Pope Benedict, theologian.

Pope Benedict is a theologian. Not many people know what that means. One reason is the daily press which is inclined to bestow it upon anyone who is attached to a religious institution. A daily paper has referred to Toronto feminist Joanna Manning as a "theologian." Ms. Manning is a retired schoolteacher who taught religion in high school. Others are given the title because they have spent some years taking religion courses, or lecture in 'religion', or publish in biblical studies, or history, or pastoral ministry, or social justice. None of these are theologians. The term should be reserved only for those who have made theology, the study of God, and in particular dogmatic or moral theology, the subject of their life's work, and study of its own proper sources and methods. Politics should have no bearing on this but sacrament and faith do, as does the general ambiance of culture. Today the crisis in theology--and there is a crisis--is the result of the crisis in culture.

Father Joseph Ratzinger has lived out his priestly life as a theologian and scholar. Starting at the University of Bonn in 1959 as lecturer in fundamental theology, he attended the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) as a 'peritus' (or theological advisor) for Cardinal Frings of Cologne. About the Council, he writes, Pope John XXIII intended that the Catholic faith, "while remaining the same in its contents was to be proclaimed to our era in a new way, and, after a period of demarcations ..., we were no longer to condemn but to apply 'the medicine of mercy'" (Milestones, p., 122).

During the Council, Ratzinger became uneasy with certain views about the relationship between Scripture and tradition, and the teaching authority of the Church, the Magisterium. Unease slowly gave way to resisting theology based on nineteenth-century Scholasticism and twentieth-century German idealism, such as Karl Rahner's. Rahner's was a speculative and philosophical theology in which Scripture and the Fathers of the early Church did not play much of a role; Ratzinger's formation, on the other hand, has been shaped by Scripture, the Church Fathers, and profound historical thinking. He began to apply this approach when in 1963 he accepted the chair in dogmatic theology at the University of M?nster. By 1964 he had become aware of a change among theologians as a result of the Council debates, namely "that nothing was now stable in the Church, that everything was open to revision "(132). Theologians began to look upon themselves as the true knowledgeable experts in the faith and therefore no longer subordinate to the shepherds, i.e., the bishops and the Magisterium.

After a year at Tubingen (1966-67), Father Ratzinger was called to teach dogmatic theology at Regensburg in Bavaria, away from the increasing Marxist influences in elsewhere Germany. He stayed until his appointment as Archbishop of Munich in 1977. For his episcopal motto he chose "Co-worker of the Truth (3 John). His understanding of the role of theologians became even more important when Pope John Paul II appointed him Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1981. By that time a former colleague, Hans K?ng, had already lost his title of Catholic theologian (1979), but others, too, were challenging the Church. Much depended on Archbishop Ratzinger's ability to defend the Catholic understanding of that office.

Two points may be mentioned here. The Instruction on the ecclesial vocation of the theologian (CDF, 1990) begins with the invitation to pursue truth, and ends with the denial that dissent is a "right".

(3) "The truth possesses in itself a unifying force. It frees men from isolation and the oppositions in which they have been trapped by ignorance of the truth. And as it opens the way to God, it, at the same time, unites them to each other" " Eph. 2:12-14).

(36) "The freedom of the act of faith cannot justify a right to dissent. In fact this freedom does not indicate at all freedom with regard to the truth but signifies the free self-determination of the person in conformity with his moral obligation to accept the truth."

The truth will set us free. Anything that leads away from truth diminishes our freedom. As individuals and national institutions reject the idea of absolute truth, this teaching is bound to look strange. But the Church continues to hold that "all wisdom is from the Lord, and with him it remains forever ... the source of wisdom is God's word in the highest heaven, and her ways are the eternal commandments" (Sirach 1:1,6.)