In His mercy God picked an ethics professor to be the last pope of the tumultuous twentieth century. Now Divine Providence has decreed that a former professor of theology will shepherd the Church as the first new pope of the third millennium.
The common university background suggests a way of expressing the questions that are on everyone’s mind: “What’s his field of specialization? I’ve heard that his seminars are demanding… is he a tough grader?” For some Catholics, the election of Pope Benedict XVI is like learning that the professor whose courses you’ve been avoiding has suddenly been made university president. “He’s an internationally renowned scholar, but what will he be like as an administrator?”
Cardinal Ratzinger had published so much that he was a known quantity when he entered the conclave. In book-length interviews that he granted in 1985, 1996 and 2000, he clearly set forth his positions on a gamut of issues facing the Church. With tireless urbanity he has defended Catholic teaching in novel ways against secular challenges. In return, the media have portrayed him as adversarial, militantly old-guard!
To this author, the theologian Joseph Ratzinger always seemed like that brilliant but unassuming professor whose sense of humor and unlimited patience enabled him to correct rafts of abysmal student papers in the cheerful hope that this served the cause of higher education. Far from being a reactionary, he responded to anyone willing to enter into dialogue with Catholicism.
But now that he heads over a billion Catholics, where will he lead them?
An essay written by the German theologian in 2000 offers us a window through which we can look out onto the Eternal City and the entire world with the new Holy Father. He wrote it as the Preface to a recent edition of his contemporary apologia for the faith, Introduction to Christianity, originally compiled from lecture notes in 1968.
In the thirty-plus years since the first edition, “world history has moved along at a brisk pace. In retrospect, two years seem to be particularly important milestones…. The year 1968 marked the rebellion of a new generation, which not only considered postwar reconstruction in Europe as inadequate, full of injustice…, but also viewed the entire course of history since the triumph of Christianity as a failure.” Western European intellectuals turned to “scientific” Marxism as “the sole ethically motivated guide to the future.”
During the post-conciliar ferment, many Catholic university student groups actively participated in that revolution. “This new fusion of the Christian impulse with secular and political action was like a lightning bolt; the real fires that it set, however, were in Latin America.” The theology of liberation appeared to point the way by which the Church could engage the modern world.
The Church could not simply “baptize” Marxism, however, as Thomas Aquinas had baptized Aristotelian philosophy. Adopting dialectical materialism means accepting “the primacy of politics and economics.” In such a scheme of human redemption, “God has nothing to do” and Jesus is reduced to a symbol and spokesman of the oppressed.
The other milestone was 1989 and “the surprising collapse of the socialist regimes in Europe, which left behind a sorry legacy of ruined land and ruined souls.” Unfortunately, “Christianity failed at that historical moment to make itself heard as an epoch-making alternative.” Perhaps the individualistic materialism of Christians in capitalist societies had lulled them, too, into the habit of acting “as if there were no God.” At any rate, the fall of communism dashed all hopes of salvation through politics.
Since 1989 most of Europe’s intellectuals have retreated into a philosophy of doctrinaire relativism. But any attempt to relativize the Christian faith changes it radically. “Instead of being the man who is God, Christ becomes the man who has experienced God in a special way.” Furthermore, to lump Christianity together with Eastern religions is to cease caring whether God is thought of as a person or impersonally.
These theological paradigm shifts have dire practical consequences. If Jesus is not God, He cannot be the Way. If God is not personal, He cannot communicate His will to mankind, and no objective basis for morality remains.
In concluding this brief summary of the 2000 Preface to Introduction to Christianity, I wish to emphasize two points. First, there is no danger that the reign of Benedict XVI will usher in an age of conservative “theocracy.” As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the new pope was an implacable foe of politicized religion. Second, the Holy Father is just as adamant in opposing attempts to detach twenty-first century Europe from its Christian roots. He knows that when faith in God is “deleted” from a society, the humanity of man soon follows.
“When I say Cardinal Ratzinger’s name,” the late Pope John Paul II once said of his co-worker, “I think of The Splendor of Truth and also The Gospel of Life.” So we may expect continuity between the teaching of Benedict XVI and that of his immediate predecessor. Still, whereas the ethicist from Krakow notably and eloquently defended the God-given dignity of the human person, I’m guessing that the theologian from Bavaria will emphasize the ongoing action of the Second Divine Person in history.
While not a forceful personality, Benedict XVI is much more than an intellectual. He is a cultured Christian gentleman who has worked for decades at the listening post of the world. He enjoys classical music and has written insightfully about liturgical singing. He is profoundly committed to the task of helping Christianity to “rediscover its voice” and of rebuilding Europe as a civilization with Christian principles.
Be sure to watch in August as he meets the “incoming class” at World Youth Day in Cologne.
Michael J. Miller translated the 2000 Preface to Introduction to Christianity for Ignatius Press.
This article first appeared, in slightly abridged form, in the National Catholic Register.
