Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs of the
Times
By Pope Benedict XVI
and Peter Seewaldt
(Ignatius Press, 256 pages, $21.95)
A well-known American Catholic theologian not noted for
his fidelity to Church teaching was a commentator for a major
television network during the last papal conclave. Just before the
conclave closed its doors to begin the process of selecting the
successor of St. Peter (and more immediately the successor to Pope
John Paul II), he proclaimed confidently that one thing was certain
— the next pope would not be Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. I think it
fair to assume that the network has not offered him a contract for
the next papal election.
The election of Pope Benedict following upon John Paul
II’s long and historic papacy dealt the death blow to the
resistance movement within the Church’s post-Vatican II efforts to
misinterpret the Council as a mere surrender to secular modernity.
The most obvious product of this lengthy internal war, at least in
the West, was a massive decline in priestly vocations and
concurrent rise in defections. No less invidious were changes at
the diocesan level in selection and formation of seminarians —
changes partly responsible for precipitating the sexual abuse of
children by a small percentage of Catholic priests in the U.S. and
Europe. Although such deviant behavior has also been reported with
greater frequency among Protestant ministers and indeed among
public school teachers in the U.S. (not surprisingly in a
sex-soaked culture that aggravates fallen human nature), the
betrayal of many innocents by past diocesan cover-ups of abuse
allegations has rightly drawn condemnation. The toll for the
Catholic Church has been great and just: the bankruptcy of many
dioceses, resignations of bishops, and understandable mistrust by
the laity of their bishops and priests that will take years to
eradicate. Pope Benedict’s gesture of meeting with victims of abuse
on his many papal visits along with his constant denunciation of
these crimes in his talks in Rome and most particularly a scorching
letter to the hierarchy of Ireland, one of the hotbeds of clerical
abuse, are already having an effect in convincing the lay faithful
that disclosure of crimes and punishment of their perpetrators have
replaced cover-up and faith in therapy.
But beyond the sex abuse scandals, Pope Benedict’s firm
and far-seeing handling of his uniquely heavy spiritual
responsibilities in the past five years validates his surely
Spirit-driven election to the papacy. He has calmly and confidently
taken up the authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council
and the New Evangelization that John Paul launched, and has even
scored a smashing success at a World Youth Day in his native land.
Benedict’s few encyclicals have not been trumpet blasts condemning
heretics right and left, as many expected, but rather gentle but
strong examinations of the theological virtues and how they play
out in our modern world.
However, over time what may most affect the lay faithful
is the importance Pope Benedict places on the sacred liturgy. Some
refer to Benedict’s liturgical work as the “Reform of the Renewal.”
He had already outlined all this in his book The Spirit of the
Liturgy, which laid out his agenda of making the 1962
(Tridentine) Mass more available and attempting to introduce more
silence and reverence into the post-Vatican II Mass. If he
succeeds, decades or centuries from now this reinvigoration of the
sacred dimension of the liturgy will likely be seen as his most
important pontifical accomplishment.
Pope Benedict XVI has now been the Roman pontiff for over
five years; at the age of 83 he continues to make headlines with
his steadfast presentation and defense of Catholic doctrine and
pastoral trips abroad, most notably his recent visit to Great
Britain on the occasion of the beatification of his fellow
theologian, the now Blessed John Henry Newman. By all accounts,
Benedict’s sincerity, simplicity, and kindness, combined with a
powerful intellect, both charmed and tamed a population that is
largely pagan and atheistic and had threatened possible violence
against his person.
Naturally each pope is different, yet no Church historian
or Vaticanista could have foreseen such an occurrence. Two popes in
succession — one, arguably the greatest philosopher pope, and the
second, the greatest theologian pope — who both lived and suffered
through the cataclysmic events of the mid-20th century; the first
of whom played a central role in the demise of Communism, the
second of whom is confronting the “dictatorship of relativism” in
the depopulating West while tirelessly insisting on the importance
of reason in dealing with Islamic fundamentalism.
PETER SEEWALD, THE GERMAN JOURNALIST whose interviews with
Benedict produced Light of the World: The Pope, the
Church, and the Signs of the Times, knows his interviewee
well. He is co-author of a biography of Pope Benedict, and
interviewed the then Cardinal Ratzinger twice before at book length
for Salt of the Earth and God and the World.
Seewald, who was then a skeptic but is now a practicing Catholic
and well-known religion writer in his native Germany, poses
questions that are lengthy and even provocative.
However, to clarify some of the earlier media confusion:
No, this book is happily not about the morality of using condoms in
certain circumstances. In response to a question from Seewald, the
pope glancingly touched on the topic, which set off the predictable
brief media frenzy, terminated when it became clear that the
visible head of the Catholic Church had not belatedly embraced the
sexual revolution.
What then is the book about? The headings of its three
parts indicate the subject of Seewald’s questions: “The Sign of the
Times,” “The Pontificate,” and “Where Do We Go from
Here?”
In the first section Seewald asks the pope what he felt
like when he was elected:
A thought of a guillotine occurred to me: Now it falls
down and hits you. I had been so sure that this office was not my
calling but that God would grant me some peace and quiet after
strenuous years. But then, I can only say, explain to my self:
God’s will is apparently otherwise and something new and completely
different is beginning for me. He will be with me.
When asked in the second part about how the Church differs
from a multinational company, Pope Benedict replies:
Well, we are not a production plant, we are not a for
profit business. We are Church. That means a community of men
standing together in faith. The task is not to manufacture some
product or to be a success at selling merchandise. Instead the task
is to live the faith in an exemplary way and to proclaim it and at
the same time to keep this voluntary association which cuts, across
all cultures, nations and times and is not based on external
interests, spiritually connected with Christ and God
himself.
In the third part, asked about his prayer at Fatima on May
11, 2010, “May the years ahead hasten the fulfillment of the
prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to the
Glory of the Most Holy Trinity,” Pope Benedict replies:
I said the “triumph will draw closer.” This is equivalent
in meaning to our praying for the coming of God’s kingdom. The
statement was not intended to express any expectation on my part
that there is going to be a turnaround and that history will
suddenly take on a totally different course. The point rather was
that the power of evil is restrained again and again and again and
the power of God himself is shown in the Mother’s power and keeps
it alive! The Church is always called upon to do what God asked of
Abraham, which is to see there are enough righteous men to suppress
evil and destruction. I understood my words as a prayer that the
energies of the good might regain their vigor. So you could say
that the triumphs of God, the triumphs of Mary are quiet, but they
are real nevertheless.
Light of the World has a preface by
George Weigel, the biographer of John Paul II who probably knows
more about the contemporary Catholic scene than any man this side
of the National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen. The book’s
appendix is especially valuable, as it collects several of the most
important short statements and interviews of Benedict’s
pontificate, along with biographical data, curriculum vitae, and a
“Brief Chronicle” of the pontificate that runs right up to his
November 2010 trip to Spain.
Whatever your religious convictions or lack thereof, you
will be charmed by the sincere, simple, and deep reflections on
both the Church and the World by this man of God who also possesses
one of its greatest intellects. While John Paul II is indubitably
“the Great” and was in a certain sense the mentor of his successor,
the greatest goal of John Paul’s pontificate was left unmet — the
union of all Christians. It would be a stretch for Benedict to live
to 2017, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Revolution, but
given his close relationship with the autocephalous Orthodox
churches and the ongoing disintegration of traditional
denominational Protestantism, the pontificate of Pope Benedict
could achieve giant steps towards the greatest wish of the Founder
of the Church: “That all may be one!”
I would not bet against the unexpected pope from
Bavaria.
