Two new books for those curious about the mind and heart of Benedict XVI

Mark Shea has an excellent little column over at CatholicExchange.com that expands a bit on something he has posted about a few times, namely, "Shea's Iron Law of Media-Reported Benedictine Growth." He writes:

The MSM has had a template since the day Benedict donned the papal mitre and it has never occurred to most of the people who type or talk about him in the MSM to vary from it. They simply school together like guppies and tell each other (and us) that the rigid, hardline, inflexible, dominating and ruthless enforcer’s archaic, medieval, intolerant and backward thought, words and deeds are what you’d expect from a former Hitler Youth. Apparently, the man has spent every minute of every day cracking down on everything with a pulse over a million times. To hear the MSM tell it, the guy just hates rational thought and freedom.

As regular readers of this blog know, this is an issue I fixate on from time to time (sometimes for days on end). But Shea makes an additional point that is just as important: it isn't just many journalists who don't "get" Pope Benedict XVI, it is also Christian scholars and theologians who really should know better. Shea highlights a review of Benedict's book Jesus of Nazareth; it was penned back in May 2007 by Bruce Chilton, a fairly well-known Episcopalian theologian who has garnered a number of academic awards. Chilton's review is bewilderingly clueless, as just one sentence, out of many possible examples, demonstrates:

Benedict emphatically sets aside the view that faith amounts to a form of law, and insists that the relationship of the believer to God through Christ defines Christian belief.

Say...what?! Does Chilton really mean to suggest that prior to writing his book on Christ, Benedict failed to understand or articulate that faith was about a relationship with God through Christ? It seems so. As Shea wonders: "One is left paralyzed facing the sheer Himalayas of ignorance that lie behind such a concatenation of words. One wonders if the man who types such things has ever discovered the epistle to the Romans is in the Catholic Bible, much less read it."

Which brings me to the positive part of this post. I recently received copies of two books that further increase the substantial pile of excellent work by and about Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. The first is The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God (Ignatius, 2008), by Joseph Ratzinger, a collection of sermons and meditations given by then-Father Ratzinger in the early 1970s (1972-75). Here are a few quotes from that collection:

The Church makes a man a Christian by pronouncing the name of the triune God. In this way, she has expressed since the very beginning what she considers the most decisive element of the Christian existence, namely, faith in the triune God. This disappoints us. It is so far removed from our life. It is so useless and so incomprehensible. If some brief formula must be used, then we expect something attractive and exciting, something that immediately strikes us as important for man and for his life. And yet the essential point is precisely what is stated here: the primary concern in Christianity is, not the Church or man, but God. Christianity is not oriented to our own hopes, fears, and needs, but to God, to his sovereignty and power. The first proposition of the Christian faith and the fundamental orientation of Christian conversion is: "God is." (pp 26-27)

Let us return to my earlier point: in Jesus' prayer, the Father becomes visible and Jesus makes himself known as the Son. The unity that this reveals is the Trinity. Accordingly, becoming a Christian means sharing in Jesus' prayer, entering into the model provided by his life, that is, the model of his prayer. Becoming a  Christian means saying "Father" with Jesus and, thus, becoming a child, God's son—God–in the unity of the Spirit who allows us into the unity of God. Being a Christian means looking at the world from this central point , which gives us freedom, hope, decisiveness, and consolation. (p 35)

And, later, in reflecting on the Holy Spirit:

Paul and John agree essentially on yet another point. John calls the Spirit "Paraclete", that is, advocate, helper, defender, comforter. He is thus the adversary of the diabolos, the "prosecutor", the slanderer, "who accuses our brethren day and night before our God" (Rev 12:10). The Spirit is the Yes, just as Christ is the Yes. Correspondingly, Paul emphasizes joy very strongly. We must say that the Spirit is the Spirit of joy and of the Gospel. One of the basic rules for the discernment of spirits could be formulated as follows: Where joylessness rules and humor dies, we may be certain that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is not present. Furthermore, joy is a sign of grace. One who is serene from the bottom of his heart, one who has suffered without losing joy, is not far from the God of the Gospel, from the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of eternal joy. (p 113)

That provides a perfect introduction to the second book, Christ Our Joy: The Theological Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (Ignatius, 2008), by Monsignor Joseph Murphy, a former student of Ratzinger who currently works as an official of the Secretariat of State at the Vatican (he was also Chaplain to Pope John Paul II near the end of JP2's pontificate). In the introduction, Monsignor Murphy writes:

"Joy" is a word seldom far from the lips of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Frequently repeated in his homilies and addresses, it has emerged as one of the key themes of his pontificate. The notion of joy is an attractive one, for it is something we all seek. By evoking joy and associating it intimately with the life of faith, Pope Benedict invites us to ponder on what it really means to be Christian and on the effects that the Christian faith should produce in our lives. Joy is characteristic of the Christian, for it flows from the very heart of what Christianity is about: the merciful love of God the Father, made known to us through the saving work of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of love in the Church and in our souls. (p 1).

Further on in the Introduction there is a very helpful listing of ten characteristics of the theological work of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, including the qualities of being "solidly scriptural" (#1), "characterized above all by a search for truth" (#3), "profoundly ecclesial" (#4), very much about dialogue that is "sensitive to contemporary questions" (#7), and filled with a "sheer joy in the faith" (#10). I've yet to read the entire book, but it looks like another excellent addition to a body of fine works about the thought of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. In the words of Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P.:

The author has immersed himself in Pope Benedict's writings, many of which are occasional or fragmentary, and has made of them a coherent whole. What a surprise for many less perceptive critics to find that the motif of joy - of all things - could well be considered the master-theme of Joseph Ratzinger's work.  

There are, of course, a plenitude of "less perceptive critics" when it comes to the Holy Father. Not only is it easy to be a critic, it is far too easy to be a bad, clueless, cliché-dependent critic. A far more worthy goal is to be a perceptive and thoughtful reader of Benedict's many writings.

RELATED ARTICLES AND REVIEWS:

• Vatican II and the Ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger | Maximilian Heinrich Heim | Introduction to Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology.
• The Courage To Be Imperfect | Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D. | The Introduction to Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age
•The Theological Genius of Joseph Ratzinger | An Interview with Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D.
• God Made Visible: On the Foreword to Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Benedict and the Eucharist: On the Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis | Carl E. Olson

Go here for more articles and excerpts relating to Pope Benedict XVI.

Comments

[Tim Kellaway]

I think Mark Shea missed the point of Bruce Chilton's critique. Chilton was trying to say that Benedict was validating Luther's view of Law versus Gospel, which is not what Benedict is doing. Since the beginning of his pontificate, Benedict has been teaching that Catholicism does not consist ONLY of rules, not that they are not there.

Shea would have noticed this had he continued to read past the quotation he cited. Shea goes on to write: "One is left paralyzed facing the sheer Himalayas of ignorance that lie behind such a concatenation of words. One wonders if the man who types such things has ever discovered the epistle to the Romans is in the Catholic Bible, much less read it."

It would be nice if a Catholic, upon reading Romans, would remember that Catholic theology does not sunder works from acceptance by God or law from Gospel. We are not Lutherans. Our works are accounted to us.