Quotes About Ratzinger

The one and only time I met Pope Benedict XVI was when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments," Ratzinger said, "namely, the saints the Church has produced, and the art which has grown in her womb.

Faith also requires "purification" in Ratzinger's thought.  For Ratzinger, reason allows faith to discern what is superstitious from what is true and what inconsistent with truth from what is a genuine expansion of knowledge.

Professor Ratzinger specifies that the philosophical view of God was reframed by its convergence with the biblical faith of Christianity in two ways: 1) It removed the idea that God must be totally and solely self-interested, and 2) it recognized that the divine is not limited to pure thought and thus can act in concrete ways.[cxvi]  This union between the Logos and love is another key feature of Ratzinger's theology.

Dad also treasured the Church's beauty. Some years ago, then-Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) observed that one of the most convincing demonstrations of the Catholic Church's truth is "the beauty that the faith has generated." That statement by a man of such intellectual standing might surprise us because we tend to associate beauty with feelings and not with truth.

In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues.

Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system… Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said. "The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found" in an article written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

Ratzinger was afraid to intervene on a deadlocked Roman Curia, with reformers on one side, and the money changers on the other," wrote author Gianluigi Nuzzi. "So he decided to create a clean slate by bowing out and paving the way for the election of a strong Pope."34