Understanding Joseph Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI

Probably the most frequent complaint one hears about the current Pope, Benedict XVI, who still publishes academic books under the name Joseph Ratzinger, is that he is either an extreme conservative or, worse still, a reactionary. Yet readers of his books soon discover that he is a very intelligent, open, and articulate thinker
Anyone wanting to understand the Pope’s conservative views, particularly his apparent reversal of some aspects of the implementation of the Second Sacred Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, known as Vatican II, which was held from 11 October 1962 to 21 November 1965, ought to read Derek Hastings’ new book Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

The book’s title is highly misleading because it is not about Catholicism as such, but rather about a group of rebel Catholics based in the Bavarian city of Munich who were followers of the excommunicated scholar Ignaz von Döllinger (1799-1890). Learning from Döllinger’s mistakes these people determined to remain “loyal Catholics” in terms of their public self-presentation while working hard to undermine traditional Roman Catholic beliefs and practices which they believed were in need of modernization. Essentially disloyal to the Pope and strongly rejecting papal authority these writers and activists embraced German völkisch thought and an ultra-Nationalism that glorified the German race while at the same time rejecting ultramontainism that insisted on a universal Catholicism centered on Rome.

After the defeat of Germany in 1918 many of these figures, but not all, soon embraced National Socialism as the wave of the future. It is this embrace that Dr. Hastings misleadingly argues represents the catholic roots of National Socialism.

In fact, given the intense persecution of official Catholicism after 1933 which to his credit he also documents, Hastings’ argument makes more sense in terms of Catholic modernism and its rejection of both traditional and official Catholicism. Regardless of how one reads Hastings’ book his careful documentation of the way the modernists tried to change the Roman Catholic Church and their desire for change goes a long way to explain Joseph Ratzinger’s rejection of modernism and desire to steer the church back to a tradition based orthodoxy.