God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time

As a Cardinal the current Pope gave an astonishing interview to Peter Seewald. The astonishing part of this book is the breadth of the questions asked and the simple but deeply moving answers that were given. If you have read Ratzingers own works, you know that they are not easy reading. This book is very very different. It is an interview and the tone is conversational. Some of the questions asked of him are provoking eg., "Was Jesus a Catholic?" The answers are surprisingly moving, tolerant and reveal a depth of knowledge. Other questions such as "Is God male or female". "What does God look like?" "Is faith an auto-suggestion" etc are handled in the same manner. If regular theology is too much of a chore for you but you want to know what the theology of Ratzinger/Benedict is, then look no further. This is a very easy-to-read book.

In an interview with Peter Seewald, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) humbly expresses his views and beliefs about God, Jesus and the Church, which gives us an insight into this man's great wisdom and the reasons why he has so rigorously defended these tenets of our faith. When reading this book, one can only marvel that Cardinal Ratzinger's responses are very down-to-earth. You can imagine him sitting across the living room from you, quite at ease, answering your questions, perhaps about creation, about the Trinity, genetics, love and just matter-of-factly explaining this all to you, like a kindly professor or grandfather. On one level, this book appears to be easy to read and understand and it is, yet on another level it is not because his explanations are profound theological thought for clergy, his fellow peers. An intelligent and scholarly theologian, Cardinal Ratzinger responds to probably most of the questions you ever had about our faith. This book is good for everyone who wants information about both the Old Testament and New Testament.

In a series of conversations, which took place over several days with journalist Peter Seewald, Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, offers theological insights and explains doctrine in simple direct language. Covering a variety of topics, he systematically explores the notion of God, Jesus Christ, and the Church, and applies the theology to the lives of men and women in contemporary society. The dialogue format works extremely well, enabling the reader to digest complex issues in small, well-written presentations. The style is simple and direct which flows well, maintaining the reader's attention despite the nature of the topic. Originally written in German, the translation is exceptional; the author's ideas and thoughts are conveyed smoothly, while occasional difficulties are addressed through accompanying footnotes and commentary. GOD AND THE WORLD is probably the most engaging of all of Pope Benedict's longer works and can be read sequentially or by topic. For those unfamiliar with the Holy Father's writings, this book is probably the best introduction to his understanding of Catholic Theology.

"In Pope Ratzinger we easily have the most acute mind in public life in the world today," says the brilliant James V. Schall. I've been reading Joseph Ratzinger's works for a few months now, and he never fails to astound, particularly in this book, not only because of the depth of his thought, but also because he had to answer extemporaneously (as the book is a series of interviews). This man surely ranks with John Paul the Great in his sublime mixture of mind and heart. It approaches Mozartean proportions. Here, once again, Ratzinger explodes the popular media notion that he is simply a fascist enforcer. For example, here is his answer to a question concerning God's wrath: "Punishment is the situation in which man finds himself if he has alienated himself from his own essential being.... The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath. Whoever falls away from love is moving into negativity. So that is not something that some dictator with a lust for power inflicts on you, but is simply a way of expressing the inner logic of a certain action. If I move outside the area of what is compatible with the ideal model by which I am created, if I move beyond the love that sustains me, well then, I just fall into the void, into darkness. I am then no longer in the realm of love, so to speak, but in a realm that can be seen as the realm of wrath. When God inflicts punishment, this is not punishment in the sense that God has, as it were, drawn up a system of fines and penalties and is wanting to pin one on you. 'The punishment of God' is in fact an expression for having missed the right road and then experiencing the consequences that follow from taking the wrong track and wandering away from the right way of living.... It is important that the Church should draw a large enough image of God and not decorate it with artificial dreadful threats...." Ratzinger sustains this depth throughout the book. Peter Seewald is also to be highly commended for his excellent questions and comments. I imagine that this was quite an experience for him. Highly recommended, along with Ratzinger's seminal Introduction to Christianity. Update: Peter Seewald has now written a book in which he describes the experience of interviewing Joseph Ratzinger for both God and the World and Salt of the Earth. See Benedict XVI: An Intimate Portrait

Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, gave an interview to Peter Seewald a few years before the turn of the millennium, in a book entitled 'Salt of the Earth'. A few years after the turn of the millennium, Seewald followed up this earlier publication with this book, 'God and the World'. In it, Seewald take a bit more of a systematic approach to discussing theological topics. In the first section, the Prologue, Seewald continues in a vein similar to the earlier book, asking questions that are both academic and personal, discussing issues of faith, vocation, mystery and belief. Ratzinger speaks of his personal devotion and prayer practices, which include traditional forms of standard communal prayer (noontime Angelus, Vespers, Compline) as well as his own personal prayer practices, such as reciting a prayer before rising in the morning. He gives an account of how this kind of practice strengthens and reinforces itself, saying that 'the organ of sensitivity to God can atrophy to such an extent that the words of faith become quite meaningless.' Seewald directs the questions in a format that might serve as a guide to following a systematic theology - while this is not Ratzinger's systematic theology by any means, one can see the philosophical and theological consistency even in the answers to the question-and-answer format. He speaks of God, creation, Christology, scripture, sacraments, ecclesiology, and more. These are done in creative but traditional ways - for example, the section of Christology (speaking of Jesus Christ), the conversation falls under broad headings of Revelation, The Way, The Truth, and The Light (as separate sections). He also explores issues of Mariology and the significance of the Cross. The sections on the sacraments and the future are both firmly grounded in a sense that they need to be connected to the happenings in this world. Ratzinger looks forward to a resurgence of the spiritual in Christianity, and this perhaps taps into one of his namesakes, the St. Benedict who was an early pioneer in the development of monastic community and spirituality. Interestingly, given Ratzinger's selection of papal name as Benedict XVI, this interview (the third in-depth interview with Seewald) was conducted at a Benedictine Abbey, the famous Abbey of Monte Cassino. There are many books that can give good insight into the thinking of the new pope, but this book is a key text to show both his recent thinking, as well as his responses to crucial questions of concern in the current situation in the church and in the world.