Even since they were introduced at the end of the Sixties, the annual meetings between Professor Ratzinger and his circle of former students/theologians have explored all areas of the vast world of theology, philosophy and history of the Church. This opening of horizons was inspired by the doktorvater himself; his intention was never to create a theological clique fossilised into his own conventions on method and content. “If Joseph Ratzinger’s aim was to imprint something specific in the minds of his PhD students” said Stephan Otto Horn, Benedict XVI’s former assistant and current coordinator of Ratzinger’s Schülerkreis, “I think this is above all an effort on their part to open their eyes to the whole wide spectrum of faith and to the whole fullness of theological perspectives.”
Having said this, ecumenism and relations with Churches and communities that were born out of the Protestant Reform - which is at the centre of the meeting currently taking place in Castel Gandolfo – have always been of primary interest for the former professor-turned-Pope and his students.
During his teaching days in Tübingen, the circle started organising semesterly meetings with professors and famous theologians from outside the faculty – an idea introduced by Peter Kuhn, a former assistant of Professor Ratzinger’s. The series of meetings was inaugurated in 1967 with a group visit to Basel, to meet the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth, who apparently died a few months later.
Kuhn recalled that at the time, Barth had been busy studying the Dei Verbum Constitution on the Sacred Scriptures, prepared during the Second Vatican Council “with an interest and seriousness that were far superior to that witnessed in Catholic circles.” In the 70’s, when Ratzinger moved to Regensburg to teach, the Bavarian theologian’s students had been able to examine, alongside Professor Wilfried Joest, the comparison between Luther’s concept of faith and that which merged from the Council of Trent.
At the end of the summer semester on 1975, a meeting with another great Protestant theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg acted as inspiration for discussions on Christological questions. In July 1978, the brainstorming sessions held by Ratzinger’s circle of former students took place during a two day meeting with his old friend and colleague, Heinrich Schlier, a great Lutheran exegete who had converted to Catholicism. By now, Ratzinger had been appointed Archbishop of Munich and cardinal.
In 1987, when Ratzinger was in Rome as Prefect of the former Holy Office, his former students met in Eternal City to celebrate the achievements of their former professor and listen to the reflections of Fr. Pierre Duprey – who at the time was secretary of the Vatican dicastery for ecumenism – on papal infallibility seen from an ecumenical perspective. In 1988, the annual Schülerkreis meeting was hosted by the Orthodox Centre of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy and focused on controversial issues in the dialogue between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
The ecumenical imprint of the Schülerkreis meetings, which is evident in the types of subjects discussed, is always fostered by the special concern of its members regarding the question of Christian unity and especially the dialogue between Catholicism and Evangelical and Lutheran ecclesial communities.
The aforementioned Professor Peter Kuhn, who is a Judaism expert and was one of Ratzinger’s assistants during his teaching years in Tübingen. Kuhn comes from a Lutheran family and joined the Catholic faith as an adult. Church historian Vincenz Pfnür, who was Ratzinger’s student during his Bonn days, is also an “inveterate” ecumenist and staunch supporter of the possibility of a Catholic consensus on the Augsburg Confession, the confession of faith written by the Lutheran Filippo Melantone.
And we must not forget the Professor of Ecumenical Theology, Heinz Schütte who passed away in 2007. Always keen to promote his professor’s openness initiatives to the Protestant world, Schütte had attended private meetings held by a small informal work group - which included Ratzinger, the Bavarian Lutheran Bishop, Johannes Hanselmann and Lutheran theologian Joachim Track – which worked on the Joint Catholic-Lutehran Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, in the summer of 1998.
This was finally given full approval, paving the way for the next signature, added in December 1999.