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Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium- An Interview With Peter Seewald

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For those who want a keen insight into the life and formation of the new pope, Benedict XVI, most recently known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, this book is a must read. Most of the text is done as an interview with Peter Seewald, a German journalist, who does a question-and-answer format, but not in a choppy form. The answers are extended reflections, giving ample space to discussion of real, substantive issues of the church and the world.

The first section of the book concentrates on Ratzinger himself; the interview is nearly ten years old now, but the insights are still apropos to the man who is now the pope. Ratzinger did not look at the questions beforehand, and his responses, while not quite off-the-cuff, still have a spontaneity to them that is perhaps at odds with the more conservative image Ratzinger has come to bear. He is a conservative, to be sure, but in these pages along with other books, one may find a bit more compassion and humour than one might expect.

Ratzinger reflects upon his strict upbringing as a child, his time as a child of a 'simple commissioner', and his growth in a devout Catholic family who tended to go to Mass twice on Sundays.

Ratzinger became a theology professor, teaching at the universities at Tubingen and Regensburg. Heidegger is a big influence on Ratzinger's philosophical development, as are notions of Personalism (a philosophy of profound influence on Martin Luther King Jr. among others). Like his predecessor, Ratzinger has a great interest in Phenomenology and other modern philosophical schools. This led him to be a theological advisor to the Second Vatican Council, at which time Ratzinger was classified as a progressive, perhaps even a liberal.

Ratzinger discusses the role of his office, the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (once called The Inquisition), in the development of the 800+ page catechism for the Catholic church. This is a pope who knows the catechism backwards and forwards, for he has been part of the development at every stage.

Most intriguing are his ideas for the future of the church and the state of the world. He doesn't expect some sort of dramatic resurgence of the church, but does see a role and relevance for the church in the world. Perhaps this comes from the power of the church to provoke and be a prophetic witness. Given that his chosen name as pope is Benedict, his comparison in this text with St. Benedict (of monastic fame) is very intriguing. He likens the current and future situation to that of late antiquity, a time in which the majority of the non-ecclesial society wasn't really taking note of what the church was doing - Benedict was a bit of a dropout, who created 'an ark in which the West survived', largely going unnoticed.

For those who see Ratzinger as a knee-jerk traditionalist, perhaps no other statement is more enigmatic than his comment, "Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures."

An intriguing and fascinating read.

Cardinal Ratzinger is cut from a different cloth than those mediocre prelates who are always eager to accommodate the mistakes of modern Western societies. This book is well worth reading because Ratzinger obviously places proclaiming the truth above his personal popularity. In my opinion, his most striking words have to do with the proper role of the bishop: to keep challenging Christians and others, to, as Augustine said, keep them from falling asleep. Ratzinger finds repulsive the mentality of "don't rock the boat" that seems to permeate too many dioceses. When church historians look back to the latter part of the 20th century, they will rightly note the pivotal role of Ratzinger in preserving the deposit of faith when so many high-ranking clerics and prominent theologians were so eager to compromise that same deposit of faith.

A bumper sticker spotted this week on a mini-van emerging from a parking lot of a Catholic Church:

"I love my German Shepherd!" (beneath it, two words: "Benedict Sixteen.")

I wanted to second that emotion! And it's because of this interview, from ten years ago, which reminds me on its every delightful page, of my all-time favorite such book, from 17 centuries ago (correct) --- one of the treasures of the Eastern Church tradition.

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Back in the fourth century a simple monk named John Cassian went to visit the so-called "Desert Fathers" - many of them saints, who performed miracles of spiritual understanding in the presence of Cassian and his friend Germanus. Cassian's young friend was positively hostile in his questioning of these saintly men. But his often rude and gratingly persistent questions elicited the most amazing replies!

Cassian's resulting book "The Conferences" was strong meat devoured by the first "Saint Benedict" -- who used it as the basis for his monastic order (the very first in the western tradition of the Church). A thousand years later, the greatest of the theologians, Thomas Aquinas kept a copy of "The Conferences" with him at all times, and "read from it every day."

I thought of my ancient hero John Cassian (and especially of his rude companion Germanus) while reading this -- my new favorite book! Published in German in 1996, these 280 pages comprise an interview in 1995 of then-Cardinal Ratzinger.

The interviewer, an agnostic journalist Peter Seewald, repeatedly asks often-hostile questions of a truly great and (I believe) saintly mind. I love the fact that Ratzinger specifically requested he not see any of the questions in advance. The resultant conversation is astonishingly brilliant and satisfyingly deep!

Alas . . . it is impossible (for me at least) to recapitulate such brilliant thought in fewer words. But to single out just one exchange that appealed to this former journalist, who like Mr. Seewald has since converted to this 2,000 year old faith - mainly because of such brilliant and saintly minds.

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Near the end of this book (p. 215) --- in a chapter titled "2000 years of Christian history and still no redemption"--- the German journalist poses a rambling, 250 word question --- in fact really a dozen questions all bundled together. To which the German cardinal gently begins unraveling the bundle, with the most astonishingly focused reply. He deals with each implied question-in-turn - (and in the same order he received them; I am in awe of such a mind!)

Ratzinger's reply begins with a gentle dig at the questioner's inability to focus on `one-thing-at-a-time - saying:

"That is quite a bundle of observations and questions! The basic question (buried in the middle) is, `Has Christianity really brought salvation, has it brought redemption, or hasn't it actually remained fruitless? Hasn't Christianity perhaps by now lost its power?'

Ratzinger then proceeds to point out a distinction lost on many of us - including his interviewer:

"I think we must first say that salvation - the kind that comes from God - is not quantitative (like) the sum of an addition. In (science and) technical discoveries, there is growth, which may proceed in fits and starts, but is nonetheless continuous: The purely quantitative is measurable - one can ascertain whether there is now `more' or `less.'

"But a quantifiable progress in human goodness is impossible. Because each (of us) is new - and in a sense, history begins anew with every man. It is very important to learn this distinction."

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Assisting the journalist then (with an endearingly gentle and diplomatic guidance) Ratzinger helps his interviewer re-focus many subsequent questions (which, significantly become ever-more compact).

Eventually Peter Seewald asks a question that helps the reader see in bold relief, the difference between the mind of Ratzinger and that of his predecessor John Paul II (who three times refused to allow Ratzinger to abandon Rome for a more peaceful and secluded retirement in his homeland).

Seewald quotes from "John Paul II's talk to the United Nations" (1995) on the "foundations of a new, world order" -- and his hope for the "third Millennium: `We shall see' said the Pope, `that the tears of this century prepared the ground for a new springtime of the human spirit.' What might be meant by this springtime? A new identity of man?"

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger (ten years away from his own pontificate) replies in a manner that helps us see the principal difference between the world view of the two popes: John Paul II (who philosophically resembles his ideal --Thomas Aquinas) and Benedict Sixteen, (who more closely resembles the original St. Augustine).

Thus, Pope John Paul II (in Ratzinger's words of ten years ago) "does indeed cherish a vision that (the last thousand years of Christianity) - "the `millennium of divisions,' will be followed by the `millennium of unifications.' " The difference is, Ratzinger does NOT see this happening any time soon:

"The emergence of ecumenism at the Second Vatican Council is indeed a sign of a renewed approach to a new unity. It is thus filled with the hope . . . that all the catastrophes of our century, `all its tears,' as the Pope says, will be caught up at the end and turned into a new beginning."

It is good, the future pope said that we have such visions: "This is a vision that inspires and that challenges us to move in this direction. The Pope's untiring activity comes precisely from his visionary power. It would be fatal if we let ourselves be guided by purely negative calculations --- if we didn't allow ourselves to be guided by (such visions) that then give us guidelines and courage for action.

"(However) whether the vision is actually fulfilled is something we must leave entirely in God's hands. At the moment, I do not yet see it approaching."

As a former interviewer, I must add that this interview is quite simply the most amazing (and intellectually pleasurable) that I have ever read.

Mark Blackburn
Winnipeg

This is the first book I have read by Pope Benedict XVI. In my years of Catholic reading I had always meant to get around to reading something by or about Cardinal Ratzinger, but I always seemed to find something else. Well, after this reading I'm about to rush headlong into a Ratzinger reading frenzy. I won't bother to quote from the book because every paragraph is quotable.

In this book the Cardinal is answering interview questions on the fly and every answer is shocking in its clarity and depth of knowledge. I don't believe there is any topic this man's mind cannot or has not pierced. What is even more astounding is the masterful use of language. I could give this book to anyone, knowing that even the Catholic and theological priciples would be easily understood.

I believe that reviews should be concise, so I'll stop while my better judgment is intact and before I let my emotions run away with me. In most books, you are happy to run across points of light. This Pope's mind is a beacon of light and truth.

The background of Peter Seewald sets the tone for the book. He does not shy from his questions and this brings out more of Cardinal Ratzinger. I was not dissappointed as C. Ratzinger provides more than standard answers. His answer on women as priests was excellent.One thing that strike me most was when he was asked a particular question, he asked to be excused. The author assumes that he leaves for a prayer and comes back to answer his question. C. Ratzinger answers his question based on the search of truth in the Catholic faith.

There are so many fabulous insights in this book, and such honesty that it should be required reading for high school religion classes. Cardinal Ratzinger has really hit the nail on the head, giving all of us an inside view of the issues that are important to the Church. "In today's whirl of instant bliss, religion, too, is socially respectable only as a dream of happiness without tears, as a mystical enchantment of the soul. Perhaps the Church comes under heavier fire because she talks about sin and suffering and rectitude of life....Just one curious example - when it comes to the state, as soon as crimes begin to multiply and society feels its safety threatened, there is an immediate demand for tougher laws. In relation to the Church, whose laws are moral in nature, the exact opposite happens - there is a demand for further relaxation."

This book can be read in at least two ways: in the interest of understanding Cardinal Ratziner the man, or to understand Ratzinger the theologian. In other words, this is both a personal and intellectual book.

Here Seewold succeeds in not only getting to Ratzinger's theological positions, but also the more personal thought processes that were instrumental in the formation of his very important views. This solid interview with one of the Church's most larger-than-life figures shows how little of himself Ratzinger can see in such a discription. That is, the overwhelming modesty of the man is what comes through most strikingly.

This is a book length interview of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He is the Roman Church's sentinel on the frontiers of theological adventurism, there to keep watch that the Church's Deposit of Faith is preserved against impious attack. He has held this position since 1981, when Pope John Paul II called him to Rome from Munich, where he was archbishop.

He was born in Bavaria seventy-three years ago. As with Karol Wojtyla, he had a full life before going to Rome. As a young man and seminarian he was exposed to the rise of Nazism in Germany. He was a prominent theological advisor during the Second Vatican Council and taught theology at Germany's most prominent universities. He earned a reputation as one of the Church's brightest and most creative theologians.

In an age when Truth has come under unceasing brutal assault, he has become a target of attack worldwide. He is routinely caricatured in the worldwide media as the new Grand Inquisitor, unthinking and dictatorial. This book will discomfit his enemies. It shows a deeply learned man moving carefully and deliberately across all the issues of the "Canon of Criticism," forthrightly defending the Church. It shows a man with a keen understanding of our present age and the ideologies that animate it.

The Roman Church is contemptible to so many precisely because it stands in unabashed reproof of so much of what passes as wisdom today, including the central "truth" of our post-modern era: that only truth is that there is no Truth. This reminds us that the Church is now, as always, a scandal. But it is necessary, Cardinal Ratzinger reminds, us to distinguish between the "primary" scandal and the "secondary" scandal. "The secondary scandal consists in our actual mistakes, defects and over-institutionalizations . . .." (124) The Church is made up of men who are subject to all the frailties to which flesh is heir. But the Church aspires for more. That she occasionally fails should not surprise us. That she aspires for more should inspire new generations of saints. Yet the very idea that man is not naturally good and should aspire for more through self-abnegation is a deep offense to the modern mindset that man is good and is always, inexorably, getting better. This makes the Church an object of contempt and, in time, hatred.

"[T]he primary scandal consists precisely in the fact that we stand in opposition to the decline into the banal and the bourgeois and into false promises. It consists in the fact that we don't simply leave man alone in his self-made ideologies." (124) Substitution of transitory political ethics for Christian ethics leads to despotism, the exaltation of a mere man as God: Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Min. "We can say with a certainty backed up by empirical evidence that if the ethical power represented by Christianity were suddenly torn out of humanity, mankind would lurch to and fro like a ship rammed against an iceberg, and then the survival of humanity would be in greatest jeopardy." (227) "For this reason . . . the Catholic Church is a scandal, insofar as she sets herself in opposition to what appears to be a nascent global ideology and defends primordial values of humanity that can't be fit into this ideology . . .." (124)

"[I]f we give up the principle that every man as man is under God's protection, that as a man he is beyond the reach of arbitrary will, we really do forsake the foundation of human rights." (204) The sacred tradition of the Church is arrayed in defense of the dignity of mankind. Contrary to fashionable caricature, the Church is not an ossified tree, subject to being felled by the latest gale. It changes, but slowly, deliberately, organically. "[T]here are various degrees of importance in the tradition [of the Church] . . . not everything has the same weight . . . [but] there are . . . essentials, for example, the great conciliar decisions or what is stated in the Creed. These things are the Way and as such are vital to the Church's existence; they belong to her inner identity." (207-208) As to its essentials, its First Principles, or everlasting verities, the Church is powerless to change even in face of popular demand.

Bringing to mind Edmund Burke and G.K. Chesterton, Cardinal Ratzinger reminds us that "the Church lives not only synchronically but diachronically as well. This means that it is always all - even the dead - who live and are the whole Church, that it is always all who must be considered in any majority in the Church. . . . The Church lives her life precisely from the identity of all the generations, from their identity that overarches time, and her real majority is made up of the saints." (189) Our present age cannot cavalierly discard the wisdom of this great communion of the living and the dead, of one hundred human generations of the Church, confident that it has somehow achieved superceding wisdom. Instead, it must, as must all generations, submit to the essentials of the Church, to revelation and the Church's sacred tradition. "Every generation tries to join the ranks of the saints, and each makes its contribution. But it can do that only by accepting this great continuity and entering into it in a living way." (189) The Church does not need additional "reformers" of institutions. "What we really need are people who are inwardly seized by Christianity, who experience it as joy and hope, who have thus become lovers. And these we call saints." (269)

This is not easy for any generation. It places a break on volition. It posits that man's every impulse is not virtuous. Intrinsically, it asserts that man is not God, that man must prune his impulses, as he would an overgrown plant to prepare it to bear fruit. "[P]eople don't want to do without religion, but they want it only to give, not to make its own demands on man. People want to take the mysterious element in religion but spare themselves the effort of faith." (212) This is New Age faith, not the faith of the Church and her saints. "If the willingness to be bound is not there, and if, above all, submission to the truth is not there, then in the end all of this will simply remain a game." (235)

It is often heard today that if only the Church would make priestly celibacy optional, ordain women and "reform" its doctrine to accommodate other contemporary demands, that she would flourish as never before. These cavils ignore the central truth of any true church - that its communicants come to it and submit to the truth it professes, a truth beyond editing by plebiscite. It also reveals a stunning lack of critical intelligence. "These issues are resolved in Lutheran Christianity," Cardinal Ratzinger notes. "On these points, it has taken the other path, and it is quite plain that it hasn't thereby solved the problem of being a Christian in today's world and that the problem of Christianity, the effort of being a Christian, remains just as dramatic as before." (181) Why should the Roman Church make itself a clone of Lutheranism? "[B]eing a Christian does not stand or fall on these questions [and] . . . the resolution of these matters doesn't make the gospel more attractive or being Christian any easier. It does not even achieve the agreement that will better hold the Church together. I believe we should finally be clear on this point, that the Church is not suffering on account of these questions." (182)

Cardinal Ratzinger is forthright in his pessimistic assessment of the time ahead. "The danger of a dictatorship of opinion is growing, and anyone who doesn't share the prevailing opinion is excluded, so that even good people no longer dare to stand by such nonconformists [i.e. Christians]. Any future anti-Christian dictatorship would probably be much more subtle than anything we have known until now. It will appear to be friendly to religion, but on the condition that its own models of behavior and thinking not be called into question." (153) The Church must attorn to the zeitgeist in this scheme. These themes are explored in Michael D. O'Brien's "Children of the Last Day" novels.

It is time for the faithful, Cardinal Ratzinger says, to form "vital circles." [T]here are great, vibrant new beginnings and joyful forms of Christian life that don't figure much statistically but are humanly great and have the power to shape the future." (143). "Particularly when one has to resist evil it's important to not to fall into gloomy moralism that doesn't allow itself any joy but really to see how much beauty there is, too, and to draw from it the strength needed to resist what destroys joy." (69)

In his autobiography "The Sword of Imagination," the novelist and historian Russell Kirk writes, "Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by the threads of moral and intellectual belief. In the hands of the Fates are no thunderbolts: only threads and scissors." Throughout this book, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger demonstrates that he understands better than, perhaps, anyone e

I couldn't put this one down. Ratzinger is one of the foremost intellectuals in the Church today, and this book lets us see both the man as well as his theology. It's well written and intellectually stimulating. I had to resist the temptation to underline many of his statements; so many had the ring of significant truth. Anyone who ever questioned Ratzinger's sincerity or ever thought him a "fascist" or "panzerkardinal" should read this book and see just what a complex individual he is. I always liked him before I read this book; now I see him as one of the most pivotal figures in the Church today. Buy this - get another copy for your skeptical friends!

I found Ratzinger's book refreshing and I think most Catholics will find it so. I have now given four copies of it away including one to our parish priest and another to someone who has been on the edge considering converting. If you are a Catholic it is certainly worth reading. If you adore the things of Christ my guess is that this book, in its reverence, will help to quiet the soul by saturating it in hope.