I took time yesterday to watch a new presentation which will be shown tomorrow on Bavarian TV, entitled "Ein Besuch bei Papst Benedikt XVI. em. Klein Bayern im Vatikan". It is very nicely done, but will no doubt serve at some point in the future for a leave-taking from the Emeritus, who works much frailer than perhaps he is at the moment. Lord knows!
Indeed more interesting for me than the lovely video was the book I read over Christmas: LAST TESTAMENT In his own words Pope Benedict XVI. With Peter Seewald, translated by Jacob Phillips. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2016. Kindle Edition. The book has been around for a couple years, but for some strange reason only now came to my attention. Never too late, I highly recommend the read for the insights it provides into the will or intention of Benedict XVI. I have confidence that the interview gives a faithful impression of the Pope Emeritus. Here things seem to me to come into proper perspective. The book includes discussions which I guess I had somehow missed or not properly weighed in the past.
For as much, however, as I perceive myself belonging to an older generation, this book has helped me see Joseph Ratzinger as an outstanding example of an even older generation than my own whose concerns just do not make book for me. What I mean by that is his generation's preoccupation with somehow getting beyond St. Thomas and Scholasticism. The so-called Ratzingerian Augustinianism with its roots in Sacred Scripture and its pretense of somehow being more existential, but yet typical of him and his three volumes on Jesus, faithfully bound to the great tradition and firmly anchored in the Person of Jesus Christ.
This book let me appreciate more fully to what extent Pope Benedict XVI stands there as a beacon and way finder. The notion "In his own words" is terribly important toward understanding how this man who is fully a man of Vatican II still manages the critical distance which may some day allow the watershed event of the Catholic Church in the 20th Century make a contribution to the work of evangelization in the 21st Century.
While that prophet or doctor of the Church may not yet have been born who will enable us to get a handle on all we have gone through in my life time, Benedict stands head and shoulders above his contemporaries in offering counsel and direction. I suggest this book should be obligatory reading for those who would carry on the essential work of sorting out the Church's recent past and getting us better on track.
Indeed more interesting for me than the lovely video was the book I read over Christmas: LAST TESTAMENT In his own words Pope Benedict XVI. With Peter Seewald, translated by Jacob Phillips. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2016. Kindle Edition. The book has been around for a couple years, but for some strange reason only now came to my attention. Never too late, I highly recommend the read for the insights it provides into the will or intention of Benedict XVI. I have confidence that the interview gives a faithful impression of the Pope Emeritus. Here things seem to me to come into proper perspective. The book includes discussions which I guess I had somehow missed or not properly weighed in the past.
For as much, however, as I perceive myself belonging to an older generation, this book has helped me see Joseph Ratzinger as an outstanding example of an even older generation than my own whose concerns just do not make book for me. What I mean by that is his generation's preoccupation with somehow getting beyond St. Thomas and Scholasticism. The so-called Ratzingerian Augustinianism with its roots in Sacred Scripture and its pretense of somehow being more existential, but yet typical of him and his three volumes on Jesus, faithfully bound to the great tradition and firmly anchored in the Person of Jesus Christ.
This book let me appreciate more fully to what extent Pope Benedict XVI stands there as a beacon and way finder. The notion "In his own words" is terribly important toward understanding how this man who is fully a man of Vatican II still manages the critical distance which may some day allow the watershed event of the Catholic Church in the 20th Century make a contribution to the work of evangelization in the 21st Century.
While that prophet or doctor of the Church may not yet have been born who will enable us to get a handle on all we have gone through in my life time, Benedict stands head and shoulders above his contemporaries in offering counsel and direction. I suggest this book should be obligatory reading for those who would carry on the essential work of sorting out the Church's recent past and getting us better on track.
tolle et lege!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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