BOOKS BY AND ON BENEDICT

In the preceding page of this thread, Benefan posted a delightful TIME article about Rabbi Jacob Neusner - it took someone 6 weeks to finally think of getting in touch with the Rabbi! The first Italian accounts of the book after it was presented initially on April 13 all mentioned the prominent place Neusner has in JON. And yet, no American writer - as I have been saying, not even the usually unscoopable John Allen - thought of seeking him out, and I found that strange. If I had had the time, I would have done so myself.

And on the topic of this post, in the preceding page, we have an account of the Paris presentation of the Pope's book by Cardinal Martini, by Patrice de Plunkett, who also describes the presentation made by Archbishop Dore, which seems from this account to be more compelling than Martini's (and I hope it will come out in full somewhere). Then there is a translation of Cardinal Martini's full presentation, and then a report by John Allen about that presentation.

Here we have contrasting reactions to Martini's presentation that came out today in Corriere della Sera.


Faith and research:
A confrontation on 'Jesus of Nazareth'

On the side of the Pope:

The cardinal demotes the book
to a purely spiritual meditation
By VITTORIO MESSORI


Carlo Maria Martini always deserves careful attention. Of course, in the awareness that he is a great interpreter of the tradition of the Society of Jesus. For the sons of St. Ignatius, nothing is unambiguous ('Numquam nega, raro adfirma' - Never deny, rarely vouch - goes one of their mottoes), whereas the obligatory Catholic strategy of 'et et' [not only, but also] - never 'aut aut' [either or] - could lead to ambiguity. Obviously, in the most noble sense.

And so, the unsuspecting reader can be mistaken, reading the final praises of Martini for the book on Jesus written by Benedict XVI as professor Joseph Ratzinger: "I think the book is very beautiful, it reads quite easily, and it makes us better understand Jesus Son of God as well as the author's great faith."

Thus spoke the emeritus Archbishop of Milan, apparently enthusiastic.

But whoever was listening with practised ears would be alarmed at that reference to 'the author's faith.' An alarm which first sounded, clearly, in the preceding sentence: "This work is a great and ardent testimony about Jesus of Nazareth and his significance for the history of mankind."

With a corollary that sounded edifying but in which the less charitable might discern an ironic smile: "It is always comforting to read testimony like this."

In fact, Martini's review - read at UNESCO headquarters, in the presence of representatives from the diffident French bishops conference - seemed constructed to relocate Ratzinger's book from the shelves of biblical exegesis to those on spiritual texts, of edifying reflections and personal testimonies.

The cardinal, who was an illustrious professor of New Testament criticism at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, reminds us immediately that Ratzinger "is not a Biblical scholar but a theologian, and although he moves agilely within the exegetic literature of his time, he has not made firsthand studies, for instance, on the critical texts of the New Testament."

Ratzinger is made to appear here almost as an untrained layman, who is moreover not up-to-date, stalled in the exegesis of 'his time' - not 'our time' but 'his time', which means, the Bavarian theologian has remained 30 years behind, stuck in the time he was a professor.

And so, Professor Martini immediately points to some errors, equivocations or conclusions that a specialist like him cannot share, like the attribution of the Fourth Gospel to John of Zebedee.[Which is a misleading statement! I would love to see how Ratzinger wrote in German what seems to me rather clear on p. 223 of the English edition - "...it remains an open question whether the author [of the Fourth Gospel] is one and the same person [as the author of Revelation], and on pp 226-227 of the English translation, "I entirely concur with the conclusion that...'the author of the Gospel of John' is, as it were, the literary executor of the favorite disciple'"(the executor being one John the Presbyter)]

Therefore, it is implied, this book of Ratzinger's is not a 'scientific' book, certainly not up to confronting the historical-critical method which he would like to put into perspective. It is rather a pastoral and an apologetics text, "a meditation on the figure of Jesus and the consequences of his coming for the present time."

What a suave, elegant and drastic downgrading which does not contradict the final words of Martini: "I myself thought, toward the end of my days, of writing a book on Jesus ... Now it seems that this work by Joseph Ratzinger corresponds to my desires and expectations, and I am very happy that he wrote it..."

Words that should be read in the light of the notice he issued at the beginning that Ratzinger in this book proposes himself as a scholar and not as Pope.

Agreed, Martini says, but "we think it will not be easy for a Catholic to contradict what is written in these pages."

So, when one is a cardinal - even if retired in Jerusalem - how can one now propose a book with a very different reading of the relationship between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the faith? Best to postpone, at least for now. Even patience is an Ignatian virtue.

Corriere della sera, 25 maggio 2007

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Melloni is probably not responsible for the headline they gave his article - because Benedict clearly and explicitly is not writing here ex officio or ex cathedra! And it is obvious that Melloni only used Martini as the pretext to launch his own critique of Benedict and his book.

On the side of Martini:

'The office cannot abolish
the efforts of the exegetes'
By ALBERTO MELLONI


The presentation of the Pope's book by Cardinal Martini shows the potential problems posed by a work which follows, within the papal service, the style by which Cardinal Ratzinger, though prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, took the liberty of entering theological discussion as a privatus magister, a private teacher. That is what he has done in his recent book on Jesus. [So, what is wrong with that?]

He says he asks simply for a friendly ear to the theses that he expresses. But, as Martini notes, it is not really easy to distinguish these aspects (Ratzinger as Ratzinger, and Ratzinger as Pope) and to read this work as though it were by just any other author. Not only because of the cover but because of its contents. [Sure it is easy to distinguish! But what he says in the book as a pastor, he could say as Father Joseph Ratzinger, not as Pope Benedict. So what is the problem? Melloni said 'potential problems' in his first sentence. Where's the rest of it?]

Certainly, it would have been a previous service if this JESUS OF NAZARETH opened a very calm and very profound discussion on the status of historico-critical exegesis, on the reasons for the indifference it meets in too many Catholic preachings, on the disdain with which it is treated by slapdash ignorant conservatives, on the reasons why the figure of Christ is increasingly descending in the horizon of Christian life, on its abandonment to sectarian edulcoration or to slipshod approaches stimulated by a desire for anti-enlightenment revenge.

But we all know that it is a remote hypothesis. [Because none of the above was ever Ratzinger's intention - and he couldn't have been clearer about his intentions! A book should be reviewed according to what it purports to be, not according to what the reader expects it to be, especially if expressly not the author's intention. It's a 'personal search', not a textbook!]

Yes, Cardinal Martini, from the height of his competence as a scholar of New Testament text, [As opposed,that is, to the lowliness of Ratzinger's scholarship???? Why, all of a sudden, is Ratzinger's scholarship, which has been one of the few positive things no one disputed about him through the decades, so disdained?] protected by his cardinal's rank and by his luminous testimony of Christian wisdom, can allow himself some caution when Ratzinger's book shows the disinterest of someone who thinks that, basically, all the laborious work of generations of exegetes can be liquidated in a few sentences? [What a dishonest, fallacious and condescending view which totally misrepresents Ratzinger's attitude towards historico-critical exegesis, about which he is quite explicit in the book. He's not trying to liquidate anyone's work nor the method. He's expressing his opposition to the conclusions reached by most of them, and telling us why. Surely he is entitled to do that!]

For many others, for all others, to question the method and the positions taken in a non-magisterial book by the Roman Pontiff means taking a risk, which is never positive in the Church. [There speaks the familiar bigot Melloni, who is among the 'spirit of Vatican II' theorizers who believe they,not the Pope and the hierarchy, represent the Church!]

We must be aware of that, just as we must appreciate that Martini, once again, has chosen to defend the legitimacy of a 'different' position on something, different from what is allowed or expected. [This is perhaps the worst offense Melloni can make against Ratzinger - that he was not sincere when he said 'Everyone is free to contradict me', from a man who has lived for at least 25 years as the target of the worst calumnies against his person and against his thinking, and has survived it all because he is 'pure of heart'.

At the same time, one must be calmly aware that Ratzinger's book, even as Pope, does not remedy (if at all, it aggravates) the problem of problems of Catholicism in the past 250 years, that of the culture of the clergy. [Huh???]

The book legitimizes, with the authority of fine intellect, a dangerous diffidence to research, in the name of a theological eloquence about evangelical factuality that is assumed uncritically and concordistically. [I'm sorry, that's Melloni's language - here's the original sentence : "Esso legittima con l'autorità di un fine intellettuale una pericolosa diffidenza verso la ricerca, in nome di una eloquenza teologica nel presente della fatticità evangelica assunta in modo acritico e concordistico."] [Diffidence to research? Disagreeing with the conclusions drawn from research is not diffidence to research per se!]

And to priests who, these days, know less and less, and worse and worse, does Ratzinger's Jesus not serve to cover the superficiality which impresses itself today, without any need of comment, from the display windows on religious bookstores, and not just in Italy?[Why not? If Melloni thinks that religious bookstores are selling nothing but pap and pablum, then what's wrong with one book that rises above them and that a simple priest - surely not all priests are as stupid as he thinks they are - could profitably read to strengthen his faith, which is the ultimate purpose of the book?]

Beyond such effects, however, Martini points to what I think is the central node of the book for the future of the Church: In Ratzinger's Jesus, all the texts and stories have a single meaning which perfectly coincides with the faith as expressed in the Creed and perfectly expressed in the Church, especially where it shows the resistance of a counterculture.

[Let's disregard the last clause for the moment. What is wrong with a Catholic - he does not have to be a Pope or a theologian - interpreting the Gospel as the Church does? Ratzinger is saying in this book that the Jesus of the faith is the Jesus of the Gospels who is also the historical Jesus, insofar as the Gospels are historical. That is, they are datable, localizable, and relatable to 'known' and 'accepted' secular historical events.

So some researchers will question that, which they are free to do. In the same way, Ratzinger and others can question their conclusions and interpretations from the historical facts they have been able to unearth directly relating to Jesus - not much, it appears - therefore, most of their conclusions are really derivative and indirect, rather than direct. Has anyone come up with 'eyewitness accounts' that contradict the 'eyewitness accounts' that the Gospels represent to believers, because they have been transmitted unbroken from 3 A.D. onwards, first in oral then in written form?

As for the phrase 'resistance of a counter-culture', why not? Did not Jesus say that he would be a 'sign of contradiction'? The Church, Mr. Melloni, has resisted for 2000 years. Do not think that because you belong to the dominant culture, even if you are Catholic, that your past 40 years of post-Vatican II sabotage will prevail over the Church! ]

It is a perspective which undermines all the dynamism of reforms which from the fourth to the 20th centuries has instead resulted today in [the wrinkles of] a sorrowful faithlessness to the Church and [undermines as well] the grace for reform in the rediscovery of evangelical truth. [Here is his original sentence, just in case I mistranslated, and someone can correct me: "È una prospettiva che scalza tutto il dinamismo di riforma che dal IV al XX secolo ha invece colto nell'oggi le rughe di una infedeltà dolorosa della Chiesa e nella riscoperta della verità evangelica la grazia per la riforma.'] [Did Vatican II call for a reform to 'rediscover' evangelical truth? Was it ever lost?]

One must reflect, think and dialog even about this: Or maybe there already is reflection and dialog, outside and beyond the competition among best-sellers about Jesus. [What a cheap shot! As if Ratzinger wrote a book about Jesus just to have a bestseller! Not that there is any competition to JON right now. For all the months that the Pesce-Augias book Inchiesta su Gesu has been a best-seller in Italy, I have yet to read an actual sales figure on it. Has it even reached 100,000?]

Corriere della sera, 25 maggio 2007

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I may be uncharitable but I think both Martini and Melloni are motivated somewhat by envy here. Martini obviously wishes he had written a book on Jesus - why didn't he? He has been retired for five years - Ratzinger has had to do it in between duties (And who can have greater responsibility on earth than someone who has the duty to make a billion people 'live' their faith?).

But as Messori suggests, the cardinal can still do so. Maybe he already has a draft somewhere, or the beginnings of one. The whole Catholic world will welcome his portrait of Jesus. It's unlikely he will dispute that Jesus is God the Son.

But it will be very interesting and informative to see what a Biblical scholar and exegete - in contrast to poor Joseph Ratzinger, who is 'only' a theologian - can tell us about what the Gospels say or don't say; and what up-to-the-minute scholarship - not Ratzinger's 'retro' knowledge - tells us about Jesus and his disciples and the evangelists.

And Melloni - I don't know if he has any best-sellers to his name, but whatever they are cannot possibly approach the numbers JON has registered, or Deus caritas est, or even Sacramentum caritatis, for that matter! ... Even the accounts of Vatican II (written by the 'Bologna school' to which he belongs), considered best-sellers for their extremely specialized category, could not have reached a fraction of the 1.5 million JON had registered in 4 editions as of earlier this week.

True, numbers are really not an index of the value of the book, as Cardinal Martini legitimately but rather inappropriately and gracelessly points out. But they are an index of interest in the subject matter, even if the interest is naturally enhanced by wanting to know what a Pope - and even specifically, this Pope - would say about Jesus.

Not that anyone was in doubt or in suspense about what he would say. He said it from the beginning - when he allowed the pre-release of his Foreword last November. "I trust the Gospels" and even with all the historico-critical exegesis that has taken place, "I believe that the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the Gospels are one and the same." He was not misleading anyone into thinking otherwise. And I am assuming that all who have bought the book so far were aware of that.

Let's face it. One and a half million persons so far would not turn out to buy a textbook, which I don't think the Pope ever meant it to be, although it is academic enough in support of the personal conclusions that he draws.

I said earlier that a book should be reviewed principally on the basis of what it purports to be, not on the basis of the reviewer's expectations.

JON does not fit a single category, and whoever would want to force it into a mold is simply wrong or has not read the book. It should be reviewed on the basis of what it is:
- a very personal experience of Jesus that illustrates what the author means by being 'friends with Christ' or 'intimate with Christ'
- a theological reflection on Jesus as the Gospels present him, and on his words
- therefore, a very plausible portrait of a man who knew his divinity as well as his mission in having become man, having a scant three years to carry out that mission
- a historical overview of modern scholarship about Jesus and a commentary on historico-critical exegesis as it has been applied to Jesus
- an introduction to other congenial authors who have studied Jesus in their own way and have arrived at conclusions that are acceptable to Ratzinger [Why would he endorse contrary authors?]
- a fascinating series of homilies on familiar themes and phrases that we have long taken for granted (and some I never knew)
- an education in the unity of Scriptures, the Old and New, and in the Jewish roots of the Christian religion
- a spiritual guide to living a Christian life and to developing a relationship with God
- all told, a truly singular and unique reading experience that one can turn to again and again, whether at random or in search of something specific.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI gives me the Jesus of my faith in a manner more vivid than I expected, because I had never thought very much before this on the eternal conflict there must have been between Jesus's consciousness of his divinity and the necessity of assuming at the same time the full weight of being human, with all its restrictions and weaknesses. Freud might have given the world so much more if he had had the originality to consider this God-man dilemma, unique in history. [P.S. But then Freud was Jewish, so perhaps he was 'theologically' unable to accept a God-man situation, but he was a scientist, too, so why not have looked at it 'theoretically' or 'hypothetically'?]

Ratzinger's Jesus is not a conventional flesh-and-blood individual, but I do not want a conventional flesh-and-blood Jesus. I don't want him to be just like anyone, because he is not and he could not be. And yet, he can be the Jesus he is, my Lord and my God, but still a friend I can go to. Ratzinger/Benedict has been clear about this in all his writings and homilies - what I have read and heard of him in the past two years of cramming up on someone as protean as he has been.

The most indelible images I have from JON are those of Jesus in prayer - in communion with the Father - something I was not capable of imagining this way by simply reading from the Gospel, "And he went up the mountain to pray." In this volume, these images climax in the Transfiguration scene. But I cannot wait for Ratzinger's account of the Passion and Death, in which the God-man dilemma is most acute, and Jesus of Nazareth fulfills the mission he was born to do.

I have always been in awe of how the Bible has been, since the dawn of printing, the world's most widely bought and read book - when it is not easy to read at all, not for me, at any rate! And yet, every day on the train and in the bus, there is always someone who is deep into reading a Bible - in as many languages as there are in New York - and seemingly doing it effortlessly. Obviously, the Bible communicates at every level, and I may be trying too hard. [Really, just take the Gospel from today, which is from John. Without exegesis from someone like Ratzinger/Benedict, I really have difficulty taking in many Jesus discourses in the Fourth Gospel!)

When I was a child, my aunt had a farm tenant who read the Bible daily in the vernacular [I must inform all those who think the colonizers did nothing but oppress their subjects that it was one of those Bibles translated into the language of my region by a Spanish missionary of the 17th century]. Taxi drivers in Manila who belong to one of the charismatic Catholic groups keep a Bible beside them to read when they're waiting for passengers. My household help in Manila read the Bible in Filipino and listen to Bible readings on the radio. And I do not think these are isolated examples.

As many Dan Browns and Richard Dawkinses as there may be, they have not killed off religion or the Christian faith, if Bible sales and readership are any gauge.

And what about the tens of millions in book sales that Protestant fiction writers like Tim DeLa Haye or evangelists like Rick Harris have? Their numbers can rival that of Da Vinci Code. I personally have not read any of these books but I get the impression from what's written about them that they are Christian and preach Christ as the only salvation.

One book reviewer has said that Pope Benedict could reach so many more people with a book like JON than any encyclical he could write. I disagree with the statement only because Deus caritas est happened to be a bestseller - it is a unique encyclical in its universal appeal and outreach, and its readability and accessibility.

But between JON and DCE and his previous books, Joseph Ratzinger has extended his Apostolate of preaching and teaching far beyond any other Pope. It is just one of the manifold reasons one thanks God everyday that we have him as Pope.

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P.S. I have not commented directly on Cardinal Martini's presentation except about a possible envy there, but he did have positive things to say about the book, even if his initial putdown - nothing casuistic about it - of Ratzinger's Biblical/exegetic scholarship is almost offensive [though I don't know if it sounds different in the original French, which I have yet to see] and those remarks towards the end about book sales and about finding the book 'comforting' are odd, to say the least.

Surprise! From this week's issue of that British newspaper that can often be a 'poison pill' as Wulfrune and MaryJos have called it.

Christ in faith and history
Book Review, 24 May 2007
By Fergus Kerr

Jesus of Nazareth:
From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration
Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI


Benedict XVI writes Jesus of Nazareth not as Pope ("it goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the Magisterium") but as one theologian among others ("everyone is free, then, to contradict me"). A second instalment is planned but, not knowing how much more time or strength he will have, he publishes this much now.

So well translated from the German by Adrian J. Walker that it reads as if written in English, this book of some 350 pages seeks to counteract the impression, which "has by now penetrated deeply into the minds of the Christian people at large", that the "Christ of faith" has little or nothing to do with the "historical Jesus", as the jargon goes.

On the contrary, although the gospels' picture of Jesus is, as the Pope agrees, the product of selection and revision, which critical-historical analysis lays bare, it does not follow that the "real" Jesus remains unknown. Rather, the unique relationship that the historical Jesus had with the God of Moses is a matter of fact, demonstrably, and not a way of viewing him conceived afterwards by theologically inventive followers.

The Pope recalls books about Jesus from his youth, by Karl Adam, Romano Guardini and others, all of course written before Pope Pius XII's encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) authorised Catholic scholars to subject the gospels to critical-historical analysis. The challenge, then, is to write a book that inspires and confirms faith in Jesus, while completely accepting the legitimacy of the historical-critical method.

Whether many Catholics in Britain have as yet had their faith disturbed by the reductive and somewhat sceptical procedures of historical-critical exegesis may be doubted. In professional circles, however, teachers of Christian doctrine have long felt uneasy. New Testament scholars, on the other hand, are often reluctant to connect their conclusions as historians with the doctrines about Jesus that good Catholics believe.

The Pope regards Rudolf Schnackenburg (1914-2002) as the greatest Catholic New Testament scholar of recent times. Jesus of Nazareth is quite explicitly an attempt to write the book that Schnackenburg tried but ultimately failed to write towards the end of his life, seeking to harmonise analysis of the gospels as literary constructs with traditional Christian doctrine.

An eight-page glossary has been supplied by the publishers, explaining 90 terms, such as Aramaic, icon, liturgy and Magisterium; and also, more fundamentally, Christology, Epiphany and Incarnation (although not Christmas or Resurrection). Perhaps this is to help anti-Christian media pundits skimming the book in the hope of finding illiberal thoughts. Make no mistake, however: this book will be hard going for those who need the glossary.

The book concludes (there is no index) with 10 workmanlike pages of annotated bibliography by the author. He refers mostly to recent German scholarship. Like any fair-minded academic, he recommends books of which he does not entirely approve. In commending John P. Meier's A Marginal Jew, for example, he directs us to the review by Jacob Neusner, presumably critical in a way that he endorses, though unhappily for us in a rather inaccessible journal. C.H. Dodd on the parables, C.K. Barrett, Raymond E. Brown and Francis J. Moloney on St John's gospel complete the tally of books written in English.

The central theme, to put it simply, is that Jesus brought the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - the true God - to the Gentiles. Furthermore, he knew what he was doing. Thus, the first three chapters deal with the baptism, the temptations and the preaching of the Kingdom of God, each freshly considered, indebted explicitly to the German exegetes Joachim Jeremias and Joachim Gnilka.

The fourth chapter, among the longest (over 60 pages), dealing with the Sermon on the Mount, brings the central theme to the fore. In dialogue with Moses and the tradition of Israel, Jesus understood himself as the Torah - as the Word of God in person. This chapter is written in dialogue with "the great Jewish scholar" Jacob Neusner, whose book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, the Pope says, opened his eyes to what he wanted to say.

He goes on to discuss the Lord's Prayer, the disciples and the Parables (with lengthy exegesis of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Rich Man and Lazarus). The chapter on the fourth gospel opens with 20 pages refuting Bultmann's thesis - which "shaped half a century's reading of the text" - that it derives from Gnostic sources.

For students brought up on Dodd, Barrett and suchlike British scholars, Bultmann was never so persuasive. The rest of the chapter (over 50 pages) offers a deeply meditated analysis of the symbolism of water, vine and wine, bread, and the shepherd, in Jesus' discourses.

The final two chapters deal with Peter's confession, the Transfiguration, and Jesus' self-designation as "Son of Man", "Son" and "I am he". Like Moses, he speaks face to face with God as a friend, knowing all along (however) that his communion with God was unique. Of course this will give rise to debate. Like such maverick scholars as François Dreyfus and John C. O'Neill, the Pope holds that "scientific" exegesis of the New Testament does not necessarily show that Jesus did not know his own identity.

The Pope indulges in a few sideswipes: the "cruelties of capitalism", aid programmes to developing countries that are often destructive because of the West's "technocratic mind-set", and so on. "Modern liturgists" who regard the Sunday Mass obligation as a "Constantinian aberration" puzzle him. Translations of Scripture that, indifferent to Jewish sensitivities, spell out the most sacred name of God he finds deplorable. As regards critical-historical biblical scholarship, however, the tone throughout is respectful and irenic, a model of how to conduct theological debate.

Not much to contradict here, then, but a great deal to reread, to question and reflect upon. This is a theologian on top form. Indeed, this is the best of Professor Ratzinger's many fine books - so far!

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Mr. Kerr, I would like to know more about you. I hope you can be googled profitably!

Beatrice shows us what the dust jacket is like.



Flammarion, the publisher, has added the subtitle:
'To know and understand Jesus'

I was going to translate the blurb but it's the same one used for the English edition, an excellent excerpt, which bears re-quoting even in part:

"What did Jesus actually bring if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world?...The answer is very simple: God..."

Here's someone who looks at this book as it should be looked at - a theologian's work. The site identifies the author as the O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, longtime contributor to Commonweal and the author/editor of twenty books.


Reading Benedict on Jesus
May 25, 2007
by Lawrence S. Cunningham


I have just finished reading and it is with some trepidation that I post this message since the blogosphere is cluttered with reactions. It is not my intention to review the work but let me say that I did think it is a powerful book.

Those who think it only a work of devotion are mistaken as are those who think his approach to the scriptures is retrograde or those who hail it as the greatest thing since the Summa.

The following points might prove helpful:
(1) Ratzinger writes as a theologian in the honorable tradition of the Anselmian 'faith seeking understanding' which is to say, he writes as a believer seeking understanding; as a consequence, he writes from the angle of the hermeneutics of trust and not of suspicion.

(2) He understands the competence of the exegete but he refuses to allow the exegete to have the final say and, further, he appreciates that biblical exegesis did not begin for Catholics in the twentieth century. What he has learned from the "Third Quest" (as my esteemed colleague John Meier has said) is that if we do not see Jesus against the backkground of Judaism we see him wrongly.

(3) His work takes into account the of the text and, thus, does not find it out of court to call on Cyprian when discussing the Lord's Prayer or Origen on the same subject.

(4) His real antagonists are those who would reduce Jesus down to a genteel liberal Protestant or a political revolutionary or a philosopher (pick your reductionist category).

(5) In the background of this work is his own penchant for seeing things via the lens of the witness and proclamation of the church in its life; hence, his work is both catechesis (in the sense of "echoing" the faith) and theology (in the sense of trying to understand what he believes).

(6) While it is true that he cites a number of contemporary exegetes this is not a pastiche of scholarly opinions cobbled together but a rather singular christological portrait arising from years of study.
It is a work that cries out for expansion and, in that sense, is not a profound* book; it is rather a prologomenon for such a work. May God give him strength and health to finish the promised second volume. [*What he means, obviously, is that it is not an 'in-depth' work of scholarship, but I don't think it was meant to be that at all. The Pope is realistic enough to know what he can set out to do, given his age and the office he must carry out daily.]

(7) Finally, the book should be read not for its scholarship (although there is a fair amount of that in the book) but in the spirit of what Saint Bonaventure says at the end of his prologue to the : "Weigh the writer's intention rather than his work...you should not run rapidly over the development of these considerations but should mull them over slowly/ with the greatest care."

That is exactly what I intend to do as I reread this fecund book with a pencil in hand.

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Interesting sidebar on Prof. Cunningham: Shortly after the Newsweek 'mini-special' on JON came online, with that highly quetionable lead article by staff writer Lisa Miller who called it an 'orthodox biography' - which made me ask, "Has she actually seen the book?" - Cunningham left this comment in Amy Welborn's box:


Readers may be interested in this bit of background to the risible article by Ms Miller. The person who is acknowledged as helping with the article [Julie Scelfo] called me a few weeks before this article appeared doing "research."

She wanted the names of famous books on Jesus and a description of their contents beginning with Reimarus. When I told her gently that the history of the "higher" criticism was a tad complicated she soldiered on asking about Schweitzer (the only name she seemed to know) and then, jumping ahead nearly a century, something about the Jesus Seminar.

When I told her about some sources she might consult she said that she was on "deadline." Not to put too fine a point on it: she did not have a clue. Lesson to be learned: read these articles in the popular press with a shovel full of salt.

As for the Miller piece itself: patronizing and snarky about sums it up. Oh, how I miss the days when Ken Woodward (Notre Dame - Class of 57) wrote on religion.

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If that is the kind of researcher that a hoity-toity 'me-superior-you-idiot' publication like Newsweek puts to work on its articles, you better keep shovels of salt handy all the time.

Not to be 'snarky' about it, but during these past two years of reading and translating Vatican/religion reporting and commentary in the Italian media - pro-Catholic or anti-clerical - I have had to check out the backgrounds of those whose reports I often use. And to my pleasant surprise, they are usually multilingual, with a solid academic background and Catholic writing credentials behind them, and indeed, a surprising number of them have written many books, including scholarly ones, on religious topics or personalities. (Messori, Accattoli, Tornielli, Tosatti, Politi, Ferrara, Baget Bozzo, Introvigne - just to name the first few that come to mind).

A great CV does not necessarily make someone an exemplary journalist or writer, but at least it tells you you're not dealing with chaff in terms of preparation.

A faithful portrayal of Jesus

In Jesus Of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger writes not as the Pope, but as a scholar and Believer, providing a balanced and authoritative look at the life of the Galilean

A review by LORENZO DITOMMASO
Montreal Gazette
Saturday, May 26, 2007

Jesus once asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" One disciple replied, "John the Baptist." Others said that he was Elijah or another of the prophets. Only Peter answered, "You are the Christ" (Mark 8:27-30).

Ever since then, the question of Jesus's identity has defined the identity of Christians. Reduced to its most elemental definition, a Christian is a person for whom, as Peter confessed, the Jesus of history is identical to the Christ of faith.

In the modern world, though, Jesus and Christ have been rent asunder. On the one hand, the Gospel narrative has been transformed into a palimpsest upon which we script our own answers to Jesus's question. For some, he is the simple Galilean peasant; for others, he is the militant nationalist, the original hippie, the itinerant rabbi, the social reformer, or the husband of Mary Magdalene and progenitor of a holy bloodline.

Belief in Christ, on the other hand, has become the ultimate sacrifice upon the altar of reason. In its extreme form, the idea is that the myth of Jesus Christ was invented by his distraught disciples, who, upon the unexpected crucifixion of their leader, cobbled together some biblical prophecies and retrofitted his story with messianic parts.

In Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict XVI attempts to reunite the person of Jesus with the figure of Christ. Given the source, this position is in itself unsurprising. What is significant is its presentation.

Many people, I think, accustomed to the popular philosophy that nowadays masquerades for deep thought, might have expected an innocuous book along the lines of "what would Jesus have done?" in various life situations.

Others, no doubt recalling the debate surrounding the election of the conservative Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope, might have anticipated his using the Jesus narrative to underwrite a defence of traditional Catholic doctrine.

But the book is really nothing of either sort. Instead, it is a surprisingly balanced and profoundly learned commentary on the life of Jesus. The first of two volumes, it covers the story from Jesus's baptism to Peter's confession.

Benedict argues that we cannot understand Jesus without a full appreciation of his historical contexts. Jesus was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew, and he existed in a world that was informed by Jewish scripture, Greek culture and Roman rule in equal measure.

So when, for example, Jesus discussed the kingdom of God and the purpose of history, he drew upon an established apocalyptic world view that was already part of Daniel and other Jewish writings.

Yet Benedict also argues that we cannot understand Jesus solely as a product of these contexts. In every way he represented something radically different, something original and unique. For Benedict, Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and those who accept this essential axiom are "thus caught up with him into communion with God."

I am afraid that this book will not speak to those people who view all religion as superstition (or worse), like the geneticist Richard Dawkins or the author and columnist Christopher Hitchens, both of whom have recently written their own books on what they understand to be toxic aspects of religious doctrine.

For everyone else, though, Jesus of Nazareth is well worth reading. Christians of all denominations will encounter insights on nearly every page, as well as a very great surprise: Benedict does not present his arguments from a position of papal infallibility, but as a scholar and believer whose tools are reason and persuasion.

The net result is a satisfying combination of authority and intimacy that makes the book a superb introduction to Jesus from the perspective of faith. For this reason I highly recommend the book to non-Christians as well, including agnostics and atheists.

Jesus of Nazareth is also important for another reason: With some notable exceptions, Christianity and the Catholic Church have a terrible overall track record of intolerance. In terms of scholarship, Benedict's emphasis on the basic Jewish identity of Jesus is not particularly new. Given his position as pope, however, and particularly in the light of the Vatican's actions in the last century, this emphasis is both remarkable and welcome.

Lorenzo DiTommaso is an assistant professor of theology at Concordia University.

Beatrice on her site beatricewe.eu informs us that Le Figaro has a special this weekend devoted to JON, which came out in the French edition on May 24. She posts two of the positive reviews - and I am sure she will post others, not necessarily positive, if they are objective and worth while. Here is a translation of the first, by a journalist for Le Nouvel Observateur, a center-left French newspaper.

Ratzinger defends the specificity
of the Christian way
By Jacques Julliard


The world of beliefs is a thick forest through reality seldom manages to break through. The media have assumed that their Panzerkardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, is an incorrigible reactionary in political matters and a hardline conservative in morals and faith.

Those who can profit from reading his JESUS OF NAZARETH are only those with an open mind that knows it is more difficult to get rid of one's own prejudices than it is to fight those of others.

This book by Jseph Ratzinger is an apologia pro Jesus. Is Jesus then under attack?

Yes, and in convergent fashion. On the one hand, by exegetes and theologians who have been doggedly shaving away day after day his historical reality in the name of some vague knowledge that is supposed to be of universal use. And on the other hand, by 'enlightened' zealots for whom Jesus is nothing but the product of fantasy and sick sensibilities.

Thus, says the author, we have gone from the ecclesiocentrism of the pre-Conciliar church (the Church at the center of Christianity) to the Christocentrism of the immediate post-conciliar period to today's theocentrism which tends to bring together all religions into one religion umnder a God with vague and elastic contours.

Against this bleating syncretism, Joseph Ratzinger vigorously defends the specificity of the Christian way, which is above all, Christlike...

To preserve the specificity of the Gospel message, to defend a truly Christ-like Christianity from the sickening blandness of a believers' International based on a theology not unlike the principles of, say, the Universal Postal Union, the Pope thinks that the historicity of Jesus must be defended, without stepping back: Jesus is not a myth, a shaman, or a guru. He is a being of flesh and blood (bread and wine).

Ratzinger, who began this book before he became Pope, does not fulminate or condemn. He does not anathematize anyone and he was careful to disavow infallibility. But he confronts his colleagues in exegesis and theology, yesterday and today, from Harnack to Bultmann.

We have come a long way since John Paul II, of whom he was nevertheless one of the closest collaborators. But we have gone from the Virgin of Czestochowa to disputing German criticism of the 19th and 20th centuries. [If he is implying that JPII represented 'pure faith' while B16 represents reason, then it is a false and unnecessary dichotomy.]

Because to effectively defend the historicity of Jesus, one must take note, in an authentically scientific spirit, of all the recent products of research, including those that may present a problem for the faith.

Against a scholar who would see the Gospel of John as a 'poetic work on Jesus,", Ratzinger says: "A faith that discards history in this manner really turns into 'Gnosticism.' It leaves flesh, incarnation - just what true history is - behind."

The book is obviously not a new life of Christ, of which there are thousands. It is a veritable manual of Christology, which includes chapters that are admirable for their subtlety and penetration about the Sermon on the Mount and the Kingdom of God.

The last, dedicated to how Jesus called himself (Son of Man, Son, 'I am'), shows how he practically gave his disciples a pedagogy on his divinity.

Also notable for their poetic value are the discussions on the principal elements of Christian symbolism - water, wine, the vine, bread, or even the mountain and the desert.

I will not conclude by citing the different problems of exegesis raised by this theologian who is nevertheless also Pope Benedict XVI.

The most fascinating about the history of the Popes in the past century has been the alternation of Popes who were Pastors above all (Pius X, Benedict XV, John XXIIII, John Paul II) and those who are principally intellectuals (Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XIII, Paul VI, Benedict XVI), in which each series has included conservatives as well as innovators. The alternation is not bad.

In the language of religion, one says, "In the Father's mansion are many rooms."

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The second takes the form of a cross-interview with philosopher Jean-Luc Marion and Philippe Sollers [whose answers are rather idiosyncratic!] As the post is a truncated version of the whole article, I note that Marion is limited to only one answer, and I would have liked to hear what he said about the book!


The Pope goes to the beginning
Interviews by BENOÎT CHANTRE et PAUL-FRANÇOIS PAOLI



Considered one of the most important French philosophers today, at home and abroad, especially in the USA, where he teaches a the University of Chicago, tells us why he thinks the Pope's book is of major significance. Philippe Sollers's Catholic contacts are well-known...

Philippe SOLLERS. - What interests me most is the personal implication for this Pope of going back to the fundamental question: Who is the Christ? Because I see every day that the Gospels are ignored, even by Christians themselves. Now, the Pope is going back to the beginning.

He begins with the Baptism of Jesus and shows us how this figure becomes Christ. He makes us feel in the chapter on the tempations of Jesus that the devil is always there. Satan exists, he tempted Jesus himself. He asks him to show his power by changing stones to bread, etc. Thre is a chapter on the Kingdom of God, on theSemropn on the Mount and the Beatitudes...Another on prayer. How did Jesus pray? The words of the Father - how many know what they mean? And ther's an admirable chapter on the Gospel of John. On water, wine, the vine, bread - the fundamentals.

Catholics have to be reminded why they are not Protestants. And that through the words of Christ, bread becomes His Body, and wine His blood. One must remind the faithful of these things, which are increasingly neither known nor felt.

Finally, Jesus's affirmations about himself: Son of Man, Son, and above all, 'I am' - the Christ who brings life, the idea that the seal of death has been broken.

Do you think this philosopher-Pope is in continuity with John Paul II?

Sollers: They may seem different, with expressions and charisms which may appear opposed. But they are linked by continuity. Let us not forget that John Paul was a historic Pope - object of an assassination attempt in 1981. And the extraordinary Polish resistance to the Soviet Union. A great Pope.

Along comes Benedict XVI. He chooses his name from a line that includes the founder of the Benedictine order. I will just cite the last two Popes of that name - Benedict XIV, called the Pope of Enlightenment, who had cordial relations with Voltaire, and Benedict XV, who preached in the wilderness during World War I, warning, among other things, that if French and Germans continued their reciprocal butchery, then Europe was headed for a terrible phenomenon.

...And this invisible continuity among the Popes is far more decisive than media fixation on sexual matters. This perennial din which betrays a sexual obsession (about abortion, chastity, contraception, etc) hides essential things. Like John Paul II's decisive role in the collapse of the Soviet empire. And this impassioned book by Benedict XVI.

Jena-Luc Marion: I agree. I would add that the recurrent polemic over what Popes teach is probably society's way of expressing its contradictions. All it takes is for the Pope to say something, and you will hear people say they would much rather not be Catholics, feeling themselves reproached. Is that not a way of recognizing the Pope's spiritual magisterium? Come on, let's admit we are all a bit Catholic that way! ...

Q. But the Pope's interventions are questioned by Catholics themselves. Can this book help reverse that phenomenon? [This is like the question, What has Jesus brought? Journalists are constantly expecting instant solutions!]

Sollers: We are in the midst of a disinformation campaign which distorts whatever the Pope says. Recently an article in Nouvel Observateur was recently reprinted by the Italian newspaper Manifesto [Communist] which said this Pope has a hopeless view of society. An almost Wagnerian vision of the world - because he is an admirer of the composer of Goetterdaemmerung, his culture is too German, etc.

The same article calls him asocial, whose only company is his private secretary, a blue-eyed Bavarian. What is this, Visconti's The Damned?

It is so irritating to have to put up with this nonsense. Especially since this Pope's fondness for Mozart is so well-known. You may well ask, So this Pope plays Mozart, is that important? It's just a detail! Certainly not! A Pope who plays a Mozart sonata is a Pope who affirms that God exists! That's what I think.

In an earlier round-up of English reviews, I mentioned that a blog called CATHOLIC ANALYSIS had started a chapter-by-chapter review of JON. Here are the first five posts. The blogger is Oswald Sobrino - I am guessing no relation to Jon (small letters) - who describes himself as a graduate student at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, and who already has a J.D. and an M.A. after his name. He writes for a range of Catholic scholarly journals.

These notes may be helpful for those who have not yet read the book.


Friday, May 18, 2007
Series Begins on Pope's Book "Jesus of Nazareth"
By Oswald Sobrino


As I begin reading Benedict XVI's newly published book Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (Doubleday, 2007), I will post periodic commentary on the book, rather than attempt a gargantuan book review. Today, we begin by covering preliminary matters and Chapter One on the Baptism of Jesus.

One of the first things I did when I got the book yesterday was to turn to the bibliography section at the back of the book. That can be a telling section. Of course, the Pope uses works by authors that he disagrees with in some or maybe even most matters. But notice that our Pope, in this book and in his other writings, is a true intellectual, not a pseudo-intellectual. The Pope reads widely, without boundaries.

As John Allen recently noted, one of the Pope's favorites is a Jewish theologian, Jacob Neusner. Neusner is in the bibliography. Benedict also speaks favorably of Fr. John P. Meier's book on the historical Jesus and lists the late Raymond Brown's book on the Gospel of John.

Now, let me point out for those who are not familiar with either Meier or Brown that both come under heavy fire by "right-wing" Catholics. Certainly, the Pope does not ascribe to all the views of either writer. But, unlike the fanatic wing, the Pope is a true intellectual. The bibliography confirms again, as do the Pope's previous voluminous writings, that this Pope is not the Pope of the self-righteous, fanatical, and censorious right-wing of Catholicism (or, better stated, pseudo-Catholicism).

Unfortunately, some in the media mistakenly view him in that way and some in the fanatic sections, both on the left and on the right, also mistakenly view him that way - just consider the silly frothing on all sides over the apparently forthcoming directive (motu proprio) on the Latin Mass.

For further confirmation that the Pope is not obsessed with the conservative/liberal fault lines in the Church, he also lists in the bibliography works by the current Superior General of the Jesuit order (favorably quoted at p. 135) and by liberal Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. So, our Pope, as most familiar with his work already knew, is a genuine intellectual, not in the least like the self-righteous, half-educated pseudo-intellectuals that seem to abound.

Now, let us enter the book itself. In the Foreword, the Pope sets forth why he has written a book on Jesus: because the abuses of historical-critical scholarship (a scholarship, by the way, that he nevertheless deems essential to exegesis; see p. xv) have sown a corrosive doubt even among Christians:

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All these [abusive] attempts [to find the historical Jesus] have produced a common result: the impression that we have very little certain knowledge of Jesus and that only at a later stage did faith in his divinity shape the image we have of him. This impression has by now penetrated deeply into the minds of the Christian people at large. This is a dramatic situation for faith, because its point of reference is being placed in doubt: Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.

Benedict, p. xii (comments in brackets added by me).

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The historical-critical method of exegesis or biblical interpretation must be complemented by a canonical reading of Scripture that respects the unity of Scripture as God's word to man. "The aim of this [canonical] exegesis is to read individual texts within the totality of the one Scripture, which then sheds new light on all individual texts" (p. xviii; bracketed word added by me). Benedict calls canonical exegesis "a fundamental principle of theological exegesis" (p. xviii), as taught in Vatican II (Dei Verbum, para. 12; cf. Benedict, p. xix).

Having commented on his method in the Foreword, the Pope writes an introduction entitled "An Initial Reflection on the Mystery of Jesus." He begins by calling Jesus a "New Moses" (p. 1; also p. 3). Here, we see how unavoidably Jewish Jesus and our faith is.

As I once heard apologist Steve Ray say, we Catholics are indeed, in a certain sense, Jewish. If we forget that, we will find it very hard to understand the Bible and the rest of our faith. In the first chapter on the Baptism of Jesus (an excerpt of which Newsweek magazine published and is linked to in a recent post), I found of great interest the Pope's observations on the Essene community of Qumran whose ancient writings are known as the Dead Sea Scrolls (I recently visited Qumran).

The Pope considers it "a reasonable hypothesis" that John the Baptist lived "for some time in this community and received part of his religious formation from it" (p. 14). Benedict also observes that "possibly Jesus and his family as well, were close to the Qumran community" (p. 14). I heard one knowledgeable guide to Qumran speculate that the documents of Qumran may hold even more surprises. We shall see.

But the great significance of the Baptism of Jesus at the Jordan is that it is an anticipation of our own baptism: "The Baptism that Jesus' disciples have been administering since he spoke these words is an entrance into the Master's own Baptism - into the reality that he anticipated by means of it" (p. 23). For example, just as the Holy Spirit "came down upon him [Jesus] 'like a dove,' " so too the Holy Spirit descends upon us in the Sacrament of Baptism (p. 22; cf. p. 25; see also the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Sacrament of Baptism, especially Section 1241). That is an important point.

To my amazement, I have even read how some attempt to dispute the receiving of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Baptism - another reason to thank God that we have a Pope, habemus Papam.



Monday, May 21, 2007
Ch. 2 of Pope's New Book:
"The Temptations of Jesus"


Chapter two is worth spending time over in extended thought and reflection. In this chapter, what I find most striking is the Pope's repeated references to the Russian writer Vladimir Soloviev's short story "The Antichrist." Here is an excerpt from the Pope which begins with a reference to the devil who tempts Jesus:

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The devil proves to be a Bible expert who can quote the Psalm exactly. The whole conversation of the second temptation takes the form of a dispute between two Bible scholars. Remarking on this passage, Joachim Gnilka says that the devil presents himself here as a theologian. The Russian writer Vladimir Soloviev took up this motif in his short story "The Antichrist." The Antichrist receives an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Tübingen and is a great Scripture scholar. Soloviev's portrayal of the Antichrist forcefully expresses his skepticism regarding a certain type of scholarly exegesis current at the time. This is not a rejection of scholarly biblical interpretation as such, but an eminently salutary and necessary warning against its possible aberrations. The fact is that scriptural exegesis can become a tool of the Antichrist. Soloviev is not the first person to tell us that; it is the deeper point of the temptation story itself. The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith. The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history--that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity. And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God; no, now we alone speak and decide what God can do and what we will and should do.

Benedict XVI, pp. 35-36 (emphasis added).

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I predict that this passage and its continuation will likely be - or, at least, should be - the most quoted and discussed from the Pope's book. So much of the lifestyle of the West is premised on the fact that we no longer have a living God who acts today and speaks to us today.

Western culture today proclaims, as the famous magazine cover of the nineteen sixties did, that God is dead. Now, you can still be a church member, you can even be a clergyman or an exegete, and still affirm, for all practical purposes, that God is dead. You can even be a bastion of orthodoxy and in effect proclaim God is dead by forbidding God to act today as He did in the early Church described in the Acts of the Apostles.

Our rationalistic (notice, I do not say "rational," which is something certainly desirable and necessary) culture exiles and buries the living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses - and of the New Moses, Jesus of Nazareth.

Yet, the rationalistic culture has no problem maintaining the forms of organized religion as a form of self-expression, self-therapy, and self-display. The local church thus becomes a social club, a quaint artifact, an arena to express the desire for authority and for being the center of attention, sometimes even just a concert hall.

Most commonly and obviously, the orientation of such churches is liberal. But the orientation can also be self-consciously, but falsely, "orthodox" in doctrine. God is left out of the church. The liberals will replace God with themselves and their own moral relativism. The so-called "orthodox" will replace God with the authoritarian, legalistic, and punitive self and so in effect kill off the God proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth.

Here is another book excerpt that depicts the process of creating our own false God:

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The tempter is not so crude as to suggest to us directly that we should worship the devil. He merely suggests that we opt for the reasonable decision, that we choose to give priority to a planned and thoroughly organized world, where God may have his place as a private concern but must not interfere in our essential purposes. Soloviev attributes to the Antichrist a book entitled The Open Way to World Peace and Welfare. This book becomes something of a new Bible, whose real message is the worship of well-being and rational planning.

Benedict, p. 41.

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When I read the Pope's description of this false gospel of "rational planning," I thought immediately of Planned Parenthood. We plan ourselves into disaster. Recently, a friend mentioned to me that he read about an upcoming world crisis: we don't have enough people!

We plan ourselves into disaster. And, of course, planning ourselves into disaster is not just a macro-reality: it takes places at the micro level of the decisions of our daily lives. We plan and we plan. We do and we do. But we do not stop to consult the One who controls the end of everything. We think ourselves so wise and rational that we fail to take the most rational step: consult the Maker and Sustainer of the universe.

Many reject the very concept of God altogether. Many others replace Him with a legal code. Or simply make him the distant, irrelevant metaphor of the Deists. The process comes down to the rationalistic belief that there is no living God who speaks and acts today.

The "theological liberal" believes that God neither acted in biblical times nor acts today. Some "theological conservatives" believe that God does not act in biblical fashion today, although He did ages ago. Both extremes have succumbed to the rationalistic temptation of the Antichrist, who has many of us where he wants us to be.


Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Pope Series:
"The Gospel of the Kingdom of God"

That's the title of Chapter 3 of the Pope's new book. In this chapter, Benedict the professor gives us lessons in the nuances of words so commonly used by Christians.

The first word he considers is the Latin evangelium, which comes from a similar sounding Greek word (euangélion). We usually translate it as "good news," or use the Old English word "gospel" derived from "godspell."

But the Pope points out that the word was originally used to describe "messages issued by the emperor . . . regardless of whether or not their content was particularly cheerful or pleasant" (p. 47). The Pope is not being dour. What he is trying to communicate is the "magnitude" of the word as signifying not just information but real "action, efficacious power that enters into the world to save and transform" (p. 47).

He contrasts this efficacious power from Jesus with the pretensions of the Roman emperors because "it is here [in the Gospel] that what the emperors merely assert, but cannot actually perform, truly takes place" (p. 47; bracketed material added by me).

No emperor, Roman or otherwise, can save and transform the world. Only Jesus saves. Only Jesus makes all things new. That is the evangelium - not a merely cheerful message, but a revolutionary message of power.

We still have political, economic, and cultural "emperors" pretending to possess the power to save the world. We even have "mini-emperors" in our daily lives and even in religious circles who seek to impose their will on others as if they, and not Jesus, have the power to save.

The Gospel is true freedom because it is freedom from all those false emperors. Remember that freedom as you say or sing the Gloria at Mass. You are proclaiming the subversive message that only you, Jesus Christ, are Lord, not the other self-anointed lords of this world or of your personal life.

The other term that Benedict instructs us about is "Kingdom of God." The analysis is quite simple. If we look closely at how Jesus uses the term, the "Kingdom of God" is Jesus himself:

"By the way in which he speaks of the Kingdom of God, Jesus leads men to realize the overwhelming fact that in him God himself is present among them, that he is God's presence" (p. 49).

In other words:
"Jesus himself is the Kingdom; the Kingdom is not a thing, it is not a geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. It is a person; it is he" (p. 49).

In further clarification of the phrase "Kingdom of God," the Pope goes back to the Hebrew word malkut (the Pope's book is a very Jewish book, and this chapter is a very Jewish chapter!) which refers to "the regal function, the active lordship of the king" (p. 55). He concludes that the better translation of the phrase is "to speak of God's being-Lord, of his lordship" (p. 56). The Kingdom is about God "acting now . . . showing himself in history" (Ibid.).

The next chapter is on the Sermon on the Mount. So the Pope, as a good writer, ends this, the preceding, chapter by anticipating the Sermon on the Mount as the "Messiah's Torah" (p. 61).

"Torah" is the Hebrew word for "instruction," which we use to refer to the first five books of the Old Testament. In the Sermon, Jesus give his own messianic Torah or "instruction."

In his comments, Benedict points out how the Torah of Jesus is far above and different from what the Pharisees are offering. The description of the Pharisees fits some confused traditional or orthodox Catholics:

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The Pharisee does not really look at God at all, but only at himself; he does not really need God, because he does everything right [by the rubrics!] by himself. . . . The tax collector, by contrast, sees himself in the light of God. . . . He needs God, and because he recognizes that, he begins through God's goodness to become good himself. Ethics is not denied; it is freed from the constraints of moralism and set in the context of a relationship of love - of relationship to God.

Benedict, p. 62 [material in brackets added by me].

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Chhristianity is not about moralism. Christianity is the earth-shaking announcement of the active power and lordship of God that transforms us into what we were always meant to be. And that power and rule of God is Jesus himself.


Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Pope Series: "The Sermon on the Mount"

This chapter is number four and is quite lengthy. So I will not try to cover all of it today. The Pope again emphasizes the Jewishness of Jesus and how that is key to understanding our Savior. He praises a particular book by Jewish theologian Jacob Neusner (I have already ordered it!):

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There is an important book in which the great Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner takes his place, as it were, among the audience of the Sermon on the Mount and, having listened to Jesus, attempts a dialogue with him under the title A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. More than other interpretations known to me, this respectful and frank dispute between a believing Jew and Jesus, the son of Abraham, has opened my eyes to the greatness of Jesus' words and to the choice that the Gospel places before us.

Benedict, p. 69 (emphasis added).

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If it's a book that "has opened" the eyes of the Pope, then I will certainly read it! In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, "the new Moses . . . . takes his seat on the cathedra of the mountain," which is "the new and definitive Sinai" where Jesus proclaims "the new Torah" (pp. 65-66, 68). You can see the fundamental Jewishness of the event.

But the Pope also looks to later Church history to interpret the Sermon, especially the Beatitudes. He looks foremost to St. Francis of Assisi and makes the point, as Balthasar also made, that the "saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scripture," who make the Bible "most intelligible" because they "have been totally transfixed by it and have lived it out" (p. 78).

As a warning to all of us who engage in the academic study of Scripture, Benedict makes clear that the "interpretation of Scripture can never be a purely academic affair, and it cannot be relegated to the purely historical" (p. 78). A Bible Study that does not transform the students is not a Bible Study, but rather merely an attempt to fill up with data and facts.

Others who emphasize only the factual content of Church history and magisterial pronouncements make a similar error of mistaking the accumulation of data with the work of the Holy Spirit. They proclaim the letter only, and not the Spirit. Later in the chapter, the Pope makes much the same point when he says that:

"The organ for seeing God is the heart. The intellect alone is not enough." (Benedict, p. 92.)

In discussing the Beatitudes, the Pope has some important things to say about peace and peacemakers: "only the man who is reconciled to God and with himself can establish peace around him and throughout the world" (p. 85).

I think of that when I pass the site on the University of Michigan campus where JFK proclaimed his idea for the Peace Corps. I like to make my own silent counterproclamation as I pass the site by thinking of the real "Peace Corps": the Body of Christ, who is our only true peace, as some of the Church Fathers would say.

In the time of the Roman Empire, the emperors presented themselves as the saviors of the known civilized world bringing the Pax Romana, which was never real peace. Something similar, although on a lesser scale, happened in our own era at the University of Michigan historical site.

What was missing from the proclamations of "peace" by the foremost powers of the world in both eras? The Pope gives the answer:
"The struggle to abide in peace with God is an indispensable part of the struggle for 'peace on earth'; the former is the source of the criteria and the energy for the latter. When men lose sight of God, peace disintegrates and violence proliferates to a formerly unimaginable degree of cruelty. This we see only too clearly today."
[Benedict, p. 85 (emphasis added).]

The Pope also speaks of those who mourn, as mentioned in the Beatitudes: "The mourning of which the Lord speaks is nonconformity with evil; it is a way of resisting models of behavior that the individual is pressured to accept because "everyone does it." The world cannot tolerate this kind of resistance; it demands conformity. It considers this mourning to be an accusation directed against the numbing of consciences. And so it is." (Benedict, p. 88)

So often we may think of the mourning in the Beatitudes as merely a defeatist or passive stance. It is not. The mourning of the Beatitudes is the cry for truth and justice which God commits himself to hearing and answering.

We cannot play along in the denial game of our Western culture which hides the true cost of so much self-destructive behavior. We see it especially in the sexual sphere. Those who mourn the real and deep wounds of sexual immorality are viewed as dangerous to the consensus of lies and even as acting in a non-Christian manner by refusing to be acceptably "nice" about the cost.

The cultural emphasis is to anesthesize all so that the truly abusive becomes socially normal and conventional. Yet, the reality is that what is normal is what is truly healthy: chastity is normal, even if it is uncommon. We cannot reduce the authentically normal to a statistical analysis when the statistical population has simply gone crazy.

Later, the Pope makes the same point again about those who mourn: they are "the ones . . . who do not bow to the diktat of the prevailing opinions and customs, but resist it by suffering" (p. 90).

He continues on this theme of Christian social nonconformity:

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The people this Beatitude ["Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied"] describes are those who are not content with things as they are and refuse to stifle the restlessness of heart that points man toward something greater and so sets him on the inward journey to reach it--rather like the wise men of the East seeking Jesus, the star that shows the way to truth, to love, to God. The people meant here are those whose interior sensitivity enables them to see and hear the subtle signs that God sends into the world to break the dictatorship of convention.

Benedict, p. 91 (bracketed words added by me).

---

In other words, those who hunger for righteousness are prophets in our own time, following in the steps of the New Moses who took his seat on the new Mount Sinai in an empire full of paganism, madness, and cruelty.


Thursday, May 24, 2007
Pope Series:
"The Torah of the Messiah"

This post continues the discussion of Ch. 4 about the Sermon on the Mount. Here, we finally see why the Pope makes so much of Jewish rabbi Jacob Neusner's view of Jesus in the book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus: Neusner concludes that the Jesus of the Gospels is asking people to recognize that he is indeed God.

Neusner declines to accept the invitation, but at least affirms that Jewish ears recognized and recognize that Jesus is not claiming to be just another prophet or moral teacher. Jesus is presenting his divinity. Neusner's work puts the liberal exegetes in an awkward position: their "demythologizing" of Jesus contradicts the very meaning of the words of Jesus the Jew speaking to his fellow Jews.

You either accept or reject the divinity of Jesus, but you cannot make a persuasive case that Jesus is not presenting you with that challenge.

First, Benedict gives us some interesting background information on Neusner: "Neusner, a believing Jew and rabbi, grew up with Catholic and Protestant friends, teaches with Christian theologians at the university, and is deeply respectful of the faith of his Christian colleagues. He remains, however, profoundly convinced of the validity of the Jewish interpretation of Holy Scripture. His reverence for the Christian faith and his fidelity to Judaism prompted him to seek a dialogue with Jesus." (Benedict, p. 103)

This daring rabbi presents himself in his book in dialogue with other Jews of Jesus' time over the message, the instruction or Torah that Jesus presents. In the end, what troubles Neusner is that Jesus adds "Himself" to the Torah: you must follow Jesus to be holy (p. 105). Here is the Pope again:

---

This mysterious identification of Jesus and God . . . . is the point where Jesus' message diverges fundamentally from the faith of the "eternal Israel." Neusner demonstrates this after investigating Jesus' attitude toward three fundamental commandments: the fourth commandment (the commandment to love one's parents), the third commandment (to keep holy the Sabbath), and, finally, the commandment to be holy as God is holy . . . . Neusner comes to the disturbing conclusion that Jesus is evidently trying to persuade him to cease following these three fundamental commandments of God and to adhere to Jesus instead.

Benedict, pp. 105-106.

---

Christians instead would say that by following Jesus, you indeed fulfill all of God's commandments.

But Neusner's point is well-taken as stated by the Pope: "Jesus understands himself as the Torah - as the word of God in person" (p. 110). There was even a view among the Jews of Jesus' time that the Torah as Wisdom somehow existed with God at the creation of the world. One French Catholic commentator puts the situation in this context:

---

Speculation about the Torah was given free rein and legends multiplied . . . . Certain [Jewish] doctors represent it as the daughter of God, conceived by Him before the world, His counselor and His instrument in the work of creation. It becomes almost a divine hypostasis and, in the most ancient of the rabbinical writings, it has the same place and plays the same role as the Wisdom of God in the last books of the Old Testament. Thus personified, it not only enjoys the veneration due to sacred beings and sacred things: it is apotheosized (cf. Sir 24, 22).

A. Tricot, in A. Robert & A. Feuillet, Introduction to the New Testament (N.Y.: Desclee Co., 1965), p. 44.

---

In the New Testament, we have Jesus the Logos of the Gospel of John as that same Torah but now in the unequivocal, concrete form of a male Jew teaching with unprecedented authority.

Where does this biblical claim of Jesus leave liberal exegetes? As Benedict writes, "that again we see how far Harnack and the liberal exegesis that followed him went wrong in thinking that the Son, Christ, is not really part of the Gospel about Jesus. The truth is that he is always at the center of it." (Benedict, p. 111.)

This identity of the Gospel with Jesus himself is why in an earlier chapter the Pope affirmed that the presence of the Kingdom of God is Jesus himself. There is much more in the remainder of Chapter Four, but we have hit here the Christological kernel of the Pope's aim in this chapter.

Thank you very much for all your translations and for the other stimulating posts on this thread, Teresa. Last night I wrote a longer message, but it again disappeared like yours also did.
It would be most interesting to hear the opinions of forum members, beside Teresa, on the new book.

==================================================================

Crotchet, I have already complained to FFZ about the glitches of their 'updated' system. Meanwhile, try to remember - as I am learning to do - that as soon as you have completed typing your post, copy it with the mouse [even if you don't actually dump it into a holding place - as long as you don't copy something else before you have successfully posted!] before pressing REPLY. The system sometimes gives you confidence because you see the green progress bars at the bottom righthand side of the screen, but then instead of getting 'Message posted successfully' you end up with the previous 'last post' on the thread, not the one you thought you had just posted. Be patient, go back in to a new blank message box, 'paste' what you have on your mouse onto the blank box, and try posting again. Usually, it goes on the second time. If it does not, well, you still have it on the mouse...Just happened again to me before I came to this thread - I was posting a longish Fr. Schall article on a remarkable 1996 address by Ratzi in Guadalajara, and it didn't take at all the first time. But I did have it on the mouse, so it went on the second time. [Only to find out I had to go back in and change all its 'squares' to apostrophes, quotation amrks and hyphens, as needed! That too, after I had made the changes - SOOOO TEDIOUS - I made sure I had the whole 'corrected' thing on the mouse first before hitting 'Modify']....ACH! So ein Pech!!!


About the book, I assume you have finished reading it, and cannot wait to hear any thoughts you may want to share! Random is fine, that's how wrote the two 'thoughts' I've posted; we're not book reviewers. In my case, I just wanted to share my experience reading it, and any comments came in that context.

I am assuming no one among our members has written in because maybe many have not seen it yet. But Yvonne and Sue have read it in Polish, and Dinabella in German [very strange, not one of the Italian sisters has posted a personal reaction either in the main forum!], among those I know. And I hope Benefan's son finally gave her the book this weekend.

Unlike you, I chose to read it through the usual way the first time, although I have never had to stop so often to highlight things - and am now, going back to it in three ways - reading one chapter at a go; skimming it for something I had previously marked; or skimming it to get the 'official' English translation of the passages mentioned in the non-English reviews....And oh dear, I haven't started any translations from the German, of which I can think of at least 5 'musts'...

P.S. DO READ THE SCHALL ARTICLE IN 'READINGS'

"And I hope Benefan's son finally gave her the book this weekend." Teresa


No, he didn't. He spent most of yesterday at an ordination ceremony and celebration for 5 new priests in our diocese. Haven't seen him yet. He's run out of excuses.


====================================================================

OH-OH! Methinks the good father will get an earful from Mom!
But congratulations again on the new priests for your diocese.
God bless! TERESA

Here is an interesting take on the Pope's book and on criticism of it so far, by an Italian theologian with a most unusual biography.

Gianni Baget Bozzo usually writes his own articles - and he is quite prolific, but in this article from Il Foglio today, he talks to journalist Maurizio Crippa. Baget Bozzo, who lives in Genoa, is an 82-year-old priest and theologian, journalist and author of several books on theology, religion and culture, who has been prominent in Italy for the past five decades because of his outspoken political activism (conservative) and writing.

John Allen once likened him to "an Italian Catholic analog of Pat Robertson because he does not hesitate to apply theological, even apocalyptic, language to current events."

In his earlier years as a priest, he taught theology and was in the inner circle of Genoa's revered conservative Cardinal Siri (someone who was considered the front-running papabile in three Conclaves, and incidentally, Archbishop Bagnasco's mentor). Then he became the confidant of Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi.

Eventually, he ran for the European Parliament for three successive terms (1987-1994) as a Socialist, but during his time in Parliament, he was suspended from his priestly functions (because of Church laws that prohibit priests from taking public office). Later, he became the public affairs consultant for Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, and today edits its online journal ragionpolitica.



Are they contradicting the Pope, or
do exegetes feel contradicted by him?
By Maurizio Crippa

MILAN - "I am wondering whether it would have been better not to have the Pope's name on the cover of the book, seeing that the author himself says in the Foreword that 'the book is by no means a magisterial act and everyone is free to contradict me'."

A subtle point, similar to many others Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini made when he presented the French edition of JESUS OF NAZARETH n Paris last week.

Before answering, says Fr. Gianni Baget Bozzo, let us first understand what the Pope's book is. "It is and it wants to be an example of theological exegesis."

He explains further:
"For its author, the Bible must be interpreted as a single text, with an internal significance that is integral and intelligible. Theological exegesis is the 'believer's reading' of the Bible by the Church. It is different from purely critical exegesis, from the historico-philological criticism of Scriptures.

"In essence, the Pope is saying clearly: the interpretation of the Bible in its true significance is not a task for historians or academics, least of all in the 'private' sense. It is the task of Christians, of the Church."

Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's book clearly warns: After three centuries in which it was made to appear that only textual exegesis was capable of 'knowing' the historical Jesus, and therefore, 'knowing ' what Christianity is; after centuries in which the Church has been accused, even from within, of ignorance and obscurantism for having continued to insist on a knowledge of Jesus rooted in faith, JESUS OF NAZARETH shows that it is possible to defend the nature of theological exegesis. Without thereby negating the validity of historical research, which Ratzinger neither fears nor condemns."

Baget Bozzo thinks that Biblical scholars like Cardinal Martini get this 'caveat'. And so does Church historian Alberto Melloni in his article for Corriere della Sera commenting on Martini as a commentator of Ratzinger.

He adds: "One could maliciously think that, more that feeling themselves free to contradict Ratzinger, both Martini and Melloni feel contradicted by the book, and each in their own way have reacted accordingly."

Martini, he says, "as an exegete, takes seriously the criticism of the 'theologian' Ratzinger of exegetes, reproaching him, for instance for 'hardly ever citing the possible variants of a text' and accepting the conclusions of most experts."

Nonetheless, Baget Bozzo does not think Martini has any basic disagreement with the Pope, and has stated his appreciation of the book - even if he feels constrained to reject criticism of the historico-critical method which, to him, is valid, whereas Ratzinger "gladly cites from the Fathers of the Church."

Therein lies an essential point, Baget Bozzo says: "Ratzinger's reading of the Gospels is more like the 'wisdom' reading by the Orthodox Church, which has always rejected the philological school. In fact, he welcomes Patristic exegesis, which is an expression of the living Church. Ratzinger asserts that this tradition is convincing, and that if we read the Bible with the eyes of faith, we understand it more than with historical exegesis."

In contrast he says, Martini sees scientific reading "as essential and adequate for the meaning."

He finds Melloni's objections more radical, even if the latter uses a 'defense' of Martini as a pretext for his own critique. "Martini," Melloni wrote, "once again chooses to defend the legitimacy of a position that is 'different'" within a Church situation in which, Melloni writes maliciously, "for whoever is not protected by a cardinal's rank, to take such a risk is never seen positively."

Baget Bozzo says that Melloni's polemical tone evokes a certain climate of growing rebellion. He refers to the protest being mounted by a hundred German theologians, led by ex-professor Peter Huenermann of Tuebingen, who signed a document that frontally attacks Ratzinger on his own ground, by asking for a radical reform of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He thinks this is a significant and consistent sign. "They didn't do it with Wojtyla. [John Allen mentions a 1989 protest letter, though!] But now, with the theological rigor of a theologian-Pope, there is much less room for ambiguity, and whoever opposes him must come out openly, as they will do for this book. Clarity calls for like clarity."

Melloni claims that the Pope's book confirms the 'slapdash and ignorant conservatism' with which the church has always treated historico-critical exegesis. But his crucial objection is that, in Ratzinger's Jesus, "all of the texts and stories have but one significance which perfectly coincides with that of the faith as expressed in the Creed and perfectly represented by the Church."

Baget Bozzo's reply: "Melloni wants to take the Bible away from the Church and entrust it to university professors, to the arrogance of those who say, 'I can do an exegesis more educated than yours.' Whereas, in fact, for the past 300 years, the Church has been defending the faith of the simple folk." [Cardinal Ratzinger has been quoted as saying that he saw that as the task of the CDF - to defend the faith of the simple folk from being confused.]

And what would be the outcome of this academic dominance? To cut off the Church from its relationship to history! He thinks that there are gnostic roots in the academic attitude that "faith is something internal, the text is just study material, and the church does not serve anything. For someone like Melloni, the true believer would be the spiritualist, who the world accepts precisely because he has nothing to do with history. Meanwhile, the Church becomes a 'tradition' that can be abolished, material that is disposable. "

"But for the Pope, belief is essential even to a historical reading of the Bible. For him, the faith is immanent in the text."

So now let's go back to Martini's question. Is this book by the Pope or by the theologian Ratzinger? Baget Bozzo thinks it's a legitimate question and not at all intended rhetorically by Martini.

His answer: "Ratzinger does not speak as the Pope, but as a Pope. It's not wordplay."

In effect, he's saying: "What I'm saying, I'm saying as a Pope, that is, as someone who places an objective problem for the whole Church - and that problem, which he has stressed as the essential problem (the reactions to his book show he is right) is to decide what is exegesis applied to Jesus - namely, the possibility of knowing 'the face of the Lord' - and how can it be done today, after three centuries in which it has been attempted in a self-limiting way."

"But he doesn't present it as the Pope, who has canonical powers that every Catholic would have to follow. What he is using is a Pope's doctrinal power, the ability to influence, which no one could possibly fail to take into consideration."

This is a translation of an interview that appeared in Avvenire on 5/22/07.


Ratzinger and the rabbi -
and other thoughts about
the Pope's book

By Filippo Rizzi


"This book will help exegetes and experts in textual criticism to study more profoundly but even to enter with more respect and rigor into the mystery of Jesus and the historicity of the Gospels."

In his study at Rome's Pontifical Biblical Institute (a status address for scholars of Sacred Scripture, where Biblicists of international renown like Martini, Bea, Lyonnet, Vanhoye and Schoeckel trained), Klemens Stock - a German Jesuits who is among the most authoritative experts in the synoptic Gospels, named in 2004 by Cardinal Ratzinger to be the secretary of the Pontifical Biblical International Commission - speaks about the Pope's book JESUS OF NAZARETH.

"Reading through the first pages," he says, "I was immediately impressed by the appreciation the Holy Father expresses for, in his words, 'the historical method which remains an irrenunciable dimension of exegetical work' and therefore, his respect for the work that we exegetes do."

You worked so many years beside Cardinal Ratzinger, first as a member then secretary of the Biblical commission. Were you expecting him to write a book on Jesus and the Gospels?
I don't know if I can answer that exhaustively. I know he has always held that there is no contradiction between the 'historical Jesus' and the 'Christ of the faith.' And I think it is wonderful that a Pope would have wanted to reaffirm a fact which, because of the distortions by various popular publications, is no longer accepted as truth: namely, that Biblical faith is based on historical facts and that Jesus was a person who truly existed and lived in a known place and time.

Nevertheless, the book keeps its distance from certain 'liberal exegeses.' For instance, he made some observations about the work of Jaspers, von Harnack or John Meier.
The Pope does part ways with some theories have been in vogue lately. He does not accept that the true historical Jesus is seen only as a great teacher and moralist, a Galilean peasant, a wandering philosopher, a revolutionary, etc. Just see how the Pope, almost as though to balance that out, refers to the Fathers of the Church and their exegeses. He cites, for instance, and not incidentally, one of the most Patristic scholars of the 20th century, Jean Danielou, with his famous book Bible and Liturgy.

So he is asking the reader to go deeper - which is the central message of the book - to get to know in Jesus the Son of God. But beyond that, to discover his particular relationship with the Father, in whose will the real Jesus is revealed, the Jesus narrated by the Gospels.

The other impressive aspect about the book is the recognition that the Pope gives to the studies by the American rabbi Jacob Neusner, whom he cites more than his master Romano Guardini or even St. Augustine. What did you think?
I thought it was a great acknowledgment which underlines that Jesus was really a Jew who observed Jewish law, but also reaffirms to Christians today that when Jesus is called the Son of God, we refer to the God of Israel, not to any pagan god."

Ratzinger refers to Neusner and his book A Rabbi talks to Jesus, specially when he explains the Sermon on the Mount. Neusner tries to understand Jesus with great respect and sympathy and then says sincerely that he cannot accept his teachings.

You think this JESUS OF NAZARETH will help facilitate the dialog between Christianity and Judaism?
I think so. I must say that I find a great ideal continuity in this book with two documents of our commission: one in 1993 called 'Interpretation of the Bible in the Church', and the other in 2001 'The Jewish people and their sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible'. Both documents carry the signature of Cardinal Ratzinger. For us Christians, a clear truth is reaffirmed: the New Testament refers to the Old, of which Jesus is the fulfillment.

One notes the passion of this theologian-Pope for the Word of God.
I think the Holy Father recognizes the great value of studying the
Word of God, not simply by us exegetes, but even for contemporary theology. I found one sentence particularly beautiful. "Man realizes the need to drink from the Word of God."

I thought that with this book, the Pope wants to remind us that Jesus, through the Gospels, speaks to the man of today, and so the Gospels should remain the ground and the base for meditation by every believer in his personal as well as communal prayers.

What other feature struck you about this book?
I found a great affinity with one of the books that gained recognition for a young Bavarian theologian in the scientific world, his Introduction to Christianity, written almost 40 years ago, in 1968. Then as now, the center of the author's research was Jesus. In this book, Ratzinger simply reaffirms that Jesus is the heart of Christianity.

I hope the Pope will come out with the second volume soon and make us enter more vividly into the fundamental and central truths of the faith.

Avvenire, 22 maggio 2007

For those who know French -

www.ktotv.com/video.php3?numero=1697

Here is a review of JON from Catholic Culture, at
beta1.catholicculture.org/
a very useful site I just discovered (I'm still a random searcher on the Internet, and have not learned how to systematize a search - haven't had a chance to consult anyone knowledgeable about this all these months!).

The review here is dated May 18. The author, Dr. Mirus, is a Catholic educator who founded Trinity Communications in 1985 "to advance the Catholic faith through communications" and has been doing that on many fronts, including Catholic World News and the Catholic Culture site. Since 1966, he has also headed an IT consulting firm which, among other things, established EWTN'S Online Services.


Benedict's New Book
by Jeffrey Mirus


My parish church is blessed to have a very enthusiastic priest who recommends many excellent books from the pulpit. At morning Mass on the day on which Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth was to be released, he described how he had tried to get an advance copy the evening before at the local Barnes & Noble. But it hadn't yet arrived, so it wasn't until the next day that he began his homily by kissing Benedict's book.

My own copy had been on advance order from Amazon for some time, and it arrived on my doorstep just an hour too late for me to hold the book up gleefully from the front pew while our priest was explaining how hard he had tried to get it. (Oh well, into every life, a little rain&.) But I share his enthusiasm for this wonderful book.

The foreword of Jesus of Nazareth discusses, among other things, the Pope's methodology. While very good, this can readily be skipped by those uninterested in the various twists and turns of Biblical scholarship over the past century. However, Benedict also tells us in the foreword that this is the first volume of what he hopes will be a two-volume work...

After the foreword, the book opens with "An Initial Reflection on the Mystery of Jesus" before entering into its ten chapters, which cover the following topics: Jesus's Baptism, His temptations, the Kingdom of God, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Disciples, the Parables, John's gospel, two milestones (Peter's Confession and the Transfiguration), and Jesus's declaration of His identity.

I will have more to say in future columns about this important book, combining as it does impressive scholarship, deep faith, and pastoral care, but let me provide an inkling of its riches here from the very first chapter.

In his exploration of Jesus's baptism alone, Benedict touches on several themes which already begin to unlock the richness of our relationship with Christ.

For example, he notes that unlike Matthew, who begins his gospel with the genealogy of Jesus, Luke couples the genealogy with the baptism, tracing Jesus back to Adam. "This is a way of underscoring the universal scope of Jesus's mission," Benedict points out. "He is the son of Adam - the son of man. Because he is man, all of us belong to him and he to us; in him humanity starts anew and reaches its destiny."

A reflection on the meaning of Jesus's baptism is, of course, the centerpiece of this chapter. When John objects that Jesus has no need to be baptized, Jesus replies, "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness" (Mt 3:15).

Benedict traces the meaning of 'to fulfill all righteousness' to the Torah, where it signifies the acceptance of God's will or, as one expression has it, the bearing of the 'yoke of God's kingdom.' He then offers this beautiful reflection on what it means for Jesus to have undergone John's baptism of repentance:

---

The act of descending into the waters of this Baptism implies a confession of guilt and a plea for forgiveness in order to make a new beginning. In a world marked by sin, then, this Yes to the entire will of God also expresses solidarity with men, who have incurred guilt but yearn for righteousness. The significance of this event could not fully emerge until it was seen in light of the Cross and Resurrection. Descending into the water, the candidates for Baptism confess their sin and seek to be rid of their burden of guilt.

What did Jesus do in this same situation? Luke, who throughout his Gospel is keenly attentive to Jesus's prayer and portrays him again and again at prayer -in conversation with the Father - tells us that Jesus was praying while he received Baptism (cf. Lk 3:21).

Looking at the events in light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what had happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, "Take me and throw me into the sea" (Jon 1:12).

The whole significance of Jesus's Baptism, the fact that he bears 'all righteousness,' first comes to light on the Cross: The Baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out "This is my beloved Son" over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word baptism to refer to his death (cf. Mk 10:38; Lk 12:50).

---

A Papal Book?

"It goes without saying," Benedict remarks near the end of his foreword, "that this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium&. Everyone is free, then, to contradict me."

A papal book is a relatively new means of communication, begun by John Paul II, in which popes publish their own works of scholarship and personal reflections as private persons.

One can, I suppose, doubt the wisdom of this development, as it provides something of a key to a pope's thought without having any magisterial right to be used even as an interpretive tool. On the other hand, the same issue exists with any pope's private comments or allocutions to individual groups, since magisterial authority extends only to what the pope intends to teach by virtue of his office to the whole Church.

In reality, there is no new blurring of the lines of authority here, but rather a great benefit in permitting some of the most brilliant and faith-filled Catholics to continue offering their human wisdom to the Church even after their election as pope.
Except when the papal office has been tied to secular politics, the human quality of the popes has been consistently and remarkably high.

Joseph Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth is a great gift which, precisely because it has been written as a private person by one who is also the pope, will have a disproportionate influence on how other scholars approach Sacred Scripture and the person of Christ.

One can read this profound book either for scholarship or for faith, for study or for meditation. It should in fact be read for both reasons. It is truly Athens and Jerusalem all in one.

==================================================================

Dr. Mirus's piece this week is about "Style and substance" applied to Popes. I will post it in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH.

This review gives an unusual historical context to the singular fact that a Pope has written a theological book. It appeared in Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on 5/14/07.


The Key to the Keeper of the Keys
by J. Peter Pham



In 1316, after the tumultuous papacy of Pope Clement V, the cardinals of the Catholic Church elected an elderly French colleague serving in the Roman Curia, Jacques Duèse, who took the name John XXII.

Although his advanced age - he was seventy-two years old when elected - predicted a transitional papacy, John took to his new office with almost miraculous energy and went on to occupy the papal throne for some eighteen years, during which time he not only reorganized the church's central bureaucracy and strengthened the powers of his office by removing the election of bishops from cathedral chapters, but also intervened in a number of theological controversies, including the one between the Conventual and Spiritual Franciscans, ultimately excommunicating the latter, including the most famous of their number, the philosopher William of Occam.

But John XXII is perhaps best known for being one of the few popes - and the only one in times recent enough for an accurate record to be extant - to stand accused of heresy.

In a series of sermons he undertook to preach between All Saints Day 1331 and the Feast of the Annunciation 1332, Pope John expounded his conviction that the saints do not see God until the day of final judgment, contradicting the traditional doctrine that they enjoyed the "Beatific Vision" immediately after death. He also speculated that devils and the souls of the damned were likewise not yet in hell (since they, like the saints, had to await the Judgment Day).

In an age in which such obscure theological disputations were followed as passionately as the culture wars are today, the pontiff's musings provoked outrage, as theologians at major universities leaped to condemn his views and a number of his cardinals began planning a council to depose him for straying from the path of orthodoxy.

Ultimately, under extraordinary pressure and on his deathbed, John gave in to his critics and professed his belief that the saints see God "as their condition allowed," insisting that, in any event, his theologizing was an academic exercise undertaken in his purely personal capacity rather than an expression of papal teaching.

John's convenient distinction between his personal theological inquiry and his official position became an increasingly difficult one to maintain as the claims of papal infallibility expanded over the centuries that followed. His successors managed it by refraining from expressing personal theological opinions and limiting their doctrinal pronouncements to official declarations.

The late Pope John Paul II, however, partially reopened the issue with the "catechisms" he delivered at his weekly Wednesday audiences as well as the books he published after his election to the papacy.

But while the Polish pontiff's literary efforts consisted primarily of semi-autobiographical personal reflections, with the publication of JESUS OF NAZARETH (Doubleday, 2007) by his German successor, Benedict XVI, for the first time in nearly seven centuries the world is confronted with systematic work by a theologian who is simultaneously, in Catholic belief, the custodian of the faith and the keeper of the keys originally entrusted by Jesus to the Galilean fisherman Simon Peter.

An academic theologian - indeed, the first to be elected to the papacy since Pius VII in 1800 - Benedict already has to his credit a distinguished list of publications so extensive that they could be fairly reckoned a respectable accomplishment for several scholars.

In his volume TRUTH AND TOLERANCE (Ignatius Press, 2004) - a book-length response to the uproar caused at the publication by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which he headed at the time, of the declaration DOMINUS IESUS, affirming the absolute universal claims of Christianity in general (and Catholicism in particular) vis-à-vis other religions - then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger surveyed his own considerable body of work and pronounced it "quite fragmentary and unfinished."

Hence the urgency that has motivated him to devote "every free moment" since his election to the papacy to finish a book he described as having has "a long gestation." That same urgency - "I do not know how much more time or strength I am still to be given," the eighty-year-old author writes - results in JESUS OF NAZARETH being just the first ten chapters of what is projected to be a longer work. It covers a narrow period in its subject's public career, extending from his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist to Peter's confession of faith and the Transfiguration.

The book takes as its starting point the author's observation over the course of his career that "the gap between the 'historical Jesus' and the 'Christ of faith' grew wider and wider and the two visibly fell apart." This distinction, first raised by critical biblical exegetes such as Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930), who helped pioneer the liberal Social Gospel movement, "has by now penetrated deeply into the mind of the Christian people at large" and to no good effect, according to Benedict, who asks: "[W]hat can faith in Jesus the Christ possibly mean&if the man Jesus was so completely different from the picture that the Evangelists painted of him and that the Church, on the evidence of the Gospels, takes as the basis of her preaching?"

An example of Benedict's own preferred methodology is found in his treatment of the baptism of Jesus. He dismisses as "more akin to a 'Jesus novel'" than an actual interpretation of the gospel texts the broad consensus of modern interpretation of the event that presents it as a "vocational experience" whereby Jesus, after having lived a relatively ordinary existence is, at the moment of his baptism by John, made "aware of his special relationship to God and his religious mission," which "supposedly originated from the expectational motif then dominant in Israel."

The texts, according to Benedict, "give us no window into Jesus' inner life" because "Jesus stands above our psychologizing." Instead, carefully read in the light of the entirety of the canon of scripture as a whole and the living tradition of the church (Benedict cites extensively the liturgies of the Eastern churches and their theology of icons, as well as the Roman liturgy), they "enable us to ascertain how Jesus is connected with 'Moses and the Prophets'; they do enable us to recognize the intrinsic unity of the trajectory stretching from the first moment of his life to the Cross and the Resurrection."

As JESUS OF NAZARETH unfolds, it is clear that its author has little patience for popular modern Christologies portraying Jesus as wise teacher on a par with the founders of other religious or philosophical movements, or as a preacher of tolerance and understanding, or even as a political revolutionary.

No wonder the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger investigated the Christological writings of Jesuit theologians Jacques Dupuis and Roger Haight and more recently issued a warning about those of another Jesuit, Jon Sobrino, who in its view transgressed into those respective faulty understandings.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I was a student of Dupuis, whose official defender during Ratzinger's intervention, Gerard O'Collins, directed the dissertation for my theological doctorate.)

For Benedict, however, the flaw with all these interpretations is that, no matter how well-intentioned, they end up detracting from the truth that "in the end, man needs just one thing, in which everything else is included," God, the source of objective, absolute truth beyond the ephemeral interests and fancies of humankind.

Thus, in his exegesis of Jesus' temptations in the desert when he was called upon to "command this stone to become bread" (Luke 4:3), Benedict admits, "Is there anything more tragic, is there anything more opposed to belief in the existence of a good God and a Redeemer of mankind, than world hunger?"

In answer to his own query, he quotes the German Jesuit priest Alfred Delp, who was executed by the Nazis for his work with the German resistance: "Bread is important, freedom is more important, but most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration." Benedict then proceeds to draw out the practical implications of this theological perspective on feeding the world today:

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The aid offered by the West to developing countries has been purely technically and materially based, and not only has left God out of the picture, but has driven men away from God. And this aid, proudly claiming to "know better," is itself what first turned the "third world" into what we mean today by that term. It has thrust aside indigenous religious, ethical, and social structures and filled the resulting vacuum with its technocratic mind-set. The idea was that we could turn our stones into bread; instead, our "aid" has only given stones in place of bread. The issue is the primacy of God. The issue is acknowledging the he is a reality, that he is the reality without which nothing else can be good. History cannot be detached from God and then run smoothly on purely material lines.

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The limitations of international development assistance are nowadays well known: witness the devastating critique by William Easterly, the subtitle of whose most recent book THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN (Penguin, 2006) was "Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good."

What is characteristic of Benedict is his emphasis, echoing his repeated calls for postmodern Europe to recover its Christian roots, that in this world "we are obliged to resist the delusions of false philosophies and to recognize that we do not live by bread alone, but first and foremost by obedience to God's word." Only when this obedience is put into practice, Benedict insists, will "the attitude develop that is also capable of providing bread for all."

Thus the reason for the pontiff's emphasis on Christology (and its role as the hermeneutical key to his own "fragmentary and unfinished" theological corpus):

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What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? ...He brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope, and love.

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Unlike his fourteenth-century predecessor, Benedict's theological treatise comes with a proviso: "It goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but is solely an expression of my personal search 'for the face of the Lord'&Everyone is free, then, to contradict me."

No doubt a number of theologians, both Catholic and non-Catholic, will dispute one or another of the scholarly preferences of the author (for example, JESUS OF NAZARETH takes issue with the influential commentaries of the Gospel of John by well-known theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Hengel, while favorably citing less well-known figures such as Protestant biblical scholar Peter Stuhlmacher, a onetime colleague of Joseph Ratzinger's at the University of Tübingen, who holds that "the Johannine school carried on the style and thinking and teaching that before Easter set the tone of Jesus' internal didactic discourses with Peter, James, and John" - a distinctly minority view in academic circles).

The real question, however, is not what professional theologians think but whether anyone else in today's world will take up Benedict's invitation to engage in dialogue. The answer to that query might well determine whether or not another seven centuries will have to pass before another Bishop of Rome takes up his pen to open an intellectual debate.


J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Virginia, is the author, among other works, of HEIRS OF THE FISHERMAN: BEHIND THE SCENES OF PAPAL DEATH AND SUCCESSION (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Continuing Oswald Sobrino's chapter-by-chapter review of JESUS OF NAZARETH, from the site CATHOLIC ANALYSIS. He devotes four installments to the chapter on "The Lord's Prayer."


Friday, May 25, 2007
"The Lord's Prayer"

In Chapter Five, the Pope comments on the Pater Noster. Here are some of the items that impressed me. Certainly, everyone should eventually attempt to read the book for himself so he can mark up or jot down what is especially meaningful in his own life.

The first item that struck me was the evangelical advice about praying not being "an occasion for showing off before others; it requires discretion that is essential to a relation of love" (p. 128).

My own advice is that in our public praying we should err on the side of brevity, which makes us choose our words carefully and which does not tax the patience of our listeners. If you want to make a very lengthy prayer, maybe that should be reserved for private prayer.

Benedict also says something beautiful about the Psalter to remind us of the jewels in this great treasure chest of prayer: "The Psalms are words that the Holy Spirit has given to men; they are God's Spirit become word. We thus pray 'in the Spirit,' with the Holy Spirit." (Benedict, p. 131.)

That is the justification for praying with and over your Bible reading (lectio divina). That is the justification for sometimes memorizing verses of Scripture. If we see the events of our lives through the prism of biblical passages that instantly come to mind, we see our lives in and through the Holy Spirit.

As we approach Pentecost and some will be receiving shortly the Sacrament of Confirmation, what better advice can we give the candidates for Confirmation than that they should soak their minds in the words of Scripture to release especially the gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, and knowledge that they will sacramentally receive. The Holy Spirit will guide you through the words of Scripture.

And, of course, this work of the Holy Spirit applies also and most powerfully to the words of the Our Father because "in them he [Jesus] gives us the Holy Spirit" (p. 131, citing St. Cyprian). By free, conscious, knowing, and serious prayer with the words of Scripture, we release the gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives - we receive a new outpouring or effusion of the Holy Spirit (what some call in the English-speaking world "baptism in the Holy Spirit").

Benedict then goes on to discuss the Our Father, line by line (hence, I will post on this chapter over several days). The first two words are revolutionary: "Our Father." A lot of powerful healing lies in those two words:

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It is true, of course, that contemporary men and women have difficulty experiencing the great consolation of the word father immediately, since the experience of the father is in many cases either completely absent or is obscured by inadequate examples of fatherhood.

Pope, p. 136 (original italics).

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The Pope is being diplomatic. In many cases, the experience of human fatherhood has been devastating. Such devastating experience has a lot to do with the rampant female promiscuity in the West. It also likely has an important role in the proliferation of homosexuality.

So to say "Our Father" is to enter a zone of healing and liberation: we have a true Father, in comparison to which even excellent human fathers are nothing. This healing fact is the fact of our divine filiation, as sons and daughters of God through the Sacrament of Baptism. Benedict emphasizes this fact again in discussing why we say the "our" in the Pater Noster:

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This word our also gives us the key to understanding the words that come next: "Who art in heaven." With these words, we are not pushing God the Father away to some distant planet. Rather, we are testifying to the fact that, while we have different earthly fathers, we all come from one single Father, who is the measure and source of all fatherhood. As Saint Paul says, "I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph 3:14-15). In the background we hear the Lord himself speaking: "Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven" (Mt 23:9). God's fatherhood is more real than human fatherhood, because he is the ultimate source of our being; because he has thought and willed us from all eternity; because he gives us our true paternal home, which is eternal.

Benedict, pp. 141-42 (original italics; emphasis added).

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The Pope then goes on to quote one of the most powerful verses in Scripture about this most real of all fathers:

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"If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Mt 7:9ff.). Luke specifies the "good gifts" that the Father gives; he says "how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Lk 11:13). This means that the gift of God is God himself. . . . This reveals in a surprising way what prayer is really all about: It is not about this or that, but about God's desire to offer us the gift of himself--that is the gift of all gifts, the "one thing necessary." Prayer is a way of gradually purifying and correcting our wishes and of slowly coming to realize what we really need: God and his Spirit.

Benedict, p. 137 (emphasis added).

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The Pope is a Catholic charismatic! He teaches that in prayer we receive God. There is no superficial distinction here between the Giver and the Gift: the Giver himself is the Gift! So, when someone disdains the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirt by saying that we should seek the Giver rather than the gifts: tell them lovingly that the Giver is indeed the Gift who comes "loaded" with many, many "accessories."

Read and underline all of Luke 11:13, maybe even memorize it. The Father we claim in the Our Father is the madly generous Father who wants to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. After receiving the sacraments, we continue to ask the Father in prayer for a greater release of the Holy Spirit in our lives in accordance with Luke 11:13 (Cf. Vatican II's Lumen Gentium, 12; by the way, be wary of the English translation of Vatican II documents that you use; if you can't read the official Latin text, I recommend the English translation in the Austin Flannery, O.P., series). That is the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in a nutshell: more importantly and more accurately, that is normal Catholicism in a nutshell -Catholicism for every Catholic, without exception. That renewal is what the Pope is describing.

This biblical charismatic dimension to prayer is also why, in endorsing an appeal by Cardinal Suenens, Cardinal Ratzinger in 1982 joined in urging "those responsible for the ecclesial ministry - from parish priests to bishops - not to let the [Catholic Charismatic] Renewal pass them by but to welcome it fully" (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Foreword, in Cardinal Suenens, Renewal & the Powers of Darkness]



Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Lord's Prayer (2)

We now resume our analysis of Ch. 5 in Benedict's new book. This chapter deals with the Pater Noster. Previously, we considered the first phrase in the prayer focusing on the fatherhood of God. Today, we move on to the other phrases of the model prayer.

1. "Hallowed Be Thy Name": The Pope, unlike some others, has absolutely no reluctance to emphasize the deeply Jewish character of Christianity. And so, he contends that "recent Bible translations were wrong to write out this name [the name of God "YHWH" that pious Jews refuse to pronounce out loud] - which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable - as if it were just any old name" (p. 143).

Even today, when you read Hebrew in a Jewish setting you substitute another word for the divine name in print. In my Hebrew class, we substitute Adonai or Lord for the divine name. The Pope has a point here. Maybe, if we were more circumspect with the divine name, some, lacking in authority or real knowledge but not lacking in misguided zeal, would be more hesitant about presumptuously pretending to speak the mind of God on so many different matters.

2. "Thy Kingdom Come": The Pope gives a guide to daily life by quoting Matthew 6:33 that we should "seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well" (p. 145). Of course, he is right. When in doubt about your course of action, follow this principle. You will not regret it now or later.

The other practical advice comes here: "The Kingdom of God comes by way of a listening heart" (p. 146). We listen in prayer and not just hear ourselves speak. We listen to the words of others, even if they are quite ordinary others in quite ordinary settings. Sometimes, God is sending signals through the words of others. We need to listen. We could also say that we need a "seeing heart," a heart that sees the prayers that God has already answered. I am convinced that many of us refuse to see God's answers to our prayers because we are so obstinate and myopic: we are stuck on seeing Him give our preferred answers, and so we miss the boat. This stubborn refusal to let God be God leads to the next petition.

3. "Thy Will Be Done on Earth As It Is In Heaven": Benedict gives us a fine sentence: "Earth becomes 'heaven' when and insofar as God's will is done there; and it is merely 'earth,' the opposite of heaven, when and insofar as it withdraws from the will of God" (pp. 147-48). We can also say that when God's will is defied, earth becomes "hell."

Do we really need examples of that? All I will add is that inseparable from God's will is respect for the freedom of others. If we seek to coerce or impose or intimidate, we are bringing hell on earth, regardless of our goal. We need to look to God for our sustenance, not to bending or manipulating the wills of others--a thought which brings us to our "daily bread."

4. "Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread": The Pope points out the levels of meaning in this petition - from the bread "that we need in order to live" physically to the bread of the "future . . . . the [eschatological] bread of the new world," which is Jesus himself (p. 154). He also, of course, points to the eucharistic interpretation.

The Greek word for "daily" (epiousios) is one that seems to have an exclusive linguistic origin in the Gospels (Mt 6:11 & Lk 11:3 are the only instances in the entire Bible, with one documented instance in Greek literature outside the Bible coming centuries after the Gospels) and which St. Jerome translated as "super-substantial" (p. 154).

The point is clear: the "bread" in this petition includes our daily physical, kitchen food; but it is also much more. We need more to live. As St. Paul would say, we are meant to be more than just our bellies (cf. Philippians 3:19).



Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Most Troublesome Petition

We know what that petition is in the Our Father: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Here is what the Pope says:

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Guilt is a reality, an objective force; it has caused destruction and must be repaired. For this reason, forgiveness must be more than a matter of ignoring, of merely trying to forget. Guilt must be worked through, healed, and thus overcome. Forgiveness exacts a price--first of all from the person who forgives. He must overcome within himself the evil done to him; he must, as it were, burn it interiorly and in so doing renew himself. As a result, he also involves the other, the trespasser, in this process of transformation, of inner purification, and both parties, suffering all the way through and overcoming evil, are made new.

Benedict, p. 159 (Ch. 5).

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What the Pope writes reminds me of what another German, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), a Lutheran, wrote years ago about "cheap grace":

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"Cheap grace," writes Bonhoefer, "means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before....Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

"Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has....Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son: 'ye were bought with a price', and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us, Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Ch. 1.]

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What can I say from my own experiences and reflection? We cannot separate this one petition or any other petition from all the other petitions in the Pater Noster.

Forgiveness means stopping the anger and the hate: reaching the point of sincerely wishing the best for those who trespass against us. Does that mean that an abused spouse, for example, puts herself (or, I guess, himself also) in the same abusive situation again? No. We practice forgiveness within the other petitions: thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

For a person to remain in an abusive or harmful situation is not the kingdom of God, is not God's will on earth. Forgiveness, yes; God's kingdom, always. The two cannot contradict. Forgiveness is not the passivity that allows abuse in any form to persist. And so the kingdom and will of God on earth advance further when forgiveness is not cheap.


Saturday, June 02, 2007
"And Lead Us Not Into Temptation"


As the Pope notes, this particular petition "is shocking for many people" (Benedict, p. 160). The Pope follows the great maxim: interpret Scripture by other Scripture by pointing us to this verse from the Letter of James: "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God': for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one" (James 1:13).

The Pope also looks at the book of Job in the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. He calls Job a book "which in so many respects prefigures the mystery of Christ" (p. 161). What he draws out for us from the book of Job is "the difference between trial and temptation" (p. 162). Here is a key excerpt:

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In order to mature, in order to make real progress on the path leading from a superficial piety into profound oneness with God's will, man needs to be tried. . . . [M]an needs purifications and transformations; they are dangerous for him, because they present an opportunity for him to fall, and yet they are indispensable as paths on which he comes to himself and to God. Love is always a process involving purifications, renunciations, and painful transformations of ourselves--and that is how it is a journey to maturity.

Benedict, p. 162 (emphasis added).

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Maturity is a goal of the Christian life, of life in the Holy Spirit. Given the types of behavior we see among not a few outwardly "pious" persons, you would think maturity was an option in the Christian life.

Maturity in Christ is not presented as an option in the letters of Paul (cf. 1 Cor. 14:20; Eph. 4:13; Phil. 3:15; Col. 1:28; Col. 4:12). And, while we are at it, maturity in Christ is the fullest maturity for all human beings because Christ reveals the truth of our human existence for every single person on the globe!

After considering the necessity of trials and purifications, Benedict is now ready to interpret the petition "lead us not into temptation":

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When we pray it [this sixth petition], we are saying to God: "I know that I need trials so that my nature can be purified. When you decide to send me these trials, when you give evil some room to maneuver, as you did with Job, then please remember that my strength goes only so far. Don't overestimate my capacity. Don't set too wide the boundaries within which I may be tempted, and be close to me with your protecting hand when it becomes too much for me."

Benedict, p. 163.

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The Pope then closes again with Scripture: "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).

I would also add that in the Spanish version of the Our Father, the sense that the Pope is presenting is more readily transparent: "Do not let us fall into temptation" ("No nos dejes caer en la tentación").

In this short section of the Pope's book, we have a good instruction in method: when you are "shocked" by a certain passage of Scripture, read more of the Scriptures and the light will come.

My rather frantic review for all the Papal-related news items I missed seeing while I was away all day yesterday turned up an item in Avvenire referring to an article written by Rabbi Neusner for the Jerusalem Post on May 30. Of course, I went after the original article, only to find that it is available in full only to paying subscribers, and what I could get for free is an abstract, which follows.

Unfortunately, the abstract does not read like a summary at all, but rather like the start of the article only. To begin with, this 'abstract' doesn't even mention the Pope! Anyway, I am posting it here, in the hope that one of you may somehow have access to the full article. But I did do a quick translation of the Avvenire item, just so we know the rest of what Neusner wrote....


My argument with the pope
Daily Edition, Jerusalem Post
Author: JACOB NEUSNER
Date: May 30, 2007
Section: Opinion
Text Word Count: 1548

Abstract (Document Summary)


POPES INVOLVED in Judeo-Christian theological dialogue?

In ancient and medieval times disputations concerning propositions of religious truth defined the purpose of dialogue between religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity. Judaism made its case vigorously, amassing rigorous arguments built upon the facts of Scripture common to both parties to the debate.

Imaginary narratives, such as Judah Halevi's Kuzari, constructed a dialogue among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a dialogue conducted by a king who sought the true religion for his kingdom. Judaism won the disputation before the king of the Khazars, at least in Judah Halevi's formulation.

But Christianity no less aggressively sought debate-partners, confident of the outcome of the confrontation. Such debates attested to the common faith of both parties in the integrity of reason and in the facticity of shared Scriptures.

WHAT'S AT stake here? If I succeed in creating a vivid portrait of the dispute, Christians see the choices [Jesus Christ] made and will find renewal for their faith in Jesus Christ - but also respect Judaism.

I underscore the choices both Judaism and Christianity confront in the shared Scriptures. Christians will understand Christianity when they acknowledge the choices it has made, and so too Jews, Judaism.

I mean to explain to Christians why I believe in Judaism, and that ought to help Christians identify the critical convictions that bring them to church every Sunday. Jews will strengthen their commitment to the Torah of Moses - but also respect Christianity.

I want Jews to understand why Judaism demands assent - "the All- Merciful seeks the heart," "the Torah was given only to purify the human heart."

Both Jews and Christians should find in A Rabbi Talks with Jesus the reason to affirm, because each party will locate there the very points on which the difference between Judaism and Christianity rests.

===================================================================

Here's a translation of the Avvenire article:


The rabbi stands with the Pope
By Giorgio Bernardelli


"Benedict is a seeker of truth. We are living through interesting times."

Words by Jacob Neusner, the New York rabbi extensively cited by Pope Benedict XVI in his book JESUS OF NAZARETH. Words rendered even more significant because of the audience they address.

It is, in fact, the final sentence in a long article by Neusner published on May 30 in the Jerusalem Post, in which the rabbi reviews the course of his studies and his relationship with Ratzinger.

"Imagine my astonishment when I was told that Chaptor 4 of the Pope's book was a Christian response to my book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus," he writes.

Above all, however, Neusner's article is an invitation to consider the Pope's book as opening a new page in the relations between Christians and Jews. Neusner goes back through history.

"In the Middle Ages," he recalls, "rabbis were forced to debate with priests before kings and cardinals on which was the true religion, Judaism or Christianity. The outcome was predictable: The Christians won because they had might on their side. Then, after the Second World War, the disputes gave way to a conviction that both religions were saying the same thing, and that differences were reduced to secondary matters. But now, there is a new debate, in which the truth expressed by both religions is at the center of the dispute."

That was the perspective chosen by Neusner for his book, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, published in 1993.

"In the past two centuries, the Jewish-Christian dialog served as a means for politics of social reconciliation," he explains. "It was no longer an inquiry into the religious convictions of each other. Negotiations took the place of debate, and it was thought that claiming truth for one's own religion was a breach of good manners and right conduct."

"In my book, on the other hand," he continues, "I take seriously Jesus's affirmation that the Torah finds fulfillment in him, and I placed this statement in confrontation with the teachings of other rabbis, in a sort of colloquy among masters of the Torah. I explain in a lucid and by no means apologetic manner why, if I had lived in the land of Israel in the first century and I had been present at the Sermon on the Mount, I would not have joined the disciples of Jesus. I would have said No courteously, and I am sure I have solid reasons and facts for this."

It is a perspective, says Neusner, that does not weaken the dialog but, on the contrary, strengthens it.

"For a long time," he writes in the article, "Jews have praised Jesus as a rabbi, a Jew who was truly like us. But for the Christian faith in Jesus Christ, this statement is absolutely irrelevant. For their part, Christians have praised Judaism as the religion from which Jesus came, but this is hardly a compliment to us. [In the book,] I underline the different choices that Jews and Christians have taken about the Scriptures they share. Christians will understand Christianity better if they are aware of the choices they have made; and the same thing goes for the Jews about Judaism. I wanted to explain to Christians why I believe in Judaism, and this should help them to understand the conviction they bring to church every Sunday."

A task now given new impetus by Benedict XVI.

Neusner concludes his article:

"When my editor asked me [in 1993] who I would suggest to present my book, I suggested chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. I admired what the cardinal had written about the historical Jesus and I wrote to tell him that. He answered me, and we started to exchange letters and books. His interest in confronting the question of truth - not simply with the politics of doctrine - seemed to me courageous and constructive.

"Now, however, His Holiness has taken a further step, responding to my criticsm with an exercise in exegesis and theology. With his JESUS OF NAZARETH, the Jewish-Christian debate enters a new era. We are now able to confront each other in a promising exercise of reason and criticism.

"The words on Mt. Sinai have brought us together to renew a 2000-year tradition of theological debate in the service of the truth of God."

Avvenire, 1° giugno 2007

=====================================================================
P.S.

This article came out in the June 1, 2007, issue of the New York-based Jewish Daily Forward (which says it began as a Yiddish daily newspaper in 1897!), and it reads like basically what might have been the article that came out in the Jerusalem Post.

The Pope and I:
A Debate With Jesus Is Joined By Benedict XVI
Jacob Neusner | Fri. Jun 01, 2007


I made up an imaginary conversation with Jesus and wound up debating the real-life Bishop of Rome, the pope.

In my 1993 book A Rabbi Talks With Jesus, I imagined being present at the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus taught Torah like Moses on Sinai. I explained why, for good and substantial reasons based in the Torah, I would not have followed Jesus but would have remained true to Gods teaching to Moses. Much to my surprise, Pope Benedict XVI, in his new book Jesus of Nazareth, devotes much of his chapter on the Sermon on the Mount to discussing my book.

More than other interpretations known to me, this respectful and frank dispute between a believing Jew and Jesus, the son of Abraham, has opened my eyes to the greatness of Jesus words and to the choice that the gospel places before us, the pope writes.

I certainly didnt envision this sort of a reception when I began writing A Rabbi Talks With Jesus. I wrote that book to shed some light on why, while Christians believe in Jesus Christ and the good news of his rule in the kingdom of Heaven, Jews believe in the Torah of Moses and form on earth and in their own flesh Gods kingdom of priests and the holy people. And that belief requires faithful Jews to enter a dissent at the teachings of Jesus, on the grounds that those teachings at important points contradict the Torah.

Where Jesus diverges from the revelation by God to Moses at Mount Sinai that is the Torah, he is wrong, and Moses is right. In setting forth the grounds to this unapologetic dissent, I meant to foster religious dialogue among believers, Christian and Jewish alike. For a long time, Jews have disingenuously praised Jesus as a rabbi, a Jew like us really; but to Christian faith in Jesus Christ, that affirmation is monumentally irrelevant. And for their part, Christians have praised Judaism as the religion from which Jesus came, and to us, that is hardly a vivid compliment.

Jews and Christians have avoided meeting head-on the points of substantial difference between us, not only in response to the person and claims of Jesus, but especially in addressing his teachings. He claimed to reform and to improve, You have heard it said& but I say&. We maintain that the Torah was and is perfect and beyond improvement, and that Judaism  built upon the Torah and the prophets and writings, and the originally oral parts of the Torah written down in the Mishnah, Talmuds and Midrash  was and remains Gods will for humanity.

By that criterion I set forth a Jewish dissent to some important teachings of Jesus. It is a gesture of respect for Christians and of honor for their faith. For we can argue only if we take one another seriously. But we can enter into dialogue only if we honor both ourselves and the other. So I treated Jesus with respect, but I also meant to argue with him about things he says.

When my publisher asked me from whom to request a blurb for my book, I proposed British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Holy Office (aka the Inquisition) in the Vatican. My favorite contemporary theologian of Judaism, Rabbi Sacks and I had corresponded for years.

Cardinal Ratzinger and I had previously exchanged offprints, sharing an interest in the historical study of Judaism and Christianity in the first century. He had criticized the study of the historical Jesus and found dubious its distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. Since my book argued that in the Sermon on the Mount a fully articulated Christianity emerged, with Jesus portrayed as exercising the authority of God, I hoped Cardinal Ratzinger would endorse the book. This he did, promptly and generously.

That is where the matter rested for 15 years. The book made its way and went through a couple of printings and a second edition. It came out in Swedish, German, Italian and Russian, with translations in Polish and Spanish under contract. Imagine my surprise when I heard that the pope mentioned my book in his biography of Jesus.

It turns out he did more than mention it. Catholic News Service reported that Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, presenting the popes book at an April 13 Vatican conference, cited my book as one of the reasons Pope Benedict decided to write his. What Pope Benedict says about [Neusners] book is so essential for understanding his own book about Jesus, the cardinal said.

More than discussions about exegetical methods used to understand what the Scriptures say about Jesus, the pope has at heart the discussion with the rabbi, Cardinal Schonborn said.

So where does the argument now stand in the light of the popes renewal of the discussion? The pope writes: Neusner addresses this mysterious identification of Jesus and God that is found in the discourses of the Sermon on the Mount.& His analysis shows that this is the point where Jesus message diverges fundamentally from the faith of the eternal Israel. Neusner demonstrates this after investigating Jesus attitude toward three fundamental commandments: the fourth commandment (to love ones parents), the third commandment (the Sabbath), and finally the commandment to be holy as God is holy. The pope proceeds to address all three, systematically and in clear focus.

In ancient and medieval times, disputations concerning propositions of religious truth defined the purpose of dialogue between religions, particularly Judaism and Christianity. Judaism made its case vigorously, amassing rigorous arguments built upon the facts of Scripture common to both parties to the debate. Imaginary narratives, such as Judah Halevis Kuzari, constructed a dialogue among Judaism, Christianity and Islam, a dialogue conducted by a king who sought the true religion for his kingdom. Judaism won the disputation before the king of the Khazars, at least in Judah Halevis formulation.

But Christianity no less aggressively sought debate partners, confident of the outcome of the confrontation. Such debates attested to the common faith of both parties in the integrity of reason and in the facticity of shared Scriptures.

Disputation went out of style when religions lost their confidence in the power of reason to establish theological truth. Then, as in Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Nathan the Wise, religions were made to affirm a truth in common, and the differences between religions were dismissed as trivial and unimportant.
Disputations between religions lost their urgency. The heritage of the Enlightenment, with its indifference to the truth-claims of religion, fostered religious toleration and reciprocal respect in place of religious confrontation and claims to know God. Religions emerged as obstacles to the good order of society. Judeo-Christian dialogue came to serve as the medium of a politics of social conciliation, not religious inquiry into the convictions of the other. Negotiation took the place of debate, and to lay claim upon truth on behalf of ones own religion violated the rules of good conduct.

Of course, religious toleration is a good thing. In the Middle Ages, after all, disputations often were not conducted in an atmosphere of civility. Jews frequently faced persecution, rather than respectful theological debate.

Yet the tradition of disputation also has value, so long as such debates are conducted in a manner reflecting goodwill and respect. In articulating our beliefs and having them challenged, we sharpen our understanding of our own faiths.

Two new facts have opened the way to a renewed debate about religious truth: First, Pope John XXIII signaled the desire of Catholic Christianity to bring about a reconciliation between Jews and Christians in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and he expressed respect for Judaism.

Second, the Second Vatican Council began the work of formulating a Catholic theology of Judaism and other religions, an enterprise realized for Christianity in Pope John Paul IIs Crossing the Threshold of Hope. The counterpart for a Judaic theology of world religions is Chief Rabbi Sackss The Dignity of Difference.

It is against this backdrop that one should view my exchange with Pope Benedict. What we have done is to revive the disputation as a medium of dialogue on theological truth. In this era of relativism and creeping secularism, it is an enterprise that, I believe, has the potential to strengthen Judaism and Christianity alike.
Rabbi Jacob Neusner is a professor of the history and theology of Judaism at Bard College and a senior fellow at the colleges Institute of Advanced Theology.

perhaps these books could be interesting: www.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354661&p=2

unfortunately it was sunday and the shops around the vatican were closed, so i couldn't get a view inside.

The Apostles


This new book covering Benedict's talks about the apostles during his general audiences is being published in English in August by Our Sunday Visitor.

Christ first, last and always

George Weigel
The Tidings
Published: Friday, June 8, 2007

A few weeks back, Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, and I were invited by Doubleday to help launch Pope Benedict XVI's new book, "Jesus of Nazareth," at a May 15 program in Washington.

It was, among other things, a happy reunion, as I hadn't seen Brother Allen since the halcyon days of April 2005, which we both spent in Rome covering (and preparing books on) the papal transition. Since then, John has moved to New York, but his return to the Great Republic hasn't diminished his insight into papal affairs and how others perceive them --- and so he began his remarks with an acute observation.

Note, he said, that the mainstream media found three bits of "news" during Benedict XVI's May trip to Brazil. There was the impromptu papal statement about politicians, abortion and the ecclesiastical sanction of excommunication. There was the papal condemnation of drug-dealing (surprise!). And there were a few lines in an 11-page speech to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean in which the Pope observed that both capitalism and Marxism had flaws (surprise again!).

To his colleagues on the press plane, Allen remarked, these were three disconnected moments. In fact, he said, there was a "scarlet thread" running throughout Benedict XVI's speeches, homilies and remarks in Brazil, a thread that linked the Brazil trip to the publication of "Jesus of Nazareth." That thread was, and is, the Pope's insistence that Jesus Christ is the revolution.

For Benedict XVI, everything else flows from that unshakable conviction. Social progress, which means political and economic systems that reflect human dignity and unleash human creativity, follows from belief in God through Christ. Liberation from enslavement to drugs and drug-dealers is possible because of belief in God through Christ. Healing from the wounds of abortion follows from faith in God through Christ. And so forth and so on, through the whole catalogue of 21st century ills.

During the discussion that followed our panel's remarks, a guest asked whether there was a difference between this radical Christocentricity of Benedict XVI and the teaching of his great predecessor, John Paul II.

I suggested that it wasn't so much a matter of difference as of destination. John Paul II began his pontificate with the clarion call, "Open the doors to Christ!" Why? Because, as the Pope continued, "Christ knows 'what is in man.' He alone knows it."

John Paul's magisterium was intensely Christocentric, in that Karol Wojtyla was convinced that we learn that truth about our humanity in contemplating the face of Christ: his was a Christology with an anthropological destination.

Benedict XVI shares that conviction. But as he writes in "Jesus of Nazareth," getting to the truth about ourselves through "intimate friendship with Christ" is difficult today because two centuries of historical-critical dissection of the New Testament have left the face of Christ murky, even obscure.

When exegetes try to reassemble the pieces after dissecting the Gospels, the result too often reflects the exegete's own concept of who Christ should be --- mild-mannered liberal teacher; apocalyptic visionary; social reformer; political revolutionary --- rather than the truth about Jesus of Nazareth, his person and his message.

We need both historically sophisticated methods of interpretation and trust in order to read the Gospels properly, Pope Benedict writes. If we approach the Gospels with suspicion, we will encounter a Christ in our preferred image, not the Jesus who is the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1: 15). If we approach the Gospels with alert minds and open, trusting hearts, however, we meet a Jesus with whom "intimate friendship" becomes possible, and life-transforming.

Time and again, whether he's writing about the temptations, the parables, the Lord's Prayer, or the miracles of Jesus' public ministry, Pope Benedict's method of reading the Gospels puts the edge back on stories and messages often dulled by familiarity. Reading the New Testament through the eyes of Joseph Ratzinger in "Jesus of Nazareth" thus becomes a way to read the Gospels afresh --- and to be reminded that, whether the New York Times thinks it's "news" or not, the proclamation of Jesus Christ is what the Church is for.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.