Thanks for this translation, Teresa. One wishes it could be read by the critics of Papa's Auschwitz-speech. And you even translated the foot-ball speech, I see now for the first time!...hehehe, only Ratzinger can manage to put foot-ball in a philosophical framework.

Don't you think it is yet another negative reflection on the journalists and essayists (many of them, reputable scholars) who commented negatively about the Auschwitz-Birkenau speech that, before shooting from the hip, no one bothered to do a search on what Joseph Ratzinger has said about Jews and anti-Semitism in the thousands of words he has written over the years?

Yes, Crotchet, only (then) Cardinal Ratzinger could express it so well! He sees straight through to the truth and has the ability to put it into the most beautiful form with crystal clear logic.

He truly is the Mozart of Theology! Like Mozart he has the ability to create in his head, a piece perfect in form and content. But because of his deep humility, he is the last person to realize that, with his great genius, he is most like his favorite composer! Also, great soccer piece, Papa.

Yes, Teresa, you're right - I thought Papa at Auschwitz, both in words and actions, was perfection. But, even if they had done their research before his Auschwitz address, some journalists would probably have still found SOMEthing about which to bash him.[sigh]

Last August 17, I posted the following in POPE-POURRI. Not surprisingly, for anyone who is interested in the issue, Christopher of the RFC devotes his blog today
www.ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/2006/08/war-no-good-to-anyone-words...
to this question and uses the same items I cited as his take-off point.

This being a very significant issue for our day, I am transferring any discussion of it to this thread.
---------------------------------------------------------------

This was my 8/17/06 post, including my personal comments on the matter -

In www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=402
contributor Robert T. Miller, who teaches law at Villanova University, has this to say:

August 16, 2006
On August 1, I criticized Pope Benedict XVI's call for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Since then, he has granted an interview to some German journalists in anticipation of his upcoming trip to Bavaria.

Asked about the fighting in the Middle East, he said in part:
"We do want to appeal to all Christians and to all those who feel touched by the words of the Holy See, to help mobilize all the forces that recognize how war is the worst solution for all sides. It brings no good to anyone, not even to the apparent victors. We understand this very well in Europe, after the two world wars."

I find it difficult to understand how the pope says this. Along with many others, I often invoke the Second World War as the paradigm example of a just war, of a case where morality not only permitted but required the use of armed force in order to combat evil.

But here Benedict, expressly mentioning the world wars, says that they brought no good to anyone.

No good to Elie Wiesel, and all the other prisoners liberated from Buchenwald?

No good to the peoples of France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and others saved from Nazi domination? No good to the Poles and other Slavs, destined to slavery to support the Third Reich?

No good to the young Joseph Ratzinger, who, freed from service in the Wehrmacht, was able to enter seminary, study theology, become a priest and a professor, and live to become pope?
[Teresa's comment: This question is out of place here - The war did not have to happen for Joseph Ratzinger to become a priest!]

As it stands, this statement from Benedict is unsupportable. All serious people know that war is a terrible reality to be avoided whenever possible, and Benedict should certainly say this. But he is also a great theologian, well able to make moral distinctions. He ought not make statements that can so easily be understood as endorsing a dangerously naive pacifism that is incompatible with the Catholic moral tradition.


Mark P. Shea in "Catholic and Enjoying It' says -

I basically agree with Miller...though I'd like more context to what the Holy Father is saying.

On the other hand, I'm also reminded of something Ross Douthat was pointing the other day: namely, that much of our foreign policy seems to be driven by a curious tendency to view the world through the prism of various years, depending on our ideology. For some people, it's always 1938, for others, 1919, for others, 1948....

For me, it's 2006 and I'm highly suspicious of all moral calculations that appeal to a clock for legitimacy. I plod along, looking at just war teaching, and find myself increasing puzzled as to how to unscramble the various eggs our Best and Brightest have scrambled for us in recent years.

On the whole, though I disagree with the Pope's remarks as they stand (since I believe in Just War teaching), I find myself thinking that I'd rather live in a world of people who err as the Pope does, than in a world of War Zealots and Master Planners with big ideas for a New American Century based on "creative destruction" and other Machiavellian schemes.

In short, I don't have much in the way of solutions, but I have a clearer and clearer idea of who I trust as I try to think things through.

I hope you will excuse my ruminating aloud. Nothing final here. I'm still feeling my way.


Then, Shea adds this update:

Reader M.Z. Forrest notes:
"For perspective, I think we should take into consideration that he was speaking to German reporters. What grievances did WWI and WWII solve for the Germans? WWI brought them the lost of some of their most productive land in the west and economic collapse. WWII gave them 1/4 of their country put in communist oppression."

D'oh! Why didn't I think of that? Makes perfect sense. Thanks, M.Z.

----------------------------------------------------------------

MMMM....I agree that the Pope's statement "Wars bring no good to anyone" was too sweeping. And I was too taken by the charm and novelty of the whole interview that this escaped my critical faculties.

Wars are bad and must be avoided whenever possible, but although I have read very little of the Catholic concept of a just war, my common sense tells me that there are necessary wars, as World War II was, or the wars Israel has fought to defend its existence. Even the war that toppled the Taliban mullahs in Afghanistan. Or a war to topple the current crazies in Iran, if it came to that.

And that the achievement of one's goal in a necessary war (or a just war, if the necessary war meets the criteria) - for instance, to defeat Hitler and the Nazi ideology - is certainly to be seen as "good." Even Joseph Ratzinger has said so in many ways! So why would Pope Benedict say something else now?

I could say he was probably thinking of Iraq and the perpetual intifadah in the Holy Land and assorted civil wars in Africa... but he mentioned the two world wars specifically. World War I probably deserves what Benedict XV called it, 'inutile strage', useless massacres, because no core principles were involved, just conflicting national interests. But World War II? And after Benedict XVI's discourse in Auschwitz-Birkenau?

Reader Forrest's comment that the Pope's context was what happened to Germany after both world wars may be extenuating, but the Pope clearly said "We understand this very well in Europe..." so he was not referring to Germany alone.

If he had not added the sentence, "We understand this very well in Europe, after the two world wars," the whole quotation would have been unexceptionable, what one expects the Pope, any Pope to say. Basically, it's the reference to World War-II in that sentence that threw the statement out of kilter.

I hope the Holy Father clarifies this issue!
---------------------------------------------------------------

Christopher gives the 'clarification' by citing the address that then Cardinal Ratzinger delivered in Caen, France, on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. This, of course, is probably the most apropos instance of Joseph Ratzinger's justification for why World War II was necessary - one of many similar statements he has made in the past as I mentioned in my comments on 8/17/06.

The D-Day anniversary addresses places his recent statement to German TV in the right context, i.e., this Pope is neither politically naive nor a peace-for-peace's-sake idealist, and thank God for that.

This address apparently became chapter 6 of the Cardinal's book "Values in a Time of Upheaval", but Christopher credits Forum member rcesq for pointing out the address to him in her comment to his May blog about 'just wars' by Catholic standards.

I have only archived the address in its original French, along with the audio of it, but I will post the official English translation as soon as I get the link to the full text.

=====================================================================

Christopher has found another source in which Cardinal Ratzinger gives unequivocal context for his thoughts on a 'just war':


In a November 2001 interview with Polish radio, Cardinal Ratzinger had the opportunity to elaborate more fully on the question "Is there any such thing as a 'just war'?":

Cardinal Ratzinger: This is a major issue of concern. In the preparation of the Catechism, there were two problems: the death penalty and just war theory were the most debated. The debate has taken on new urgency given the response of the Americans. Or, another example: Poland, which defended itself against Hitler.
I'd say that we cannot ignore, in the great Christian tradition and in a world marked by sin, any evil aggression that threatens to destroy not only many values, many people, but the image of humanity itself.

In this case, defending oneself and others is a duty. Let's say for example that a father who sees his family attacked is duty-bound to defend them in every way possible -- even if that means using proportional violence.

Thus, the just war problem is defined according to these parameters:

1) Everything must be conscientiously considered, and every alternative explored if there is even just one possibility to save human life and values;

2) Only the most necessary means of defense should be used and human rights must always be respected; in such a war the enemy must be respected as a human being and all fundamental rights must be respected.

I think that the Christian tradition on this point has provided answers that must be updated on the basis of new methods of destruction and of new dangers. For example, there may be no way for a population to defend itself from an atomic bomb. So, these must be updated.

But I'd say that we cannot totally exclude the need, the moral need, to suitably defend people and values against unjust aggressors.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Suffice to say Cardinal Ratzinger comes across as squarely in the middle - which is to say, neither a pacifist who would prohibit the use of armed force altogether, nor as one who would bless and lend clerical sanction to any effort made by the warring state. And I think that we can safely conclude from this that he would maintain the legitimacy of the just war tradition.

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In connection with the Muslim reaction to the Regensburg lecture, in which almost every Muslim critic accused the Church and the Pope of seeing 'the mote in another's eye but not the beam in theirs' - Beatrice in her excellent site www.beatriceweb.eu pointed us to the 32-page report published by the International Theological Commission under Cardinal Ratzinger in March 2000 on "Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past".

Beatrice also cited excerpts from a book by Cardinal Ratzinger, "Walking with God" (my translation of the French title 'Faire route avec Dieu') - which has not appeared in English - in which he explains how the Commission, of which, being Prefect of the CDF at the time, he was ex-officio President, came up with the document.

Strangely, although he was present at the presentation of the document to the press on March 7, 2000, he did not make the presentation. I checked the Vatican press bulletin for that day and the main presenter was Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, as chairman of the Jubilee 2000 preparatory committee.

Here is a translation of those excerpts:

---------------------------------------------------------------

Through his apostolic letter 'Tertio millennio inneunte', the Pope made known his desire that the Holy Year 2000 should not only be an occasion for individual penitence, but also for a 'purification of memory' by the Church, a purification in which she should remember the sins of the past which weigh on her history.

This presented theology with a subject which was new in this respect: to whom would the multiple sins committed (in her name) throughout the history of the Church be attributed? Could the Church name itself to be at fault? What kind of confession, of penance and of pardon would be possible for these cases?
....

It is right that the media should speak of the Pope's 'mea culpa' in the name of the Church. One cites the Confiteor which we say every day at the start of the Mass. The priest, the Pope, laymen, everyone confesses as an individual "I" - each one in particular, but all together before God and in the presence of brothers and sisters in the faith - to have sinned, to have rendered oneself culpable, even of very grave sins.
...
There were three important points in our first consideration. The subject of a confession is "I" - I am not confessing the sins of others but mine. Nevertheless, I confess my sins, and this is the second point, before others and before God. And finally, I ask simultaneously of my brothers and sisters to pray for me, and so, within God's pardon, I also seek reconciliation with my brothers and sisters.
.....

Considering this permanent 'mea culpa' within the Church, one can ask - and I have also asked myself - what is the surprise, the novelty, of this event in the Holy Year?

My impression, which I will set forth here for discussion, was that something changed with the dawn of the modern era, when Protestantism created a new historiography for the Church to show that the Catholic Church was not only covered with sins - something it has always known and said - but that it was completely corrupted and ruined, and no longer the church of Christ, but on the contrary, it had become an instrument of the anti-Christ.

As it was corrupted to the very bottom, it was no longer the Church, but the 'Anti-Church.' At that point, something had obviously changed.

By necessity, a Catholic historiography was born to oppose that image, with the aim of showing that the Catholic Church - despite its faults which were more than evident and which it was not about to deny - still remains the Church of Christ, the church of saints, the holy Church.

At that moment of confrontation between two historiographies, in which the Catholic historian had to resort to apologetics to show that, despite everything, the holiness of the Church remained intact, the tendency towards any open confession of the sins of the Church was necessarily silenced.

The situation only became worse during the century of Enlightenment. Think of Voltaire who cried out "Crush infamy!" Accusations against the Church simply mounted until the time of Nietszche, who considered the Church not only totally void of the will of Christ, but as the great evil of humanity, an alienation of man who should therefore be liberated in order to become himself.

The same theme appeared, in different guise, under Marxism. It also affirmed that the Church, Christianity, made man a stranger to himself, that the Church approved of oppression and barred the way to progress.

During the century of Enlightenment, some regrettable realities of history were magnified into myth - the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts - far beyond actual historical fact. They became mythical scarecrows which not only justified a renunciation of the Church, but demanded it.

And any attempt to look at history in a more nuanced way; to distinguish more clearly who was responsible for what, and why; to consider the complexity of events and the different actions by those involved - all that was considered condemnable, a concession to inhumanity.

Wherever the regrettable incidents give rise to a profession of negative faith and where they cannot be considered within a context of cause-and-effect, the participation of all believers in a confession of sins becomes more difficult. Therefore, we should try to make it clear even to them that, despite everything, the Church has been and has remained an instrument of good for man, not of his destruction.

But today, we find ourselves in a situation where the Church can go back, with much greater freedom, to an open confession of sins and when it can also invite other religions to do the same and come to profound reconciliation with one another.

We have seen the great destruction caused by atheisms which engendered a new level of anti-humanism. The atrocities invented and practised by the atheistic systems of the past century far surpass anything that went before. We cannot look back at them without a shudder.

Saying No to the Church, No to God, No to Christ, does not save man. On the contrary, we have seen what terrible possibilities it unleashes in man.

So today we are faced with the question - where are we in this regard? Who will save man? With this new opening, we can proceed to confess our sins and recognize at the same time, with new confidence, the gift that the Lord gave us in His Church, and that all the sins committed in her name could not destroy her nor will ever destroy her.

To conclude, I would like once more to formulate briefly three criteria for the correct relation between the sins 'of the Church' and a new way to purify memory.

The first criterion: The Church of our time cannot present itself as a tribunal to judge past generations - even if the 'mea culpa' necessarily applies to sins of the past. Without those errors, we would not be able to understand our present situation.

The Church cannot and should not live its present with arrogance, nor feel exempt from those sins, nor consider the sins of the past and the sins of others as a source of evil.

A confession of sins from the past should not keep us from aknowledging the sins of the present. Rather it sholdl help to awaken our own conscience and open for all of us the way to conversion.

Second criterion: confession means, according to St. Augustine "to tell the truth." That is why it is above all the discipline and the humility of truth that are required in order not to deny all the evil that has been committed in the Church, but also in order not to assume sins which were not committed or about which there is no historical certitude.

Third criterion: Still according to Augustine, we must point out that a Christian 'confessio peccati' should always go with a 'confessio laudis'.

In making a sincere examination of conscience, we would discover that we have committed many wrongs in every generation.
But we also see that, inspite of those sins, God purifies and renews His Church continuously and that he entrusts great things to fragile vessels.

Who would not recognize, for instance, even during the past two centuries that were ravaged by the cruelty of atheisms, all the good that has been done by religious congregations and by lay movements in the field of education and in the social sector, by their commitment to help the weak, the sick, the suffering and the poor?

It would be a lack of sincerity to see only the wrongs that have been committed and not the good that God has worked through the faithful, despite their sins.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I call attention, incidentally, to the clause that I underscored above, about how the Church today cannot be a tribunal to judge past errors.

When Pope Benedict XVI said this in Poland last May, most of the Italian Vaticanists, including Vittorio Messori, concluded that Benedict was reproving his predecessor for all his 'mea culpas' on behalf of the Church.

It strikes me as odd that none of the Vatican experts remembered that in fact, this 'non-judgmental' condition was originally postulated for those very 'mea culpas'!

The Polish journalists who said Benedict he was referring to the then-ongoing investigation into Polish priests accused of having collaborated with the Communists were probably more on the mark.

This thread has been neglected for some time - for the simple reason that there are no English translations easily available, if at all, of many things Joseph Ratzinger wrote.

The following post is not just about Joseph Ratzinger, however, but is a comparison between what Cardinal Martini preached in 2005 about the Sermon on the Mount, and what Cardinal Raztinger had to say about it in a book that came out in 1989.

In many ways, the comparison is most instructive indeed!

================================================================


In the main forum, Ratzigirl has resurrected a comparison made back in May 2005 between the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount (also known as the Beaitudes) by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and by Cardinal Ratzinger.

Martini’s homily was delivered in the Cathedral of Milan on May 8, 2005 to mark the 25th anniversary of his episcopal ordination. Italy’s most important newspaper, Corriere della Sera, based in Milan where Martini was Archbishop for 22 years, ran the full homily on its front page the next day supposedly as the emblematic alternative 'manifesto' to what was considered to be the new Pope’s ‘neo-conservatism.'

Martini, commenting on Jesus’s command, “Teach all the nations,” said it meant “to teach and observe everything that the Lord has commanded." And everything He commanded, Martini points out, is contained in Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, and in Matthew 25, “What you have done for the least of my brothers, you have done for me.”

He goes on:

---

This is what we should teach and follow, and such a discourse is very important today. I notice it, living in a place of particular suffering, where humanity’s knots are all entangled: Jerusalem, in the Middle East.

We all have an immense need of learning to live together with all our differences, respecting each other. Not destroying each other, not isolating each other in ghettos, not despising each other, and not even just tolerating each other, because tolerance would be too little. Nor, would I say, attempting any conversions right away, because this word raises impassable barriers when said in certain situations or among certain nations.

Rather we should ‘ferment’ each other reciprocally so that each one is led to realize more profoundly his own authenticity, his own truth, before the mystery of God. To this end, there is no means more concrete, more accessible, than the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

These are words that no one can reject, because they speak to us of joy, of beatitude, of forgiveness, loyalty, renouncing ambition, moderation in our desire for gain, consistency in our behavior, sincerity.

These words, which have the full power of Jesus behind them, touch every heart, every religion, every belief, every non-belief. No one can say, “These words are not for me – not sincerity, nor loyalty, nor fighting the lies about what constitutes goodness in this world.”

It is a discourse for everyone, it gives us all something in common, it unites us, it calls on us all to look into our own personal authenticity. It is a message that allows us all to live together with all our differences, respecting each other. Not destroying each other reciprocally, not isolating each other in ghettos, nor destroying each other, not keeping a ‘proper’ distance between each other, but fermenting each other…

If we do so, then all men will recognize themselves in these values, will feel closer to each other, as neighbors and as fellow travelers. They will feel having profound and true realities in common that perhaps they may not have discovered without Jesus.

Thus, beyond ethnic, social and even religious and confessional differences, humanity will find a capacity for living together, growing in peace, conquering violence and terorism, overcoming their reciprocal differences.

Then the grace of God will be fully manifest.

---

Martini's 'ode' to universal brotherhood was contrasted with some words the new Pope said in his homily at the National Eucharistic Congress in Bari, Italy, on May 29, 2005, for the Corpus Domini Mass.

He commented on the words of Jesus, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” (Jn 6,53) – words, he pointed out, which disconcerted His disciples.

Benedict XVI said:

---

In answer to the ripple of protest, Jesus could have fallen back on reassuring words. “Friends,’ he could have said, “don’t worry! I spoke about flesh but I was only using a symbol. What I meant was simply a profound communion of feeling.”

But no, Jesus did not resort to any such sweetening. He mtained His statement, in all its realism, even with the defection of many of his disciples. “As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” (Jn 6,66).

Indeed, He was willing to accept the defection of even the Twelve rather than change the concreteness of his discourse in any way. "Do you also want to leave?” (Jn 6,67), he asked them.

Thank God Peter gave an answer, that even we, today, can make ours: ” "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6,68).

---

On the Sermon on the Mount itself, this is what Joseph Ratzinger said in his book, “Looking at Christ: Exercises in faith, hope and charity” , first published in 1989.

---

In order to grasp the true profundity of the Beatitudes, we should bring to light an aspect of modern exegesis that is rarely considered, but in my opinion, it is decisive for a realistic interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety. I am referring to the Christological dimension of this text…

The secret subject of the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus. The Sermon is not exaggerated or unreal moralism, which would mean it has no relationship to our life and would seem to be unpracticable in totality.

Nor is it, as an opposite hypothesis would have it, simply a mirror in which we can see that each of us is a sinner, and will all remain sinners, therefore we can only reach salvation through the unconditional grace of God.

With such an opposition between moralism and the theory of salvation-by-grace-alone, one is getting away from the text rather than going into it.

But Christ is the center that brings those two extremes together, and only discovering Christ in the text will open it to us and make it into words of hope.

If we look at the Sermon on the Mount essentially, then Jesus appears as the secret subject all over. It is He in whom one sees what is meant by “being poor in spirit.” He is the afflicted, the meek, the one who hungers, and thirsts for justice, the merciful. It is He with the pure heart, He who brings peace, He who is persecuted in the cause of justice. All the words in the Sermon on the Mount are flesh and blood in Him.

The Sermon on the Mount is a call to an imitation of Christ: Only He is perfect, as Our Father in heaven (Mt 5, 48). We cannot be ‘perfect like Our Father who is in heaven,' but we should be, in order to fulfill the mission of our human nature. We cannot be perfect, but we can follow Jesus, adhere to Him, ‘become His.”

If we belong to Him like His own limbs, then we can become, by participation, what He is – His goodness becomes ours. The words of the father in the parable of the prodigal son then become realized in us: “Everything that is mine is yours” (Lk 15,31).

Then the moralism of the Sermon, too arduous for us, is taken up and transformed into communion with Jesus, in being a disciple of Christ, friends with Him, trusting Him.

---

I must say I was rather stunned when I read this comparison. Stunned because I had expected much more of Cardinal Martini, a world-famous Biblical scholar, than a banal homily that any parish priest with Kumbaya mentality could have preached. It also sounds to me like it was delivered offhand - it has very much of an improvised tone about it, when one would have expected to get the sense that it was well thought out and prepared with care. Especially since the occasion was the 25th anniversary of his episcopal ordination.

And then we come to the two excerpts from Benedict XVI and Joseph Ratzinger. In both cases, he gives us a radically fresh reading of Bible passages that are familiar even to people who have never read the Bible.

In the Bari homily, the novelty is not that he defends the literalness of the 'flesh and blood' that Jesus speaks of, because he has always been very clear about the Magisterium on that point - at the Consecration, bread and wine are not mere symbols but are the Flesh and Blood of Christ, just as the Resurrection literally happened.

The novelty is how he points out that Jesus never ever tried to sweeten His message, even if it meant losing disciples who could not accept Him at His word.

It's all of a piece, however, with Joseph Ratzinger's often-expressed image of the Catholic Church in the current era as consisting more of small nuclei of true and faithful believers within that vast tent of 1.1 billion nominal Catholics, rather than a homogeneous worldwide community, much as we would want that to be the case.

So the Church, like Christ its Head, is not going to accommodate itself to what some of its 'members' want - even if they end up being a considerable number, these cafeteria Catholics. You don't sweeten or dilute the message of God - you take it straight or not at all.

And the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is just brilliant, of course. Once it is pointed out that way, you cannot see it any other way again! How realistic and yet how hopeful, that if we adhere to Christ, if we persevere in doing that, we won't be perfect but we will partake of His perfection.

The other obvious characteristic if we compare this particular Martini text and the Ratzinger texts is how Ratzinger does not try to get away with broad and facile generalizations, as Martini does in his Kumbaya homily, but gets down to concrete specifics one can almost physically grasp, not airy-fairy 'feel-good' platitudes.

I have been looking for this interview, whether in the original French or any translation I can read, since I couldn't get it online (Figaro archives are only open to subscribers), but today, while trolling the Net for articles on Cardinal Biffi, lo and behold, here is an English translation even, from a Communione e Liberazione site.

It was an interview given to Jean Sevilla for Le Figaro magazine in November 2001. And just a few weeks ago, I found Cardinal Ratzinger's answer to the concluding question in an excerpt Beatrice posted on her website, and posted a translation in POPE-POURRI because he was asked what would be 'the great tasks of the next Pontificate', and the first line of his answer was,"It will not be up to me to establish its program!"

As usual, the Cardinal's words are timeless....

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The Abolition of Man
Le Figaro Magazine
by Jean Sévilla

An interview with the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Truth and subjectivism. Church and tolerance. West and Islam. Science and the future.
A viewpoint on basic issues of our times.



You once wrote that “faith has not disappeared, but has migrated into the realm of the subjective.” According to the Church, what are the consequences of contemporary relativism?
Since the Enlightenment, faith is no longer a mission that unites the world, as it was in the Middle Ages. Science has codified a new perception of reality: only what can be demonstrated in a laboratory is considered to be objectively well-founded. All the rest – God, morality, eternal life – is transferred to the realm of subjectivity. To hold that there is a truth accessible to all in the religious sphere would imply also a certain amount of intolerance. Relativism becomes the virtue of democracy.

And yet, according to the Church, does the Christian faith have an objective content?
Certainly. And this cultural context generates our greatest difficulty in announcing the Gospel.

But the limits of subjectivism can be made evident: if we accept relativism completely, in religion but also in matters of morality, this leads to the destruction of society.

By increasing rationalism more and more, reason itself is destroyed and anarchy established: when each person constitutes an island of incommunicability, the basic rules of coexistence fall apart. If it is the majority that sets the moral rules, then tomorrow a majority can impose opposite rules to those that were valid yesterday. We have lived even the experience of totalitarianism, in which those in power establish the moral rules by their authority. Thus, relativism ends up in anarchy or totalitarianism.

Does the Church still consider herself to be missionary?
Yes. I would say once again missionary. Today, the word mission is not always correctly understood, because one thinks of the destruction of ancient cultures by the West.

The historical reality, however, is different: we know that the Christian missionaries – in Africa, in Asia, but also in Latin America –were often the real defenders of human dignity. These missionaries saved a part of the ancient cultures by transcribing the indigenous languages and compiling dictionaries and grammar books.

They helped to bring about that great revolution which was the encounter between Europe and these peoples, integrating the traditions that converged with the Christian faith.

Certain current problems of Africa derive from the fact that, with Western rationalism, we have destroyed the ancient moral values without offering anything in return. And, given that we have imported the technology, what is left is weapons, and the war of everyone against everyone else.

In short, it is Christian mission that can defend the edification of modern societies, maintaining their ties with their own roots.

The Church declares that she is against intolerance. But isn’t she a victim herself of intolerance?
Certainly. There have been, on one hand, the totalitarian philosophies, even if currently Marxism is in crisis. On the other, agnostic rationalism is not as pacific as it might seem. Some consider the Church to be the last bulwark of intolerance, but in order to combat this intolerance, they become intolerant. And this intolerance can turn into violence.

In the contestations against the Church, questions about sexuality and free moral choice come up quite frequently. Why is there this lack of understanding between the modern world and the Church?
Here we arrive at an individualistic view of man. Our era glorifies the body and its pleasures, it exalts sexual freedom but considers that this pertains more to the sphere of biology than to psychology. A subtle separation is made between the biological, the bodily factors that supposedly elude spiritual responsibility since they are part of the order of nature – and the human being as such. From the moment when sexuality is seen as a purely biological phenomenon, a sexual morality no longer has any meaning.

Contemporary culture is the culture of absolute freedom, according to which man must “fulfill himself.” Thus, there does not exist a human nature that defines good and evil. This view is opposed to the tradition of the Church, but also to all the conceptions which say that a certain line of behavior, the very meaning of our being, is inscribed in our nature.

The Church speaks of natural law, of natural morals. On the contrary, if all we are is products of evolution, we are free to define ourselves. There is then, as Sartre said, a freedom in the sense that “I am not defined”: in my situation, I must invent what man is.

Whereas in the Christian view, man’s existence – man’s and woman’s – is the bearer of an idea of the Creator, a Creator who has a plan for the world, which expresses incarnate ideas in the reality of the world.

And the relationship of fidelity between a man and a woman reveals a destination of one for the other, in a profound unity of body and spirit, to which future generations are linked. The elevation of physical reactions to the level of realities lived in respect of the person is the difficult, but great and beautiful, path of Christian morality on sexuality.

The European Union’s Charter of Basic Rights, adopted last year, refused to make reference to the “religious heritage” of Europe. What do you think of this interpretation of secularism?
We must define secularism properly. For me, a positive notion of secularism exists in the sense that Christianity, a new phenomenon in history, posited the difference, recognizing the distinction between religion and the state.

This distinction between the kingdom of God and that of Caesar is the source of the concept of freedom that has developed in Europe and in the West. It implies that religion gives man a vision for all of life, not only for the spiritual realm.

But the religious institution is not totalitarian – it is limited by the state, and the state cannot take everything in hand, as it in turn is limited by freedom of religion. The state is not everything, and the Church, in this world, is not everything.

Taken in this sense, secularism is profoundly Christian. The hostility of the Nazis toward Christianity, especially Catholicism, was based on the idea that the state is everything.

But if secularism wants to mean that there is no room for God in public life, then this is a grave error. Political institutions and religious institutions possess their own particular spheres. Nonetheless, the fundamental values of faith must be manifested publicly, not through the institutional strength of the Church, but through the force of their inner truth. If secularism intends to exclude religion, it effects a mutilation of the human being.

Is the confrontation between the Western world and the Muslim world a clash of civilizations?
Islam does not exist as one solid bloc. There is no Magisterium of Islam, nor a centralized Islamic constitution. The Koran furnishes certain common referents for the Islamic world. But it gives rise to different interpretations, and Islam becomes concrete within very diverse cultural contexts, from Indonesia to India, from the Middle East to Africa.

Therefore, the Islamic world is not a bloc and it does not erase national temperaments: there are countries with an Islamic majority which are extremely tolerant and others that exclude Christianity to a greater or lesser degree.

Today, Islam is massively present in Europe. And there seems to be emerging a certain amount of blame on the part of those who feel that the West has lost its moral conscience.

For example, whenever marriage and homosexuality are considered equivalent, whenever atheism is transformed into a right to blasphemy, especially in art, these facts are horrible for Muslims.

Hence, the widespread impression, in the Islamic world, that Christianity is dying, that the West is falling into decadence, and the feeling that Islam alone brings the light of faith and morality. Some Muslims see in this an unbridgeable opposition between the Western world – and its moral and religious relativism – and the Islamic world.

To speak of a confrontation of cultures is sometimes correct: in the rebuke of the West we find the consequences of the past, when Islam was subjected to the domination of the European countries. We can thus reach the point of terrible extremes of fanaticism.

This is one of the faces of Islam; it is not all of Islam. There are also Muslims who seek a peaceful dialogue with Christians. Consequently, it is important to judge the various aspects of a situation which is worrisome for all sides.

Last year, Cardinal Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, aroused debate by declaring that Muslim immigration raises problems…
Cardinal Biffi’s reflection was more subtle. He pointed out that there is currently in act a migration of peoples, but it is clear that every government, even the most open-minded, cannot accept all immigrants indefinitely.

Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between those who are allowed to come in and the others. According to what criteria? This was Cardinal Biffi’s question.

Starting from the moment when some choices are inevitable, we must accept first of all – in view of the civil peace of our European societies – the groups that can be most easily integrated, the ones closest to our culture.

If a cultural incompatibility, a lack of understanding, manifests itself, all of society is torn apart by it. And this is not helpful to anyone, not even to the Muslim immigrants. Defining the criteria that enable the unity of a country and foster its social peace is in everybody’s interest.

The modern world lived in the worship of progress and reason. After two world wars, the Gulags, Auschwitz, and terrorism, do the notions of progress and reason still make sense?
I have always been skeptical of the concept of progress. There is, of course, a progress in the amount of knowledge, in science and technology. But this progress does not necessarily bring about a progress in moral values, nor in our ability to put to good use the power granted by knowledge. On the contrary, power can be a factor of destruction.

I have always been contrary to the Utopian spirit, to faith in a perfect society – conceiving a perfect society once and for all means excluding the freedom of every day. It is certainly true that reason and morality are fragile, that a society can always autodestruct. We must hope forthe presence of sufficient moral strength that is capable of opposing evil.

The sale of organs, genetic manipulation, cloning… Is it necessary to place limits on medical and scientific research?
For modern man, the idea of placing limits on research sounds like blasphemy. However, an intrinsic limit exists, and this is human dignity.

Progress obtained at the price of the violation of human dignity is unacceptable. If research attacks man, it is a deviation of science. Even if we protest that this or that research will open possibilities for the future, we must say no when man is at stake.

The comparison is a bit strong, but I would like to recall that already once before, medical experiments were carried out on persons who were held to be inferior. Where will the logic that consists in treating a fetus or an embryo as a thing lead?

What does the Church expect from young people?
That young people do not have in them the prejudices of the 1968 generation, which drove a great number of people – even men of the Church – away from the faith. We expect young people to start over with a new vitality, an openness to discovering in Christ a God who is truth and love.

What will be the great tasks of the next pontificate?
It is not up to me to establish its program! Also, the world changes rapidly; what seemed imperative yesterday does not have the same importance today. It seems to me that the most urgent problems, for the Church, come from what we have just said.

How do we deal with the situation created by a Western world that itself is full of doubt, that no longer acknowledges a rational foundation in a common faith; a world that is thus abandoned to subjectivism and relativism?

And then there are Islam and also Buddhism, the two great challenges for the Western world. It is necessary to set up a dialogue with them, to find a way of understanding each other without losing sight of the great light that comes to us from the figure of Jesus Christ.

In case you do not have INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY -



From Introduction to Christianity


To the Christian, faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is an expression of certainty that the saying that seems to be only a beautiful dream is in fact true: "Love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). In the Old Testament this sentence comes in the middle of praises of the power of eros. But this by no means signifies that we can simply push it aside as a lyrical exaggeration. The boundless demands of eros", its apparent exaggerations and extravagance, do in reality give expression to a basic problem, indeed the" basic problem of human existence, insofar as they reflect the nature and intrinsic paradox of love: love demands infinity, indestructibility; indeed, it is, so to speak, a call for infinity. But it is also a fact that this cry of love's cannot be satisfied, that it demands infinity but cannot grant it; that it claims eternity but in fact is included in the world of death, in its loneliness and its power of destruction. Only from this angle can one understand what "resurrection" means. It is" the greater strength of love in face of death.

At the same time it is proof of what only immortality can create: being in the other who still stands when I have fallen apart. Man is a being who himself does not live forever but is necessarily delivered up to death. For him, since he has no continuance in himself, survival, from a purely human point of view, can only become possible through his continuing to exist in another. The statements of Scripture about the connection between sin and death are to he understood from this angle. For it now becomes clear that man's attempt "to be like God", his striving for autonomy, through which he wishes to stand on his own feet alone, means his death, for he just cannot stand on his own. If man--and this is the real nature of sin--nevertheless refuses to recognize his own limits and tries to be completely self-sufficient, then precisely by adopting this attitude he delivers himself up to death.

Of course man does understand that his life alone does not endure and that he must therefore strive to exist in others, so as to remain through them and in them in the land of the living. Two ways in particular have been tried. First, living on in one's own children: that is why in primitive peoples failure to marry and childlessness are regarded as the most terrible curse; they mean hopeless destruction, final death. Conversely, the largest possible number of children offers at the same time the greatest possible chance of survival, hope of immortality, and thus the most genuine blessing that man can expect. Another way discloses itself when man discovers that in his children he only continues to exist in a very unreal way; he wants more of himself to remain. So he takes refuge in the idea of fame, which should make him really immortal if be lives on through all ages in the memory of others. Brit this second attempt of man's to obtain immortality for himself by existing in others fails just as badly as the first: what remains is not the self but only its echo, a mere shadow. So self-made immortality is really only a Hades, a sheol": more nonbeing than being. The inadequacy of both ways lies partly in the fact that the other person who holds my being after my death cannot carry this being itself but only its echo; and even more in the fact that even time other person to whom I have, so to speak, entrusted my continuance will not last--he, too, will perish.

This leads us to the next step. We have seen so far that man has no permanence in himself. And consequently can only continue to exist in another but that his existence in another is only shadowy and once again not final, because this other must perish, too. If this is so, then only one could truly give lasting stability: he who is, who does not come into existence and pass away again but abides in the midst of transience: the God of the living, who does not hold just the shadow and echo of my being, whose ideas are not just copies of reality. I myself am his thought, which establishes me more securely, so to speak, than I am in myself; his thought is not the posthumous shadow but the original source and strength of my being. In him I can stand as more than a shadow; in him I am truly closer to myself than I should be if I just tried to stay by myself.

Before we return from here to the Resurrection, let us try to see the same thing once again from a somewhat different side. We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one.

But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with faith in the Resurrection of Jesus? Well, we previously considered the question of the possible immortality of man from two sides, which now turn out to be aspects of one and. the same state of affairs. We said that, as man has no permanence in himself, his survival could. only be brought about by his living on in another. And we said, from the point of view of this "other", that only the love that takes up the beloved in itself, into its own being, could make possible this existence in the other. These two complementary aspects are mirrored again, so it seems to me, in the two New Testament ways of describing the Resurrection of the Lord: "Jesus has risen" and "God (the Father) has awakened Jesus." The two formulas meet in the fact that Jesus' total love for men, which leads him to the Cross, is perfected in totally passing beyond to the Father and therein becomes stronger than death, because in this it is at the same time total "being held" by him.

From this a further step results. We can now say that love always establishes some kind of immortality; even in its prehuman stage, it points, in the form of preservation of the species, in this direction. Indeed, this founding of immortality is not something incidental to love, not one thing that it does among others, but what really gives it its specific character. This principle can be reversed; it then signifies that immortality always" proceeds from love, never out of the autarchy of that which is sufficient to itself. We may even be bold enough to assert that this principle, properly understood, also applies even to God as he is seen by the Christian faith. God, too, is absolute permanence, as opposed to everything transitory, for the reason that he is the relation of three Persons to one another, their incorporation in the "for one another" of love, act-substance of the love that is absolute and therefore completely "relative", living only "in relation to". As we said earlier, it is not autarchy, which knows no one but itself, that is divine; what is revolutionary about the Christian view of the world and of God, we found, as opposed to those of antiquity, is that it learns to understand the "absolute" as absolute "relatedness", as relatio subsistens.

To return to our argument, love is the foundation of immortality, and immortality proceeds from love alone. This statement to which we have now worked our way also means that he who has love for all has established immortality for all. That is precisely the meaning of the biblical statement that his Resurrection is our life. The--to us--curious reasoning of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians now becomes comprehensible: if he has risen, then we have, too, for then love is stronger than death; if he has not risen, then we have not either, for then the situation is still that death has the last word, nothing else (cf. I Cor 15:16f.). Since this is a statement of central importance, let us spell it out once again in a different way: Either love is stronger than death, or it is not. If it has become so in him, then it became so precisely as love for others. This also means, it is true, that our own love, left to itself, is not sufficient to overcome death; taken in itself it would have to remain an unanswered cry. It means that only his love, coinciding with God's own power of life and love, can be the foundation of our immortality. Nevertheless, it still remains true that the mode of our immortality will depend on our mode of loving. We shall have to return to this in the section on the Last Judgment.

A further point emerges from this discussion. Given the foregoing considerations, it goes without saying that the life of him who has risen from the dead is not once again bios, the biological form of our mortal life within history; it is zoe, new, different, definitive life; life that has stepped beyond the mortal realm of bios and history, a realm that has here been surpassed by a greater power. And in fact the Resurrection narratives of the New Testament allow us to see clearly that the life of the Risen One lies, not within the historical bios, but beyond and above it. It is also true, of course, that this new life begot itself in history and had to do so, because after all it is there for history, and the Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us. Once we have realized this, it is no longer difficult to find the right kind of hermeneutics for the difficult business of expounding the biblical Resurrection narratives, that is, to acquire a clear understanding of the sense in which they must properly be understood. Obviously we cannot attempt here a detailed discussion of the questions involved, which today present themselves in a more difficult form than ever before; especially as historical and--for the most part inadequately pondered--philosophical statements are becoming more and more inextricably intertwined, and exegesis itself quite often produces its own philosophy, which is intended to appear to the layman as a supremely refined distillation of the biblical evidence. Many points of detail will here always remain open to discussion, but it is possible to recognize a fundamental dividing line between explanation that remains explanation and arbitrary adaptations [to contemporary ways of thinking].

First of all, it is quite clear that after his Resurrection Christ did not go back to his previous earthly life, as we are told the young man of Nain and Lazarus did. He rose again to definitive life, which is no longer governed by chemical and biological laws and therefore stands outside the possibility of death, in the eternity conferred by love. That is why the encounters with him are "appearances"; that is why he with whom people had sat at table two days earlier is not recognized by his best friends and, even when recognized, remains foreign: only where he grants vision is he seen; only when he opens men's eyes and makes their hearts open up can the countenance of the eternal love that conquers death become recognizable in our mortal world, and, in that love, the new, different world, the world of him who is to come. That is also why it is so difficult, indeed absolutely impossible, for the Gospels to describe the encounter with the risen Christ; that is why they can only stammer when they speak of these meetings and seem to provide contradictory descriptions of them. In reality they are surprisingly unanimous in the dialectic of their statements, in the simultaneity of touching and not touching, or recognizing and not recognizing, of complete identity between the crucified and the risen Christ and complete transformation. People recognize the Lord and yet do not recognize him again; people touch him, and yet he is untouchable; he is the same and yet quite different. As we have said, the dialectic is always the same; it is only the stylistic means by which it is expressed that changes.

For example, let us examine a little more closely from this point of view the Emmaus story, which we have already touched upon briefly. At first sight it looks as if we are confronted here with a completely earthly and material notion of resurrection; as if nothing remains of the mysterious and indescribable elements to be found in the Pauline accounts. It looks as if the tendency to detailed depiction, to the concreteness of legend, supported by the apologist's desire for something tangible, had completely won the upper hand and fetched the risen Lord right back into earthly history. But this impression is soon contradicted by his mysterious appearance and his no less mysterious disappearance. The notion is contradicted even more by the fact that here, too, he remains unrecognizable to the accustomed eye. He cannot be firmly grasped as he could be in the time of his earthly life; he is discovered only in the realm of faith; he sets the hearts of the two travelers aflame by his interpretation of the Scriptures and by breaking bread he opens their eyes. This is a reference to the two basic elements in early Christian worship, which consisted of the liturgy of the word (the reading and expounding of Scripture) and the eucharistic breaking of bread. In this way the evangelist makes it clear that the encounter with the risen Christ lies on a quite new plane; he tries to describe the indescribable in terms of the liturgical facts. He thereby provides both a theology of the Resurrection and a theology of the liturgy: one encounters the risen Christ in the word and in the sacrament; worship is the way in which he becomes touchable to us and, recognizable as the living Christ. And conversely, the liturgy is based on the mystery of Easter; it is to he understood as the Lords approach to us. In it he becomes our traveling companion, sets our dull hearts aflame, and opens our sealed eyes. He still walks with us, still finds us worried and downhearted, and still has the power to make us see.

Of course, all this is only half the story; to stop at this alone would mean falsifying the evidence of the New Testament. Experience of the risen Christ is something other than a meeting with a man from within our history, and it must certainly not be traced back to conversations at table and recollections that would have finally crystallized in the idea that he still lived and went about his business. Such an interpretation reduces what happened to the purely human level and robs it of its specific quality. The Resurrection narratives are something other and more than disguised liturgical scenes: they make visible the founding event on which all Christian liturgy rests. They testify to an approach that did not rise from the hearts of the disciples but came to them from outside, convinced them despite their doubts and made them certain that the Lord had truly risen. He who lay in the grave is no longer there; he--really he himself--lives. He who had been transposed into the other world of God showed himself powerful enough to make it palpably clear that he himself stood in their presence again, that in him the power of love had really proved itself stronger than the power of death.

Only by taking this just as seriously as what we said first does one remain faithful to the witness borne by the New Testament; only thus, too, is its seriousness in world history preserved. The comfortable attempt to spare oneself the belief in the mystery of God's mighty actions in this world and yet at the same time to have the satisfaction of remaining on the foundation of the biblical message leads nowhere; it measures up neither to the honesty of reason nor to the claims of faith. One cannot have both the Christian faith and "religion within the bounds of pure reason"; a choice is unavoidable. He who believes will see more and more clearly, it is true, how rational it is to have faith in the love that has conquered death.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/04/2007 16.22]

This came out in Commonweal last Friday, and I think Komonchak is trying to show that Ratzinger at the time of Vatican-II was in favor of the major liturgical reforms that eventually became institutionalized in the Novus Ordo, that he thought the Council of Trent liturgical reforms (i.e., the Tridentine rite) were inadequate and part of the problem was Latin. In other words, that Pope Benedict (and Cardinal Ratzinger before him) have been saying things that are practically the polar opposite of what the younger Ratzinger thought at the time of Vatican-II.

It certainly seems so, from the excerpts Komonchak chose, but 1)I would like to see the entire thing to get the right context; and 2) I would like to be able to see what else Ratzinger said about the liturgy between 1966 when he wrote these comments and say, the mid-70s, after the Novus Ordo had been about 5-6 years in use.


Ratzinger Junior on liturgical reform at Vatican II
April 26, 2007
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak

After each of the four sessions of the Second Vatican Council, Joseph Ratzinger published a pamphlet with reflections on the events and achievements of that session. These were then gathered together and translated into English as Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press/Deus Books, 1966).

Given the discussion in several threads of the possible action of Pope Benedict XVI with regard to the Tridentine Rite, some may find it interesting to know how the young conciliar peritus saw the question of liturgy at the time. (Page numbers are given from that English edition.)

In his review of the first session, he had a number of comments:

"The decision to begin with the liturgy schema was not merely a technically correct move. Its significance went far deeper. This decision was a profession of faith in what is truly central to the Church – the ever-renewed marriage of the Church wi8th her Lord, actualized in the eucharistic mystery where the Church, participating in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, fulfills its innermost mission, the adoration of the triune God.

Beyond all the superficially more important issues, there was here a profession of faith in the true source of the Church’s life, and the proper point of departure for all renewal. The text did not restrict itself to mere changes in individual rubrics, but was inspired from this profound perspective of faith. The text implied an entire ecclesiology and thus anticipated ... the main theme of the entire Council–its teaching on the Church. Thus the Church was freed from the 'hierarchological’ Congar) narrowness' of the last hundred years, and returned to its sacramental origins" (14).

Ratzinger pointed to five important elements in the liturgical schema. (1)
"the return to Christian origins and the pruning of certain accretions that often enough concealed the original liturgical nucleus; examples: priority of Sunday over saints’ days; of mystery over devotion, of "simple structure over the rank growth of forms"; "defrosting’ of ritual rigidity; restoration of the liturgy of the Word; "the dialogical nature of the whole liturgical celebration and its essence as the common service of the People of God; "reduction in the status of private Masses in favor of emphasis on greater communal participation."

(2) a stronger emphasis on the Word as an element of equal value with the sacrament:" new arrangement of biblical readings.

(3) "a more active participation of the laity, the inclusion of the whole table-fellowship of God in the holy action".

(4) "the decentralization of liturgical legislation," which represents "a fundamental innovation." Conferences of bishops now will have responsibility for liturgical laws in their own regions and this, "not by delegation from the Holy See, but by virtue of their own independent authority." This is to introduce "a new element in the Church’s structure, ... a kind of quasi-synodal agency between individual bishops and the pope. This decision may even have "more significance fore the theology of the episcopacy and for the long desired strengthening of episcopal power than anything in the ‘Constitution on the Church.’"

(5) the language of the liturgy. Behind this vigorous debate lay the need for a "new confrontation between the Christian mind and the modern mind. For it can hardly be denied that the sterility to which Catholic theology and philosophy had in many ways been doomed since the end of the Enlightenment was due not least to a language in which the living choices of the human mind no longer found a place. Theology often bypassed new ideas, was not enriched by them and remained unable to transform them" (14-18).

In a talk delivered in October 1964, Ratzinger remarked "that the first real task of the Council was to overcome the indolent, euphoric feeling that all was well with the Church, and to bring into the open the problems smoldering within" (83).

An example was the question of the liturgy, which represented a "profound crisis in the life of the Church." Its roots lay back in the late Middle Ages, when "awareness of the real essence of Christian worship increasingly vanished. Great importance was attached to externals, and these choked out the whole."

Trent’s reaction to Reformation challenges was inadequate, even if it eliminated a number of abuses. It did not sufficiently deal with Reformation difficulties with the notions of adoration and sacrifice. It did cut back the medieval overgrowth and took measures to prevent it in the future. But the main measure was to centralize liturgical authority in the Congregation of Rites.

"New overgrowths were in fact prevented, but the fate of liturgy in the West was now in the hands of a strictly centralized and purely bureaucratic authority. This authority completely lacked historical perspective; it viewed the liturgy solely in terms of ceremonial rubrics, treating it as a kind of problem of proper court etiquette for sacred matters.

"This resulted in the complete archaizing of the liturgy, which now passed from the stage of living history, became embalmed in the status quo and was ultimately doomed to internal decay. The liturgy had become a rigid, fixed and firmly encrusted system; the more out of touch with genuine piety the more attention was paid to its prescribed forms. We can see this if we remember that none of the saints of the Catholic Reformation drew their spirituality from the liturgy....

"The baroque era adjusted to this situation by super-imposing a kind of para-liturgy on the archeologized actual liturgy. Accompanied by the splendor of orchestral performance, the baroque high Mass became a kind of sacred opera in which the chants of the priest functioned as a kind of periodic recitative.

"The entire performance seemed to aim at a kind of festive lifting of the heart, enhanced by the beauty of a celebration appealing to the eye and ear. On ordinary days, when such display was not possible, the Mass was frequently covered over with devotions more attractive to the popular mentality.

"Even Leo XIII recommended that the rosary be recited during Mass in the month of October. In practice this meant that while the priest was busy with his archeologized liturgy, the people were busy with their devotions to Mary. They were united with the priest only by being in the same church with him and by entrusting themselves to the sacred power of the eucharistic sacrifice" (85-86).

After the baroque period, it was clear that the efforts of the Congregation of Rites had resulted in the total impoverishment of the liturgy. If the Church's worship was once again to become the worship of the Church in the fullest sense - i.e., of all the faithful - then it had to become something in movement again.

The wall of Latinity had to be breached if the liturgy were again to function either as proclamation or as invitation to prayer... It was now clear that behind the protective skin of Latin lay hidden something that even Trent's cutting away of late medieval ornamentations had failed to remove. The simplicity of the liturgy was still overgrown with superfluous accretions of purely historical value.

It was now clear, for example, that the selection of biblical texts had frozen at a certain point and hardly met the needs of preaching. The next step was to recognize that the necessary revamping could not take place simply through purely stylistic modifications, but also required a new theology of divine worship. Otherwise the renewal would be no more than superficial" (87).

His concluding comments: "If we view the Council’s initiatives for liturgical reform in their historical context, then we may well consider them a basic reversal. The value of the reform will of course substantially depend on the post-conciliar commission of Cardinal Lercaro and what it is able to achieve.

"The problems and hopes of liturgical reform anticipate some of the crucial problems and hopes of ecclesiastical reform in general. Will it be possible to bring contemporary man into new contact with the Church, and through the Church into new contact with God? Will it be possible to minimize centralism without losing unity? Will it be possible to make divine worship the starting point ofr a new understanding among Christians? These three questions represent three hopes, all bound up with liturgical reform, and all in line with the basic intentions of the recent Council" (88).

================================================================

Just to place Fr. Komonchak in further context, here is an article he wrote for Commonweal shortly after Ratsinger became Pope. He is a Professor of Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America in Wasington, DC.


June 3, 2005
The Church in Crisis
Pope Benedict’s Theological Vision

By Joseph A. Komonchak

In articles about Pope Benedict XVI, much has been made of his experience of student unrest at the University of Tübingen in 1968. Many see that experience as the best explanation of the apparent intellectual about-face that turned the young progressive theologian of the Second Vatican Council into the poster-child of conservative reaction in theology and in church politics. There is something to this, and Joseph Ratzinger was not the only European intellectual to have been deeply affected by the excesses of the fascists of the left at the time. (We all know the definition of a neoconservative: a liberal who’s been mugged.)

But overemphasizing that Tübingen experience may lead one to overlook the deeper continuity in the new pope’s basic theological approach and vision. In his early seminary and university studies, Ratzinger eagerly benefited from the renewal of theology and pastoral practice that had begun before the Second World War and flourished in the late 1940s and 1950s. He shared the view that scholastic theology “was no longer an instrument for bringing faith into the contemporary discussion,” that theology had to find a new language, a new openness. It could no longer be satisfied with being “encyclical theology,” it needed room to breathe. Ratzinger has described the “feeling of radical change” abroad when he was pursuing his theological studies, “the sense of a theology that had the courage to ask new questions and a spirituality that was doing away with what was dusty and obsolete and leading to a new joy in the redemption. Dogma was conceived, not as an external shackle, but as the living source that made knowledge of the truth possible in the first place. The church came to life for us above all in the liturgy and in the great richness of the theological tradition.”

Impatience with neoscholasticism also led Ratzinger to resist the nearly exclusive emphasis placed on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The latter’s “crystal-clear logic” he found “too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made.” He far preferred Augustine’s personalism in all its passion and depth. His doctoral dissertation was on the ecclesiology of St. Augustine, and the great saint would remain by far the most powerful influence on his thought, not least in the distinction between wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia) and on humility as the necessary road to truth. In his Habilitationschrift, his second dissertation qualifying him as a university lecturer, he turned to a subject in the Middle Ages, again avoiding Aquinas by choosing to study the notion of revelation in St. Bonaventure, the great representative of neo-Augustinianism. When his work was criticized by one professor for approaching a Modernist, subjectivist notion of revelation, Ratzinger excerpted one part of it and published it as The Theology of History According to St. Bonaventure (Franciscan Herald Press).

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The last chapter of this work helps explain Ratzinger’s basic approach to the situation of faith in the modern world. He himself drew an analogy between the postconciliar mood of the late 1960s and the turbulent years in the mid-thirteenth century when the translation of the works of Aristotle and of his Arabian commentators threatened the structure of traditional theology. In Aquinas’s response to the intellectual crisis, the distinction began to emerge between theology and philosophy and, along with the latter, the sciences of nature, which implies, of course, a certain autonomy for those other disciplines. Ratzinger shows how Bonaventure set himself against this development and continued to insist on the unity of Christian wisdom for which Christ was the center of all knowledge. “Only faith,” Bonaventure wrote, “divides the light from the darkness.” Bonaventure ended in an anti-Aristotelianism that came close to anti-intellectualism, and he was among those who urged ecclesiastical authorities to intervene and censure the Thomist positions.

With these early intellectual influences, Ratzinger located himself within one broad stream of the theological renewal, the one that included figures like Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, great advocates of the return to the sources (ressourcement). He showed little interest in another stream (represented by figures such as Marie-Dominique Chenu, Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx) which, inspired by Aquinas, proposed and attempted a positive engagement with modern intellectual and cultural movements.

At the Second Vatican Council, representatives of both orientations helped to produce the coup d’Église that oriented the council in a direction quite different from that expressed in the schemas prepared by the curia for the bishops’ consideration. Only thirty-five years old when the council began, Ratzinger served as a theological adviser to Cardinal Joseph Frings, archbishop of Cologne. Ratzinger described the prepared texts as reflective of the “anti-Modernist neurosis” that had marked the church’s response to the intellectual and cultural challenges of the previous century; he wrote the speech in which Cardinal Frings began with a clear and firm non placet (“it does not please”) rejecting a text on revelation. At meetings among German and French bishops, Ratzinger joined theologians of the caliber of Yves Congar, Daniélou, de Lubac, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx in exploring ways to have the preparatory doctrinal texts removed from the agenda, and along with Rahner he prepared a text the group hoped could replace them. He enthusiastically praised the decisions taken during the council’s first session as a reversal “epochal” in character, making possible a “new beginning.”

The question raised by this new beginning, of course, was: “What now?” In what form would the council present and interpret the Word of God for its day? The next three sessions of the council were devoted to answering the question, and the sixteen documents of Vatican II are the result. Ratzinger worked closely on the texts on the church, divine revelation, the missions, and the church in the modern world, topics on which he also published learned essays in theological journals. He served on the board of advisers of the new progressive journal Concilium, and contributed an important essay on collegiality to its first volume.

On the principal doctrinal texts the progressive theologians held their ranks, but as the council moved toward its text on the church in the modern world (Gaudium et spes), divisions among them became increasingly apparent. The text was largely inspired by Chenu and followed an incarnational approach, looking in contemporary social and cultural movements for signs of an aspiration for the spiritual to which the church could address her message about Christ. Chenu called these aspirations pierres d’attente, toothing stones, that jut out from a wall in order to mesh with an eventual addition. He vigorously defended the method of reading the “signs of the times” and of responding first of all with a dialogue respectful of the other. It was an extension of the basic Thomist understanding of the relation between nature and grace to the realm of the social and historical.

Joseph Ratzinger was among the German theologians who criticized this draft for neglecting the reality of sin in the world, for confusing the natural and the supernatural, and for its unclear notions of “world” and “church.” Its description of the contemporary situation offered little more than sociological commonplaces to which references to Christ and his work appeared to be tacked on, almost as if embarrassed afterthoughts. The text, he said, indulged “the fiction that it is possible to construct a rational philosophical picture of man intelligible to all and on which all men of goodwill can agree, the actual Christian doctrines being added to this as a sort of crowning conclusion.” He would have preferred that the text begin “from the actual Christian creed, which, precisely as a confession of faith, can and must manifest its own intelligibility and rationality.” Dialogue was substituting for proclamation of the faith. The Augustinian distinction between science and wisdom would have offered a deeper epistemology than that of Aquinas, and greater emphasis on the Cross as the necessary point of contradiction between church and world would have enabled the council to avoid semi-Pelagian language and notions. While some of the Germans’ concerns were met in revisions of the text, Ratzinger’s later commentary on the early paragraphs of Gaudium et spes reveal that he continued to think his main criticisms were still pertinent.

The debate at the council, little noted at the time, reveals where Ratzinger differed from the representatives of the Thomist-like approach. (Despite the many points on which Karl Rahner and he could agree—liturgy, biblical exegesis, etc.—Ratzinger said that “Rahner and I lived on two different theological planets.”) And from Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity (1968) down to the homily he delivered on his installation as Pope Benedict XVI, a distinctive and consistent approach has been visible. Let me attempt a summary.

The church lives today in a state of intellectual or cultural crisis. Once, theology could draw on a common intellectual heritage for the articulation of the Christian vision. This philosophical tradition focused on reality and the search for its truth. Linked up with Christian faith, it enabled theology to plumb the depths of reality and in the end to acknowledge the truth of things as they emerged from the hands of an intelligent and loving Creator. Theology can no longer presuppose that common cultural and intellectual heritage. Through various stages, philosophy abandoned the ontological and metaphysical attitude that once marked it. It became fascinated with phenomena and from emerging natural science borrowed a positivistic interest in facts as they appear; it grounded itself now, not in the reality of things, but in reflections on human consciousness. The rise of historical consciousness moved attention away from reality as created by God to reality as constructed by human beings. With Marx, attention has moved from attempting to understand the world thus created to seeking to change it. “Truth” now refers, not to reality as given, nor to what has been done, but to what remains to be done. Through all of these processes, philosophy has been dissolved into a multiplicity of philosophies.

The tragedy of post-Vatican II theology is that, after dethroning the inadequate neoscholastic vision, it has turned, not back to the ancient wisdom displayed in the church fathers and the medieval masters, but to various forms of modern philosophy. It has therefore lost its critical distance and has become a handmaiden of the various forms of positivism, particularly by linking itself to other visions of the future, either the one liberals hope from technology, or the one Marxists hope from political and economic revolution. The results of this disastrous choice are all around us, in a church that has become indistinct from its surrounding worlds and has lost its sense of identity and mission, and in a world in which the triumph of positivism has led to ever growing dissolution and alienation.

The one response that can rescue us from this slavery to our own works is the presentation of the Christian message as the only truly liberating force. Theology cannot count on any help from contemporary philosophy or the human and natural sciences. In Ratzinger’s writings, there are very few positive references to intellectual developments outside the church; they almost always appear as antithetical to the specifically Christian. There are no cultural or social pierres d’attente. Instead, dichotomies abound, contrasts between the Christian notions of truth, freedom, nature and those current in Western culture. The faith must be presented as countercultural, as an appeal to nonconformity. It can appeal to the widespread sense of disillusion to what modernity has promised but been unable to deliver. It will make its appeal by presenting the Christian vision in its synthetic totality as a comprehensive structure of meaning that at nearly every point breaks with the taken-for-granted attitudes, strategies, and habits of contemporary culture. The gospel will save us, not philosophy, not science, and not scientific theology. The great model for this enterprise is the effort to preach the gospel in the alien world of antiquity and to construct the vision of Christian wisdom manifest in the great ages of faith before philosophy, science, and technology separated themselves into autonomous areas of reflection and activity.

This is a “Bonaventuran” theological vision. In the last stages of his intellectual journey, and in the face of the cultural challenge of his day, the great Franciscan responded with a religious concentration on holiness and an eschatological interpretation of contemporary intellectual developments that led him to an “apocalyptic anti-Aristotelianism” that was anti-philosophical, anti-intellectual, and indiscriminate enough to include in its condemnations the effort of Aquinas to engage critically the Aristotelian challenge. There are remarkable parallels between Bonaventure’s final view, as described by Ratzinger, and the basic attitude the new pope has himself adopted in the face of the great changes in the post-Vatican II church.

That Pope Benedict XVI has brought this perspective with him as he assumed the chair of Peter is clear from his homily the day he was solemnly installed. The sermon was at many points a very beautiful and positive presentation of Christianity, and it grounds the hope that this will mark his preaching and teaching. But at two points he also revealed how he sees the world to which Christ must be preached. The first is when he described the many kinds of desert that exist today: “There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore, the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction. The church as a whole and all her pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert.” The other image is borrowed from the metaphor of the pastor as “fisher of men.” The image supposes, of course, that it is a good thing for the fish to be caught and taken from their natural environment. And to explain this the pope says, “We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendor of God’s light, into true life.” Beautiful as is the description of what the gospel has to offer, is it the case that apart from Christ the world is only a desert, or “salt waters of suffering and death,” “darkness without light”?

When a bishop complained about some of the books being published after the council, Paul VI replied that the best way to oppose bad books is with good books. Joseph Ratzinger has been of the view that Paul VI’s patient attitude with regard to theological developments after the council failed, and that, as in the thirteenth century, it is the task of ecclesiastical authority to intervene. This appeal to authority has its own roots in the situation of the church in the world since Vatican II. We ask our questions about the roles of religion and theology in a church that, after simply repudiating the whole modern experiment and constructing its own narrow countersociety, attempted at Vatican II to adopt a more nuanced, critical attitude and set of strategies. The world had long since relegated religion to a private sphere and banished theology from serious intellectual consideration. What sort of church could we be, and what sort of theology could we construct, in those circumstances?

The effort to answer those questions has largely divided Catholics since the council, and one element of that division has been the splintering of theology. The subculture of Roman Catholicism has largely been fractured, and this disintegration has made it very difficult to speak of the church as providing a unified community of response to contemporary challenges. Almost everyone agrees that preconciliar neoscholasticism does not provide an adequate theological basis on which to reflect on the challenge; but, after that, the divisions are many and great; the main ones concern the degree to which the modern intellectual developments can be critically appropriated.

Under Ratzinger’s tenure at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Roman reservations about theological pluralism and opposition to theological dissent had their roots in these problems. Ratzinger wanted the church again to be able to pose a real alternative, a set of meanings and values that can stand at a critical and redemptive distance from contemporary culture. It is the importance of their being an ecclesial—not simply a theological or intellectual—response to today’s challenges that led him to insist on internal unity. It is the church, and not theology, that would provide a real alternative; and theologians were often perceived as in fact and, because of their defense of public dissent, in principle preventing the unity that is required for the church’s effective redemptive service in the world.

Such a position is easier, of course, if one does not believe that genuine dialogue with the world is possible, if one believes that dialogue threatens the distinctive speech-act of the church, the proclamation of the gospel in its distinctiveness, the call to the decision of faith. The council, in one of its chief documents, did not think that dialogue and gospel proclamation were incompatible; in fact it could even be said that it regarded dialogue and discerning the signs of the times as essential aspects in proclaiming the Word of God. This requires, of course, a sphere of freedom, a place for discussion, for trying out new ideas, for exploring commonalities, for efforts to reconcile perhaps only apparently contrasting positions. The CDF under Joseph Ratzinger did little to create such a sphere for freedom, as one of its last acts, the removal of Fr. Thomas Reese as editor of America, indicates. We may hope that, with the greater responsibility that now falls upon him as pope, Benedict XVI will recognize that the necessary proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ will include moments for listening not only to the world to which he addresses himself but also to others — of different minds and different approaches — within the household of the faith.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/04/2007 9.52]

This document comes from the site of Christendom Awake. My problem with it is that it identifies it is coming from THE RATZINGER REPORT, which, as everyone knows, is in informal interview-form, and not as an almost academic document like this one.

Probably the one thing reliable about its provenance is that it was written by Cardinal Ratzinger in his private capacity before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith came out with its Instruction on Certain Aspects of the "theology of Liberation' in August 1984. It is an 18-page document that can always be found on the Vatican through this link:
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation...

In any case, I thought that for those like me who have not really read or thought about LT in depth, this is the best introduction possible to LT and what the Church found objectionable in it, before going on to the much longer CDF document.

I am posting this here preparatory to the Brazil trip, where LT is sure to be dredged up by the international media even if, as the new Archbishop of Sao Paolo says, it is definitely a thing of the past.


Liberation Theology
by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger


Preliminary Notes

1. Liberation theology is a phenomenon with an extraordinary number of layers. There is a whole spectrum from radically marxist positions, on the one hand, to the efforts which are being made within the framework of a correct and ecclesial theology, on the other hand, a theology which stresses the responsibility which Christians necessarily hear for the poor and oppressed, such as we see in the documents of the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM) from Medellin to Puebla.

In what follows, the concept of liberation theology will be understood in a narrower sense: it will refer only to those theologies which, in one way or another, have embraced the marxist fundamental option. Here too there are many individual differences, which cannot be dealt with in a general discussion of this kind. All I can do is attempt to illuminate certain trends which, notwithstanding the different nuances they exhibit, are widespread and exert a certain influence even where liberation theology in this more restricted sense does not exist.

2. An analysis of the phenomenon of liberation theology reveals that it constitutes a fundamental threat to the faith of the Church. At the same time it must be borne in mind that no error could persist unless it contained a grain of truth. Indeed, an error is all the more dangerous, the greater that grain of truth is, for then the temptation it exerts is all the greater.

Furthermore, the error concerned would not have been able to wrench that piece of the truth to its own use if that truth had been adequately lived and witnessed to in its proper place (in the faith of the Church). So, in denouncing error and pointing to dangers in liberation theology, we must always be ready to ask what truth is latent in the error and how it can be given its rightful place, how it can be released from error's monopoly.

3. Liberation theology is a universal phenomenon in three ways:

a. It does not intend to add a new theological treatise to those already existing, i.e., it does not wish to develop new aspects of the Church's social ethics. Rather it sees itself as a new hermeneutics of the Christian faith, a new way of understanding Christianity as a whole and implementing it. Thus it affects theology in its basic constitution, not merely in aspects of its content. So too it alters all forms of Church life: the Church's constitution, liturgy, catechesis, moral options.

b. While liberation theology today has its center of gravity in Latin America, it is by no means an exclusively Latin American phenomenon. It is unthinkable apart from the governing influence of European and North American theologians. But it is also found in India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Taiwan and in Africa, though in the latter case the search for an "African theology" is in the foreground. The Union of Third World Theologians is strongly characterized by an emphasis on the themes of liberation theology.

c. Liberation theology goes beyond denominational borders:
from its own starting point it frequently tries to create a new universality for which the classical church divisions are supposed to have become irrelevant.

I The concept of liberation theology and its origins and preconditions

These preliminary remarks have brought us right to the heart of the subject, without, however, dealing with the central question: what is liberation theology?

Initially we said that liberation theology intends to supply a new total interpretation of the Christian reality; it explains Christianity as a praxis of liberation and sees itself as the guide to this praxis. However, since in its view all reality is political, liberation is also a political concept and the guide to liberation must he a guide to political action:

"Nothing lies outside ... political commitment. Everything has a political color." A theology that is not "practical"; i.e., not essentially political, is regarded as "idealistic" and thus as lacking in reality, or else it is condemned as a vehicle for the oppressors' maintenance of power.

A theologian who has learned his theology in the classical tradition and has accepted its spiritual challenge will find it hard to realize that an attempt is being made, in all seriousness, to recast the whole Christian reality in the categories of politico-social liberation praxis. This is all the more difficult because many liberation theologians continue to use a great deal of the Church's classical ascetical and dogmatic language while changing its signification.

As a result, the reader or listener who is operating from a different background can gain the impression that everything is the same as before, apart from the addition of a few somewhat unpalatable statements, which, given so much spirituality, can scarcely be all that dangerous.

The very radicality of liberation theology means that its seriousness is often underestimated, since it does not fit into any of the accepted categories of heresy; its fundamental concern cannot be detected by the existing range of standard questions.

I would like to try, therefore, to approach the basic orientation of liberation theology in two steps: first by saying something about its presuppositions, which make it possible, and then by referring to some of its basic concepts, which reveal something of its structure.

What could have led to that complete new orientation of theological thought that is expressed in liberation theology? In the main I see three factors which made it possible.

1. After the Council a new theological situation had arisen, again characterized by three assertions:

a. The view arose that the existing theological tradition was largely no longer adequate, and that, as a result, an entirely new theological and spiritual orientation needed to be sought directly from Scripture and from the signs of the times.

b. The idea of a turning to the world, of responsibility for the world, frequently deteriorated into a naive belief in science which accepted the human sciences as a new gospel without wanting to see their limitations and endemic problems. Psychology, sociology and the marxist interpretation of history seemed to be scientifically established and hence to become unquestionable arbiters of Christian thought.

c. The criticism of tradition applied by modern Evangelical exegesis, in particular by Rudolf Bultmann and his school, similarly became a firm theological authority, cutting off the path to theology in its prior form and so encouraging people all the more to produce new constructions.

2. This changed theological situation coincided with a changed intellectual situation. At the end of the phase of reconstruction after the Second World War, which corresponded roughly to the end of the Council, a tangible vacuum of meaning had arisen in the Western world to which the still dominant existentialist philosophy could give no answer.

In this situation the various brands of neo-marxism became a moral impulse, also holding out a promise of meaning that was practically irresistible to the academic youth. Bloch's marxism with its religious veneer and the strictly scientific appearance of the philosophies of Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas and Marcuse offered models of action by which people believed they could respond to the moral challenge of misery in the world as well as realize the proper meaning of the biblical message.

3. The moral challenge of poverty and oppression presented itself in an ineluctable form at the very moment when Europe and North America had attained a hitherto unknown affluence. This challenge evidently called for new answers which were not to be found in the existing tradition. The changed theological and philosophical situation was a formal invitation to seek the answer in a Christianity which allowed itself to be guided by the models of hope — apparently scientifically grounded — put forward by marxist philosophies.

II. The basic structure of liberation theology

This answer takes very different shapes, depending on the par­ticular form of liberation theology, theology of revolution, political theology, etc. No overall description can be given, therefore. Yet there are certain basic concepts that recur in various modifications and express fundamental intentions held in common.

Before examining the content of these basic concepts we must make an observation concerning the cardinal structural elements of liberation theology, taking up what we have already said about the changed theological situation in the wake of the Council.

As I explained, the exegesis of Bultmann and his school now came to be read as the verdict of "science" on Jesus, a verdict that simply had to be accepted as valid. But Bultmann's "historical Jesus" is separated from the Christ of faith by a great gulf (Bultmann himself speaks of a 'chasm'). In Bultmann, while Jesus is part of the presuppositions of the New Testament, he himself is enclosed in the world of Judaism.

Now the crucial result of this exegesis was to shatter the historical credibility of the Gospels: the Christ of the Church's tradition and the Jesus of history put forward by science evidently belong to two different worlds. Science, regarded as the final arbiter, had torn the figure of Jesus from its anchorage in tradition; on the one hand, consequently, tradition hangs in a vacuum, deprived of reality, while on the other hand, a new interpretation and significance must be sought for the figure of Jesus.

Bultmann's importance, therefore, was less because of his positive discoveries than because of the negative result of his criticism: the core of faith, christology, was open to new interpretations because its previous affirmations had perished as being historically no longer tenable. It also meant that the Church's teaching Office was discredited, since she had evidently clung to a scientifically untenable theory, and thus ceased to be regarded as an authority where knowledge of Jesus was concerned. In the future her statements could only be seen as futile attempts to defend a position which was scientifically obsolete.

Another key word made Bultmann important for future developments. He had reinstated the old concept "hermeneutics" and given it a new thust. The word hermeneutics expresses the insight that a real understanding of historical texts does not come about by mere historical interpretation and, indeed, that every historical interpretation already includes certain prior decisions. Once the historical material has been established, it is the task of hermeneutics to "actualize" Scripture. In classical terminology, it is to "dissolve the horizon" between then and now. It asks the question: what significance have these past events for today?

Bultmann himself had answered this question with the help of Heidegger's philosophy and had interpreted the Bible in a correspondingly existentialist manner. This answer attracted no interest then, nor does it now; to that extent Bultmann has been superseded in the exegesis currently acceptable. Yet what has remained is the abstraction of the figure of Jesus from the classical tradition as well as the idea that, using a new hermeneutics, we can and must bring this figure into the present in a new way.

At this point we come to the second element of our situation to which we have already referred: the new philosophical climate of the late sixties. In the meantime the marxist analysis of history and society was largely accepted as the only "scientific" one. This means that the world must be interpreted in terms of the class struggle and that the only choice is between capitalism and marxism. It also means that all reality is political and has to justify itself politically.

The biblical concept of the 'poor" provides a starting point for fusing the Bible's view of history with marxist dialectic; it is interpreted by the idea of the proletariat in the marxist sense and thus justifies marxism as the legitimate hermeneutics for understanding the Bible.

Since, according to this view, there are, and can only be, two options, any objection to this interpretation of the Bible is an expression of the ruling class's determination to hold on to its power. A well-known liberation theologian asserts: "The class struggle is a fact; neutrality on this point is simply impossible."

This approach also takes the ground from under the feet of the Church's teaching office: if she were to intervene and proceed against such an interpretation of Christianity, she would only prove that she is on the side of the rich and the rulers and against the poor and suffering, i.e., against Jesus himself: she would show that she had taken the negative side in the dialectic of history.

This decision, apparently unavoidable in "scientific" and "historical" terms, automatically determines how Christianity shall be interpreted in the future, as regards both the activities of this interpretation and its content.

As far as the arbiters are concerned, the crucial concepts are people, community, experience and history. Previously it was the Church, namely, the Catholic Church in her totality — a totality which spanned time and space and embraced laity (sensus fidei) and hierarchy (Magisterium) — that constituted the hermeneutical criterion; now it is the "community". The experience of the "community" determines the understanding and the interpretation of Scripture.

Again it can be said, in a way that seems strictly scientific, that the Gospels' picture of Jesus is itself a synthesis of event and interpretation, based on the experience of the individual communities, whereby interpretation was far more important than the no longer ascertainable event.

This original synthesis of event and interpretation can be dissolved and reformed continually: the community "interprets" the events on the basis of its "experience" and thus discovers what its "praxis" should be.

The same idea appears in a somewhat modified form in connection with the concept of the people" where the conciliar emphasis on the "People of God" is transformed into a marxist myth. The experiences of the 'people" elucidate Scripture. Here "people" is the antithesis of the hierarchy, the antithesis of all institutions, which are seen as oppressive power. Ultimately anyone who participates in the class struggle is a member of the "people" (and) the "Church of the people" becomes the antagonist of the hierarchical Church.

Finally the concept "history" becomes a crucial interpretative category. The view, accepted as scientifically certain and incontrovertible, that the Bible speaks exclusively in terms of salvation history (and thus, anti-metaphysically), facilitates the fusing of the biblical horizon with the marxist idea of history, which progresses in a dialectical manner and is the real bringer of salvation.

History is accordingly a process of progressive liberation; history is the real revelation and hence the real interpreter of the Bible. Sometimes this dialectic of progress is supported by pneumatology. In any case the latter also makes a teaching office which insists on abiding truths into an authority inimical to progress, thinking "metaphysically" and hence contradicting "history". We can say that the concept of history swallows up the concepts of God and of Revelation.

The "historicality" of the Bible must justify its absolute dominance and thus legitimize the' transition to materialist-marxist philosophy, in which history has taken over the role of God.

III. Central concepts of liberation theology

So we have arrived at the basic concepts of the new interpretation of the Christian reality. Since the individual concepts occur in different contexts, I will simply discuss them one after another, without any systematization.

Let us begin with the new meaning of faith, hope and love. Concerning faith, one South American theologian says, for instance, that Jesus' experience of God is radically historical. "His faith is transformed into fidelity." Thus faith is fundamentally replaced by "fidelity to history". Here we see that fusion between God and history which makes it possible to keep the Chalcedonian formula for Jesus, albeit with a totally changed meaning: it is clear that the classical tests for orthodoxy are of no avail in analyzing this theology.

It is asserted "that Jesus is God," but it is immediately added that the true and only God is he who reveals himself historically and has a stumbling block in Jesus, and in the poor who prolong his presence. Only the person who holds together these two affirmations is orthodox."

Hope is interpreted as "confidence in the.future" and as working for the future and thus is subordinated once more to the history of class conflict.

Love consists in the "option for the poor"; i.e., it coincides with opting for the class struggle. In opposition to "false universalism"'; the liberation theologians emphasize very strongly the partiality and partisan nature of the Christian option; in their view, taking sides is the fundamental presupposition for a correct hermeneutics of the biblical testimony.

Here, I think, one can see very clearly that amalgam of a basic truth of Christianity and an un-Christian fundamental option which makes the whole thing so seductive: The Sermon on the Mount is indeed God taking sides with the poor. But to interpret the "poor" in the sense of the marxist dialectic of history, and "taking sides with them" in the sense of the class struggle, is a wanton attempt to portray as identical things that are contrary.

The fundamental concept of the preaching of Jesus is the "Kingdom of God". This concept is also at the center of the liberation theologies, but read against the background of marxist hermeneutics. According to one of these theologians, the Kingdom must not be understood in a spiritualist or universalist manner, not in the sense of an abstract eschatological eventuality. It must be understood in partisan terms and with a view to praxis. The meaning of the Kingdom can only be defined by reference to the praxis of Jesus, not theoretically: it means working at the historical reality that surrounds us in order to transform it into the Kingdom.

Here we must mention another basic idea of a particular post­conciliar theology which has led in this direction. People said that after the Council every dualism must be overcome: the dualism of body and soul, of natural and supernatural, of this world and the world beyond, of then and now. Once these supposed dualisms had been eliminated, it only remained to work for a kingdom to be realized in present history and in politico­economic reality. This meant, however, that one had ceased to work for the benefit of people in this present time and had begun to destroy the present in the interests of a supposed future: thus the real dualism had broken loose.

In this connection I would like to mention the interpretation of death and resurrection given by one of the leading liberation theologians.

First of all he once again opposes "universalist" conceptions by asserting that resurrection is in the first place a hope for those who are crucified, who make up the majority of men: all the millions who are subjected to a slow crucifixion by structural injustice.

But faith also participates in Jesus' lordship over history by setting up the Kingdom, that is, by fighting for justice and integral liberation, by transforming unjust structures into more human ones. This lordship over history is exercised by repeating in history the gesture by which God raised Jesus, i.e., by giving life to those who are crucified in history.

Man has taken over God's gesture — this manifests the whole transformation of the biblical message in an almost tragic way, when one thinks how this attempted imitation of God has worked out in practice and continues to do so.

As to other reinterpretations of biblical concepts: The Exodus becomes the central image of salvation history; the paschal mystery is understood as a revolutionary symbol, and consequently the Eucharist is interpreted as a celebration of liberation in the sense of politico-messianic hope and praxis.

The word redemption is largely replaced by liberation, which is seen, against the background of history and the class struggle, as a process of progressive liberation.

Absolutely fundamental, finally, is the stress on praxis: truth must not be understood metaphysically, for that would be "idealism". Truth is realized in history and its praxis. Action is truth. Hence even the ideas which are employed in such action are ultimately inter­changeable. Praxis is the sole deciding factor. The only true orthodoxy is therefore orthopraxy.

It follows that the biblical texts can be treated more loosely, for historical criticism has loosed Scripture from the traditional interpretation, which now appears to be unscientific. Tradition itself is treated with the greatest possible scientific strictness along the lines of Bultmann.

But as for the historically transmitted content of the Bible, it cannot be exclusively binding. Ultimately, what is normative for interpretation is not historical research but the hermeneutic of history experienced in the community or the political group.

In trying to arrive at an overall evaluation it must be said that, if one accepts the fundamental assumptions which underlie liberation theology, it cannot be denied that the whole edifice has an almost irresistible logic.

By adopting the position of biblical criticism and of a hermeneutics that grows through experience, on the one hand, and of the marxist analysis of history, on the other, liberation theologians have succeeded in creating a total picture of the Christian reality, and this total view seems to respond fully both to the claims of science and to the moral challenges of our time, urging people to make Christianity an instrument of concrete world transformation; it seems to have united Christianity, in this way, with all the "progressive forces" of our era.

One can understand, therefore, that this new interpretation of Christianity should have exercised an increasing fascination over theologians, priests and religious, particularly against the background of Third World problems. To say "no" to it must seem to them to be a flight from reality as well as a denial of reason and morality.

On the other hand, if one considers how radical this reinterpretation of Christianity is, it is all the more pressing to find the right answer to the challenge which it presents.

We shall only survive this crisis if we succeed in making the logic of faith visible in an equally compelling manner and in presenting it as a logic of reality, i.e., manifesting the concrete force of a better answer attested in lived experience.

Since it is so, since thought and experience, interpretation and realization, are equally called for, it is a task for the whole Church. Theology alone is insufficient, Church authority alone is insufficient. Since the phenomenon of liberation theology indicates a lack of conversion in the Church, a lack of radical faith, only an increase in conversion and faith can arouse and elicit those theological insights and those decisions on the part of the shepherds which will give an answer to the magnitude of the question.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/05/2007 4.40]

Here is a reprint from Ignatius Insight of a chapter in a book by Cardinal Ratzinger, which is the English translation of a homily he delivered Cathedral of Bayeux (France) on June 6, 2004 , when he represented Pope John Paul II at the 60th anniversary celebration of D-Day. I only had this earlier in the French original.

It is very apropos today because we just marked Trinity Sunday - and although Pope Benedict did celebrate a public Mass last Sunday, his homily was necessarily related to the four new saints canonized that day.


Faith in the Triune God
and Peace in the World

By Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
From Europe: Today and Tomorrow




The feast of the Holy Trinity is different from all the other feasts of the liturgical year, such as Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, when we celebrate the wondrous works of God in history: the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and consequently the birth of the Church.

Today we are not celebrating an event in which "something" of God is made visible; rather, we are celebrating the very mystery of God. We rejoice in God, in the fact that he is the way he is; we thank him for existing; we are grateful that he is what he is and that we can know him and love him and that he knows and loves us and reveals himself to us.

But the existence of God, his being, the fact that he knows us--is that really a cause for joy? Certainly it is not something easy to understand or experience. Many gods in the different religions of peoples throughout the world are terrible, cruel, selfish, an inscrutable mixture of good and evil. The ancient world was characterized by a fear of the gods and a dread of their mysterious power: it was necessary to win the favor of the gods, to act in such a way as to avoid their whims or their bad humor.

Part of the Christian mission was a liberating force that was able to drive out a whole world of idols and gods that are now considered empty, illusory appearances. At the same time it proclaimed the God who, in Jesus, became man, the God who is Love and Reason.

This God is mightier than all the dark powers that the world can contain: "We know that 'an idol has no real existence,' and that 'there is no God but one.' For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth-as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'--yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist" (1 Cor 8:4-6).

Even today this is a revolutionary, liberating message with respect to all the ancient traditional religions: No longer is there reason to fear the spirits that surround us on all sides, coming and going ceaselessly, eluding our vain efforts at exorcism. Anyone who "dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty" (Ps 91:1) knows that he is safe, guarded tenderly by the One who welcomes him and offers him refuge. Someone who knows the God of Jesus Christ knows that the other forms of fear in the presence of God have disappeared also, that he has overcome all the forms of harrowing existential anguish that spread through the world in ever new ways.

In view of all the horrors of the world, the same question unceasingly arises: Does God exist? And if he exists, is he truly good? Might he not be instead a mysterious and dangerous reality?

In modern times this question is posed differently: the existence of God seems to be a limit to our freedom. He is perceived as a sort of supervisor who pursues us with his glance. In the modern era, the rebellion against God assumes the form of a fear of an omnipresent, all-seeing God. His glance appears as a threat to us; indeed, we prefer not to be seen; we just want to be ourselves and nothing more. Man does not feel free, he does not feel that he is truly himself, until God is set aside.

The story of Adam already notes this: he sees God as a competitor. Adam wants to lead his own life, all alone, and tries to hide from God "among the trees of the garden" (Gen 3:8). Sartre, too, declared that we must deny God, even if he must exist philosophically, because the concept of God is opposed to man's freedom and greatness.

But has the world really become brighter, freer, happier after setting God aside? Or has man not been stripped of his own dignity and condemned to an empty freedom that makes cruel and ruthless choices of all sorts?

God's glance frightens us only if we think of him as reducing us to some kind of servitude or slavery; but if we read in it the expression of his love, we discover that he is the fundamental requirement for our very being, that it is he who makes us live. "He who has seen me has seen the Father", Jesus said to Philip and to us all (Jn 14:9).

Jesus' face is the face of God himself this is what God is like. Jesus suffered for us, and by his death he has given us peace; he reveals to us who God is. His glance, far from being a threat, is a glance that saves us.

Yes, we can rejoice that God exists, that he has revealed himself to mankind, and that he does not leave us alone. How consoling it is to know the telephone number of a friend, to know good people who love us, who are always available and never aloof: at any time we can call them and they can call us. This is precisely what the Incarnation of God in Christ says to us: God has written our names and phone numbers in his address book! He is always listening; we do not need money or technology to call him. Thanks to baptism and confirmation, we are privileged to belong to his family. He is always ready to welcome us: "Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20).

But the Gospel reading for today adds a particularly important statement: Jesus promises the Holy Spirit (Jn 16:13), whom he calls, several times, the "Paraclete". What does that mean? In Latin, the word is translated as Consolator, the Comforter. Etymologically, the Latin word means: the one who stays by us when we feel lonely. Thus our solitude ceases to be loneliness.

For a human being, solitude is often a place of unhappiness; he needs love, and solitude makes the absence of it conspicuous. Loneliness indicates a lack of love; it is something that threatens our quality of life at the deepest level. Not being loved is at the core of human suffering and personal sadness. The word Consoler tells us precisely that we are not alone, that we can never feel abandoned by Love.

By the gift of the Holy Spirit, God has entered into our loneliness and has shattered it. Indeed, this is genuine consolation; it does not consist merely of words but has the force of an active and effective reality.

During the Middle Ages this definition of the Spirit as Consoler led to the Christian duty of entering into the solitude of those who suffer. The first hospices and hospitals were dedicated to the Holy Spirit: thus men undertook the mission of continuing the Spirit's work; they dedicated themselves to being "consolers", to entering into the solitude of the sick, the suffering, and the elderly, so as to bring them light.

This is still a serious duty for us today, in our time.

Moreover, the Greek work parakletos can be translated in yet another way: it also means "advocate". A verse from the Book of Revelation might help us to understand it better: "And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God" (Rev 12:10).

Someone who does not love God with all his heart does not love man, either. Those who deny God quickly become persons who destroy nature and accuse men, because accusing other men and nature enables them to justify their opposition to God: a God who has made this cannot be good! That is their logic.

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is not an accuser; he is an advocate and defender of mankind and creation. God himself takes the side of men and creatures. Within creation, God affirms and defends himself by coming to our defense. God is for us; we see that clearly throughout the earthly life of Jesus: he is the only one who takes our side, becomes one with us even unto death. Saint Paul's awareness of this prompted an outburst of joy:

If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? ... For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:31-39)

This God is for us a cause of joy, and we want to celebrate him. To know him and to acknowledge him is of great importance in our time. We are remembering the terrible days of the Second World War, happy that the dictator Hitler has disappeared along with all his atrocities and that Europe has been able to regain its freedom.

But we cannot forget the fact that, even today, the world suffers from atrocious threats and cruelties. To corrupt and exploit the image of God is as dangerous as the denial of God that was part and parcel of the twentieth-century ideologies and of the totalitarian regimes that sprang from them, turning the world into an arid desert, outside and inside, to the very depths of the soul.

Precisely at this historical moment, Europe and the world need the presence of God that was revealed in Jesus; they need God to stay close to mankind through the Holy Spirit. It is part of our responsibility as Christians to see to it that God remains in our world, that he is present to it as the one and only force capable of preserving mankind from self-destruction.

God is One and Three: he is not an eternal solitude; rather, he is an eternal love that is based on the reciprocity of the Persons, a love that is the first cause, the origin, and the foundation of all being and of every form of life. Unity engendered by love, trinitarian unity, is a unity infinitely more profound than the unity of a building stone, indivisible as that may be from a material perspective.

This supreme unity is not rigidly static; it is love. The most beautiful artistic depiction of this mystery was left to us by Andrei Rublev in the fifteenth century: the world-renowned icon of the Trinity.

Of course, it does not portray the eternal mystery of God in himself, who would dare to do that? It attempts, rather, to represent this mystery as it is reflected in the gift of itself in history, as in the visit of the three men to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre (Gen 18:1-33). Abraham immediately recognized that they were not just like any other men, but that God himself was coming to him through them.



In Rublev's icon, the mystery of this event is made visible, presented as an event that can be contemplated in its many dimensions: thus the mystery as such is respected. The artistic richness of this icon allows me to underscore another characteristic: the natural surroundings of this event, which express the mystery of the Persons.

We are near the oaks of Mamre, which Rublev depicts in stylized form as a single tree representing the tree of life; and this tree of life is none other than the trinitarian love that created the world, sustains it, saves it, and is the source of all life. We see also the tent, the dwelling of Abraham, which recalls the Prologue of John's Gospel: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14).

The body of the incarnate Word of God became itself the tent, the place where God dwells: God becomes our refuge and our dwelling place. Finally, the gift that Abraham offers, "a calf, tender and good", is replaced, in the icon, with a cup, a symbol of the Eucharist, a sign of the gift in which God gives himself: "Love, sacrifice, and self-immolation preceded the act by which the world was created and are the source of that creation." [1]

The tree, the tent, and the cup: these elements show us the mystery of God, allow us to immerse ourselves in the contemplation of its intimate depths, in his trinitarian love. This is the God that we celebrate. This is the God who gives us joy. He is the true hope of our world. Amen.

ENDNOTES:

[1] P. Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, trans. Steven Bigham (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Oakwood Publications, 1990), 247.

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I have found a further explication of the Rublev icon, which I will post later in THE SAINTS...

In advance of SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM, I thought I would put together some 'basic texts', as it were, of Joseph Ratzinger about liturgy. and the question of the Mass.


"The inexhaustible reality of the Catholic liturgy has accompanied me through all phases of life,
and so I shall have to speak of it time and again."


From MILESTONES: MEMOIRS 1927-1977 (publ 1997)
By Joseph Ratzinger

Joseph's parents gradually introduced him to the liturgy by giving him as he grew older a more progressive version of the Schott, the Roman Missal translated into German, that also contained the Latin original. He started out with a children's illustrated prayer book, progressed to a Schott for children with he basic liturgy, then a Schott for Sundays and feast days, and finally a Schott for every day of the year.

pp. 19-20
Every new step into the liturgy was a great event for me. Each new book I was given was something precious to me, and I could not dream of anything more beautiful. It was a riveting adventure to move by degrees into the mysterious world of the liturgy, which was being enacted before us and for us there on the altar.

It was becoming more and more clear to me that here I was encountering a reality that no one had simply thought up, a reality that no official authority or great individual had created. This mysterious fabric of texts and actions had grown from the faith of the Church over the centuries.

It bore the whole weight of history within itself, and yet, at the same time, it was much more than the product of human history. Every century had left its mark upon it. The introductory notes informed us about what came from the early Church, what from the Middle Ages, and what from modern times.

Not everything was logical. Things sometimes got complicated, and it was not always easy to find one's way. But precisely, this is what made the whole edifice wonderful, like one's own. Naturally, the child I then was did not grasp every aspect of this, but I started down the road of the liturgy, and this became a continuous process of growth into a grand reality transcending all particular individuals and generations, a reality that became an occasion for me of ever-new amazement and discovery.

[Someone please tell me if it is possible for a child today to get this same sense of awe and ever-new wonder, of history and continuity, of transcendence, when he attends one of the Novus Ordo Masses that have degenerated into bingo-night informality and self-celebratory community social, instead of an act of worship and thanksgiving directed only to God?]


MILESTONES, pp. 146-149

The second great event at the beginning of my years in Regensburg was the publication of the Missal of Paul VI, which was accompanied by the almost total prohibition, after a transitional phase of only half a year, of using the missal we had had until then.

I welcomed the fact that now we had a binding liturgical text after a period of experimentation that had often deformed the liturgy. [What was he referring to?] But I was dismayed by the prohibition of the old missal, since nothing of the sort had ever happened in the entire history of the liturgy.

The impression was given that what was happening was quite normal: The previous missal had been created by Pius V in 1570 in connection with the Council of Trent; and so it was quite normal that, after four hundred years and a new council, a new pope would present us with a new missal. But the historical truth of the matter is different.

Pius V had simply ordered a reworking of the Missale Romanum then being used, which is the normal thing as history develops over the course of centuries. Many of his successors had likewise reworked this missal again, but without ever setting one missal against another. It was a continual process of growth and purification in which continuity was never destroyed.

There is no such thing as a 'Missal of Pius V', created by Pius V himself. There is only the reworking done by Pius V as one phase in a long history of growth.

The new feature that came to the for after the Council of Trent was of a different nature. The irruption of the Reformation had above all taken the concrete form of liturgical 'reforms.' It was not just a matter of there being a Catholic Church and a Protestant Church alongside one another.

The split of the Church occurred almost imperceptibly and found it most visible and historically most incisive manifestation in the changes of the liturgy. These changes, in turn, took very different forms at he local level, so that here, too, one frequently could not ascertain the boundary between what was still Catholic and what was no longer Catholic.

In this confusing situation, which had become possible by the failure to produce unified liturgical legislation and by the existing liturgical pluralism inherited from the Middle Ages, the pope decided that now the Missale Romanum - the missal of the city of Rome - was to be introduced as reliably Catholic in every place that could not demonstrate its liturgy to be at least 200 years old. Wherever the existing liturgy was that old, it could be preserved because its Catholic character was thus assured. In this case, we cannot speak of the prohibition of a previous missal that had been formerly approved as valid.

The prohibition of the missal that was now decreed, a missal that had known continuous growth over the centuries, starting with the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, introduced a breach into the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic.

It was reasonable and right of the Council to order a revision of teh missal such as had often taken place before and which this time had to be more thorough than before, above all because of the introduction of the vernacular.

But more than this now happened: the old building was demolished, and another was built, to be sure largely using materials from the previous one and even using the old building plans.

There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the results of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused us enormous harm.

For then the impression had to emerge that liturgy is something 'made', not something given in advance but something lying within our power of decision. From this it also follows that we are not to recognize the scholars and the central authority alone as decision makers, but that in the end each and every 'community' must provide itself with its own liturgy.

When liturgy is self-made, however, then it can no longer give us what its proper gift should be: the encounter with the mystery that is not our own product but rather our origin and the source of our life.

A renewal of liturgical awareness, a liturgical reconciliation that again recognizes the unity of the history of the liturgy and understands Vatican II, not as a breach, but as a stage of development - these are urgently needed for the life of the Church.
I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy, which at times has even come to be conceived of etsi Deus non daretur - as if God did not exist: in that it is a matter of indifference whether or not God exists and whether or or not he speaks to us and hears us.

But when the community of faith, the worldwide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless.

And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds - partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart.

That is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council.


From SALT OF THE EARTH(1997)
pp 175-176

In our form of the liturgy, there is a tendency that, in my opinion, is false, namely, the complete 'inculturation' of the liturgy into the contemporary world. The liturgy is thus supposed to be shortened; and everything that is supposedly unintelligible should be removed from it; it should, basically, be transposed down to an even 'flatter' language.

But this is a thoroughgoing misunderstanding of the essence of the liturgy and of liturgical celebration. For in the liturgy one doesn't grasp what's going in a simply rational way, as I understand a lecture, fore example but in a manifold way, with all the senses, and by being drawn into a celebration that isn't invented by some commission but that, as it were, comes to me from the depths of the millennia and, ultimately, of eternity.

When Judaism lost the temple, it clung to the synagogal feasts and rites and was held together by celebrating the great holy days as rites of the believing household. There is a certain form of shared life in the rites, in which what counts is not pure surface intelligibility but what expresses the great continuity of the history of faith that presents itself as an authority that does not come from the individual.

The priest is, in fact, not a showmaster who invents something new and skillfully communicates it. On the contrary, he can entirely lack any talents of a showmaster, because he represents something completely different, and it doesn't depend on him.

Of course, intelligibility is also an element of the liturgy, and for this reason, the Word of God must be well read, interpreted and explained. But there are other ways of understanding in addition to the intelligibility of the words.

Above all, it is not something that new commissions think up again and again. When that happens, the liturgy becomes something we construct, whether the commissions meet in Rome, Trier or Paris. Instead of this, liturgy must really have its great continuity, protected from what is arbitrary, in which I really meet the millennia and through them, eternity, and am raised up into a communion of celebration that is something other than what commissions or liturgy committees devise.

Q: Wouldn't it be conceivable to reactivate the old rite in order to work against this leveling and demystification?

That alone, would not be a solution. I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it. It's impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that.

A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent. Can it be trusted any more about anything else? Won't it proscribe again tomorrow what it prescribes today?

But a simple return to the old way would not, as I have said, be a solution. Our culture has changed so radically in the last 30 years that a liturgy celebrated exclusively in Latin would bring with it an experience of foreignness that many could not cope with.

What we need is a new liturgical education, especially of priests. It must once again become clear that liturgical scholarship does not exist in order to produce constantly new models, though that may be all right for the auto industry It exists in order to introduce us into feast and celebration, to make man capable of mystery.

Here we ought to learn not just from the Eastern Church but from all the religions of the world, which all know that liturgy is something other than the invention of texts and rites, that it lives precisely from what is beyond manipulation.

Young people have a very strong senses of this. Centers in which the liturgy is celebrated reverently and nobly without nonsense, attract, even if one doesn't understand every word. We need such centers to set an example.

Unfortunately, in Germany, tolerance for bizarre tinkering is almost unlimited, whereas tolerance for the old liturgy is practically non-existent.

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And thanks to the traditionalist site UNA VOCE, here is the English translation of an address delivered by Cardinal Ratzinger in Rome in 1998:

Ten Years of the Motu Proprio "Ecclesia Dei"
by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
translated by Fr. Ignatius Harrison
Brompton Oratory, London

A lecture given at the Ergife Palace Hotel, Rome on Saturday 24th October 1998, to an audience of some 3000 traditional Catholics.


Ten years after the publication of the Motu proprio "Ecclesia Dei", what sort of balance-sheet can one draw-up? I think this is above all an occasion to show our gratitude and to give thanks.

The divers communities that were born thanks to this pontifical text have given the Church a great number of priestly and religious vocations who, zealously, joyfully and deeply united with the Pope, have given their service to the Gospel in our present era of history.

Through them, many of the faithful have been confirmed in the joy of being able to live the liturgy, and confirmed in their love for the Church, or perhaps they have rediscovered both. In many dioceses - and their number is not so small! - they serve the Church in collaboration with the Bishops and in fraternal union with those faithful who do feel at home with the renewed form of the new liturgy. All this cannot but move us to gratitude today!

However, it would not be realistic if we were to pass-over in silence those things which are less good. In many places difficulties persist, and these continue because some bishops, priests and faithful consider this attachment to the old liturgy as an element of division which only disturbs the ecclesial community and which gives rise to suspicions regarding an acceptance of the Council made "with reservations", and more generally concerning obedience towards the legitimate pastors of the Church.

We ought now to ask the following question: how can these difficulties be overcome? How can one build the necessary trust so that these groups and communities who love the ancient liturgy can be smoothly integrated into the life of the Church?

But there is another question underlying the first: what is the deeper reason for this distrust or even for this rejection of a continuation of the ancient liturgical forms?

It is without doubt possible that, within this area, there exist reasons which go further back than any theology and which have their origin in the character of individuals or in the conflict between different personalities, or indeed a number of other circumstances which are wholly extrinsic.

But it is certain that there are also other deeper reasons which explain these problems. The two reasons which are most often heard, are: lack of obedience to the Council which wanted the liturgical books reformed, and the break in unity which must necessarily follow if different liturgical forms are left in use.

It is relatively simple to refute these two arguments on the theoretical level.

The Council did not itself reform the liturgical books, but it ordered their revision, and to this end, it established certain fundamental rules.

Before anything else, the Council gave a definition of what liturgy is, and this definition gives a valuable yardstick for every liturgical celebration. Were one to shun these essential rules and put to one side the normae generales which one finds in numbers 34 - 36 of the Constitution De Sacra Liturgia (SL), in that case one would indeed be guilty of disobedience to the Council! It is in the light of these criteria that liturgical celebrations must be evaluated, whether they be according to the old books or the new.

It is good to recall here what Cardinal Newman observed, that the Church, throughout her history, has never abolished nor forbidden orthodox liturgical forms, which would be quite alien to the Spirit of the Church.

An orthodox liturgy, that is to say, one which expresses the true faith, is never a compilation made according to the pragmatic criteria of different ceremonies, handled in a positivist and arbitrary way, one way today and another way tomorrow.

The orthodox forms of a rite are living realities, born out of the dialogue of love between the Church and her Lord. They are expressions of the life of the Church, in which are distilled the faith, the prayer and the very life of whole generations, and which make incarnate in specific forms both the action of God and the response of man. Such rites can die, if those who have used them in a particular era should disappear, or if the life-situation of those same people should change.

The authority of the Church has the power to define and limit the use of such rites in different historical situations, but she never just purely and simply forbids them! Thus the Council ordered a reform of the liturgical books, but it did not prohibit the former books. The criterion which the Council established is both much larger and more demanding; it invites us all to self-criticism! But we will come back to this point.

We must now examine the other argument, which claims that the existence of the two rites can damage unity. Here a distinction must be made between the theological aspect and the practical aspect of the question.

As regards what is theoretical and basic, it must be stated that several forms of the Latin rite have always existed, and were only slowly withdrawn, as a result of the coming together of the different parts of Europe. Before the Council there existed side by side with the Roman rite, the Ambrosian rite, the Mozarabic rite of Toledo, the rite of Braga, the Carthusian rite, the Carmelite rite, and best known of all, the Dominican rite, and perhaps still other rites of which I am not aware.

No one was ever scandalized that the Dominicans, often present in our parishes, did not celebrate like diocesan priests but had their own rite. We did not have any doubt that their rite was as Catholic as the Roman rite, and we were proud of the richness inherent in these various traditions.

Moreover, one must say this: that the freedom which the new order of Mass gives to creativity is often taken to excessive lengths. The difference between the liturgy according to the new books, how it is actually practiced and celebrated in different places, is often greater than the difference between an old Mass and a new Mass, when both these are celebrated according to the prescribed liturgical books.

An average Christian without specialist liturgical formation would find it difficult to distinguish between a Mass sung in Latin according to the old Missal and a sung Latin Mass according to the new Missal. However, the difference between a liturgy celebrated faithfully according to the Missal of Paul VI and the reality of a vernacular liturgy celebrated with all the freedom and creativity that are possible - that difference can be enormous!

With these considerations we have already crossed the threshold between theory and practice, a point at which things naturally get more complicated, because they concern relations between living people.

It seems to me that the dislikes we have mentioned are as great as they are because the two forms of celebration are seen as indicating two different spiritual attitudes, two different ways of perceiving the Church and the Christian life.

The reasons for this are many. The first is this: one judges the two liturgical forms from their externals and thus one arrives at the following conclusion: there are two fundamentally different attitudes.

The average Christian considers it essential for the renewed liturgy to be celebrated in the vernacular and facing the people; that there be a great deal of freedom for creativity; and that the laity exercise an active role therein. On the other hand, it is considered essential for a celebration according to the old rite to be in Latin, with the priest facing the altar, strictly and precisely according to the rubrics, and that the faithful follow the Mass in private prayer with no active role.

From this viewpoint, a particular set of externals [phénoménologie] is seen as essential to this or that liturgy, rather than what the liturgy itself holds to be essential. We must hope for the day when the faithful will appreciate the liturgy on the basis of visible concrete forms, and become spiritually immersed in those forms; the faithful do not easily penetrate the depths of the liturgy.

The contradictions and oppositions which we have just enumerated originate neither from the spirit nor the letter of the conciliar texts. The actual Constitution on the Liturgy does not speak at all about celebration facing the altar or facing the people. On the subject of language, it says that Latin should be retained, while giving a greater place to the vernacular "above all in readings, instructions, and in a certain number of prayers and chants" (SL 36:2).

As regards the participation of the laity, the Council first of all insists on a general point, that the liturgy is essentially the concern of the whole Body of Christ, Head and members, and for this reason it pertains to the whole Body of the Church "and that consequently it [the liturgy] is destined to be celebrated in community with the active participation of the faithful".

And the text specifies "In liturgical celebrations each person, minister or lay faithful, when fulfilling his role, should carry out only and wholly that which pertains to him by virtue of the nature of the rite and the liturgical norms"(SL 28).

"To promote active participation, acclamations by the people are favoured, responses, the chanting of the psalms, antiphons, canticles, also actions or gestures and bodily postures. One should also observe a period of sacred silence at an appropriate time" (SL 30).

These are the directives of the Council; they can provide everybody with material for reflection. Amongst a number of modern liturgists there is unfortunately a tendency to develop the ideas of the Council in one direction only. In acting thus, they end up reversing the intentions of the Council.

The role of the priest is reduced, by some, to that of a mere functionary. The fact that the Body of Christ as a whole is the subject of the liturgy is often deformed to the point where the local community becomes the self-sufficient subject of the liturgy and itself distributes the liturgy's various roles.

There also exists a dangerous tendency to minimalize the sacrificial character of the Mass, causing the mystery and the sacred to disappear, on the pretext, a pretext that claims to be absolute, that in this way they make things better understood.

Finally, one observes the tendency to fragment the liturgy and to highlight in a unilateral way its communitarian character, giving the assembly itself the power to regulate the celebration.

Fortunately however, there is also a certain disenchantment with an all too banal rationalism, and with the pragmatism of certain liturgists, whether they be theorists or practitioners, and one can note a return to mystery, to adoration and to the sacred, and to the cosmic and eschatological character of the liturgy, as evidenced in the 1996 "Oxford Declaration on the Liturgy".

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the celebration of the old liturgy had strayed too far into a private individualism, and that communication between priest and people was insufficient. I have great respect for our forefathers who at Low Mass said the "Prayers during Mass" contained in their prayer books, but certainly one cannot consider that as the ideal of liturgical celebration!

Perhaps these reductionist forms of celebration are the real reason that the disappearance of the old liturgical books was of no importance in many countries and caused no sorrow. One was never in contact with the liturgy itself.

On the other hand, in those places where the Liturgical Movement had created a certain love for the liturgy, where the Movement had anticipated the essential ideas of the Council, such as for example, the prayerful participation of all in the liturgical action, it was those places where there was all the more distress when confronted with a liturgical reform undertaken too hastily and often limited to externals.

Where the Liturgical Movement had never existed, the reform initially raised no problems. The problems only appeared in a sporadic fashion, when unchecked creativity caused the sense of the sacred mystery to disappear.

This is why it is very important to observe the essential criteria of the Constitution on the Liturgy, which I quoted above, including when one celebrates according to the old Missal! The moment when this liturgy truly touches the faithful with its beauty and its richness, then it will be loved, then it will no longer be irreconcilably opposed to the new Liturgy, providing that these criteria are indeed applied as the Council wished.

Different spiritual and theological emphases will certainly continue to exist, but there will no longer be two contradictory ways of being a Christian; there will instead be that richness which pertains to the same single Catholic faith.

When, some years ago, somebody proposed "a new liturgical movement" in order to avoid the two forms of the liturgy becoming too distanced from each other, and in order to bring about their close convergence, at that time some of the friends of the old liturgy expressed their fear that this would only be a stratagem or a ruse, intended to eliminate the old liturgy finally and completely.

Such anxieties and fears really must end! If the unity of faith and the oneness of the mystery appear clearly within the two forms of celebration, that can only be a reason for everybody to rejoice and to thank the good Lord. Inasmuch as we all believe, live and act with these intentions, we shall also be able to persuade the Bishops that the presence of the old liturgy does not disturb or break the unity of their diocese, but is rather a gift destined to build-up the Body of Christ, of which we are all the servants.

So, my dear friends, I would like to encourage you not to lose patience, to maintain your confidence, and to draw from the liturgy the strength needed to bear witness to the Lord in our own day.

What a great thing it is that Joseph Ratzinger has written and spoken so much about all of the topics that matter most to the faith and to the Church that one can almost always turn to multiple sources to see exactly what he had to say about a certain topic in the past, with a consistency that has characterized his thought. This one helps us to appreciate more profoundly the simple statements made by the CDF in reasserting Catholic doctrine on the Church itself.

When the CDF statement came out yesterday, EWTN had an appropriate document online in English translation. Here it is:


THE ECCLESIOLOGY OF THE VATICAN-II
CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH, 'LUMEN GENTIUM'
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Prefect
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith


[This article appears in English translation for the first time. Cardinal Ratzinger made the presentation at a symposium on the reception of the Council held in Rome in November 2000.

In the article the Cardinal alerts us to the need to keep before us in a global way the Council's teaching on the Church, in order to appreciate its richness. Grasping the richness of the mystery of the Church keeps us from forgetting that the Church is a mystery of faith that no one theology or pastoral plan can ever encompass].

******

At the time of the preparation for the Second Vatican Council and during the Council itself, Cardinal Frings often told me of a small episode which moved him deeply.

Pope John XXIII had not personally decided on themes for the Council, but invited the world's bishops to make their suggestions, so that the subjects to be treated by the Council might emerge from the lived experience of the universal Church.

In the German Bishops' Conference, topics were presented for the Council but, not only in Germany but throughout the Catholic Church, it was felt that the theme of the Council should be the Church. The First Vatican Council was unable to complete its ecclesiological synthesis because it had been cut short by the Franco-Prussian War, and had to leave the chapter on the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff to stand by itself.

To offer a comprehensive vision of the Church seemed to be the urgent task of the coming Second Vatican Council. The focus on the Church flowed from the cultural atmosphere of the time.

The end of the First World War had brought a profound theological upheaval. Liberal theology with its individualistic orientation was completely eclipsed, and a new sensitivity to the Church had been arising.

Not only did Romano Guardini speak of a reawakening of the Church in souls. The Evangelical Bishop Otto Dibelius coined the formula "the century of the Church", and Karl Barth gave to his dogmatic synthesis of the reformed (Calvinist) tradition the programmatic title Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics).

He explained that a dogmatic theology presupposes the Church; without the Church it does not exist. Among the members of the German Episcopal Conference there was consequently a broad consensus that the theme of the Council should be the Church.

Speak of Church within discourse on God

But the senior Bishop of Regensburg, Bishop Buchberger, who came to be esteemed and respected far beyond his diocese for having conceived of the 10-volume Lexikon für Teologie und Kirche, now in its third edition.

He asked to speak  as the Archbishop of Cologne told me and said: "Dear brothers, at the Council you should first of all speak about God. This is the most important theme".

The bishops were deeply impressed; they could not ignore the seriousness of his suggestion. Of course, they could not make up their minds simply to propose the theme of God. But an unspoken concern lingered, at least in Cardinal Frings, who continued to ponder how the bishops might satisfy this imperative.

The episode came to mind when I read the text of the conference given by Johann Baptist Metz in 1993 at the time he retired from his chair in Münster. I would like to quote at least a few significant phrases of his important address.

Metz says:
"The crisis reached by European Christianity is no longer primarily or at least exclusively an ecclesial crisis.... The crisis is more profound: it is not only rooted in the situation of the Church: the crisis has become a crisis of God. To sum up, one could say 'religion yes', 'God no', where this 'no', in turn, is not meant in the categorical sense of the great forms of atheism.

"There are no longer any great forms of atheism. Today's atheism can effectively return to speaking of God  distractedly or calmly without really intending him [his person].... Furthermore, the Church has her own concept of immunization against the crisis of God. She no longer speaks today of God  as, for example, she still did at the Second Vatican Council  but only  as she did at the Council  of God proclaimed through the Church. The crisis of God is codified ecclesiologically".

Words like this from the mouth of the creator of political theology cannot fail to capture our attention. They rightly remind us that the Second Vatican Council was not only an ecclesioiogical Council, but that first and foremost, it spoke of God, and this not only within Christianity, but to the world, of the God who is the God of all, who saves all and is accessible to all.

Perhaps the Second Vatican Council, as Metz seems to say, only accepted half the legacy of the First Vatican Council? Obviously a treatment of the ecclesiology of the Council has to deal with this question.

Basic Thesis

Right now I want to state my basic thesis: the Second Vatican Council clearly wanted to speak of the Church within the discourse on God, to subordinate the discourse on the Church to the discourse on God and to offer an ecclesiology that would be theo-logical in a true sense.

Until now, however, the way the Council was received has ignored this qualifying characteristic in favour of individual ecclesiological affirmations; it has highlighted single phrases that are easy to repeat, and has thus fallen away from the broad horizons of the Council Fathers.

Something similar can be said about the first text on which the Second Vatican Council focused  the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The fact that it was placed at the beginning was basically due to pragmatic motives. But retrospectively, it must be said that it has a deeper meaning within the structure of the Council: adoration comes first. Therefore God comes first.

This introduction corresponds to the norm of the Benedictine Rule: Operi Dei nihil praeponatur [Let nothing be placed before the work of God, the divine office]. As the second text of the Council, the Constitution on the Church should be considered as inwardly connected with the text on the liturgy. The Church is guided by prayer, by the mission of glorifying God. By its nature, ecclesiology is connected with the liturgy.

It is, therefore, logical that the third Constitution should speak of the Word of God that convokes the Church and renews her in every age.

The fourth Constitution shows how the glorification of God is realized in the active life, since the light received from God is carried into the world and only in this way becomes fully the glorification of God.

In the history of the post-Conciliar period, the Constitution on the Liturgy was certainly no longer understood from the viewpoint of the basic primacy of adoration, but rather as a recipe book of what we can do with the Liturgy. In the meantime, the fact that the Liturgy is actually "made" for God and not for ourselves, seems to have escaped the minds of those who are busy pondering how to give the Liturgy an ever more attractive and communicable shape, actively involving an ever greater number of people.

However the more we make it for ourselves, the less attractive it is, because everyone perceives clearly that the essential focus on God has increasingly been lost.

Partial Interpretations

As regards the ecclesioiogy of Lumen gentium, certain key words continue to be kept in mind: the idea of the People of God, the collegiality of the bishops as a reappraisal of the bishops' ministry in relation to the primacy of the Pope, the reappraisal of the local Churches in relation to the universal Church, the ecumenical openness of the concept of Church and openness to other religions, lastly, the question of the specific position of the Catholic Church, expressed in the formula which holds that the Church, defined in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, 'subsistit in Ecclesia catholica'.

For now I will leave the famous formula untranslated, because  as was foreseen  it has received the most contradictory explanations: which range from the idea that it expresses the uniqueness of the Catholic Church united to the Pope, to the idea that it expresses the equivalency of the other Christian Churches with the Catholic Church and that the Catholic Church has given up her claim of being distinctive.

In the early stages of the reception of the Council, the concept of "People of God" predominated together with the theme of collegiality; the term "people" was understood in terms of ordinary political usage; later in the context of liberation theology it was understood in terms of the Marxist use of the term people as opposed to the dominating classes, and even more widely, in the sense of the sovereignty of the people, which would now finally be applied to the Church.

This in turn gave rise to broad discussions about her structures, in which People of God was interpreted, according to the situation, either in a more Western way as "democratization", or in the Eastern European way as "popular democracy".

Gradually these "verbal fireworks" (N. Lohfink) around the concept of People of God burned out, on the one hand, and above all because the power games became empty and had to make room for ordinary work in parish councils, and, on the other, because sound theological work has incontrovertibly shown that the politicization of a concept that comes from a totally different context cannot be supported.

As a result of his careful exegetic analyses, the exegete of Bocum, Werner Berg, to take one example, states: "Despite the small number of passages that contain the expression 'People of God', from this point of view 'People of God' is a rare biblical expression, but nevertheless a common idea emerges: the phrase 'People of God' expresses 'kinship' with God, a relationship with God, the link between God and what is designated as 'People of God', hence a 'vertical orientation'. The expression lends itself less to describe the hierarchical structure of this community, especially if the 'People of God' is described as a 'counterpart' to the ministers.... Nor, starting with its biblical significance, does the expression lend itself to a cry of protest against the ministers: 'We are the People of God'".

Josef Meyer zu Schlotern, the professor of fundamental theology of Paderborn, concludes the examination of the discussion about the concept of "People of God" by observing that the Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council ends the pertinent chapter in such a way as "to outline the Trinitarian structure as the foundation of the ultimate definition of the Church ...".

Thus the discussion is led back to the essential point: the Church does not exist for herself, but must be God's instrument, in order to gather man to Himself to prepare for the moment when "God will be all in all" (I Cor 15,28).

It was the concept of God that lost out in the "fireworks" sparked by the expression, and in this way the expression, People of God, lost its meaning.

In fact, a Church that exists for herself alone is superfluous. And people notice it immediately. The crisis of the Church as it is reflected in the concept of People of God, is a "crisis of God"; it is the consequence of abandoning the essential. What remains is merely a struggle for power, There is enough of this elsewhere in the world, there is no need of the Church for this.

Ecclesiology of Communion

It can certainly be said that, at the time of the extraordinary Synod of 1985, which was to attempt an evaluation of the 20 years following the Council, there appeared a new effort to sum up conciliar ecclesiology in a basic concept: the ecclesiology of communio. I received this new focus of ecclesiology with joy and did my best to prepare it.

Even so, it should be recognized first of all that the word communio does not have a central position in the Council. But if it is properly understood it can serve as a synthesis for the essential elements of conciliar ecclesiology.

All of the essential elements of the Christian concept of communio are combined in the famous text of I Jn 1,3, which can be taken as the criterion for the correct Christian understanding of communion: "That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete".

Here the starting point of communio is brought to the fore: the encounter with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who comes to men and women through the Church's proclamation. So there arises communion among human beings, which in turn is based on communio with the Triune God.

We have access to communion with God through the realization of the communion of God with man which is Christ in person; the encounter with Christ creates communion with him and thus with the Father in the Holy Spirit; and from this point unites human beings with one another.

The purpose of all this is full joy: the Church carries an eschatological dynamic within her. In the words "full joy", we can glimpse a reference to the farewell discourse of Jesus, to the Easter mystery and to the return of the Lord in his Easter appearances, which prepare for his full return in the new world: "You will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy ... I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice .... ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (Jn 16; 20; 22; 24).

If the last sentence is compared with Lk 11,13  the invitation to prayer in Luke  it clearly appears that "joy" and "Holy Spirit" are one and the same, and that the word "joy" in I Jn 1, 3, conceals the Holy Spirit who is not expressly mentioned here.

The word communio therefore, based on the biblical context has a theological, Christological, salvation historical and ecclesiological character. It therefore has within it the sacramental dimension which in Paul appears explicitly: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one Bread, we who are many are one body..." (I Cor 10,16 f.).

The ecclesiology of communion is a profoundly Eucharistic ecclesiology. It is thus very close to the Eucharistic ecclesiology which Orthodox theologians have developed convincingly in our century. Ecclesiology becomes more concrete and at the same time remains totally spiritual, transcendent and eschatological. In the Eucharist Christ, present in the bread and wine and giving himself ever anew, builds the Church as his body and through his risen body unites us to the Triune God and to one another.

The Eucharist is celebrated in different places, and yet at the same time it is universal, because there is only one Christ and only one body of Christ. The Eucharist includes the priestly service of the repraesentatio Christi and thus the network of service, the synthesis of unity and multiplicity, which is already expressed in the word communio.

Thus it can be said without a doubt that the concept incorporates an ecclesiological synthesis, which unites the discourse on the Church with the discourse on God and with life from God and with God, a synthesis that takes up all the essential intentions of the Second Vatican Council's ecclesiology and connects them in the right way.

For these reasons I was grateful and pleased when the Synod of 1985 made the concept of communion once again the focus of reflection. However, the years that followed show that no word is safe from misunderstandings, not even the best and most profound.

Partial Interpretations

To the extent that communio became an easy slogan, it was devalued and distorted. As with the concept of "People of God", here too a gradual "horizontalism" should be pointed out, with the giving up of the idea of God.

The ecclesiology of communion began to be reduced to the theme of the relationship between the local Church and the universal Church, which in turn degenerated gradually into the problem of the division of the areas of competence between them.

Of course, the egalitarian cause, which claimed that there could only be complete equality in communio, was again disseminated. Thus once again the disciples' discussion on who was the greatest became operative, which, of course, will not be settled in any generation. Mark mentions it with the greatest insistence.

On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus had spoken for the third time to the disciples about his forthcoming Passion. On arriving in Capernaum he asked them what they had been discussing on the way.

"But they were silent", for they had been discussing which of them was the greatest  a sort of discussion of primacy (Mk 9,33-37). Isn't it still the same today? As the Lord walks towards his Passion, while the Church, he himself within her, is suffering, we reflect on our favourite theme, the discussion of our rights of precedence. And if he were to come among us and ask us what we were discussing along the way, how embarrassed and silent we would have to be!

This does not mean that the Church should not also discuss the proper order and designation of responsibilities; and naturally, imbalances will always be found in her that will require correction. Of course, there can be an excessive Roman centralism, which must be identified and purified.

But such matters cannot detract from the Church's true task: the Church must not speak primarily of herself but of God; and only in order that this may happen with integrity, there are also certain intra-ecclesial criticisms for which the connecting of her discourse on God and on common service must provide the proper direction.

Finally, it is not by accident that what Jesus said about the last becoming first and the first becoming last returns in various contexts of the evangelical tradition  as a mirror, that always reflects everyone.

CDF Letter on Communion

To confront the reduction of the concept of communio which has taken place since 1985, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith saw fit to prepare a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on "Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion", which was published on 28 June 1992.

Since it now seems to have become obligatory for theologians who want to make a big name for themselves to offer a negative appraisal of the documents of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, theologians created a storm of criticism over it from which it could hardly recover.

It was the sentence that said that the universal Church is a reality that in its essential mystery is logically and ontologically prior to the particular Churches that was singled out for criticism.

In the text, this was supported concisely by recalling that, according to the Fathers, the Church which is one and unique precedes creation and gives birth to the particular Churches (n. 9). Thus the Fathers take up a rabbinical theology which had conceived of the Torah and Israel as pre-existent: creation was considered to be so conceived that there would be room in it for God's will; but this would require a people who would live in accord with God's will and make it the light of the world.

Since the Fathers were convinced of the ultimate identity between the Church and Israel, they could not see in the Church something that took place by chance at the last hour, but recognized in the gathering of the peoples in accord with God's will, the internal purpose of creation.

The image is broadened and deepened on the basis of Christology: history  again in relation to the Old Testament  is explained as a love story between God and man. God finds and prepares a bride for his Son, the single bride who is the unique Church.

Starting from the word of Genesis, that the man and his wife will become "one flesh" (Gn 2,24), the image of the bride is united with the idea of the Church as the body of Christ, a metaphor which in turn comes from the Eucharistic liturgy. The one body of Christ is prepared; Christ and the Church will be two "in one flesh", one body and thus "God will be all in all".

This ontological precedence of the universal Church, the one Church, the one body, the one bride, over the concrete empirical realizations in the particular Churches seems to me so obvious that I find it hard to understand the objections to it.

Indeed it seems to me that they are only possible if one does not want to see, or no longer succeeds in seeing, the great Church conceived by God  perhaps out of desperation at her earthly inadequacy  she now appears as a theological fancy, so all that remains is the empirical image of the Church in the mutual relations and conflicts of the particular Churches.

But this means that the Church as a theological subject has been obliterated. If from now on the Church can only be recognized in her human organization, then, in fact, all that is left is desolation. But then one has not only abandoned the ecclesiology of the Fathers, but also that of the New Testament and the conception of Israel in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, however, it is not necessary to wait for the Deutero-Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse to find the ontological priority  reaffirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith  of the universal Church in relation to the particular Churches.

In the heart of the great Pauline letters, in the Letter to the Galatians, the Apostle does not speak to us of the heavenly Jerusalem as of a great eschatological reality, but as of one that precedes us: "But the Jerusalem above is our mother" (Gal 4,26). In this regard, H. Schlier points out that for Paul, as for the Jewish tradition from which he draws inspiration, the heavenly Jerusalem is the new aeon. However, for the Apostle, this new aeon is already present "in the Christian Church. This is for him the heavenly Jerusalem in her children".

Lucan Vision of the Church

Even though the ontological priority of the one Church cannot seriously be denied, the question concerning her temporal priority is certainly more difficult. The Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is referring here to the Lucan image of the birth of the Church at Pentecost through the work of the Holy Spirit.

There is no intention to discuss the question of the historical aspect of this account. What matters is the theological affirmation which Luke has at heart.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called attention to the fact that the Church began in the community of the 120 gathered around Mary, especially in the renewed community of the Twelve, who are not members of a local Church, but the Apostles who will take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

As a further clarification, one can add that in their number, 12, they are both the old and the new Israel, the one Israel of God, which now  as at the outset was fundamentally contained in the concept of the People of God, is extended to all the nations and founds the unique People of God among all peoples.

This reference is reinforced by two other elements: the Church at the time of her birth already speaks all languages. The Fathers of the Church have rightly interpreted this account of the miracle of tongues as an anticipation of the Catholica  the Church from the very first moment is oriented kat'holon  she embraces the whole universe.

The counterpart to this is Luke's description of the multitude of those who listened as pilgrims coming from all over the earth on the basis of the table of 12 peoples, by which he intends to allude to the all-inclusiveness of the hearers. Luke has enriched this Hellenistic table of peoples with a 13th name: the Romans, with which he doubtless wanted to stress once more the idea of the Orbis.

The precise meaning of the text of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is not fully conveyed when a German theologian says of it that the original community of Jerusalem was in fact the universal Church and the local Church at the same time, and then continues: "This certainly represents a Lucan elaboration, in fact, in the historical perspective presumably several communities existed from the very start, with communities in Galilee alongside the community of Jerusalem".

Here it is not a matter of the question, ultimately insoluble for us, of when and exactly where Christian communities came into being for the first time, but of the interior beginning of the Church, which Luke wants to describe and which he attributes, over and apart from any empirically verifiable fact, to the power of the Holy Spirit.

However it does not do justice to the Lucan account to say that the original community of Jerusalem was simultaneously the universal Church and the local Church. The first reality in St Luke's account is not an indigenous community of Jerusalem; rather, the first reality is that, in the Twelve, the old Israel which is unique becomes the new one, and this one Israel of God, through the miracle of tongues, even before it becomes the representation of the local Church of Jerusalem, is now revealed as a unity that embraces all time and places. In the pilgrims present who came from all countries, it immediately encompasses all the peoples of the world.

Perhaps it is not necessary to overemphasize the question of the temporal priority of the universal Church which Luke clearly presents in his account. What is important is that at the beginning the Church is generated in the Twelve by the one Spirit for all peoples, hence even from the first moment she is directed to being in all cultures, and thus to being the one People of God: she is not a local community that grows gradually, but the leaven that is always destined to permeate the whole, and consequently, embodies universality from the first instant.

Resistance to the affirmations of the pre-eminence of the universal Church in relation to the particular Churches is difficult to understand and even impossible to understand theologically.

It only becomes understandable on the basis of a suspicion: "The formula becomes totally problematic if the one universal Church is tacitly identified with the Roman Church, de facto with the Pope and the Curia. If this occurs, then the Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cannot be understood as an aid to the clarification of the ecclesiology of communion, but must be understood as its abandonment and an endeavour to restore the centralism of Rome".

In this text the identification of the universal Church with the Pope and the Curia is first introduced as a hypothesis, as a risk, but then seems de facto to have been attributed to the Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which thus appears as a kind of theological restoration, thereby diverging from the Second Vatican Council.

This interpretative leap is surprising, but obviously represents a widespread suspicion; it gives voice to an accusation heard everywhere, and expresses succinctly a growing inability to portray anything concrete under the name of universal Church, under the elements of the one, holy, catholic of the Church.

The Pope and the Curia are the only elements that can be identified, and if one exalts them inordinately from the theological point of view, it is understandable that some may feel threatened.

Council on the universal Church

Thus we find ourselves concretely, after what is only apparently an excursus, facing the question of the interpretation of the Council. We now ask the following question: what really was the idea of the Council on the universal Church?

It cannot be rightly said that the Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith tacitly identifies the universal Church with the Roman Church, or de facto with the Pope and the Curia.

The temptation to do so arises if at the start the local Church of Jerusalem and the universal Church had already been identified, that is, if the concept of Church has been reduced to that of the communities that are empirically discernible, and if one has lost sight of its theological depth. It is helpful to return with these questions to the text of the Council itself.

The first sentence of the Constitution on the Church immediately explains that the Council does not consider the Church as a reality closed in on herself, but sees her in a Christological perspective: "Christ is the light of the nations; and it is, accordingly, the heartfelt desire of this sacred Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that ... the light of Christ, reflected on the face of the Church, may enlighten all men".

With this background we can understand the image used in the theology of the Fathers, who see the Church as the moon that does not shine with its own light, but reflects the light of Christ the sun. Ecclesiology is shown to be dependent upon Christology and connected with it. But since no one can speak correctly of Christ, of the Son, without at the same time speaking of the Father, and, since it is impossible to speak correctly of the Father and the Son without listening to the Holy Spirit, the Christological vision of the Church necessarily expands to become a Trinitarian ecclesiology (Lumen gentium, nn. 2-4).

The discourse on the Church is a discourse on God, and only in this way is it correct. In this Trinitarian ouverture, which offers the key to a correct interpretation of the whole text, we learn what the one, holy Church is, starting with and in all her concrete historical phenomena, and what "universal Church" should mean.

This is further explained when we are subsequently shown the Church's inner dynamism towards the kingdom of God. Precisely because the Church is to be theo-logically understood, she is always transcending herself; she is the gathering for the kingdom of God, the breaking-in of the kingdom.

Then the different images of the Church are briefly presented, which all describe the unique Church, whether she is described as the bride, the house of God, his family, the temple, the holy city, our mother, the Jerusalem which is above or God's flock, etc. This, ultimately, becomes even more concrete. We are given a very practical answer to the question: what is this, this one universal Church which ontologically and temporally precedes the local Churches? Where is she? Where can we see her act?

Baptism and Eucharist

The Constitution answers, speaking to us of the sacraments. First comes Baptism: it is a Trinitarian event, in other words , totally theological, far more than a socialization bound up with the local Church; this, unfortunately, is a common distortion.

Baptism does not derive from the local community; rather through Baptism the door of the one Church is opened to us, it is the presence of the one Church and can only flow from her, from the heavenly Jerusalem, from the new mother.

In this regard, the well known ecumenist, Vinzenz Pfnür, recently said: "Baptism is being incorporated into the 'one' body of Christ, opened up for us through the Cross (Eph 2,16), in which we ... are all baptized by means of the one Spirit (I Cor 12,13), that is, it is essentially more than the baptismal announcement in use in many places: "we have received into our community&" We come to belong to this one body through Baptism, "which should not be replaced by membership in a local Church, The 'one' bride and the 'one' episcopate also belong to it ... in which one participates, according to Cyprian, only within the communion of bishops".

In Baptism the universal Church continuously precedes the local Church and builds her. Because of this, the Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on communio can say that there are no strangers in the Church: everyone is at home everywhere, and is not just a guest.

The Church is always the one Church, one and the same. Whoever is baptized in Berlin, is as much at home in the Church in Rome or New York or Kinshasa or Bangalore or in any other place, as he is in the Church where he was baptized. He does not have to register for Baptism again, the Church is one. Baptism comes from her and gives birth within her.

Whoever speaks of Baptism, speaks of, and, by that very fact, treats of the Word of God, which for the whole Church is only one and continuously precedes her in all places, summons her and builds her up. This Word is above the Church, yet it is in her, entrusted to her as a living subject. To be effectively present in history, the Word needs this subject, but this subject on her part does not subsist without the vital life-giving force of the Word, which first makes her a subject.

When we speak of the Word of God, we also mean the Creed, which is at the heart of the baptismal event; it is also the way in which the Church receives the Word and makes it her own, in a certain way it is a word and also a response. Here too, the universal Church, the one Church, is present in a concrete way, and can be perceived as such.

The conciliar text passes from Baptism to the Eucharist, in which Christ gives his body and thus makes us his body. This body is one, and so again for every local Church the Eucharist is the place of incorporation into the one Christ, the becoming-one of all communicants in the universal communio, which unites heaven and earth, the living and the dead, past, present and future, and opens up into eternity.

The Eucharist is not born from the local Church and does not end in her. It continuously shows that Christ comes to us from outside, through our closed doors; the Church comes to us continuously from outside, from the total, unique body of Christ and leads us into it.

This extra nous of the sacrament is also revealed in the ministry of the Bishop and of the priest: the truth that the Eucharist needs the sacrament of priestly service is founded precisely in the fact that the community cannot give itself the Eucharist; it must receive it from the Lord through the mediation of the one Church.

Apostolic succession, which constitutes the priestly ministry, implies at the same time the synchronic aspect and diachronic aspects of the concept of Church: belonging to the whole history of the faith from the Apostles, and being in communion with all who let themselves be gathered by the Lord in his body.

The Constitution on the Church has notably treated the episcopal ministry in chapter three, and explained its meaning starting with the fundamental concept of the collegium. This concept, which only marginally appears in tradition, serves to illustrate the interior unity of the episcopal ministry.

The bishop is not a bishop as an individual, but by belonging to a body, a college, which in turn represents the historical continuity of the collegium Apostolorum. In this sense, the episcopal ministry derives from the one Church and leads into it. Precisely here it becomes evident that there is no opposition between the local Church and the universal Church.

The Bishop represents the one Church in the local Church, and builds up the one Church while he builds up the local Church and awakens her particular gifts for the benefit of the whole body.

The ministry of the Successor of Peter is a particular form of episcopal ministry connected in a special way with responsibility for the unity of the whole Church. But Peter's ministry and responsibility would not even be able to exist had the universal Church not existed first. In fact he would have been moving in a void and representing an absurd claim.

Without a doubt the right relationship between episcopate and primacy must be continuously rediscovered, even through hard work and suffering. However, this quest is only correctly formulated when it is seen in relation to the primacy of the Church's specific mission and, in every age, when it is oriented to and subordinated to it: that is, to the duty to bring God to men and men to God. The Church's goal is the Gospel, around which everything else must revolve,

'Subsistit in': Church of Christ 'subsists in' Catholic Church

At this point I would like to interrupt my analysis of the concept of communio and at least briefly take a stance regarding the most disputed point of Lumen gentium: the meaning of the disputed sentence of Lumen gentium, n. 8, which teaches that the unique Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, "subsists" in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the Successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him.

In 1985 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was forced to adopt a position with regard to this text, because of a book by Leonardo Boff in which he supported the idea that the one Church of Christ as she subsists in the Roman Catholic Church could also subsist in other Christian Churches. It is superfluous to say that the statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was met with stinging criticism and then later put aside.

In the attempt to reflect on where we stand today in the reception of the Council's ecclesiology, the question of the interpretation of the subsistit is inevitable, and on this subject the postconciliar Magisterium's single official pronouncement, that is, the Notification I just mentioned, cannot be ignored.

Looking back from the perspective of 15 years, it emerges more clearly that it was not so much the question of a single theological author, but of a vision of the Church that was put forward in a variety of ways and which is still current today. The clarification of 1985 presented the context of Boff's thesis at great length. We do not need to examine these details further, because we have something more fundamental at heart.

The thesis, which at the time had Boff as its proponent, could be described as ecclesiological relativism. It finds its justification in the theory that the "historical Jesus" would not as such have conceived the idea of a Church, nor much less have founded one. The Church, as a historical reality, would have only come into existence after the resurrection, on account of the loss of the eschatological tension towards the immediate coming of the kingdom, caused in its turn by the inevitable sociological needs of institutionalization.

In the beginning, a universal Catholic Church would certainly not have existed, but only different local Churches with different theologies, different ministers, etc. No institutional Church could, therefore, say that she was that one Church of Jesus Christ desired by God himself; all institutional forms thus stem from sociological needs and as such are human constructions which can and even must be radically changed again in new situations.

In their theological quality they are only different in a very secondary way, so one might say that in all of them or at least in many, the "one Church of Christ" subsists; with regard to this hypothesis the question naturally arises: in this vision, what right does one have to speak at all of the one Church of Christ?

Instead, Catholic tradition has chosen another starting point: it puts its confidence in the Evangelists and believes in them. It is obvious then that Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom of God would gather disciples around him for its realization; he not only gave them his Word as a new interpretation of the Old Testament, but in the sacrament of the Last Supper he gave them the gift of a new unifying centre, through which all who profess to be Christians can become one with him in a totally new way, so that Paul could designate this communion as being one body with Christ, as the unity of one body in the Spirit.

It then becomes obvious that the promise of the Holy Spirit was not a vague announcement but brought about the reality of Pentecost, hence the fact that the Church was not conceived of and established by men, but created by means of the Holy Spirit, whose creation she is and continues to be.

As a result, however, the institution and the Spirit have a very different relationship in the Church than that which the trends of thought I just mentioned would like to suggest to us. The institution is not merely a structure that can be changed or demolished at will, which would have nothing to do with the reality of faith as such. This form of bodiliness [body of Christ] belongs to the Church herself.

Christ's Church is not hidden invisibly behind the manifold human configurations, but really exists, as a true and proper Church which is manifest in the profession of faith, in the sacraments and in apostolic succession.

The Second Vatican Council, with the formula of the subsistit in accord with Catholic tradition wanted to teach the exact opposite of "ecclesiological relativism": the Church of Jesus Christ truly exists. He himself willed her, and the Holy Spirit has continuously created her since Pentecost, in spite of being faced with every human failing, and sustains her in her essential identity.

The institution is not an inevitable but theologically unimportant or even harmful externalization, but belongs in its essential core to the concrete character of the Incarnation. The Lord keeps his word: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against her".

Council: 'subsistit in' explains Church as concrete subject

At this point it becomes necessary to investigate the word subsistit somewhat more carefully. With this expression, the Council differs from the formula of Pius XII, who said in his Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi: "The Catholic Church "is" (est) the one mystical body of Christ".

The difference between subsistit and est conceals within itself the whole ecumenical problem. The word subsistit derives from the ancient philosophy as later developed in Scholastic philosophy. The Greek word hypostasis that has a central role in Christology to describe the union of the divine and the human nature in the Person of Christ comes from that vision.

Subsistere is a special case of esse. It is being in the form of a subject who has an autonomous existence. Here it is a question precisely of this. The Council wants to tell us that the Church of Jesus Christ as a concrete subject in this world can be found in the Catholic Church. This can take place only once, and the idea that the subsistit could be multiplied fails to grasp precisely the notion that is being intended. With the word subsistit, the Council wished to explain the unicity of the Catholic Church and the fact of her inability to be multiplied: the Church exists as a subject in historical reality.

The difference between subsistit and est however contains the tragedy of ecclesial division. Although the Church is only one and "subsists" in a unique subject, there are also ecclesial realities beyond this subject  true local Churches and different ecclesial communities.

Because sin is a contradiction(????), this difference between subsistit and est cannot be fully resolved from the logical viewpoint. [Was something dropped in the reprint? /the following sentences imply there was a preceding discussion about 'sin'!]

The paradox of the difference between the unique and concrete character of the Church, on the one hand, and, on the other, the existence of an ecclesial reality beyond the one subject, reflects the contradictory nature of human sin and division.

This division is something totally different from the relativistic dialectic described above in which the division of Christians loses its painful aspect and in fact is not a rupture, but only the manifestation of multiple variations on a single theme, in which all the variations are in a certain way right and wrong.

An intrinsic need to seek unity does not then exist, because in any event the one Church really is everywhere and nowhere. Thus Christianity would actually exist only in the dialectic correlation of various antitheses.

Ecumenism consists in the fact that in some way all recognize one another, because all are supposed to be only fragments of Christian reality. Ecumenism would therefore be the resignation to a relativistic dialectic, because the Jesus of history belongs to the past and the truth in any case remains hidden.

The vision of the Council is quite different: the fact that in the Catholic Church is present the subsistit of the one subject the Church, is not at all the merit of Catholics, but is solely God's work, which he makes endure despite the continuous unworthiness of the human subjects. They cannot boast of anything, but can only admire the fidelity of God, with shame for their sins and at the same time great thanks.

But the effect of their own sins can be seen: the whole world sees the spectacle of the divided and opposing Christian communities, reciprocally making their own claims to truth and thus clearly frustrating the prayer of Christ on the eve of his Passion.

Whereas division as a historical reality can be perceived by each person, the subsistence of the one Church in the concrete form of the Catholic Church can be seen as such only through faith.

Since the Second Vatican Council was conscious of this paradox, it proclaimed the duty of ecumenism as a search for true unity, and entrusted it to the Church of the future.

Conclusion: call to holiness

I come to my conclusion. Anyone who desires to understand the approach of the Council's ecclesiology cannot ignore chapters 4-7 of the Constitution, which speak of the laity, the universal call to holiness, religious, and the eschatological orientation of the Church.

In these chapters the intrinsic purpose once again comes to the fore: that is, all that is most essential to her existence: it is a question of holiness, of conformity to God, that there be room in the world for God, that he dwell in it and thus that the world become his "kingdom".

Holiness is something more than a moral quality. It is the dwelling of God with men, and of men with God, God's "tent" among us and in our midst (Jn 1,14). It is the new birth  not of flesh and blood, but of God (Jn 1,13). The movement toward holiness is identical with the eschatological movement and indeed, from the standpoint of Jesus' message, is now fundamental to the Church.

The Church exists so that she may become God's dwelling place in the world and thus be "holiness": it is this for which one should compete in the Church  not for a given rank in rights of precedence, or for occupying the first places. All this is taken up and formed into a synthesis in the last chapter of the Constitution, that presents Mary, the Mother of the Lord.

Marian Vision

At first sight the insertion of Mariology in ecclesiology, which the Council decided upon, could seem somewhat accidental. In fact it is true, from the historical viewpoint, that a rather small majority of the Fathers voted for the inclusion of Mariology. But from the inner logic of their vote, their decision corresponds perfectly to the movement of the whole Constitution: only if this correlation is grasped, can one correctly grasp the image of the Church which the Council wished to portray.

In this decision the research of Hugo Rahner, A Muller, R Laurentin and Karl Delahaye played a great part, and thanks to them Mariology and ecclesiology were both renewed and more deeply expounded.

Hugo Rahner, in particular, showed in a magnificent way from the sources that Mariology in its entirety was first thought of and established by the Fathers as ecclesiology: the Church is virgin and mother, she was conceived without sin and bears the burden of history, she suffers and yet is taken up into heaven.

Very slowly there develops later the notion that the Church is anticipated in Mary, she is personified in Mary and that vice versa Mary is not an isolated individual closed in on herself, but carries within her the whole mystery of the Church. The person is not closed individualistically nor is the community understood as a collectivity in an impersonal way: both inseparably overlap.

This already applies to the woman in the Apocalypse, as she appears in chapter 12: it is not right to limit this figure exclusively and individualistically to Mary, because in her we contemplate together the whole People of God, the old and new Israel, which suffers and is fruitful in suffering; nor is it right to exclude from this image Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. Thus the overlapping of individual and community, as we find it in this text, anticipates the identification of Mary and the Church that was gradually developed in the theology of the Fathers and finally taken up by the Council.

The fact that the two were later separated, that Mary was seen as an individual filled with privileges and therefore infinitely beyond our reach where the Church in turn [was seen] in an impersonal and purely institutional manner, has caused equal damage to both Mariology and Ecclesiology.

Here are active the divisions brought about by Western thought in particular, and which otherwise would have their own good reasons. But if we want to understand the Church and Mary properly, we must go back to the time before these divisions, in order to understand the supra-individual nature of the person and the supra-institutional nature of the community, precisely where person and community are taken back to their origins, grounded in the power of the Lord, the new Adam.

The Marian vision of the Church and the ecclesial, salvation-historical vision of Mary take us back ultimately to Christ and to the Trinitarian God, because it is here that we find revealed what holiness means, what is God's dwelling in man and in the world, what we should understand by the "eschatological" tension of the Church. Thus it is only the chapter on Mary that leads conciliar ecclesiology to its fulfilment and brings us back to its Christological and Trinitarian starting point.

To give a taste of the Fathers' theology, I would like as a conclusion to propose a text of St Ambrose, chosen by Hugo Rahner:

"So stand on the firm ground of your heart!... What standing means, the Apostle taught us, Moses wrote it: 'The place on which you stand is holy ground'. No one stands except the one who stands firm in the faith ... and yet another word is written: 'But you, stand firm with me'. You stand firm with me, if you stand in the Church. The Church is holy ground on which we must stand.... So stand firm, stand in the Church, stand there, where I want to appear to you. There I will stay beside you. Where the Church is, there is the stronghold of your heart. On the Church are laid the foundations of your soul. Indeed I appeared to you in the Church as once in the burning bush. You are the bush, I am the fire. Like the fire in the bush I am in your flesh. I am fire to enlighten you; to burn away the thorns of your sins, to give you the favour of my grace".


L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
19 September 2001, page 5

Long story of why and how this TV interview transcript from November 2003 came to light today. Suffice it for now that Lella found it after researching some outright falsities in a La Stampa story today, 8/22/07, that made the most outrageous - and patently false - statements about the format of the Pope's encounter with the youth at the Agora in Loreto on September 1. Why La Stampa allowed suc reporting at all is simply emblematic of editorial laissez-faire everywhere - as long as the reporter toes the paper's editorial line, that is!

In any case, it's always exhilarating to come across anything said by Joseph Ratzinger, now or in the past, so let me go ahead and translate:

The video may be seen on
www.raidue.rai.it/R2_popup_intervista/0,7325,6475%5Evideo...



Today it is the West
that opposes Christianity
By Antonio Socci



In these times of Islamism and a 'clash of civilizations', religions play a crucial role. Therefore the authoritative voice of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who has been the guardian of orthodoxy for decades in the Church by express wish of the Pope, is truly invaluable. Not only for a billion and a half Catholics but for everyone.

In the beautiful book, Fede, Verita, Tolleranza (Faith, Truth, Tolerance) just published by Cantagalli, he confronts, with his habitual profundity, all the issues which inflame the world today.

Thanks to David Cantagalli, the editor who facilitated this encounter, we had the opportunity to confront the prelate. Last Thursday, Excalibur [the TV program Socci hosted for RAI-2 at the time] showed some of the interview. Considering its importance, we are reporting it here in its entirety.


Eminence, there is an idea in what passes for high culture today and in common thinking that religions are all different ways which point toward the same God, therefore, one is just as good as the other. What do you think, from the theological point of view?

I would say that even on the empirical and historical levels, this very convenient concession, which is common thinking today, is a reflection of widespread relativism, but it is not reality. Religions are not static with respect to each other - they are in a historical dynamic in which they can challenge each other.

In the end, there is only one Truth, there is one God, so all these expressions, that are so different, born in different historical moments, are not equivalent. They each represent a way in which one asks: where am I going? But one cannot say they are equivalent ways, because each is an interior dialog, and of course, it seems obvious to me that contradictory things cannot all be means of salvation. Truth and lies cannot be at the same time means of salvation.

So this idea simply does not correspond to the reality of religions and does not respond to man's need to find consistent and coherent answers to his great questions.


Many religions recognize the extraordinary character of Jesus. It seems it's not necessary to be Christian to venerate him, and if that's the case, then what need is there for the Church?

Already in the Gospel we find two possibilities with reference to Christ. The Lord himself distinguishes it: 'what do men say about me, and what do you (his disciples) say.' In other words, what do people say who only know of him at second hand, or only in a historical or literary way, against what those who know him intimately say, those who have entered into a true encounter with him, who have experienced his true identity.

In the Gospel, some say he is a prophet. Exactly as now it is said that Jesus is a great religious personality and can be listed among the avatars (the multiple manifestations of the divine). But those who have entered into communion with Jesus know that he is another reality altogether, that he is God who became man.


So he is not comparable with other great religious figures?

They are all different from each other. Buddha essentially says, "Forget all about me, just go on the way I have indicated." Mohammed affirms: "The Lord God has given me these words verbally which I transmit to you in the Koran." And so forth.

But Jesus does not belong to this category of people who area already historically and evidently different. Much less is he an avatar, in the mythical sense of the Hindu religion.


Why not?

He is a completely different reality. He belongs to a story that begins with Abraham - in him, God shows His face, God shows himself as a person who speaks to man and answershim, who enters history. And this face of God, of a God who is a person and acts in history, finds fulfillment the moment God himself, in becoming man, enters time.

Therefore, even historically, one cannot compare Christ to other religious personalities or to mythological Oriental concepts.


But in the common thinking, this claim of the Church - that Christ is the only salvation - is doctrinal arrogance.

I can understand the reasons for this modern thinking which rejects the uniqueness of Christ, and I also understand a certain modesty on the part of some Catholics according to whom "we cannot say that we have something better than others." Besides, there is also the wound caused by colonialism, during which some European powers used Christianity as an instrument of their earthly powers. These wounds have remained in the conscience of Christians but they should not keep us from seeing what is essential. Abuses committed in the past should not hinder correct understanding.

Colonialism - and the use of Christianity as an instrument of power - were abuses. But this fact should not blind us to the reality of Christ's uniqueness. Above all, we should also recognize that Christianity is not a European invention, it's not our product. It was a challenge that came from outside Europe - it came from Asia, as we all know. And it immediately found itself in conflict with the dominant sensibility. Even after Europe was Christianized, there was always this opposition between its own particular cultural claims, European tendencies, and the ever-new novelty of the Word of God which is against exclusivisms and is an opening to true universality. In this sense, we should re-discover that Christianity is not a native European property.


So does Christianity even today oppose itself to the tendency towards becoming closed-in that there is in Europe?

Christianity is always something that really comes from outside, from a divine happening that transforms us and opposes our own presumptions and values. The Lord always changes our presumptions and opens our hearts to his universality.

It seems to be very significant that in this moment, it is Western Europe that is the part of the world most opposed to Christianity, precisely because the European spirit has become autonomous and will not accept that there is a Divine Word which shows us a way that is not always easy.


Echoing Dostoyevsky, I would ask if modern man is capable of believing that in truth, Jesus of Nazareth was God made man. It is perceived as absurd.

Certainly. For modern man it is almost unthinkable, rather absurd - the idea is conveniently attributed to mythical thinking about a past which is no longer acceptable. The historical distance makes it ever more difficult to think that a man who lived in a remote time could be present now, for me, and is the answer to my questions.

I think it is important to point out that Christ is not an individual from the past who is remote from me, today, but that he created a path of light that pervades history, starting with the first Christian martyrs - with these witnesses who transform human thinking, who see human dignity in slaves, who concern themselves with the poor, the suffering, and bring the novelty of Christianity to the world through their suffering. With the great doctors who transformed the wisdom of the Greeks and Latins into a new vision of the world inspired by Christ himself, who found in Christ the light to interpret the world, with figures like Francis of Assisi who created a new humanism. Or figures from our own time like Mother Teresa, Maximilian Kolbe...

It is an uninterrupted way of light that courses through history, an uninterrupted presence of Christ. And I think that this fact - that Christ has not remained in the past, that he is always present and contemporary with all the generations and has created a new history - makes it clear that he is not just a great historical personality, but a reality that is truly Other, someone who always brings light. Associating oneself with his story, one enters into light; one is not entering into a relationship with a remote person but with a reality who is truly present.


Why would you say that man in 2003 needs Christ?

It is easy to realize that the things available in a material world, or even intellectual, do not respond to the most profound and most radical need that exists in every man - because man, as the Fathers said, has a desire for the infinite. I think that our times, with its contradictions, its despairs, its massive refuge in shortcuts like drugs, are a visible manifestation of this thirst for the infinite - to which the only answer is an infinite love which has nevertheless entered into finitude, which has in fact become man
like us.

It is certainly a paradox that God, in his immensity, entered the finite world as a human being. But God is precisely the answer that we need - an infinite response which nevertheless makes itself acceptable and accessible, for me, for the individual, since he 'ends up' as a human being even if he is the infinite. It is the answer we need - we would almost have had to invent him if he did not exist.


There is something new in your book regarding relativism. You say that in practice, relativism is welcome because it immunizes us, so to speak, against the utopian temptation. Is that the judgment the Church has always had about politics?

I would say so. This was one of the essential novelties that Christianity had for the world. Because up till Christ, the identity between religion and the state, between the gods and the state, was almost a necessity to give stability to the state. Then later, Islam returned to this identity of the political and religious worlds, with the thought that only through political power can morality be imposed on mankind.

In Christ himself, we find the opposite. God is not of this world, he has no legions, as Christ said; the Church has no (military) divisions, as Stalin said.

Christ has no earthly power. He attracts man not through any external power, political or military, but only with the power of truth which convinces, of love which attracts. He says, "I will draw everyone towards me." But he says that from the Cross. And so he creates that distinction between emperor and God, between the world of empire which demands loyalty but a critical loyalty, and the world of God, which is absolute, which the state is not.

There is no earthly power or politics or ideology that can claim it is absolute, definitiv or perfect. This is very important. That is why I have been against liberation theology, which tried once again to transform the Gospel into a political formula with the absolutization of a position that claims only thus can liberation and progress be achieved.

In fact, the political world is the world of practical reason in which, by means of our reasoning, we ought to find our way. One must allow human reason to find the most appropriate measures without absolutizing the state. The Fathers prayed for the state, recognizing the need for it, its value, but they did not adore it. That is the great distinction.


But this is an extraordinary meeting point between Christian thought and the liberal-democratic culture.

I think the liberal-democratic vision could not have been born without the advent of Christianity which divided the two worlds, thus creating a new freedom. The state is important, one must obey its laws, but it is not the ultimate power. The distinction between the state and divine reality creates the space for the freedom to oppose the state when necessary. The martyrs are witnesses to such a limitation to the power of the state. With them, a story of freedom was born. Even if liberal democratic thought later took its own paths, it all started there.


The European communist systems have collapsed. But in your book, you do not exclude that Marxist thought may still present itself in other forms in the near future.

It's my hypothesis, but it seems it's starting to come true, because pure relativism which does not recognize any fundamental ethical values - and therefore does not really know the why of human existence - is not enough. Because for a non-believer who does not recognize transcendence, there is still that great desire to find something absolute and a moral sense to his actions.


Are the global developments in recent years yet another transposition of such a thirst for the absolute into a political objective?

I would say so. There will always be such a thirst, because man has need of the absolute, and if he does not find it in God, he creates it in history.

But still on the issue of relativism. The usages and customs of civilization should nevertheless be respected a priori, or at least, there should be a minimum canon of rights and duties which should be valid for everyone.

This is the other side of the coin. First, we noted that politics is the world of the opinable, of the perfectible, where one should try to find the best ways through the force of reason, without absolutizing a party or a formula. But there is also the ethical side of politics. So, ultimately one cannot practice total relativism because, for example, to kill and to make peace do not have the same legitimacy. We have underscored this in several documents of our Congregation, even while totally recognizing political autonomy.


So not everything is allowed.

We have always said that not even the majority is the ultimate resort, the absolute legitimization of everything, that the dictatorship of the majority is just as dangerous as other dictatorships. Because one day, for example, the majority could decide that there should be a 'race' to be excluded for the sake of progress, an aberration that unfortunately we have already seen. So there are limits even to political relativism. The limits are delineated by the fundamental ethical values that are the very conditions for this pluralism. And therefore they are obligatory even for the majority.


An example?

Substantially, the Decalogue offers these great constants in synthesis.

I'd like to get back to another aspect of cultural relativism. Even among Catholics, there are those who consider mission almost as a psychological violence against peoples who have a different civilization.

If one thinks that Christianity is only its own traditional world, then one will feel that way about mission. But that only shows that one has not understood the greatness of this pearl, as the Lord says, that is given to us with the faith. If it were only our tradition, we could not bring it to others. But if we have discovered love, as St. John says, if we have discovered the face of God, then we have the obligation to tell others about it. I cannot keep a great thing just to myself, a great love. I must communicate the Truth. Of course, with full respect of the freedom of others, because truth cannot be imposed by means other than its own proof. And only by offering this discovery to others - showing them what we have discovered, what gift we have in our hands, which is destined for everyone - only then can we announce Christianity well, knowing that it presupposes the highest respect for the freedom of others, because a conversion that is not based on interior conversion - "I have found what I wanted" - would not be a true conversion.


Recently a sad phenomenon has been reported in the press: the conversion of so many immigrants from Islam and who - besides finding themselves in danger - also are alone, not accompanied by the Christian community.

I have read about that and it saddens me a great deal. It is always the same symptom, the tragedy of our Christian consciousness which is wounded and unsure of itself. We should, of course, respect the Islamic states and their religion, but we should also ask for freedom of conscience for those who want to become Christians, and we should courageously help these persons, who have found the true answer. We should not leave them alone. We should do everything possible so that they may live in freedom and peace what they have found in Christianity.


Il Giornale, 26 November 2003

By Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
1985

In REFLECTIONS ON THE FAITH... earlier today, I posted Father Z's presentation of a well-known Italian
liturgist's screed against Summorum Pontificum. It's a good occasion to post a very relevant article
from the invaluable MUSICA SACRA site, which I have 'transcribed' from its PDF format.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered this lecture in Italian at the VIII International Church Music Congress
in Rome on November 17, 1985. It was printed in Musica Sacra's quarterly journal Sacred Music 112
(1986, pp. 13-22), and also in the book A New Song for the Lord (NY: Crossroad, 1995).

For those who do not have the book, or have not read it, this lecture is one of the Cardinal's most
incisive presentations about what liturgy - along with church music as part of liturgy - is and
should be.



From the very beginning, liturgy and music have been quite closely related. Mere words do not suffice
when man praises God. Discourse with God goes beyond the boundaries of human speech.

Hence by its very nature the liturgy has everywhere called upon the help of music, of singing, and of
the voices of creation in the sounds of instruments. The praise of God, after all, does not involve
only man. To worship God means to join in that of which all creatures speak.

Although liturgy and music are by their very nature closely linked with each other, their relationship
has always been a difficult one as well, above all in times of cultural change and at turning points
in history.

It is thus no surprise that today, the question of the right form of music in worship is once again disputed.
The debates of the last council and the years immediately following it seemed to center solely upon
the antithesis between the men of pastoral practice and the church musicians who refused to submit
to classification in categories of mere pastoral expediency, but strove instead to assert the validity
of music’s inner worthiness as a pastoral and liturgical standard with a rank of its own.

In other words, at bottom the debate seemed limited to the level of concrete application. In the
meantime, however, the rift goes much deeper.

The second wave of liturgical reform stimulates a questioning of the very principles themselves. It is
a question here of the very essence of worship activity as such, of its anthropological and theological
foundations.

The dispute about church music is symptomatic of a more profound question: what is worship?

1. Outstripping the council? A new conception of the liturgy

The new phase of liturgical reform efforts is explicitly based not upon the texts of the Second Vatican
Council, but upon its “Spirit.”

As symptomatic of this view, I shall use here the informative and clearly conceived article, “Song and
Music in the Church” which appeared in the Nuovo Dizionario di Liturgia.

There, the high artistic rank of Gregorian chant and classical polyphony is not called into question.
It is not even a case of playing off community activity against elitist art.

Indeed, the rejection of a historicist rigidity which merely copies the past and thus lacks both a present
and a future, is not the real point at issue, either. It is rather a question of a new basic understanding
of liturgy, with which the council, whose constitution on the sacred liturgy is said to contain a split
personality, is to be outstripped.

Let us attempt to familiarize ourselves briefly with the basic outlines of this new conception.

The point of departure for the liturgy (so we are told) lies in the assembly of two or three who gather
in Christ’s name. At first hearing, this reference to the promise of esus in Matthew 16:20 sounds harmless
and quite traditional.

However, it acquires a revolutionary impetus through the isolation of this one biblical text, which is viewed
in contrast to the entire liturgical tradition. The “two or three” are not set up as the antithesis of an
institution with institutional roles, as the antithesis of any kind of “codified program.”

This definition of the liturgy therefore means that it is not the Church which takes precedence of
the group, but rather that the group is more important than the Church. It is not the Church as total
entity which supports the liturgy of an individual group or congregation, but rather the group itself
is the point at which liturgy begins in every instance.

Hence, it also follows that liturgy does not grow out of a model shared in common, out of a “rite”
(which as a “codified program” now becomes a negative image of constraint): liturgy rather arises
on the spot, out of the creativity of those assembled.

In such a sociological view, the sacrament of priestly ordination appears as an institutional role
which has created a monopoly for itself and which by means of the institution (the Church) undoes
the pristine unity and community of the group.

In this constellation, we are told, both music and the Latin tongue have become a language of the initiates,
“the language of another Church, namely of the institution and of its clergy.”

It is evident that the isolation of Matthew 16:20 from the entire biblical and ecclesiastical tradition
of the Church’s common prayer has far-reaching consequences: the Lord’s promise to those praying
anywhere is transformed into the dogma of the autonomous group.

The joint action of praying has been intensified to an egalitarianism which regards the development of
spiritual offices as the beginning of a different Church.

From this point of view, any guiding postulates derived from the Church as a whole are restraints
which must be resisted for the sake of the originality and freedom of the liturgical celebration. It is
not obedience to a totality but rather the creativity of the moment which becomes determinative.

Plainly, with the acceptance of sociological terminology, certain evaluations have also been accepted
here: the value system formed by sociological language builds a new view of past and present, negative
and positive. And so, conventional (indeed, even conciliar!) terms like the “treasury of sacred music,”
the “organ as queen of instruments” or the “universality of Gregorian chant” now appear ss “mystifications”
whose purpose is “to preserve a particular form of power.”

A certain administration of power (so we are told) feels threatened by the processes of cultural change.
It (allegedly) reacts by masking its effort at self-preservation in the guise of love for tradition.

Gregorian chant and Palestrina are said to be the tutelary deities of a mythicized ancient repertory,
ingredients of a Catholic counter-culture supported by re-mythicized and super-sacralized archetypes.

In fact, the entire historical liturgy of the Church is claimed to be more concerned with the representation
of a cultic bureaucracy than with the singing activity of the congregation.

And finally, the content of Pope St. Pius X’s motu proprio on church music is called a “culturally
shortsighted and theologically worthless ideology of sacred music.”

Now, of course, it is not only sociologism which is at work here, but also a complete separation of
the New Testament from the Church’s history, linked to a theory of decadence which is quite typical
of many an Enlightenment situation: real purity can only be found in the “Jesuistic”origins, and all
the rest of history seems to be a “musical adventure with false and disoriented experiences.” This
history must now “be brought to an end” in order to begin again with what is right.

But just what does the new and better look like? The basic ideas have already been hinted at earlier,
and we must now try to render them more concrete. Two fundamental values are stated quite clearly.

The “primary value” of a renewed liturgy, so we are told, is “the activity of all persons in fullness and in
authenticity.” Accordingly, church music primarily means that the “People of God” depicts its own identity
by singing.

And with this, we arrive at the second value decision which is operative here: music proves to be a force
which causes the group to cohere. The familiar songs are, so to speak, the hallmarks of a community.

From these two principles there follow the main categories of music at worship: project, program, animation,
management. The “how,” so we are told, is much more important than the “what.” The ability to celebrate is
claimed to be primarily “the ability to produce”: music must above all be “produced” or “made”.

In order to be fair, I must add that the article shows complete appreciation for different cultural situations
and leaves room for the acceptance of historical materials as well.

And above all, the article stresses the paschal character of Christian liturgy, whose song not only depicts
the identity of the People of God, but should also render an account of its hope and proclaim to all
the countenance of the Father of Jesus Christ.

In spite of the great rupture, there thus remain elements which make dialogue feasible and offer the hope
that unity in our basic understanding of the liturgy can once again be achieved.

Because the liturgy is derived from the group instead of from the Church, this unity threatens to
disappear, and that not merely in theory, but in actual liturgical practice.

I would not speak at such length about all of this if I believed that such ideas were attributable only
to a few individual theorists. Although it is beyond all dispute that they are not supported by the texts
of Vatican II, many a liturgical office and its organs firmly believes that the “spirit” of the council
points in this direction.

In the sense of what has been described above, an all too widespread opinion today holds that
the real categories of the conciliar understanding of liturgy are a so-called creativity, the activity
of all those present, and the reference to a group whose members know and are drawn to each other.

Not only assistant pastors, but sometimes even bishops have the feeling that they are not loyal to
the council if they celebrate Holy Mass exactly as it is printed in the Missale: at least one “creative”
formula must be slipped in, no matter how banal it might be. Of course, the bourgeois greeting of
the audience and if possible also the friendly greetings at leavetaking have already become
an obligatory element of the sacred action which scarcely anyone dare omit.


2. The philosophical foundation of this conception and its questionable aspects

In spite of all that has been said thus far, we have not yet reached the center of this change of values.

The points already discussed all follow from the preferential ranking of the group above the Church.
How so? Because the Church is classified under the general term “institution,” and in the type of
sociology being borrowed here, “institution” bears the quality of a negative value. “Institution”
embodies power, and power is viewed as the antithesis of freedom.

Since faith (“imitation of Jesus”) is conceived of as a positive value, it must stand on the side of freedom
and hence by its very nature be anti-institutional as well. Accordingly, worship may not be a prop for
or a part of an institution either, but it must instead be a counterforce which helps bring down the mighty
from their thrones.

If that be the point of departure, then of course, the paschal hope (to which the liturgy is supposed
to testify) can become quite terrestrial. It can become the hope of overcoming the institutions, and
in fact it becomes a weapon in the struggle against the powers that be.

For example, he who merely reads the texts of the Missa Nicaraguensis can get a good idea of this shifting
of hope and of the new realism which liturgy acquires here, as instrument of a militant promise.

And something else becomes evident: the importance which actually accrues to music in the new conception.
The revolutionary songs have the power to arouse, and this communicates an enthusiasm and a conviction
which a merely spoken liturgy could not evoke.

Here, there is no longer any opposition to liturgical music, since music has received a new and indispensable
function of arousing irrational powers and a communitarian impulse which is the purpose of the entire process.

And music simultaneously contributes to the formation of consciousness, because something which is sung
gradually communicates itself to the spirit much more effectively than something merely spoken or thought.

Moreover, by way of the group liturgy, the boundaries of the locally assembled community are here
quite deliberately overstepped: by means of the liturgical form and its music there arises a new
solidarity which is supposed to bring forth a new people that calls itself the people of God, although
“God” really means the people themselves and the historical energies realized in them.

Let us now return to our analysis of the values which have become determinant of the new liturgical
consciousness.

First of all, there is the negative quality of the concept “institution” and the fact that the Church
is considered solely under this sociological aspect, which is not that of an empirical sociology (be it noted),
but from a point of view for which we are indebted to the so-called masters of distrust.

They have obviously done their work quite well, and have achieved a mind-set which remains effective even
when its origin goes unremarked. But the distrust could not have had such explosive power if it were not
accompanied by a promise whose fascination is almost unavoidable: the idea of freedom as the real requirement
of human dignity.

To this extent the question of the correct concept of freedom must represent the heart of the discussion.
And thereby the dispute about the liturgy is brought back from all the superficial questions about its shape,
to the real matter at hand, for in the liturgy it is actually a matter of the presence of the Redemption
and of the approach to genuine freedom.

The positive side of the new dispute is undoubtedly to be found in thus pointing up the central issue.
At the same time, we can see just what Catholic Christianity is suffering from today.

If the Church appears to be merely an institution, a bearer of power and thus an opponent of freedom and
a hindrance to redemption, then the faith lives in contradiction to itself, because on the one hand, faith
cannot dispense with the Church, and on the other hand, faith is fundamentally opposed to the Church.
Therein lies the tragic paradox of this trend in liturgical reform.

After all, liturgy without the Church is a contradiction in terms. Where all are active so that all become
themselves the subject, the real agent in the liturgy disappears along with the common subject “Church.”

People forget that the liturgy is supposed to be opus Dei, God’s work, in which He Himself acts first,
and we become the redeemed precisely because He is at work.

The group celebrates itself, and in so doing it celebrates absolutely nothing, because the group is no reason
for celebrating. This is why universal activity leads to boredom.

Nothing at all happens without Him Whom the whole world awaits. Only in light of this fact is the transition
to more concrete purposes, as they are reflected in the Missa Nicaraguensis, a logical conclusion.

Hence, the representatives of this view must be asked with all firmness: Is the Church really just an institution,
a cultic bureaucracy, a power apparatus? Is the spiritual office (of Holy Orders) merely the monopolization of
sacred prerogatives?

If it proves impossible to overcome these ideas at the level of the emotions as well, and to view the Church
once again from the heart in a different light, then we will not be renewing liturgy, but the dead will be
burying the dead and calling it “reform.”

And then, of course, church music no longer exists either, because it has lost its subject, the Church. In fact,
in such a case one could no longer correctly speak of liturgy at all, because liturgy presupposes the Church,
and what would remain are mere group rituals which use musical means of expression more or less adroitly.

If liturgy is to survive or indeed be renewed, it is essential that the Church be discovered anew.
And I would add: if man’s alienation is to be overcome and if he is to rediscover his identity, then it is
obligatory that man re-discover the Church, which is not an institution inimical to humanity, but that
new We in which alone the individual can achieve his stability and his permanence.

In this connection it would be salutary indeed to re-study with all thoroughness the small book with which
Romano Guardini, the great pioneer of liturgical renewal, concluded his literary activity in the year
the council ended.

He himself stressed that he wrote this book out of concern and love for the Church whose human side —
and its perilous state — he knew quite well. But he had learned to discover in the Church’s human frailty
the scandal of God’s Incarnation; he had learned to see in the Church the presence of the Lord Who had
made the Church, His Body.

Only when that is accomplished does Jesus Christ synchronize or co-exist with us. Without this,
there is no real liturgy, which is not a mere recalling of the paschal mystery but its true presence.

And again, only when this is the case, is liturgy a sharing in the Trinitarian dialogue between Father,
Son and Holy Ghost. Only in this way is liturgy not our “making” but the opus Dei — God’s action
upon and with us.

Therefore, Guardini emphatically stressed that in the liturgy, it was not a matter of doing something,
but of being. The idea that general activity is the central value of the liturgy, is the most complete
antithesis to Guardini’s liturgical conception which one could imagine. The truth is that the general
activity of all is not simply not the liturgy’s basic value: it is as such no value at all.

I shall forego any further discussion of this question, for we must concentrate upon finding a point
of departure and a standard for the correct relationship between liturgy and music.

As a matter of fact, even from this point of view far-reaching consequences flow from establishing
the fact that the Church is the real subject of the liturgy — the Church as the communio sanctorum
of all places and of all times.

From this there follows (as Guardini exhaustively showed in his early work Liturgical Formation)
not merely the withdrawal of the liturgy from the arbitrariness of the group and of the individual
(even though he be cleric or specialist) which Guardini termed the objectivity and the positive nature
of the liturgy.

Above all, there follow the three ontological dimensions in which the liturgy lives: the cosmos, history
and the mysterium.

The connection with history includes development, meaning that liturgy is part of something living,
something which has a beginning, which continues to exert its influence and which, remains present
without being completed, but rather lives only by being further developed. Some elements die off,
others are forgotten and return later on in a different way, but development always implies partaking
of an open-ended beginning.

And this brings us to a second category which is especially important because it is related to the cosmos:
liturgy so conceived exists basically as partaking.

No one is the first and only creator of liturgy. For everyone, liturgy is participation in something larger,
which goes beyond the mere individual. And in this way each individual is also an agent, active precisely
because he is a recipient.

Finally, relationship to the mystery means that the beginning of the liturgical event never lies within
ourselves. It is rather response to an initiative from above, to a call and an act of love, which is mystery.

There are problems here which need to be explained, but the mystery does not open itself to explanation.
It becomes accessible only by being accepted, in the “yes” which even today we can safely call obedience,
in a biblical sense.

And this brings us to a point which is very important for the onset of art. Group liturgy is not cosmic, since
it lives from the autonomy of the group. Group liturgy has no history, for it is characterized precisely
by emancipation from history and by a “do-it-yourself” attitude, even when a group uses moveable
scenery borrowed from history.

And group liturgy knows nothing of the mystery, for in group liturgy everything is explained and must be
explained. That is why development and partaking are just as foreign to group liturgy as is obedience,
which perceives a meaning greater than that which can be explained.

All of this is now replaced by creativity, in which the autonomy of those emancipated attempts to
corroborate or ratify itself. Such a creativity, which aspires to be a functional expression of autonomy
and emancipation, is — precisely on that account — diametrically opposed to any form of partaking.

Characteristic of this creativity is arbitrariness as a necessary expression of the rejection of
all prescribed forms or rules, unrepeatability because repetition would already imply dependence, and
artificiality because it is necessarily a case of purely human production.

And so we see that human creativity which refuses to receive and to partake, is contradictory and untrue
in its very nature, because man can only be man through receiving and partaking.

Such creativity is escape from the conditio humana and therefore falsehood. This is ultimately
why cultural decadence begins at the point where along with the loss of faith in God a pre-established
reasonableness of being must also be called into question.

Let us now summarize our findings so that we can draw consequences for the point of departure and
the basic form of church music. It has become evident that the primacy of the group derives from
an understanding of the Church as institution based upon a concept of freedom which is incompatible with
the idea and the reality of the institutional.

Indeed, this idea of freedom is no longer capable of grasping the dimension of the mysterium in the reality
of the Church. Freedom is conceived in terms of autonomy and emancipation, and takes concrete shape in
the idea of creativity, which against this background is the exact opposite of that objectivity and
positiveness which belong to the essence of the Church’s liturgy. The group is truly free only when
it discovers itself anew each time.

We also found that liturgy worthy of the name is the radical antithesis of all this. Genuine liturgy
is opposed to an historical arbitrariness which knows no development and hence is ultimately vacuous.
Genuine liturgy is also opposed to an unrepeatability which is also exclusivity and loss of
communication without regard for any groupings.

Genuine liturgy is not opposed to the technical, but to the artificial, in which man creates a counter-
world for himself and loses sight of, indeed loses a feeling for, God’s creation.

The antitheses are evident as is the incipient clarification of the inner justification for group thinking
as an autonomistically conceived idea of freedom.

But now we must inquire positively as to the anthropological concept which forms the basis for the liturgy
in the sense of the Church’s faith.

By Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
1985
(Continued from the above post)


3. The anthropological pattern of the Church’s liturgy

The answer to our question is suggested by two fundamental statements in the New Testament.

Saint Paul coined the expression logike Iatreia in Romans 12:1, but this is very difficult to translate
because we lack a satisfactory equivalent for the concept of logos. It might perhaps be translated “logos-like
worship” or worship fixed or determined by the Spirit, which would also echo Jesus’s statement about adoration
n spirit and in truth (John 4:23).

But it is also possible to translate adoration stamped or marked by the word, adding of course that in a biblical
sense (as well as in the Greek meaning) “word” is more than mere speech or language: it is creative reality.

To be sure, it is also more than mere thought or spirit: it is spirit which explains and communicates itself.
The relationship to a text, the rationality, the intelligibility and the sobriety of Christian liturgy have a
lways been deduced from this fact and presupposed as the basic norm of liturgical music.

But it would be a restrictive and a false interpretation to understand this norm as strictly requiring of all
liturgical music a very close link with the text, or to declare the intelligibility of the text to be a general
requirement for all liturgical music.

After all, “word” in the biblical sense is more than text and comprehension includes more than the banal
perspicuity of what is obvious to everyone, what is to be compressed into the most superficial rationality.

It is quite correct, however, that music which serves the adoration in spirit and in truth cannot be rhythmic
ecstasy, sensual suggestion or stupefaction, subjective emotional bliss or superficial entertainment.

It is rather subordinated to a message to a comprehensive spiritual statement which is rational in the highest
sense of the word. In other words it is quite correct to say that such music must correspond in its innermost
nature to this “word” in a comprehensive sense, indeed must serve it.

And so we are quite naturally led to another text which makes the really fundamental biblical statement about
worship by clarifying for us the importance of the “word” and its relationship with us.

I refer to that sentence in the prologue of Saint John’s gospel: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us, and we saw His glory” (John 1:13).

First of all, the “word” to which Christian worship refers is not a text, but a living reality: a God Who is meaning,
communicating Itself, and Who communicates Himself by becoming man. This Incarnation is now the holy tent or
tabernacle, the point of reference for all cult, which is a gazing upon God’s glory and does Him honor.

But these statements of Saint John’s prologue do not convey the complete picture. The passages will be
misunderstood unless we take them together with the “farewell speeches” of Jesus, in which He says to
His disciples, “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again. I go away, and I come unto you.
It is expedient to you that I go, for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you (John 12:2 ff., 14:18 ff.,
16:5 ff., etc.).

The Incarnation is only the first step in a longer process which moves to a final and meaningful conclusion in
the Cross and the Resurrection. From the Cross, the Lord draws everything to Himself and bears what is corporeal,
i.e., man and the whole created world, into God’s eternity.

The liturgy is subordinate to this movement, which we might call the basic text to which all liturgical music
refers: music must be measured from within by the standard of this line of motion.

Liturgical music is a result of the demands and of the dynamism of the Incarnation of the Word, for music
means that even among us, the word cannot be mere speech.

The principal ways in which the Incarnation continues to operate are of course the sacramental signs themselves.
But they are quite misplaced if they are not immersed in a liturgy which as a whole follows this expansion of
the Word into the corporeal and into the sphere of all our senses.

It is this fact which justifies and indeed renders necessary images in complete contrast to Jewish and Islamic
types of worship. This is also the reason why it is necessary to appeal to those deeper levels of comprehension
and response which become accessible through music.

Faith becoming music is part of the process of the Word becoming flesh. But at the same time, this “becoming music”
is also subordinated in a completely unique way to that inner evolution of the Incarnation event which I tried
to hint at earlier that the 'Word become flesh' comes to be, in the Cross and Resurrection, 'flesh become Word'.
Both are permeated with each other.

The Incarnation is not revoked, but becomes definitive at that instant in which the movement turns around,
so to speak: flesh itself becomes Word, is “logocized,” but precisely this transformation brings about a new unity
of all reality which was obviously so important to God that He paid for it at the price of the Son’s Cross.

When the Word becomes music, there is involved on the one hand perceptible illustration, incarnation or
taking on flesh, attraction of pre-rational powers, a drawing upon the hidden resonance of creation, a discovery
of the song which lies at the basis of all things.

And so this becoming music is itself the very turning point in the movement: it involves not only the Word
becoming flesh, but simultaneously the flesh becoming spirit: Brass and wood become sound; what is unconscious
and unsettled becomes orderly and meaningful resonance.

What takes place is an embodiment or incarnation which is spiritualization and a spiritualization which is
incarnation or 'em-body-ment'. Christian incarnation or embodiment is always simultaneously spiritualization, and
Christian spiritualization is 'em-body-ment' into the body of the Logos become man.


4. The consequences for liturgical music

a) Basic principles

To the degree that in music this conjunction of both movements takes place, music serves in the highest degree
and in an irreplaceable manner that interior exodus which liturgy always is and wants to be.

This means that the propriety of liturgical music is measured by its inner conformity to this basic anthropological
and theological model.

At first glance, such a statement seems far removed from concrete musical realities. But the statement becomes
very concrete indeed when we consider the antithetical models of cultic music which I mentioned earlier.

Or we can recall the Dionysiac type of religion and its music, which Plato discussed on the basis of his religious
and philosophical views.

In many forms of religion, music is associated with frenzy and ecstasy. The free expansion of human existence,
toward which man’s own hunger for the Infinite is directed, is supposed to be achieved through sacred delirium
induced by frenzied instrumental rhythms.

Such music lowers the barriers of individuality and personality, and in it man liberates himself from the burden
of consciousness. Music becomes ecstasy, liberation from the ego, amalgamation with the universe.

Today we experience the secularized variation of this type in rock and pop music, whose festivals are an anti-
cult with the same tendency: desire for destruction, repealing the limitations of the everyday, and the illusion
of salvation in liberation from the ego, in the wild ecstasy of a tumultuous crowd.

These are measures which involve a form of release related to that achieved through drugs. It is the complete
antithesis of Christian faith in the Redemption.

Accordingly, it is only logical that in this area, diabolical cults and demonic music are on the increase today,
and their dangerous power of deliberately destroying personality is not yet taken seriously enough.

The dispute between Dionysiac and Apolline music which Plato tried to arbitrate, is not our concern, since Apollo
is not Christ. But the question which Plato posed concerns us in a most significant way.

In a way which we could not imagine thirty years ago, music has become the decisive vehicle of a counter-religion
and thus calls for a parting of the ways. Since rock music seeks release through liberation from the personality
and its responsibility, it can be on the one hand precisely classified among the anarchic ideas of freedom which
today predominate more openly in the West than in the East.

But that is precisely why rock music is so completely antithetical to the Christian concept of redemption and freedom,
indeed its exact opposite.

Hence, music of this type must be excluded from the Church on principle, and not merely for aesthetic reasons,
or because of restorative crankiness or historical inflexibility.

If we were to continue our analysis of the anthropological foundations of various types of music, we could render
our question even more concrete.

There is an agitational type of music which animates men for various collective goals. There is a sensuous type of
music which brings man into the realm of the erotic or in some other way essentially tends toward feelings of
sensual desire. There is a purely entertaining type of music which desires to express nothing more than an
interruption of silence.

And there is a rationalistic type of music in which the tones only serve rational constructs, and in which there
is no real penetration of spirit and senses. Many dry catechism hymns and many modern songs constructed
by committees belong to this category.

Music truly appropriate to the worship of the incarnate Lord exalted on the cross exists on the strength of
a different, a greater, a much more truly comprehensive synthesis of spirit, intuition and audible sound.

We might say that Western music derives from the inner richness of this synthesis, indeed has developed
and unfolded in a fullness of possibilities ranging from Gregorian chant and the music of the cathedrals
via the great polyphony and the music of the Renaissance and the Baroque up to Bruckner and beyond.

This pre-eminence is found only in the West because it could arise only out of an anthropological foundation
which unites the spiritual and the profane in an ultimate human unity. And the pre-eminence disappears
to the degree that this anthropology vanishes.

For me, the greatness of this music is the most obvious and immediate verification of the Christian image of man
and of the Christian faith in the Redemption which could be found.

Those who are truly impressed by this grandeur somehow realize from their innermost depths that the faith is true,
even though they may need to travel some distance in order to carry out this insight with deliberate understanding.

This means that the Church’s liturgical music must be adjoined to that integration of human existence which we
encounter through faith in the Incarnation. Such redeeming release is more toilsome than that sought in ecstatic frenzy,
but this toil is the exertion of truth itself.

On the one hand, it must integrate the senses into the spirit, in accord wih the impulse of the sursum corda.
Pure spiritualization, however, is not the goal, but rather integration of the sensitive powers with the spirit,
so that both taken together become the complete person.

The spirit is not degraded by taking in the sense faculties, but actually receives thereby the complete richness
of creation. And on the other hand the senses are not rendered less real when they are permeated with the spirit,
because thereby they participate in the spirit’s infinitude.

Every sensuous desire is really quite limited and ultimately incapable of intensification because an act of the senses
cannot go beyond a certain limit. Those who expect release from an act of the senses will be disappointed, or “frustrated,”
as we say today.

By being integrated, into the spirit, the senses, receive a new depth and reach into the endlessness of the spiritual
adventure. Only there do they recover themselves completely — on condition, of course, that the spirit too does not
remain uncommunicative.

In “lifting up your hearts (sursum corda) music of faith seeks the integration of man and finds it not within itself
but only by going beyond itself into the Word made flesh.

Sacred music which forms a part of this framework of movement thus becomes man’s purification, his ascent.

Let us remember, though, that this music is not the product of a moment, but participation in history. It cannot be
realized by an individual, but only in cooperation with others.

And thus such sacred music also expresses entrance into the history of the faith, and the mutual relationship of all
members of Christ’s body. Such sacred music bequeathes joy and a higher type of ecstasy which does not extinguish
personality, but unites and thus liberates. Such sacred music gives us a foretaste of that freedom which does not
destroy, but which unites and purifies.

b) Remarks on the present situation

The musician, of course, will ask: How can that be accomplished? In the last analysis, great works of church music can
only he bestowed or presented, since it is a matter of going beyond oneself, which is something man cannot accomplish
without help; whereas according to the wellknown mechanisms of stupefaction, frenzy of the senses is producible.

But all producing ends where the truly great begins. It is this limitation which we must first of all recognize and
acknowledge. To that extent, the beginnings of great sacred music necessarily lie in reverence, in receptivity, and in
that humility which is prepared to serve and to minister while partaking of already existing greatness.

It is only the person who at the very least lives radically within the inner framework of this image of man, who can
create the music appropriate to it.

The Church has posted two additional signposts. In its inner character, liturgical music must fulfill the demands of
the great liturgical texts: the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei. This by no means implies that it should be strictly
limited to expressing the text, as I mentioned earlier. But in the inner direction of these texts, liturgical music finds
a guideline for its own statement.

And the other signpost is the reference to Gregorian chant and Palestrina. This too does not imply that all church music
must be an imitation of such music. In this respect, there was actually many a restriction in the church music renewal
during the 19th century as well as in the papal documents based upon it.

Correctly understood, the reference to Gregorian chant and Palestrina simply means that we find here a standard which
provides orientation. But the results of creatively applying and transforming such orientation cannot of course
be determined.

One question remains. Humanly speaking, can we hope that new creative possibilities are still open here? And how is that
to come about?

The first part of the question is actually easy to answer, because if this concept of man is inexhaustible in contrast to
the other one, then it also opens up continually new possibilities for artistic expression in proportion to the degree
to which it vivifies the spirit of an age. And therein lies the difficulty for the second part of the question.

In our own time, the faith has to a great extent receded as a public formative force. How is the faith supposed to become
creative? Has it not been forced back on all fronts into the position of a mere subculture?

By way of reply, we might say that in Africa, Asia and Latin America we are apparently on the threshold of a new
florescence of the faith which could also give rise to new cultural forms.

But even in the Western world, we should not be frightened by the term “subculture.” In the cultural crisis we are
currently experiencing, new cultural purification and unification can break forth only from islands of spiritual composure.

It is already apparent that Christian culture forms itself anew wherever new departures of faith occur, and that joint
experience inspires and opens new paths which we could not previously see.

However, J. F. Doppelbauer has quite rightly pointed out that genuine liturgical music often and not by accident bears
the traits of later or mature work and presupposes that growth and ripening have taken place earlier.

Here it is important that there exist the “antechambers” of popular piety and its music as well as religious music
in the broader sense, which should always remain in fruitful exchange with liturgical music.

On the one hand, the “antechambers” will be fructified and purified by liturgical music, while on the other hand,
they prepare the way for new forms of liturgical music. Out of such freer forms there can develop elements capable
of entering the joint action of the Church s universal worship.

Here, too, is the realm in which the group can try out its creativity, in the hope that one day something will emerge
which can belong to all.

Conclusion: Liturgy, music and the cosmos

I would like to conclude my remarks with a fine quotation from Mahatma Gandhi which I recently found in a calendar.

Gandhi mentions the three “living areas” of the cosmos and notes that each of these involves a specific manner of
existing. Fish live in the sea, and they are silent. Animals on earth below, bark and bray. But the birds who inhabit
the heavens sing. Silence is proper to the sea, braying is proper to the earth, and singing belongs to heaven.

But man has a share in all three, for within himself he bears the depths of the sea, the burden of the earth and
the heights of heaven. Hence he possesses all three properties: silence, bellowing and singing.

Today, I would like to add, we see that for man deprived of transcendence, there remains only braying, because
he desires to be earth and nothing more, indeed tries to make the heavens and the ocean deep to be his earth.

True liturgy, the liturgy of the communion of saints, gives man once again his completeness. It instructs him
once again in silence and in singing by opening for him the depths of the sea and by teaching him to fly —
the existence of the angels.

By “lifting up the heart”, true liturgy allows the buried song to resound in man once again. Indeed, we could now
actually say that true liturgy can be recognized by the fact that it liberates from everyday activity and restores
to us both the depths and the heights: silence and singing.

True liturgy is recognizable because it is cosmic and not limited to a group. True liturgy sings with the angels,
and true liturgy is silent with the expectant depths of the universe. And thus, liturgy redeems the earth.

The following excerpts provided by Ignatius Insight are from The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, former prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and now Pope Benedict XVI.



Music and the Bible

The importance of music in biblical religion is shown very simply by the fact that the verb "to sing" (with related words such as "song", and so forth) is one of the most commonly used words in the Bible. It occurs 309 times in the Old Testament and thirty-six in the New.

When man comes into contact with God, mere speech is not enough. Areas of his existence are awakened that spontaneously turn into song. Indeed, man's own being is insufficient for what he has to express, and so he invites the whole of creation to become a song with him: "Awake, my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds" (Ps 57:8f.).

We find the first mention of singing in the Bible after the crossing of the Red Sea. Israel has now been definitively delivered from slavery. In a desperate situation, it has had an overwhelming experience of God's saving power. Just as Moses as a baby was taken from the Nile and only then really received the gift of life, so Israel now feels as if it has been, so to speak, taken out of the water: it is free, newly endowed with the gift of itself from God's own hands.

In the biblical account, the people's reaction to the foundational event of salvation is described in this sentence: "[T]hey believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses" (Ex 14:31).

But then follows a second reaction, which soars up from the first with elemental force: "Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord" (15:1).

Year by year, at the Easter Vigil, Christians join in the singing of this song. They sing it in a new way as their song, because they know that they have been "taken out of the water" by God's power, set free by God for authentic life. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 136-7)


Liturgical Music Flows From Love

The singing of the Church comes ultimately out of love. It is the utter depth of love that produces the singing. "Cantare amantis est", says St. Augustine, singing is a lover's thing. In so saying, we come again to the trinitarian interpretation of Church music.

The Holy Spirit is love, and it is he who produces the singing. He is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit who draws us into love for Christ and so leads to the Father. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p 142)

In liturgical music, based as it is on biblical faith, there is, therefore, a clear dominance of the Word; this music is a higher form of proclamation. Ultimately, it rises up out of the love that responds to God's love made flesh in Christ, the love that for us went unto death.

After the Resurrection, the Cross is by no means a thing of the past, and so this love is always marked by pain at the hiddenness of God, by the cry that rises up from the depths of anguish, Kyrie eleison, by hope and by supplication.

But it also has the privilege, by anticipation, of experiencing the reality of the Resurrection, and so it brings with it the joy of being loved, that gladness of heart that Haydn said came upon him when he set liturgical texts to music.

Thus the relation of liturgical music to logos means, first of all, simply its relation to words. That is why singing in the liturgy has priority over instrumental music, though it does not in any way exclude it.

It goes without saying that the biblical and liturgical texts are the normative words from which liturgical music has to take its bearings. This does not rule out the continuing creation of "new songs", but instead inspires them and assures them of a firm grounding in God's love for mankind and his work of redemption. (The Spirit of Liturgy, p 149)


Sacred Music in the West

In the West, in the form of Gregorian chant, the inherited tradition of psalm-singing was developed to a new sublimity and purity, which set a permanent standard for sacred music, music for the liturgy of the Church.

Polyphony developed in the late Middle Ages, and then instruments came back into divine worship - quite rightly, too, because, as we have seen, the Church not only continues the synagogue, but also takes up, in the light of Christ's Pasch, the reality represented by the Temple.

Two new factors are thus at work in Church music. Artistic freedom increasingly asserts its rights, even in the liturgy. Church music and secular music are now each influenced by the other. This is particularly clear in the case of the so-called "parody Masses", in which the text of the Mass was set to a theme or melody that came from secular music, with the result that anyone hearing it might think he was listening to the latest "hit".

It is clear that these opportunities for artistic creativity and the adoption of secular tunes brought danger with them. Music was no longer developing out of prayer, but, with the new demand for artistic autonomy, was now heading away from the liturgy; it was becoming an end in itself, opening the door to new, very different ways of feeling and of experiencing the world. Music was alienating the liturgy from its true nature.

At this point the Council of Trent intervened in the culture war that had broken out. It was made a norm that liturgical music should be at the service of the Word; the use of instruments was substantially reduced; and the difference between secular and sacred music was clearly affirmed. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 145-6)


Religious and Liturgical Music

Whether it is Bach or Mozart that we hear in church, we have a sense in either case of what gloria Dei, the glory of God, means. The mystery of infinite beauty is there and enables us to experience the presence of God more truly and vividly than in many sermons. But there are already signs of danger to come.

Subjective experience and passion are still held in check by the order of the musical universe, reflecting as it does the order of the divine creation itself. But there is already the threat of invasion by the virtuoso mentality, the vanity of technique, which is no longer the servant of the whole but wants to push itself to the fore.

During the nineteenth century, the century of self-emancipating subjectivity, this led in many places to the obscuring of the sacred by the operatic. The dangers that had forced the Council of Trent to intervene were back again.

In similar fashion, Pope Pius X tried to remove the operatic element from the liturgy and declared Gregorian chant and the great polyphony of the age of the Catholic Reformation (of which Palestrina was the outstanding representative) to be the standard for liturgical music.

A clear distinction was made between liturgical music and religious music in general, just as visual art in the liturgy has to conform to different standards from those employed in religious art in general. Art in the liturgy has a very specific responsibility, and precisely as such does it serve as a wellspring of culture, which in the final analysis owes its existence to cult. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 146-7)


The Challenge of Popular Music

After the cultural revolution of recent decades, we are faced with a challenge no less great than that of the three moments of crisis that we have encountered in our historical sketch: the Gnostic temptation, the crisis at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity, and the crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century, which formed the prelude to the still more radical questions of the present day.

Three developments in recent music epitomize the problems that the Church has to face when she is considering liturgical music.

First of all, there is the cultural universalization that the Church has to undertake if she wants to get beyond the boundaries of the European mind. This is the question of what inculturation should look like in the realm of sacred music if, on the one hand, the identity of Christianity is to be preserved and, on the other, its universality is to be expressed in local forms.

Then there are two developments in music itself that have their origins primarily in the West but that for a long time have affected the whole of mankind in the world culture that is being formed.

Modern so-called "classical" music has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter -and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings. The music of the masses has broken loose from this and treads a very different path.

On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by the people in the ancient sense (populus). It is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal.

"Rock", on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects.

However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit's sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 147-8)


Music and Logos

Not every kind of music can have a place in Christian worship. It has its standards, and that standard is the Logos. If we want to know whom we are dealing with, the Holy Spirit or the unholy spirit, we have to remember that it is the Holy Spirit who moves us to say, "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor 12:3).

The Holy Spirit leads us to the Logos, and he leads us to a music that serves the Logos as a sign of the sursum corda, the lifting up of the human heart. Does it integrate man by drawing him to what is above, or does it cause his disintegration into formless intoxication or mere sensuality?

That is the criterion for a music in harmony with logos, a form of that logiké latreia (reason-able, logos-worthy worship) of which we spoke in the first part of this book." (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p 151


Liturgical Dancing

Dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy. In about the third century, there was an attempt in certain Gnostic-Docetic circles to introduce it into the liturgy.

For these people, the Crucifixion was only an appearance. Before the Passion, Christ had abandoned the body that in any case he had never really assumed. Dancing could take the place of the liturgy of the Cross, because, after all, the Cross was only an appearance.

The cultic dances of the different religions have different purposes - incantation, imitative magic, mystical ecstasy - none of which is compatible with the essential purpose of the liturgy of the "reasonable sacrifice".

It is totally absurd to try to make the liturgy "attractive" by introducing dancing pantomimes (wherever possible performed by professional dance troupes), which frequently (and rightly, from the professionals' point of view) end with applause.

Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment.

Such attractiveness fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation. I myself have experienced the replacing of the penitential rite by a dance performance, which, needless to say, received a round of applause.

Could there be anything farther removed from true penitence? Liturgy can only attract people when it looks, not at itself, but at God, when it allows him to enter and act. Then something truly unique happens, beyond competition, and people have a sense that more has taken place than a recreational activity. None of the Christian rites includes dancing. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 198-9)


On External Actions

Of course, external actions - reading, singing, the bringing up of the gifts--can be distributed in a sensible way. By the same token, participation in the Liturgy of the Word (reading, singing) is to be distinguished from the sacramental celebration proper.

We should be clearly aware that external actions are quite secondary here. Doing really must stop when we come to the heart of the matter: the oratio. It must be plainly evident that the oratio is the heart of the matter, but that it is important precisely because it provides a space for the actio of God.

Anyone who grasps this will easily see that it is not now a matter of looking at or toward the priest, but of looking together toward the Lord and going out to meet him. The almost theatrical entrance of different players into the liturgy, which is so common today, especially during the Preparation of the Gifts, quite simply misses the point.

If the various external actions (as a matter of fact, there are not very many of them, though they are being artificially multiplied) become the essential in the liturgy, if the liturgy degenerates into general activity, then we have radically misunderstood the "theo-drama" of the liturgy and lapsed almost into parody.

True liturgical education cannot consist in learning and experimenting with external activities. Instead one must be led toward the essential actio that makes the liturgy what it is, toward the transforming power of God, who wants, through what happens in the liturgy, to transform us and the world.

In this respect, liturgical education today, of both priests and laity, is deficient to a deplorable extent. Much remains to be done here. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 174-5)


Silence

We are realizing more and more clearly that silence is part of the liturgy. We respond, by singing and praying, to the God who addresses us, but the greater mystery, surpassing all words, summons us to silence. It must, of course, be a silence with content, not just the absence of speech and action.

We should expect the liturgy to give us a positive stillness that will restore us. Such stillness will not be just a pause, in which a thousand thoughts and desires assault us, but a time of recollection, giving us an inward peace, allowing us to draw breath and rediscover the one thing necessary, which we have forgotten.

That is why silence cannot be simply "made", organized as if it were one activity among many. It is no accident that on all sides people are seeking techniques of meditation, a spirituality for emptying the mind.

One of man's deepest needs is making its presence felt, a need that is manifestly not being met in our present form of the liturgy. For silence to be fruitful, as we have already said, it must not be just a pause in the action of the liturgy. No, it must be an integral part of the liturgical event. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p 209)

I am sure some of you have seen this lecture elsewhere, espeially since it was delivered in English. Not having visited the site
www.ratzinger.it/ for some time, I find it has added this document to its extensive catalog of Ratzinger speeches (and some interviews) over the past two decades. As it is an Italian site, most of the documents are in Italian, and one of these days, I should attempt to do a systematic listing to prioritize translations.

Meanwhile, this one does not have to be translated. It was given by Cardinal Ratzinger on Saturday, February 13, 1999, in the Chapel at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park near San Francisco. It was a historic occasion for the seminary ,as it was the first time that a Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith had ever visited it - more historic even, after the Prefect became Pope.

However, the current CDF Prefect used to be Archbishop of San Francisco, so the seminary may yet get a visit by another CDF Prefect - if they invite him.

What strikes me, re-reading this essay after more than a year, is how topical it is today, in terms, not only of the 'faith and reason' which is the subject of John Paul's encyclical and a leitmotif of Pope Benedict's Magisterium, but what it says about the relevance of the Christian message to non-Christian cultures, i.e., the nature of evangelization, is most relevant to the CDF Doctrinal Note last Friday on evangelization, and to the doctrinal objections to pluralism in religion such as that advocated by the Vietnamese-American theologian Fr. Phan.

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Culture and Truth:
Some Reflections on
the Encyclical Letter 'Fides et Ratio'
by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
The Patrician - February 1999



I would like to begin my reflections on the Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio of Pope John Paul II with a brief quotation from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.

This short book, which appeared in 1942, presents the questions and dangers faced by modern man in a spirited and ironic way, through a series of imaginary letters of instruction written by a higher demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior demon, a beginner in the work of human seduction, in which he gives him advice on how to proceed.

At one point it seems that the junior demon may have expressed some concern to his uncle over the fact that intelligent people are especially prone to read books containing the wisdom of the ancients, and by doing so, they may come upon traces of the truth.

Screwtape responds by reassuring him that the spirits from below have succeeded in inculcating among educated people something which makes that very unlikely. It is called 'the Historical Point of View' and it works this way:

---

`The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement from an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer's development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates... and so on' (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 107108).

---

In his study of interpretation, Josef Pieper cites this passage from C.S. Lewis, and relates how, for example, in the editions of Plato or Dante which were produced in countries under Communist domination, an introduction to the text was systematically added in order to give the reader an 'historical' understanding of the writing, and thereby to exclude the question of truth. In this way, scholarship becomes an immunization against the truth.

The question of whether and to what extent the author's statements are true is viewed as a question that is not scholarly; indeed, it would be a question which would lead beyond what can be documented and demonstrated, and would cause one to fall back into the naivete of the pre-critical world.

In this way, also, the reading of the Bible is neutralized: we can explain when and under what conditions a phrase came into being and we can classify it historically, questions which do not really concern us in an ultimate way.

Behind this form of 'historical interpretation' lies a philosophy, a fundamental perspective on reality, which says that it is in fact pointless to ask about what is; we can only ask ourselves what we are able to do with things. The issue is not truth, but praxis, the domination of things for our needs.

In the face of such an apparently enlightened limitation of human thought, the question naturally arises: What really is useful to us? Why is it useful? Why do we exist?

One who observes carefully will see that the modern attitude reveals at the same time a false humility and a false presumption, a false humility that does not recognize in the human person the capacity for the truth; a false presumption, by which one places oneself above things, above truth itself, while, at the same time, making the extension of one's power, one's domination over things, the objective of one's thought.

Viewed against the background of this fundamental orientation of modern thought, the intention of the Encyclical and its significance for our historical moment can be better understood.

Fides et Ratio seeks to restore to humanity the courage to seek the truth, that is, to encourage reason once again in the adventure of searching for truth. It does this when, referring to the task of interpretation, it contradicts all of 'Screwtape's instructions' and states that:

---

'The interpretation of this word [that is, the word of God] cannot merely keep referring us to one interpretation after another, without ever leading us to a statement which is simply true' (FR 84).

---

Man is not trapped in a hall of mirrors of interpretations; one can and must seek a breakthrough to what is really true; man must ask who he really is and what he is to do; he must ask whether there is a God; who God is, and what the world is.

The one who no longer poses these questions is by that very fact bereft of any standard or path. Allow me to give an example.

The position is gaining ground which maintains that human rights are the cultural product of the Judeo-Christian world and which, outside this world, would be unintelligible and without foundation. But what then? What happens if we can no longer recognize common standards which transcend individual cultures? What happens if the unity of mankind is no longer recognizable to man?

Will not division into separate races, classes and nationalities become insurmountable? The person who can no longer recognize a common human nature in others, beyond all such boundaries, has lost his identity. Precisely as a human being, he is in peril.

Thus, for philosophy in its classical and original sense, the question of truth is not a frivolity to be enjoyed by affluent cultures which can afford the luxury, but rather a question which concerns the existence and non-existence of man.

And therefore the Pope earnestly asks for a breaking-down of the barriers of eclecticism, historicism, scientism, pragmatism and nihilism, and he exhorts us not to allow ourselves to be caught up in a form of Post-modernism which, in a decadent desire for negativity itself, tends toward the abdication of all meaning, and seeks to grasp only what is provisional and ephemeral (Cf. FR 91).

Whoever poses the question of truth today as we already mentioned - is necessarily directed to the problem of cultures and their mutual openness.

Christianity's claim to universality, which is based on the universality of truth, is often countered in our day with the argument of the relativity of cultures it is maintained that, in fact, the Christian missionary effort did not disseminate a truth which is the same for all people, but instead subjugated indigenous cultures to the particular culture of Europe, thus damaging the richness of those cultures which had evolved among a variety of peoples.

The Christian missionary effort thus appears as another of the great European sins, as the original form of colonialism and thus, as the spiritual despoiling of other peoples.

To this argument, we must reply first of all by noting that in the history of evangelization, there were certainly mistakes, about this no one would disagree. Moreover, that the cultural multiplicity of humanity must find a place in the Church, as the common home for all people, is today recognized without exception.

But in the radical critique of the Christian missionary effort from the standpoint of cultures, there is something deeper at work: it is the question of whether there can be a communion of cultures within the truth that unites them, the question of whether truth can he expressed for all people beyond cultural forms or instead whether, finally, behind the diversity of cultures, truth only appears asymptotically.

Because of its importance, the Pope dedicates several paragraphs of the Encyclical to this question (FR 6972). He underscores the fact that when cultures are deeply rooted in what is human, they bear witness in themselves to the human person's 'characteristic openness to the universal and the transcendent' (FR 70).

Therefore, cultures, as the expression of man's one essence, are characterized by the human dynamic, which is to transcend all boundaries. Thus, cultures are not fixed once and for all in a single form; they have the capacity to make progress and to be transformed, as they also face the danger of decadence.

Cultures are predisposed to the experience of encounter and reciprocal enrichment. As man's inner openness to God leaves its mark on a culture to the extent to which that culture is great and pure, so there is written in such cultures themselves an inner openness for the revelation of God.

Revelation is not something extraneous to cultures, but rather it responds to an inner expectation within cultures themselves.

It was in this connection that Theodor Hacher spoke of the advent character of pre-Christian cultures, and since that time, many studies in the history of religions have demonstrated quite impressively this advance of cultures toward the Logos of God, who in Jesus Christ became flesh.

In this context, the Holy Father makes reference to the listing of peoples in the Pentecost account in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:711), which narrates for us how, through all languages and in all languages, that is, in all cultures, which manifest themselves in language, the testimony about Jesus Christ becomes understandable.

In all of them, the human word becomes the bearer of God's own language, of God's own Logos. The Encyclical puts it in this way:
'While it demands of all who hear it the adherence of faith, the proclamation of the Gospel in different cultures allows people to preserve their own cultural identity. This in no way creates division because the community of the baptized is marked by a universality which can embrace every culture. . .' (FR 71)

Taking as his starting point the encounter with the culture of India, the Holy Father develops the fundamental principles for the relationship between Christian faith and pre-Christian cultures. He refers briefly to the great spiritual quest of Indian thought, which struggles for the liberation of the spirit from the confines of space and time, and so manifests in practice the metaphysical openness of man.

This quest for liberation, then, takes on an intellectual form in the great philosophical systems (FR 72). With this reference, the universalistic tendency of the great cultures becomes evident, their transcending of place and time, and so too the way in which they advance man's being and his highest possibilities.

Here the capacity for reciprocal dialogue between cultures finds its foundation in this specific case, the dialogue between Indian culture and those cultures which have grown up on the soil of the Christian faith.

Thus, from a profound contact with Indian culture, a first criterion emerges almost spontaneously: 'the universality of the human spirit whose basic needs are the same in the most disparate cultures' (FR 72).

From this, a second criterion immediately follows: 'in engaging great cultures for the first time, the Church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought' (FR 72).

Finally, the Encyclical specifies a third criterion which derives from the reflections up to this point on the nature of culture: one must take care lest 'contrary to the very nature of the human spirit, the legitimate defense of the uniqueness and originality of Indian thought be confused with the idea that a particular cultural tradition should remain closed in its difference and affirm itself by opposing other traditions' (FR 72).

When the Pope insists upon the inalienability of an acquired cultural inheritance, one which has become a vehicle for the common truth about God and man, the question naturally arises as to whether this does not amount to the canonization of a eurocentrism, in the Christian faith, a eurocentrism which would not seem capable of being superseded later by the possibility that a new patrimony could enter - and in fact has entered into the permanent identity of the faith.

The question is unavoidable: how Latin and how Greek is the Christian faith in reality, a faith which, of course, originated neither in the Greek nor the Latin world, but in the Semitic world of the Middle East, where Asia, Africa and Europe come together?

The Encyclical takes a position on this problem above all in the second chapter which treats the development of philosophical thought within the Bible, as well as in the fourth chapter which presents the decisive meeting of the wisdom of reason which had matured within the faith and the Greek wisdom of philosophy. On this question, I would make the following brief observations.

Already within the Bible itself a pluralistic inheritance of religious and philosophical thought deriving from various cultural worlds is developed.

The word of God unfolds in a process of encounters with man's search for an answer to his ultimate questions. It does not simply fall straight from heaven, but is in reality a synthesis of cultures.

It allows us, on deeper inspection, to recognize a process in which God struggles with man and slowly opens him to his deeper word, to himself, to the Son who is the Logos.

The Bible is not simply the expression of the culture of the people of Israel, but rather manifests a constant conflict with the completely natural desire of the people of Israel to be only themselves, to shut themselves in their own culture.

Faith in God and their 'yes' to the will of God is wrested from them against their own ideas and wishes. God places himself against certain expressions of the religiosity and religious culture of Israel which, in the worship on the highplaces, in the worship of the `Queen of heaven', and in the claim to power of its own kingdom, sought to assert itself.

From the anger of God and of Moses against the worship of the golden calf at Sinai to the late PostExilic prophets, Israel must constantly be drawn away from elements of its own cultural identity and religious desires; that is, it must leave the worship of its own nationality, the worship of 'Blood and Land', in order to submit to God who is completely other, a God who is not of Israel's own making, the God who created the heavens and the earth and who is God of all peoples.

Israel's faith requires a continual self-transcendence, an overcoming of its own culture, in order to open itself and enter into the expansiveness of a truth common to all.

The books of the Old Testament may appear in many respects less pious, less poetic, less inspired, than certain passages of the sacred books of other peoples. But they possess their own originality in this struggle of faith against particularity, the process of taking leave of what is their own, which begins with Abraham's departure on his journey.

In a sense, when St. Paul departs from the [Judaic] law, a departure based on his encounter with the risen Lord, this fundamental trajectory of the Old Testament is brought to its logical conclusion; it expresses fully the universalization of the faith of Israel, released from the particularity of an ethnic structure.

Now all peoples are invited to join in this process of self-transcendence of their own particularity, the process which first began in Israel. All people are invited to direct themselves to the God who has gone beyond himself in Jesus Christ and, in him, has broken down the 'wall of hostility' (Eph 2:14) which was between us, and who leads us to one another through the selfemptying of the Cross.

Faith in Jesus Christ is of its nature a continual opening of the self: it is God's breaking into the world of human beings and the response of human beings breaking out toward God, who at the same time leads them to one another.

Everything particular now belongs to everyone, and everything which belongs to others becomes also our own. The 'everything' referred to in the parable of the prodigal son, when the father says to the elder son, 'everything which is mine is yours,' later reappears in the high-priestly prayer of Jesus as the Son's address to the Father: 'Everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine.'

This fundamental pattern also shapes the encounter of the Christian message with Greek Culture, an encounter which did not begin with the proclamation of the Gospel, but had already developed within the writings of the Old Testament, above all when these were translated into Greek, and which continued in early Judaism.

The encounter was made possible because at the same time a similar process of transcending the particular had begun in the Greek world.
The Fathers of the Church did not simply mix an autonomous and self-standing Greek culture into the Gospel.

They were able to take up the dialogue with Greek philosophy and use it as an instrument for the Gospel, because in the Greek world a form of autocriticism of their own culture which had arisen through the search for God was already under way.

Beginning with the Germanic and Slavic peoples, who in the period of the great migrations came into contact with the Christian message, and then later with the peoples of Asia, Africa and America, the Christian faith introduced these people not to Greek culture as such, but rather to its capacity for self-transcendence, which was the true connecting point for interpreting the Christian message.

It drew them into the dynamic of self-transcendence. On this question, Richard Schaffler has recently stated in a striking way that, from the very outset, the proclamation of the Christian message required from the European peoples (who incidentally did not exist as such before the Christian missionary effort), 'the abandonment . . . of every aboriginal God of the Europeans, long before the extra-European cultures came on the scene.'

Thus, we can understand why it was that the Christian proclamation sought a connection with philosophies and not with religions. Where it did seek to connect with religions, for example, where Christ was interpreted as the true Dionysius, Asklepius or Hercules. such attempts were quickly superseded.

That a connection was sought not with religions, but with philosophies, was itself linked to the fact that there was no intention to canonize a particular culture as such, but rather to enter into it at the point where it had begun to transcend itself, at the point where it had begun to open itself to universal truth and thus to lead it out of the enclosure of pure particularity.

This is a fundamental point of reference also today for the question of connection and contact with other peoples and cultures. Certainly, the Christian faith cannot utilize philosophies which exclude the question of truth, but it can connect with those movements which seek to escape from the prison of relativism.

Surely, it cannot reestablish a connection with the ancient religions: there was such an attempt in the time of early Christianity, where, for example, the mystery religions gave new content to the worship of the ancient gods, or where certain schools of philosophy interpreted in a new way the ancient teachings about the gods.

However, religions can offer forms and structures, and especially attitudes; for example, reverence, humility, the willingness to make sacrifices, goodness, love of neighbor, hope for eternal life. It seems to me that this is important for the question of the salvific significance of world religions.

These do not save, so to speak, as closed systems and through fidelity to the system, but they contribute to salvation insofar an they bring men 'to ask about God', or as it is expressed in the Old Testament, 'to seek his face' to seek 'the kingdom of God and its righteousness'.

Allow me finally to speak briefly about two other important concepts found in the Encyclical.

First, there is the reference to the circularity between theology and philosophy (FR 73). The Encyclical understands this in the sense that theology must always take the Word of God as its starting point, but as this Word is truth, it stands in relationship to the human search for truth, to the connection of reason with truth and, therefore, it must stand in dialogue with philosophy.

The search for truth by believers takes place in a movement in which listening to the Word that has been spoken meets continually with the search of reason. Through this process, on the one hand, faith becomes more profound and more pure, and, on the other hand, human thought is enriched because of the new horizons open to it.

It seems to me that one could develop a bit further this notion of circularity. Philosophy too should not enclose itself in total particularity or simply in the results of its own reflections. As philosophy must be attentive to empirical discoveries, which occur in the various branches of knowledge, so too it should consider, as a source of knowledge for its enrichment, the holy tradition of religions and, above all, the message of the Bible.

In fact, all great philosophies have received illumination and direction from religious tradition. We need only think of the philosophies of Greece or India, or those which have developed within Christianity, or even those recent philosophies which, although they are convinced of the autonomy of reason and see it as the highest measure of human thought, at the same time remain indebted to the great impulse which the Biblical faith has given to philosophy along the way.

Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling would be unthinkable without the preceding substructure of faith, and Marx, with his radical reinterpretation of the horizon of hope, was influenced by what he had absorbed from the religious tradition.

When philosophy completely extinguishes this dialogue with the thinking of faith it ends up as Jaspers once formulated it in an 'empty seriousness'.

In the end, philosophy will feel forced to renounce the question of truth, that is, to relinquish its very nature for a philosophy which no longer asks about who we are, about why we exist, about whether God and eternal life exist, has, as philosophy, abdicated.

I would like to mention a second thought which is connected with these considerations. The Encyclical speaks explicitly of the contribution which faith has made to philosophy and of the tasks undertaken by philosophy with this contribution.

It mentions first some fundamental elements of knowledge, some concepts, which cannot be overlooked in philosophical thought: the idea of a personal God and with it, in general, the concept of the 'person' which was formulated for the first time in the encounter between faith and philosophy (FR 76).

In this context, the Encyclical refers to the concept of man as the image of God, that is, to the relational anthropology of the Bible, which understands man as a being in relation. From this, from the relational being of man, God, whose image is portrayed within, can be seen (FR 80).

The notion of sin and guilt is presented as another fundamental anthropological concept; further on, the idea of the equality and freedom of man, as well as the idea of a philosophy of history, are included.

Then the Pope formulates three postulates of faith in philosophy:
- It must recover its sapient dimension as a search for the ultimate and all-encompassing meaning of life (FR 81) ;
- It should attest to the human capacity to know the truth (FR 82) ; -and third, following from these,
- There is a need for a philosophy of genuinely metaphysical range.

This means that human thought cannot stop at the level of appearance, but must reach beyond appearance to being itself; it must go from 'phenomenon to foundation,' (FR 83).

In today's context, the impossibility of passing beyond what is apparent, that is, of passing beyond phenomena, has indeed become a kind of dogma.

But isn't the human person then cut off from his innermost self, if he stops simply at appearances? Doesn't one then begin to lead a life which is simply appearance?

It is at this crucial point of contemporary thought that we touch on the heart of the Gospel message. For the Gospel of Saint John, the Christian faith decision is precisely this: that one not yield to appearances or raise appearances to the level of the highest reality, but rather that, beyond appearances, one must seek and direct oneself to the glory of God, the radiant splendor of truth.

Today, the dictatorship of appearances can be clearly seen on two planes: on the level of political activity where, in many cases, what really counts is what 'appears' about facts; what is said, what is written, what is presented, more than the facts themselves.Widespread opinion assumes a greater importance than what in fact really happened.

Something similar occurs on the theological level when, in approaching the Biblical message, the so-called modern worldview (in the thought of Bultmann, for example) becomes the single measure for judgment, which decides about what can and what cannot be, though in fact this worldview, if correctly represented, does not even attempt to decide on questions of being or ultimate reality, or final possibility, but rather seeks to understand the laws which govern the things that are apparent to us, and nothing more.

In this connection, the Holy Father emphasizes the limits of the concept of 'experience, which today, in keeping with the dominant limitation to what is apparent, is often elevated even in theology to the level of the ultimate standard.'

As the Encyclical explains, 'The word of God refers constantly to things which transcend human experience' (FR 83).

It can do so, because human beings are not limited to the world of appearances or to subjective experience. Indeed, the reduction to experience traps the human person in the subjective.

Revelation is more than experience, and only thus does it give us an experience of God and help us to bring our own experiences together, to order them rightly, and through positive and critical discernment, to understand and communicate them.

I am convinced that, in our current philosophical and theological debate, precisely this section of the Encyclical must he given further thought and investigation; it could well become a valuable source of enrichment for cultural research in our time.

I would like to close by referring to a comment on the Encyclical which appeared in Die Zeit, a German weekly newspaper which is not usually very favorable to the Church.

The commentator, Jan Ross, grasped the essence of the Pope's message very well when he noted that the dethroning of theology and metaphysics had made human thought 'not only more free, but also more narrow', indeed, he was not afraid to speak of a Verdummung durch Unglauben a '`dumbing-down through unbelief'.

He writes: 'As reason has turned away from the ultimate questions, it has become indifferent and tiresome, it has become incompetent for addressing the life questions of good and evil, of death and immortality'.

The voice of the Pope has 'inspired many persons and entire peoples, it has sounded harsh and trenchant to the ear of many, and even aroused hatred, but if it falls silent, this would be a moment of dreadful silence'.

In fact, if we no longer speak about God and man, about sin and grace, about death and eternal life, then all that remains is sound and fury, a useless attempt to cover up the silencing of what is authentically human.

With the fearless frankness of faith, the Pope has pitted himself against the danger of this silence and in doing so he has rendered a service not only to the Church, but to humanity as well. For this we should be grateful to him.

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I wonder if we will ever know how much input Cardinal Ratzinger had in Fides et ratio, though I have read separate items mentioning Mons. Angelo Amato and Mons. Rino Fisichella as the principal 'ghost writer' of the encyclical.

'Ghost writer' in this context is a term I strongly disapprove of, because while someone (or more than one) may provide a Pope with drafts for an encyclical, it is ultimately the Pope himself, whoever he is, who must adapt and revise any drafts to accurately reflect both his Magisterium and his personal style. The intellectual caliber of the Popes in our lifetime - and in the 20th century - does not lend itself to thinking that they would have used 'ghost writers' in the way the term is understood.


P.S. One of the more interesting among the 'new' posts on the site is a 1988 speech of Cardinal Ratzinger to the Chilean bishops conference about the Lefebvre case. Will try to translate ASAP.

It is a great document - not only explaining how and why Mgr. Lefebvre changed his mind at the last minute about an agreement with the Church, but also going into how the Church - represented in these negotiations by Cardinal Ratzinger - had sought to show Mgr. Lefebvre that acceptance of the Church meant acceptance of Vatican-II, and why Vatican-II must be accepted by every Catholic.

It then proceeds to dispute the progressivists who claim that Vatican-II represented a break from the past and those who would accept all religions as 'equal'. And once again, a document that is almost 20 years old sounds very 'today'. Proof that there are certain truths about the faith that do not change but are constantly questioned znd threfore, must be constantly defended.

Ignatius Insight posted this opportunely for the Mass celebrated by the Pope yesterday in the Sistine Chapel.





To the ordinary churchgoer, the two most obvious effects of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council seem to be the disappearance of Latin and the turning of the altars towards the people. Those who read the relevant texts will be astonished to learn that neither is in fact found in the decrees of the Council.

The use of the vernacular is certainly permitted, especially for the Liturgy of the Word, but the preceding general rule of the Council text says, 'Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites' (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36.1).

There is nothing in the Council text about turning altars towards the people; that point is raised only in postconciliar instructions.

The most important directive is found in paragraph 262 of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, the General Instruction of the new Roman Missal, issued in 1969.

That says, 'It is better for the main altar to be constructed away from the wall so that one can easily walk around the altar and celebrate facing the people (versus populum).'

The General Instruction of the Missal issued in 2002 retained this text unaltered except for the addition of the subordinate clause, 'which is desirable wherever possible'. This was taken in many quarters as hardening the 1969 text to mean that there was now a general obligation to set up altars facing the people 'wherever possible'.

This interpretation, however, was rejected by the Congregation for Divine Worship on 25 September 2000, when it declared that the word 'expedit' ('is desirable') did not imply an obligation but only made a suggestion.

The physical orientation, the Congregation says, must be distinguished from the spiritual. Even if a priest celebrates versus populum, he should always be oriented versus Deum per Iesum Christum (towards God through Jesus Christ).

Rites, signs, symbols, and words can never exhaust the inner reality of the mystery of salvation. For this reason the Congregation warns against one-sided and rigid positions in this debate.

This is an important clarification. It sheds light on what is relative in the external symbolic forms of the liturgy and resists the fanaticisms that, unfortunately, have not been uncommon in the controversies of the last forty years.

At the same time it highlights the internal direction of liturgical action, which can never be expressed in its totality by external forms. This internal direction is the same for priest and people, towards the Lord - towards the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit.

The Congregation's response should thus make for a new, more relaxed discussion, in which we can search for the best ways of putting into practice the mystery of salvation. The quest is to be achieved, not by condemning one another, but by carefully listening to each other and, even more importantly, listening to the internal guidance of the liturgy itself.

The labelling of positions as 'preconciliar', 'reactionary', and 'conservative', or as 'progressive' and 'alien to the faith' achieves nothing; what is needed is a new mutual openness in the search for the best realisation of the memorial of Christ.



This small book by Uwe Michael Lang, a member of the London Oratory, studies the direction of liturgical prayer from a historical, theological, and pastoral point of view. At a propitious moment, as it seems to me, this book resumes a debate that, despite appearances to the contrary, has never really gone away, not even after the Second Vatican Council.

The Innsbruck liturgist Josef Andreas Jungmann, one of the architects of the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was from the, very beginning resolutely opposed to the polemical catchphrase that previously the priest celebrated 'with his back to the people'; he emphasised that what was at issue was not the priest turning away from the people, but, on the contrary, his facing the same direction as the people.

The Liturgy of the Word has the character of proclamation and dialogue, to which address and response can rightly belong. But in the Liturgy of the Eucharist the priest leads the people in prayer and is turned, together with the people, towards the Lord. For this reason, Jungmann argued, the common direction of priest and people is intrinsically fitting and proper to the liturgical action.

Louis Bouyer (like Jungmann, one of the Council's leading liturgists) and Klaus Gainber have each in his own way taken up the same question. Despite their great reputations, they were unable to make their voices heard at first, so strong was the tendency to stress the communality of the liturgical celebration and to regard therefore the face-to-face position of priest and people as absolutely necessary.

More recently the atmosphere has become more relaxed so that it is possible to raise the kind of questions asked by Jungmann, Bouyer, and Gamber without at once being suspected of anti-conciliar sentiments. Historical research has made the controversy less partisan, and among the faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are above and to the world to come.

In this situation, Lang's delightfully objective and wholly unpolemical book is a valuable guide. Without claiming to offer major new insights, he carefully presents the results of recent research and provides the material necessary for making an informed judgment.

The book is especially valuable in showing the contribution made by the Church of England to this question and in giving, also, due consideration to the part played by the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century (in which the conversion of John Henry Newman matured).

It is from such historical evidence that the author elicits the theological answers that he proposes, and I hope that the book, the work of a young scholar, will help the struggle-necessary in every generation–for the right understanding and worthy celebration of the sacred liturgy.

I wish the book a wide and attentive readership.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Rome, Laetare Sunday 2003


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Uwe Michael Lang is a member of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London. he holds an M.A. in Catholic theology from the University of Vienna and a D.Phil in theology from the University of Oxford. His publications include several articles on Patristic subjects and his doctoral thesis, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century

NB: Last autumn, Fr. Lang joined the Curia as head of an office in the Congtregation for Divine Worship. .