Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions ed. by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering

Abstract

Reviewed by: Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions ed. by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering Emil Anton Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, edited by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2019), xxvii+371 pp. When George Smith first deciphered the Mesopotamian account of the Flood and realized he was the first person to read it in a couple thousand years, he started running around the room in excitement and taking his clothes off. Without the undressing part, I experienced the same impulse while reading Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, a collection of seventeen priceless chapters by both Catholic and Protestant scholars, coming out of a conference held in 2017 to celebrate Joseph Ratzinger’s ninetieth birthday and to commemorate the five-hundred-year anniversary of the Reformation. This wonderful book takes its place as clearly the leading volume on Ratzinger and Catholic– Protestant ecumenism. Based on his media image, recently reinforced by the Netflix movie [End Page 675] The Two Popes, one would not think that Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI would prove a relevant figure in overcoming the centuries-old Catholic–Protestant divide. All one remembers about Benedict XVI and ecumenism, based on news coverage, is that he said Protestant churches are not really churches. Fortunately, the scholars contributing to the present volume dig deeper, look behind the scenes, and uncover Ratzinger/Benedict’s “history-changing contributions” (22), such as saving the Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and making “The Thames flow into the Tiber.” (Talk about an ingenious chapter title!) In order, the topics covered in this volume include papal primacy, principles of ecumenism, exegesis and liturgy, secularism, Mariology, public theology, Christology, Luther, love, Eucharist, creation, conscience, missiology, justification, Radical Orthodoxy (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, et al.), and the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and Church. Space does not permit me to review all of the articles; instead, I will highlight only some points that I found particularly illuminating. As editor, Matthew Levering opens the introductory chapter with a comparison of Karl Rahner’s and Joseph Ratzinger’s views on attaining Christian unity. Rahner presents what Thomas A. Baima calls “a Pelagian view of ecumenism” (23), a rash manmade institutional unification which might be a marvel of pragmatic skill but could not account for its structures in terms of God’s instituting Word (xix). Ratzinger’s model is more theological and patient: respecting our differences, accepting the good reasons both sides have for them, and thus learning from each other, “will in the end deepen our unity and, in God’s time, will allow for the ‘must’ of division to give way to a doctrinally articulated unity-in-diversity” (xxi). But what should this unity-in-diversity look like? In his article on the principles of ecumenism, Baima makes a helpful distinction between the Church’s structure and its institution. For example, in communist Ukraine there was no Catholic ecclesial institution, but the sacramental and apostolic structure of the Church remained. The two terms are often confused; distinguishing between them helps to clarify that the goal of Christian unity is not necessarily a common institution, but it does include a common sacramental structure. Baima also notes that Ratzinger rejected “the return model used by the Council of Florence” when he famously said that “Rome must not require more of the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium” (28). Baima raises the very pertinent question as to how this might “inform dialogue with the communities of the Reformation” (29). Would it not [End Page 676] mean, for example, that Rome should not demand that Protestants accept the dogmatic definitions of 1854, 1870, and 1950 as such, but simply admit that they are not heretical doctrinal developments? (The next question would be whether Catholics could also legitimately think so.) The question is very much connected to the relationship between Scripture and the Church, treated by Douglas A. Sweeney in his important contribution. While acknowledging rapprochement between Evangelicals who are “sinking...