I mean there is nothing to add, the young priest had a vision of future, faith and wisdom for the Church of Jesus Christ.
A restructured Church with far fewer members that is
forced to let go of many places of worship it worked so hard to build
over the centuries. A minority Catholic Church with little influence
over political decisions, that is socially irrelevant, left humiliated
and forced to “start over.”
But a Church that will find itself again and be reborn a
“simpler and more spiritual” entity thanks to this “enormous
confusion.” This was the prophesy made 40 years ago on the future of
Christianity by a young Bavarian theologian, Joseph Ratzinger. Digging
it out again today perhaps provides us with another key to understanding
Benedict XVI's decision to resign, because it traces his gesture back
through the course of his interpretation of history.
His prophesy concluded a series of radio
preachings which the then professor of theology gave in 1969 at what was
a decisive moment in his life and the life of the Church. These were
the turbulent years of the student revolts and the landing on the moon
but also of the disputes over the Second Vatican Council which had only
recently come to a close. Ratzinger, who was one of the Council's
protagonists, had left the riotous university of Tübingen seeking refuge in the calmer city of Regensburg.
He found himself isolated as a theologian, having
split with liberals Küng, Schillebeeckx and Rahner over their
interpretations of the Council. It was in this period that he
concolidated new friendships with theologians Hans Urs von Balthasar and
Henri de Lubac, with whom he founded Catholic theological journal, Communio. Communio soon
became a training ground for young “Ratzingerian” priests who are now
cardinals and all seen as potential successors to Benedict XVI: Angelo
Scola, Christoph Schönborn and Marc Ouellet.
In five little known radio speeches made in 1969 and published again a while ago by Ignatius Press in the volume “Faith and the Future”,
the future Pope gave his vision of the future of man and the Church.
His last teaching, which he read out on “Hessian Rundfunk” radio on
Christmas day, had a distinctly prophetic tone.
Ratzinger said he was convinced the Church was going
through an era similar to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
“We are at a huge turning point – he explained – in the evolution of
mankind. This moment makes the move from Medieval to modern times seem
insignificant.” Professor Ratzinger compared the current era to that of
Pope Pius VI who was abducted by troops of the French Republic and died
in prison in 1799. The Church was fighting against a force which
intended to annihilate it definitively, confiscating its property and
dissolving religious orders.
Today's Church could be faced with a similar situation,
undermined, according to Ratzinger, by the temptation to reduce priests
to “social workers” and it and all its work reduced to a mere political
presence. “From today's crisis, will emerge a Church that has lost a
great deal,” he affirmed.
“It will become small and will have to start pretty much
all over again. It will no longer have use of the structures it built
in its years of prosperity. The reduction in the number of faithful will
lead to it losing an important part of its social privileges.” It will
start off with small groups and movements and a minority that will make
faith central to experience again. “It will be a more spiritual Church,
and will not claim a political mandate flirting with the Right one
minute and the Left the next. It will be poor and will become the Church
of the destitute.”
The process outlined by Ratzinger was a “long” one “but
when all the suffering is past, a great power will emerge from a more
spiritual and simple Church,” at which point humans will realise that
they live in a world of “indescribable solitude” and having lost sight
of God “they will perceive the horror of their poverty.”
Then and only then, Ratzinger concluded, will
they see “that small flock of faithful as something completely new: they
will see it as a source of hope for themselves, the answer they had
always secretly been searching for.
