Let God's Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI [Hardcover]

Robert Moynihan Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 2005

Though he was a familiar Church leader for many years before becoming pope, there has been little awareness of the spiritual side of Benedict XVI. Now for the first time readers are given a brilliant overview of the Pope’s most inspirational teachings in Let God’s Light Shine Forth. Editor Robert Moynihan offers a brief introduction to the life and work of Pope Benedict XVI and then presents an absorbing collection of his most persuasive words.

Within these pages, Pope Benedict XVI introduces a God who is good, beautiful, and true, the fountain of all life. The most important thing for each person, in Benedict’s view, is to discover and develop a loving relationship with God, because this is the way to the deepest and most lasting happiness that human beings can experience. Even in our darkest moments, he teaches, we can have hope that all things will ultimately work out in a wonderful way to show God’s glory and bring blessedness to individual men and women.

Many of these selections deal specifically with questions such as: Who is God? How we can know him? What does he wants us to do and to be? Having spent his entire life thinking, studying, and praying about such questions, Benedict has become perhaps the leading contemporary theologian (the word literally means “knower of God”) in the Roman Catholic Church. From his earliest work as a teacher to his first words as leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict’s vision of hope is powerfully summarized in Let God’s Light Shine Forth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope in April 2005, he had long been the second most powerful man in the Vatican, but his own writings had often been overlooked. This sampler of those writings--doubtless the first of many such collections--promises to give readers a taste of the theology and teachings of the man who is now Pope Benedict XVI. After a helpful biographical essay by Moynihan, the founder and editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, the book dashes through excerpts spanning Ratzinger's whole career, from his earliest days as a young professor to his first utterance as pope. Since these excerpts are undated and Moynihan gives them no historical context, the book is more useful as a devotional text than as a window into the evolution of Ratzinger's spiritual development. In any case, it would be useful to have an index that could help readers find the specific topics addressed here (Christmas, Islam, poverty, marriage, in vitro fertilization, pride, Easter, etc.). However, the reflections are loosely grouped in very general topical chapters and organized with helpful subheads. The readings are short, usually just a paragraph or two long, and representative of a wide variety of spiritual and social issues. Readers who are eager for a taste of the new pope's stance on topics like Protestant-Catholic relations, cloning, or the liturgy will enjoy leafing through this compilation.
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Review

“In Let God’s Light Shine Forth, Robert Moynihan has made an intelligent selection from [Pope Benedict XVI’s works] . . . the extracts themselves provide a useful window into the characteristic preoccupations of a thinker now uniquely positioned to translate thought into policies that will affect the lives of hundreds of millions.” —The Washington Post
 
“Let God’s Light Shine Forth is a lovely book that serves two purposes. It is a fine introduction to the pope’s personal and professional life. And the selection of beautifully written (yet relatively short) excerpts from his writings can be fruitfully used for personal meditation and reflection.” —St. Louis Review


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Religion; First edition (June 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385507925
• ISBN-13: 978-0385507929
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,263,953 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in 1927 in Germany as Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI has been head of the Roman Catholic Church since April 2005. A prolific author, theologian and university professor, Ratzinger served as an "expert" at the Second Vatican Council, and was tapped in 1977 by Pope Paul VI to lead the German Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. In 1981, Pope John Paul II called him to Rome to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he served until his papal election.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Accurate Sense of the New Pope, June 28, 2005

By 

Oswald Sobrino (Traverse City) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Let God's Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (Hardcover)

Robert Moynihan gives us an accurate overview of the vision of Pope Benedict. The first part of the book gives us a sense of the background and values of the new Pope based on the Pope's past writings and interviews and based on Moynihan's own repeated conversations with Benedict when he was a cardinal. The second part is a topical collection of the Pope's views on many issues ranging from various theological dogmas to matters of morality to issues in the Christian life such as suffering and loneliness. The third and last part of the book consists of a reprinting of the first messages and homily of the new Pope from that extraordinary month of April 2005. You will get a good sense about the new Pope's vision from this book. Personally, I was struck by the Pope's strong views on the urgency of liturgical reform and on the centrality of defending human dignity.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provides Great Understanding of the new Holy Father., July 19, 2005

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D. Burch (Lexington, KY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Let God's Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (Hardcover)

This is an excellent work which provides information on the Holy Father and summarizes his views from previous written works. As then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he published nearly 50 books on the Church. He truly is "hands-on" and clearly understands what is going on in the Church outside of Rome. A quick and easy read that will bring you up to date on Benedict XVI.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An informative but uneven sampling, January 20, 2007

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Waverley36 (Nunya) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Let God's Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (Paperback)

I found the first part of this book, a brief biography/interview of the Pope with the editor, to be enlightening and inspiring. I don't know why, but it hadn't crossed my mind that Benedict grew up in Nazi Germany, so the account of his childhood and of how his family maintained their faith despite the fascist war ideology is a real eye-opener.

However, I found the larger second part, devoted to little snippets from interviews, articles, and books, to be less helpful. Most of the quotes are very short, no more than a paragraph or two. Plucked from their original context, they make for a terribly uneven introduction to Benedict's work and thought: sometimes illuminating, sometimes unclear. I think I would have preferred it if the editor had continued in the same vein as Part One, putting a bit of shape and coherence to the original material.