I felt my phone buzz in my pocket as I stared blank-minded at my freshman biology test and risked several days’ detention and flunking to see who it was. The length of the buzz indicated it was a call, not a text. In those days, anyone who had my number knew I couldn’t answer the phone during school, so I figured it must have been some kind of emergency. The preview screen read out the name of my parish youth minister. I hurried to finish my exam and went straight to the vice principal’s office to return her call.
She told me the parish suddenly had an extra ticket to attend Mass with Pope Benedict XVI in Washington the next day. It was mine if I wanted it, and I did. I couldn’t imagine who in their right mind would have passed up the opportunity, but I was too excited to ask. I told my teachers I’d be missing school, and that was that.
At that point, my scope of the Church had a two block radius. After 10 years of parochial school, I attended the Catholic high school that exists within my parish’s boundaries. The Catholic Church, to me, consisted of those two institutions and the dozens of people I knew between them. When I stepped off the metro at Navy Yard the following day, the length of that radius was multiplied by a power of, approximately, infinity. People everywhere, of every culture and ethnicity, of every age and walk of life, all united by their Catholic faith and eager desire to catch a glimpse of the pope.
I obviously had no idea of it at the time, but Pope Benedict’s position in the greatest theological debate of his career was manifesting before my eyes. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, then-Cardinal Ratzinger argued publicly against Cardinal Walter Kasper on the relation between the universal Church and particular, local churches (read: dioceses). I don’t have time to fully flesh out their debate here (although I will in this month’s Catholic 301 course), but Ratzinger’s position, in a nutshell, is that the universal Church exists in being and in time before every particular church. Kasper argued instead that the universal Church only exists in and not apart from particular churches. There is no idea of dog out there that is separate from any actual dog. The universal lives only within its particulars.
Ratzinger thought Kasper’s view was flawed, because it reduces the universal Church to an empirical reality and, thus, a merely human organization. According to Kasper, you can only see the universal Church when you look at the Church as you find it in Corinth, or Rottenburg-Stuttgart (where Kasper was ordinary), or Baltimore, or anywhere else. Outside of them, the universal Church simply does not exist. Kasper’s position is attractive, for it seems to save us from living only in the realm of ideas, but Ratzinger points out this is not the Church as taught by the Fathers:
The Fathers were convinced of the identity of the Church and Israel, and were therefore not able to see the Church as something that accidentally came into being at the last hour, and rather recognized in this gathering of the peoples under the will of God as the inner teleology of creation.1
In other words, the universal Church comes before any particular church, because the universal Church has always existed in the eternal mind of God and has been gradually coming into existence since the very beginning of the world as the world’s proper end (telos). Creation tends from its first instant toward its fulfillment in the Church. Therefore, the universal Church must exist before any particular Church, otherwise creation would have been lacking its end and, thus, meaningless.
So, on that day in Washington, in all the people gathered to see the pope, I saw the nations, and all creation, pressing on toward their end: union with Christ through the Church. In all his apostolic voyages around the world, I can’t help but think the same thought must have crossed Pope Benedict’s mind as he looked out over the crowds. Looking back, I can draw that connection because I have read and thought about Ratzinger’s theology more than anyone else’s. But in 2008, I could barely even understand him when he spoke. I remember thinking, sitting high in the nosebleeds of Nationals Park, that I couldn’t wait to get home and read his homily online to know what he said.
But that day, for me then, was more about witness than it was theology. Pope Benedict was a witness to Jesus Christ and to his Church — a witness bold, confident, and joyful. I left the stadium that day sure that I wanted to be the same. I had thought about becoming a priest in the past, and it would take a few more dramatic events to push me over the edge, but that day unmistakably led me to find my vocation and has, in truth, sustained me in it ever since.
As I learned after the fact, the extra ticket had belonged to my associate pastor, who had just been admitted to the hospital and had to give it up. He died about six weeks later, which more than anything, caused me to discern priesthood seriously, but that’s a story for another day.
When I began to take theology classes in college seminary, I finally got around to reading him, beginning with Deus Caritas Est. From there, I took up the Jesus of Nazareth trilogy for spiritual reading. Both taught me what is fundamental to the Christian life: relationship with Christ through the Church — a truth to which Benedict’s own life, more than any of his books or articles, bears compelling witness.
After the papal Mass of 2008, the next and only time I would again be in the physical presence of Pope Benedict XVI was in St. Peter’s Square on December 8, 2015 when Pope Francis inaugurated the Year of Mercy. The crowd, rather worn out from standing outside for hours on a cold, rainy Roman day, erupted in applause when the monitors showed him greeting Pope Francis before his successor opened the Holy Door. From then on, my only sight of him would be from his light in the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, which could be seen from the rooftop of the seminary: a faithful sign that he kept vigil for the Church of which he once was supreme shepherd.
Every theologian and student of theology eventually lands on and claims a great theologian as his own touchstone. With the entirety of my theological education coming at the hands of the Dominicans, I was sure for most of my studies that mine was Saint Thomas Aquinas. At the Angelicum in Rome, the program of study for the bachelor (S.T.B.) degree followed, generally, the structure of the Summa Theologiae, and I finished with the conviction that the Thomistic revival was the only way to go — i.e., the only viable alternative to whatever the Jesuits taught around the corner at the Gregorian. When I returned to the Angelicum for the licentiate (S.T.L.), I expected more of the same and to emerge a full-throttled Thomist.
In the year I had been back home on pastoral year, the faculty at the Angelicum had made a significant shift. A few bright, young American Dominicans came aboard, who brought not only enthusiasm for the Thomistic project, but also familiarity, sympathy, and — dare I say! — affection for the theology of the Communio school. I had heard these names before — Balthasar, de Lubac, and of course, Ratzinger — but I had never read them, except for a quick skim of The Spirit of the Liturgy for my bachelor-level liturgy exam.
New also to the faculty was a young German professor, a member of the Neuer Schülerkreis, a group of theologians carrying out research on the thought of Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI. In my first semester of the program, I was enrolled in his seminar on the crisis of faith and morals in the Church today. The commanding text of that course was the pope emeritus’ 2019 essay, “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse”, through which he introduced us to the whole of his theology. What Benedict saw at the root of every moral deprivation in the Church was an even more fundamental deprivation of faith:
A world without God can only be a world without meaning. For where, then, does everything that is come from? In any case, it has no spiritual purpose. It is somehow simply there and has neither any goal nor any sense. Then there are no standards of good or evil. Then only what is stronger than the other can assert itself. Power is then the only principle. Truth does not count, it actually does not exist. Only if things have a spiritual reason, are intended and conceived - only if there is a Creator God who is good and wants the good - can the life of man also have meaning.
Without God, there can be no truth in the world; and without truth, morality is conditioned only by power: the powerful exert their contrived moral code, convinced of its righteousness, upon the rest. The way forward, then, required a return to faith. Only believing in God could save the Church from further scandal. But how could faith be restored?
Before I read any of this, I was already enrolled in the dogmatics section of my licentiate program. I had sensed, as anyone, the great need for intellectual formation in the Church, but my theological education to this point had led me to the conviction that discursive theology was the solution to the problem. I chose to study dogmatics so that I could teach theology wherever and however my bishop would like, most probably within a parish setting. Readers of this site are aware I have not abandoned that conviction in the slightest. But Ratzinger introduced me to another, more important form of theological education: the liturgy.
The Church has long operated according to the expression lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of prayer is the law of belief. What the Church believes should be expressed in the way the Church prays. The liturgy, while always first and foremost an act of divine worship, should not fail to form those who worship to know and to love the God it adores.
From then on, my interest in Ratzinger in particular and dogmatic theology in general turned liturgical. In the end, my licentiate thesis argued for a renewed liturgical vision, according to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, that would bolster the Church’s faith and galvanize her work of evangelization. Joseph Ratzinger, by a long shot, was my most cited theological source. What he taught me I bring with me, as best I can, to the altar whenever I celebrate the sacred liturgy. And when people compliment me on a beautiful Mass, my heart thanks the Lord for Pope Benedict XVI, who continues to teach me how to celebrate, on the inside and on the out.
When I saw the news of his passing, I was flooded with both grief and joy. His death was not unexpected. We had been praying for him to meet the Lord for the last-half of the week prior. Yet I still felt as though I had lost a spiritual father, a friend, and a mentor. I am a priest today because of Benedict XVI, and I owe the kind of priest I am to him, as well. But in Christian hope, I believe that, for him, life is changed, not ended, and pray that he would continue to inspire and guide me in whatever time on earth the Lord grants me to serve his Church as a priest.
Pope Benedict XVI, pray for us!
Joseph Ratzinger, “On the Relation of the Universal Church and the Local Church in Vatican II”.