A valuable guide to the thought and theology of Benedict XVI

Joseph Ratzinger didn’t want to be pope. He didn’t even want to be a bishop. When, in 1977, the apostolic nuncio informed him of his appointment as archbishop of Munich and Freising, he first requested to consult with his confessor, Johann Auer, before accepting. Auer told Ratzinger, much to the German priest’s surprise, that he must accept. So Ratzinger did, and, remarkably, was designated a cardinal by Pope Paul VI later that year.

But Ratzinger kept trying (without success) to walk away from leadership positions and return to the corridors of academia where he felt most at home. When offered a position with the Congregation for Catholic Education, he declined. He objected to being appointed by Pope John Paul II as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) in 1981, but accepted. Multiple times, including after a 1991 brain hemorrhage, he attempted to retire from the position, until John Paul II told Ratzinger he would hear no more of resignations or retirements.

When Ratzinger was elected pope in 2005—a decision he labeled “unreasonable”—he remarked: “The thought of the guillotine occurred to me: Now it falls down and hits you.” All of this, notes Richard G. DeClue, Jr., in his excellent new book The Mind of Benedict XVI: A Theology of Communion, helps contextualize and explain the decision by Ratzinger, now known as Benedict XVI, to resign from the papacy in 2013. Contrary to the absurd public image promoted by left-leaning (and even some Catholic) media that Benedict XVI was “God’s Rottweiler,” a Putin-like autocrat, and an “ecclesial climber,” the bookish German theologian throughout his life was outspoken in his preference for a religious vocation that kept him in the library stacks.

And yet, as DeClue’s book demonstrates, Benedict XVI’s allegiance to God always seemed to trump his personal preferences. When called to serve, Benedict, even if reluctant or resistant, ultimately went where he was ordered. And, though one might not have expected such qualities from a professional academic with more than fifteen hundred articles and books to his name, it is perhaps humble courage that most accurately defines his incredible life and mind.

DeClue’s chapter-long biography of Benedict XVI is a fascinating one. He cites many observers who noted that his career was defined by a humble “monastic simplicity,” the German cleric giving away much of his salary to those in need. While CDF prefect, Lufthansa once offered him a new suitcase, because the cardinal’s conspicuously decrepit one was “bad for business.” Though an admirer of St. Thomas Aquinas, he was decidedly not a Thomist, his unique theological vision owing more to St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure. Indeed, Ratzinger’s earliest academic work was on those two Doctors of the Church. Writes DeClue:

Benedict XVI was always attracted to the cooperation of a robust intellectual search for truth with the full force of a loving heart expressed in profoundly personal terms that he found in St. Augustine.

Though the great German theologian never published a systematic theology, DeClue argues that Benedict XVI’s thought is “fundamentally cohesive,” and can be best understood by the word communio, meaning communion, but also the name of an international scholarly journal he co-founded more than fifty years ago. By this word, the intention is for theology to be grounded in a faith that seeks to know and love God, and is done in intimate communion with the Church. Thus, Benedict XVI bluntly argued that “theology either exists in the church and from the church, or it does not exist at all.” And that theology should be placed at the service of the Church, to help others better understand the Catholic Faith.

For Benedict XVI, that typically meant having to wade into the various theological and philosophical controversies of the late twentieth century, where he exhibited a tenacious courage to speak uncomfortable and unpopular truths. In the face of a modern biblical scholarship deeply skeptical of the original sources, the German theologian and scholar offered an approach that engaged with both patristic sources and contemporary scholars, while addressing the errors of modernism. This is most visible in his popular three-part series on the Gospels.

Benedict XVI charitably dialogued with Protestantism and its best scholars, but reserved hard words for Luther, whom he accused of inaugurating “a new era of antagonism to philosophy for the sake of the unadulterated Word of God.” In contrast, the late pope’s theology is noticeably influenced by philosophical reflection. As DeClue explains:

Theology is faith seeking understanding. As such, it necessarily involves rational reflection, which inherently involves some sort of philosophical thinking. Even those opposed to it have not been able to avoid it.

In the chapter on ecclesiology, DeClue cites Benedict XVI’s excellent, often fresh argumentation regarding Petrine primacy. “It is immediately striking that all the major groups of texts in the New Testament are acquainted with the subject of Peter,” the pope observes, “which is thereby proven to be a topic of universal significance whose importance cannot be restricted to a particular tradition limited to one person or place.” The German scholar also employs a rhetorically clever move in noting various prominent Protestant scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann and Adolf von Harnach, who recognized the centrality and primacy of Peter among the apostles. In another powerful retort to Protestants, he elsewhere notes that the concept of apostolic succession predates the recognition of the existence of the New Testament.

Yet Benedict XVI reserved his most pointed attacks for the skepticism and relativism of modernity. He pushed modern skeptics to contemplate the ramifications of their intellectual system, shorn as it is from any objective sense of morality, any means of articulating one moral or political vision as superior to any other, and any way to defend such a vision short of the (ultimately subjective) assertion of one will over another.

In response to these modern dead-ends, Benedict XVI consistently insisted on the primacy of love, which is “higher than mere thought.” This approach should not come as a surprise given the title of his first papal encyclical: Deus caritas est. Even more interesting, he argues that it is the Trinitarian God, whose being is both singular and a plurality, who answers the ancient philosophical questions of the one and the many. “Not only unity is divine; plurality, too, is something primordial and has its inner ground in God himself,” he wrote in his famous Introduction to Christianity, first published in 1968.

The Bavarian theologian attacked scientism and epistemological reductionism as the question-begging systems that they are, though he was himself deeply familiar with the latest scientific research across a host of disciplines. Indeed, Benedict XVI believed that recent advances in modern science, far from undermining belief in God, were consistently reinforcing belief in creation. “Belief in creation concerns the difference between nothing and something, while the idea of evolution examines the difference between something and something else,” he argued, explaining that evolution is simply incapable of disproving the idea of creation.

One of the late pope’s most memorable turns of phrase was what he called the “dictatorship of relativism.” Such an intellectual autocracy “does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s ego and desires.” In an impressive riposte to modern secularists and relativists, Benedict XVI struck at the heart of their own worldview, asking, “What is freedom?” For if freedom is simply the liberty to whatever one chooses, based on whatever morality, there can be no true society. “Community has no value whatever in itself but exists only to allow the individual to be himself.” Moreover, he argues, if there are no objective standards for values, then there seems no basis for elevating freedom as the preeminent value. Or, as DeClue summarizes: “If freedom is solely the fulfillment of the individual’s desires, then how could there be an objective standard to mediate between individuals’ competing desires?”

Himself an influential intellectual force at the Second Vatican Council, Benedict XVI nonetheless took issue with progressive interpretations of the Council that attempted (and often succeeded) in promoting dramatic innovations in the liturgy, liturgical music and ecclesial architecture. For example, he argued that the post-conciliar custom of the priest facing the people (versus populum) is based on historical inaccuracies and an inaccurate understanding of the Eucharist. Thus he urged a return to the custom of ad orientem to reemphasize the sacrificial, priestly, and Christological character of the Mass.

Sadly, the late pope’s views on the Mass have taken a hit under his successor, though given the popularity of more traditional liturgical forms among young Catholics, perhaps it will ultimately be Benedict XVI’s vision that will win out. That was his way: bravely fighting what often seemed like a losing battle against what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity,” whether it be manifested in biblical scholarship, the fissiparous tendencies of Protestantism, or the intellectual nihilism of scientism.

Whatever the topic, he brought fresh, intellectually rigorous reflections that confounded his critics. In the foreword to The Mind of Benedict XVI, Fr. Emery de Gaál argues that the late pope, someday, should be declared a Doctor of the Church. If so, it would be a well-deserved title the humble, bookish Bavarian would not be able to escape.

The Mind of Benedict XVI: A Theology of Communion
By Richard G. DeClue, Jr.
Word on Fire, 2024
Hardcover, 349