The Pope is about to publish a book about Jesus. In so doing, he will share his deepest convictions about Jesus Christ....The greatest drama of this pontificate -- greater than the drama of relations with secular humanism or Islam, greater even than the drama of the scandals in the Church -- is the drama occurring within Pope Benedict himself.
It is the drama of a man whose entire formation as a thinker and theologian led him to regard free theological inquiry as the highest intellectual activity of the believing Christian, but whose destiny was to become the Successor of Peter, and as such, the possessor of the Church's binding teaching authority, the Magisterium (the authority to "bind and to loose," to approve and to condemn doctrine and heresies, to teach, ex cathedra, infallibly).
And that is why Benedict's decision to publish a book about Jesus later this spring, but not to give the teaching in the book any magisterial authority whatsoever, is so dramatic.
It is dramatic because it is the decision to withhold magisterial authority from the book that is itself magisterial.
And this decision has profound consequences, both for the exercise of the papal office within the Roman Catholic Church, and for relations with non-Catholics, particularly the Orthodox. For this reason, it is one of the most important decisions of the pontificate thus far, and perhaps a defining one.
The Vatican announced November 21 that the Pope's new book, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, would appear in March. The book's preface and part of its introduction were also handed out.
In the preface (signed "Joseph Ratzinger -- Benedict XVI"), the Pope writes that for decades he has observed an increasing scholarly distinction between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith" (the idea that Jesus 2,000 years ago in Palestine was not at all the Jesus Christ, Son of God, that faith teaches he was).
In essence, Benedict wants to argue that the Jesus depicted in the Gospels, the Jesus who performed miracles and rose from the dead, is the true Jesus -- that the historical Jesus is the same as the Jesus of faith, that the Gospels are not fables.
"I trust the Gospels," the Pope writes. "I wanted to attempt to present the Jesus of the Gospels as the true Jesus, as the ‘historic Jesus,' in the true sense of the expression."
The Pope thinks this is a reasonable position, that it is in keeping with evidence which all of us can examine and judge. He writes: "Only if something extraordinary happened, if the figure and words of Jesus radically exceeded all the hopes and expectations of his age, can his crucifixion and his effectiveness be explained."
The Pope began the book during his 2003 summer vacation, giving the final form to the first four chapters in the summer of 2004.
"After my election to the episcopal see of Rome, I used all of my free moments to work on it," he wrote. "Because I do not know how much time and how much strength I will still be given, I have decided to publish the first 10 chapters."
So what we know from the Pope's own words is that he has used "all of my free moments" to write this book, and that he is so anxious to publish it -- even saying quite openly that he fears he may not live much longer -- that he chose to publish part of it now, even though it isn't yet finished. This means, clearly, that the Pope regards this book as extremely important, even urgent. He has little time left.
And yet, he is not publishing it as a papal encyclical. This is the striking point. He is not making the book that he is working on with all his strength, as the final great work of his life, a part of the papal magisterium.
"This work is not an absolute act of magisterial teaching, but merely an expression of my personal research into the face of the Lord," Benedict writes in the preface. "Therefore, everyone is free to contradict me."
What does this mean?
In a November 21 statement, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said, "The Pope says clearly, with his usual simplicity and humility, that this is not a ‘magisterial act,' but a fruit of his personal research and, as such, can be freely discussed and critiqued. It is not a long encyclical on Jesus, but a personal presentation of the figure of Jesus by the theologian Joseph Ratzinger."
And he added: "At the same time, it is very significant that he, who was elected bishop of Rome and has the task of supporting the faith of his brothers and sisters, felt so strongly called to give us a new presentation of the figure of Jesus."
How are we to understand all this? Why is the Pope writing an extremely important book, but choosing quite consciously to not formulate his teaching magisterially?
The answer is not entirely clear, and all we can do is offer a few possible avenues of interpretation.
Clearly, Benedict does not wish to use his Petrine authority -- at least in this particular case -- in a "maximalist" way. He does not want to issue an encyclical and say, "I as Pope understand Jesus in this way, and I declare that this understanding is part of the Church's magisterial teaching."
Rather, he seems to wish to publish a book about Jesus and offer it to the world as a proposal, as a text for readers to wrestle with and even to criticize.
And, though he states that he does not wish to define anything about Jesus, by choosing this path he implicitly teaches (with papal authority) that the first thing of all, the starting point for all matters of faith, the prerequisite for everything concerning Christian life, is the free conscience of a man wrestling with ultimate questions, wrestling to find God, to find the truth.
And so the great drama of the present pontificate is right in front of us. It is Benedict presenting himself to us, not as an authoritarian Pope -- certainly not as the "Panzer Kardinal" the press for so many years depicted him as being -- and not as the issuer of infallible papal formulations of doctrine, but as a fellow pilgrim. The "first pilgrim," we might almost say, or "first among pilgrims."
In short, the Pope's decision to publish an entire book about Jesus, and to withdraw from that book all magisterial authority, is a magisterial act of the first importance. He is saying -- without using the words -- that "being Peter (for me) means this," that "being the Bishop of Rome means this."
And this has important consequences for the profound crisis the Church is passing through today, which is in part related to the whole question of the role of "Rome" in Roman Catholicism, and to the question of how the Church's unity, doctrinally and administratively, can be preserved in an age where centrifugal forces threaten to tear her apart.
After Pope John Paul II was elected Pope in 1978, he told Ratzinger that he would invite him to Rome, to serve in the Roman Curia. "The Pope told me he intended to summon me to Rome," Ratzinger once told me. "I spelled out the reasons against it and he said: ‘Let's think about it a bit longer.' Then, after the assassination attempt (May 13, 1981), we spoke about it again and he repeated that he felt he had to stick to his original decision. I objected that I felt so bound to theology that I desired to have the right to continue to publish works of a private nature and didn't know whether that would be compatible with this new task."
So a tension between being a "private" and a "magisterial" theologian has always been present in Ratzinger's thought. And it was such an important question to him that he debated it with Pope John Paul II, and for a time declined his invitation to join him in Rome.
Evidently, Ratzinger came to believe that, as other Roman prefects had written as private theologians in the past, so his desire to continue writing as a private theologian was no impediment. And so Ratzinger came to Rome and ceased to be a private theologian.
But Ratzinger brought a new style to the office of prefect of the Congregation of the Faith. His book-length interviews, first with Vittorio Messori (Report on the Faith, 1984), and then with Peter Seewald, offered an analysis of the faith and of the modern crisis of the Church which was all the more powerful and persuasive because it was private and personal, not public and impersonal. Ratzinger's words, not "officious" but blunt and candid, seemed alive and... prophetic.
In other words, Ratzinger's engagement with the issues of our time during his years as prefect came to define the "spirit" needed in this ecclesial generation. (He once used the word "restoration" to describe the needed spirit as opposed to the euphoric -- and amorphous-- "spirit of Vatican II," which had promised so much, but had gone so profoundly off track.)
But -- and this is key -- this spirit of "restoration" was never intended to be a "restoration" of a mold of ecclesial life that had been definitively shattered -- with all the confusion and suffering that entailed -- by the Second Vatican Council and its chaotic, unanticipated aftermath. Ratzinger did not intend to go back to the Counter-Reformation and hurl anathemas. He intended to go forward... but toward what?
That is the question, of course, and it is the question he is answering, in part, by the publication of this new book on Jesus, and by its publication in this way, as a non-magisterial pronouncement.
Clearly, Benedict wants to be read. And he wants those who read him to become engaged in a dialogue, with him and with themselves, but above all with Jesus Christ. And he does not want anything to stand in the way of this possible dialogue, not his triple tiara (which he has quietly removed from his papal coat of arms), not his Petrine prerogative, not even his professorial distinction as one of the leading German theologians of our time.
No, he wants to transcend these possible "barriers" to a true engagement with readers, and that is why he has chosen to publish the new book in this unprecedented, dramatic way. So this new book is not "dry-as-dust theology" but a heartfelt plea to people around the world, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, Christian and non-Christian, to consider the central question of all, which Jesus asked of his disciples: "Who do men say that I am?"
This will be Benedict's answer to that question, and not Benedict as Pope, but Benedict as a man.
When St. Francis of Assisi finally found his vocation, on that day when, not long after the year 1200 in the main square of Assisi, Italy, in front of the entire town, he took off his father's cloak and clothes and stood naked, he became himself: the "little poor man" who took as his bride "Lady Poverty." It was a defining moment for medieval Christendom, which was so tempted to forget the "naked Christ" in the midst of the new commercial wealth and architectural splendor of the High Middle Ages.
This spring, when he publishes his book on Jesus, Benedict will turn 80 years old. He, like Francis, will despoil himself of his "clothes," which in this case are those doctrines and traditions which have elevated yet marginalized the modern Popes as they have attempted to carry out their role as witnesses to Christ in a world that has largely forgotten faith.
He will stand before the world as a simple pilgrim, bearing witness to his own understanding of Jesus Christ, to his own relationship with Jesus Christ, without reliance on the garments of authority in which Vatican I -- in keeping with the perennial understanding of the essential infallibility of the papal magisterium -- clothed him. Removing himself from the eminence and authority of the Chair of Peter, he will practice what he has preached and what Jesus preached: he will present himself as one exegete among many exegetes.
He will sit in the marketplace with contemporaries, many of whom have contradicted, scorned, worked against his view of Jesus Christ. He will invite criticism.
Inevitably this preface, and the book itself, will be compared with the talk Ratzinger gave to many of the leading practitioners of the historical-critical method of scriptural analysis, including Raymond Brown, in January 1988 in New York. (The occasion was the annual Erasmus Lecture sponsored by the ecumenical Rockford Institute's Center on Religion and Society.)
In his new preface, Ratzinger makes every effort to identify with scriptural interpreters and praise whatever scholarly enlightenment has resulted from the historical-critical method.
In 1988, the first thing the cardinal did was to remind the assembled scholars that one of the great creative visionaries of the previous century, the Russian theologian Vladimir Soloviev (in his haunting History of the Antichrist) had described the Antichrist, "the eschatological enemy of the redeemer," as "a famous exegete." Ratzinger elaborated: "He had earned his doctorate in theology at Tubingen and had written an exegetical work which was recognized as pioneering in the field."
There is no such sharp and ironic tone in the new preface. This is the change which has taken place between Ratzinger the cardinal and Ratzinger the Pope. Now he invites his hearers to follow the case he will make and pastorally pleads with them to carefully consider what he will say about Jesus.
He has become a fisher of men.
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