Thesis advisor: Barbara Radtke / Thesis advisor: Margaret Guider / The aim of this thesis is to study the convictions of Ratzinger the theologian, with specific reference to his ecclesiological positions, commitments or convictions. It is my humble opinion that understanding Ratzinger’s systematic approach to the question of the Church is crucial in analyzing his impact on Catholicism and the world, especially on the many fronts where he engaged issues from the perspective of the faith and as a theologian. This thesis explores Benedict from the inside, from the internal theological and formative forces and convictions that shaped him and contributed to his making the decision that shook the world on February 11, 2013. Besides the media speculations and obvious embarrassing stories that emerged from the papal household, such as the theft of his private papers by his own butler; the belated effort by the communication machinery bogged down in the realm of endless bureaucratic ritual and unable to come to terms with a Pope who seemed more inclined to the religious dimension of his papacy than staging theatrical media drama. It is my strong conviction that, for a man who had withstood so much pressure and opprobrium throughout most of his ecclesiastical career, Ratzinger’s renunciation of papal power came about through the lens with which he had often judged and discerned situations – the life of the Church, the gift of the Church and what was best for this Church that had meant all to Ratzinger. His remarkable final public address, delivered on February 27, 2013, captures this sentiment. It reads in part: When, on 19 April almost eight years ago I accepted to take on the Petrine ministry, I had the firm certainty that has always accompanied me: this certainty for the life of the Church from the Word of God. At that moment, as I have already expressed many times, the words that resounded in my heart were: Lord, what do You ask of me? It is a great weight that You are placing on my shoulders but, if You ask it of me, I will cast my nets at your command, confident that You will guide me, even with all my weaknesses. And eight years later I can say that the Lord has guided me. He has been close to me. I have felt His presence every day. It has been a stretch of the Church's path that has had moments of joy and light, but also difficult moments. I felt like St. Peter and the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee. The Lord has given us many days of sunshine and light breezes, days when the fishing was plentiful, but also times when the water was rough and the winds against us, just as throughout the whole history of the Church, when the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I always knew that the Lord is in that boat and I always knew that the boat of the Church is not mine, not ours, but is His. And the Lord will not let it sink. He is the one who steers her, of course also through those He has chosen because that is how He wanted it. This was and is a certainty that nothing can tarnish. And that is why my heart today is filled with gratitude to God, because He never left—the whole Church or me—without His consolation, His light, or His love. These profound words of inspiration mirror the character of a churchman who placed the good of the Church before his own personal interest. It was a significant message to those in the Church, especially within the clerical ranks that tended to pursue careerism, even at the detriment of the Church’s mission of spreading the gospel. Within the context of the infighting that had rocked the Roman Curia under Benedict XVI’s watch that came to a head with his butler stealing and revealing his private papers to the media, the former pontiff appeared to be far above the moral mendacity in the Roman Curia that had become a house divided within itself with the brazen maneuvering and infighting that was embarrassing the Church. It is important to make the distinction between the sincere love of the Church by Benedict and the administrative setbacks he faced, which were all counter-productive to his vision of the Church as a community of love and truth. This thesis is divided into Three Chapters. Chapter One considers Ratzinger’s Bavarian roots in terms of the effects these had on his theological imagination, particularly his experience of Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s. Ratzinger’s vision of liturgical ecclesiology was definitely affected by the religious piety of his native Bavaria. Foundational to this first chapter is the conviction that the human being is often subjected to and formed by varied life-formative experiences and encounters. The public display of Catholic faith in Bavaria, the rituals and public processions, the times and seasons of Catholic life that affected even the daily menu of Bavarians, instilled in Ratzinger a deep conviction that Catholicism was not just a cultic liturgical expression, but a deep transforming experience that oriented all to a communion. Chapter Two examines the theological attitudes that shaped Ratzinger’s ecclesiology, which are helpful in understanding his theological assumptions. This chapter considers Ratzinger’s theological formation in Augustine and Bonaventure, Ratzinger’s theological mentors. In Augustine, Ratzinger saw the Church as the people and house of God, formed by the spirit of Caritas. This Church is universal and the central act of worship is the Eucharist. In Bonaventure, Ratzinger found a transcendental and spiritual vision of the Church and history that is determined by a vision that is eschatologically triumphant, with a Christo-cosmic consciousness that spans the life of the Church, from ecclesia ab Abel – the Church of the Just, to the ecclesia contemplativa – the final and definitive form of the Church’s existence. This triumph of the Church can only come about through patient endurance of suffering and rejection on the part of the Church, after the pattern of Christ. Chapter Three proposes theological insights and implications from understanding the Church from the perspective of the Bavaria, Augustine and Bonaventure of Joseph Ratzinger, with the aim of offering the Church of today lessons that could be helpful to the Church’s contemporary evangelical efforts. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

From the relatively extensive works of Joseph Ratzinger we will first look up more significant texts dealing with hope. Then the collected materials will be studied and we will attempt to analyze, evaluate and compare them. The aim of our thesis will be to capture Ratzinger's basic line of thought concerning hope. We will also try to contrast Ratzinger's basic conception of hope with other approaches to this topic which he has encountered during his life since from our point of view, these approaches were often either incorrect or too narrow- minded. Thus we will be dealing especially with Ratzinger's texts originating from the time of his academic career. Furthermore, we will analyze also the texts written in the period when Professor Ratzinger was invited, as the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, to lecture on hope. However, in the section dealing with methodology we will attempt to distinguish texts coming from Ratzinger's pre- and post-Congregation career. Since the topic of hope is closely related to soteriology and eschatology, we will include these disciplines into our thesis, though only marginally. In practice, eschatology is also connected to political science. In the concluding section of our thesis we would like to summarize the essentials of Ratzinger's conception...

Thesis advisor: Khaled Anatolios / Based upon his role as a peritus at Vatican II in the shaping of the Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, Ratzinger reflected back on the deliberations at the Council soon after its conclusion and indicated that the new development of understanding of Revelation was that Revelation is to be seen "basically as dialogue." In his Introduction to Christianity, he would indicate that because of the experience of Jesus Christ, the Church comes to see that God is not only logos, but dia-logos. Throughout his theological and pastoral career, Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, consistently relies upon the framework of "dialogue" as the principle of coherence for how he attempts to articulate the one Christian mystery, whether he is speaking of Revelation, Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology or any other area of Christian theology. I attempt in this dissertation, to trace that principle of coherence in his thought and thereby give a hermeneutic for approaching one of the most influential theologians of our time. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis advisor: Mary Ann Hinsdale / The thesis of this dissertation is that the ecclesial reality of certain Protestant and Anglican communities cannot be adequately evaluated only in reference to the validity or invalidity of its Eucharist and ministry. The question this dissertation will address is whether recognition of some of these communities as "churches" in the theological sense might be possible using a different standard for understanding "church" and ecclesiality. This dissertation will pursue this question through an exploration of how amenable the writings of Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and Cardinal Walter Kasper are to developing more adequate criteria for recognizing Protestant and Anglican communities as "churches" in the theological sense. The goal of this dissertation is to advance Catholic ecumenical ecclesiology beyond the current impasse over its inability to attribute the term "church" to those communities traditionally understood to possess an invalid Eucharist and ministry. This dissertation will draw on the theological works of both Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper in order to develop a theology of "ecclesial fruitfulness" as a more adequate standard for understanding "church." It will suggest that "ecclesial fruitfulness" is theologically rooted primarily in pneumatology. The Spirit is both the inner fruitfulness of God--God as pure, abundant and overflowing love--and also the condition and possibility of God self-communicating this ecstatic love in history. Creation is therefore the outflow of God's love and a participation in God's being. As the world originates in love, so also then is the world ordered towards fulfillment in love. The mystery of God's salvation for humankind is to be drawn up into the fruitfulness of the trinitarian God through a transformation of sinful individuality into an existence of openness and love. This is made possible in Jesus Christ, who is God's self-communicating love in person, God's loving reign, and the meaning of all reality. In Christ's death and resurrection, he becomes fruitful or "communicable" through giving of himself in the Spirit, and this ability to give of himself through the centuries is itself a fruit of the Paschal Mystery. The church, therefore, is to serve as a sign and icon of the Spirit of the risen Christ, who is the fruitfulness of God in and to the world. The "fruitfulness" of the church is thus the Spirit effectively realizing the mystery of God's salvation given in Jesus Christ through the preaching of the Word, the celebration of the sacraments (particularly the Eucharist), and through fostering communion among all local churches and ecclesial communities. This dissertation will suggest that a Christian community that is "ecclesially fruitful" in the sense described here is theologically a "church." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Khaled Anatolios / Examines Joseph Ratzingers's contribution to the theology of inspiration and inerrancy. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 244-255).

Thesis advisor: Brian Dunkle / The eighteenth-century Enlightenment movement that swept across much of Europe, notably France, England and Germany, came to mean different things to different peoples, embodying different strands and currents of thought. Even with the national and cultural specificities, the common element that cut across national boundaries was the appeal to reason as the point of departure in interpreting individual and communal behavior. The Aufklärung, that is, the German strand of the Enlightenment, was particularly acute in its interaction and more pointedly, its challenge of traditional Christian orthodoxy and doctrines. Given this obvious interest in Christian thought by the Aufklärung, it is quite predictable that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI became concerned with the perspectives and positions of the Aufklärer. To Ratzinger, the Aufklärung marked an enduring criticism of revealed faith, a critique that the Church is yet to fully engage and respond to. The critique of faith by the Aufklärung has lost nothing of its freshness and attraction, two centuries later. This task of opening avenues of rational engagements with the modes of thought of the Aufklärung is not just the expedient thing to do. There is a more profound reason: Christianity, as Ratzinger has repeatedly pointed out, is a religion of the Logos, a Logos that at the fullness of time (Gal 4:4), entered history. To foster this rapport between faith and the Aufklärung, Ratzinger therefore finds a ready tool in the Johannine appropriation of the Greek concept of the Logos. In Ratzinger, one discerns a five-fold usage of the concept of logos that could be useful in creating a space of interaction and engagement with the Aufklärung: As Creative Reason, Son, Person, Unity of Love and Word. These five appropriations of logos will therefore provide avenues by which Ratzinger will engage the Aufklärung. What this dissertation seeks to achieve by way of moving the needle of knowledge is to study Ratzinger from the philosophical prism of the Aufklärung, that is, how do Ratzinger’s theological ideas, convictions and conclusions place him in dialogue and engagement with the philosophical currents of the post-Aufklärung era, especially the philosophers that emerge from Germany? This thesis therefore places Ratzinger in dialogue with notable Aufklärung figures like Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger around the central Christological and Ecclesiological questions as seen in the multiple appropriation of the concept of logos by Ratzinger. Overall, one gains a deeper appreciation not only of Ratzinger’s Christo-ecclesial hermeneutical framework, but also the philosophical currents and presuppositions that shaped and contextualized the thinking of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, especially from the prism of the dialogue between faith and reason, and the continuous relevance for such a hermeneutical framework for today’s Church, as we continue to grapple with the challenges of the autonomy of reason and science vis-à-vis the traditional claims of Christian orthodoxy. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

[pt] Esta tese expõe, a partir do pensamento de Joseph Ratzinger, a relação entre a Eucaristia e a Igreja, com o intuito de mergulhar na totalidade e unidade da produção teológica deste autor. Verifica-se, nessa relação, que a Eucaristia edifica a Igreja e que a celebração da Ceia na comunidade eclesial é o elemento nuclear deste mistério. A eclesiologia, compreendida a partir de sua relação com a Eucaristia, foi um referencial ímpar no entendimento de J. Ratzinger. Para ele, a Igreja pode ser definida como o povo que vive do Corpo de Cristo e que, na Eucaristia, se torna ela mesma Corpo de Cristo. A Igreja é, fundamentalmente, communio sanctotum, no duplo sentido de comunhão dos bens da salvação (sancta) e comunhão daqueles que recebem esse bem (sancti). Desse modo, a exposição analítica da produção de J. Ratzinger conduz à junção das teses – synthesis – influenciadas sobretudo nas aplicações das decisões do Concílio Vaticano II, como também de grandes pensadores como De Lubac, Congar, Tillard, Forte, Kasper, Zizioulas, grandes fautores de uma eclesiologia eucarística ou de comunhão. / [en] This thesis exposes, from the thought of Joseph Ratzinger, the relationship between the Eucharist and the Church, in order to delve into the totality and unity of this author s theological production. In this relationship, it can be seen that the Eucharist builds the Church and that the celebration of the Supper in the ecclesial community is the core element of this mystery. Ecclesiology, understood from its relationship with the Eucharist, was a unique reference in the understanding of J. Ratzinger. For him, the Church can be defined as the people who live from the Body of Christ and who, in the Eucharist, themselves become the Body of Christ. The Church is, fundamentally, communio sanctotum, in the double sense of communion of the goods of salvation (sancta) and communion of those who receive this good (sancti). In this way, the analytical exposition of J. Ratzinger s production leads to the junction of theses - synthesis - influenced mainly in the applications of the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, as well as great thinkers such as De Lubac, Congar, Tillard, Forte, Kasper, Zizioulas, great promoters of a Eucharistic ecclesiology or of communion. / [it] Questa tesi espone, dal pensiero di Joseph Ratzinger, il rapporto tra l Eucaristia e la Chiesa, per approfondire la totalità e l unità della produzione teologica di questo autore. In questo rapporto si vede che l Eucaristia edifica la Chiesa e che la celebrazione della Cena nella comunità ecclesiale è l elemento centrale di questo mistero. L ecclesiologia, intesa dal suo rapporto con l Eucaristia, è stata un riferimento unico nella comprensione di J. Ratzinger. Per lui la Chiesa può essere definita come il popolo che vive del Corpo di Cristo e che, nell Eucaristia, diventa esso stesso Corpo di Cristo. La Chiesa è, fondamentalmente, communio sanctotum, nel duplice senso di comunione dei beni della salvezza (sancta) e comunione di coloro che ricevono questo bene (sancti). In tal modo, l esposizione analitica della produzione di J. Ratzinger porta all incrocio di tesi - sintesi - influenzate soprattutto nelle applicazioni delle decisioni del Concilio Vaticano II, oltre che da grandi pensatori come De Lubac, Congar, Tillard, Forte, Kasper, Zizioulas, grandi promotori di una ecclesiologia eucaristica o di comunione.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-22T12:39:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 000468746-Texto+Completo-0.pdf: 1327392 bytes, checksum: bcdc7a5223062ea477f237271015e0b2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / This master's research aims the concept of "justice" in the Catholic eschatology, from the German theologian Joseph Ratzinger approach, to understand the implications of this issue for the Christian praxis. It is about to verify the relationship between the Christian hope of eschatological justice and the need to establish new relations of justice in the current context. Therefore, we discuss in the first chapter, the theme of eschatological justice in Sacred Scripture, in the Christian Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church. In the second chapter is rescued the theological sense of the traditional doctrine of the final judgment, presented by Ratzinger as "the decisive image of hope", in an updated reading that seeks to overcome the remnants of a forensic vision, threatening, punitive and retributive divine justice. In the third and final chapter, based on the relationship between eschatology and praxis it is intended to reflect upon the need for a new concept and new relationships of justice, on a full and creative perspective, reconciling and restoring, through the contributions of Catholic Social Teaching, the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate, in dialogue with other authors dealing with the theme. / A presente pesquisa de mestrado tem como objeto o conceito de “justiça” na escatologia católica, a partir da abordagem do teólogo alemão Joseph Ratzinger, visando a compreender as implicações desse tema para a práxis cristã. Trata-se de verificar a relação entre a esperança cristã numa justiça escatológica e a necessidade de se estabelecer novas relações de justiça no contexto atual. Para tanto, aborda-se, no primeiro capítulo, o tema da justiça escatológica na Sagrada Escritura, na Tradição cristã e no Magistério da Igreja. No segundo capítulo, resgata-se o sentido teológico da doutrina tradicional acerca do juízo final, apresentado por Ratzinger como “a imagem decisiva da esperança”, numa leitura atualizada que busca superar os resquícios de uma visão forense, ameaçadora, retributiva e punitiva da justiça divina. No terceiro e último capítulo, a partir da relação entre escatologia e práxis, pretende-se refletir sobre a necessidade de um novo conceito e novas relações de justiça, numa perspectiva integral e criativa, reconciliadora e restauradora, mediante as contribuições da Doutrina Social da Igreja, do Episcopado da América Latina e Caribe, e da carta encíclica Caritas in veritate, em diálogo com outros autores que se ocupam da temática.

[pt] A escatologia de Joseph Ratzinger é o tema principal dessa dissertação. Busca-se através da análise dos escritos escatológicos do autor apresentar parte de suas contribuições aos recorrentes debates sobre a escatologia do século XX. Para isso, foi necessário estudar e apresentar uma panorâmica histórica da escatologia e de seus característicos desdobramentos ao longo dos séculos. Posteriormente se analisou os escritos e as homilias de Ratzinger que se relacionavam diretamente com a doutrina das últimas coisas com destaque para as suas formulações teológicas mais importantes a partir dos tais. Nessas análises, buscou-se focar nos posicionamentos adotados por Ratzinger à medida que suas investigações se intensificavam. Dedicou-se, também ao exame da relação de Ratzinger e o desenvolvimento histórico da matéria com espaço para observação da evolução do seu pensamento. Foram apresentados aspectos distintivos e as contribuições do autor ao debate sobre escatologia. / [en] Joseph Ratzinger s eschatology is the main theme of this dissertation. It seeks through the analysis of the author s eschatological writings to present part of his contributions to the recurring debates on eschatology in the 20th century. To do this, it was necessary to study and present a historical overview of eschatology and its characteristic developments over the centuries. Subsequently, the writings and homilies of Ratzinger that were directly related to the doctrine of the last things were analyzed, with emphasis on his most important theological formulations from these. In these analyses, the focus was on the positions adopted by Ratzinger as his investigations intensified. It was also dedicated to examining the relationship between Ratzinger and the historical development of the subject, with space for observing the evolution of his thought. The author s distinctive aspects and contributions to the debate on eschatology were presented.