During the time of the Council, however, what was perhaps the most profound upheaval in the life of the Ratzinger brothers also occurred: the death of their beloved mother a week before Christmas, on December 16, 1963.
Our mother had already had stomach problems for a long time. It actually began in March 1963, when she often complained about stomach pains. She used to say then that “Italian food” was best for her, but that was a Tyrolean expression equivalent to “go hungry and eat nothing”, because under Italian rule the inhabitants of Tyrol were not so well off. She recovered shortly, but then it became even worse, and she had to vomit repeatedly.
In August, my brother and I traveled to Lienz in East Tyrol and spent our vacation there in the Wiener Sängerknaben (Vienna Boys’ Choir) hotel. At that time she had made an appointment at the hospital to have a stomach X-ray. She traveled there with our sister, underwent the examination, and the doctor’s fears were confirmed: it was stomach cancer.
Despite the diagnosis, she continued to keep house for me, while my brother had to go to Rome again. That summer he moved from Bonn to Münster, where he had accepted a new professorship, and Maria had plenty to do setting up a new household for him there. Later on she did come join us to take care of our mother.
In the summer of 1963, Professor Joseph Ratzinger left his beloved Bonn. Hermann Volk, a dogmatic theologian in Münster, had become the bishop of Mainz in the summer of 1962, and now his professorial chair was vacant. Volk himself had requested Ratzinger as his successor, but he refused at first. Only when two young students were in danger of having their doctoral dissertations rejected because of opposition by his colleagues did he see it as destiny beckoning. In Münster, he knew, he would be able to help the two students more. So finally he moved to the university city in Westphalia and took his two doctoral candidates right with him; eventually they succeeded in earning their degrees.
At that time our mother had already become bedridden; she was vomiting regularly and suffering horribly. It was a difficult time for us. She became thinner and thinner, was able to eat less and less, and was actually afraid to take any food, because she did not know whether she would be able to keep it down. In early December, I finally wrote to my brother that she was in a bad way, and he came immediately. We spent the last two weeks together, my siblings, my mother, and I. It was terrible to watch how she kept fading, until it was plain that she was gradually dying. We then called the pastor, who heard her confession and gave her extreme unction, while she was quite weak and subdued. To the end she carried the burden of her life patiently, with the strength of her faith; she was like a candle that is increasingly consumed and yet radiates its light.
“Her goodness became even purer and more radiant and continued to shine unchanged even through the weeks of increasing pain. . . . I know of no more convincing proof for the faith than precisely the pure and unalloyed humanity that the faith allowed to mature in my parents and in so many other persons I have had the privilege to encounter”, Joseph Ratzinger wrote in his memoirs (M 131).
When my brother was born in Marktl, the bader (barber-surgeon) pulled our mother’s teeth, because they were all decayed and some were festering at the roots, and made a denture for her. That denture, made by a simple barber-surgeon, held up wonderfully until the 1960s without any part of it breaking off. But then, when she was getting thinner and thinner, it was suddenly too big. For us, that was an upsetting sign: Mother’s teeth no longer fit because she was losing so much weight.
She died around noon on a rather cold day. So we had to reopen the grave in which we had buried our father four years earlier. Eight days later, it was Christmas. It was the saddest and most lonely Christmas of our whole life.
Commemorative prayer cards for the pope’s parents, Joseph (d. 1959) and Maria (d. 1963) Ratzinger
My brother “inherited” a lot from our mother. Like her, he is very tenderhearted; he loves animals and flowers. I can remember how he as a little boy once sat in a meadow for hours and picked flowers. He got that from our mother, and from our father somehow his rational side. These two qualities of our parents combined in him in a special way.
At the time when our mother became sick, negotiations were already in progress for my transfer to Regensburg. Mother was still able to hear the news and was happy about it.
The long-time director of the Regensburg Domspatzen, cathedral choirmaster Doctor Theobald Shrems, was suffering then from a malignant form of cancer, and shortly before his seventieth birthday he was looking for a suitable successor. It had to be a cleric who had already made a public appearance as a gifted musician and choir director. At some point, his former piano teacher at the Munich Music College, Professor Fritz Hubsch, told him about Georg Ratzinger, who at that time had already made a name for himself as a choir director in Traunstein. After making initial contact with him in early 1963, Schrems recommended him as his favorite candidate to succeed him in the position. Immediately after his death on November 15, 1963, the negotiations began.
If our mother had survived, I would not have gone to Regensburg, for I could not have asked her to make the move. Yet our idyllic life in Traunstein did end then. I was living there in a beautiful house connected with a benefice, the so-called “little preacher’s house”, in which our parents had felt so much at home. Mother had her little garden where she could work, which she always liked to do. Yet when she had died, all that ceased to have any value for me, and so I left Traunstein and went to Regensburg. It was the biggest upheaval in my life. My siblings of course still visited me in Regensburg and had their room with the Domspatzen (that is, at the gymnasium of the Regensburg Domspatzen, which was nicknamed the “Kaff”). It was always quite nice there, yet it was also a totally different world, to which we first had to become accustomed.
For me, the first years in Regensburg were rather difficult. At that time, the two nephews of my predecessor were still active in the house of the Domspatzen. One of them, Hans Schrems, had acted on behalf of his uncle for a long time and recently, when the latter was sick, had even conducted the main choir. The other, Fritz Schrems, was responsible for the finances. Both of them gave me the feeling that I was somehow unwelcome, like a fifth wheel on a wagon. Several years went by before this changed. Hans Schrems, the choir director, met a tragic end; on November 7, 1969, he was found dead beneath the bridge over the Danube in Regensburg. Yet as sad as that was, at least it ended the established regime that had oppressed me personally and artistically, while I lacked the energy to offer resistance to it. Only from that point on was I the “master of the house”, who also, in practice, conducted the Regensburg Domspaten choir.
Not only artistically, but also personally everything was now “in tune” again with the world-famous boys choir. The “Chief”, as they called Georg Ratzinger, quickly succeeded in winning the hearts of the boys who sang in it. His phenomenal memory enabled him to learn the names and stories of the youngsters quickly, so that even the new students were surprised that he already knew so much about them. Since the nuns in the house of the Domspatzen provided him superabundantly with pretzels, candy, and cake, he invited the choir boys every day at 4:00 in the afternoon to his legendary “Raubtierfütterung” (feeding time for the beasts of prey), which soon became a fixture in the daily routine, an opportunity that many of them continued to take even long after their careers as choristers were over. Yet as kindly as he was toward the boys during free time, there was just as much discipline during choir practices. Georg Ratzinger hated a lack of punctuality and demanded the highest level of achievement. Only in that way did he succeed in forming the boys choir of the cathedral city into a world-famous institution, which not only toured all of Europe in the “Kaff-bomber”—the aging tour bus of the Domspatzen—but at the same time went on tour twice each in the United States (1983 and 1987) and in Japan (1988 and 1991). Yet the high point in the history of the choir was first of all another tour: in October 1965, the Domspatzen appeared in Rome and sang for th
e Council Fathers and Pope Paul VI. His brother, Joseph, had arranged that great event.
The performance in Rome was of course a thoroughly wonderful experience and the high point of my career as cathedral choirmaster. At that point in time, I had been in Regensburg for less than two years; my predecessor’s nephews and the whole group that had flocked around them were still there, but I was the choir director, in any case. Our first concert for the Council Fathers took place in the great hall of the Angelicum, the college of the Dominicans. Then we had the privilege of singing at a conciliar Mass at Saint Peter’s. The whole basilica was filled with two thousand bishops from all over the world, along with the Council observers, and at the end the Council Secretary, Archbishop Pericle Felici, said, “Optime, sed nunc exite!” (Excellent, but now out with you!) In addition, we sang a beautiful liturgy in the German national church in Rome, Santa Maria dell’Anima; it was a major feast day, too. And finally we made another appearance at an audience Pope Paul VI gave for the Catholic Academy in Bavaria and for us, too. It was a special audience for this limited group and naturally a great experience for the boys, and for me in any case, that they were able to sing there in front of the Pope.
We gave another special concert for the Catholic Academy in a room that Raphael had decorated, in the Villa Farnesina, a wonderful Roman palazzo. It was all like a dream, and the boys were overjoyed to be able to experience Rome and the events of the Council. We traveled by train and stayed in the Kolping House; that was certainly nice. I still remember one detail about the return trip as though it were yesterday. I went to the boys when I heard that Haller was there. Helmut Haller (b. 1939) was at that time a famous player on the German national soccer team. And so many of them went to him and asked for an autograph. But that of course was an incidental experience; the decisive thing for us all was the stay in Rome. I think we were well received everywhere. Wherever we went, people were enthusiastic about our singing. That gave us a lot of encouragement and self-confidence, making appearances abroad now as a choir and from then on practically traveling around the world.
Of course the reform of the liturgy that followed the Second Vatican Council was a considerable adjustment for us at first. I must confess that by nature I am someone who is oriented to custom and does not surrender it thoughtlessly. I will be the first to admit that it is a bit difficult for me to learn completely new things and to put them into practice. Our bishop at the time, Rudolf Graber (1903-1992), was very understanding, and the whole cathedral chapter was also. To a large extent, we still cultivated the old liturgy. The Regensburg tradition had already existed before, and my predecessor raised awareness of it even more, so that it was viewed as an obligation to continue it and to keep singing the way it had always been done, even though all around us things had long since changed. Besides, valuable things that were once considered important and were well received should not be given away, either, without further ado. So we were not only permitted to keep practicing the old music, but it was considered our duty. New elements were added only step by step. That way it was not a painful break but, rather, a gradual and somewhat organic development over the years, so as to loosen up more and more the liturgy from those days, which was, after all, a bit rigid.
While my brother was teaching in Bonn, first, and then in Münster, I often visited him and my sister there and spent my vacation with them both. I also used the time to attend lectures at the University of Bonn and later in Münster and Tübingen. I simply looked in the course catalogue for sessions that interested me, both in musicology and in theology. I liked Bonn very much; I felt very much at ease in that beautiful city. Most importantly, Professor Johann Auer (1910-1989) was there, too, whom I knew from Freising, where he was our professor for dogmatic theology. He was a native of Regensburg, actually a simple man who in his free time spoke the thickest Bavarian dialect, and we always got along wonderfully.
Naturally my brother missed his Bavarian homeland even then. The presence of other Bavarians, though, such as Professor Auer and another one, the medievalist Professor Ludwig Hödl (b. 1924), who was in my class, gave him the feeling that he was not all that much of a stranger in Bonn. In Münster, too, he adjusted quickly. That was also a very beautiful city, well tended and clean; there was really no reason to complain, yet the longing for Bavaria was still there. Our sister, too, dreamed about returning to our homeland, which perhaps influenced him a little. Love of homeland is very often greater among us Bavarians than among North Germans.
So the temptation was irresistible when the University of Tübingen offered him in 1966 a newly created chair in dogmatic theology. One theologian in Tübingen who had strongly advocated recruiting Ratzinger was Hans Küng. The two men met in 1957 at a congress of dogmatic theologians in Innsbruck (see M 135)—only later would they become opponents.
His students in Münster had very positive memories of Ratzinger. When the newspaper Die Rheinische Post asked several of them in April 2005, their impression was always the same. They described him as a reserved, amiable man who not only could think analytically but also radiated much warmth and humanity. Pastor Fritz Lemming, for instance, who at that time was an instructor in dogmatic theology, recalled: “He was the kindliest of all examiners. When the other professors noticed that a candidate was well acquainted with a field, they changed the subject. Ratzinger, in contrast, stayed at every oasis of knowledge he discovered.” At that time, he was living in a little house on the Aasee [a lake]. He rode to his lectures on an old bicycle that his students had bought for him at an auction. Since he had no driver’s license, they often drove him home again after the lecture. Often he invited his students to his house for a meal. In a circle of close acquaintances, he then thawed and told anecdotes and jokes by Karl Valentin.5
Then when the call to Tübingen came, he told me that that was closer to Bavaria. A train ride to Münster, after all, was rather tiresome; it took a long time to travel in those days.
However promising the changes in the Church after the Council were, they were fundamentally misunderstood by many people. Thus Ratzinger, as one of the co-authors of the document Lumen gentium (Light of the nations), helped establish the practice of defining the Church, as New Israel, as “People of God” that live from the Body of Christ, the Eucharist, and so herself becomes the Body of Christ. What this meant was that the Church should unite herself more closely to Jesus, who in calling his apostles was concerned about sending a “new people” on its way. The concept “People of God” became connected with such exciting and questionable things as the increased importance of the laity in the Church, the notion of the autonomy of the episcopal office and of episcopal collegiality as opposed to papal primacy, a greater importance of local Churches vis-à-vis Rome, and a broadening of the concept of Church in ecumenical terms.
After the Council, the expression was taken up enthusiastically, but in a way that neither Ratzinger nor the Council Fathers had intended. Suddenly it became a slogan: “We are the People!” The idea of a “Church from below” developed; its proponents wanted to engage in polemics against those who held office and to carry out their agenda by democratic majority vote. Although the theological, biblical concept of people was still the idea of a natural hierarchy, of a great family, suddenly it was reinterpreted in a Marxist sense, in which “people” is always considered the antithesis to the ruling classes. The center of the Christian faith, however, can only be God’s revelation, which cannot be put to a ballot. Church is being called by God. Joseph Ratzinger said: “The crisis concerning the Church, as it is reflected in the crisis concerning the concept ‘People of God’, is a ‘crisis about God’: it is the result of leaving out what is most essential. What then remains is merely a dispute about power. There is already enough of that elsewhere in the world—we do not need the Church for that” (PF 129). The Council Fathers had appeared in Rome so as to bring the faith with its full impact into the present day. But many understood “reform” to mean, not renewing, but watering dow
n the faith. Their spokesman was the same Hans Küng who had just brought Ratzinger along to Tübingen, probably because he saw him as another reformer.
And so in the Swabian university city, two men who could not have been more different collided. While Hans Küng drove around in his Alfa Romeo, Joseph Ratzinger rode to lectures on his rusty bike. While the flamboyant, highly vocal Küng rose to the position of figurehead of the progressives, Ratzinger at first offered quiet resistance. Anyone who maintains that in Tübingen he switched over to the conservative camp has thoroughly misunderstood him. He only remained true to himself and did not turn like a weathervane with every breeze of the spirit of the age.
The conflict took place against the backdrop of the 1968 rebellions. The student movement wanted to drive “the mustiness of a thousand years” (IP 201) out of the university gowns. The generation of their parents was accused of complicity with the Nazi terror and slaughter of the Jews, of giving themselves absolution, and of bourgeois narrow-mindedness. They dreamed of free love and autonomy, new music and new values. Whereas the Western world defined itself at that time by its opposition to Communism, the generation of revolutionaries flirted with Marx. Marxism became the new doctrine of salvation that dispenses with God and replaces him with man’s political action. Christ did not bring redemption; it must be won first in the world revolution! Thus it was clear that Marxism and Christianity were fundamentally irreconcilable. Yet despite this, there were “progressive” theologians who attempted precisely this balancing act without noticing they had long since left the firm ground of faith.
My Brother, the Pope Page 17
