Contextualizing “The Church as an Essential Dimension of Theology”: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Public Lecture, Toronto, April 13, 1986

The historic nature of Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1986 lecture to an audience of more than six thousand, together with his private question-and-answer session with the faculty of the Toronto School of Theology, coupled with the circumstance that the cardinal not only was elected pope in 2005 and became the first bishop of Rome to renounce that office in centuries, warrants placing the lecture and the issues raised by tst theologians in a context extending from the Second Vatican Council to the new ministry of Pope Francis. The complex theme of the lecture, that of the ecclesial dimension of theology, is even more complex when seen in the context of Vatican ii ’s teaching on the participation of not just theologians, but of the whole People of God, in the three-fold ministries of Jesus as prophet, priest, and king, and of the need for the College of Bishops, which includes the bishop of Rome, to function in a way that prevents Roman centralism/absolutism. Despite his efforts to aid Pope John Paul ii in this direction, the cardinal acknowledged, just prior to his election to the papacy, that a realistic plan for “a profound collaboration between the bishops and the Pope” in the governance of the Church has yet to be achieved. The implications of such a reform for greater unity amidst diversity within the Catholic Church, as well as for the broader goal of Christian reunion for the sake of the Church’s mission to the world, are positive, as Vatican ii attests.