RATZINGER: THE EARLY YEARS
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A new start that prospered in the ruins
Interview by Gianni Valente and Pierluca Azzaro
With Prof. Alfred Laepple
There are only two typewritten manuscripts, bound in red marocaine, of Joseph Ratzinger’s first work. The yellow lettering on the cover indicates it is a translation in German of St. Thomas Aquinas’s
Quaestio disputata on the subject of
caritas. One of the copies is in the author’s possession. The other is kept by Alfred Laepple in his house in Gilching, in the Munich suburbs.
Laepple recounts: “We translated it together, line by line. It was 1946. I remember how we looked for the original versions of all the citations from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine… Then, several years later, the manuscript was deteriorating, and my secretary retyped it, and I had two copies bound. I gave one copy to oJseph as a gift on March 14, 1979, when on the feast of St. Thomas, he came to Salzburg, at the Aula Magna where I was teaching, to give a master class on “The consequences of faith in creation”.”
(We interviewed the professor at) the end of January when the German press was still reporting on
Deus caritas est. Professor Laepple, with the precious typewritten manuscript in his hand, observed: “When I first heard what the theme was for Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, it seemed to me very suggestive that it recalled his
opus primum written when he had just started seminary in 1946. It means that at the start, in every new start for him, there is always love.”
There is snow here in Gilching, and over a great part of Bavaria. In the hills behind us, the young Ratzinger had served in an anti-aircraft battery during the second world war. The old professor with the young heart – who had a prestigious university career as professor of pedagogy and has written dozens of books on spirituality - has come out of his house today, in jacket and shirt, to shovel his garden path. We are told that at 91, he still drives his old BMW.
But today he is revisiting memories leading him back along the impassioned pathways of his life. In his sunlit living room, he reveals to us the secret of a friendship that has lasted over 60 years. Which is also the early history of a young man who would become the successor to Peter.
Fr. Laepple celebrates his first Mass in Partenkirchen, in 1947.
with the young Joseph Ratzinger as his Mass server. Ratzi is 20!
Left: The ruins of Munich's main cathedral, the Frauenkirche, in 1944.
Right: 1945 Corpus Domini procession through the streets of a ruined Munich.
When did you first meet Joseph Ratzinger?
It was January 4 or 5, 1946. I had just returned from an American POW camp. At the time I had to leave in 1939 to become a soldier of the Luftwaffe [the German air force], I only needed one more year to become a full priest. So as soon as I got back, I called the seminary in Freising to find out what I had to do. I spoke with the new rector Michael Hoeck, a priest who had survived 5 years in the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and Dachau where he was sent for having written articles against Hitler in the diocesan newspaper. I already knew him, because he had been my prefect of studies at the minor seminary.
What did Rector Hoeck tell you?
He said, “Dear Alfred, Iwas waiting for you, I have a nice assignment for you. You must be the prefect of studies for the new ones who have never been in a seminary before.” He took me to the largest hall that there was in the seminary, the Red Room, which was usually opened only for solemn celebrations. They had arranged the desks and chairs, and there were some 60 novices. Rector Hoeck told them: "Dear boys, here is the best man that I have found for you. You will be in good hands with him." Among those 60 boys were the Ratzinger brothers.
A few days later, during a break, this young man whom I had not yet met approached me. He said,"I am Joseph Ratzinger and I have some questions for you." Our work together started with those questions. It was the start of so many conversations, so many walks together, so many passionate discussions and so much work done together. That is how a great friendship started. We have never lost sight of each other. If we had something to say to each other, we phoned each other and we wrote each other a lot..
As prefect of seminarians you had an unusual background – the war and the POW camp. How did it go?
From 1939 to 1945 I was with the Luftwaffe, then I was taken prisoner by the Americans in Westphalia, near Hamm. From there I was deported to France and was about to be placed on a ship for the United States. But between April and May of 1945, the war came to an end and they transferred us to a POW camp near Le Havre.
There were almost half a million of us, divided into groups of a thousand each. I went around the camp with the American chaplain for whom I served as interpreter. I soon realized that the camp had a great many seminarians, priests, Protestant pastors, theology students. I even recognized some of them. I succeeded in getting them all together as a separate group. There were more than 300, Catholic as well as Protestant. We organized theology courses. Eventually, some of those lectures were even published. On the frontispiece I wrote a motto from Kierkegaard: “Christianity is not a doctrine, but the communication of a life.” I did not know Ratzinger yet but it was within this common view of Christianity that we met each other. These were the things we spoke to each other about so fervently.
You said you were almost a priest when you had to go to war. Where did you study?
I was born in 1915. After three years of theology and philosophy at the superior school in Freising, I started my university studies at the faculty of theology in Munich. Under the guidance of Professor Theodor Steinbuechel, I started to work on a dissertation on the theme of the conscience of the individual in the Church according to (Cardinal John Henry)Newman. But the Nazis closed down the faculty in 1939 because Cardinal Faulhaber had refused to accept a pro-Hitler professor, Dr. Hans Barion, who had been a member of the National Socialist Party since 1933. Then the war began.
A young man about to become a priest, who is passionately interested in Newman and personalism – in what spirit did you go to war?
With a divided heart. Today it is easy to say that we could have said no. But at that time, conscientious objection meant a death sentence. I was sent to officer school in Baden near Vienna, but I refused to become an officer. I thought: if Hitler wins, I will never be a priest. I will end up being a soldier in Norway or in North Africa. If I want to become a priest, then Germany must lose. That was my torment. That was the tragedy we faced. And whom many had the courage to recount soon after the war.
In what way?
I had just returned a few days from the POW camp, and in Munich I attended a lecture by the writer Ernst Weichert. I never forgot his words: “Consider this, my friends, and let it be that we can shout it out… We know that thousands turned their backs against the demons, and that little by little, these thousands became tens, hundreds of thousands, then millions… And I know that they did not have the courage to speak up because to do so would have meant death. They were obedient, silent, but every step that they took was like stepping on thorns. And at night, when no one saw, they lifted their hands to God and prayed for Germany’s enemies to triumph. Does the world know what such a prayer means? Does the world know what a people must have suffered in order to pray that way?”
Dachau is not far from here. Did you all know what happened there?
I had friends who had been sent to Dachau, so I knew something. But each of them said, Alfred, I cannot speak. If I say something, they will send me back there and I will never get out again.
And right here, behind your house, are the hills where the young Ratzinger served with an anti-aircraft battery in Gilching…
He tells of that period in his autobiography. Even he ended up in an Americna POW camp from where he was released on June 19, 1945. The date has remained in my memory because it is my birthday, and on that day, I turned 30.
Did the horror from which you all came condition the atmosphere in the newly reopened seminary?
In the newspapers we read every day an account of the trials in Nuremberg, or saw the pictures of the mountains of cadavers found in the concentration camps. We asked ourselves how all of this could have been possible. And all of it drew this reaction: that we must now start again from zero. To begin with, we were happy that the war was over, we could not take any more of it. We just wanted to become priests. So we were very happy to be able to begin our studies.
Without looking back?I
t was like starting from scratch. It was over, enough, it was necessary to stop talking about it. We knew that later, in the confessional, we would be listening to both victims and executioners. They would be telling us: I was in a concentration camp. Or I was a partisan. Or I was in the war and I killed partisans.
Excuse me if I insist. It was a new beginning for your seminary. You were preparing to bear witness to the Christian faith among men who had their lives upset by nazism and the war. Wasn’t there a common attempt to find out what exactly had happened?
I can only say that we were in a state of shock over what had happened. That Christians had been responsible for the concentration camps… There was nothing to discuss; none of our answers could have explained it. Hitler never left the Church…But it did not make sense to dig it all up among us. God had saved us, he had rescued us from the abyss, and only he with his forgiveness could heal hearts. It was as if the end of the war had given us back our lives, given us a second life. And we could thank God with our lives by being good priests. Then we would be serving the faithful not just for the moment but for always.
Ratzinger narrates that there were seminarians who were in their 30s and 40s, who had interrupted their studies to go to war and had lived through its horrors…
There were even some who had a command role in the war. After I became a priest, they all started to confide in me, because I too had been in the war. They said, we cannot go to the rector, he was in a concentration camp, not out fighting the war, he would not understand…There was an unspoken pact among them: they would not ask each other where they were or what they did.
What did they tell you?
They would ask me: I did this, I did that. In all conscience, can I be a good priest? I remember one who had been a major and had killed. He said, I can’t become a priest. Every time I start Mass and say “Dominus vobiscum," someone could rise and shourt, you are an assassin. Another one, during the retreat from Russia, shot a companion who was wounded and had his leg amputated, who begged him to shoot him so his suffering would end. He asked me, Father, I killed him. Was that homicide?
And what did you answer?
I tried to comfort him. I said, if I had been in your place, I might have done worse things.
You said that even Joseph Ratzinger, when he first approached you, said he had questions. What did he ask you?
He asked: How were you able to keep your faith throughout the war?
And you answered?
I told him I owed it to the prayers of my mother, whom he later wished to meet. And that I knew that Christ loved me, and if I were to be saved, I would give my life to Christ.
How was was seminary life in Freising?
Half of the seminary was still being used as a hospital for lnjured Allied soldiers. But from the beginning, we tried to establish normal seminary routine. The boys slept in big rooms in groups of 40. Everyone had his own bed surrounded by a white curtain to provide some separation. They woke up at 5:30 a.m., then Mass, breakfast and lessons. Courses which had to do directly with pastoral work were held in the seminary. But the scientific courses were given at the Superior School of philosophy and theology, a state institution which was housed next to the seminary. After lunch, there was some free time, they would go for a walk, and then back to lessons. At night, after supper, there would be a meditation or perhaps a lecture. We went to bed happy. We did not have any heating, so we all hurried to get under the covers because the rooms could get chilly.
Did the Ratzinger brothers distinguish themselves in any way?
During lessons, they were always in the first row. The other students called them Orgel-Ratz and Buecher-Ratz, the Ratzinger of the organ and the Ratzinger of the books. Georg was already a musician even then.
What struck you the most about Joseph?
He was like blotting paper which absorbed everything almost with avidity. Whenever he found something during his studies that he could correct or that opened new avenues for him in relation to what he already knew, he was full of enthusiasm and could not wait to share it with others. He and I spent hours and hours discussing things while going on a walk. First one subject then another… I remember as though it were yesterday the time we discussed the sentence in which Nietszche said that Christians should have the faces of redeemed persons so that one can believe in their Redeemer.
He came to the Mass at which Cardinal Faulhaber ordained me as a priest on June 29, 1947 in Freising. And even that day, he had questions for me.
What did he want to know?
He asked: What happens at the moment of Consecration, during the Mass? Who is at work during this mystery? Is it I, the priest, who is doing it? Is there some sort of magic force at work? These were his questions that day, and then again after my First Mass in Partenkirchen, on July 6, 1947. We talked for hours that day, taking a walk near the ski slopes built for the Winter Olympics of 1936. I repeated a passage from St. John Chrysostom (I had read it during the spiritual exercises to prepare for my ordination) where he says that the priest lends Christ his being, his hands, his words, but it is Christ himself who works the miracle of changing bread and wine into his flesh and blood.
In 1997, when I celebrated 50 years of priesthood in Munich-Pasing, Ratzinger sent me a letter in which he recalled how important that day was for him.
Can we read it?
“On that festive day,” he wrote, remembering that walk, “I experienced much more than ever before what it means to be a priest in the Church of Jesus Christ. You yourself told me then how moved you were that you could say the same words that Jesus did for the transformation of bread and wine, giving him your voice, your words, your very being.” For that first Mass which I celebrated in my hometown of Partenkirchen, I asked Ratzinger to accompany me and be my ‘cerimoniere.’
At that time you were already a Newman scholar. Was it you who transmitted to Ratzinger his interest in this English cardinal theologian?
Newman was not just a topic like any other, He was our passion. The theme of my thesis was :”Conscience in Newman”. I did my doctoral exams in July 1951, one week after Ratzinger was ordained priest. He helped me. It was he who translated my thesis into classical Latin, a thesis that at the time had to be defended during a public session at the University of Munich in order to earn the doctorate.
Between us we shared this great liberty in looking at and judging things, the freedom of the sons of God that St. Paul writes about. So that was why Newman fascinated us – one who had lived as a free-thinking man in the context of anglicanism, how would such a man accept the Catholic doctrine of the primacy of the Church? Was it thinkable that he could accept this doctrine as a limit to his own liberty? It was I who read Ratzinger the sentence of Newman that he has often cited since…
Which is?
The famous sentence in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk: “Certainly if I had to offer a toast to religion after a meal – something which one is rarely called on to do – then I would toast the Pope. But first for conscience and then for the Pope.”
Did the young Ratzinger already begin showing his impatience during his seminary studies?
The philosopher at Freising then was Arnold Wilmsen, a neo-scholasticist. Ratzinger mever talked about it much to me, maybe because he did not want to be discourteous. But Wilmsen’s lessons had as much effect on him as water on a rainproof coat. He said, I am sorry for the time I am losing, it would be more useful for me to go for a walk with you….
What didn’t he like about neo-scholasticism?
He wrote about it in his book. Wilmsen, who had stuck to the neo-Thomism that he had learned in Rome, seemed to Ratzinger like someone who had stopped asking questions but only thought of defending - against every attempt to question it - the truth which he believed he possessed.
And why did this bother Ratzinger?
It wasn’t so much a question of contrasting philosophical doctrines. The question was: what is a man, after all? A man always asks questions, and when he thinks that he has an answer to one, he finds there is another greater question. It always bothered him for truth to be considered as a possessed object that had to be defended. He was not at ease with neo-scholastic definitions which appeared to him as barriers, in which whatever was within such definitions was the truth,and everything outside was error. But if God is everywhere, he argued, I cannot put up a barrier and say God is only here. And if Christ himself said that he is the way, the truth and the life, then truth is a You which loves us first. According to him, we do not know God because he is the
summum bonum whom we can grasp and demonstrate with exact formulas, but because he is a You who comes to us and makes himself known to us. The intellect can construct concepts to define true content. But according to Ratzinger, that is a theology that would dissect the mystery, not a theology that kneels. And even then, that kind of theology did not interest him. In Bavarian we would say, it wasn’t his beer at all!
And what was his kind of “beer” in those days?
He was never interested in books with titles like “The essence of Christianity.”
He was never interested in defining God with abstract concepts. An abstraction, he once said, does not need a mother. God did not come to us as an abstract concept, as a summum bonum, but as a You who loved me first, and we can thank him! You can only say thanks to a You. This same approach one finds for instance in Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher of personalism who said that
the best discourse with God was to give him thanks. But even because of this, we loved Newman who chose for his episcopal motto “Cor ad cor loquitur” (heart speaking to heart).
After his studies in philosophy, Ratzinger began to study theology at the Theological faculty in Munich. What were you doing at that time?
After I became a priest, I was a chaplain for one year, and then in 1948, I returned to the seminary in Freising as lecturer in ministry and sacraments. But I still had to finish my theological studies and my doctorate thesis on Newman. That is how I found myself taking some theology courses with Ratzinger at the university. The campus had been destroyed by bombings and the theology faculty was temporarily housed in Fuerstenried, the former hunting lodge of the Bavarian kings, south of Munich. I remember we started out holding classes in the greenhouse, very warm in summer, and cold in winter.
The theology faculty of Munich had a prestigious tradition in which Christianity was principally approached as historical fact…
Yes, but after it was closed down by the Nazis in February 1939 and after the war, it had to start all over. There was no longer an ‘organic’ theological school left. Very few remained of the old professors, and the new ones came from different theological faculties and diverse backgrounds. The teaching corps was very diverse internally. And in that atmosphere, even the students took liberties…
What do you mean?
Like they would enrol in a course, but if they found the professor’s lessons uninteresting, they would not come to class. They would assign someone to take notes and then they would share the notes. But in the libraries, they preferred to read books about new tendencies in theology.
Who were the big names in the faculty?
I thought the three most important ones were Gottlieb Soehngen, Michael Schmaus and Friedrisch Wilhelm Maier.
What do you remember of Soehngen, Ratzinger’s “teacher’?
He taught fundamental theology, and his way of lecturing was impressive. One could see that he had lived what he explained. He would come with a piece of paper, with 3 or 4 words written at the top folowed by a series of questions. He spoke extemporaneously, and if a striking idea came to him while he was lecturing, he would leave the lectern and come near the students, almost as if to speak to them tete-a-tete. He started out in philosophy, but he was destined for theology, as Ratzinger said in his homily at his funeral. His was not a theology of concepts, but an existential theology, a theology for the faith.
It was known that he and Schmaus did not get along.
Soehngen was very open to new influences coming from France. And he was a man from Cologne, sunny, happy, extroverted, fascinating. Schmaus on the other hand was the classic professor who is detached, all compressed and enclosed within that role. He came from neo-scholasticism, although he enlivened his exposition of Catholic dogma with references to the Fathers and to Scripture with limitless erudition. Soehngen maintained that Schmaus’s works were only rich compilations of citations from original sources on the various topics of theology, without having a vision that also took into account developments in modern philosophy and the questions these gave rise to. Schmaus wrote monumental works of dogmatic theology!
What were the theological differences between them?
For Schmaus the faith of the Church was communicated with definitive static concepts which stand for perennial truths. For Soehngen, the faith was a mystery and it was told through a story. At that time, the “story of salvation” was much talked about. It had a dynamic element which guaranteed openness and taking into account new questions.
What did Ratzinger learn from Soehngen?
Soehngen usually never made liquidatory judgments on any author. He never rejected a priori any new proposal brought forward, whoever it came from. His way was to gather and evaluate whatever was good that could be found in each author and in every theological perspective, in order to be able to integrate the new into tradition, and then move ahead, indicating the ulterior developments that could follow. But Ratzinger also saw in Soehngen a taste for rediscovering tradition, where this is understood as the theology of the Fathers of the Church. It was a taste for making theology by going back to the great sources: from Plato to Newman, passing through Tomas, Bonaventure, Luther, and obviously, Saint Augustine.
Who became Ratzinger’s favorite.
Ratzinger’s passion for Augustine began in the seminary. It was an existential passion. I remember a lesson in which Soehngen said that before Augustine, everyone – Plato, Xenophon, Julius Caesar – all spoke in the third person, The sainted Bishop of Hippo was the very first to say “I”. This was a breakthrough.
How was the relationship between teacher and student here?Soehngen was not in the habit of ‘forming” his pupils, of making them clones of himself. Ratzinger was always free in his relationship with his teacher. That can be seen even in his doctorate thesis.
In what way?
The point of departure was to seek to understand what would be the best definition of the Church. On June 29, 1943, Pope Pius XII published the encyclical
Mystici Corporis Christi, which defined the Church as the mystical Body of Christ. Soehngen noted that such a definition could not be traced to the Bible. So he suggested to Ratzinger to verify whether St. Augustine had used other definitions for the Church.
What was wrong with the definiion of the Church as the mystical Body of Christ?
One of the questions for example was: If a man, entering the Church, comes as someone already involved in the mystical Body of Christ, then how can he continue to sin? And what is the purpose of liberty? Ratzinger’s discoveries surprised and enthused Soehngen.
And what did the pupil find?
Ratzinger found so much more than what his teacher asked him to look for. He documented with an incredible number of citations what St. Augustine meant when he defined the Church as the people of God. The same expression which would be proposed much later after the Second Vatican Council by Paul VI. But Ratzinger did not counterpose the two definitions of the Church, he reconciled them.
How did Soehngen take that?
He said: And now my student knows more about this than I whom am the teacher! Soehngen had great consideration for the person he considered his best pupil. Once he said he felt like Albertus Magnus, who in the Middle Ages said his pupil’s voice carried farther than his! And his pupil was, of course, Thomas of Aquinas. He, Soehngen, was very happy that someone knew how to develop his suggestions in an original and not predetermined way.
Ratzinger says in his autobiography that for his doctoral thesis on Augustine, you too influenced him in a determinative manner because in 1949 you gave him the book entitled Catholicism by he French Jesuit Henri de Lubac…
I gave it to him because I thought it would be beautiful surprise. Indeed he writes that it became his reference text, which conveyed to him a new relationship with the thinking of the Fathers, as well as a new look at theology. In effect, more than one-third of that book consisted of citations from the Fathers.
And yet, it was precisely in those years that De Lubac, Danielou and the other Jesuits from Lyons were prohibited from teaching, and their books were listed in the Index. How did you all take it?
I remember when we got the news about the measures taken against them. Soehngen did not want to incite anyone so he didn’t give any indication of it during class. But I remember that day, Ratzinger and I, after class, went with him to his study where he had a grand piano, because Soehngen was also a musician who played like a concert pianist. That day, in front of us, he didn’t say a word, but he threw down his books on his desk, then sat at the piano and vented all his anger through the keyboard.
In his autobiography, Ratzinger writes that even then, exegesis was already at the center of his interests, and the point of departure for his theological work…
He has always cited Sacred Scripture. Even now one can see that in his homilies and his most beautiful catechetical lessons, he often starts from a passage in Scripture, commented on with citations from the Fathers referring to such passage. Because for him there cannot be a good explanation of an excerpt from the Bible if it does not begin with the interpretaiton that the Church has given to it through the Fathers. This for him is the
Traditio vivens, the living transmission. It was the Church that defined the Canon, which has indentified the canonical books. He is not one of the exegetes of
soli Scriptura. For him, one must start from the motto
Christus praedicat Christum. The best exegete of Christ is Christ himself in the Church within which he works. And this brings with it maximum freedom, because as St. Augustine said: «
In Ecclesia non valet: hoc ego dico, hoc tu dicis, hoc ille dicit, sed haec dicit Dominus».
Maier, who taught New Testament exegesis, lived through tough times himself.
When he was a youung scholar, before the first World War, he was an enthusiastic advocate of the exegetic thesis according to which the Gospel of Mark was the first to heve been written, providing the soutrce for the other synoptic Gospels. A thesis that was then commonly accepted, but subsequently, it was all branded as modernism. The pages with Maier’s arguments on the subject were ripped from the anthology in which they had been included. And he was prohibited from teaching. But things changed after the Second World War, and it was a great fortune to have Maier as a professor in Munich…
Ratzinger writes that Maier failed to assimilate the turning point that had been introduced to exegesis by Rudolh Bultmann and Karl Barth…
Professor Maier continued to move within the horizon of historico-critical exegesis. But his drect approach, his way of posing questions without censoring them, created a new immediacy of the Biblical text.
Ratzinger also recounts his relationship with the so-called liturgical movement. What was he referring to?
In those years, the liturgical movement underscored the centrality of liturgy in Christian life, and aimed to rediscover the essential elements of liturgy, liberating it from the additions which had grown over it in layers down the centuries. Joseph Pascher, the professor for ministry, was also the director of the Gregorianum, the college where the students lived, and he was an enthusiastic supporter of the liturgical movement. He was influenced by French currents and in the discussions which were beginning then between those who support the theory that the mass is a sacrifice and those who think it is a meal, Pascher belonged to the latter group. But Romano Guardini had already expressed himself against reducing the Mss to a ritual repetition of the Last Supper….
And what position did Ratzinger take?
For him, the character of the Mass as sacrifice cannot be put aside, but that does not exclude that the Mass ritually repeats the Last Supper, the meal with which the disciples celebrated the Jewish Passover. This capacity of his to integrate both positions was demonstrated again in a meditation on this theme that the Pope gave during the last Bishops Synod. Nevertheless, Ratzinger respected Pascher and was influenced by his emphasis on making the daily celebration of the Mass the central point of his pupils’ education. He felt bad whenever he noticed that any professor, after a display of precise definitions in the classroom, showed himself hardly able to say Mass properly and moved about the altar unfamilarly. One time, while one of these types was saying Mass, he said, “Look, I don’t think he even knows what exactly is happening in the Mass.”
How did the Theological faculty in Munich greet the proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption in 1950?
In general, it was critical. There was no objection to the content of the dogma, but about whether it was necessary to proceed to dogmatizxation. Soehngen underscored that in the Christian sources from the first century, there was no trace of a doctrine that Jesus’s Mother had been assumed physically into Heavenm. Schmaus found hiself called down both by Rome and the Archbishop of Munich because of a critical article he wrote for the diocesan newspaper.
And Ratzinger?
I think even he thought that dogmatization was not necessary. In our practice of the most traditional devotions we already believe and celebrate the Assumption of Mary, as in the Rosary, for instance.
Lex orandi, lex credendi. We thought that at that time, the promulgation of a new dogma would create problems for the ecumenical dialog that was flourishing in Germany at the time.
In 1951, after his ordination, Ratzinger began his ministry as a chaplain. What do you recall of that time?
Young Fr. Ratzinger says Mass in Ruhpolding, a mountain village.
He was assigned to the parish of the Most Precious Blood in Munich and he stayed there for a year. Before him, the parish had two martyrs who were victims of Nazism – the chaplain Hermann Joseph Wherle, killed in September 1944, and the Jesuit Alfred Delp, killed in February 1945. In that first year, he had to give 16 hours of religious instruction every week, too much for a beginner. He also guided Catholic youth movements in the parish. He then had to decide: should he continue his study of theology and undertake an academic career, or should he opt to become a pastoral priest in some parish. At that time, I did something which contributed to resolving the dilemma.
What did you do?
In 1952, I wanted to leave my assignment as lecturer on Ministry of the sacraments at the Seminary in Freising, I decided to see Bishop Faulhaber to tell him that the best person to succeed me at that post was Joseph Ratzinger. Who did, in fact, on October 1, 1952, take my post, and thus began his academic career. I never told him that I went to the bishop to propose his name. But I like to think that maybe that intervention of mine helped open him on his path.
So in 1952, Ratzinger goes back to live in Freising, and in 1953, he pases his final exams for his doctorate in Theology. Meanwhile, still under Soehngen’s guidance, he chooses his topic for the exam that in Germany one must pass in order to obtain Habilitation to become a lecturer. He chooses St. Bonaventure. What was the specific topic assigned?
Ratzinger was supposed to analyze Bonaventure’s viewpoint on Revelation. In those years, the debate about Revelation was heated. A new perspective considered Revelation as, above all, God’s action in history, in proceeding towards the story of salvation. And it could not be identical to the communication of some truths to reason via abstract concepts, as in the neo-scholastic way.
What did Ratzinger find out this time?
He realized that in Bonaventure’s medieval perception, Revelation was first of all an act, it always indicated an act in which God manifests himself at a given historical moment. Revelation was reflected in the Sacred Scriptures but was always greater than Scripture itself; it preceded Scripture and it was not identical to it, just as a fact precedes and is not identical to the account that is made of it. Therefore the formula of
sola Scriptura was alien to the thought of Bonaventure, that concept in modern times which defines Revelation as the fixed and objective aggregate of what is contained in Holy Scriptures. Beyond that, in his analysis, Ratzinger noted that in this perspective, there is Revelation only when the act by which the Mystery is manifested ia perceived by someone. If God had spoken only in divine language, not comprehensible to any man, there would have been no Reveation at all.
Ratzinger then recounts how things became complicated. What happened?
In the autumn of 1955, Ratzinger submitted his work on Bonvaenture. Soehngen was very enthusiastic right away. But the thesis adviser was Schmaus because he was the medievalist in the faculty. Schmaus told Soehngen: Look, this is a modernist work, I cannot let it pass. So Soehngen warned Ratzinger, watch out because we can’t make it with this work, Schmaus thinks it is a modernist work. I think that some sentences may have appeared to Schmaus like dangerous subjectivism which would put the objectivity of Revelation into question.
But the thesis for the Habilitation of the future Pope was not rejcted because of suspected modernism……
No, the faculty council sent it back to him to rewrite, taking into account the corrections and criticisms that Schmaus had made on the copy.
But the size of the required changes would have required years of work. So Ratzinger resorted to a subterfuge…
In Ratzinger’s thesis, Part 2 was dedicated to the theology if Bonaventure’s story, compared to that of Gioachino di Fiore, and Schmaus had not placed any critical judhgments on this part. This section was really autonomous and could be read as a complete text in itself. So even Soehngen advised Ratzinger to cut out the first part, which is causing all the problems, and just present Part 2.
So the Habilitation thesis is accepted, and on February 21, 1957 was the day of the public reading of the Habilitation theses at the Univerity of Munich, and in the Great Hall of the Faculty of Theology, there was a gathering such as for grand occasions. What do you remember?
Ratzinger made his exposition. Then Schmaus started by asking him if he thought that truth was satic and immutable or whether it was historical-dynamic. Ratzinger did not reply. Soehngen spoke up, and the two professors started to face off in what seemed like a great medieval
disputatio. The public applauded Soehngen and seemed happy that Schmaus, the supercilious professor, was getting his comeuppance. Ratzinger did not say a word. Finally the rector arrived and said, Enough, time is up. So then, the examiners got up and said hurriedly, “OK, he passes…”
What happened afterwards? Ratzinger indicates some problems on the part of his detractors…
Ratzinger took over the teaching of Dogmatic Theology at the School of Higher Studies next to the seminary in Freising, where he himself had studied. Meanwhile, rumors went around that Ratzinger would be sent to an institute of pedagogy in Pasing, in the periphery of Munich.
He talks of problems with the episcopal curia. What did he mean?Let us remember that throughout the war, there were no ordinations. In the dioceses and parishes, there was much work to do. One would hear, “First let us think of pastoral work, then let us think of theology and science.” The bishops were not happy whenever anyone asked to dedicate himself to scientific theology. But in Germany there is a law that if a priest is called on by a state university to teach theology, his bishop cannot oppose this.
And Ratzinger availed of this?
In the summer of 1958, Joseph received an offer from the University of Bonn to take the chair of fundamental theology. Shorly after, Cardinal Wendel, who was then Archbishop of Munich, called him and said: “Congratulations, I hear that you are going to the pedagogical institue in Pasing.” And Ratzinger replied: “I thank you very much, Lord Archbishop, but I have received an invitation from Bonn…” And he showed him the letter…
Finally, Professor, is there an episode in your long friendship that is particularly dear to you?
The day when Joseph and his brother Georg were ordained priests, June 29, 1951, at the Cathedral of Freising. Even me, after Cardinal Faulhaber, I joined the line of the other priests present to lay hands on the head of the new priest. At the moment I did this, he raised his head and said Thank you. After the Mass, he, his parents and his sister Maria went up with me to my room and I said, “Dear Joseph, now give me your blessing.” We embraced each other with an indescribable joy.
Joseph Ratzinger's ordination as priest, 6/29/51: The cremony inside Freising Cathedral; Joseph and Georg as new priests; from Ratzinger family picture taken that day.
He does not know how to pretend. What makes him feel most bad is when someone is not sincere, when one is playing a role. It really makes him feel bad. That is why it displeases him when liturgy is turned into theater, because, he would say, that is not how one treats Jesus Christ.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/03/2006 18.30]