Book Review

Ratzinger: enigma of a pessimist

The Pontificate of Benedict XVI: its premises and promises

Benedict XVI's reputation as a harsh conservative has proved stubbornly durable, especially outside the Church. A second impression of Joseph Ratzinger, from inside Catholic ranks, is that he's an unsung hero. Asked why his stock is not as high as they think it should be, his supporters blame not the Pope but bungling officials or unfriendly media commentators.

Both assessments are wide of the mark; the former is especially unjust. But the "Grand Inquisitor" tag was not plucked from thin air. Among other ill-advised actions, the former Cardinal Ratzinger was responsible for Vati­can documents such as "Dominus Iesus" (2000), which assert that non-Christians and even non-Catholics are in grave spiritual peril. 

What form might a more nuanced account of the Pope take? At its core should lie the fact  that he is an unusual mixture of contradictory impulses. By this I do not just mean that Ratzinger began as a reformer and later swung to the theological right after the Second Vati­can Council. That side of his evolution has been endlessly remarked on. The interesting point is that he continued to feel pulled in ­different directions, even as the Vatican's ­doctrinal watchdog from 1981 to 2005. The man who condemned Harry Potter and warned Catholics against yoga also donated a large sum from his private funds to finance a German translation of the Lotus Sutra. The prefect who apparently takes a dim view of non-Catholic faith traditions, and the open-handed pastor who told a German ­journalist that there are as many paths to God as human beings, are one and the same person. These examples could be multiplied. The mystery has been pithily summed up by Henry ­Wansbrough, a monk of Ampleforth who dealt with Cardinal Ratzinger when they served on the Pontifical Biblical Commission. "I don't know how someone so polite, so perceptive, so open, so intelligent, could also have put his name to so many severe pronouncements," Fr Wansbrough told me. 

Of the two verdicts on the Pope sketched above, the excessively critical and the unduly deferential, the latter chiefly comes across in this book. Most contributors are theologians from the Reformed traditions; there is one  Roman Catholic, and one Greek Orthodox. The book will do no harm to ecumenical ties: Rusch's team expresses repeated gratitude to Benedict, as well as admiration for him. But what purpose is served by all the adulation? For example, Sara Butler's essay, "Benedict XVI: Apostle of the ‘Pierced Heart of Jesus'", is too pious to tell us anything worthwhile about the "premises and promises" of Benedict's reign. Cheryl Bridges Jones admits to having read only "a small portion" of the Ratzinger oeuvre, but feels entitled to announce her discovery of "a person who is driven by a vision of love". Nor is this the most treacly statement in the book. Harding Meyer lauds the former cardinal for playing a crucial role in advan­cing Catholic-Lutheran dialogue before the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999, but says nothing of how the process was almost derailed by skittish attitudes at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. 

The Pontificate of Benedict XVI is not only mealy-mouthed: it also lacks structure. Dale Irvin bites off more than he can chew in an opening essay grandiosely titled "Benedict XVI, the Ends of European Christendom, and the Horizons of World Christianity". The Pope's Regensburg lecture of 2006 (in which he ­quoted a fourteenth-century Byzantine ­emperor's extremely hostile verdict on Islam) was by common consent an own goal. Instead of making this clear from the start, however, Irvin indulges in a circuitous discussion leading down some irrelevant byways. At the heart of the lecture, as sympathetic observers were quick to point out, was a coherent if naively expressed defence of the complementarity of faith and reason. Irvin sees this as a licence for a windy reflection on Christianity's relation to Hellenistic thought in general: far too complex a topic to be treated in a brief essay. 

Both in Irvin's essay and elsewhere, one ­wishes that Rusch's symposiasts had spared us so much throat-clearing and clearly stated a thesis which some of them, at least, are groping for - namely that, although secular governments show disconcerting signs of wanting to deny the Church a role in shaping public consciousness, democratic pluralism as such is not to be deplored. On the contrary, it is a mark of the separation of Church and State, which Pope Benedict himself holds to have been prefigured in Jesus' injunction about rendering unto Caesar the things that are his. 

Like his utterances on other subjects, Ratzinger's comments about Christianity's place in the public square have drawn a quizzical reaction in many quarters. While he has voiced nostalgia for a more uniform Christian culture, he has also urged that the Christian presence should in future be mediated through small, counter-cultural cells, recalling Jesus' talk of the "little flock" in Luke 12:32. At other times, the Pope has talked in deeply pessimistic terms of Western society's lapse into neo-paganism. This complaint is especially contentious. A century ago, most women did not even have the vote. Two centuries ago, four-fifths of humanity lived in dire poverty. To maintain that we have made great strides forward is not callow Whiggery, but simple common sense. 

Why could the authors of The Pontificate of Benedict XVI not have set out their stall with greater candour and lucidity? This is a book written from inside the theological bubble, with few concessions to the thoughtful layperson. And, though some of the premises of the pontificate are set out adequately, the contributors are not incisive or well enough informed to tackle the trickier area of its promises. They are also too timid. A more critical register need not have betokened disrespect. Rusch's team could have said that since the Pope has unsurpassed influence, and is the pre-eminent defender of values without which the world will perish, it is vital that he pitch his message credibly; that a more positive estimate of secular culture implies support for more open forms of church government - a lesson only imperfectly absorbed by Joseph Ratzinger and other conservatives in the after­math of Vatican II. The book includes an ­enthusiastic postscript by the late Richard John Neuhaus, a strident traditionalist. It is revealing in unintended ways.

Back to homepage

       

The clear message that emerged from the symposium on child sexual abuse held in Rome from ...

According to the chairman of governors at the Cardinal Vaughan School, west London, one ...

There was an old Sixties TV series, Branded, about a disgraced soldier that always began ...