In 1969, while he was a professor of theology at the University of Regensburg, Fr Joseph Ratzinger gave a radio address in Germany, asking “What will the Church look like in 2000?” The then-future pope’s foresight and analysis are both prophetic and alarming. The speech was not merely concerned with speculating about the future of the Church. Rather, it is a thoughtful consideration about the theological and spiritual implication of the reality of a Church that is smaller, as measured by Mass attendance and participation. Ratzinger used the address to challenge those of us who remain to be faithful and diligent in our witness to the truth of the Faith, for the purpose of urging others to return.
Consistent with both his personality and his theological work, Ratzinger began the lecture with a strong word of circumspection. Speculation about either the decline or the resurgence of the Church must be made with acknowledgment of the contingency of any such analysis. The theologian should be guarded about making “a calculation of the future based on the measurable factors of the present”, he cautioned, “because faith and the Church reach down into those depths from which creative newness [is] constantly coming forth”. He observed that “their future remains hidden to us, even in an age of futurology”.
Despite Ratzinger’s circumspection, the subsequent decades have proven his prediction of a smaller Church. He explained that it is necessary to look to the past so we can think clearly in the present about what may come in the future. “[R]eflection upon history, properly understood, embraces both looking back into the past and … reflecting on the possibilities and tasks of the future”. This is neither an exercise in nostalgia for some prior golden age nor hubris about the present or future. Rather, it is an application of prudent observation and discernment.
For Ratzinger’s address, the historical survey was from the so-called “Enlightenment”, through 19th-century revolutions, 20th-century world wars, and the social and theological upheaval of the second half of the 1960s. This included his own movement in 1969 from the venerable University of Tübingen, one of the most prestigious theological faculties in the world, to the upstart University of Regensburg.
Initially invited to Tübingen by Fr Hans Küng in 1966 because of Ratzinger’s perceived progressivism at Vatican II, he soon found both the student body and the theological faculty to be at odds with his own academic and theological development. Regensburg, in his native state of Bavaria, offered the quiet and relative anonymity that he really preferred. It was from there, shortly after his move, that Ratzinger cautioned the Church to be neither overly pessimistic nor optimistic, but to take seriously the demands of the times.
Ratzinger’s observations from 54 years ago resonate with the worrisome current state of the Church. Fewer than 40 per cent of American Catholics attend at least weekly Mass. Across Europe, attendance at weekly Mass is even more alarming: 28 per cent in the UK; 20 per cent in Spain; 25 per cent in Italy; 6 per cent in France; under 10 per cent in Ratzinger’s native Germany. But while this may tempt us to wring our hands, the point of the 1969 speech was to give a sober and forceful assessment of the path to recovery.
Ratzinger’s purpose was not to bemoan the state of the Church, but rather to encourage believers to have hope for her future. A resurgent Church will not emerge from those who reduce it to a mere social organisation, aping the empty rhetoric of its surrounding political culture. “We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers,” Ratzinger admonished. Such a Church is “utterly superfluous” of the secular world. “The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist.”
A resurgent Church “will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live in the pure fullness of their faith”, not “from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticise”. The Church “will be reshaped by saints”, by people “whose minds are deeper than the slogans of the day”. And it will be served not by priests who give “official advice” but rather by those who place themselves at the disposal of people “in their sorrows, their joys, in their hope and in their fear”.
The process “will be long and wearisome”, Ratzinger explained. But through it the Church can “find her essence afresh with full conviction in that which was always at her centre: faith in the triune God”. This Church will not glory in its smallness, but rather serve as witness to hope and a haven for welcoming people back. These “will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it is a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret”. It is a Church that will have the prayers of Pope Benedict XVI to sustain her.
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