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The pope entombed in the crypt under St. Peter’s Basilica on January 5, 2023 was without doubt an extraordinary man. As a friend observed, “We’re not likely to see anyone half as well-educated or a tenth as wise anytime soon.” I think he’s right. Ratzinger was a deeply learned man. Something of a theological wunderkind, he served as an advisor during the Second Vatican Council, a role that put him at the center of twentieth-century Catholicism’s defining event. As a young professor, he experienced firsthand the student uprisings of 1968 and glimpsed the nihilism that underlay the political idealism and ardent moralism of that time. Working closely with Pope John Paul II and then as John Paul’s successor, for decades Benedict XVI shaped Catholicism in the aftermath of Vatican II.
Others have written about his achievements as a theologian. I commend Christopher Ruddy’s survey for Commonweal, “Benedict’s Theological Legacy,” as well as Gerhard Cardinal Müller’s reflections in these pages (“Ratzinger and the Liberation Theologians”). It will be interesting to see which of this great man’s many publications find readers in future generations. In my opinion, his encyclicals, though theologically rich, are too diffuse and long-winded to endure as touchstones in the way that Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum has and as John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor will. Fr. Robert Imbelli has written warmly about the young Ratzinger’s theological textbook, Introduction to Christianity. My students found it tough sledding when I assigned the book in my introductory classes. By contrast, The Spirit of the Liturgy sings, and I’m sure it will be read for decades to come, as will his essays and addresses, in which his vast learning is often synthesized and expressed in plain, accessible theological language.[…]
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