Maynooth professor, D. Vincent Twomey SVD, a former doctoral student of Pope Benedict XVI, reflects on the transformation of his university teacher into the Universal Teacher of the Nations.
Walking the streets of Rome the day before the celebrations to mark the start of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, I was confronted by a strange and rather unsettling sight: the familiar face of my former teacher on hundreds of posters everywhere. They were on billboards and in street stalls among miniature statues of Michelangelo’s Pietà and David or they were stuck incongruously between bottles of grappa in a café. I had arrived in Rome that morning and was one of the crowd walking towards the magnificent piazza in front of St Peter’s Basilica still somewhat numbed by the shock that the man whom I had long revered as Doktor Vater was now actually Pope, the new successor of St Peter.
He himself has written extensively on the nature of the office of the Pope and at least three of his doctoral students – including myself – devoted their research to the origins and nature of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the universal Church, which is one of the chief stumbling blocks for separated Christians, in fact the only real obstacle to union with the Orthodox Churches.
It was only in the course of the various celebrations marking his inauguration as successor of St Peter that I slowly came to terms with the transformation of my former teacher, an eminent but essentially humble German professor, into the universal Pastor of the Church, with the eyes of the world turned on him, thanks to the media. It took time to assimilate the transformation of the somewhat retiring academic into an exuberant pastor responding with gestures we never saw before, such as waving hands and kissing babies. His former students gathered in Rome for the occasion dreamed of the future, of what he would do, in the light of what we knew of his own personality and, more importantly, of his great mind and extraordinary memory.
The main topic of conversation while I was in Rome was Joseph Ratzinger. Everyone wanted to know: What kind of a person is he? I have known Benedict XVI since 1971, when I became a postgraduate student at the University of Regensburg, Bavaria. Professor Ratzinger directed my doctoral thesis.
He always had time for everyone- something that holds true to this day. After the general audience for thousands of German pilgrims who attended his inauguration as Pope, he met everyone of the thirty or so special guests individually, including his relatives and a group of his former students. He spoke unhurriedly with each one of us for a few minutes, greeting each by name and exchanging greetings. He never forgets names or people and contact with most of his students has continued to this day. We meet with him each year in early autumn for a colloquium with invited guest-professors, Catholic and non-Catholic. Cardinal Ratzinger spends as much time as he can with us in active participation in the discussions and afterwards at table. This year the topic chosen is the relationship between Christianity and Islam. These meetings are marked by an open congenial atmosphere, with plenty of times for walks, informal encounters and good humoured socials in the evenings. Discussions are invariably relaxed and frank. Contrary to his public image – understandable given the position he held as the guardian of the Church’s teachings – he creates space where each one can speak his or her mind freely yet respectfully, helped by his ever present humour.
In Rome, we his former students, felt the world at last had the opportunity to encounter the charming personality, intellectual brilliance and pastoral heart of the man we knew. For the public this encounter was made possible by journalists, whose colleagues, paradoxically, had been largely responsible for his negative image as Grand Inquisitor, Panzerkardinal (the tank-like cardinal), and ‘enforcer of the faith’ (John Allen). His former students have been saddened by the recent attempt to blacken his image by distorting the truth about his youth at a time when Germany was under the total control of Hitler. (He and his family were intensely anti-Nazi.) Those who only knew the new Pope from TV and newspapers had a decidedly negative image, one largely created by the media. That image did not quite match the reality the public was now seeing. His former grim image was strikingly at variance with the smiling new Pope, who had evidently captured the hearts of the Romans and who was already causing journalists from around the world to question their own creation.
Pope Benedict XVI will teach the world not only by what he says but by example. The sheer beauty of the Requiem for Pope John Paul II and his own Inauguration Mass gave those present a touch of heaven on earth- and entranced those who followed it on television. As I remarked to a priest studying liturgy who sat near me at the Mass, Benedict XVI was giving the world its first lesson in liturgy. He has over the years written extensively on liturgy, but his writings were ignored – even kept off the shelves in one liturgical institute I know. Now people will finally read him.
This will be his teaching method – first to win the hearts of people, who will then read for themselves, what he has written on a particular topic. There was not a book of his left on the shelves in Dublin after his election, while in Germany sales outstripped Harry Potter. He has written on almost every theological subject on the faith, morality, the Church and State. The bibliography of his publications (including secondary literature) up to 1997 covers some 101 pages. Many more have appeared since then, for, as few people realize, he continued to publish as a private theologian while prefect of the Congregation of the Faith.
What is the secret of Ratzinger’s quiet dignified behaviour, as seen during the world shaking events of Pope John Paul II’s death and the conclave that elected him successor. How could he be so relaxed and smiling precisely at the moment he accepted his election to responsibilities that would overwhelm most mortals? Let me answer by recalling two anecdotes.
While at Tübingen, one student asked another to identify the qualities of Professor Ratzinger. The other replied: Ratzinger finds time to play the piano. He is open to beauty as much as to truth. He lives outside himself. He is not preoccupied with his own self. Put simply he does not take himself too seriously.
The other anecdote is personal. Once he asked me gently about the progress of my thesis. I had been working on it for some seven years. I told him that I thought there was some more work to be done. He turned to me with those piercing but kindly eyes and a smile on his face, saying: ‘Lieber Pater Vincent, haben Sie Mut zur Lücke’: (‘My dear Father Vincent, do have the courage to leave some gaps:) In other words, be courageous enough to be imperfect.
On reflection, this is one of the keys to Ratzinger’s character (and also to his theology of politics): the acceptance that everything we do is imperfect, that all knowledge is limited, no matter how brilliant or well read one may be. It never bothered him that in a course of lectures he rarely covered the actual content of the course. His most famous book, Introduction to Christianity, is incomplete. Ratzinger knows in his heart and soul that God alone is perfect and that all human attempts at perfection (such as political utopias) end in disaster.
The only perfection open to us is that advocated by Jesus in the Gospel: “Be you perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). He who “causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike” (Mt 5:45). Love of God and neighbour: that is the secret of Pope Benedict XVI and that will be the core of his universal teaching.
This article first appeared in The Word (June 2005), a Divine Word Missionary Publication.
