Pope Benedict XVI, the Anchor That Kept Germany Rooted in Christ

National Catholic Register, 15 April 2021

In the late evening of his life, Ratzinger/Benedict can be understood as the Catholic Church’s singular, multi-generational response to the reforming agenda of German theology.

Did the Church place too many of her theological eggs in one Bavarian Easter basket?

The question occurs as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI — born on Holy Saturday and baptized the same day in the newly-blessed Easter water — celebrates his 94th birthday tomorrow, April 16.

With the death of Father Hans Küng, 93, during the Easter Octave, the generation to which Joseph Ratzinger belongs is passing away. Ratzinger, the Bavarian, and the Swiss Küng were 30-something theological wunderkinds, both part of what Ratzinger called the “Rhine alliance” of northern European theologians who would definitively shape the work of the Second Vatican Council.

The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber was the title of one of the more famous books on Vatican II, and Cardinal Ratzinger flowed farther than anyone, becoming, as it were, the Tiber itself upon his election as supreme pontiff in 2005.

The current theological chaos in Germany, where the “binding synodal path” raises the possibility of schism, invites renewed attention to German theology, one of the most influential forces in ecclesial life in the past century. For 60 years, from his ordination in 1951 to his abdication in 2013, Joseph Ratzinger was at the center of it. Indeed, he became something of an anchor in stormy seas. After his abdication, the boat began to drift.

In the late evening of his life, Ratzinger/Benedict can be understood as the Church’s singular, multi-generational response to the reforming agenda of German theology. Would that reform be Catholic, returning to the great and wide tradition, or Protestant, diverging from it? 

For generations a great number of German bishops have been on the Protestant side of many questions. Ratzinger/Benedict kept them Catholic. Since he departed in 2013, the Protestantizing wing has been in ascendance.

Peter Seewald, who was Ratzinger’s privileged interlocutor for four interview books, published last year Volume I of his definitive biography, Benedict XVI: A Life (1927-1965). Volume II will be published later this year.

The splendid Seewald biography admirably captures the theological ferment in which the young Father Ratzinger was immersed. The Counter-Reformation theology dominant in Rome had become sluggish and complacent. The challenges of modernity posed new questions that Roman officialdom was ill-equipped to engage. The bold reforms that Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) had launched in recovering the originality of Thomistic philosophy and supporting an authentic renewal in biblical studies were bearing fruit. All of this was awaiting the mature judgment and encouragement of an ecumenical council, the first really since the 16th-century Council of Trent, given that Vatican I (1869-1870) had to be prematurely abandoned due to political strife.

If his friends in the Cracovian Rhapsodic Theatre would tease their friend as “Karol Wojtyla, future saint,” the classmates of Joseph Ratzinger, ordained in 1951, knew that he was a future scholar, destined to take his place sooner rather than later in the theological firmament. Within a year of ordination, he was appointed a seminary professor; he would also take his turn hearing confessions in the cathedral. 

“It was mostly seminarians who came,” the Pope Emeritus told Seewald. “I was especially popular with them because I was so broad-minded.”

With other broad-minded scholars, Father Ratzinger rocketed up the theological circles in Germany and, by the time of the Council, emerged as a key adviser (peritus) to Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne. 

In advance of the Council, Cardinal Frings gave a landmark address in Genoa, setting out a framework. Pope St. John XXIII summoned Frings to the Vatican to tell him that he had said what the Pope had wanted to say, but had not found the right words.

Father Ratzinger had written the entire Genoa speech. Not yet 35 years old, he was key in shaping the thought of one of the most influential Council fathers.

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