Katie and I are both reading Salt of the Earth, an interview with then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.
He answers questions from his boyhood to being enlisted in the Hitler Youth to becoming a priest, professor, and his role in the second Vatican council.
What is so awesome about it is how clearly he answers the questions. Examples:
Interviewer Peter Seewald: “One can probably say that without your involvement, the reforms of the Second Vatican Council would have been unthinkable.”
Cardinal Ratzinger: “I feel that you are quite overestimating my role.”
Seewald: “Another of Hesse’s works, Steppenwolf, is among your favorite books. The novel is considered one of the most significant documents of cultural pessimism and early existentialism…Does this description also have something to do with you?”
Cardinal Ratzinger:”No.”
Seewald: “In an early encomium, Professor Wolfgang Beinert had this to say about [you]: ‘Your theology was sovereign and masterly and inseparable from your person’…your language had a ‘classical radiance’. Do you recognize yourself in this description?”
Cardinal Ratzinger: “I think that’s a bit too high-flown, as is usual with encomia.”
—
I am highlighting the particular passages where he bluntly steps aside from praise that he considers excessive–his humility really shines through.
What also shines through is his amazing understanding of world history and how Christ’s Church has moved, influenced, and developed throughout this history, as well as his understanding of Christian theology: He presents the Gospel clearly and without equivocation and elucidates how it is both ever-ancient and ever-new, exactly the solution for man’s problems today, as it has always been.
Salt of the Earth is informative both with regard to our Faith and to Pope Benedict the man.
