Lost Lectures of Benedict XVI Collected in New Book

February 21, 2023213 views0

Lost Lectures of Benedict XVI Collected in New Book

2023-02-21T11:30:13+01:00

By Church News

Six lectures of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) were almost lost forever. But now, they have been collected in a new Ignatius Press book, “The Divine Project: Reflections on Creation and Church.”“It’s a wonderful summation of what God intends in creating us and redeeming us, in six lectures. It’s just a great find,” Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, president of Ignatius Press, said. “It’s written for students and spoken for students. It’s really quite readable.”Pope Benedict XVI delivered a series of lectures in 1985 at the Bishop of Gurk’s formation house at St. George’s Abbey in Längsee in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia. They were recorded on audio cassettes but the tapes were misplaced for 30 years and forgotten. By chance, they were rediscovered.“It was a treasure that was lost and found again,” said Fessio, who studied under Ratzinger when the future pontiff was a theologian and university professor. Ratzinger served as a cardinal under Pope John Paul II. He was elected pope in 2005.The lectures were first published in German in 2008, but Ignatius Press is the first to publish them in English, in a 177-page book.Fessio stressed Ratzinger’s emphasis on Scripture.“He always goes back to Scripture when he is presenting on any topic,” Fessio commented. “This is theological. It has to do with faith, of course. His interpretation of Genesis brings it right up to the present. He understands traditional scholarship and the historical-critical method, but he’s able to make it come alive.”Ratzinger’s lectures reflect upon God as the creator of a reasonable cosmos, in which each man and woman is ultimately a creature. He considers how to read the Bible and understand original sin and redemption.Ratzinger considers the first eight lines of the Book of Genesis, about the creation of the heavens and the earth.He said, “Is this merely a beautiful passage, or does this beauty also reveal something of the truth?” he asks. “And if so, how do we find it?”He reflects on explanations of Genesis that engage scientific accounts of the universe and of humankind, including evolutionary theory. He asks whether and how the scientific and Christian approaches can complement each other, and he ponders the place of the Genesis account of creation in historic Christian thought, including the fall of humankind through Adam.ALSO READ: Vatican Shares Pope Benedict XVI Final Thoughts