Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica on March 26, 2005, in Vatican City. / Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images
Denver, Colo., Feb 19, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).
Six lectures of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger were almost lost forever. But now, they have been collected in a new Ignatius Press book, “The Divine Project: Reflections on Creation and Church.”
“It’s a wonderful summation of what God intends in creating us and redeeming us, in six lectures. It’s just a great find,” Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, president of Ignatius Press, told CNA. “It’s written for students and spoken for students. It’s really quite readable.”
The future Pope Benedict XVI delivered the series of lectures in 1985 at the Bishop of Gurk’s formation house at St. George’s Abbey in Längsee in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia. They were recorded on audio cassettes but the tapes were misplaced for 30 years and forgotten. By chance, they were rediscovered.
“It was a treasure that was lost and found again,” said Fessio, who studied under Ratzinger when the future pontiff was a theologian and university professor. Ratzinger would serve as a cardinal under Pope John Paul II. He was elected pope in 2005.
The lectures were first published in German in 2008, but Ignatius Press is the first to publish them in English, in a 177-page book.
Fessio stressed Ratzinger’s emphasis on Scripture.
“He always goes back to Scripture when he is presenting on any topic,” Fessio commented. “This is theological. It has to do with faith, of course. His interpretation of Genesis brings it right up to the present. He understands traditional scholarship and the historical-critical method, but he’s able to make it come alive.”
Ratzinger’s lectures reflect upon God as the creator of a reasonable cosmos, in which each man and woman is ultimately a creature. He considers how to read the Bible and understand original sin and redemption.
Ratzinger considers the first eight lines of the Book of Genesis, about the creation of the heavens and the earth.
“Is this merely a beautiful passage, or does this beauty also reveal something of the truth?” he asks. “And if so, how do we find it?”
He reflects on explanations of Genesis that engage scientific accounts of the universe and of humankind, including evolutionary theory. He asks whether and how the scientific and Christian approaches can complement each other, and he ponders the place of the Genesis account of creation in historic Christian thought, including the fall of humankind through Adam.
The early Church and the Middle Ages “understood that the Bible is one whole and that we can only truly hear what it is saying if we hear it as coming from Christ,” Ratzinger explains.
“This means hearing it in the freedom that he has given us and from the depths where, through the screen of images, he reveals the true and enduring reality, the solid ground on which we can always stand,” he says.
Fessio told CNA that the Book of Genesis is written in “a very parabolic or even mythical way.” In Ratzinger’s commentary, the Old Testament must be read as a preparation for the New Testament. The Bible should be read as a whole.
“Its parts help to understand each other and [to understand] that Christ is the goal and therefore the key of interpretation,” Fessio said. He added that Ratzinger’s lectures show “how Creation was made for the worship of God, for the Sabbath, for the day of worship, and the day that God rested.”
“If God is the Creator, it means we are creatures,” Fessio added. “It means that we do not create ourselves, we depend for existence on God and on others.
“[Ratzinger] spends a lot of time on how man is relational. We come from parents, we live for others. We give ourselves to a project we can’t consider ourselves,” he said.
“We’re not just autonomous monads floating around each other,” Fessio said. “Rather, we’re connected to each other because we’re connected to God, who himself is relationship as the Trinity.”
Ratzinger considers the place of necessity and chance in creation and contemporary attitudes about the place of each person in the world. He notes that many object, saying, “No one ever asked me if I wanted to be born!”
To this, Ratzinger responds: “It is only when we know that there is One who did not cast lots blindly, when we know that our existence is not an accident, but is rather born of freedom and love, only then can we, whose existence is not necessary, be thankful for this freedom and know, with gratitude, that it is indeed a gift to be human.”
According to Fessio, Ratzinger is “expounding the Catholic faith, but doing it in a contemporary language.”
“Sin is the destruction of that relationship with ourselves and God, and then among each other. [Ratzinger] makes the very important point that there’s no such thing as an individual sin that doesn’t have effects on others,” the priest said. “Every turn away from God’s plan, God’s law, affects not only oneself, but everyone else, as well.”
This can be healed “by losing self and turning to Christ,” the source of our love, Fessio commented. Ratzinger emphasizes “how important the Eucharist is in restoring fallen man to unity with himself and with God.”
Other topics in “The Divine Project” include technology and ecology, the cross and the Eucharist, religious pluralism, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, and the nature of the Church.
For Fessio, the theologian’s former student, the qualities of Benedict XVI are evident in the book.
Cardinal Ratzinger was “brilliant and humble, warm, holy, a good listener,” Fessio said.
“He had a tremendous ability to synthesize the thoughts of others and present them in a clear and compelling way,” he said. “He was just simply a great teacher. And therefore, those of us who are learners do well to turn to that great teacher whenever we can.”
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“What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy” – Mahatma Gandhi
“What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?” The kind of victory that delivers the world from a Nazi Germany and an Imperial Japan, for starters. The world has been a much better place as a result of the Allied victories. Just one more reason not to take the words of a master manipulator like Ghandi too seriously.
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy – no doubt about it. War is hell on earth. I have a difficult time, however, clearly seeing Russia as the only bad actor in this tragedy. During the Cuban missile crisis, our own country nearly initiated a nuclear conflagration to prevent the placement of missiles so close to our border. That said, we now condemn in Russia the same behavior we were only too eager to embrace against Cuba. Clearly, the New World Order is one where old economies based in oil and gas will be made irrelevant even at the expense of lives, no matter the number. Just ask the elites at Davos. Ukraine supposedly has a sizeable Catholic population; yet, Zelensky rose to power behind an agenda embracing abortion-on-demand; legalizing gay marriage and other “woke”/communist elements. While Ukraine has gone full-blown “woke” to appease the masters of the universe at Davos, Russia has returned to the faith. Putin is painted as the worst type of villian by our media who, of course, NEVER push an agenda; especially one favoring communism. Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin is filmed attending church services (appearing rather sincere by the way), giving speeches lauding values rooted in the natural law, condemning abortion, condemning gender bending illusions and the LGBT agenda. He recently passed laws preventing the possibility of gay marriage in Russia. There is no doubt that Russia spread her “errors”, i.e. communism, as Our Lady warned. But, Our Lady also said that, in the end, Russia would be pleasing to God. I fear that Pope Francis outreach to Zel., only further confirms his support of a new world order. When combined with this Abu Dhabi “temple”, his condemnation of all things inherently Catholic, i,e, the Latin Mass and “backwardist” movement, which in reality is the only way forward for the survival of the church, his embrace of the climate agenda, his tossing the Catholic church in China under the bus, his acceptance of the LGBT agenda, etc., etc., etc., . . . we’re either seeing the result of Rome having “lost the faith” or are witnessing Rome in the process of “losing the faith”, just as Our Lady of La Salette prophesized. We’re suffering the chastisement of rebellious men and I cannot help but see Pope Francis as one of those rebellious men we’re suffering.
Amen, Mark–great post. We could also add to the list of Z’s bad actions: his suppression of the Orthodox cave monks of Kiev–who were apparently guilty of praying for Russia.
Striking imagery–a Jewish president suppressing the religious liberty of Christians.
According to Paul VI’s theory of concentric circles of dialogue, the Greek and Russian Orthodox (which term could be in quotes of course) have a lot more in common with us than do the Jews.
Peace of Christ to all
To my knowledge Pope Francis has never denounced the murderous violence that has been inflicted gratuitously n Kiev upon the ethnic peoples living between Kiev and Russia east of Kiev, by an over-zealous faction in Kiev; to which they have been subject now for nine years and which Kiev continues to escalate. Nor has he denounced the vitriolic hatred expressed by the Kiev aggressors that they spread abroad for money.
Nor has Pope Francis denounced the international supporters that have been backing and arming said war-mongering Kiev elements.
All along Patriarch Bartholomew has pushed the violence but Pope Francis shows no sign of separating himself from this side of Bartholomew’s psychological make-up and identity; nor of correcting him. Bartholomew has suppressed his plans in this area and kept it from being a public affair. Pope Francis seems to be abetting him in this.
I commend to all reading this article the interview that Archbishop Vigano gave recently on Russian TV:
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/6626-archbishop-vigano-interviewed-on-russian-tv
I would also add this:
https://gloria.tv/post/28eRuvMR63272oCJC1adz39xA
“We are betting on Ukraine’s victory,” Meloni said at the press conference.
War is a sport for the elites.