The Pope is coming, and my question is: Are you ready for him?
And perhaps there's no better way to prepare for his first U.S. visit in this Easter season than to learn a bit about his latest encyclical SPE SALVI –“Saved by Hope.”
The New York Times called it “a complex but elegant argument for the necessity of hope,” and David Scott (who coined “Pope of Hope”) finds this encyclical establishing Benedict XVI’s place in history:
Nearly three years into his papacy, Benedict has emerged as the wisest leader on the world stage today, one who has thought deeply about what ails us in these troubled times and has offered compelling answers for what we should do about it. But very few people, even among Catholics, seem to have grasped this or taken him seriously.
Perhaps this is because Benedict’s press coverage has often been unkind, partly due to his prior reputation and partly due to self-inflicted gaffs.
To be perfectly honest, I must admit that, if Joseph Ratzinger had not become Benedict XVI, I would still be ignoring this man. By ignoring I don't mean that I didn't know who he was. I mean I actually avoided paying any attention to him. The fact is that for the last 40 years, Joseph Ratzinger was not my idea of the kind of spokesperson the Catholic Church needed in the wake of Vatican Council II.
His style and tone seemed altogether too strict, too accepting of the very established church conventions Vatican II sought to renew, too fearful and critical of the contemporary world that Vatican II had sought to embrace. I tended to prefer those theologians who seemed more enthusiastic about renewal: Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx, Bernard Lonergan.
But none of these men became Pope--and one does not ignore the Pope. So since his election as Benedict XVI I have found myself paying attention in a new way to this man , and close inspection of his major works suggest a complex figure who may reflect the complex age the Church is living through.
It may even be that this man was born to write encyclicals --and to transform what a papal encyclical can be. At 81, he may finally have found his true niche in life. But if so, it has been a long and twisty path.
By now we all know that as a teenager he was pressed into service as part of the Hitler youth. After the war ended he spent the 1940s and 1950s living the life of the young priest and scholar. Vatican II transformed his work when he became one of the theological experts to the German Bishops at the Council, where he served side by side with Han Kung. Their partnership got them both tagged as "progressives" in the theological movement to renew the Church, but while Kung has continued to confirm the label "progressive," Joseph Ratzinger’s public image has long since changed.
It all happened around 1968, when the May ’68 revolt of Paris students spread across Europe and appeared briefly to portend a profound social revolution. For professor Ratzinger comfortably teaching back on his German campus, the experience was mind-altering. Henceforth his posture shifted, and his public image became that of a champion of orthodoxy rather than of change--though he still claimed, as always, to represent the cause of Church renewal and Vatican II.
Then, under John Paul II, he became head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith: the Vatican's "watchdog" of orthodoxy. He served in this role as a loyal soldier, and the private image of a gentle congenial personality was superseded by the public image of a strict and censorious judge.
Time will tell whether Ratzinger’s "watchdog" image was a true or false reflection of the real man, but so far it appears that (like many before him) election to the papacy has liberated him to become his true self.
(I am reminded of the always compliant and obedient Angelo Roncalli who, in decades of church service, never rocked the Vatican's boat and seemed the prefect candidate to warm the papal seat as a do-nothing caretaker until a younger man could be chosen. But once elected Pope, he had no one left to obey but God and his own instincts--and promptly called for an ecumenical council that still has the boat rocking 45 years later.)
Benedict’s first encyclical, “God is Love,” was an attempt to elaborate upon the basics of Catholic faith, not by returning to a pre-conciliar view of Catholicism but by cutting through much of the paraphernalia of Catholic tradition to illuminate its core. Now he is focused on hope and, since he views hope as interchangeable with faith, the two encyclicals have now covered the main virtues of Christian live: faith hope and love.
This new encyclical is written in a distinctive personal style (some passages read like class lectures, and are best left for scholars). So in some ways it tells us as much about Joseph Ratzinger as it does about his views on hope.
For example, his treatment makes several references to Saint Augustine. It seems clear there is an intellectual affinity between Ratzinger’s way of viewing Christian faith and Augustine's. But there is also a curious way that Benedict identifies with Augustine's life as well as his thought.
This encyclical marks the second time in less than a year that Benedict has publicly referred to the moment when Augustine gave up his dream of forming in a monastic community to dedicate himself to pastoral leadership. The pope devotes an extraordinarily long passage to Augustine’s story:
After his conversion to the Christian faith, he decided, together with some like-minded friends, to lead a life totally dedicated to the word of God and to things eternal. His intention was to practise a Christian version of the ideal of the contemplative life expressed in the great tradition of Greek philosophy, choosing in this way the “better part” (cf. Lk 10:42). Things turned out differently, however. While attending the Sunday liturgy at the port city of Hippo, he was called out from the assembly by the Bishop and constrained to receive ordination for the exercise of the priestly ministry in that city….
It's obvious why Benedict would draw on the thinking and writing of the best in, who remains one of the intellectual giants of Catholic tradition. But why is he so struck by Augustine's story as well? One point of identification is obvious: just as Augustine abandoned the life of meditation and prayer to work in Church leadership, Ratzinger surrendered the quiet and removed life of academic teaching and writing for the turmoil of Vatican politics and public exposure.
For Augustine this meant a totally new life...Amid the serious difficulties facing the Roman Empire…this was what he set out to do: to transmit hope, the hope which came to him from faith and which, in complete contrast with his introverted temperament, enabled him to take part decisively and with all his strength in the task of building up the city. On the strength of his hope, Augustine dedicated himself completely to the ordinary people and to his city—renouncing his spiritual nobility, he preached and acted in a simple way for simple people.
“To transmit hope”—here, I suspect, is the key to understanding both this document and Benedict’s true vocation.
For this encyclical hints more clearly than ever before why the man Joseph Ratzinger was willing to make the move from theologian to bishop to Vatican to Pope. In writing about hope, he does more than review Catholic thought and teaching. He also reveals his own personal conviction that he must speak out beyond the academy to the public forum, whether as Vatican official or as Pope, precisely because he sees our current situation as a crisis--and specifically, he sees it as a crisis of hope.
In fact, this encyclical offers a glimpse into the mind of Joseph Ratzinger through the Pope's personal reading of the intellectual history of the last five centuries, a history that in his view reflects an evolution in the idea of hope that has led us—not just Catholicism but the whole world--to a watershed moment: a crisis of hope that only faith can resolve.
It will be no small surprise if the Pope’s upcoming address to the United Nations does not focus on this very notion of the crisis of hope.
And next time: The Evolution of Hope.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2008
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