The Quiet Prophet: Benedict XVI and Catholic Social Teaching

1. Distance

Joseph Ratzinger—a prophet of social teaching?¹ That is not what one would have expected following his theological career at the Universities of Bonn, Münster, Tübingen, and Regensburg. Fundamental theology and dogmatic theology, the disciplines in which he researched and taught, did not automatically lead him to Catholic social teaching. And, when he nevertheless did make a trip into this discipline, he was walking on thin ice. He made such a trip in 1964 with his essay "Natural Law, Gospel, and Ideology in Catholic Social Doctrine," and promptly received applause from the wrong camp. He rather boldly reproached "so-called" Catholic social teaching for developing in abstract formulas a timeless social doctrine that was largely withdrawn from historicity, under "the pseudonym of natural law."² The essay maintained a clear distance from the natural law, which was for him at that time clearly only an "idea" tied to the hierarchical, social-class world of the Middle Ages. Defenders of liberation theology cite this essay gratefully up to the present day, to justify their distance from Catholic social teaching and to reject criticism of their theology of liberation by the later prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the ninetieth year of his life, he confessed to the beginnings of his theological journey: "At that time we all had a certain contempt for the nineteenth century; it was fashionable then.… I wanted out of classical Thomism, and Augustine was a helper and guide with this."³

A prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is also not necessarily directed to Catholic social teaching in his official capacity. His responsibility is defense of the Creed, examination of dogmatic and moral-theological theses, and defense of the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has its own "ministry" for politics, economics, and society, for justice and peace: the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. More precisely, it had such a council from 1967 to 2016.⁴ Two arguments or battlegrounds, however, forced Joseph Ratzinger as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to occupy himself with questions of politics and the common good and to move closer to Catholic social teaching: the controversy with liberation theology about the Christian understanding of liberation and the controversy with German Catholicism about counseling pregnant women in conflict situations. These controversies touch upon central questions of both dogmatic theology and moral theology.

2. Rapprochements

In its most prominent representatives, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Jan Sobrino, Hugo Assmann, etc., the theology of liberation was a theology that attempted to redefine the relationship between Christian salvation and political history.⁵ It interpreted the gospel as a call to political revolution, class struggle, and the establishment of a socialist society.⁶ It claimed to renew all theological disciplines. It sees itself, according to Joseph Ratzinger's critique in 1984, as a new hermeneutic of the Christian faith that changes all forms of ecclesial life: the ecclesial constitution, the liturgy, catechesis, and the moral option.⁷ In it, orthopraxis replaces orthodoxy. Liberation theology merges hope in the Kingdom of God with political action and socialist utopia. In it, politics is, "as in theologized Marxism from Saint-Simon to Ernst Bloch," assigned to metaphysics instead of, as in Aristotelianism, to ethics.⁸

The argument with liberation theology, to which he repeatedly granted a "kernel of truth" because of its efforts for the poor and marginalized segments of a society, forced Joseph Ratzinger to take a new look at Catholic social teaching.⁹ Its "realism" shows itself "in the fact that it promises no earthly paradise, no irreversibly and definitively positive society within this history." Its mission is to develop "models of the best possible organization of human affairs in a given historical situation" and to seek, contrary to the myth of revolution, "the way of reform, which itself does not entirely exclude violent resistance in extreme situations." It is the scientific development of basic moral...