1. George Weigel: Joseph Ratzinger, Doctor of the Church?
2. Francis X. Maier in the Wall Street Journal: The Quiet Genius of Pope Benedict XVI:
For all the criticism he inspired, Ratzinger himself was a quiet man averse to conflict. He was a scholar of refined tastes in music and art. His greatest needs were ample sleep and silence to think and write. Much of his enormous body of work was scribbled with a pencil in shorthand. He never sought to be a bishop, cardinal or pope — but served as all three. As prefect of Rome’s doctrine congregation, he tried repeatedly to resign and return home to Germany. The response of John Paul II, the pope to whom he was a friend and perfect complement, was simple: Stop asking, because “as long as I am here, you must stay.” Ratzinger even remarked that he saw his papacy, which started when he was 78, as a looming guillotine blade.
. . .
Pope Benedict XVI . . . used his astonishing intellect in luminescent ways. His 2006 University of Regensburg lecture was widely and ignorantly trashed at the time as anti-Muslim. What he actually delivered was a superb defense of the mutually supportive roles of faith and reason and the nature of a free conscience. His 2008 comments to the United Nations — which he praised as “an instrument of service to the entire human family” — were a triumph. His extensive collected writings on human responsibility for the environment preceded the current pontificate. His 2011 Freiburg address offered a brutally sober assessment of the challenges facing Christianity. It was also a compelling call to conversion and hope. The first and best encyclical issued by Pope Francis — “Light of Faith” — was written in significant part by Benedict XVI.
3. Tracey Rowland: The piety of Pope Benedict XVI and his passion for the truth:
On many occasions he declared that what the Church needed was less management, fewer introspective talk-fests, and more holiness. He understood that democracy does not equate to greater freedom. On the contrary, it means greater uniformity, less freedom for diversity, and trends toward a general levelling down of cultural standards. Committees generate lowest common denominator documents and policies. He never forgot that the strongest opponents of the Nazi regime were strong-minded individuals, including heroic bishops like Clemens August von Galen, who were not afraid to be different and really did not care about majority opinion.
4. Nicole Winfield for the AP: While blamed, Benedict fought sex abuse more than past popes
5. Fr. Raymond de Souza: Joseph Ratzinger’s Revealing ‘Family’ Dynamic
6. R. J. Snell: Benedict XVI: Apostle of Hope:
Ratzinger had hope because God lived in him; and while he soberly warned of difficult times for the Church and the world, and pleaded with the contemporary person to recover his lost humanity, his own hope did not falter or flicker, for he knew God.
7. Through controversy and friendship: Pope Benedict XVI and the United States — an interview with former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon:
There were many memorable moments about that visit because it was, as you know, extraordinary that there had been a previous meeting between Pope Benedict and President Bush only a few months before in June of 2007. It was clear to observers that a very cordial relationship had developed between the president and the pope. It surprised many people because their personalities were so different.
I think a symbol of how extraordinary that improbable relationship was is that the president and I and other peoples went out to Andrews Air Force Base to meet the pope upon his arrival. This was the first and only time that President Bush had ever gone out to meet a foreign head of state. I was so fascinated by the fact we were standing around, waiting for the pope’s plane to land. Somebody asked the president, “How come you’re coming out here to meet the pope?” And President Bush replied, “It’s very simple. He’s the greatest spiritual leader in the world.” In fact, when the pope got off the plane and the two of them sat down for a few minutes to talk and have some orange juice, President Bush said, “Your Holiness, people have asked me why I came out here to meet you, and I tell them it’s because you are the greatest spiritual leader in the whole world.” So it was clear to me that the relationship had already gotten off to a great start.
But coming back to your question about highlights or particular moments in the trip . . . it was a whirlwind visit. There were 16 speeches by this pope in five days, but there are two that really stick in my memory. One was the ceremony on the White House South Lawn. It was the pope’s 80th birthday that day, and what was so touching was that when the president mentioned that this was the pope’s birthday, the whole assembled audience burst into singing “Happy Birthday.” And the pope, despite his wonderful success as a public figure, kind of just shyly smiled and then raised his arms and with a big smile on his face. When the president and the pope then exchanged remarks, it was like a duet. Both leaders sounded the same themes: freedom is a precious thing that requires work to keep alive, and a free society and a decent society is one which cares for the weakest and most vulnerable. It was a beautiful, touching occasion.
8. “He did all things well”: Benedict’s former student (Fr. Joseph Fessio) reflects on his mentor
9. Benedict’s Books: Unpacking the Late Pope’s Theological Impact
10. Tod Worner:
After years of being a Protestant who dismissed the Church and disdained the papacy, I was shocked by the beauty, clarity, and wisdom offered by this old priest from Bavaria. The moment I tried to be fair to him, I began to be fond of him. And my fondness has never ceased.
11. Jacob Phillips: The Benedict XVI generation:
Benedict’s intellectual legacy is one of “dynamic fidelity”. Fidelity points to his deep and intransigent loyalty to Catholic tradition — no surprise there. The word dynamic, however, points to how Benedict XVI’s work is never without a responsive contemporaneity, an attentiveness to the questions and needs of the contemporary world. This makes his theology quite unique, in that he draws deeply on the yearnings and desires of the world, yet responds faithfully with aspects of tradition. These aspects of tradition are often seemingly “made new” after decades of being wrongfully neglected or misappropriated. Moreover, his return to the fountainhead of tradition is never what we might term a retrograde reaction, which means he doesn’t just want us to return to some bygone era. This can be seen in comments he made when accused of “restorationism”; he responded by saying that he was fighting “not for a turning back” to the past, but “a newly found balance of orientation and values”.
12. Samuel Gregg: Reason’s Pope
13. Pope Benedict XVI: No Diplomatic Maneuvers, but Jesus — The late Pope Benedict XVI on the search for reconciliation by Anabaptists and Catholics
14. Tracey Rowland: Pope Benedict’s theological legacy: An Augustinian at heart who influenced the course of Vatican II and beyond:
Ratzinger was interested in the relationship between love and truth, affectivity as well as objectivity, the significance of history for personal formation, the historical character of revelation and the role of beauty in evangelization. History, beauty and love and the relation of all three to the formation of the human person are core Romantic movement interests and, in the style of Bruckner, Ratzinger wove together his analyses of these relationships in strongly polyphonic essays using rich, harmonic language. He managed to bring to the fore these neglected elements in Catholic thought without jettisoning what had come to be regarded as the classical elements. In this sense Ratzinger was the theological analogue of a musical synthesis of Mozart and von Weber or Bruckner, if such a thing were possible. For those who wanted the romantic element without the classical he was considered a dangerous reactionary, and for those who wanted the classical without the romantic he was seen as a dangerous liberal.
15. Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM:
Benedict, as a person, as an academic, as an archbishop, and as the pope was and remains a light in the darkness of our present world. His light will continue to shine even now when he has passed from this world into his heavenly reward. There, with all of the Saints, he will give glory to God the Father, in union with Jesus, the risen incarnate Son, in communion with the love of the Holy Spirit.