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He and John Paul worked to cement the “hermeneutic of continuity and reform” requested by the Council, but he also understood that this was a project that stretched into the future. This includes recognizing the direction of the relationship between the Church and the world.
“It is not Christians who oppose the world,” he says prophetically, “but rather the world opposes them when the truth of God, of Christ, and of man is proclaimed. The world is outraged when sin and grace are called by their names. After the phase of indiscriminate “openness” it is time for the Christian to regain the consciousness that he belongs to a minority and that he is often in opposition to what is obvious, plausible and natural for this mentality that the New Testament calls – and certainly not in a positive way meaning, “the spirit of the world.” It is time to rediscover the courage of non-conformism, the ability to resist many of the trends of the culture around us, abandoning a certain euphoric post-conciliar solidarity.”
He also foresees the inevitable course of Western culture with its sexual and moral libertinism in the name of false and diabolical freedom: “Fecundity separated from marriage based on lifelong fidelity turns from a blessing (as it was understood in every culture) into its opposite : that is, a threat to the free development of the “individual’s right to happiness.” Thus abortion, institutionalized, free and socially guaranteed, becomes another “right”, another form of “liberation”.
Called to Fellowship: Understanding the Church Today (1996)
Published a decade after the Ratzinger Report, this relatively short work is described by its author as a “primer of Catholic ecclesiology.” Indeed, Ratzinger focused on the nature and mission of the Church, but as he always did when speaking and writing about the Church, he got to the very heart of the matter: only by adopting a Christocentric and Eucharistic life can we truly understand the Church. This profound yet accessible Christological perspective of approaching the Church carries with it enormous ramifications for the believer.
Divided into five chapters with an epilogue, Called to Fellowship examines: The origin and nature of the Church; The primacy of Peter and the unity of the Church; The Universal Church and the Separate Church: The Task of the Bishop; On the nature of the priesthood; A company in constant renewal.
It is possible to see in this work the enormous achievement of Ratzinger’s own doctoral dissertation on the theology of St. Augustine, as well as his reflections spanning the decades since. It builds on St. Paul’s description of the Church as the Body of Christ to help the reader understand the proper role and function of its members.
Called to Fellowship also confronts the central theme in Ratzinger’s writings about true and false reform in the Church. This is a question that is particularly relevant today in the frequent calls for the remodeling of the Church in our own image, exemplified by the German Synodal Way. As he writes: “What is great and liberating in the Church is not something we do ourselves, but the gift that is given to all of us. This gift is not a product of our own will and invention, but precedes us and greets us as an incomprehensible reality that is “bigger than our heart” (cf. 1 John 3:20). The reform that is needed at all times does not consist in constantly remodeling “our” Church to our liking or in inventing it ourselves, but in constantly clearing away our ancillary structures to allow the pure light that comes from above and it is also the dawn of pure freedom.”
Salt of the Earth (1997)
The first of four book-length interviews Ratzinger gave to German journalist Peter Seewald – with God and the World (2002), The Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times (2010) and The Last Testament: his own words’ (2016) – The Salt of the Earth follows in the footsteps of The Ratzinger Report in both style and many of its themes. Seewald was given the opportunity to sit down and interview the then-cardinal for an hour a day over several days, but he also had the valuable permission to ask difficult questions of a cardinal who had not received the questions ahead of time. The result is a book like The Ratzinger Report, which is filled with harsh but charitable assessments of the state of the Church and the world.
Two aspects of the book are particularly valuable. First, it begins with his personal reflections on his family and then with his progression to priest, theologian and bishop. Second, the interview was given shortly before the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium, which means that he was able to address the crises of the past, the challenges of the future, and the hope of a new millennium.
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Seewald raises many issues, including the great moral controversies, as well as the so-called “canon of criticism” always directed at the Church: celibacy, the ordination of women, and remarriage for divorced persons. Ratzinger’s responses are important to reiterate that there is a fixation on criticism by liberals to the great detriment of the mandate to proclaim the Gospel.
“Too little attention is paid to the fact that 80 percent of the people in this world are non-Christians,” replies Ratzinger, “who are waiting for the gospel, or for whom, at any rate, the gospel is also intended, and we must not constantly agonize over our own questions, but we must think about how we as Christians can express today in this world what we believe in, and in this way say something to these people.”
There is also a remarkable repetition of Ratzinger’s fundamental thesis that we must not as Christians abandon the pursuit of truth. Truth, he says, “must remain the central category. As a demand on us that does not give us rights, but requires, on the contrary, our humility and our obedience and can lead us to the common path.”
“Jesus of Nazareth” (2007, 2011, 2012)
The first of a trilogy on the person of Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration is the first book written by Pope Benedict XVI after his election. It was followed by Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (2011) and Jesus of Nazareth: Childhood Stories (2012).
Pope Benedict poured all his decades of study and prayer into the enormous task of revealing Christ to the modern reader, and he drew on a vast array of sources to weave a compelling narrative that is also perhaps the most accessible of all his writings. It is also notable for the Pope’s declaration in his introduction that this is in no way an exercise of the magisterium. Instead, it is a book by Joseph Ratzinger and a believer’s “personal search for the face of God.” He adds, “Then everyone is free to contradict me.” For a theologian who has made Christ the center of all things, doing justice to the subject was a difficult task and took years of work, beginning in 2003.
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