One prominent theologian disagrees:
“And finally in its present shape this text [the Apostles' Creed] also expresses the politically inspired uniformity impressed on the Church in the West and thus the political alienation of belief, its utilization as a means to imperial unity. In using this text which was promoted as the “Roman” one and, in the process, forced on Rome in this shape from the outside, we find present in it the necessity for belief to break through the prison bars of political aims and to assert its own independence. Thus the fate of this text demonstrates how the answer to the call from Galilee mingles, at the moment of its entry into history, with all the human circumstances of man: with the special interests of one region, with the estrangement of those called to unity among themselves, with the tricks of the powers of this world. I think it is important to see this, for this, too, is a part of the worldly reality of believing, namely, that the bold leap of faith into the infinite signified by it can only take place on the petty scale of everything human; that here, too, where man makes his greatest venture, so to speak, the leap over his own shadow to the meaning that bears him up, his action is not pure, noble greatness, but instead it shows him up as a divided being pitiful in his greatness, yet still great while he is pitiful. When one follows up in this way the traces left behind in the text of the creed by man and his human attributes, the doubt may well arise whether it is right; to use this text [the Creed!] as a peg on which to hang the sort of introduction to the basic content of Christian faith (sic) aimed at in this book. Is it not to be feared that by doing so, we are already moving on dubious terrain? The question must be posed, but anyone who follows it up will nevertheless be able to confirm that, despite its checkered history this Creed does represent at all decisive points an accurate echo of the ancient Church's faith (sic) which, for its part is, in its kernel, the true echo of the New Testament message."Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2004), 86-87.
More quotes: (emphasis mine, except where noted.)
“Naturally, I have my own ideas about how theology should look.”Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church at the End of the Millennium (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1997), 15.
“An awareness needs to develop that in fact to a large extent we no longer know Christianity at all.”Salt of the Earth, 18.
"In the course of a now centuries-old history, Protestantism has made an important contribution to the realization of Christian faith, fulfilling a positive function in the development of the Christian message and, above all, often giving rise to a sincere and profound faith in the individual non-Catholic Christian, whose separation from the Catholic affirmation has nothing to do with the pertinacia characteristic of heresy."Joseph Ratzinger, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993), 87-88.
“The question that really concerns us, the question that really oppresses us, is why it is necessary for us in particular to practice the Christian Faith in its totality; why, when there are so many other ways that lead to heaven and salvation, it should be required of us to bear day after day the whole burden of ecclesial dogmas and of the ecclesial ethos."Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1990), 217.
“Whoever loves is a Christian.”Joseph Ratzinger, Credo for Today: What Christians Believe (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2006), 9.
“Q: How many ways are there to God? A: As many as there are people.”Salt of the Earth, 32.
"At one point in its Creed, as is well known, the Council of Nicaea clearly went beyond the language of Scripture, in describing Jesus as "of one substance with the Father'. Both in ancient and modern times the presence in the Creed of this philosophical term, 'of one substance', has given rise to major disputes. Again and again it has been suggested that it indicates a serious departure not only from the language but also from the thought of the Bible."Joseph Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1986), 35-36.
“The issue is no longer the relatively superficial question as to any errors that may have been contained within Jesus' worldview and his perspective on future time. Rather is it the much more fundamental question of the essential character of his message as such. Is the expectation of an imminent end its true center? Does his message retain any significant content once the expectation of an imminent end is eliminated?”Joseph Ratzinger, trans. Michael Waldstein, ed. Adam Nichols, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 19.
“Can we still believe in the God who calls Moses in the burning bush? The God who kills the firstborn sons of Egypt and leads His people to war against the inhabitants of Canaan? Who makes Oza fall dead because he touched the sacred ark? Or were all these things nothing but an expression of the old East, interesting, yes; perhaps even significant as a level of the human conscience; but not the expression of the divine word?Joseph Ratzinger, Faith and the Future (Sao Paulo: Vozes, 1971), 13.
"[E]nough has been said to make clear that it is by no means self-evident that the central expression of Christianity should be the word credo, that the Christian should describe this attitude to reality as being that of 'belief' . But this only makes our question all the more urgent: What attitude is really signified by this word? And, further, how is it that it is becoming so difficult for our individual, personal 'I' to enter into this 'I believe'? How is it that, again and again, it seems almost impossible for us to identify our present-day egos--each of them inalterably separate from everyone else's--with that 'I' of the 'I believe', which has been predetermined and shaped by past generations?Introduction to Christianity, 53.
“On top of the gulf between 'visible' and 'invisible' there comes, to make things harder for us, the gulf between 'then' and 'now'. The basic paradox already present in belief as such is rendered even more profound by the fact that belief appears on the scene in the garb of days gone by and, indeed, seems itself to be something old-fashioned, the mode of life and existence current a long time ago. All attempts at modernization, whether intellectual, academic 'demythologization', or ecclesiastical, pragmatic aggiornamento, do not alter this fact; on the contrary, they strengthen the suspicion that a convulsive effort is being made to proclaim as contemporary something that is, after all, really a relic of days gone by. It is these attempts at modernization that first make us fully aware just how old-fashioned what we are being offered really is. Belief appears no longer as the bold but challenging leap out of the apparent all of our visible world and into the apparent void of the invisible and intangible; it looks much more like a demand to bind oneself to yesterday and to affirm it as eternally valid. And who wants to do that in an age when the idea of 'tradition' has been replaced by the idea of 'progress'?Introduction to Christianity, 56.
“People think they know the Church. ... Few people manage to recognize instead that there is something fresh and also bold and large minded here. ... But precisely those who have gone through the experience of modernity see this.”Salt of the Earth, 17.
"Since the end of the Council the panorama of theology has changed fundamentally, not only as regards the matters debated by theologians, but also and in particular as regards the structure of theology itself. For whereas, prior to the Council, theological debate took place within a closely knit and uncontested framework, now the fundamentals themselves are widely matters of dispute.”Behold the Pierced One, 13.
“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.
“She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.”Joseph Ratzinger, Light of the World (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2010).
Ed. Note: However much people have tried to justify the above statement in the press, the reality is that Ratzinger repeated himself twice: condoms are a "first step". Never mind the Catholic teaching that any attempt to separate the marital act from its procreative power is gravely immoral and a mortal sin.
“When a priest lives together with a woman, one must examine whether they could build a good marriage. If that is the case, they must follow that path.”Light of the World, 39.
“[I]t is significant that, in contemporary writing, the title "Christ" has largely given way to the personal name "Jesus". This linguistic change reveals a spiritual process with wide implications, namely, the attempt to get behind the Church's confession of faith and reach the purely historical figure of Jesus. He is no longer to be understood through this confession, but, as it were, in and through himself alone; and thus his achievement and his challenge are to be reinterpreted from scratch. Consequently people no longer speak of following Christ but of following Jesus: for "discipleship of Christ" implies the Church's confession that Jesus is the Christ, and hence it involves a basic acknowledgement of the Church as the primary form of discipleship. "Discipleship of Jesus", however, concentrated on the man Jesus who opposes all forms of authority ; one of its features is a basically critical attitude to the Church, seen as a sign of its faithfulness to Jesus.Behold the Pierced One, 14.
“ ‘Ascension’ does not mean departure into a remote region of the cosmos but, rather, the continuing closeness that the disciples experience so strongly that it becomes a source of lasting joy.
“This reference to the cloud is unambiguously theological language. It presents Jesus’ departure, not as a journey to the stars, but as his entry into the mystery of God. It evokes an entirely different order of magnitude, a different dimension of being”Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2011), 281- 282.
“The impetus given by Teilhard de Chardin exerted a wide influence [on the Council]. With daring vision it incorporated the historical movements of Christianity into the great cosmic process of evolution from Alpha to Omega: since the noogenesis, since the formation of consciousness in the event by which man became man, the process of evolution has continued to unfold as the building of the noosphere above the biosphere. That means evolution takes place now in the form of technical and scientific development in which, ultimately, matter and spirit, individual and society, will produce a comprehensive whole, a divine world.”Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1987), 334.
“The difficulty already begins with the first page of the Bible. The idea of the world's origin developed there is in evident contradiction with everything we know today about the origin of the cosmos. Even if we say that those pages are not a manual of natural history and, therefore, should not be understood as a literal description of the cosmos' origin, a bad feeling remains.”Faith and the Future, 11.
“In the next chapter [of Genesis: the history of the fall] new questions rise. How can we reconcile them with the concept that man, as demonstrated by natural science, did not begin from above, but from below? He did not fall, but little by little ascended, increasingly becoming a man from an animal. And what about Paradise? Suffering and death already existed in the world long before man existed.”Faith and the Future, 11-12.
“Wanting to be like God is the inner motive of all mankind's programs of liberation. Since the yearning for freedom is rooted in man's being, right from the outset he is trying to become 'like God'. Indeed, anything less is ultimately too little for him.Behold the Pierced One, 33-34.
“But the point is that Christ's Resurrection is something more, something different. If we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution, it is the greatest "mutation", absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order which does concern us, and concerns the whole of history.
“It is clear that this event is not just some miracle from the past, the occurrence of which could be ultimately a matter of indifference to us. It is a qualitative leap in the history of "evolution" and of life in general towards a new future life, towards a new world which, starting from Christ, already continuously permeates this world of ours, transforms it and draws it to itself."Easter Vigil Homily", 2006.
“It is of course possible to read the Old Testament so that it is not directed toward Christ; it does not point quite unequivocally to Christ. And if Jews cannot see the promises as being fulfilled in him, this is not just ill will on their part, but genuinely because of the obscurity of the texts… There are perfectly good reasons, then, for denying that the Old Testament refers to Christ and for saying, No, that is not what he said. And there are also good reasons for referring it to him – that is what the dispute between Jews and Christians is about.”Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2000), 209.
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