Benedict XVI warned in an unpublished talk in June 1995 but made public this Sunday, January 1, 2023, after his death, that there was a «weariness of theology» that was felt in many places, «to the point of aversion.»
«Among many believers there is a feeling – which is not entirely unfounded – that theology destroys people’s faith,» noted the then Cardinal Ratzinger who in 2005 was elected Pope and in 2013 resigned from the pontificate.
However, he specifies that a faith that no longer permeates the whole person, a faith whose claim to be the truth no longer challenges our reason, is no longer an object of thought and does not realize the greatness of real faith.
«Faith, if it is the truth, must implement knowledge. And study theology, not one that indulges in a false academic impartiality and tries to justify itself academically somehow in this impartiality, but a theology that has the courage to take the adventure of faith very seriously and understands that faith must be materially incarnated, which is very difficult, exposed [to criticism], but very necessary,» Ratzinger explained at the time.
In the hitherto unpublished conversation, the publisher Plough, which publishes books and articles on Christian discipleship, the man who later became Pontiff and then Pope Emeritus urges not to adopt «worldly criteria».
In this sense, he points out that there is a Church «closely linked to the powers of the world», in reference to the martyrdom suffered by two Anabaptists, Georg Wagner and Klaus Felbinger, at the hands of the Catholic authorities in the 16th century.
«It grieves us, of course, that the Church was so closely linked to the powers of the world that it was capable of handing over other Christians to be executed because of their beliefs,» notes then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in a conversation in Rome with the leaders of the German Catholic communities, Traudl Wallbrecher and Johann Christoph Arnold.
«This should be a profound challenge to us, how much we all need to repent again and again, and how much the church must renounce worldly principles and norms to accept the truth as the only norm, to look to Christ, not to torture others, but to follow ourselves the path of witness, a path that the world will always oppose, a path that will always lead to some form of martyrdom,» the Pope Emeritus asserts.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
