Peter Seewald > Quotes

“Priesthood, Ratzinger stressed, meant getting out of a bourgeois lifestyle. It had to ‘guide people towards becoming reconciled, forgiving and forgetting, being tolerant and generous’. It was to help them ‘put up with other people in their otherness, and have patience with one another’. A priest must ‘above all, be able to support people in pain – in bodily suffering, as well as in all the disappointments, humiliations and fears, which no one is spared.’ For ‘the ability to accept and stand suffering’ is ‘a fundamental condition for successful human living. If that is not learned, then failure is inevitable.’16 The ‘right definition of what a priest should be and do’ was still Paul’s message in his letter to the Corinthians: ‘We are ambassadors for Christ.’ A priest is required ‘to know Jesus intimately; he has met him and learned to love him’. It was only by being a man of prayer that he was also a truly ‘spiritual’ person – a priest. When priests were overworked and felt tired and frustrated, it was often caused by a tense straining for performance. Then faith became a heavy burden, ‘when it should be wings to carry us’. Whoever works for Christ knows that ‘it is always someone else who sows and someone else who reaps. He does not have to continually question himself; he leaves the outcome to the Lord and does what he can without worrying, freely and happily, secure as part of the whole.’17”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume One: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965

“That ‘requires from you serenity of mind, fraternal harmony, moderation in proposals, dignity in discussion and sound advice’. John XXIII ended his speech with an”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume One: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965

“Unlike with all the previous Councils, this time there was ‘no particular problem to solve’. In a way, it was about the whole thing. ‘Christianity, which had built and shaped the West, seemed increasingly to be losing its defining power’, Joseph Ratzinger thought, as he witnessed the historic moment. ‘It seemed to have grown tired, and the future seemed to be determined by other spiritual forces.’5 It had to catch up with ‘the world of today so that it can again have power to shape tomorrow’.6 Pope John’s word aggiornamento – ‘updating’ – had mobilized a new energy. Everything should become fresher, newer, more vivid. But wasn’t it also clear that the Roman Curia with all its power – and all its guile – would undermine any attempt at reform? Didn’t the prepared schemata bear the stamp, in content, style and mentality, of precisely that Roman neo-scholastic theology which needed to be overcome? Yes, the entry into St Peter’s was impressive. But, Ratzinger wondered outside in the Square, ‘Is it normal that 2,500 bishops, not to mention the many other”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume One: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965

“Zwar habe die Kirche feste Fundamente, aber sie bleibe gleichwohl ein ständiger Bauplatz.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedikt XVI.: Ein Leben

“Ratzinger took from his professor: unhampered access to current topics; new approaches informed by the liturgical movement; historical-critical investigation of tradition; sympathy for the philosophical-theological ‘Nouvelle Théologie’; the ecumenical impulse; a passion for clear formulation of your own thinking, even if it was deviant, as the precondition for genuine dialogue.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume One: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965

“In Wirklichkeit seien »nicht Schrift und Überlieferung die Quellen der Offenbarung«, sondern das Sprechen und Sichenthüllen Gottes selbst, aus dem die beiden Flüsse Schrift und Überlieferung hervorgingen.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedikt XVI.: Ein Leben

“On board the plane to Edinburgh, Benedict made his standpoint clear. When a journalist asked him whether the church should urgently do something to become more attractive, he answered with a plain ‘No’. The church did not sell anything, least of all itself. It was not entrusted with goods but with a message, which it had to pass on in full.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present

“Once Ratzinger said in passing that education should not seek to take anything away from the other; it should have the humility simply to accompany the student’s own thinking and help them to mature.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present

“Pope Benedict was “framed” in a media set-up that no longer permitted serious reporting.’ The result: ‘Pope Benedict’s papacy, which had begun so brilliantly in 2005, increasingly developed into a “serial breakdown papacy”.’ Every appearance by the pope promised the media new negative headlines.’ The reporting on the pope and the church also showed a trend towards ‘tabloidization’, a way of presenting news ‘with a striking style in both design and content that does not just seek to inform, but also specifically aims at forming’ opinion. There was the ‘expectation of failure’, a mechanism that survived by satisfying those expectations. Journalists themselves did not now ‘expect to consider what the pope had said of interest about the relation between faith and reason or on the global economy, but to look out for mistakes’. That lack of ethics had had ‘a decisive influence on the media images of Pope Benedict’. Now it was often just a matter of ‘exposing the pope’:”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present

“»das Leben wird nicht vom Zufall regiert; es ist nicht der Willkür unterworfen. Euer persönliches Sein ist von Gott gewollt; er hat es gesegnet und ihm einen Sinn gegeben!”
― Peter Seewald, Benedikt XVI.: Ein Leben

“And the older you become, the more you find that your strength is just not enough to do what you should. You are too weak, too helpless or unable to deal with situations.’ At such moments he turned to his God and besought him: ‘Now you must help. I can’t do any more.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present

“he then coined the term ‘desecularization’ (Entweltlichung). Indeed, a church becoming more like Christ necessarily had ‘to differ sharply from the world around it’, he quoted from Pope Paul VI. It had to ‘distance itself’, we could say ‘desecularize itself’. Jesus became human ‘not just to confirm the world in its worldliness and be its companion’ and then leave it as it was. No, a church that ‘settles in this world, is self-satisfied and conforms to the world’s standards’ contravened its founder’s mission, ‘to be an instrument of salvation, imbued with God’s word’ and thus ‘be not of the world’. The pope expressly made clear that necessary ‘desecularization’ also included the church’s charitable works and its ‘organization and institution’. For ‘a church freed from material and political burdens and privileges can devote itself to the whole world better and in a truly Christian way. […] It opens itself to the world, not in order to win people for an institution with its own claims to power, but to bring them to themselves.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present

“According to the Catholic convert Scheler, people today fled from God because they fled from themselves. So being concerned with religion was not about self-sacrifice or any other loss. Quite the opposite: ‘You gain yourself as a person by losing yourself in God.’ Scheler was convinced that only Christian Socialism was capable of finding a way between the capitalist West and the communist East. In his philosophical anthropology, he stressed the special nature of humankind as ‘co-operator with God’.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume One: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965

“Every suffering, said Ratzinger, ‘every silent endurance of wrong, every inner overcoming, every impulse of love, every care and every committal to God’ would have an effect. For ‘nothing good is in vain’.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life Volume Two: Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present

“Fußball-»Kaiser« Franz Beckenbauer wertete die 48 Sekunden seiner Audienz bei Benedikt gar als den »Höhepunkt meines Lebens«. Der Papst hätte ihn inspiriert: »Ich habe selten einen Menschen mit dieser Ausstrahlung, dieser Güte, dieser Freundlichkeit im Antlitz gesehen.”
― Peter Seewald, Benedikt XVI.: Ein Leben