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Book Review

THE RATZINGER REPORT

By Diane Levero

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was named pope in a stunningly short election, I was cautiously happy.  

The little I knew about him – that he was Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and as such, a hardliner on doctrinal matters, was reassuring.

But did he really deserve the nicknames with which he was dubbed:  “Der Panzercardinal,” “God’s Rottweiler”?  I hoped so!

An aggressive, even ferocious defender of the faith is exactly who we needed to take the helm of the undeniably floundering ship that is the Catholic Church.

I wanted to know more about him – not biographical data, necessarily, but his views on the issues embroiling the Church.  

I found the answers in The Ratzinger Report.

The result of an interview of Catdinal Ratzinger by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that lasted several days, The Ratzinger Report is a tour de force of the then-cardinal’s incisive assessment of the controversies swirling about the Church.

The author of a dissertation on St. Augustine and other scholarly works and lecturer in dogmatics at Germany’s most prominent universities, Joseph Ratzinger served as an expert of the German episcopate at Vatican Council II.  There he gained a reputation as an “open-minded” and “progressive” theologian.

When Messori interviewed him two decades later, in 1984, Ratzinger, at 58, had been Prefect of the former Holy Office for two years.

Had he changed his “liberal” views, Messori asked half-jokingly?

“It is not I who have changed, but others,” Ratzinger answered seriously.  He had never entertained any thoughts of creating an “alternative magisterium,” but when he saw that others did, he “disengaged” himself from them, he said.

So, what does he think about Vatican II, confession, Episcopal conferences, present-day catechesis, sexuality and marriage, the state of the liturgy, the devil?

In the space of a book review, I can only offer brief excerpts from the future Benedict XVI’s trenchant comments, but I hope these give you enough of their flavor to want to read them in full.

Vatican II:  Ratzinger is earnest in his insistence that the many post-conciliar abuses in the Church are not the fault of the Council and its documents, but a result of opposition by, in his words, a “self-styled ‘spirit of the Council,’ which in reality is a true ‘anti-spirit of the Council.’

“According to this pernicious anti-spirit, everything that is ‘new’ (or presumed such:  how many old heresies have surfaced again in recent years that have been presented as something new!) is always and in every case better than what has been or what is.”

At the root of the crisis in the Church, says Ratzinger, is a faulty understanding of the Church.  Instead of believing in an institutional Church willed by Christ, “the Church is viewed as a human construction, the product of our own efforts,” he observes.

“Here lies the origin of the decline of the authentic concept of ‘obedience.’  If the Church, in fact, is our Church, if we alone are the Church, if her structures are not willed by Christ, then it is no longer possible to conceive of a hierarchy as a service to the baptized established by the Lord himself.”

True reform consists, not of erecting new structures within the Church, or better management, but personal holiness, he says.

“Saints, in fact, reformed the Church, not by working up plans for new structures but by reforming themselves.  What the Church needs in order to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management.”

Confession:  “There are priests who tend to transform [confession] almost exclusively into a ‘conversation,’ into a kind of therapeutic self-analysis between two persons on the same level.

“For me, the self-praise of some priests for their ‘penitential colloquies’ . . . has an increasingly bitter ring in my ear.  

“Viewed properly, behind the ‘repetitiousness’ of certain confessions of the past, there was also the seriousness of the encounter between two persons aware of being in the presence of the shattering mystery of Christ’s forgiveness that arrives through the words and gestures of a sinful man.”

Episcopal conferences:  “No episcopal conference, as such, has a teaching mission; its documents have no weight of their own save that of the consent given to them by the individual bishops,” says Ratzinger.

He emphasizes this because, he says, “it is a matter of safeguarding the very nature of the Catholic Church, which is based on an episcopal structure and not on a kind of federation of national churches.”

In many episcopal conferences, he warns, “the group spirit, and perhaps even the wish for a quiet, peaceful life or conformism lead the majority to accept the positions of active minorities pursuing clear goals.”

Catechesis:  “All that is said about faith is organized around four fundamental elements:  the Credo, the Our Father, the Decalogue, the sacraments.  

“Today this fundamental structure is neglected in extensive areas of present-day catechesis.  The result has been a disintegration of the sensus fidei in the new generations.”

Sexuality and marriage:  “The issue is the rupture between sexuality and marriage.  Separated from motherhood, sex has remained without a locus and has lost its point of reference:  it is a kind of drifting mine, a problem and at the same time an omnipresent power.

“No longer having an objective reason to justify it, sex seeks the subjective reason in the gratification of the desire . . . it naturally follows that all forms of sexual gratification are transformed into the ‘rights’ of the individual.  Thus, . . . homosexuality becomes an inalienable right.”

Liturgy:  “The liturgy is not a show, a spectacle, requiring brilliant producers and talented actors.  The life of the liturgy does not consist in ‘pleasant’ surprises and attractive ‘ideas’ but in solemn repetitions.”

When it comes to liturgy, says the Prefect, “Christians must not be too easily satisfied.  They must make their Church into a place where beauty – and hence truth – is at home.  Without this the world will become the first circle of hell.”

The devil:  “Whatever the less discerning theologians may say, the devil, as far as Christian belief is concerned, is a puzzling but real, personal and not merely symbolical presence.  He is a powerful reality,” insists Ratzinger.

“The more one understands the holiness of God, the more one understands the opposite of what is holy, namely, the deceptive masks of the devil.

“Jesus Christ himself is the greatest example of this:  before him, the Holy One, Satan could not keep hidden and was constantly compelled to show himself.  So one might say that the disappearance of the awareness of the demonic indicates a related decline in holiness.”

Other subjects are examined in The Ratzinger Report:  ecumenism, feminism, the role of Mary, original sin, sacred music, heresy and excommunication, to name a few.  

All are addressed with the same erudition, clarity of thought, and insight borne of a correctly informed, brilliant and holy mind.

Habemus papam.  And, thanks be to God, he is a good one.