ZENIT has an interview with Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, author of 
Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age, recently published by Ignatius Press. Some of the content is similar to my IgnatiusInsight.com interview with Fr. Twomey (posted last week), but is well worth the read. An excerpt:
Q: What do you think are the most defining characteristics of the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI?
Father Twomey: The most defining formal characteristics of his writings are originality, clarity and a superb literary style that is not easy to render in translation.
Ratzinger is more than a world-class scholar and academic: He is an original thinker.
He has the Midas touch, in the positive sense that whatever he touches, he turns to gold, in other words, whatever subject he examines, he has something new and exciting to say about it, be it the dogmas of the Church or a mosaic in an ancient Roman church or bioethics. And he writes with amazing clarity.
With regard to his style, Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne is reported as commenting that Ratzinger is the Mozart of theology -- he writes masterpieces effortlessly.
With regard to its content, as Ratzinger once said himself, "God is the real central theme of my endeavors."
There is hardly an area of theology -- dogma, moral, political life, bioethics, liturgy, exegesis, music, art -- that he has not examined in-depth. And everything he examines, he does so from God's viewpoint, as it were, namely trying to discover what light revelation -- Scripture and Tradition -- can shine on a particular issue.
On the other hand, his theological reflection is firmly rooted in contemporary experience: the questions and existential issues posed by modernity and post-modernity, by contemporary thinkers and the epoch-making events of our times.
However, his pastoral and administrative duties as archbishop and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were such that he had little time to write extensive monographs, with the result that most of his writings are of a fragmentary nature. But what fragments!
Each has the capacity to convey that insight into truth that touches the mind and heart of the reader -- and can effect in many a change of heart.
• Author Page for Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI
• The Courage To Be Imperfect | The Introduction to Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age (A Theological Portrait) | D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D.
• A Question of Fairness | A Review of Cardinal Ratzinger:The Vatican's Enforcer of the Faith, by John Allen | D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D.
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