Franciscan University Presents: Theology of Pope Benedict XVI

on April 19 2005 the College of Cardinals elected one of the most distinguished the allowance of the last century to succeed John Paul - as Bishop of Rome join us today as we look back on the theological formation of benedict xvi and look ahead to what we can project theologically during his papacy I'm father Michael Scanlon Chancellor of Franciscan University and you're watching Franciscan University presents stay with us we're talking about the theology of Pope Benedict the 16th and we have our theology professors here gathered for this challenging topic professor Mike Zorrilla here a professor of moral and systematic theology regular panelist dr. Scott Hahn professor of biblical theology and recently we have both his books the swear to God the promise of the power of the sacraments and dr. regis martin again a regular panelist professor systematic theology and he holds a doctorate from sacred theology from rome that's why we're making you the expert today regis written many articles and books and lectured at conferences throughout the author of the last things and you recently published what is the church confessions of a cradle Catholic so therefore you're our expert among this great panel Regis and we want to know about the fascinating background of pope benedict xvi he grew up in the political climate of Nazi Germany this is fascinating you know you've John Paul - growing up in Poland and the occupation but here someone who's actually growing up within the Nazi camp there in Germany what effect did that have and maybe that can be our launching point right yeah no that's a good point of entry uh but let me first say I'm awed by the company I find myself in I'm not really an expert upon on Benedict the 16th but I'm sure that we'll get lots of help and and move this understanding along yeah I think he had you might describe a bad hair day up in Germany as did most of the citizens of the Third Reich he lived under a fairly oppressive regime of a totalitarian night had fallen over his beloved country his beloved Bavaria of his own father predicted that the the end times the apocalypse was coming that with the victory of Hitler that we had the Antichrist Wow even though they were there in Germany and under the Nazis his own father is prophesying or predicting this is it the anti car right he describes in in that little book of his milestones which is a charming and engaging memoir of the years of 1927 when he was born until 1977 when he was sort of overwhelmed with huge Episcopal responsibilities but in that book he describes his parents as being real Paragons of virtue and sanctity something of the radiance of God shown through the example of his parents his father had been a policeman but was evidently a very holy gentle soul who attended three masses on Sundays but he also had a says rat singer unfailing clairvoyance when it came to the Third Reich he could finger of exactly the threat that was coming and the family took measures against it they survived what kind of know the church they they retreated I think more deeply into this bastion of Holy Church I think for Ratzinger the experience of the Second World War fortified a sense of confidence in the capacity of the church to overcome these forces of evil and triumph the way he describes it most Catholics in Bavaria according to his memoirs didn't succumb to the Third Reich even though there were some notable exceptions most of them he connects it to their Catholic faith perceived the real threat and the outcome of continental liberalism resulting in this totalitarian area had an identity as a Catholic that's the key I find I agree with everything you said except a bad hair day depending on how you spell hair the the culture was really key because southern Germany was still predominantly Catholic even if there had been some diluting or erosion Bavaria southern Germany was still really imbued with a great deal of Catholic culture northern Germany was heavily industrialized Protestant eyes for centuries and so you have you had a country but it was really at cross-purposes with itself and so the the the culture of the Catholic faith especially as it developed after the Reformation Rococo architecture and this sort of thing beautiful very Eucharistic almost extreme at points but it was just reflective I think of what made it possible for families like his to kind of prosper in such difficult times yeah he was steeped in a tradition of centuries-old Catholicism it was in his bones I think the man Benedict today would have been impossible but for that shaping influence and and in fact it began on the day of his birth he was born on Holy Saturday he was baptized the same day with water taken from the Easter Vigil at that time of the reforms had not been instituted by Pius the 12th and so he began his life in a kind of liturgical and Beyonc and he describes these glorious masses of his youth and the holy day of the Holy Week experience the ritual of of of the church being shut up and the shadows the darkness and then suddenly the priest announcing Christ is risen and and and all the curtains fall away and this floods him with a sense of light and and this I think became really the cradle for the most formative kind of development and yet the this fascinating that it was so deep and yet whenever I read about him they talked about him being in renewal movements well he stumbles upon that I think the real figure of in this is delue Bock onry de Loup Bock whose great work Catholicism the and Christ the common destiny of humankind I think he wrote it in 1938 Ratzinger stumbles upon it as a seminarian in the late 1940s and it literally changes his life because what de luboc did was to rediscover the idea of the Catholic the universal the all-encompassing the social dimension of membership in the faith which has since been somewhat debased it's now merely sociological we celebrate ourselves but with de Lubich and this movement of race or Simone the idea of the Catholic was rooted in the Trinity the persons of the Trinity the perfection of Camus neo within the life of the Godhead this this universal vision of God's grace permeating all cultures the whole world and every aspect of life was also tapping into something that he was getting and from Ramana Gordini you know and this this pioneer of of authentic liturgical renewal Romano Gordini is the German with the Italian name and his pioneering work in liturgical theology I think also fit perfectly well with the Lu box so you know being schooled in this environment it was just the perfect way to kind of capture what was the best of the midpoint of the 20th century there's this notion of race or song which is a French word which which literally means resourcing the past in order to go forward you have got to first go backward it arose with a generation of intensely Catholic figures after the First World War and they sensed the disillusion of the period and they felt two things pretty strongly on the one hand faith and theology have got to engage man where he is the concrete circumstances of his life they've got to be relevant to the present moment but secondly to be relevant they've got to recover in a creative way a sense of the past and it's not merely just a an exercise in intellectual archaeology but rather in the resource Mont movement and rotzinger really is his work as emblematic of this the church is perceived under the influence of Agustin and the other great fathers as a single subject a mystical person with a memory with a history so tradition is then seen not just as a concept aura or a content of data but rather as a living memory of a person the church who remembers Jesus Christ walking the earth and and keeps that memory and shares it with the world so his theology the church springs up in this movement so it's not just a dry looking at the sources but it's it's looking at the sources as the root of our life as members of the church so community ecclesiology also arises this notion of resource mom shows us that we can't really update the faith without you know predating it by going back to the patristic and medieval periods you know and by the way before we forget I want to mention too that besides his parents his older brother also set a really great standard Georg but you know to get back to this man and they were ordained I think the same yeah that's right in 1952 a beautiful family life embodied there but you know when you look at his two doctorates he got a doctorate focusing on Agustin and then I got a doctorate focusing on on Bonaventure you know these two exemplary figures in the patristic and the medieval periods and he didn't do something that was sort of over specialized and very narrow he really found the centerpiece of both he he found the people of God in san agustin his vision of the church and then a Bonaventure's a theology of history this panoramic vision that was almost prophetic that whereby Bonaventure interprets all of history in the light of revelation and so assimilating he didn't just write dissertations he assimilated the the outlook of these two great Saints and doctors so what was his own you know so many of us just remember a gentleman to Vatican 2 you know it's kind of how much did the other that's the other half of the Catholic equation mike is right race horseman is not about theology che knew the great French Dominican said I'm not a documental estai don't on earth dead artifacts from a stayer aisle past I am an historian I want the past to live and breathe once more are the great Italian poet Parvaiz a who said the past memory is the past relived it's a passion repeated and and this is what racehorse Mon sought to do to resurrect revitalize the past only then can you assure in this movement of adjourn amento which has to do with renewing structures opening yourself to the world no longer barricading the church against the world but unless you've got something to give the world then you're just gonna be telling the world things the world already knows the principle that governs adjourn amento has to be the lived memory of Christ and the truth he reveals and the love he offers and forgiveness that's immortalized in the thoughts of the fathers in their writings rather than a secular contemporary rapprochement with the world that ends up undermining the very foundations of the church so that's exactly right Regis let's clarify some terms and so racehorses montt really emerges in the 40s and 50s before vatican ii in the 60s and it means back to the sources it's sort of you know back to the font the patristic the medieval and also the biblical a shorn amento is a term that really emerges in the 60s at the time of the Second Vatican Council it means updating so you know you go back to the sources in order to update and it's a balancing act and it's not an easy one nobody knows because you'll you have on the one hand this attempt to enculturate the gospel it I should say to get to enculturate the gospel by looking at society and taking everything from the past and bringing it to bear upon our life today at the same time you accommodate yourself to the culture by acknowledging whatever is true and good and I think that was the spirit of a ornamento but there's a sense in which we fell over you know we really tipped the scales Jordan meant to have simply swallowed up race or smut updating and accommodating the culture overwhelmed this idea of going back to the sources and retrieving the father use that correctly what's required is a proper profound sense of history which he got from both Agustin and his own formative years in injury why is this happening what's going on but yeah but but you're right nowadays it's the world setting the agenda for the church which is a perversion of this ideal notion of adjourn amento we're supposed to be open to the world but we're not supposed to assimilate the world that's the difference assimilation I think is the key because that's what's going on right now in many parts of the world especially Europe which is a principal concern for Pope Benedict he sees a jour nihonto that really became a kind of disguise for radical assimilation of secular vanna let you jump that far ahead already we're still building here and they're not ready to rescue your so but it's fascinating to see the foundation the background where Pope Benedict came from and where Father Ratzinger as the theologian was developing and so when we come back we're gonna take it the next step you have to know where he comes from to understand where he is and we will take on Vatican 2 and what flows from that stay with us I had the opportunity of being a long-term volunteer for World Youth Day for eight months and seeing the German people's reaction to Pope Benedict when he first became pope the stern hot singer who they knew from his theological battles and things like that and telling them what to do to seeing him come and they really embracing him and really seeing his love for the people and their love for him at one point during his homily he said that if he could he would come out and and meet every one of us individually and that just touched everybody we were just in awe and it was wonderful because I knew he was a hard-hitter theologian but at that point he really showed a gentleness of spirit and that he really was Papa at the heart of the church ex corde ecclesiae that is where the Holy Father is calling Catholic universities to be and that is where you'll always find Franciscan University of Steubenville the church's light flood flows through our campus from the classrooms from the playing fields and in our residence halls this immersion in faith and reason equips our students to be the next generation athlete leaders its foundation is here at the heart of the church we're talking about the theology of pope benedict xvi with our theology professors here from Franciscan University and we've laid a foundation of the Pope then father rat singer and earlier growing up as a child and as ears and the gradual development so now we want to take it to the next step and Regis you're our leader of batter on these things and so he starts to be a professor and teach at the University and what thrust is he taking then as we're moving closer and closer to Vatican well I mean a couple of preoccupations which are central to fundamental theology there's the area of ecclesiology the Church of his profound interest in st. Augustine the idea of the people and the house in Augustine's doctrine of the church that becomes his doctoral thesis and then he writes what's called the habilitation this entitles a German professor to teach anywhere to occupy a chair you've got to propose and defend a thesis and here he deepens his his understanding and takes on Bonaventure and at first it's the idea of Revelation and and Ratzinger in his book of milestones this memoir recounts the adventure of his habilitation it precipitated a kind of crisis because the first draft was rejected or at least half of the book was rejected on the grounds that this is really too modern this is too provocative but the idea is later accepted canonized at the Second Vatican of in Dei verbum and and that idea is that revelation is really something greater than Scripture it's the it's deposited as it were in krypter scripture gives us a verbal account of God's self-revealing word but revelation itself is an act it's something that God does and it requires someone to receive it Mary the Apostles the church you and and and I and and that is a deeper notion and this is is present in Bonaventure but it gets lost there's a disconnect between Bonaventure and the Second Vatican Council you're saying that that the then father and then Cardinal Ratzinger is building on your honor because he has a hand in shaping Dei verbum at the council he's he's asked by a hurry to write an expert brought in right to advise and he has a kind of affectionate understanding with the then Archbishop of Cologne Cardinal Frings so Cardinal Frings asks him to be his adviser and he contributes mightily I think to the work of the council you know it's interesting to see how Providence works in in a life like Pope Benedict's because not only who he studied Agustin and Bonaventure but what he studied Augustine's ecclesiology his theology of the church end and Bonaventure's theology of history as the means of Revelation because when you look at these periods of time you recognize that there are there are unique insights that are garnered in those periods the patristic for example really had a vision of the church but it wasn't systematically worked out in fact by the time you come to the end of the patristic period you know seven hundred eight hundred after Saint John Damascene you enter the Dark Ages as the church is sort of migrating up to the Frankish Empire and you know evangelizing Spain and France there is a kind of hiatus and so BA Augustine represents the the greatest achievement in the West for the patristic period of theology and his work in the church is so key and then you have the medieval period and st. Thomas of course is you know my favorite but st. Bonaventure taught right down the hall at the University of st. the University of Paris you know as a Franciscan and and he captures something - as the seraphic doctor of this of how God reveals himself not in some timeless way but in the context of salvation history but there - the medieval period lapsed into us a time of decadence the late medieval period was really what caused the split in the church the Third Age the modern age really follows after the Reformation and there is where you know Europe Europe is is progressively secularized split you know between the Protestant and the Catholic until religion is privatized but it's interesting because in the medieval theologies there is really nothing for example in st. Thomas's Summa that deals with the church there is no tractate there's no section where it's the theology of the church also in somebody like st. Thomas there is no section that deals with history the theology of history and so the church was really suffering theology I should say was kind of limping along in the 17 and 1800's without an ecclesiology yes and without a theology of history racks in your grasp so he's leading with ecclesiology and also what difference does it make that you the revelation is bigger than Scripture what would that will give me one practical it makes a decisive difference because if your view of Revelation is in terms of discrete static dogmatic texts then you don't have as rich and vibrant a notion of God's relationship with the world okay more median yeah then you want it to be existential in a good sense there's an encounter otherwise you're in danger of misunderstanding where you are historically a very important requirement for someone who will become a pastor and a universal one in the medieval period the church was the air you breathe you don't think about that until there's a shortage of oxygen you know then suddenly in a secularized Europe you have to figure out who are we well we're the mystical body of Christ when you wear the introduction to Christianity the meaning of Christian Brotherhood is this where it's being expressed that it's something deeper and more vibrant well the the introduction to Christianity is is the result of a series of lectures that he had delivered in the mid-1960s and and as far as I can tell it is the masterpiece it is his finest work an inspired exposition of the Apostles Creed but also the most acute analysis of the phenomenon of unbelief he really understood the modern age modernity yet the sense in which as Marx puts it everything solid melts into thin air that was the experience he had towards the end of the council destabilizing elements had set in and then of course as a professor at Tuebingen he faces widespread student unrest the revolt similar to what happened in in the States very similar that's right and he saw it as an outcropping of of Marxism and other liberal tendencies on the continent and it's a slouch towards totalitarianism and he knew it growing up as he did in the germ he was looking at the death of the modern age and he was looking at it right in the face because this student revolt was embracing Marxism with the zeal of a convert you know these students all around him were doing things that would otherwise be categorized as insanity and and and professors were caught up in this even professors of theology and so here he is trying to retain a kind of deep spiritual sobriety and and reflect this to the students who were coming to the lectures you know conflict is being embraced as the key that unlocks the future you know Marx but I was always Kuhn had been a friend of his and in fact had recruited him for this post at Tuebingen teaching dogmatic theology and also at the council they were they were sort of chummy Cohen was an outgoing guy he had this this this sports car he would give father Ratzinger rides around town and and coke says that when when the student uprisings hit Germany he found that father Ratzinger was he was a letter writer he wasn't a man of confrontation and these Marxist commandos really unhinged him and he to kind of complex against reform but it seems to me that Kong has it exactly backwards here we see evidence of Ratzinger's courage his steadfastness he refused to bend with prevailing winds he stood high I think in the saddle unlike kung who was sort of swept up and and succumbed to these ideological vapors how about Camus neo is that is response to all this that hey you don't have to run down this political Marxist stream the church really does have an answer and it's an answer of brotherhood and something deepened yeah yeah communiy or Evers ents of an orthodox scholarly alternative it was a journal a journal of opinion international opinion I think it's been translated into about 16 languages but it represented an alternative to Concilium which was sort of the the organ of progressive left-wing Catholic but not at first no not the concilium began in 65 as a nice journal it came out an English translation in hardback and sand and Ratzinger himself contributed to this skill of X had not really slipped over the edge even was still within the periphery of you know Catholic teaching Catholic tradition but by 67 68 the articles that were coming out and Concilium are notably beyond the fringe you know and just pushing the envelope embracing Marxism advancing a liberation perspective and and really again embracing conflict as the key to history and so you you have to confront any tradition hierarchy Authority for us to move forward and that includes truth itself and that includes God himself there was even a god is dead theology that emerged not only in this country of the students were insisting that the figure of the crucified Jesus is really sadomasochist right I mean I mean they struck at the heart of the faith the idea of Revelation the uniqueness of Christ the indispensability they're just a little older I think 1970 I think it was it was only after five years of the concilium project that things began to really break down and so in 1970 you have kimono emerging de luboc but especially von Balthasar along with rats and the proponents of the new theology the new Val tail ushi which was new in the 40s and 50s but it was being labeled retrograde you know in the 70s and 80s how I run and the title is profound communal means more than just a journal community o signifies being in union with the Pope being in Union especially with Christ that it's emerges from an ecclesiology of theology of the church as a living organic mystical person was it a big surprise when he's named prefect of the Congregation doctor and things I mean what linked that from how did he get from the early years there's a sense in which he has lived a charmed life because this little book introduction to Christianity caught the attention of Pope Paul the sixth and immediately he makes him Archbishop of Munich and then near the end of his life he makes him a cardinal I mean Ratzinger was one of one or two Cardinals who was able to be at the Conclave that elected John Paul and the one that elected him he's been around a long time that was a radical move for Paul the six because he hadn't had extensive pastoral experience so it was a little risky but it turned out to be right he was so good she was so beguiled by that book because it made Christianity credible in a very compelling of and attractive way it captures the brilliant balance of that racehorse Montana's ornamento he wasn't reacting and refusing to update the gospel but he was doing it in a way that really had roots a foundation that was the book that that I sort of cut my own theological Chopra's on when I when I discovered it and my eldest son - who took you work through that and that that book shaped his his mind in a way that he's still grateful for I've co-opted one of his children than one yeah it's important to realize I think that kimono is the church's response to conflict you have it you know with with marks but you even had it with Freud that conflict with the father figure you have it of course with Darwin that nature itself and all progress is rooted in the survival of the fittest and that sort of thing I think it's it's the air we breathe now but then in the liturgy he found that this Eucharistic camus neo is the church's life and identity exciting you get to the key word now so when we come back we're gonna pick up now and what's the situation now with Pope Benedict the sixteenth what is live opportu in him and what can we lit iment without playing political games what indeed will the Holy Spirit through this Holy Father do in leading the church it's a little perspective for the future but stay with us I think one of the highlights for me was being at the vigil with the Holy Father and adoring Christ in the Blessed Sacrament with the Vicar of Christ on earth and seeing Pope Benedict - just made me love him more as a pope and being in his presence was just amazing it it made me feel closer to Jesus and you could just sense he's a very holy man he really made us understand that we didn't come to Germany to World Youth Day you know to see the new pope but we came to worship Christ well we're here at Franciscan University surrounded by students working the equipment coordinating and surrounded by professors in our theology department Michel Sevilla Scott Hahn and Regis Martin Michael being periodically with us and the other two regularly and we've decided among all these the Regis is our expert right so we start with him each time on Oh Benedict the sixteenth now what's gonna happen you know we're not politicizing it's not really a crystal ball but it's good to have an air of expectancy as he moves forward and leading the church and where were we you expect us to go well I mean great things are expected of him God expects great things of him I mean here's a guy who is 78 I think you know John the 23rd was about that old and not much was expected of him he'll be a transitional yes and it was really the shortest Conclave since 1939 when Pius the 12th was elected and great things were expected of him it seems to me that the liturgy will be the cutting edge because here is a man steeped in liturgical consciousness it's in his blood in his bones and he has said a number of times publicly that the crisis that that beset sus is really the result of the disintegration of liturgy people view Vatican 2 as a break a breach with the tradition we're now sailing in darkness and he wants us to view Vatican 2 as a point of development we need to reform the reform restore a sense of connecting it all together note it's disconnect and for good reason because the liturgy is the source and the setting of our communal we don't have communy are um public votes or public education or government it's it's celebrating the Eucharist that to us a communion in the body of Christ that makes us the body of Christ and so he's continually returning to the liturgy because the liturgy is what renews us and gives to us our own I guess we're called a communion the former Cardinal Ratzinger writes that it's in the Eucharist that the church is fabricated the church comes into being in the Eucharist so that's absolutely right and if you go for the the liturgy and damage it you're going for the jugular because that's where the rubber meets the road with respect to the tradition and where communion is brought about it's so interesting he's work on a Gustin focused upon the household of God and the people of God because back in the 50s that term was really being rediscovered but in the 60s it was hijacked the people of God in the Vatican two documents became the the means by which people said well let's democratize the church we've got the People's Republic we've got the People's Bank now we've got the people's church bank and let's just democratize the liturgy and level it all and make it purely horizontal and he was like that's never what people of God meant he had to his prefect of the Congregation get back to the real meaning and the core meaning and the core doctrines and so many of these movements hasn't he yeah I mean people of God is a pastoral image and and it implies a shepherd and the shepherd is Christ you had mentioned Gardini of at the top of the show and he was an immense influence in in Ratzinger's life I mean he really did pioneer much of liturgical theology but for guar Dini the centerpiece was always Christ in the liturgy that's the place people encounter Christ and everything we don't find him there we're not gonna find him in the marketplace right during his Prefecture at the congregation he saw he had a pronounced sense that his job was not to merely be a watchdog and crack down on people but really to serve the common good above all of God in His Church so he saw it as a role of service executed generally for the strictures against Liberation Theology with which occupied much of his his time as he was also building this wasn't a release from a to the FIBA rides and to Orthodox and the other so these building bridges to the liberationists as well as well both sides yeah when you when you read when I first read introduction of Christianity which came out in the late 60s it was published in english translation by a protestant company Seabury before Ignatius picked it up so it had no imprimatur I didn't know who rat Singh well I didn't know he was Catholic I read the 50 or 60 pages and I I I admired the calm serenity by which he'd listened to opposing viewpoints found the true and the good and then showed where all of that lead and it led to Christianity it led to Jesus it led to worship and then I realized it leads to the Eucharist and the Catholic Church you know and by then I found myself intractably drawn into his vision but it was that patient capacity and humility and charity to listen and to learn and then the draw out the good and then gently to expose the air he does this with everything every side as the Archbishop does the Cardinal prefect for the congregation of the doctrine of faith and you can already see it in the first year of his papacy it's a great finessed a remarkable clarity which is singular I mean as much as we revere john paul ii this mystic this saint his his encyclicals were really pretty cumbersome i mean somebody said instead of the Sermon on the Mount we got the mount of sermons it may have been a tribute to his phenomenological style they were very pastor all the same they were touching people's hearts but they were too long but had word with with now you can say it no I love them but I'm you know in you know what he's a Mozart man this is something that that needs to be up emphasized that there's a lightness and a seeming effortlessness to the music of Mozart Carl Bart who wrote a beautiful tribute to Mozart and said when I die and I hope to get to heaven I plan to meet Mozart first that's sort of strange about what about mrs. Bart but with with with Mozart there there is this radiance this purity he is a man without doubt an unproblematic oh man and Ratzinger is like that there's this deep sense of serenity security he knows who he is his identity where he begins and where he leaves off and for him it's the liturgy that defines the relationship we have as church that's gonna be the focus I think more than anything else more than anybody else I think it was reading Ratzinger enroute to becoming Roman Catholic that showed me scriptures home is the liturgy you know that's where it is read that's the only thing that has to be read you know it was really canonized because of its use in the liturgy in the first 300 years of the church and so this this emphasis on the liturgy is also what enabled him not only to emphasize Scripture but to capture it in all of its its its integrity in its unity I was with a group of Protestants a few months back in Rome at the Pontifical biblical Institute about 30 of them and it was after Pope Benedict had you know rats had become Pope Benedict and they were there was a group of them and they were marveling that the Catholic Church had as its Pope a premier biblical theologian well I was gonna say if he's also a liturgical theologian you know and bond of it but i sat there listening and then I finally chimed in because they were talking about his grasp of the Old Testament and the new the unity the diversity the sort of thing and that I in his constant method in theology is to begin and end with Scripture he perceived the authors of Sacred Scripture as the primary theologians the principal theologians in the church but the begin and end with Scripture as it's read by the church and illiterate is absolutely and that is historically accurate because that was what Scripture was written for that was where scripture was read that's also how Scripture is actualized that way of reading scripture also along with the Eucharist brings about communion with Christ the Living Christ the church is the receiving subject he's pulling it all together in the common language we didn't think those doing exegesis have really had could be literature's could be dogmatic or or three together when was the last time we had so learned a theologian of as Pope you might have to go back as far as Pope st. Leo the great in the fifth century who you know who helped negotiate us through some pretty fierce christological controversies that's a long time ago this is a rare event I think to have him on the the throne if the one thing we haven't addressed is Germany in Europe I mean there's the note there and it was very prominent in his remarks and preaching before the election and after the concern about what's happening to the faith in Europe and particularly Germany what's what do you expect there with this I mean here's an old guy from an old continent and he's presiding over the universal Church I mean that they didn't pick some a thriving church men from the third world it's almost as if we're gonna give Europe one last chance to return but to save the best to last as well I mean and and the name then I mean it's a late Santa dick the 15th was the Pope of peace who tried to arbitrate an end to the first world war but Saint Benedict the founder of Europe the father of monasticism in the West I mean there's got to be a significance to that you know it's so fitting I think for God and his fatherly Providence to have given us john paul ii who's whose pastoral style whose patient courageous leadership got us through the craziness you know of the late seventies and now i think we can really consolidate those gains by seeing a new pope in pope benedict who is arguably the most profound and brilliant catholic theologian of the 20th century you know he's carrying us into the 21st but as you say father Mike he is the one who I think has been raised up and almost granted a prophetic mantel resting on her shoulders to RIA van july's Europe this was the passion of John Paul but as a Slav as a pole he was a poking it from the east but it's the western part of Europe that is so deeply decayed that's right and so World Youth Day and so much more you can't just pass that by that he gets Oh John Paul - supposed to be the youth Pope and he's supposed to be the great theologian what's his first stage appearance worldwide with all the youth of the world and that is God putting it together you know it reminded me because of Scripture of Elijah being taken up at Elisha getting the mantle and on and performing double the moon has the same mind as from on a gardenia as we've been saying in Rome on Oh Gwaltney wrote a great book called the end of the modern world and in it he the basic thesis is that contemporary Christian the Christian West is a shell evacuated of a living relationship with Christ by and large and we're slouching towards atheism secularism etc and that's how he perceives I think correctly Europe Germany Europe the West and that's a primary task of his pontificate is to address that secularism and moral relativism the root cause of this he sees again and again in different ways but especially with the Mis definition of freedom if you if you misunderstand freedom and you think that freedom is primarily freedom from Authority law tradition then conflict is the key to progress but if freedom is primarily freedom for the truth then you live out the truth and righteousness and humility and love only in communion this is what he was saying in a world youth day in so many ways but in a ways that you know I think the young people got it some critics were saying well he's not speaking on to their level I think he wasn't but the Holy Spirit made up the difference and filled in the gap no Cardinal George quipped that he always knew there was a grace of office but when he saw Benedict for the first time waving his arms I've never seen that gesture before this confirmed that God had anointed him you know after his election you have these senile experts like Richard McBryan saying now thousands of European American Catholics will be rolling their eyes and retreating to the margins of the church meanwhile in a couple of months you've got a million young people showing up right in Cologne to see this man you see descent is graying and wrinkled yes certainly exciting I mean we don't want Europe to become another of Africa North Africa which is now Muslim you know Agustin preached in Carthage or Byzantium I mean the centers of Christianity and in world history are now the centers of Islam and Europe faces that prospect and he knows it and so God I think I saved the best to last and so Europe will either convert or will have no excuse okay and not know will take a break and when we come back we want the final comments with the takeaway thoughts for our audience this day on this exciting development and the Catholic Church and the great possibilities with our new Holy Father stay with us it's a great joy for me to encourage any of our listeners who are looking for a good Catholic college to look at Franciscan University the reason why the church is involved in higher education is to provide training and education within a Catholic frame of reference the academic program at Franciscan University is excellent they teach the Catholic faith and they teach it with enthusiasm intelligence excellent teachers some of them renowned throughout the world think about us Franciscan University all right we've come to the last comments the last section on the theology of Pope Benedict the sixteenth we've followed his path from the beginning growing up Nazi Germany highlights as a priest as a Cardinal as a professor as head of the prefect prefect of faith and doctrine in the congregation and now into his papacy so I'm gonna ask each of our panelists to give us that takeaway so it's something to move us on in our appreciation of what's happened here in our church Michael well thank you Father it's a privilege to be here with you folks it's a it's an honor just a selective expression of some of the emphases that he had in his work as a theologian leading up to his consecration as Pope he saw divine revelation as the basis for all theology he saw sacred tradition and especially the tradition of the church's interpretation of Revelation as normative he developed a you a communal ecclesiology that's centered in the Eucharist he emphasizes centrality necessity of Christ in the church for salvation and the relationship between the particular and the universal church the importance of liturgical tradition and the necessity for organic as opposed to artificial liturgical development he notes the cultural crisis and the rest of secularism and relativism but he has a profound maybe more than anything a profound sense of history as sacred history and so his tasks for this pontificate will be to deal with the ongoing culture of dissent to inaugurate liturgical reform addressing the relativism and secularism of the modern world simply in a word realized the world he really is a man whose gaze is fixed on Christ the truth and the obligation to serve Him and the church and charity and love and so he has an inspired grasp of history and how the church the world got to where we are now where we're headed I think once he said that it's not necessarily the case that whoever's consecrated Pope is the Holy Spirit's choice but I think in this instance it sure seems well ok we'll we'll work with that one not a mom we'll move on to Scott once again I think we got the Pope we needed more than the Pope we deserved I would say that as he is realized in the world my exhortation to our listeners our viewers would be let Pope Benedict trie evangelize you you know I am trying to let him Rhea van july's me and it goes back I that the day he was elected several of my graduate students stopped me to congratulate me as though you know why well because you've assigned at least ten of his books in all of your courses you know and it's true I had the privilege of writing the four words to two of his books in English translation the meaning of Christian Brotherhood and then many religions one covenant and and and after both books came out by a divine providence a kind of coincidence I had a chance to meet him in Rome and he signed both copies and you're not gonna see those on ebay ever but you know the experience of reading the meaning of Christian Brotherhood while I was still a Protestant to read his biblical theology presented so clearly so simply and yet so deeply this Eucharistic Brotherhood that forms the family of God captured my heart as much as my mind and I couldn't put it down and I've been using it as a text but I would say get his books and if you see father feci oh thank him for bringing all of those chairs in the translation into the print but I would also say look at all of them you know and and read them some are deeper than others introduction to Christianity which you touted so highly and deservedly so that is not an easy read my eldest son loved it my daughter you know she has chip teeth from trying to cut them on that particular book not really I would just say read him and get his newest encyclical and devour that and really allow the Holy Spirit to deliver the the voice the word of Christ through Christ's vicar to us too not just to the world or not just to Europe not just to America or to our bishops but to ourselves take this before the Blessed Sacrament spend time in contemplative prayer and contemplative study it is easy in the sense of easy breezy but it's easy in the sense of being written excessively so that with a little effort you could have a whole lot of insight and so I that's the one thing I would really encourage people to do is get hold of his writings okay read them and as we said the rat singer report was probably the most luster to breakthrough writing to understand early on after vatican ii what really was important regis well I couldn't be more delighted with with him as the Holy Father and when he was elected I was positively rhapsodic I even wept openly which I don't often do certainly not where there are witnesses and it seemed to me an absolutely inspired choice I couldn't imagine a better choice well maybe myself but the Cardinals they're not guys easy service right it was it was it was a beautiful moment it was a Kairos a serendipity nobody certainly I didn't expect it the thing about him that that strikes me is his modesty of his gentleness he's this retiring shy self effacing guy who really if he had his own druthers would never have been a bishop he wanted to be a scholar a theologian he wanted his books and in a way like Agustin his master his great mentor he would have preferred the quiet sedentary life of a university professor and and Agustin oftentimes bristled at at the trifles as he called them that stood in the way of the disinterested pursuit of truth but the thing about Agustin and and Bishop and and and Benedict the sixteenth is that long ago they gave up their lives for Christ they don't own their lives somebody else does and this is borne out I think in that Episcopal motto that he struck when he became Archbishop of Munich there are three up symbols the first is the message from the third letter I think it is of John co-worker of the truth I mean for Ratzinger truth is really the centerpiece and he says somewhere that we've given up on truth because we think it's too sublime but nothing can happen without truth and certainly not freedom I mean freedom cannot look after herself and particularly when she becomes boundless then she becomes unbounded truth alone is there to guide and shape liberty the other two of images are a figure of a beast a kind of bear a draft horse he he describes it as someone who simply takes on the burden of a job and this is exactly what he does he's a beast of burden for Christ for the church and and finally the image of the shell and this takes us right back to st. Augustine because Augustine speaks of that little boy on the edge of the sea trying to pour the ocean into the shell and he hears the voice he can no more do that then you can fit me into your mind I mean the sense of God as being infinitely greater than even our best efforts to unpause all him I think that's what what moved him to take up this idea of Revelation that when God speaks to us reveals himself to us it really shatters all of our expectations exceeds what it was we thought we knew well done that's the Benedict that I cherish and the difference between us is you cried when you heard and I giggled to the left because what happened is we I was celebrating Mass on campus with the students and just as we began the celebration they said white smoke white smoke we know we have a pope so I made the announcement of the mass that we're now gonna go and find and so everybody rushes over to our student lounge fills the whole place channel line channel seven all the television people are there because they know it's gonna be this is the place of action and they announced it was gone all right to get I'm ready laughed and cheered it was such an exciting thing and all I could think of it's the Holy Spirit again surprises I had read 18 reasons why it couldn't be Cardinal Ratzinger he was too old he was too this he was too much in authorities too I'd have read it all and here boom the next day his homily which we're gonna send you for the mere asking on the opening of the Conclave given to the College of Cardinals so stated the church where it is so indicated what was needed that I'm sure the Holy Spirit moved in that convicted and we got action oh well contact us we'll send you a copy of this homily stay in contact with the university distance education be a student here whatever but until next time may the Lord bless and keep you show its face Tina mercy on your turn this confidence through you and give you his peace to receive a free handout on today's topic or to purchase a videotape of this show call toll-free 888 three three three zero three eight one that's eight eight eight three three three zero three eight one or you may call seven 4:02 eight three six three five seven or write to Franciscan University presents Carib television productions Franciscan University of Steubenville one two three five university boulevard steubenville ohio four three nine five two

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

Views: 24,166

Keywords: Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, Catholic, college, Fr. Michael Scanlan TOR, Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. Michael Sirilla, Dr. Regis Martin, Pope Benedict XVI, Theology

Id: RFBfgJU0g10

Length: 58min 31sec (3511 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2013