Benedict XVI continues to speak to the world

One year after his death, scholars and friends illuminate his life and work

By ITV staff/NCR

Conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, titled “Benedict XVI’s Legacy: Unfinished Debates on Faith, Culture and Politics,” November 29, 2023 (Photo: Isabella H. de Carvalho/Aleteia)

Despite the now 11 years that have passed since Pope Benedict XVI abdicated the papal throne, Catholics around the world remain determined to uphold and expand the legacy of the late Pope Emeritus — a legacy that Benedict biographer and friend Peter Seewald recently described as “being erased.” To this end, a November 29 conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, titled “Benedict XVI’s Legacy: Unfinished Debates on Faith, Culture and Politics,” was held to discuss Benedict XVI’s analysis of human rights by focusing on a speech he gave at the United Nations in 2008.

Bottom, Former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon

The conference, the first in a series which continues at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, USA, April 8-9, 2024, was sponsored by Notre Dame’s De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, The Vatican Foundation Joseph RatzingerBenedict XVI, and the Benedict XVI Institute of Regensburg, Germany. Harvard Law professor emerita and former American Ambassador to the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon, 85, gave the keynote speech at the conference honoring the life and work of Pope Benedict XVI a year after his death.

Glendon told her listeners that on the plane on his way to the USA in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI had reminded journalists that his impending visit to the UN on the occasion of the anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights was especially significant, as the world was experiencing a “crisis in values” — a crisis that is, if anything, more dire today.

In his UN speech, she related, he began by explaining his appreciation for this document before following with “the most cautionary, sober, discussion of human rights that has ever been issued from a papal pen before or since.” According to Professor Glendon, among the “10 threats to the human rights project” identified by Benedict in his writing and speaking, particularly relevant today is that the “concept of human dignity is highly contested,” clouding the understanding of the foundation of human rights. Another she highlighted is Benedict XVI’s analysis that there has been a shift from “the protection of human dignity” generally understood towards “the satisfaction of simple interests — often particular” ones.

Opposite page, top: Fr. Vincent Twomey, professor emeritus of moral theology and a student and friend of Joseph Ratzinger

“Efforts seem to have steadily increased to achieve international recognition as rights for claims that have neither broad consensus around the world nor firm grounding in international law, and that has become a major contributor to the human rights crisis,” she said.

Glendon was actually present at the UN when Benedict gave his 2008 speech, for which he received a standing ovation. The former ambassador viewed the applause as honoring the Pope “as a global moral witness.”

“I think also […] it was in gratitude for hearing a few words of truth being spoken by someone who wasn’t there just as a representative of a sovereign entity that was his own, but who was speaking to all of humanity,” she concluded.

Professors Jean-Pierre Schouppe (Pontifical University of Santa Croce) and Laurent Trigeaud (Université de Paris Panthéon-Assas) also spoke in reference to Professor Glendon’s remarks.

The conference preceded by one day the ceremony awarding the 2023 Ratzinger Prize to Professors Francesc Torralba Roselló and Pablo Blanco Sartoat in the Apostolic Palace in Rome.

Life, Teaching, Legacy

A second conference celebrating the legacy of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, titled “Remembering Benedict XVI: Life, Teaching, Legacy,” was held a month later, on December 30-31, 2023, and co-hosted by EWTN, the Fundatio Christiana Virtus, and the Vatican Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation, drawing on scholars, experts, and some of his friends. It took place at the Campo Santo Teutonico within the Vatican walls. Divine Word Missionary Fr. Vincent Twomey, former Holy See Press Office director Federico Lombardi, SJ, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, EWTN’s editorial director Matthew Bunson, Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, Fr. Ralph Weinmann and Archbishop Georg Gänswein, longtime personal secretary to Pope Benedict, all participated in the 2-day conference.

Ratzinger’s writings a key to liberation

Fr. Twomey, 82, told an interviewer after his remarks that Benedict’s “lasting legacy will be his writings… all his writings as professor, from different stages, his writings as archbishop, as cardinal, as prefect and as Pope… they all have a marvelous richness and ultimately they are inspired, in the human fashion at least, by an extraordinary love for Jesus Christ.

“Of course the world has gone crazy because there is no longer a public acceptance of God and therefore of the limits, moral limits, of what we can do… But he was full of hope, in God the Creator… which means that no matter what we do, man cannot destroy it…”

“Wherever there are men and women, and very often children, who recognize the truth,” continued Fr. Twomey, “then God becomes present in that society. My great hope for the future is the young people I know of, who have discovered [Ratzinger’s] writings; they are, as it were, the key to their ‘livelihood’ so they can be liberated from this terrible darkness that surrounds us.

“All these problems today are forms of escapism… suicide, alcohol, drugs, sex… all forms of escape, because man hos lost the heart of transcendence. And then there is no hope, no faith, and no love…”

“He was going to a friend”

Archbishop Gänswein, 67, noted how prophetic Benedict XVI was in his teaching and writing, and how he had warned “decades earlier” that when society forgets God, everything implodes. He also remembered how, for Benedict, reason and faith were “the great themes of his life and also as Pope,” and how he saw beauty at the service of truth.

“Beauty is the little sister of the truth, the fruit of the truth,” the archbishop said, recalling Benedict’s teaching. “Where there is truth there is beauty; people sense that by heart and that’s very important.”

Archbishop Gänswein told the conference that Benedict “practiced what he had always taught: to prepare the way to eternal life.” He added, “My impression was that he was going to a friend, a friend to whom he was dedicated all his life.”

Christianity is not a theory, but a relationship

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith

Reflecting on the centrality of Christ in Benedict’s theology, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, 76, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, said “Joseph Ratzinger’s entire Christology and piety for Christ is a unique testimony to Jesus who leads us in our faith and brings us to perfection.”

The German cardinal, who founded the Benedict XVI Institute to make available Joseph Ratzinger’s collected works, said Benedict XVI “confessed during his lifetime that [Christ] is truly risen, that he is the living God, that we trust in him and so know we are on the right path.” Christianity for Joseph Ratzinger, the cardinal reminded the audience, “is not a theory but a relationship with a Person, our Savior.”

“In the Eucharist we are united with Benedict XVI”

At a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to mark Benedict’s passing on December 31, 2022, Gänswein spoke of how the Church’s faithful, both her living members and “deceased loved ones,” are united through the Eucharist.

“In the Eucharist we also remain united with Benedict XVI,” he said, “sincerely grateful to God for the gift of his life, the richness of his magisterium, the depth of his theology and the shining example of this ‘simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.’ Amen.”

Was Benedict XVI’s Pontificate a Success or a Failure?

Introductory remarks for a conference on “Benedict XVI’s Legacy: Unfinished Debates on Faith, Culture, and Politics,” held in Rome on November 29, 2023, by a noted historian and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University

By Fr. Roberto Regoli

Author Fr. Roberto Regoli points his finger at Archbishop George Gänswein on the occasion of the presentation of Regoli’s book, Beyond the crisis of the Church: The pontificate of Benedict XVI in the great hall of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where Joseph Ratzinger taught in 1972-1973

Let us begin with a clear and straightforward question: Was Benedict XVI’s pontificate a success or a failure? What does “success” or “failure” mean when it comes to a pontificate? It’s impossible to give a short, simple answer. I can only go back to an event that took place over a thousand years ago.

Gregory VII, a zealous, reforming Pope who confronted major crises in the Church in the 11th century, died in exile in Salerno. His pontificate seemed to end in failure. And yet it was the most important pontificate of the entire second millennium. It gave later Christianity its character and left a permanent imprint on the exercise of Church governance. Benedict XVI was not in exile, but he was hidden from the world.

It is from this perspective that we can think about Benedict XVI’s legacy. After his election in 2005, it seemed that Benedict was going to be a transitional pontiff because of his advanced age and the fact that he was unlikely to deviate from the general magisterial approach of his predecessor, John Paul II. Yet the reality at the moment of his resignation in 2013 did not conform with these initial expectations. His pontificate proved to be much more significant. It was not the pontificate of “restoration,” which many feared — and others hoped — it would be. More than anything else, it was a pontificate of consolidation, one that also raised the stakes and took risks. Benedict XVI knew how to confront the sexual abuse crisis.

Benedict XVI’s pontificate was also one of ecclesial and papal reform. It was no coincidence that the Pope coordinated a simultaneous, systematic reform on the liturgical and theological fronts through “ecumenical” initiatives (primarily with the Lefebvrites and the Anglicans), as well as on the canonical front (changing the 1983 Code with the creation of “personal ordinariates”).

Peter Seewald once asked Benedict: “Are you the end of the old or the beginning of the new?” He responded: “Both.” The question and the answer are short and concise. His pontificate eschews all rigid categories.

Benedict built on the foundation laid by John Paul II, who focused on the themes of anthropology and the defense of the human person, preparing the ground for a consistent teaching on politics and bioethics.

The central themes that emerged from Benedict’s pontificate were human rights and religious freedom. These themes were addressed from a specifically theological, rather than philosophical or political, perspective. Benedict believed that, because the state can only ever be a civitas terrena and never a civitas Dei, authentic Christianity must avoid both theologizing politics and politicizing theology.

The pontificate of Benedict XVI did not compromise with Western societies that rejected God’s truth. At the same time, Benedict XVI knew that it was important to recognize that the moral truths present in modernity come from Christianity. Modernity is not a monolith. Various elements of value are found within it. According to Benedict, however, only a theological vision can fully explain the basis of those values.

Benedict XVI’s general approach provoked many reactions in the intellectual world. While the radical neo-Enlightenment crowd never budged, figures such as Marcello Pera, an Italian philosopher and former president of the Italian Senate, decided to explore and compare his own thinking openly with Benedict’s. There was also an extraordinary conversation between Ratzinger and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in 2004, as well as an exchange between Italian Marxist intellectuals and Ratzinger’s theology.

Benedict XVI urged the Church to engage with an ever-growing number of cultural, political, and ethical phenomena. Without excessively worrying about reaching a perfect consensus, the Pope launched processes that would lead to significant encounters and dialogues about man’s ultimate identity. In doing so, he roused up supporters and naysayers alike. His private deliberations about a possible resignation, however, may have stunted the natural development of these new pathways.

In the face of all this, the initial question returns: How are we to evaluate this pontificate?

Only an immersion in Ratzinger’s point of view will help us arrive at a proper consideration of his legacy. For his gaze was fixed on Christ. In the end, it is “recognizing that the traditio of the faith is precisely a matter of the exchange of glances” — our responses to Christ’s loving gaze — “which taste of history, and which make history.”

Benedict himself gave an assessment of his pontificate on February 27, 2013, the day before the sede vacante began:

“It has been a portion of the Church’s journey which has had moments of joy and light, but also moments which were not easy; I have felt like St. Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: the Lord has given us so many days of sun and of light winds, days when the catch was abundant; there were also moments when the waters were rough and the winds against us, as throughout Church history, and the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I have always known that the Lord is in the boat, and I have always known that the boat of the Church is not mine but his. Nor does the Lord let it sink; it is he who guides it, surely also through those whom he has chosen, because he so wished. This has been, and is, a certainty which nothing can shake.” 

Benedict XVI’s legacy is thus one of radical faith in God. Moreover, in a tired and self-destructive era that exalts man but, in the end, continuously humiliates him, Benedict XVI chose both faith in God and in man. He chose the harmony between faith and reason. This is his legacy.