Pope Benedict XVI: Joseph Ratzinger


By Zachary Hayes, O.F.M., Professor of Historical and Doctrinal Studies
Pope Benedict XVI: Joseph Ratzinger

 

The 265th Pope
Former Cardinal, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith;

 

b. Marktl am Inn, Germany, April 16, 1927.

 

Early Life. Joseph Ratzinger is the youngest of three children born to Joseph and Maria Ratzinger. He grew up in rural Bavaria in a period of great political chaos for Germany as the Weimar Republic was in decline and the Nazis were rising to power. He began his education at the primary school in the village of Aschau. From there he went on to the gymnasium in the town of Traunstein. Then in the Easter season of 1939, just six years after Adolf Hitler had taken over the political leadership of Germany and was moving into the opening phase of World War II, Ratzinger began seminary studies in Traunstein. During the later years of the war, beginning in 1943, he was called to service with other students to man the anti-aircraft batteries while the Allied air-attacks in the Munich area were at their peak.

 

At the end of the war he found himself in an American prisoner-of-war camp near the city of Ulm. After his release from the camp he began the study of philosophy in the seminary at Freising in 1946. Two years of philosophy were followed by theological studies at the university of Munich. During these years Ratzinger became familiar with the work of a number of important Roman Catholic authors whose writings would have a lasting effect in the development of his personal theological vision. These included especially Michael Schmaus, Romano Guardini, Joseph Pieper, Odo Casel, and Henri de Lubac. For the youthful student, these authors opened new worlds such as the history of doctrine, the significance of humanism, the possibility of richer interpretations of Scholasticism than that found in the dominant form of neo-Thomism, and the deeper meaning of the reform of the liturgy. Two books of De Lubac were of particular importance; namely, Catholicism, and Corpus Mysticum. These opened insights into the mystery of the church which would eventually enter into the shaping of Ratzinger's own ecclesiology. In the summer of 1951 he was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Faulhaber in the cathedral of Freising.

 

Academic Career. In the year prior to his ordination, Ratzinger worked on a study of St. Augustine's ecclesiology. Entitled People and House of God in Augustine's Doctrine of the Church, this study was awarded the prize in a competition organized by the university faculty and was accepted as his dissertation for the doctoral degree in theology. In choosing and working on this project, he came under the significant influence of Gottlieb Söhngen who was well-known for his interest in Augustinian theology. After about a year of pastoral ministry, Ratzinger was assigned to lecture on theology in the seminary at Freising. While there, he completed his studies for the doctorate in theology. The degree was awarded to him in July of 1953. With only a few minor changes, the study on Augustine appeared in book-form in the spring of 1954.

 

During his time as lecturer at the seminary at Freising, Ratzinger began working on his second major historical study, again with the encouragement of Söhngen. This took the form of a study of a medieval theologian, St. Bonaventure. The text that came from this research was completed in the summer of 1955 and corrected in 1956 and 1957. It was published in 1959 under the title:

 

The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure. Within a year of the completion of this study Ratzinger was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Munich and as Professor of fundamental theology and dogma at the College of Philosophy and Theology in Freising.

 

In spring of 1959 he began lecturing as ordinary professor of fundamental theology at the University of Bonn. His courses included topics such as revelation, basic questions in the philosophy of religion, and ecclesiology. During his years at Bonn, he came to know Cardinal Frings of Cologne who at that time was a member of the Central Preparatory Commission for Vatican Council II. Ratzinger accompanied the Cardinal to Rome as a theological adviser and was eventually named a peritus of the Council.

 

In 1963 he moved to the University of Münster to take over the chair of dogmatic theology. His work at the Council continued even as he developed his courses in theology at the university. But by the summer of 1966 he had moved to Tübingen and joined the Catholic theological faculty there. Thus he was present at Tübingen in the late 1 960's when a Marxist movement on the campus led to a revolt that shook the university. Despite this, during his time at Tübingen he was able to write his Introduction to Christianity which was published in German in 1968 and in English in the following year.

 

In the midst of the controversies at Tübingen, Ratzinger received an invitation from the recently opened university at Regensburg. In 1969 he accepted this invitation and made what was to be his final move in academic circles. While at Regensburg, he joined in a collaborative project with Johann Auer, one of his colleagues on the faculty. This took the form of a nine-volume study of Christian doctrine entitled Kleine Katholische Dogmatik. Ratzinger's most important contribution to this project is the volume which treats the major themes of eschatology. During his time at Regensburg he was appointed to the newly established International Papal Theological Commission.

 

Hierarchy. On the vigil of Pentecost in 1977 Ratzinger was consecrated as Archbishop of Munich-Freising and soon thereafter was named Cardinal. As he took up these new duties, he chose as his motto a text from the third epistle of St. John: “Co-workers of the Truth” (3 Jn. 8). As he himself explains, this text expresses two of his persistent concerns. The first of these is the understanding of the church as a communion of faith and of the body of bishops not as isolated individuals but as a group or a collegium whose function consists in service to the church community. The second is a concern for the reality of truth and an awareness of the feeling of emptiness which follows when one loses the sense that there is some truth by which to guide human life. Both of these concerns played a basic role in his work as Archbishop and continue to motivate much of his understanding in his present work. In November 1981 Cardinal Ratzinger was appointed Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and he continues to exercise that office up to the present.

 

Writings. His study of Augustine's ecclesiology and of Bonaventure's theology of history stand as major studies in the history of doctrine. Beyond this, his Introduction to Christianity can be described as a contemporary classic. It has gone through numerous editions, and has been translated into many languages including English. He has contributed numerous articles to lexicons and periodicals over many years. In 1985 a lengthy interview with the Cardinal was published under the title The Ratzinger Report. This offers helpful understandings of his vision of Vatican Council II and its aftermath. More recently he has published Called to Communion and Salt of the Earth, both of which present key insights into his theological understanding of the church. The latter is in the form of an extensive interview. In 1998 he published Milestones:

 

Memoirs 1927-1977. This takes the reader through the first fifty years of his life up to the time of his appointment as Archbishop of Munich.

 

Theological Legacy. Cardinal Ratzinger's writings cover a wide range of topics including the theology of history, revelation, ecclesiology, preaching, catechesis, liturgical reform, and eschatology. His work presents a theology of remarkable depth and power reflecting the Cardinal's abiding conviction concerning the importance of objective truth. He offers especially a theology of revelation arrived at largely by his study of the medieval work of St. Bonaventure but still significant in dealing with problems such as those raised by historical criticism of the Scriptures today. Beyond this he offers a penetrating theology of church which retrieves key insights of Scripture and of patristic ecclesiology and echoes themes found in the theology of J. A. Möhler of the nineteenth-century school of Tübingen. This dimension of the Cardinal's work offers a vision of the church which is far richer than that of the centuries of post-Tridentine Catholic theology and provides a basis for his discussion of issues such as Christian brotherhood, the church and the world, and Christianity in relation to the other religions of the world. The ecclesiology helps clarify the positive possibilities together with the limits that the Cardinal would place on all these areas of discussion. Independently of his work at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith which has become more controversial over the years, Cardinal Ratzinger stands out as a major Catholic theologian whose work represents an important contribution to Roman Catholic theology in the modern era.

 

Bibliography.

 

Nichols, Aidan, The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger: An Introductory Study. Edinburgh, 1988.

 

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology. San Francisco, 1987.
•  Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today. San Francisco, 1996.
•  Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium. San Francisco, 1997.
•  Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977. San Francisco, 1999.

 

(Zachary Hayes, O.F.M.)