In my home library of several thousand volumes, only a few authors enjoy the privileged status of occupying several shelves exclusively their own. No one will be surprised to hear that Aristotle and Aquinas are among them; in the music section, Arvo Pärt and G.F. Handel; and for pleasure, P.G. Wodehouse. Joseph Ratzinger belongs to this limited circle of authors whom I regard so highly that I have acquired nearly everything they wrote.
It would be difficult for me to reconstruct at this point the sequence in which I read his works, but for sure it started with The Ratzinger Report. I remember eagerly awaiting each subsequent sparkling interview — Salt of the Earth, God and the World, Light of the World — much as fiction fans might look forward to the latest release by a favorite novelist. As a professor, I sometimes assigned Called to Communion as a text in ecclesiology, Behold the Pierced One as a text in Christology, and Truth and Tolerance as a text in missiology.
At the International Theological Institute in Austria where I taught from 1998 to 2006, I enjoyed the privilege of teaching alongside Fr (then Dr) John Saward at the time he was putting finishing touches on his translation of The Spirit of the Liturgy. Although I had already fallen in love with the classical Roman rite by experiencing it in its recited and sung forms, it was Ratzinger who first opened my eyes to why I loved it — the theological and spiritual rationale. He made my own mind and heart intelligible to me, gave me the language with which to express what had been, prior to that, little more than an intuition and an attraction.
In discussing The Spirit of the Liturgy with fellow appreciators over the past two decades, especially members of the clergy, I learned that it had had the same powerful effect on many of its readers. At last, we had found a highly literate, sophisticated, rather audacious modern theologian who nonetheless knew and loved the Catholic tradition, explained its meaning, rebuked its assailants, and advanced its recovery. That he was the right-hand man of John Paul II and followed him to the Chair of Peter only added to the momentary elation of recovering territory after a series of brutal annexations.
Rejoicing there was, and plenty of it, in the small town of Gaming on that day in April of 2005, when the faculty and students of the ITI learned that Ratzinger had been elected pope. We heard the bells of the town church start ringing like nobody’s business and we knew something was up. (When bells ring like that in Europe, it means one of three things: someone has died; a war has begun; or a pope has been elected!) My wife and I took a short walk downtown to the apartment of some friends who had a TV, and they shouted to us from their upper-storey window: “It’s Ratzinger! Raaaatziiiingerrrrrr!” The rest of the day and week was passed in a sort of stupor, as the magnitude of the event sank in….
To read more, click on Peter Kwasnievski’s Substack, Tradition & Sanity
I loved Pope Benedict XVI. He wrote my most favourite encyclical Deus Caritas Est, God Is Love. The most important commandments love God and love your neighbour.. it’s all about love. God has great love and mercy for each of us . Thank you Pope Benedict XVI for reminding us in your amazing Papal Encyclical.
Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is a very devout, highly intelligent Traditional Catholic professor, speaker, writer, composer, and more– one of the few and finest Catholic intellectual leaders of today. I always appreciate and enjoy hearing what he has to say.
Here is a link to a beautiful “Kyrie” from Dr. Kwasniewski’s “Missa Spe Salve.” Most parish choirs could easily learn to sing this beautiful Mass. Perfect for both the holy Tridentine Latin Mass or a very reverent, holy Novus Ordo Missae:
https://youtu.be/nlpnimFPsDM?is=5z3iz5FEKbfAXrb9
Kwasniewski has written that the Novus Ordo Mass should be abrogated and the Church return to universally celebrating the Tridentine Mass as it was before 1955. In fact, that is his current position. He has charged that the Novus Ordo Mass is spiritually dangerous to attend and so utterly flawed that it cannot be fixed. He has set himself up as his own magisterium in opposition to the Church. I’d say he’s borderline schismatic, if not indeed schismatic. He should not be listened to because his ideas are wacko. He is the darling of the Catholic trads, which probably proves my point.
Dr. Kwasniewski is a highly respectable, devout Catholic theologian and scholar, regardless. One of the finest. You cannot just swallow every little thing that a big scholar says in class. You must decide for yourself. There are a great many immoral Catholic theologians today who are rabid feminists, LGBT promoters, pro choice abortion promoters, woman priest promoters, etc. Dr. Kwasniewski is extremely gifted. Of course, the Catholic Church of today cannot absorb his views. But at least he is standing up for authentic Catholic teaching. We may have hardly anything left of our Church after the Synod on Synodality is fully implemented in all dioceses worldwide– and Canon Law is changed, to put women and laymen in clerical roles.
Loved Pope Benedict, but did not agree with him on every little thing either. He was a great theologian. Wish that he and Pope St. John Paul II had not closed their doors on the day that the poor, sexually abused Calif. kids and their parents flew all the way to the Vatican to see them and tell of their tragedies due to their Satanic parish priest. Makes me cry for them. Loved Pope Benedict’s “Summorum Pontificum”– hope it will be the norm for the Church once again.
Alien, well said.
Alien, see for yourself, the Vatican honestly had some serious, sudden, problematic issues with the text of the New Mass quickly written up at the Vatican. They did not do– as previous scholars all through the centuries— the usual, little improvements here and there on the true, traditional, ancient Catholic Mass standardized by Pope St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century A.D. Under the leadership of Abp. Bugnini at the Vatican, the Consilium did not even follow the concepts drawn up by the Fathers of Vatican II on their liturgical document, “Sacrosanctum Consilium.” Instead, they deviated completely– and wrote up a text for a totally different kind of Mass, similar to modern Protestant Eucharistic liturgies and stripped this text of as many Catholic features as possible in the name of ecumenism. The Catholic Church really changed to a 1960s-style secularized and ecumenical direction at Vatican II. The text of the New Mass was quite shocking. The Canon of the Mass (they later ended up with four Eucharistic Prayers) was acceptable and valid. Dr. Kwasniewski was not even born yet, until the 1970s. He and other younger Catholic scholars must have been shocked at their scholarly discoveries later. For today I think a return to “Summorum Pontificum” is best.The Vatican has been way off since the 1960s.