Ratzinger’s memoirs have drawn sharp criticism for their “unsettling selectiveness” and their distinct lack of introspection regarding the atrocities committed by Hitler against the Jewish people and “the moral failings of German Catholics specifically.” His biographer John Allen concurs that Milestones leads us to believe that while war and persecution were raging, Ratzinger “was reading great literature, playing Mozart, joining his family on trips to Salzburg, and poring over Latin conjugations.” Dachau was just sixty-two miles from Ratzinger’s hometown and only ten miles from Munich, yet his only mention of a concentration camp in which over 41,500 people died and over two hundred thousand were incarcerated is a lament for the kindly rector who taught him at the seminary after the war and who had spent five years there. When the Red Army was closing in on Germany’s eastern front, the SS began to evacuate the camp and drove more than seven thousand prisoners west, on the chillingly termed “death marches.” After years of torture and starvation, many did not survive the marches, and it is recorded that thirty-six people collapsed and died in and around the village of Traunstein. The Holocaust was on everybody’s doorstep.
It is commonly said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As David Gibson observes in his book The Rule of Benedict:
What the Nazi experience seems to have bred in Joseph Ratzinger, or the preexisting trait it reinforced in him, was a kind of distancing, a pattern of removing himself from unpleasantness, isolating the pure ideal—of the faith, the church, the family, the nation—from the inevitable corruptions of the world. This approach fosters a sense of remoteness in his remembrances, a detachment that may strike many as cold. In fact, it is problematic when a churchman who places such a high priority on personal rectitude and individual holiness appears unreflective about his own history.
There is an undeniable parallel between Benedict’s attempts to reduce the cognitive dissonance of his own experiences under Hitler’s rule by painting an idyllic picture of a childhood almost entirely uninterrupted by the savageries of the Second World War and his apparent unwillingness to confront the horrific reality of widespread sexual abuse within the Catholic Church during his time as pope.
THE STUDENT BECOMES A PRIEST
When Ratzinger resumed his studies at the seminary, he saw it as an opportunity not just for himself, but also for the nation to find its way out of the ruins of war and rebuild a “better Germany; and … a better world.” In Milestones he writes that “despite many human failings, the Church was the alternative to the destructive ideology of the brown(shirt) rulers; in the inferno that had swallowed up the powerful, she had stood firm with a force coming to her from eternity.” Ratzinger here chooses to sidestep the Vatican’s documented preference, under Pius XII, for the church-allied Third Reich over the specter of godless communism from Russia, instead focusing on its postwar record, more worthy of his idealized praise.
Though books were scarce, Ratzinger threw himself into his theological studies for the next two years. Then, in the summer of 1947, he was accepted into a prestigious theology institute at the University of Munich, with a view to becoming “more fully familiar with the intellectual debates of our time by working at the university, so as some day to be able to dedicate myself completely to theology as a profession.”
Here Ratzinger immersed himself in philosophy and literature, and spent hours listening to the university’s many inspirational thinkers: “I looked forward with burning expectation to the lectures of our renowned teachers.” There was a palpable feeling among the young seminarians that they were a new generation of Catholics capable of “radical change,” who “had the courage to ask new questions and a spirituality that was doing away with what was dusty and obsolete.” The university had been severely damaged during the bombing raids on Munich, and large parts still “lay in ruins,” but Ratzinger’s department “had found temporary quarters in the former royal hunting lodge at Fürstenried.” Its magnificent gardens were the ideal environment for deep contemplation of the enormous commitment he was about to make.
During his time at the university, Ratzinger developed a confidence in his own interpretation of scripture and of great theological thinkers such as Saints Augustine and Bonaventure, and the three years passed quickly. After his final examination, at the end of summer 1950, he began to prepare himself for ordination. On a “radiant summer day” in June 1951, Ratzinger, alongside Georg and forty other candidates, stepped forward to commit themselves to God. In Milestones, he recalled, “We should not be superstitious; but, at that moment when the elderly archbishop laid his hands on me, a little bird—perhaps a lark—flew up from the high altar in the cathedral and trilled a little joyful song. And I could not but see in this a reassurance from on high, as if I heard the words ‘this is good, you are on the right way.’”
The next four weeks “were like an unending feast” of new experiences for Ratzinger. After saying his first mass for a packed congregation in his home parish, he “learned firsthand how earnestly people wait for a priest, how much they long for the blessing that flows from the power of the sacrament.” After the years of academia, the new Father Joseph was taken aback by the demands of his new role:
I had to give sixteen hours of religious instruction at five different levels, which obviously required much preparation. Every Sunday I had to celebrate at least two Masses and give two different sermons. Every morning I sat in the confessional from six to seven, and on Saturday afternoons for four hours. Every week there were several burials in the various cemeteries of the city. I was totally responsible for youth ministry, and to this I had to add extracurricular obligations like baptisms, weddings, and so on.
This was challenging work, and it exposed his lack of “practical training.” And as he spent more time with the younger members of his parish, he was dismayed to find just “how far removed the world of the life and thinking of many children was from the realities of faith and how little our religious instruction coincided with the actual lives and thinking of our families.” This was an issue he continued to regard as one of the greatest threats faced by the Catholic Church.
It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that after just over a year as a parish priest, Ratzinger was delighted to learn that his place in the doctoral degree program was confirmed to start on October 1, 1952, and he could return to his beloved theological studies. He did feel some conflict about abandoning the task he had found most taxing: “I suffered a great deal, especially in the first year, from the loss of all the human contacts and experiences afforded me by the pastoral ministry. In fact, I even began to think I would have done better to remain in parish work.” But these concerns were all allayed when his proud parents watched him step onto the stage and collect his doctoral degree in July 1953.
Ratzinger had devoted a large proportion of his doctorate to studying St. Augustine, as opposed to St. Thomas Aquinas, a decision described by biographer John Allen as “a minor act of rebellion” on account of Pope Leo XIII’s 1879 encyclical that declared Aquinas was “rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith” and should be considered the single most important philosopher of the church. This encyclical had legitimized the movement known as neo-scholasticism, which sought to resist modernity by restoring the church to the doctrinal teachings of Aquinas and suggested that “anyone who departed from their point of view was flirting with heresy.” Throughout his life, Ratzinger has remained what he described as a “decided Augustinian,” but in 1953, this was a surprisingly progressive move and one perhaps influenced by what Allen describes as “the intellectual ferment” felt by many in the church in the years leading up to the Second Vatican Council in 1962.
A SHINING NEW THEOLOGICAL STAR
After his graduation, Ratzinger began working on his postdoctoral dissertation at the seminary and accepted a teaching position in Freising that came with cathedral housing. This enabled him to move his brother, sister, and
aging parents from the family home—now becoming a burden—to live with him in the town. Both his father and mother would remain living with him until their deaths, in 1958 and 1963 respectively.
His thesis on the works of St. Bonaventure and the concept of revelation, however, proved to be surprisingly problematic for a student who had always excelled academically, and after he submitted the finished document at the end of 1955 it was met with wildly conflicting opinions from two of his professors. According to Ratzinger, Professor Gottlieb Söhngen, who had originally suggested the theme, “accepted it enthusiastically and even quoted from it frequently in his lectures,” but Professor Michael Schmaus felt it displayed “dangerous modernism” and “a forthrightness not advisable in a beginner,” and rejected it “because it did not meet the pertinent scholarly standards.” Upon reflection, Ratzinger believed he had offended Schmaus by not requesting his guidance on a subject well known to be the professor’s specialty, and had further insulted him with conclusions that drew heavily on “new breakthroughs” from French scholars who had picked up where Schmaus’s own works had stalled before the war. Unfortunately, as Schmaus was the more powerful professor, his ruling stood, and numerous revisions were required before the thesis was eventually accepted, in February 1957.
A year later, Ratzinger was finally appointed as lecturer at the University of Munich and professor of fundamental theology and dogma in Freising. This was at a time when, as David Gibson notes, “theologians were like pop stars … selling out auditoriums for their talks, and books of complex theology had the popularity of paperback thrillers and were featured on the cover of Time.” It was perhaps inevitable, then, that as this young upstart with reformist zeal was making waves in theological circles, his appointments were met with what Ratzinger described as “some sniper shots from certain disgruntled quarters.” These only furthered his reputation as one to watch, and he proceeded to accept positions at universities in Bonn, Münster, and Tübingen over the next eight years. But, as Allen remarks, this was the climb of a career theologian and not someone seeking to be a cardinal: “Ambitious young clerics typically will go to Rome for seminary, where it is important to make contacts early on as well as to achieve a reputation as ‘safe’ in terms of doctrine and personal habits.”
It was during these teaching years that Ratzinger caught the eye of the cardinal archbishop of Cologne, Josef Frings, who appointed him his personal peritus (theological expert). Frings was progressive and, having been chairman of the Conference of German Bishops since 1945, was already considered a “legend in European church circles” on theological matters for his speeches and essays. When, in July 1959, Pope John XXIII announced Vatican II, Frings requested that Ratzinger accompany him. In declining health and nearly blind, Frings came to depend on his thirty-five-year-old aide, who, in turn, was greatly inspired by a cardinal who many felt was “positioned to be one of the most influential voices in the council even before it began.”
Many in the church felt hopeful that the three-year council deliberations would signal real change, and Ratzinger, at this stage in his evolution, was certainly among them.
In their simplest form, the two opposing sides at Vatican II were referred to as aggiornamento, progressive “people who wanted to ‘modernize’ the church and bring her into dialogue with the culture,” and ressourcement, conservatives who wished “to recover elements of tradition that had been lost.” As Frings’s right-hand man, there is no doubt, Ratzinger was arguing firmly in favor of the aggiornamento camp; his personal commentary written at the time of Vatican II supports this interpretation of his views. And yet, in less than twenty years, a relatively short time in theological circles, he began to pursue an aggressive campaign of enforcement against the very ideals he argued for during the council.
And so the question remains, intriguing both scholars and critics alike: What exactly happened to cause such a shift in opinion in Joseph Ratzinger?
FAREWELL TO THE IDEALS OF YOUTH
Ratzinger’s own recollections of his theological stance are somewhat contradictory. In a 1993 interview with Time magazine, he maintained that his beliefs had been consistent and unwavering: “I see no break in my views as a theologian [over the years].” Yet in Milestones he recalls that in 1966 he was “deeply troubled by the change in ecclesial climate that was becoming ever more evident,” to the extent that his colleague Cardinal Julius Döpfner “expressed surprise at the ‘conservative streak’ he thought he detected” in the previously liberal scholar.
The beginning of this shift from the liberal “Ratzinger I” toward the conservative “Ratzinger II” manifested itself around the time of his acceptance of a newly created Second Chair in Dogma at the University of Tübingen in the summer of 1966. The waves of social unrest that had been building since the late 1950s and early 1960s finally erupted into worldwide protests in 1968. These protests, often student led, differed in agenda from country to country. In the United States, against a background of fierce opposition to the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. sparked violent clashes between civil rights activists and police; in Czechoslovakia, resistance to Soviet repression gave rise to the short-lived Prague Spring; and in France and other parts of Europe there were general strikes and vast student demonstrations. In Germany, anger on the part of the young that their country and homes were still dominated by leaders and parents with a Nazi past was combined with a rejection of new laws about to be passed that would allow the government to limit civil rights in the case of an emergency. Even in the small city of Tübingen, Ratzinger recalled, “At almost a moment’s notice, there was a change in the ideological ‘paradigm’ by which the students and a part of the teachers thought.… Almost overnight the existentialist model collapsed and was replaced by the Marxist.”
Ratzinger, passionately anti-Marx, now found himself isolated on the left-leaning campus, even among members of his own theological faculty. Having long fought against the reduction of the human struggle to economic or political factors alone, he was horrified by what he saw:
The destruction of theology that was now occurring … was incomparably more radical precisely because it took biblical hope as its basis but inverted it by keeping the religious ardor but eliminating God and replacing him with the political activity of man. Hope remains, but the party takes the place of God, and, along with the party, a totalitarianism that practices an atheistic sort of adoration ready to sacrifice all humanness to its false god. I myself have seen the frightful face of this atheistic piety unveiled, its psychological terror, the abandon with which every moral consideration could be thrown overboard as a bourgeois residue when the ideological goal was at stake.
It is difficult to read this without feeling that Ratzinger’s fears are connected to his experiences living under Nazi rule. As Allen notes, “This was deeply troubling for Ratzinger, who felt he had already lived through one ruinous attempt at the ideological manipulation of the Christian faith in Nazi Germany, and therefore felt himself obliged to resist another.” Despite this, it is still surprising that he gives little credence to the stark differences between Hitler’s manipulation of society and the popular uprisings expressed by citizens, a large majority of whom was opposing political oppression, not the church itself.
When interviewed in 1997, Ratzinger reflected that he “knew what was at stake: anyone who wanted to remain a progressive in this context had to give up his integrity.” But as Gibson notes in The Rule of Benedict, “if the principles of the progressive movement were valid at one time, their misuse by some adherents or outside forces should not automatically invalidate them.” Surely someone as theologically confident and morally principled as Ratzinger, a man who “remains true to his ideals and prides himself on resisting the momentum of the crowd,” would have the strength to stand against what he considered to be a mob?
The exact moment of decision remains a mystery. The dean of Ratzinger’s department at Tübingen, eminent Swiss liberal theologia
n and onetime friend of the future pope Hans Küng, later wrote in his memoirs, “Time and again people puzzle over how so gifted, friendly, open a theologian as Joseph Ratzinger can undergo such a change: from progressive Tübingen theologian to Roman Grand Inquisitor.” Ideological differences would eventually drive an irreparable wedge between the pair. Küng went on to become one of Ratzinger’s most formidable critics, and in return, Ratzinger played an instrumental behind-the-scenes role in rallying German bishops “in support of John Paul II’s decision to strip Küng of his right to call himself a Catholic theologian.”
When a position became available in 1969 at the newly created University of Regensburg, in his beloved Catholic stronghold of Bavaria, Ratzinger, exhausted by the many “controversies experienced during academic meetings” since the “Marxist revolution kindled the whole university with its fervor,” decided to accept. In Milestones he laments how only “a few years before, one could still have expected the theological faculties to represent a bulwark against the Marxist temptation. Now the opposite was the case: they became its real ideological centre.” His brother, Georg, was also working in the city as director of the prestigious Regensburg Cathedral choir, and the opportunity to develop his own “theology further in a less agitated environment” was too good to pass up. As he had no desire to remain the lone figure “always forced into the contra position,” the role of Second Chair in Dogma at a new university meant he could help shape the institution from the inside, alongside like-minded colleagues. With this decision to withdraw to the safety of an ideologically united institution, Ratzinger was making a concrete move away from his liberal past into the conservative future that awaited him.
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