By Paul Gray
The day after Joseph Ratzinger’s election as Pope Benedict XVI, Melbourne author and theologian Tracey Rowland received a startling email from one of the world’s most prestigious publishers.
They wanted her to write a book on Karl Rahner, the influential Jesuit theologian who was leader of one of the “progressive” factions at the Second Vatican Council.
Dr Rowland replied that she was no specialist on Rahner, but that she would be well-credentialled to write a book on another influential Vatican II “progressive,” Joseph Ratzinger.
And by the way, she added, Ratzinger “was elected Pope last night.”
More than two years later and Oxford University Press has just released Dr Rowland’s book Ratzinger’s Faith, a study of the personal theology of the man who is now Pope Benedict XVI.
The book was launched by Bishop Peter Elliott in Melbourne in April.
Dr Rowland, who is Dean of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, a Vatican university branch, says the idea behind Ratzinger’s Faith was not to pen another biography of the Pope, but to present the key ideas and principles of his theological outlook.
While Pope Benedict is a famous intellectual – even his critics acknowledge the theological depths of his thinking – Dr Rowland’s approach is based on making that thinking accessible to a broad reading public.
Among the many books already written about the Pope, the only comparable volume to hers is The Thought of Benedict XVI by Aidan Nichols. That book, which Dr Rowland admires, is a re-release of one Nichols wrote in the 1980s.
Dr Rowland told The Record last week that in her book she attempts to “discredit the idea that there are three Ratzingers: a young radical Ratzinger, a middle-aged conservative Ratzinger and now a ‘grandpa Ratzinger’ who writes pastoral letters as Pope.”
The idea that Joseph Ratzinger’s thinking has changed according to age and circumstance is false, she says.
“I want to show there is an organic unity in his theological outlook that hasn’t changed over time.”
A key historical ingredient in Dr Rowland’s book is the assessment of Vatican II and the role of the so-called progressives at that landmark event in the life of the modern Church.
Subsequent controversies and clashes around the key ideas that were discussed at the Council have been much mythologised in the decades since.
In reality there were three main “factions,” or tendencies, among theologians at Vatican II, Dr Rowland says. One group favoured the status quo which had existed in Church thinking before the Council, which can be labeled “neo-scholastic.”
A second group favoured “ressourcement” or a return to patristics, the teachings and inspirations of the early Church of the first centuries after Christ.
A third group was strongly influenced by modern philosophy, including the ideas of German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Fr Karl Rahner was the leader of this group.
Dr Rowland says the “progressive” victory at Vatican II was essentially the fruit of collaboration between the latter two groups, and the young Fr Joseph Ratzinger played a key role in it.
In effect, Ratzinger formed an intellectual bridge between the thinking of Rahner and that of Henri de Lubac, who was the leader of “ressourcement” faction.
A much-written about division between Ratzinger and Rahner developed in the years after the Council. Although Ratzinger helped found the “progressive” journal Concilium with Rahner, the future Pope eventually left that journal and founded another, Communio.
Both theological journals are still in existence. Dr Rowland is an editorial board member of the North American edition of Communio.
She says that after Vatican II, “the differences between Rahner and Ratzinger become more and more pronounced,” eventually leading to a split. This was not about personality issues at all, but matters of theology.
Another key historical issue exposed by Dr Rowland is the difference in the thinking of the two Popes, Benedict XVI and John Paul II.
She says there is a liberal agenda to make it appear that the theological differences are huge: in particular, that John Paul II was a Thomist (a follower of St Thomas Aquinas) while Benedict XVI is an Augustinian (following the thought of St Augustine.)
The significance of this claim is that, according to the liberal agenda, Thomists are “open to the world” while Augustinians are “closed to the world.”
Again, in reality too much has been made of these differences between the Popes, Dr Rowland says. “Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul are not in any way different in their attitudes to the world.”
The alleged Thomist-Augustinian division between the two Popes is based on “simplistic caricatures,” she says.
Where there does lie a difference is in some of the “polarities” in the thinking of the two Popes. Whereas John Paul is interested in the relationship between truth and goodness, Benedict is more interested in that between beauty and love.
And where John Paul wrote extensively about the interplay between faith and reason, Pope Benedict is more concerned with the relationship between reason and love.
Unlike George Weigel’s major biography of Pope John Paul II, Dr Rowland’s book has not been written with active encouragement from or contact with the subject of the work.
She says she did not attempt to win Pope Benedict’s support for her book. However she intends to send him a copy.