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The Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings & Speeches
The Essential Pope Benedict XVI is “an outstanding collection of texts that takes us straight to the heart of Benedict XVI’s thoughts” (Alister McGrath).Introduction by D. Vincent Twomey, SVDOn April 24, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, the twenty-first-century successor of the Apostle Peter and the spiritual leader of more than one billion Roman Catholics. Through John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne’s carefully chosen selections from his homilies, interviews, theological essays, and articles on the crises facing the church today, The Essential Pope Benedict XVI relates his thoughts and beliefs about a variety of contemporary issues, including modern culture’s abandonment of traditional religious values, social mores regarding conception and the sanctity of life, current challenges to the priesthood, and the Catholic Church’s tenuous relations with other world religions.First a brilliant peritus, or “expert advisor,” to the Second Vatican Council and then archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger was appointed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by Pope John Paul II in 1981. As Cardinal Ratzinger, the ex officio defender of church doctrine, he gained a reputation as a heroic guardian of the faith for conservatives and was held in suspicion by church liberals.This one volume is the best source for understanding the heart, soul, and agenda of one of the most important theological voices of the Catholic faith, a twenty-first-century successor to St. Peter.“This book is an open door, inviting the reader into the mind and heart of a great teacher of eternal truth.” —Richard John Neuhaus, author of American Notes of a Christian Exile
514 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2007
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September 9, 2021Author of the Introduction Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, tells us that Pope Benedict XVI’s erudition is “astounding and phenomenal.” This Pope’s written output is equally prodigious. It was a challenge for the editors to select these pages from it and for Fr. Twomey to provide an overview of his major writings. Living and writing in the volatile decades from the 1960’s through the end of the millennium Cardinal Ratzinger had to address not only “breakdown of society in Europe, as it collapses into the black hole created by the denial of the Absolute in public life” and the “pervasive moral relativism that undermines human well-being and erodes human communities” but had to deal also with the “radical changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council.” There are many other issues like globalization, multiculturalism, “theological evaluation of world religions and their relationship to Christianity . . .dominance of rationalism and utilitarianism.”
I first became aware of the future Pope Benedict’s presence when he presided at the requiem Mass for Pope John Paul II which brought him in the media before his largest audience. The memorable homily he delivered on 8 April 2005 is included here. Cardinal Ratzinger’s charismatic delivery that I remember was more appealing than the bare text here in translation.
At a quarter of way through my reading I found some of the writing accessible and appealing, such as the selection from his “Introduction to Christianity” as is “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty” and comments about the “church still reeling from the radical changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council.” There are sermons and essays which are a stumbling block for my lack of background in matters theological. It is not enough to look up “orthopraxis, syncretism, ecclesiology of communion, Lumen gentium, praxis, utilitarianism, obsequies, eschaton, postmodern, exegetic analyses, eschatological dynamic” to get into the meaning of what he is saying. These walls to my understanding are becoming frequent and I will just have to bypass them to hopefully understand what is more accessible to me.
Fortunately, there is plenty of insights and lines of wisdom beyond these stumbling blocks:
“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
“after Auschwitz it was no longer possible to write poetry . . . People wondered: where was God when the gas chambers were operating?
“We must acknowledge, however, that faith is seriously weakened and threatened within the church. Even we in the church have lost courage.
“In his play No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre portrays man as a being who is hopelessly trapped. Christ, however, says to us, “I, your God, have become your Son. Come out! Christ summons us to find heaven in him, to discover him in others and thus to be heaven to each other. He calls us to let heaven shine into this world, to build heaven here.
“Knowledge and action are closely united, as are faith and life.
“I think that what provokes people today against celibacy is that they see how many priests really aren’t inwardly in agreement with it and either live it hypocritically, badly, not at all, or only live it in a tortured way. So, people say……it ruins them…For, as a matter of fact, today we are experiencing not only violations of celibacy; marriage itself is becoming increasingly fragile as the basis of our society. For, as a matter of fact, today we are experiencing not only violations of celibacy; marriage itself is becoming increasingly fragile as the basis of our society. And that we must also be even more careful in the selection of candidates for the priesthood.
“Brave New World, we want to master even the human condition with technology,
“The important thing here is to see the truth that lies at the heart of it: to become one with Christ means to lose one’s “oneself,” to cease to regard one’s own ego as an absolute.
The essay/sermon “On the Theological Basis of Prayer and Liturgy” has some welcome advice on prayer:
“For Christian faith it is essential that it address the God who really exists, the Creator of all things and the ground of all being, and that this God has spoken to us.
“Christian prayer holds the key to making the whole world a celebration, a feast, namely, affirmation. Asiatic contemplation is not affirmation but liberation through the renunciation of being.
“Apart from the Son, the Father remains ambivalent and strange; it is Jesus who turns the scales of the Old Testament and makes its message clear.
“At this point everything becomes very practical: How can I learn to pray? By praying in fellowship. Prayer is always a praying with someone. No one can pray to God as an isolated individual and in his own strength.
“in Jesus, God participates in time. Through this participation he operates in time in the form of love. His love purifies men; through purification (and not otherwise) men are identified and united with him. Or we could say this: as a result of God’s participation in time in Jesus, love becomes the causality operating in the world to transform it; in any place, at any time, it can exercise its influence.
Ratzinger’s theology became so heavy-handed for me by the middle of this selection of his writings that I realized I was only fooling myself thinking I was getting anything significant from them except bits and pieces. The most persistent question I have is “Whom is he writing these for?” Take for example such lines as these:
“if orthopraxis is understood in a social and political sense, it again raises the question of the nature of correct political action.
“The theologies of liberation, animated by the conviction that Marxism clearly points out to us what good political praxis is, could use the notion of orthopraxis in its proper sense.
“Knitter is close to this principle when he affirms that the criterion for differentiating orthopraxis from pseudopraxis is freedom.
I first became aware of the future Pope Benedict’s presence when he presided at the requiem Mass for Pope John Paul II which brought him in the media before his largest audience. The memorable homily he delivered on 8 April 2005 is included here. Cardinal Ratzinger’s charismatic delivery that I remember was more appealing than the bare text here in translation.
At a quarter of way through my reading I found some of the writing accessible and appealing, such as the selection from his “Introduction to Christianity” as is “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty” and comments about the “church still reeling from the radical changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council.” There are sermons and essays which are a stumbling block for my lack of background in matters theological. It is not enough to look up “orthopraxis, syncretism, ecclesiology of communion, Lumen gentium, praxis, utilitarianism, obsequies, eschaton, postmodern, exegetic analyses, eschatological dynamic” to get into the meaning of what he is saying. These walls to my understanding are becoming frequent and I will just have to bypass them to hopefully understand what is more accessible to me.
Fortunately, there is plenty of insights and lines of wisdom beyond these stumbling blocks:
“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism, which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
“after Auschwitz it was no longer possible to write poetry . . . People wondered: where was God when the gas chambers were operating?
“We must acknowledge, however, that faith is seriously weakened and threatened within the church. Even we in the church have lost courage.
“In his play No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre portrays man as a being who is hopelessly trapped. Christ, however, says to us, “I, your God, have become your Son. Come out! Christ summons us to find heaven in him, to discover him in others and thus to be heaven to each other. He calls us to let heaven shine into this world, to build heaven here.
“Knowledge and action are closely united, as are faith and life.
“I think that what provokes people today against celibacy is that they see how many priests really aren’t inwardly in agreement with it and either live it hypocritically, badly, not at all, or only live it in a tortured way. So, people say……it ruins them…For, as a matter of fact, today we are experiencing not only violations of celibacy; marriage itself is becoming increasingly fragile as the basis of our society. For, as a matter of fact, today we are experiencing not only violations of celibacy; marriage itself is becoming increasingly fragile as the basis of our society. And that we must also be even more careful in the selection of candidates for the priesthood.
“Brave New World, we want to master even the human condition with technology,
“The important thing here is to see the truth that lies at the heart of it: to become one with Christ means to lose one’s “oneself,” to cease to regard one’s own ego as an absolute.
The essay/sermon “On the Theological Basis of Prayer and Liturgy” has some welcome advice on prayer:
“For Christian faith it is essential that it address the God who really exists, the Creator of all things and the ground of all being, and that this God has spoken to us.
“Christian prayer holds the key to making the whole world a celebration, a feast, namely, affirmation. Asiatic contemplation is not affirmation but liberation through the renunciation of being.
“Apart from the Son, the Father remains ambivalent and strange; it is Jesus who turns the scales of the Old Testament and makes its message clear.
“At this point everything becomes very practical: How can I learn to pray? By praying in fellowship. Prayer is always a praying with someone. No one can pray to God as an isolated individual and in his own strength.
“in Jesus, God participates in time. Through this participation he operates in time in the form of love. His love purifies men; through purification (and not otherwise) men are identified and united with him. Or we could say this: as a result of God’s participation in time in Jesus, love becomes the causality operating in the world to transform it; in any place, at any time, it can exercise its influence.
Ratzinger’s theology became so heavy-handed for me by the middle of this selection of his writings that I realized I was only fooling myself thinking I was getting anything significant from them except bits and pieces. The most persistent question I have is “Whom is he writing these for?” Take for example such lines as these:
“if orthopraxis is understood in a social and political sense, it again raises the question of the nature of correct political action.
“The theologies of liberation, animated by the conviction that Marxism clearly points out to us what good political praxis is, could use the notion of orthopraxis in its proper sense.
“Knitter is close to this principle when he affirms that the criterion for differentiating orthopraxis from pseudopraxis is freedom.
August 15, 2021
An excellent collection of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI's writings that highlight his broad intellect and main concerns. This would be a fine place for anyone to start who is exploring the thought of this renowned German theologian.
March 31, 2019
It is a worthwhile read into the insight of the predecessor and still living former Pope Benedict XVI. He goes into a talk of history often, and many might be turned off by the overly academic language. Even I marvel at the writing that suggests a simpler way to put something, I would have a hard time connecting Faith, Hope, and Charity as essential to living out the Catholic Faith if your local parish priest, in his zeal to committing acts of love, fails to bestow adequate teaching on the doctrines of the Faith, a lay person is bound to be confused by even the tiniest drop of real sin. Laity fed the Faith in watered down language and sending their children to color pages of Jesus and sing songs of mercy, forgiveness, and justice for all are apt to play a role in the cooperation between separating politics and religion. B16 spoke of the fishers of men as ones who leave the comforts of their existence in the sea (like a little fish being caught in a net) as able to understand God’s Will for himself. There are forces that say that religion should leave well enough alone what a secular society does on a regular basis. I am unclear what his view on the signs of the present time were as of 2005. He mentions them in God is Love, but he doesn’t really talk about it.
July 2, 2008
The strength of this book is in the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger/ Pope Benedict XVI. He is a brilliant writer who expresses himself clearly and is easy to understand. This book presents a great selection from various homilies, speeches, and excerpts from several larger books. The weakness lies in how some of these texts are ordered. Having said that, the excerpts do provide an incentive to dive into the full works which they were drawn from. It is also excellent that Deus Caritas Est was included at the end in its entirety. This is certainly a nice introduction into Pope Benedict XVI's writings, and the vast expanse of his writings before being elected Pope, but the excerpts are nowhere near as satisfying as diving into the texts themselves.
April 6, 2013
There is something in here for everyone. While I did not find all of the writings captivating, the collection provides an array of documents and sermons on a variety of topics that are fascinating and "essential." Pope Benedict is an incredible scholar, and this was a great read!
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March 22, 2023sorry Pope Benedict, just couldn't finish this
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February 4, 2008When he was Cardinal Ratzinger and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church, he was the hammer for Christological, liturginal, scriptural and orthodoxy--the enforcer. The man knows his stuff whether you agree or disagree with him.
June 27, 2012
Anyone who truly wishes to know the mind, life and passion of the Holy Father must go to his writings as not the head of the enforcement arm of the Catholic Church, but to his theological writings.
January 20, 2010
This is my Lenten reading.
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July 11, 2011very good
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews