The subtle mind of Ratzinger

A biography of the Vatican's so-called 'Enforcer' fails to do him justice, says Anthony Symondson SJ THE NAME "Ratzinger" is almost onomatopoeic; like bang', "sizzle", "cuckooor "whoosh", it induces in some instinctive prejudice, in others natural confidence. So emotive is the name that the man who bears it is hidden behind a facade. This says less about those who have contradictory reactions, more about the times in which we live and what has gone before during the 20th century.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation fir the Doctrine of the Faith, is a man whose life and thought have been moulded by the historical vicissitudes of modern Europe and the chaos, cruelty and injustice they encompass. Like Pope John Paul II he has survived under tyranny that has been inimical to the teaching of Christ embodied in the New Testament and maintained by the Magisterium of the Church. The Holy Father and Ratzinger cannot be dissociated from their age; nor can the Church, nor can we. Both represent emancipation from the consequences of the most destructive era in the history of the world. Without recognising this background neither men, nor their aims, will be understood.
The problem for a book about Ratzinger is that it is hard not to avoid polarisation. John Allen would, I suspect, like his readers to think that he has written an objective study, confined to presenting the facts of his subject's life, and drawing conclusions from them from a late 20th century American perspective. For Allen is as much a child of his time and place as Ratzinger and he looks at the recent past from a latter-day perspective.
In an introduction, Allen explains that he was born in western Kansas in 1965 and is a child of the Second Vatican Council. He is Vatican conespondent of the National Catholic Reporter and believes that "being Catholic means caring about the world and about other people, and it means finding God in the midst of these concerns".
Alien describes the clash of two cultures that he discovered in his Roman posting: "the evolving, socially engaged, compassionate Catholicism" as opposed to an authoritarian structure "vigorously defended by the best and brightest of Catholic officialdom" that believes in silencing, condemnations and banning books, a system that is "obviously detrimental to women, to the intellectual life, to the cause of social justice". So powerful, he supposes, is Ratzinger's influence as a theologian and in his congregation that these aims have for 20 years been stultified.
JOSEPH RATZINGER was born in Bavaria in 1927, the youngest of three children of a rural police supervisor. His parents were opposed to Nazism and although he was drafted into the Hitler Youth and the army he played no active part in politics.
While studying in Munich, Ratzinger fell under the influence of St Augustine and St Bonaventure rather than St Thomas Aquinas. Foremost among modern theologians who had an effect on him were Romano Guardini and Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose work in patristics, the Bible and Christology helped to create the climate that made Vatican II possible.
While teaching at the University of Bonn, Ratzinger met Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne and when the council opened in 1962 he was invited to become a peritus. A moderate, Frings spoke for reform and emerged as a leader of the progressive wing under Ratzinger's influence. Indeed, at the time of the council, Ratzinger put his support behind reorganisation, but it would be wrong to claim, as Allen does, that he was a liberal in the sense in which it is understood today.
He had, for instance, reservations about Gaudium et Spes. Rather, he embraced the theory of ressoutrement which looked back to tradition, expressed in the patristic age and forward to the social and cultural future. The object of theology and liturgy was to reveal the mystery of Christ,
his life, death and resurrection, diversely expressed through the different ages of the Church. The mystery is approached not in a spirit of conservatism but in such a way that we can, through tradition, discover Christ in the world of the present time. Aggiornamento, bringing up to date, did not mean accommodation with the secular spirit of the age.
Ratzinger soon came to see that the world was in a state of disintegration. This was made starkly evident in 1968 when sEbrope and North America were torn by student protest and institutional violence was applied in the cause of revolution. Marxism appeared as monolithic as the Church and he identified its malignancy as a danger to truth and Christian order. From this era rose liberation theology, birth control and abortion, sexual laissez-faire, feminism, inclusive language, religious pluralism and a temporal understanding of human rights.
Vatican 11 raised impossibly high and unrealistic expectations, but it was necessary to
save the Church from stagnation. The problem of secularisation and an open, flexible spirit, encouraged by the dominating characteristics of the time, created a new situation that once more masked the teaching of Christ and the Magisterium.
Ai,STRONG PAPACY was necessary and Ratzinger was appointed to the congregation in 1981. Some theologians worked over and against the Church and attempted to form an independent source of authority. The progressive policies that resulted have collapsed not, as Allen repeatedly
asserts, because of Ratzinger's opposition — he is blamed for the misfortunes of the world — but from their own friability.
Allen accurately presents Ratzinger's position as defender of the truth but he is unequal to its theological subtlety. His own experience is the measure by which Ratzinger is judged. If anything characterises this limited book it is naivety rather than illumination.