Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.