009.

71 For an extensive treatment of this theme in Ratzinger see Aidan Nichols, The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), Chapter 3.

72 The author is indebted to Aidan Nichols for this insight.

CHAPTER 6

1 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Sorbonne Millennium Address’, translation by Maria Klepacka. Nov. 1999.

2 Ibid. 3 Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World

Religions (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), p. 32. 4 Ibid. p. 39. 5 Ibid. p. 39. 6 Ibid. p. 40. 7 Ibid. p. 42. 8 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 155–6. 9 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘“In the Beginning”. . . A Catholic Understanding of

Creation and the Fall’ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 97.10 Ibid.11 Balthasar, H. U. von, Love Alone is Credible (San Francisco: Ignatius,

2004), p. 16.12 Ibid. p. 26.13 Balthasar, H. U. von, Love Alone is Credible, p. 35.

NOTES

177

14 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Christian Morality. (Co-authored with Heinz Schürmann and Hans Urs von Balthasar) (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986), p. 53.

15 Ibid. pp. 53–4.16 Ibid. p. 54.17 Ibid. pp. 54–5.18 Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 2007), p. 72.19 Romano Guardini, The Word of God: On Faith, Hope and Charity

(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1963), p. 28.20 Ibid. 29.21 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 59.22 Ibid. p. 62.23 Ibid. p. 65.24 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval, p. 156.25 Joseph Ratzinger, Sorbonne Address, ‘2000 Years after What?’, the

Sorbonne, Paris, 27 November 1999; quotation in the text taken from translation of Maria Klepecka based on the Polish translation published in Christianitas, Numer 3/4, (2000) 11–23.

26 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theological Anthropology (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), p. 97.

27 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (8).28 Ibid. p. 177.29 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Church and Scientific theology’ Communio:

International Catholic Review (Winter, 1980) p. 339. In this context Ratzinger cites his reliance on the insights of Henri de Lubac in Credo. Gestalt und Lebendigkeit unseres Glaubensbekenntnisses (Einsiedeln, 1975), pp. 29–56.

30 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 59.31 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Dignity of the Human Person’ Commentary on

Gaudium et spes in H. Vorgrimler, (ed.) Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. III (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 155.

32 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 71.33 ‘The Current Situation of Faith and Theology’, L’Osservatore Romano,

6 November 1996: 4–6 at p. 6. 34 Ibid. p. 6.35 Ibid. p. 6.36 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p. 147.37 Ibid. p. 147–8.38 Ibid. p. 158.39 Ibid. p. 73.40 Ibid. p. 160.41 Ibid. p. 160.42 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘The Current Situation of Faith and Theology’, p. 5.43 Ibid. p. 5.44 Adriaan Peperzak, ‘Plotinian Motifs in Bonaventure’s Itinerary of

the Mind to God’, in P. J. Casarella, and G. P. Schner (eds), Christian

NOTES

178

Spirituality and the Culture of Modernity: the Thought of Louis Duprè, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 50–63.

CHAPTER 7

1 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Interreligious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian Relations’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 25 (Spring 1998) 29–40 at 32.

2 Ibid. p. 32. 3 Joseph Ratzinger, Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church

and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius: 1999), p. 94. fn 6. 4 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Interreligious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian

Relations’, p. 38. 5 Benedict XVI, Homily in Bari, June 2005, as reported in The Tablet,

4 June 2005, p. 30. 6 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Interreligious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian

Relations’, p. 34. 7 Ibid. p. 34. 8 Ibid. p. 34. 9 Ibid. p. 39.10 Ibid. p. 31.11 Joseph Ratzinger, Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Crypt

of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, 18 July 2008.12 Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 1982), p. 70.13 Gavin D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (New York:

Orbis, 2000), p. 113.14 Ibid. p. 30.15 Ibid. p. 30.16 Gavin D’Costa, ‘Taking Other Religions Seriously: Some Ironies in the

Current Debate on a Christian Theology of Religions’, The Thomist, 54 (3) (July 1990) 519–31 at p. 521.

17 Ibid. p. 521.18 Ibid. p. 523.19 John Milbank, ‘The End of Dialogue’ in G. D’Costa (ed.), Christian

Uniqueness Reconsidered: Myth of Pluralistic Theology of Religions (London: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 174–192.

20 Ibid.21 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Lecture on the Current Situation of Faith and

Theology’, L’Osservatore Romano, 6 Nov. 1996.22 Joseph Ratzinger, Address to the Representatives of the Jewish

Community, Elysèe Palace, Paris, 12 Sept. 2008. 23 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Interreligious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian

Relations’, p. 36.24 Ibid. p. 36.25 Joseph Ratzinger, Many Religions – One Covenant: Israel, the Church and

the World, p. 32.26 Ibid. p. 63.27 Ibid. p. 33.

NOTES

179

28 Ibid. p. 39.29 Ibid. p. 40.30 Ibid. p. 40.31 Ibid. p. 41.32 See for example: ‘Letter of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the President

of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews on the Occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Declaration “Nostra Aetate”’.

33 Benedict XVI, Address during Courtesy Visit to the two chief Rabbis of Jerusalem at Hechal Shlomo Center in Jerusalem in Pope Benedict XVI on Christian-Muslim-Jewish Relations: Excerpts from the Addresses and Homilies of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVU during his Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (8–15 May 2009), (Sydney: Columban Mission Institute, 2009).

34 James V. Schall, ‘The Regensburg Lecture’ (South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s Press, 2007), pp. 44–5.

35 Address of Benedict XVI to the Meeting with the Diplomatic Corps to the Republic of Turkey, 28 Nov. 2006.

36 Benedict XVI, ‘Letter to the Participants in the Third Ecumenical Assembly organized by the Council of European Episcopal Conferences and by the Conference of European Churches’, Castel Gandolfo, 20 Aug. 2007.

37 Benedict XVI, Catechesis on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 18 Jan. 2006.

38 Benedict XVI, ‘Address to an Ecumenical Delegation from Finland on the Occasion of the Feast of Saint Henrik’, 18 Jan. 2008.

39 John Allen Jnr, ‘Ratzinger credited with saving Lutheran Pact’, National Catholic Reporter, 10 Sept. 1999.

40 Joseph Ratzinger, Address of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop’s House, Cologne, 19 Aug. 2005.

41 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering the Catholic Church’, Oct. 2009.

42 Digby Anderson, ‘English Gentlemen’, New Directions, Oct. 2008, p. 29.43 Ibid. p. 29.44 Robert Mickens, ‘Pope committed to unity with Orthodox’, The Tablet,

4 June 2005, p. 30.45 Patriarch Bartholomew I, ‘Speech delivered in the Sistine Chapel’,

18 Oct. 2008.46 Joseph Ratzinger, The Episcopate and the Primacy (New York: Herder

and Herder, 1962), pp. 58–9.47 Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Primat’ in Josef Höfer and Karl Rahner (eds), Lexikon

für Theologie und Kirche, (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1963), p. 763.48 Robert Moynihan, ‘A Walk by Night’, Inside the Vatican, 12 Nov. 2009.49 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 1998), p. 98 and Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), p. 124.

50 F. A. Murphy, ‘De Lubac, Ratzinger and von Balthasar: A Communal Adventure in Ecclesiology’ in F. A. Murphy and C. Asprey (eds),

NOTES

180

Ecumenism Today: the Universal Church in the 21st Century, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 45.

51 Ibid. p. 46.52 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis (11) (2007). 53 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Letter to the Bishops of

the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church understood as Communion’, 28 May 1992; ‘The Ecclesiology of the Constitution on the Church, Vatican II, Lumen Gentium’, L’Osservatore Romano, 19 Sept. 2001.

54 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church understood as Communion’, 28 May 1992, Article, 4.

55 Benedict XVI, St. Paul the Apostle (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 2009), pp. 46–7.

56 Walter Kasper, ‘On the Church: A Friendly Reply to Cardinal Ratzinger’, The Tablet, 23 June 2001, 927–30.

57 Ibid. p. 930.58 Avery Dulles, as quoted by Zenit International News Agency, Vatican

City, 28 May 2001.59 Ibid.60 Joseph Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology : Approaches

to Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995), p. 83.

61 Ibid. p. 84.62 Ibid. p. 86.63 Ibid. p. 97.64 Ibid. pp. 97 and 98.65 Aidan Nichols, The Shape of Catholic Theology: An Introduction to Its

Sources, Principles and History (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), p. 352.

66 Ibid. p. 352.67 Gianni Valente, ‘Tradition and Freedom: the lectures of the young

Joseph’, 30 Days, March 2006.68 Peter Gaeffke, ‘Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Tradi-

tional and Modern Vedanta’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, April–June, 1977.

69 Joseph Ratzinger as cited by Aidan Nichols, in ‘Walter Kasper and his theological programme’, New Blackfriars Vol. 67 (787) (Jan. 1986) 16–24 at 22. Nichols was citing Joseph Ratzinger ‘Loi de l’Englise et liberté du chrétien, Service culturel de l’Ambassade de France près la Saint-Siège, 24.11.1983. According to Nichols, Ratzinger in making these statements was indebted to D. Nestle, Eleutheria, Studien zum Wesen der Freiheit bei den Griechen und im Neuen Testament (Tübingen 1967) and E. Coreth, ‘Zur Problemgeschichte menschlicher Freiheit’, Zeitschrift für katholis-che Theologie 94 (1972) 258–89.

70 Hans Küng, ‘The Vatican thirst for power divides Christianity and damages Catholicism’, The Guardian, 27 Oct. 2009.

NOTES

181

71 Robert Moynihan, ‘Movement of all Fronts’ Inside the Vatican, 26 Oct. 2009.

CONCLUSION

1 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Martin Buber and Christianity: A Dialogue between Israel and the Church (London: Harvill Press, 1960), p. 9.

2 Philip Blosser, ‘The Kasper-Ratzinger Debate and the State of the Church’, New Oxford Review (April, 2002) 18–25 at p. 25.

3 Paul Claudel, Positions et Propositions (Paris: Gallimard, 1926), p. 175. 4 Ibid. p. 175. 5 Peter Wust, Crisis in the West (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931), p. 53. 6 J. Mouroux, L’experience chretienne (Paris: Aubier, 1952), p. 5 as quoted

by A. Maggiolini, ‘Magisterial Teaching on Experience in the Twentieth Century: From the Modernist Crisis to the Second Vatican Council’, Communio: International Catholic Review, (Summer 1996) 225–43.

7 Lieven Boeve, God Interrupts History: Theology in a Time of Upheaval (New York: Continuum, 2007), p. 4.

8 Ibid. p. 4. 9 Ibid. p. 100.10 Roger Scruton, The Philosopher on Dover Beach (Manchester: Carcanet,

1990), p. 123.11 William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (Edinburgh: T & T

Clark, 2003), p. 5.12 For a poetic expression of this idea see Gottfiried Benn, ‘Verlorenes Ich’,

the Penguin Book of German Verse (New York: Penguin, 1957), 425–7.

182

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES – BOOKS AND ARTICLES BY JOSEPH RATZINGER

Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche (Munich: Karl Zink Verlag, 1954).

The Episcopate and the Primacy (New York: Herder and Herder, 1962). (Co-authored with Karl Rahner).

‘The Changeable and the Unchangeable in Theology’, Theology Digest, 10 (1962), 71–6.

‘Die Heilige Schrift und die Tradition’, Theologische-praktische Quartal-shrift, 3 (1963), 224–7.

The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (London: Sheed & Ward, 1966).Das Problem der Dogmengeschichte in der Sicht der katholischen Theologie

(Cologne and Opladen, 1966).Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press, 1966).Revelation and Tradition (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966).

(Co-authored by Karl Rahner).‘Das Menschenbild des Konzils in seiner Bedeutung für die Bildung in

Christliche Erziehung nach dem Konzil’, Berichte und Dokumentationen, 4, ed. Kulturbeirat beim Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken (Cologne, 1967), 33–65.

‘Das Problem der Transsubstantiation und die Frage nach dem Sinn der Eucharistie’, Theologische Quartalschrift 147 (1967), 129–58.

‘Kommentar zu Art. 11-22 der Pastoralkonstitution über die Kirche in der Welt von heute’, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, suppl. vol. iii (Freiburg, 1968), 313–54.

‘Commentary on the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation’, in H. Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969).

‘The Dignity of the Human Person’: Commentary on Chapter I, Part I of Gaudium et spes, in H. Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969).

Das neue Volk Gottes: Entwürfe zur Ekklesiologie (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1969).

Demokratie in der Kirche: Moglichkeiten, Grenzen, Gefahren (Limburg: Lahn-Verlag, 1970).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

183

The Theology of History in St Bonaventure (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971).

Faith and the Future (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971).‘The “Brief Formulas of Faith” Question Again. Some Comments’,

Communio: International Catholic Review, 2 (1973), 164–8.‘Unity of the Church – Unity of Mankind: A Congress Report’, Communio:

International Catholic Review, 1 (1974), 53–7.‘What Unites and Divides Denominations? Ecumenical Reflections’,

Communio: International Catholic Review, 1 (1974), 115–18.‘Beyond Death’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 1 (1974), 157–65.‘Preaching about God Today’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 1

(1974), 450–62; Theology Digest, 22 (1974), 196–201.‘Zur Theologischen Grundlegung der Kirchenmusik’, Gloria Deo: pax

hominibus, Festschrift zum 100 – jährigen Bestehen der Kirchemusikschule Regensburg (ACV Schriftenreihe 9 Regensburg, 1974), 39–62.

‘Bildung und Glaube in unserer Zeit: drie Thesen zur christlichen Bildung’, in Informationsdienst des deutschen Instituts für Bildung und Wissen, Heft 8/9 (15 Sept. 1975), 113–16.

‘The Future of Ecumenism’, Theology Digest, 25 (3) (1977), 183–90.‘Eschatology and Utopia, Communio: International Catholic Review, 5

(1978), 211–27.‘The Church and Scientific Theology’, Communio: International Catholic

Review, 7 (1980), 332–42.‘Europa: Erstanden aus dem christlichen Glauben’, in R. Hammerschmid

(ed.), Eine Pilgerreise durch Polen (Kevelaer: Butzon & Becker, 1980), pp. 55–64.

‘Technological Security as a Probem of Social Ethics’, Communio: Interna-tional Catholic Review, 5 (1982), 238–46.

‘Observations in the final report of Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), Animadversiones quas Sacra Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, de mandato SS.mi super enuntiatis ultimis Commissionis vulgo ARCIC Cognominatae, de Eucharistica doctrina, de sacris Ordinibus atque de subiecto auctoritatis in Ecclesia, exaravit et omnibus Conferentiis Episcopurum die 2 Aprilis transmisit’, 27 Mar. 1982.

Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1983).

‘Sources and Transmission of the Faith’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 10 (1983), 17–34.

‘Problems in Catechesis Today: An interview with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 11 (1984), 145–56.

‘Luther and the Unity of the Churches: An Interview with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 11 (1984), 210–26.

‘Faith, Philosophy and Theology’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 11 (1984), 350–63.

‘Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation”’, Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1984.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

184

The Ratzinger Report: An Interview with Vittorio Messori (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985).

‘On Hope’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 12 (1985), 71–84.Feast of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986)‘Interpretation-Contemplation-Action’, Communio: International Catholic

Review, 13 (1986), 139–55.‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of

Homosexual Persons’, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1 Oct. 1986.

Behold the Pierced One (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986).Principles of Christian Morality (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986). (Co-authored

with Heinz Schürmann and Hans Urs von Balthasar).‘In the Beginning . . .’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation

and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986).‘Church and Economy’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 13 (1986),

199–204.‘Liturgy and Sacred Music’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 13

(1986), 377–91.‘Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation’, Sacred Congregation

for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1986.Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology

(San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987).‘Freedom and Liberation: The Anthropological Vision of the Instruction

Libertatis Conscientia’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 14 (1987), 52–72.

Dogmatic Theology: Eschatology, Death and Eternal Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988). (Co-authored with J. Auer).

‘Homily at the Funeral Liturgy for Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 15 (1988), 512–16.

‘Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today’: Lecture delivered on 27 Jan. 1988 at Saint Peter’s Church, New York.

‘On the Position of Mariology and Marian Spirituality within the Totality of Faith and Theology’, The Church and Women: A Compendium (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 67–81.

‘Remarks to the Bishops of Chile Regarding the Lefebvre Schism’, 13 July 1988, Santiago, Chile.

‘Man Between Reproduction and Creation’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 16 (1989), 197–211.

‘Peace and Justice in Crisis: The Task of Religion’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 16 (1989), 540–51.

‘You are Full of Grace: Elements of Biblical Devotion to Mary’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 16 (1989), 54–68.

Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990).‘Jesus Christ Today’ Communio: International Catholic Review, 17 (1990),

68–87.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

185

‘Biblical Foundations of Priesthood’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 17 (1990), 617–27.

The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises on Faith, Hope and Love (New York: Crossroad, 1991).

Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992).

‘Communio: A Program’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 19 (1992), 436–49.

‘Conscience in Time’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 19 (1992), 647–57.

‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of the Church understood as Communion’, Document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 28 May 1992.

‘The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Optimism of the Redeemed’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 20 (1993), 469–84.

‘Christ, Faith, and the Challenge of Cultures’, Address to the presidents of the Asian bishops conference, 2–5 Mar. 1993.

‘The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church’, Preface by Card. Joseph Ratzinger, Pontifical Biblical Commission, 18 Mar. 1994.

‘Christian Faith as “the Way”: An Introduction to Veritatis Splendor’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 21 (1994), 199–207.

‘The Meaning of Sunday’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 21 (1994), 5–26.

The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role in the Light of Present Controversy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995).

‘God in Pope John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 22 (1995), 107–12.

‘Christian Universalism: On Two Collections of Papers by Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 22 (1995), 545–57.

‘The New Covenant: A Theology of Covenant in the New Testament’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 22 (1995), 635–51.

A New Song for the Lord (New York: Crossroad, 1996).‘Truth and Freedom’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 23 (1996),

16–35.‘Relativism: The Central Problem for the Faith Today’, Address to the

Presidents of the doctrinal commissions of the bishops’ conference of Latin America, Guadalajara, Mexico, May 1996.

‘Guardini on Christ in Our Century’, Crisis Magazine, June 1996.‘The Current Situation of Faith and Theology’, L’Osservatore Romano, 6

Nov. 1996.Gospel, Catechesis, Catechism (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997).Gospel, Catechesis and Catechism: Sidelights on the Catechism of the

Catholic Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997).Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium: an Interview

with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997).Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

186

‘Inter-religious Dialogue and Jewish-Christian Relations’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 25 (1998), 29–41.

‘The Holy Spirit as Communio: Concerning the Relationship of Pneumato-logy and Spirituality in Augustine’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 25 (1998), 324–39.

‘The Theological Locus of Ecclesial Movements’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 25 (1998), 480–504.

‘The Primacy of the Successor of Peter in the Mystery of the Church’, Reflections of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1998.

Many Religions – One Covenant: Israel, the Church and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999).

‘Culture and Truth: Some Reflections on the Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio’, Address given by Card. Joseph Ratzinger, on Saturday, 13 Feb. 1999 in the Chapel at St Patrick’s Seminary, Patrician (Winter 1999).

The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000).‘Answers to Main Objections to Dominus Iesus’, orig. pub. Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 Sept. 2000.‘Declaration “Dominus Iesus” on the Unicity and Salvific Universality

of Jesus Christ and the Church’, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2000.

‘Dialogue, Communion, and Martyrdom: Thoughts on the Relation between Intra-ecclesial and Inter-religious Dialogue’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 27 (2000), 816–24.

Ecclesiology of the Constitution of the Church, Vatican II, ‘Lumen Gentium’, L’Osservatore Romano, 19 Sept. 2001.

‘The Local Church and the Universal Church: A Response to Walter Kasper’ America 185 (16), 19 Nov. 2001.

‘The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible’, Preface by Card. Joseph Ratzinger, Pontifical Biblical Commission, 24 May 2001.

‘The Ecclesiology of the Constitution of the Church, Vatican II, Lumen gentium’, L’Osservatore Romano, 19 Sept. 2001.

‘The Ecclesiology of Vatican II’, Address at the opening of the Pastoral Congress of the Diocese of Aversa, Italy 15 Sept. 2001.

God and the World: a conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2002).

‘Letting God Work: An Article by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on the Occasion of the Canonization of Josemaria Escrivà’, L’Osservatore Romano (spec. suppl.), Oct. 2002.

‘The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty’, Message to the Communion and Liberation (CL) meeting, Rimini, 24–30 Aug. 2002.

‘Theology of the Liturgy’, Paper delivered at a congress on the liturgy held at the Benedictine monastery, Fontgombault, France, 22–4 July 2001, Oriens: Journal of the Ecclesia Dei Society, I (2002).

Truth and Tolerance (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003).God is Near Us: The Eucharist the Heart of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius,

2003).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

187

‘Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life’, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2003.

‘Thoughts on the Place of Marian Doctrine and Piety in Faith and Theology as a Whole’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 30 (2003), 147–60.

Forward to U. M. Lang, Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003).

‘Remarks by Card. Ratzinger at the beginning of the Concert of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk from Leipzig, for the 25th Anniversary of the Pontificate of John Paul II, 17 Oct. 2003’.

Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004).The End of Time?: The Provocation of Talking about God, (Co-authored

with J. B. Metz, Jürgen Moltmann and Eveline Goodman-Thau), (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004).

‘Funeral Homily for Msgr Luigi Giussani’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 31 (2004), 685–7.

Preface to A. Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy (2nd edn, Farnborough: St Michael’s Abbey Press, 2004).

‘Homily of Card. Joseph Ratzinger during the Mass for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Celebrated in Montecassino, 7 Nov. 2004’.

‘Introduction to Christianity: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 31 (2004), 481–95.

‘Reason Separated From God is Obstacle to Peace’ (zenith.org., 7 Nov. 2004). Address delivered 4 June 2004 on the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, Vita e Pensiero, Journal of the Catholic University Sacro Cuore, Milan.

Values in a Time of Upheaval (New York: Crossroad, 2005)‘In the Beginning . . .’ A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation

and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: the Church as Communion (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 2005).On the Way to Jesus Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005).‘Lectio Divina will Bring to the Church a New Spiritual Springtime’, Address

to the International Congress on ‘Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church’, Rome, 14–18 September 2005.

‘Europe in the Crisis of Cultures’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 32 (2005), 345–56.

‘The Renewal of Moral Theology: Perspectives of Vatican II and Veritatis Splendor’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 32 (2005), 357–68.

What it Means to be a Christian (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006).Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006).Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 2006). (Co-authored with Marcello Pera).Handing on the Faith in an Age of Disbelief (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006).

(Co-authored with Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Franciszek Cardinal Marcharski and Archbishop Dermot J. Ryan).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

188

Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006).

The Dialectics of Secularisation: On Reason and Religion, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006). (Co-authored with Jürgen Habermas).

‘Pre-political Moral Foundations of a Free Republic’, in Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (eds) Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), pp. 261–9.

‘Gregorian Chant and Choral Polyphony in the Liturgy’, Address for the blessing of the new organ of the Alte Kapelle, Regensburg, 13 Sept. 2006, Adoremus Bulletin, 12 (2006), 12.

‘Common Declaration of Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Rowan Williams’, Vatican City, 23 Nov. 2006.

‘The Mystery of the Relationship between Christ and the Church: Reflections from the Experience of the Apostles’, Wednesday Audience Addresses, 2006, pub. in L’Osservatore Romano throughout 2006.

Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).Europe: Today and Tomorrow (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).Seek that which is Above (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).God’s Word: Scripture, Tradition and Office (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008).Church, Ecumenism, & Politics: New Endeavours in Ecclesiology (San

Francisco: Ignatius, 2008).The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God (San Francisco:

Ignatius, 2008).

PRIMARY SOURCES: OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

Deus Caritas Est, First Encyclical (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2006).Spe Salvi, Second Encyclical (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2007).Sacramentum caritatis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the

Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life and Mission, Mar. 2007.

Summorum Pontificum, Motu Proprio, 7 July 2007.Caritas in Veritate, Third Encyclical (London: Catholic Truth Society,

2009).Decree Remitting the Excommunication ‘Latae Sententiae’ of the Bishops

of the Society of St Pius X, 21 January 2009.Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church Concerning the Remission of

the Excommunication of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre. 10 March 2009.

Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church, Nov. 2009.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

189

SECONDARY SOURCES

Balthasar, H. U. von, Martin Buber and Christianity: A Dialogue Between Israel and the Church (London: Harvill Press, 1960).

Balthasar, H. U. von, A Theological Anthropology (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967).

Balthasar, H. U. von, Love Alone is Credible (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004).Bardazzi, M. In the Vineyard of the Lord: The Life, Faith and Teachings of

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (New York: Rizzoli, 2005).Batlogg, A. R., Michalski, Melvin E. and Turner, Barbara G., Encounters

with Karl Rahner: Remembrance of Rahner by Those who Knew Him (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009).

Biemer, G. ‘Theodor Haecker: In the Footsteps of John Henry Newman’, New Blackfriars, Vol. 81. Number 957, July, 2007.

Blondel, M. Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice, trans. Olivia Blanchette (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986).

Blosser, P. ‘The Kasper-Ratzinger Debate and the State of the Church’, New Oxford Review, (April 2002), 18–25.

Boeve, L. Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in a Postmodern Context (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2003).

Boeve, L. God Interrupts History: Theology in a Time of Upheaval (New York: Continuum, 2007).

Bonino, S-T. ‘Nature and Grace in Deus Caritas Est’, Nova et Vetera, Vol. 5 (2) (Spring 2007), 231–48.

Bosco, M. ‘Georges Bernanos and Francis Poulenc: Catholic Convergences in Dialogues of the Carmelites’, Logos, 12 (2) (Spring, 2009), 17–40.

Canty, A. ‘Bonaventurian Resonances in Benedict XVI’s Theology of Revelation’, Nova et Vetera, Vol. 5 (2) (Spring, 2007), 249–67.

Caputo, J. D. ‘Heidegger and Theology’, in Charles Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger(Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 270–89.

Chaput, C. J. ‘Reflections on Cardinal Kasper’s “On the Church”’, America, 30 July 2001.

Congar, Y. ‘Johann Adam Möhler 1796–1838’, Theologische Quartelschrift (1970), 47–51.

Congar, Y. The Revelation of God (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968).Copleston, F. ‘Peter Wust: Christian and Philosopher’, in On the History

of Philosophy, (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979).Daniélou, J, ‘The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition’, Journal

of Religion, Vol. 30 (3) (1950), 171–9.D’Arcy, M. C. The Sense of History: Secular and Sacred (London: Faber &

Faber, 1959).DeClue, R. G. ‘Primacy and Collegiality in the Works of Joseph Ratzinger’,

Communio: International Catholic Review 35 (Winter, 2008), 642–70. Dietrich, D. J. and Haines, M. J. (eds); The Legacy of the Tübingen School:

the Relevance of Nineteenth Century Theology for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Crossroad, 1997).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

190

Dulles, A. ‘Justification: the Joint Declaration’, Josephinum Journal of Theology, Vol. 9 (1) (Winter/Spring 2002), 108–19.

Edwards, J. A. ‘Fides ex Auditu: Dogmatic Theology and the Ecclesial Practice of Music’, MPhil dissertation, University of St Andrews, 2008.

Ferber, M. A Companion to European Romanticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).Fischer, H. J. Benedict XVI: A Personal Portrait (New York: Crossroad,

2005).Gallagher, D. ‘Faith, Reason, and the Dialogue between Ratzinger and the

Frankfurt School on the Notion of Hope’, forthcoming proceedings of The Grandeur of Reason Conference, Centre for Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Peter Candler and Conor Cunningham (eds).

Gieselmann, J. R. The Meaning of Tradition (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966).

Gnilka, C. Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der Antiken Kultur II: Kultur und Conversion (Basel: Schwabe & Co, 1993).

Gnilka, J. Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History (Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1997).

Granados, J., Granados, Carlos and Sanchez, Luis (eds), Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).

Guardini, R. The Word of God: On Faith, Hope and Charity (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1963).

Guarino, T. ‘Postmodernity and Five Fundamental Theological Issues’, Theological Studies 57 (1996), 654–89.

Healy, N. J. ‘Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace’, Communio: Interna-tional Catholic Review (Winter, 2008), 535–65.

Heim, M. H. Joseph Ratzinger – Kirkliche Existenz und existentielle Theologie unter dem Anspruch von “Lumen Gentium” Ekklesiologische Grundlinien (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004). In English trans-lation as Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology: Fundamentals of Ecclesiology (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).

Hemming, L. ‘The Late Heidegger’s God’, Oxford Centre for Theology and Modern European Thought, Trinity College, 15 Mar. 2008.

Henry, P. ‘Christian Philosophy of History’, Theological Studies, Vol. XIII, No. 1 (Mar. 1952), 419–32.

Hoskins, G. ‘An Interview with Lieven Boeve: “Recontextualizing the Christian Narrative in a Postmodern Context”’, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture Vol. 3 (2) (Spring 2006), 31–7.

Kaplan, G. Answering the Enlightenment: the Catholic Recovery of Historical Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder, 2006).

Kasper, W. ‘Zur Theologie und Praxis des bischöflichen Amtes’, in Werner Schreer and Georg Steins (eds), Auf neue Art Kirche Sein: Wirklichkeiten-Herausfoderungen-Wandlungen (Munich: Bernward bei Don Bosco, 1999), pp. 32–48.

Kasper, W, ‘On the Church: A Friendly Reply to Cardinal Ratzinger’, America 184 (14), 23 April 2001.

Kobler, J. F. Vatican II and Phenomenology: Reflections of the Life-World and the Church (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1986).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

191

Krieg, R. A. Karl Adam: Catholicism in German Culture (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992).

Kurzschenkel, W. Die theologische Bestimmung der Musik (Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 1971).

Läpple, A. Benedetto XVI e le sue radici (: Venezia: Marcianum Press, 2009).de Lubac, H. Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (San

Francisco: Ignatius, 1988).de Lubac, H. ‘Duplex Hominis Beatitudo’, Communio: International Review

35 (Winter 2008), 599–612.Lösel, S. ‘Unapocalyptic Theology: History and Eschatology in Balthasar’s

Theo-Drama’, Modern Theology 17 (2) (April 2001), 201–25.Matera, F. J. ‘The Jesus of Testimony: A Convergence of History and

Theology’, Nova et Vetera, Vol. 6 (3) (2008), 491–500.McDonnell, K. ‘Walter Kasper on the theology and the praxis of the

bishop’s office’, Theological Studies, 63 (2002), 711–29.McGrath, F. John Henry Newman: Universal Revelation (Tunbridge Wells:

Burns and Oates, 1997).McNeill, J. J. The Blondelian Synthesis: A Study of the Influence of German

Philosophical Sources on the Formation of Blondel’s Method and Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1966).

Melina, L. and Anderson, Carl (eds), The Way of Love: Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Deus Caritas Est (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006).

Murphy, F. A. ‘De Lubac, Ratzinger and von Balthasar: A Communal Adventure in Ecclesiology’ in F. A. Murphy and C. Asprey (eds), Ecumenism Today: the Universal Church in the 21st Century, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 45–81.

Murphy, J. Christ our Joy: the Theological Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008).

Neuhaus, R. J. (ed.), Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989).

Nichols, A. ‘Walter Kasper and his theological programme’, New Blackfriars, Vol. 67 (787) (January 1986), 16–24.

Nichols, A. The Thought of Benedict XVI (London: Burns and Oates, 2005).Nichols, A. Catholic Thought since the Enlightenment (London: Gracewing,

1998).Nichols, A. ‘Littlemore from Lucerne: Newman’s Essay on Development

in Balthasarian Perspective’, in Beyond the Blue Glass: Catholic Essays on Faith and Culture Volume I (London: Saint Austin Press, 2002), 67–87.

Nichols, A. ‘Benedict XVI and Holy Images’, Nova et Vetera, Vol. 5 (2) (Spring 2007), 359–75.

Oakes, E. ‘Balthasar’s Critique of the Historical-Critical Method’ in Ed Block Jnr (ed), Glory, Grace and Culture: the Work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 150–75.

Olsen, C. ‘Act and Event in Rahner and von Balthasar: A Case Study in Catholic Systematics’, New Blackfriars 89, issue 1019 (2008), 3–21.

O’Meara, T. F. Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the Theologians (Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1982).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

192

O’Meara, T. F. Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology 1860–1914 (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).

O’Regan, C. ‘Von Balthasar’s Valorization and Critique of Heidegger’s Genealogy of Modernity’ in Peter Casarella and George Schner (eds) Christian Spirituality and the Culture of Modernity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 123–59.

O’Regan, C. ‘Balthasar: Between Tübingen and Postmodernity’, Modern Theology 14 (3) (July 1998), 325–53.

O’Regan, C. ‘Balthasar and the Unwelcoming of Heidegger’, forthcoming proceedings of The Grandeur of Reason Conference, Centre for Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Peter Candler and Conor Cunningham (eds).

Peperzak, A. ‘Plotinian Motifs in Bonaventure’s Itinerary of the Mind to God’, in P. J. Casarella and G. P. Schner (eds); Christian Spirituality and the Culture of Modernity: the Thought of Louis Duprè, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 50–63.

Pickstock, C. ‘God and Meaning in Music: Messiaen, Deleuze and the Musico-Theological Critique of Modernism and Postmodernism’, Sacred Music, Vol. 134 (4) (Winter 2007), 40–62.

Pieper, J. Hope and History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994).Pieper, J. Faith, Hope and Love (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997).Pieper, J. The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History

(San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999).Pieper, J. Tradition: Concept and Claim (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2008).Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Bible and Morality: Biblical Roots of

Christian Conduct (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2008).Rae, M. A. History and Hermeneutics (London: T & T Clark, 2005).Rahner, K. Faith in a Wintry Season: Conversations and Interviews with Karl

Rahner in the Last Years of his Life (New York: Crossroad, 1991).Reardon, B. M. G. Religion in the Age of Romanticism: Studies in Early

Nineteenth Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Reid, S. M. P. A Bitter Trial (Curdrige: Saint Austin Press, 1996).Reid, A. (ed.), Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal

Ratzinger (Farnborough: Saint Michael’s Abbey, 2003).Reinhardt, R. (ed.), Tübinger Theologen und ihre Theologie. Quellen und

Forschungen zur Geschichte der Katholisch-theologischen Fakultät Tübingen; Contubernium, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen 16. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1977.

Rutsche, M. Die Relationalität Gottes bei Martin Buber und Joseph Ratzinger (Munich: Grin Verlag, 2008).

Schall, J. V. The Regensburg Lecture (South Bend, IN: St Augustine’s Press, 2007).

Schenk, H. G. The Mind of the European Romantics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).

Schumacher, B. A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope; D. C. Schindler trans. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

193

Schumacher, B. A Cosmopolitan Hermit: Modernity and Tradition in the Philosophy of Josef Pieper (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).

Sheehan, T. Karl Rahner the Philosophical Foundations (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987).

Valente, G. Ratzinger Professore: Gli anni dello studio e dell’insegnamento nel ricordo dei colleghi e degli allievi (1946–1977) (Milan: Edizioni San Paolo, 2008).

Vanhoozer, K. J. ‘Scripture and Tradition’ in K. J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 149–170.

Voderholzer, R. ‘Dogma and History: Henri de Lubac and the Retrieval of Historicity as a Key to Theological Renewal’, Communio: International Catholic Review 28 (Winter 2001), 648–68.

Volf, M. After Our Likeness: the Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996).

Watkin, E. I. ‘The Philosophy of Peter Wust’, Dublin Review, 189 (1931), 61–83.

White, V. ‘St Thomas’s Conception of Revelation’, Dominican Studies 1 (1) (1948), 3–34.

Wust, P. Crisis in the West (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931).Wust, E. I. ‘The Augustinian-Franciscan thought in its significance for

the philosophy of or time’, Science and Wisdom, 1 (1934) 3–7.Zeit, J. V. Spirituality and Analogia Entis According to Erich Przywara

(Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982).Zucal, S; ‘The Intellectual Relationship between the Future Pope and the

Great Italian-German Thinker’, L’Osservatore Romano, 10 Dec. 2008.

195

INDEX

Abelard, Peter 26acedia 80Acton, Harold 41Adorno, Theodor 33, 72, 74, 75Aestheticism 33Aeterni Patris 2, 9Afanasiev, Nicholas 142agape 82, 121Aggiornamento 48Alfeyev, Archbishop Hilarion 141–2Alighieri, Dante 76alienation 35Anderson, Digby 140, 141Anderson, Bishop George 139Anglicans 140, 149, 150, 151, 159Anglican Ordinariate 140, 150Annales de Philosophie

Chrétienne 19Apollonian music 34Aristotle 3, 14, 16, 146Astrology 67Augustine, Saint 4, 13, 14, 15, 19,

30, 79, 80, 85, 110, 112, 115, 117, 142, 145, 148, 153, 155

Baader, Franz Xaver von 10Bach, Johann Sebastian 37Bahrdt, K. F. 56Balthasar, Hans Urs von 5, 9, 15, 19,

20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, 39, 53, 54, 55, 61, 62, 67, 73, 82, 84, 104, 105, 112, 113, 119, 120, 123–4, 142, 144, 148, 152, 153, 156

Barth, Karl 63, 96, 97, 98, 113, 125Bartholomew I 141Basil the Great, Saint 37Bauer, Bruno 56Baur, F. C. 122Beatles, The 41beauty 21, 22, 26, 29, 32, 33, 43, 46,

71, 80, 98, 113, 118, 121, 158Beethoven, Ludwig 37 Behler, Wolfgang 33being and love 119Bernanos, Georges 4, 20, 38, 39,

77, 81, 153Bernard, Saint 26Bildung 25, 71, 99, 105, 106Billot, Louis 84Bio-technology 17, 122Blake, William 13Blank, Reiner 57Bloch, Ernst 72, 73Blondel, Maurice 19, 49, 52, 53, 62,

110, 153, 156Blosser, Philip 152, 153Böckle, Franz 5Boethius 20, 110Boeve, Lieven 62, 65, 66, 158–9Bonaventure, Saint 4, 13, 17–18,

30, 50–1, 55, 72, 94, 113, 153, 156

Bonino, Serge-Thomas 82, 85–6Bonsor, Jack Arthur 108Boot, Alexander 45, 83Borella, Jean 85

INDEX

196

Bosco, Mark 20Botton, Alain de 35, 36, 45Bouillard, Henri 19‘bourgeois Pelagianism’ 77, 78Bouyer, Louis 142, 146Bremond, Henri 19Bruckner, Anton 24, 30Buber, Martin 4, 13, 14, 15, 95,

112, 152, 153, 155, 156Buddhism 95, 114, 116, Bulgakov, Sergei 142Bultmann, Rudolf 56, 57, 58, 94,

97, 98, 113, 148Burbach, H. J. 33Bureaucracy 91

Cabasilas, Nicholas 31Cajetan, Cardinal Thomas 84, 94Canty, Aaron 55, 70capitalism 84Caputo, John D 95caritas 116Caritas in Veritate 72, 78, 82, 83,

84, 87–8, 89–90, 113Cartesian metaphysics 37Cavanaugh, William T. 160Chardin, Teilhard de 106, 113Chenu, Marie-Dominique 27Christie, Agatha 41Christology 3, 69, 110, 111, 132Classical Thomism 49Claudel, Paul 4, 20, 21, 153Cohen, Shear-Yashuv 135Communio 5, 21, 27, 143, 144Comte, Auguste 122Concilium 5, 106Congar, Yves 5, 49, 52, 142, 143,

146, 156Connolly, Cyril 41Cordes, Cardinal Paul J. 65, 86Council of Trent 48, 154Cullmann, Oscar 96, 98, 113culture 2, 25, 29, 37, 64, 65

D’Arcy, Martin 98Dahll, Minlib 37Daniélou, Jean 3, 19, 96–7, 103,

113, 116, 142, 146Darwin, Charles 122, 160D’Costa, Gavin 131Dei Verbum 48, 49, 51, 52, 56, 59,

70, 96–7, 156democracy 84Denys, or Pseudo-Dionysius 148Descartes, René 2, 110Deus Caritas Est 71–2, 82, 89–90,

119, 121, 155Dibelius, Martin 56, 57Dignitatis Humanae 40Dionysiac orgies 35Dionysian music 34Dionysian cults 32, 34Divino afflante Spiritu 59Dominus Iesus 149Dondeyne, Albert 109, 110Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 4, 76Drey, Johann Sebastian 10Dru, Alexander 19, 52Dulles, Cardinal Avery 97, 146Dupré, Louis 73Dupuis, Jacques 131

Ecclesia de Eucharistia 143Ecclesiae Unitatem 44Ecumenism 139Edward Herbert of Cherbury,

Lord 120Edwards, Gareth 41Edwards, J. Andrew 34Einstein, Albert 4Elizabethan martyrs 41eros 32, 82, 99, 121ethos 18, 25, 107–8, 116, 118, 135Eucharist, the 43, 144, 158European Union 160existentialism 109experience 156

INDEX

197

Faith and history 10Faith and reason 16, 116, 119, 122,

123, 125, 136, 137Faith, hope and love 16, 71, 73, 81,

82, 91, 93, 97, 104, 105, 107–8, 124, 133

family, the 45, 99, 135Feminism 59, 62Feuerbach 95Fides et ratio 124Florovsky, Georges 142‘folk liturgies’ 40Freedom 2, 34, 47, 113, 149French neo-Thomism 15Freud, Sigmund 8Fries, Heinrich 12Frings, Cardinal Josef 2Fürstenberg, Franz von 11

Gadamer, Hans Georg 60Galen, Clemens-August Graf

von 154Gallitzin, Countess Amalie von 11, 22Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald 84Gauchet, Maurice 8Gaudium et spes 21, 28, 72, 82, 84,

86, 100, 111, 113Geist 25German Idealism 104Gifts of the Holy Spirit 71Gilson, Etienne 84, 153Gnilka, Christian 37 Gnilka, Joachim 76Gnosticism 118Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 17Goodman-Thau, Eveline 72goodness 71Goyau, Georges 19Greene, Graham 41Gregorian chant 30Gregory Nazianzus, Saint 67Gregory Nazianzus

Foundation 142

Gregory of Nyssa, Saint 19Grisez, Germain 87Guardini, Romano 4, 17, 18, 38,

39, 49, 51, 60, 62, 72, 84, 112, 121, 153, 155, 156

Gügler, Heinrich Alois 10Gutiérrez, Gustavo 5

Hacker, Paul 148Haecker, Theodor 4, 11, 12, 19, 95Harkianakis, Stylianos 148Havel, Vaclav 83Hazm, Ibn 136–7Healy, Nicholas J. 85“Heenan Indult” 41Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

95, 122Heidegger, Martin 1, 9, 56, 58, 94,

95, 101, 106, 108, 156Heim, Maximilian Heinrich 112Heisenberg, Werner 4Hellenism 96

de-hellenization 137Hemming, Laurence Paul 95Henry, Paul 99Herder, Johann Gottfried von 94‘hermeneutic of continuity’ 46‘hermeneutic of rupture’ 5, 46, 154hermeneutics 10, 40, 54, 56, 59, 60,

61, 155Hibbs, Thomas 158Hick, John 131Hildebrand, Alice von 22Hildebrand, Dietrich von 22, 23Hinduism 148historical-critical method 56history 1, 2, 3, 23, 38, 40, 45, 46, 53,

58, 59, 64, 66, 74, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99–100, 102, 103, 106, 107, 109, 112, 113, 116, 117, 121, 122, 127, 129–30, 133, 155, 157

and ontology 96, 103, 106, 112, 121, 155

INDEX

198

Hitler, Adolf 95Hölderlin, Friedrich 94hope 16, 71, 73, 80, 81, 82, 91, 93,

97, 101, 104, 105, 107–8, 122–3, 124, 133

Horkheimer, Max 72, 74, 75Hugh of St Victor 30Humanae Vitae 41, 83

Iconoclasm 30Incarnation 28, 46, 61, 66, 67,

148, 160individuality 105–6International Theological

Commission 28–9, 59Interpretation of the Bible in the

Church, The 58–9inter-religious dialogue 129, 142Islam 116, 117–18, 131, 136, 138

Jaeger, Werner 15Jansenism 29, 32, 39, 153, 156, 157Jaspers, Karl 13, 109Jewish eschatology 58Jewish People and their Sacred

Scriptures in the Christian Bible, The 58–9

Johansson, Calvin M 33 John, Saint 78, 107John of the Cross 155John Paul II, Pope 6, 13, 63, 107,

124, 143, 149, 154, 155, 157Jones, David 41Judaism 15, 116, 117–18, 131, 132,

136, 152Justification 148

Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification 139, 151

Justin, Saint 25

Kant, Immanuel 2, 10, 16, 58, 75, 95, 120, 122, 125, 131

Kantian aesthetics 37

Kaplan, Grant 10, 64–5Kasper, Walter 145Kerr, Fergus 3Kierkegaard, Søren 19, 95Kilby, Karen 95Knitter, Paul 127, 131Kobler, John Francis 13Kopff, E. Christian 15Krasnodebski, Zdzisław 83Kraynak, Robert P. 73 Kriele, M. 103Kuhn, Johannes Evangelist

von 10Kultur 25Küng, Hans 3, 4, 5, 63, 66, 129,

150, 157, 158–9

La Maladie Catholique 29Laborem Exercens 88Langgässer, Elisabeth 4Läpple, Alfred 4, 12Le Fort, Gertrude von 4Lefebvre, Archbishop Marcel 40,

44, 159Lefebvre, René 44, 154Leo XIII, Pope 2Leonine Thomism 2Lérins, Vincent de 49, 54,

55, 156Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 10Levada, Cardinal William 140Levinas, Emmanuel 14Liberalism 74, 113, 142liberation theology 6, 7, 8, 29–30,

37, 62, 88, 99, 102, 108, 113, 127, 134, 158

liturgy 22, 29, 38, 42, 48, 158logos 18, 73, 81, 86, 109, 121, 123,

123–4, 124–5, 126, 127Lossky, Vladimir 142Lotz, Johannes B. 94love 21, 32, 38, 70, 71, 73, 80, 81,

82, 89, 91, 93, 97, 104, 105,

INDEX

199

107–8, 112, 113, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 133, 159

and knowledge 123–4and reason 118–19, 159

Lubac, Cardinal Henri de 5, 19, 20, 21, 28, 49, 51, 62, 65, 72, 75, 84, 85, 86, 87, 96–7, 108, 132–3, 142, 146, 153, 156, 157

Lumen Gentium 67, 143Luther, Martin 50, 94, 95, 120,

148, 154Lutherans 149Lyotard, Jean-François 158

MacIntyre, Alasdair 52, 73, 123, 125, 138

magnanimitas 80Man, Paul de 38Marcel, Gabriel 109Maritain, Jacques 78Marx, Karl 95, 99–100, 122Marxism 6, 8, 59, 62, 72, 73, 74, 88,

99, 102, 109, 113, 122, 158mass culture 35, 36, 39, 45, 79‘mass man’ 38material progress 84Matthew, Saint 107Mauriac, François 4Maximus the Confessor, Saint 19McAleer, Graham 158Meisner, Cardinal Joachim 23Melina, Livio 112memory 45Memory and Reconciliation: the

Church and the Faults of the Past 59

Mercier, Cardinal Désiré-Joseph 140metaphysics 98–9, 131Metz, Johann Baptist 5, 72, 106,

158–9Meyer, Cardinal Albert 48Michnik, Adam 83Milbank, John 131–2, 138

Mitford, Nancy 41modernism 2modernity 6, 39, 41, 45, 62, 66, 73,

74, 82, 120, 122, 152–3, 158, 160‘Modman’ 45‘Modman Nihilist’ 45‘Modman Philistine’ 45, 83Möhler, Johann Adam 10, 19,

64–5, 67, 142–3, 157Moltmann, Jürgen 72monotheistic revolution 116Montag, John 49, 50Montini (Pope Paul VI) 89‘moralism’ 131, 155Mounier, Emmanuel 155Mouroux, Jean 156Moynihan, Robert 150, 159Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 23, 37Müller, Max 94Murphy, Francesca 142Murray, John Courtney 87Mystical religion 127Mystical theology 114, 115Mysticism 116

Natural theology 114, 115, 117, 126Nature and grace 47, 84, 87, 100,

154–5, 156Nemoianu, Virgil 11Neo-scholasticism 2, 25, 94, 109,

112–13Neo-Thomism 15Neuhaus, Richard John 87New Age movement 127New liturgical movement 42Newman, John Henry 4, 11, 12,

19, 20, 23, 30, 49, 67, 69, 109, 112, 141, 143, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157

Nicholas of Myra, Saint 141Nichols, Aidan 29, 42, 146–7, 149Nietzsche, Friedrich 23, 82, 94, 95Nihilism 45, 46

INDEX

200

‘noosphere’ 106–7, 113Norton, R. E. 106–10Nostra Aetate 136Novak, Michael 87Nuptial mystery 144

O’Meara, Thomas F 3Ontology 1, 23, 46, 74, 93, 96, 99,

100, 103, 106, 112, 113O’Regan, Cyril 53, 54, 95Origen 19Orthodox, the 159Orthodoxy 118Orthopraxis 118, 129Ouellet, Cardinal Marc 144

Panikkar, Raymond 131Papandréou, Damaskinos 148‘parish tea-party liturgies’ 33Paschal mystery 32, 46, 66‘pastoral pragmatism’ 33pastoral strategies, correlationist 27,

48, 62–3Paul, Saint 68, 69, 82, 91, 126, 145Paul VI, Pope 5–6, 40, 41, 48, 88, 99Péguy, Charles 20Peperzak, Adriaan 128perichoresis 71, 82personalism 109Petrine office 21, 140, 142Pfnür, Vinzenz 148phenomenology 109Philistinism 38, 45–6Philosophical anthropology 15, 34Pickstock, Catherine 35, 160Pieper, Josef 4, 5, 15, 16, 19, 30, 72,

79, 80, 81, 91, 95, 101, 102, 106, 107, 153

‘pious pelagianism’ 75, 76, 155Pius XI, Pope 132–3Planck, Max 4Plato 30, 34Platonic 73, 109

Platonism 31, 126, 146Polanyi, Michael 27Political moralism 129Political theology 114polyphony 30Pontifical Biblical Commission 58–9Pontifical Council for Interreligious

Dialogue 131Pontifical Council for Justice and

Peace 88Pontifical Council for the

Promotion of Christian Unity 139

pop music 34, 35Populorum Progressio 88, 89postmodernism 62postmodernity 66, 73, 158, 160pragmatism 33presumption 79‘primitive emotionalism’ 33Progress 74Protestantism 26, 77, 94, 156Providentissimus Deus 59Przywara, Erich 11, 18, 19, 25, 26,

30, 84‘pure reason’ 16, 120, 158puritanical functionalism 33

Radbertus, Paschasius 72Radical orthodoxy 63Rahner, Karl 4, 5, 17, 23, 27, 33,

51, 63, 84, 94, 95, 96–7, 101, 102, 103, 106, 113, 148, 156, 158–9

rationalism 2, 23, 25, 109, 125, 126redemption 30, 99, 123Redemptor Hominis 99Redemptoris Missio 130, 132Reformation 26, 45, 65, 96Reid, Alcuin 43Reimarus, H. S. 56relationality 15, 93, 110relativism 2, 142

INDEX

201

Renaissance 26, 31, 119–20Renan, Ernest 56revelation 21, 43, 48, 50, 51, 55,

65–6, 68, 70, 72, 85–6, 112–13, 117, 119, 121, 137, 148, 153, 156

Ricci, Matteo 37Richard of St Victor 111rock concerts 34, 79rock music 32, 34, 35, 158Romanesque 31Romantic movement 2, 9, 10, 11, 23,

25, 46, 51, 155Rosen, Rabbi 133Rush, Ormond 68Russian Orthodox Church 141–2

Sacramental life 105order 66, 111–12presence 46–7

Sacramentality 15Sacraments 97, 105Sacramentum Caritatis 42, 143, 144‘sacro-pop’ 33, 40, 41, 42, 158Sailer, Johann Michael von 10Salvation history 96, 97–8, 98–9,

112–13, 136Sartre, Jean-Paul 16Schall, James V. 73, 74, 102, 137Scheeben, Matthias Joseph 10–11,

143Scheler, Max 13, 95, 155Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm

Joseph 10Schenk, H. G. 9, 46Schillebeeckx, Edward 4, 5, 27, 63,

158–9Schindler, David L. 86Schlier, Heinrich 148Schmaus, Michael 50scholasticism 2, 4, 19, 22, 40, 46

Baroque 154–5Scholl, Sophie 11

Schopenhauer 95Scola, Cardinal Angelo 144Scotus, Duns 137Scripture 1, 3, 21, 49, 51, 53, 55, 56,

61, 69, 70, 96, 153and tradition 62, 146

Scruton, Roger 35, 36, 45, 160Second Vatican Council 2, 41,

45, 69, 86, 106, 134, 135–6, 148, 153

secularism 79, 82, 83, 85–6, 90, 113, 126, 127–8, 142, 152, 153, 159, 160

secularization 80sexuality 6, 29, 99, 157Siewerth, Gustav 94Social Darwinism 73Society of Pius X 44Sollicitudo rei Socialis 88Söhngen, Gottlieb 12, 16, 96,

112, 113Sombart, Werner 77Spaemann, Robert 85, 129Spe Salvi 72, 73, 76, 78, 113, 123, 126Spinoza, Baruch 95Stafford, Cardinal James 26Staudinger, Hugo 33Stein, Edith 11Stoic philosophy 58, 117–18, 126Stolberg, Count Friedrich Leopold

zu 11Strauss, D. F. 56Strauss, Leo 73Suárez, Francisco 49, 50, 84,

124, 156Summorum Pontificum 40, 43

Taylor, Charles 73Tertio Millennio Adveniente 100Tertullian 25Theobald, Michael 146Theological anthropology 2, 61, 71,

88, 93, 104, 156

INDEX

202

Theological virtues 16, 71, 73, 82, 104, 105, 123–4

Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint 105Thomas Aquinas, Saint 2, 3, 14, 15,

17, 36, 49, 50, 62, 79, 80, 85, 91, 94, 143, 148, 155

Tracy, David 27, 63, 158–9tradition 1, 3, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53,

62–3, 64, 66, 155, 156, 157Traditional Anglican Communion

150traditionalists 38, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46,

62–3Trent, Council of 54Trinity 71, 90, 110, 111Truth 2, 71

and love 113Twomey, D. Vincent 1

Ut Unum Sint 138‘utlity music’ 33, 40

Vanhoozer, Kevin 61Vanhoye, Cardinal Albert 51

Varro, Marcus Terrentius 114, 115, 157

Veritatis Splendor 155Vico, Giambattista 122Voderholzer, Rudolf 94Voegelin, Eric 73, 74Voluntarism 136, 137

Walker, Adrian 89Watkin, E. I. 13Waugh, Evelyn 41Weber, Carl Maria von 24‘Westman’ 45‘Whig Thomism’ 87, 113Wiechert, Ernst 4Wiegel, George 87, 88Williamson, Richard 44Wojtyła, Karol 5, 13, 14, 88, 89,

99, 113Wordsworth, William 13Wust, Peter 4, 13, 14, 153,

154, 155

Yeago, David S. 47