Benedict XVI Theologian

7/29/2019 Benedict XVI Theologian

1/610 The Priest July 2012

PONTIFICATE

Benedict XThe TheologianBy Msgr. Peter J. Vaghi

The Christian life is marked by an encounter with Jesus

of a follower of Jesus, in his 2010 post-synodal apos-tolic exhortation, Verbum Domini (Word of the Lord),Benedict writes: The Christian life is essentiallymarked by an encounterwith Jesus Christ, who callsus to follow him (emphasis added) (VD, No. 72).

In one of his rst homilies after his election, asif to set the tone for his papacy, he says: There isnothing more beautiful than to be surprised by theGospel, by the encounterwith Christ. There is noth-

ing more beautiful than to know Him and to speakto others of our friendship with Him (emphasisadded) (Sunday Homily, April 24, 2005).

In addition to his many homilies, Benedict XVIhas to date issued three papal encyclicals. It is tothem that I now turn our attention as we seek tounderstand more deeply his theological vision.

Social Charity Not a FootnoteHis rst encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est(God

is Love) was issued on Dec. 25, 2005. In that letter,Benedict teaches: The Church cannot neglect the

service of charity any more than she can neglectthe Sacraments and the Word (DCE, No. 22). So-cial charity is constitutive of the Gospel. It is nota footnote.

The Pope reminds us in that rst encyclical let-ter, God is Love, that love is possible, and weare able to practice it because we are created in theimage of God, God who is love (DCE, No. 39).As baptized followers of Jesus, by participating inthe Eucharist, His greatest gift of love to us, youand I become involved in the dynamic of His actof sacricial giving. We become the love we re-ceive in His body and blood broken and poured

As you can assuredly understand from hisbackground as a theologian and his exhaus-tive papal contributions to date, it is easy to

understand how history will most likely label PopeBenedict XVI as The Theologian Pope. In this ar-ticle, my focus is the theological vision of our HolyFather during these past six years of his ponticateas revealed in his encyclicals and speeches duringhis many trips abroad.

At the outset, I would suggest that for Benedictone clear overarching and consistent approach tohis teaching and the direction of his theologicalvision is summed up in the expression of an en-counter with Jesus Christ. It is, if you will, seem-ingly his fundamental hermeneutic, his way of ap-proaching our relationship with God.

By way of example, already in his rst encycli-cal letterDeus Caritas Est(God is Love), Pope Bene-dict writes: Being Christian is not the result of anethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter withan event, a person, which gives life a new horizon

and a decisive direction (DCE, No. 1). And thatencounter is with Jesus. That is the basis of ourfriendship with Him, as a follower of Jesus, a per-sonal relationship and an encounter.

In his beautiful homily given at Regensburg,Germany, in 2006, speaking of the Apostles Creed,he writes: The Creed is not a collection of proposi-tions; it is not a theory. It is anchored in the eventof Baptism a genuine encounter between Godand man (emphasis added). For him, the Creed isthus primarily an encounter with Christ and notonly a way of expressing the content of our faith.

Speaking of the role of sacred Scripture in the life


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VI:ope

CREDit

LiNE

Pope

Benedict

XVI

IN BRIEF Social charity noa footnote

Formation of theheart

Barriers to anencounter with thliving God

Need forwell-formed laity

Not anotherprogram, but anencounter



We are wired to love precisely

because He poured His love ...

into our very beings in

the power of His Holy Spirit.out for us. We are thusable to love sacriciallyin a new and powerfulway. Benedict pointsus to Christs death onthe Cross: This is love in its most

radical form. By contemplating thepierced side of Christ (cf. 19:37), wecan understand the starting point ofthis encyclical letter: God is Love(1 Jn 4:8). It is there that this truthcan be contemplated. It is from therethat our denition of love must be-gin. In this contemplation the Chris-tian discovers the path along whichhis life and love must move (DCE,No. 12). This is not simply theology.It becomes very practical in our lives

as His followers.

Formation of the HeartBenedict reminds us, from a

Christian perspective, that for thosewho work with the poor, a forma-tion of the heart is required, an en-counter with God in Christ whichawakens [our] love and opens [our]spirits to others. As a result, love ofneighbor will no longer be for [us] acommandment imposed, so to speak,from without, but a consequence de-

riving from [our] faith, a faith whichbecomes active through love (DCE,No. 31).

The second encyclical, entitledSpe Salvi (On Christian Hope), waspromulgated on Nov. 30, 2007, andfollows naturally from his letter onlove. The meaning of the title ofthe encyclical is that we are savedby hope. The Pope underscores thatwhat distinguishes Christians is thatwe have a future. Our life will not

end in emptiness.He writes that the Christian mes-sage is not only informative butperformative. For Benedict XVIthat means: the Gospel is not merelya communication of things that canbe known it is one that makesthings happen and is life-changing.The dark door of time, of the future,has been thrown open (SS, No. 2) Inone of the most memorable lines ofthe entire encyclical, the Pope writes:the one who has hope lives different-

ly; the one who hopes has been grant-

ed the gift of a new life (SS, No. 2).His third great encyclical letter is

Caritas in Veritate, (Charity in Truth),issued on the Solemnity of Sts. Peterand Paul, June 29, 2009. This is anencyclical that develops and contin-ues the long social justice traditionof our Church, a tradition for whichwe can be justly proud as Catholics.It is promulgated to return to a freshreading ofPopulorum Progressio morethan 40 years after its publication

by Pope Paul VI. In fact, the secondchapter is entitled Human Develop-ment in our Time.

It is a most challenging encyclicalletter. At the outset, I wish to reecton the meaning of the title Caritasin Veritate (Charity in Truth). What isthe Pope saying with this title? Howdoes this add to the social teaching ofour Church? How does the title giveus the key to the entire lengthy en-cyclical?

Properly understood, charity is

not simply an emotional word. It isnot simply a sentiment or somethingwe do for people out of the kind-ness of our hearts. The Pope assertsthat the concept of charity has beenmisconstrued and emptied of mean-ing (CV, No. 2). It is so much morethan the common understanding ofthe word. The Pope is talking abouta truth-lled charity. Hence the titleCharity in truth. He is trying to re-coup the uniquely Christian meaning

of charity by linking it fundamental-ly to Christ himself and reattachingit as a consequence to ethical living.

In the rst line of the letter, he as-serts: Charity in truth, to which Je-sus Christ bore witness by his earthlylife and especially by his death andresurrection, is the principal drivingforce behind the authentic develop-ment of every person and of all hu-manity (CV, No. 1).

It all goes back to the fact that wewere loved by God at the outset (and

continue to be loved byGod) in creation andin redemption and asprivileged members ofHis living Body in every

sacramental encounter we have with

the living Christ in and through theChurch. We are wired to love precise-ly because He poured His love, andcontinues to do so, into our very be-ings in the power of His Holy Spirit.

This truth-lled love is indeed anintegral part of our DNA. It is inbuilt.This gift of love by God for us mustbe understood as the principle ofgratuitousness and be operative atevery level of our human relation-ships. Charity is love received and

given (CV, No. 5). Benedict writes,moreover, that the human being ismade for gift, which expresses andmakes present his transcendent di-mension (CV, No. 34). Understoodaccordingly, Charity is at the heartof the Churchs social doctrine (CV,No. 2). It is moreover integral to au-thentic human development as it ap-plies, by way of example, to econom-ics, the environment, globalization,business ethics, labor, immigrationand every aspect of the pro-life pro-

tection all of which are covered inthis encyclical.

Barriers to an Encounterwith the Living God

Now we turn to three of Bene-dict XVIs foreign trips. We can learnmuch about his theological and pas-toral priorities from these travels andparticularly from his homilies andaddresses given during his trips. Asexamples, we will never forget the

wonderful visit to our Nations capi-tal in April 2008 or his visit to GreatBritain in September 2010 or his re-cent visit to Zagreb in Croatia.

Upon his arrival in Washington,D.C., on that most beautiful April dayin 2008, he made it clear from the be-ginning of his visit that he came toconrm us in the faith. Upon return-ing to Rome, he indicated that theAmerican experience had been causefor his own conrmation in the faith.What a beautiful tribute!


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In his address to the Americanbishops at Washington, while reiter-ating that America is a land of greatfaith, he highlighted three challeng-es that face our country. He calledthem barriers to an encounter

with the living God. They includesecularism, materialism and individ-ualism. It is good to reect continu-ally on how these barriers affect ourrelationship with the Lord Jesus inour lives.

From all of the prior media hype,Pope Benedicts visit in September2010 to Great Britain was destined tobe unwelcoming. It ended up just theopposite. In fact, it was quite success-ful. The Popes personal success came

not only from what he said but alsoby the authority, kindness, simplic-ity, tenderness and humility of howhe spoke and how he acted. In theVicar of Christ, we could see anewthe face and heart of Jesus.

Need for Well-formed LaityDuring that journey, he often

made mention of the role of the la-ity in the Church and world and theneed for a well-formed laity. Quotingthe Second Vatican Council in his

homily at Westminster Cathedral,he spoke of the indispensable roleof the laity in carrying forward theChurchs mission through their ef-forts to serve as a leaven of the Gos-pel in society and to work for the ad-vancement of Gods Kingdom in theworld.

The Pope described the Gospelnot as a constriction of human free-dom, but as the truth which liber-ates our minds and enlightens our

efforts to live wisely and well. Inhis speech at Westminster Hall, heexposed the emptiness of secularism.In Westminster Hall, the same hallwhere the trial of St. Thomas Moretook place six centuries earlier, PopeBenedict also stated that . . .thereare those who argue paradoxi-cally with the intention of eliminat-ing discrimination that Christiansin public roles should be required attimes to act against their conscience.He stated further that these are wor-

rying signs of a failure to appreciatenot only the rights of believers tofreedom of conscience and freedomof religion, but also the legitimaterole of religion in the public square.

At the beatication of John Henry

Cardinal Newman during that samejourney, and speaking again of the la-ity, Pope Benedict quoted Newman,I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash

in speech, not disputatious, but menwho know their religion, who enterinto it, who know just where theystand, who know what they hold andwhat they do not, who know theircreed so well that they can give an

account of it, who know so much ofhistory that they can defend it.

The theme of conscience, a peren-nial theme of Benedicts, was raised

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again in Croatia on June 4, 2011. Hesaid, If, in keeping with the prevail-ing modern idea, conscience is re-duced to the subjective eld to whichreligion and morality have been ban-ished, then the crisis of the West has

no remedy and Europe is destined tocollapse in on itself. If, on the otherhand, conscience is rediscovered asthe place in which to listen to truthand good, the place of responsibilitybefore God and before fellow humanbeings in other words, the bulwarkagainst all forms of tyranny thenthere is hope for the future.

I wish in conclusion to emphasizethe repeated signicance placed byour Holy Father on the New Evangeli-

zation, a seed planted by his belovedpredecessor. This outreach is thechallenge of encountering Christ per-sonally, which is so essential to thetheological and pastoral approach ofthis Pope as was underscored at thebeginning of this article.

As it has been said so often, theNew Evangelization is not anotherprogram but, at its heart, an encoun-ter with a Person, and that Person is

Jesus Christ. The Church must makethe Person of Jesus Christ and a per-

sonal encounter with Him central toher thinking, knowing that He willgive His Spirit and provide the forceto announce and proclaim the Gos-pel in new ways which can speak totodays cultures (Lineamenta, TheNew Evangelization, No. 5).

In Pope Benedicts many homi-lies, encyclicals and speeches duringhis foreign trips in the past six years,it has become so clear that this bodyof theology is being transformed into

a beautiful pastoral and theologicalgift to the Church and the world. TP

MSGR. VAGHI is pastor of the Church

of the Little Flower in Bethesda,

Md., and a priest of the Archdiocese

of Washington, D.C. He serves as

chaplain of the John Carroll Society,

a group of professional men and

women in service of the Archbishop

of Washington. He fourth and newest

book in the Pillars of Faith catecheti-

cal series is The Prayer We Offer.

~ Preliminary Design for a New Monastery ~washington dc ~ (202) 223-9449 ~ www.francklohsen.com

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Benedict XVI Theologian