In the year 29 BC, the Roman poet Virgil wrote an epic poem known today as The Aeneid. It was designed as propaganda for the “lord” and “son of god” that was at that time known to all… that is, Caesar Octavian Augustus. But this propaganda took for granted that the Roman “son of god” was in fact standing upon a long-standing cultural tradition known as Greco-Roman civilization. It was at that time a mutually beneficial cultural exchange between Athens and Rome. In book six of this epic poem, Virgil explains this. It was not for the Romans to handle philosophy and art. That is the job, says Virgil, of the Greeks. “Your mission, Roman, is to rule the world” he writes,
These will be your arts: to establish peace, to spare the humbled, and to conquer the proud.
In other words, the Greeks would bring their “love of wisdom,” known as philo-sophia, “philosophy,” and the Romans would bring their “love of order,” and this would be Greco-Roman civilisation. A Russian Catholic historian, Mikhail Emmanuelovich Posnov makes this observation:
The Greeks are not gifted by nature with the ability to govern and rule. During the Golden Age of Greece, they could not form a single solid political entity from their numerous republics… Inclined to intellectualism and speculation, the Greek is naturally inclined to concentrate all his attention on the development of ideas and to neglect practical concerns.[1]
This accords with St. Luke’s observation in Acts xvii. 21: All the Athenians… employed themselves in nothing else, but either in telling or in hearing some new thing. This Greek desire for “some new thing” spurred on their philosophy. We will return to this emphasis for “the new” in a moment.
Continuing with Posnov, this Slavic historian says this about the Romans:
If the Greek has a philosophical genius, then the Roman has a juridical genius. Romans were not advanced in intellectual speculation. They much more preferred its practical application. Romans have a very strong administrative and organizing talent. Thanks to this talent, they introduced order and created a system for their Empire.[2]
Thus the Greco-Roman civilisation took the best of both worlds and married Greek speculative philosophy to Roman practical administration. The Greek desire for “some new thing” was balanced by a Roman desire for stability, or changelessness.
Without the Roman mind, the Greeks would endlessly debate atop an Athenian hill. Without the Greek mind, the Romans would conquer the world with the false idea of “might makes right.” Socrates, a Greek, first refuted that bad philosophy, and the Romans were the ones to unite the Greek city states into a cohesive system of administration, which the Romans later termed “dioceses.”
It was over all these dioceses that the Greco-Roman “lord” and “son of god” ruled. This was acknowledged by all educated Romans and Greeks who cared to keep their heads. But at that very moment, in the fringes of the Empire, in a town called Bethlehem, Angel armies were appearing and announcing a rival Lord and a rival Son of God.
In the year 752 from the founding of the city of Rome; in the 42nd year of the empire of Octavian Augustus, when the whole earth was at peace, in the sixth age of the world, Jesus Christ, eternal God, and Son of the eternal Father... is born in Bethlehem of Juda, having become man of the Virgin Mary.
If you’ve attended Christmas midnight Mass, maybe you’ve heard this announcement from the Roman Martyrology. It was through the first Greco-Roman renewal that the Church came to understand that this was not merely the historical observation of the Martyrology, but was the act of Providence. Indeed, God Himself had prepared a throne for Himself by means of Greco-Roman civilisation.
Eventually St. Leo the Great would write that “Divine Providence prepared the Roman Empire, so that the effect of divine grace might be distributed through all the world.”[3] The Blessed Apostle writes in Hebrews i. 6 about how God “brought His firstborn into the oikoumene,” a word which means “the Greek world,” “the Roman world,” or “the whole world.” This is the word which gives its name to “Ecumenical councils.”
E. Michael Jones writes this:
Christ paid honor to the logos of history by waiting until the logos of metaphysics was in place because without that quintessentially Greek vocabulary no one could understand, much less explain, who He was.[4]
This is conspicuous above all in John i. 1, which states “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος.” In the beginning was the Logos, a Greek term with a vast philosophical pedigree developed for centuries at that point by the pre-Christian Greeks. This was the fruit of the Greek desire for “some new thing.”
Yet a few verses down we catch the Roman love of order, through Him [the Logos] all things were made. In the Roman language with from the Last Gospel in the Latin Mass, In principio erat Verbum… Omnia per ipsum facta sunt.
Thus in the first three verses of John’s Gospel we have the Greco-Roman civilization united by the Logos Incarnate. The Logos is the truth according to the Greeks, and it is the order of the whole universe by which the Romans seek to rule. Then St. John announces to the world “some new thing” from God Himself: that this Logos caro factum est et habitavit in nobis.
The natural greatness of the Greco-Roman world was supernaturally elevated by God bringing His Son into the oikoumene at that moment. E. Michael Jones again:
Christianity became a mixture of Hebrew, Greek, and Roman culture, bringing to fulfillment “the instruction which Pilate wrote for the cross in these three languages as the unwitting herald of the universality of the Church.”[5]
At this point let’s bring in Joseph Ratzinger, who, speaking as Pope Benedict in his famous Regensburg address, quoting an eastern Roman emperor, discusses it this way:
…We can see the profound harmony between what is Greek …and the biblical understanding of faith in God. …John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning was the λόγος.” This is the very word used by the [Roman] emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word — a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason.
The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. …Acts 16 [shows us]… the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time.
Christ came to vivify what divine Providence had already been stirring up. With Greco-Roman civilisation in place, Christ gave the deposit of Faith to the Apostles, empowered them with the Holy Spirit, and they going forth preached every where: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed (Mk. xvi. 20).
The Acts of the Apostles tells the story of Peter and Paul and the Apostles becoming the witnesses in Judaea and Samaria and the ends of the world. St. Paul travels the Roman highways, preaches to the Greeks at Athens, then asserts his rights as a Roman citizen in order to preach in Rome.
The Faith was preached in Aramaic, written in Greek, translated into the Roman tongue, Latin, then every other language besides. The local bishop integrated into the Roman system of dioceses.
But immediately tensions arose. The First Greco-Roman renewal had just begun. It would establish the relationship between Greco-Roman civilization and Hebrew revelation.
It was already controversial to integrate Gentiles into the Church in the first place. The question then became: to what degree could Gentile culture be accepted by Christendom? Here we will meet the two protagonists in every renewal: the Strict party and the Moderate party.
For some took a strict stance to this question, erring on the side of rejecting most of this pre-Christian culture. This was the “Roman instinct of Christendom.” The Roman instinct for stability and a resistance to change. This is the Strict party. This view was summarized by Tertullian when he said “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” The Strict party seeks to preserve what was handed down without change. But this could go too far. Indeed, Tertullian’s embrace of heretical Montanism seems to have been a reaction against “some new thing.”[6]
The more Moderate school of thought is best represented by the Alexandrian catechetical school which adopted a great deal of Greek philosophy. This is the “Greek instinct of Christendom,” which desires “some new thing” but not in order to change the depositum fidei, but rather to preserve it and know Truth Himself.
But the Moderate party could also go too far, as in the case of Origen. Yet through other Fathers like Clement of Alexandria, the Moderate school and others like them utilized and adopted a great deal of the pre-Christian culture in service to the Gospel.
So we have these two parties: Moderate and Strict, Greco and Roman. The Strict want to stay the same, and the Moderate want to change. But both want to contend for the Faith once delivered to the Saints. They both want to preserve the depositum fidei, but they want to do it in different ways vis-à-vis Greek philosophy. They both have the same goal. They are on the same side. But if they don’t work together, they could go too far in either direction.
The heretics would sometimes go too far on the Strict side, and sometimes too far on the Moderate side for change. However, none of the Ante-Nicene heresies seriously challenged the whole oikoumene, so the tensions between the Moderate and Strict remained unsettled, until a great heresy arose to spur on the first Greco-Roman renewal. As E. Michael Jones comments again: “God allows error to spread in order that a greater truth may be manifest.”[7]
Arianism created a problem which necessitated the first Greco-Roman renewal. First, it was something of a universal phenomenon. As St. Jerome said after the Arian Council of Rimini, “The Church awoke to find herself Arian.”
But Arianism presented something of a philosophical problem. The Arians were able to use proof-texts from Proverbs which seemed to prove their doctrine that Jesus was only an exalted creature.
The Alexandrian Moderate school proposed a solution: let us use Greek philosophy in order to communicate the truth of Jesus’s divinity. They championed the term homoousios by using the Greek philosophical tradition of ousios, meaning the nature of a thing. This was the school of St. Athanasius.
But notice what is happening here. This is the Greek Moderate school of thought. They want to introduce “some new thing,” a new use of Greco-Roman civilization in order to guard the depositum fidei.
This was controversial.
Not only did all the various Arian sects reject this – with their own ecumenical councils and support from emperors and their armies. But another group rejected this innovation, and that was the orthodox Strict party, known to history as “orthodox semi-Arians.” They opposed the introduction of this Greek term, as they argued it was ambiguous. At first, St. Basil the Great was among this camp, among others.
The Moderate and Strict parties both held their ground, while the heretics raged. Pope Benedict comments: “Thus, the Arian crisis, believed to have been resolved at Nikaia, persisted for decades with complicated events and painful divisions in the Church.”[8]
Then something happened.
Just when things were getting far worse under a neo-pagan emperor, the Moderate St. Athanasius chose to join with the Strict party to win them over to a common cause against the heretics. He realized that the Strict were disputing about the use of Greek philosophical terms, not about the substance of the faith itself. Athanasius held his own local synod in 362 to this effect. “We discuss the matter with them as brothers with brothers,” wrote Athanasius, “who mean what we mean, and dispute only about the word”[9] This was the turning point in the Arian Crisis, and the turning point in the first Greco-Roman renewal. The Nicene Moderate party “desired peace,” writes Newman, “as soon as the interests of truth were secured; and their magnanimous decision was forthwith adopted by Councils at Rome, in Spain, Gaul and Achaia.”[10]
By joining the Roman instinct with the Greek instinct, St. Athanasius formed the basis for the First Greco-Roman renewal by means of an alliance with the Strict party who opposed change. Because of the adopting of Greek terminology through a Roman institution called the Ecumenical Council, the first renewal established the relationship of Greco-Roman civilization to Christendom.
After the fall of Rome, St. Augustine brought this out even more acutely in his book City of God Against the Pagans. Here he refutes the old paganism, and utilizes the best of Greco-Roman thought to exalt the true Eternal City, the Church.
But it was in Confessions that he penned the line that perfectly sums up the Greco-Roman tension and new synthesis: “Late have I loved thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.”
The Roman instinct of Christendom is that it is “ever ancient,” yet the Greek instinct of Christendom is that it is “ever new.” Only the Logos Incarnate can resolve this tension I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End (Apoc. xxii. 13).
Thus we have the model for all Greco-Roman renewals: this binding of Greek newness with Roman strictness to a changeless Faith, bringing about a new synthesis of truth which is ever ancient, ever new. The first renewal continued on through the period of the First Seven Councils, building and establishing our sacred doctrines, bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ (II Cor. x. 5).
Lamentably, this was also the time when the Greeks at Constantinople largely lost their appreciation for the Roman side of Greco-Roman Christendom, and this led to the three Greek schisms. In the west, the appreciation for Greek never truly faded, and it was always in the process of being resourced. This brings us to our Second and Third renewals, which were precipitated on this Greek renewal in the west.
The Second is unique in that it is only one of the four which did not include a great deal of bloodshed and heresy. Rather, in peace time, Christendom brought about a greater renewal and a greater synthesis of truth. The Second Greco-Roman renewal is known to history as the “High Middle Ages.”
This hinged upon the question of a Greek philosopher named Aristotle who was being reintroduced into western Christendom in the 12th and 13th centuries. This shows us an important mark of renewal: resourcing old texts and old wisdom long since forgotten, starting with the Greek.
The old debate was renewed: the Roman instinct of Christendom, the Strict party, wished to have nothing to do with the new Greek philosophy, but the Greek instinct, the moderate party, wanted to adopt the same. The greatest of the strict party was St. Bonaventure (1221-1274), who sought to maintain the Augustinian inheritance from the first renewal, especially its neo-Platonic method.[11] The greatest moderate was St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who sought to integrate Aristotle into a new synthesis.
The vast philosophy of St. Thomas achieved a synthesis, writes Christopher Dawson, of “the union of material and spiritual worlds” drawing upon Aristotle.[12] Yet St. Bonaventure, as Joseph Ratzinger would later note, condemned Aristotle and his false doctrines, while allowing the Thomistic Aristotelianism.[13] Bonaventure, says Ewert Cousins, “integrated the distinctively Greek spirituality” with the “emerging Franciscan devotion to the humanity and passion of Christ.”[14] But despite his rivalry with Aquinas, St. Bonaventure famously ripped up his own Eucharistic hymnody when he heard the Corpus Christi hymn of St. Thomas. Thus from different sides of the moderate and the strict, the second Greco-Roman renewal formed the philosophical, theological and spiritual foundations of Christendom before Logos Incarnate, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. This was also the beginning of modern science. This debate was a fruitful debate which produced these great works and a new synthesis of the Faith, and the greatness of western Christendom, which I term in my book “First Western Christendom.”
So once again we have the same model of renewal: the Roman Strict desire for the ever ancient faith is harmonized with the Greek desire for an ever new faith. This is the Second Greco-Roman renewal.
The Third Greco-Roman renewal came about due to the Renaissance. At first, it was peaceful. Again we see the mark of restoring old texts. But not only were old Latin texts discovered, but the study of the Greek language was revived in the west for the first time since the first renewal. This time grammars were being published and even the Semitic language was being renewed with Hebrew studies.
The Council of Florence is seminal in this regard, for it achieved a dogmatic synthesis of Greek and Latin Fathers, and was truly Greco-Roman in its effort to balance the two sides on the dogma of the Filioque.
However in the west the Moderate and Strict parties arose again. The Greco-Moderate party desiring new things were known as “humanists” who sought to utilize the new linguistic knowledge of the day. The greatest of the humanists was Desiderius Erasmus, who published the first Greek New Testament in the west in centuries. Some of these Moderates went too far and became Protestants, provoking bloodshed for years to come. Ratzinger observes how Renaissance Humanism did make advances, but it was being used to jettison the inheritance from St. Thomas.[15]
The Strict party opposed the new humanism, and sought to maintain the inherited synthesis of St. Thomas and the scholastics. A leading figure among the Strict is a man like Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, who was sent to refute Luther.
The Council of Trent continued the Third Greco-Roman renewal begun at Florence by effecting a marrying of the Strict and Moderate parties in response to Protestantism. Trent adopted some aspects of Humanism and Renaissance technology, such as in Baroque art, printing vernacular Bibles, as well as the new music of polyphony. But it did so without rupture, in full continuity with the past.
The Florentine-Tridentine response brought about this Third Greco-Roman renewal, and gave birth to Baroque civilization, which I call in my book “Second Western Christendom.”
Thus we have this model followed again: a Greek desire for the newness of faith is wedded to a Roman desire for continuity. This carried the Church forward for another few centuries. But then disaster struck, and here is the occasion for the Fourth renewal in which we stand.
A few things should be understood about this period of our modernity which I date from the Masonic conspiracy of the Vatican in 1773 when the classical Jesuits were suppressed as the pope bowed to secularising, political pressure. First of all, it is a time of political, economic and social revolution in every generation. This causes a massive breakdown in the structures of Christendom, leading to a loss of faith.
It also led to a loss of the Church’s infrastructure to do theology. After 1773, many Catholic libraries were seized by secularizing forces and the Church was trying to catch up. The conditions were not conducive to a Greco-Roman renewal. The Tridentine alliance between Moderate and Strict was greatly strained by these revolutionary forces. The Strict party tended to side with Monarchists, even if they were secular, whereas the Moderate party sided more with Liberal forces, even if they were secular.
Nevertheless, a few things were bringing about the Fourth renewal. First, Modernity presented another worldwide heresy to deal with, forcing the Strict and Moderate together: Liberalism.
At the same time, technology was providing a great deal more resources for a Greco-Roman renewal than ever before. Archaeology was uncovering vast amounts of knowledge and manuscripts for the Holy Bible, and new French scholarship was bringing out critical editions of the Church Fathers more than ever before. The Latin Fathers were published in 221 volumes (1841-1855), Greek Fathers in 161 volumes (1857-66), and the Eastern Fathers (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Old Church Slavonic and Arabic) would begin in 1897 and continue to the present day.
What was needed was a strong alliance between Moderate and Strict in this period to counter the attack of Modernity on Christendom. But at first, owing to the immensity of the violence, the Church authorities took a very Strict stance against Modernity. This was especially under the influence of Blessed Pius IX who began his pontificate as a Moderate, but after the Liberals attempted their revolutions in the Papal States, turned to the Strict view and approach.
The Strict were seeking to keep things the same with a Roman instinct. As Monarchies were being destroyed throughout the world, the Strict rallied around the pope as the Monarch of the Church. Thus arose the ultramontanist movement, which sought to counter Liberal Modernity with the Monarchy of the Pope.
At the First Vatican Council and after, the Strict sought to gain greater and greater control over the Church, including the Moderate party. The First Vatican Council did not achieve the necessary renewal because it was too dominated by the Roman mind to the exclusion of the Greek. Cardinal Newman, a Moderate, lamented that the Strict at Vatican I were a “tyrant majority” who had forced their way upon the Council.[16] This went on for a few generations, with the rise of Neo-Scholasticism. This made great gains towards renewal in the way of systematising a great deal of the faith.
But for a number of reasons, there was also decline in some quarters. In some places, especially in northern Europe, the neo-Thomism was so dominant as to create an environment we might call “No salvation outside Thomism.” Christopher Dawson wrote in 1960 of the dominance of the Strict party, that there was “no competition of rival schools, as in the medieval university,” which was making it so that “Catholic education becomes identified with an authoritarian ideology, like Marxism.”[17]
So the first period of Modernity and the Fourth Renewal was dominated by the Roman desire for strict order, to the exclusion of the Greek desire for newness. It was “no salvation outside Thomism.” It was this excess that provoked an overreaction at and after Vatican II. But it was Joseph Ratzinger who helped, perhaps above all, to bring about a balancing of this situation.
He did this by being a good Moderate voice who sought “new things” for the sake of the Faith, and sought positive dialogue with the Strict side.
First, he was an Augustinian, not a Thomist. His biographer Seewald notes it this way:
[Ratzinger] had not been able really to get to grips with Thomas Aquinas… he found the Dominican ‘too impersonal and too ready-made.’ On the other hand, with Augustine now he discovered ‘the passionate, suffering, questioning person was always directly there.’ He was someone ‘with whom you can identify.’ The spark was struck: ‘I feel him as a friend,’ Ratzinger confessed, ‘a contemporary who speaks to me.’[18]
By adopting Augustinianism instead of the dominant Thomism, Ratzinger was pushing the Fourth Renewal forward by adopting a rival school of thought. This would help restore that healthy and dynamic rivalry, that creative tension, that was necessary for renewal. It would help him, as he would later describe it, to “get out of the prison of Roman scholasticism.”[19]
After adopting a rival school of thought, he then turned to a rival scholastic who is an equal interlocutor to Aquinas. In the midst of the patristic renewal he drew upon recent French scholarship, which brought him into conflict with the Neo-Scholastic Michael Schmaus. I quote from his memoirs:
In my research I had seen that the study of the Middle Ages in Munich, primarily represented by Michael Schmaus, had come to almost a complete halt at its prewar state. The great new breakthroughs that had been made in the meantime, particularly by those writing in French, had not even been acknowledged. With a forthrightness not advisable in a beginner, I criticized the superseded positions[.][20]
The young Ratzinger was drawing upon the French patristic renewal which went beyond Thomas, and drew upon the other lights of Christendom. In the case of Ratzinger, this was the Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure, who brought a more Augustinian look at Revelation, which emphasized the heart, rather than the dominant Neo-Thomism, which focused on Aristotle’s intellect and will distinction, while de-emphasizing the heart as merely the passions.[21]
However, due to the tensions that had arisen in the period, Michael Schmaus was convinced that this theory of revelation was in fact Modernism. Schmaus opposed Ratzinger’s dissertation, but Schmaus’ colleague Gottlieb Söhngen supported Ratzinger. In the end Ratzinger removed the offending portion in order to pass the dissertation. But he maintained goodwill with Schmaus. Again quoting from his memoirs:
My relationship with Professor Schmaus understandably remained tense at first, but then in the 1970s things eased up, and we became friends. I still could not accept his judgments and decisions of the time as having been scientifically justified, but I realized that the trials of that difficult year were healthy for me humanly speaking and that, so to speak, they were following a logic higher than the merely scientific one.[22]
That higher logic, indeed, is the Fourth Greco-Roman Renewal. For this drama and this goodwill was carried over into the Second Vatican Council at a critical time.
As I said before, Vatican I held the Strict party in power who persecuted not only the heretics but also the Moderate party creating an environment which was de facto “no salvation outside Thomism.” In particular, this alienated Eastern Christendom. Pope Benedict would say in Last Testament, that it was “fashionable then” to disdain Roman theology. The Greek instinct of Christendom was thoroughly at odds with the Roman instinct.
And so at Vatican II, a new alliance was formed against the strict party of the Curia. This was known as the “European Alliance” and included not only the Moderate orthodox voices, but also those who went too far, embracing various heretical or quasi-heretical views. But this was an overflowing of the animosity that the Moderate party felt for the Strict since the first Vatican council. It was an overreaction to “no salvation outside Thomism.” The orthodox Moderates joined with the heretical party against the orthodox Strict. A picture of this animosity is shown in the story of Ottaviani getting his mic turned off at the Council and everyone laughing and cheering. This was the animosity that was felt.
This revolutionary fervour was carried over especially in the effort to throw out the original schemata written by the Strict party. These schemata, or draft documents, outlined the theology of the Church against Modernity up until that point. Were they perfect? By no means. However, the rancour felt against the Strict caused the European Alliance to push for trashing completely these draft documents. Now understand – these had been prepared for years by the Roman curia under official papal approval. But the European alliance wanted them in the trash in order to start anew and for some of them, in order to create a rupture with past Tradition.
Where was Ratzinger in all this? He was the peritus for Cardinal Frings, an orthodox Moderate from the European Alliance. Ratzinger was a critical voice in critiquing the draft document on revelation, applying his dissertation on Bonaventure. However, just like his good will held out with Schmaus, Ratzinger himself opposed the trashing of schemata. Notice his moderation in his comments about the original schemata:
Naturally I took exception to certain things, but I found no grounds for a radical rejection of what was being proposed, such as many demanded later on in the Council and actually managed to put through. It is true that the documents bore only weak traces of the biblical and patristic renewal of the last decades, so that they gave an impression of rigidity and narrowness through their excessive dependency on scholastic theology… but I must say they had a solid foundation and had been carefully elaborated.[23]
His Augustinian-Bonaventurian thought wants to deepen the excessively Thomistic approach with sources from the Fathers and Holy Writ, but he desires continuity, and no rupture, no “radical rejection” of the documents which indeed had a “solid foundation.” His was the Greek instinct of Christendom, but with an open heart to the Roman instinct of Christendom. I dare say that if the European Alliance would have had the moderation of Ratzinger to not throw out the original documents and simply develop the doctrine from the existing schemata, the Council and its aftermath would not have been as tumultuous as it was and is.
Because Ratzinger rejected revolution (or rupture) as a means of reform, he was immediately painted as a conservative after the Council, and to this day the myth persists that he was originally liberal and then turned conservative. In reality, he was consistently Augustinian before, during and after Vatican II. The shift that did occur was the reality of his distancing from the Liberal party members like Hans Küng with whom, he admits, he had been naïve.[24]
Now as the crisis in the Church began to be felt after Vatican II, Joseph Ratzinger had very wise words, and this is one of the most important points to seize upon here. That is, that the renewal is a painful pruning. It is a cleansing of the Church by means of the wrath of God. Ratzinger was not disturbed in his Faith by the crisis in the 1960s. In fact, he said it would get worse. But in a way, he had predicted this crisis before the Council began.
In 1958, Ratzinger had condemned the infiltration of neo-Paganism within the Church: “This so-called Christian Europe for almost four hundred years has become the birthplace of a new paganism, which is growing steadily in the heart of the Church, and threatens to undermine her from within.”[25] He said numerous Catholics were merely going through the motions, but in reality they were pagans. This helps us to understand what Ratzinger says in 1969 when he made his famous prediction of the future of the Church, saying
From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning….
The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.
This show’s Ratzinger faith in the God of history: that this renewal will be a painful pruning of the neo-paganism in the Church. A painful pruning of progressivism, without forsaking true progress. Without forsaking true roots. Ratzinger here is the voice of Jeremiah, urging the Israelites to go into exile in Babylon, and to accept the wrath of God that diminishes them yet cleanses them. For I know the plans I have for you (Jer. 29:11). Ratzinger provides this critical look at the crisis with the eyes of Faith. This view of history is absolutely essential for the Fourth Greco-Roman renewal.
While Vatican I had shown itself dominantly Roman in its desire to keep change to a minimum, Vatican II had shown itself heavily Greek in its desire for “some new thing” as Paul VI observed, the word “new” dominated the discourse. But Ratzinger’s idea of “some new thing” meant accepting the wrath of God to cleanse the threshing floor (Mt. iii. 12). Ratzinger was doing his part as a member of the Moderate party.
We must note as well beyond being an Augustinian, Ratzinger promoted a theology as he described it “essentially from Scripture, the church fathers and the great liturgical legacy of the whole church.”[26] This helped to ground the Fourth renewal in the Greco-Roman Fathers.
His work in the CDF and as pope is well known. Summarizing his accomplishments here, Joseph Pearce wrote his recent book Defender of the Faith, a title which Joseph Ratzinger well-earned.[27]
From an Eastern Catholic perspective, Vatican II was necessary for the Greco-Roman renewal. After Trent there was a certain hardening of a Roman sense against the Greek in certain excesses which came out in the form of Latinisations of Greek traditions. Vatican I was a high point of this, and some Eastern Catholic bishops complained. Joseph Ratzinger helped to re-balance a more Greco-Roman synthesis of Christendom in promoting a ressourcement of eastern fathers and incorporating them into the Church.
We see this remarkably with the new catechism, which quotes Thomas as a main source yet also quotes Eastern liturgies. Yet we also see that he maintained a strong commitment to his Latin roots, for example, in his final (living) book with Cardinal Sarah in defence of priestly celibacy, in which he denounced the “diabolical lies” which “devalue” priestly celibacy.[28] This was against a false ressourcement which was attempting to use Greek traditions to undermine Christendom. Another example of this is in his opposition to Cardinal Kasper’s divorce and remarriage proposal.[29]
His greatest and most fundamental contribution to this renewal was of course in the area of the liturgy. He struck a moderate balance between approving moderate reform and tenaciously maintaining continuity with liturgical roots. He opposed the abolishing of the Latin Mass from the beginning on the grounds of liturgical continuity. There could be no renewal without a fundamental continuity with the past.[30]
On the one hand, the new missal is accepted in its true ressourcement, which sources Greek things like the formula for Confirmation. But we cannot use this to abolish the whole Roman rite. Thus it was that in 1988 he helped to create the FSSP and integrate it into the Church. On its ten-year anniversary in 1998, Cardinal Ratzinger praised this effort.[31]
Bringing the new missal into contact with the old in a free “mutual enrichment” is the liturgical nexus of the Fourth renewal. For it is taking the Greek instinct of newness and marrying it to the Roman instinct of ancient order. Summorum Pontificum then, represents a Greco-Roman synthesis to cure our liturgical woe. In response to excessive “Greek instinct” in the liturgy desiring new things, Summorum Pontificum restores the Roman instinct of good order.
Again, we see Ratzinger’s faith in the God of history to work this out, once the conditions are set for the renewal. As he describes it in Last Testament, “[It was] about the inward reconciliation of the Church with itself...”[32] The Greco-Roman nature is seen here, ever ancient, ever new.
Finally, let us look at Ratzinger’s comments on the third secret of Fatima, which helps us look toward the future. Contrary to popular belief, Cardinal Ratzinger did not put forward an interpretation that the Third Secret was only meant to represent the assassination attempt on St. John Paul II. This seems to have been a result of no English translation existing (until recently) of the press conference in which then-cardinal Ratzinger helped to explain the vision further. Instead, Ratzinger, with the Augustinian eye to history, said the Third Secret was a “very profound synthesis of the history of this century.”
We truly can see summarized in this vision the history of the martyrs of a century, and in that sense also the passion of the popes in this century, and not exclusively the attack of 13 May ’81; but certainly, in this history of the sufferings of the Popes, this attack which truly brought the Pope to the brink of death is the culmination which is particularly identified as the kernel of this vision…
The accent is on the response… The threats, the cruelty are shown to wake up the conscience of humanity and to call us to the power of love and of faith… to take courage that there is always, even in a half-destroyed world, a superior power, and that hence death does not have the last word.[33]
This hearkens back to his 1969 vision of the future Church as God’s wrath is poured out to cleanse the Church of neo-paganism. This is the central heart of the Fourth Renewal: penance, penance, penance. Ratzinger gives us this great vision of hope for the future, that even in a “half-destroyed world,” or even a “half-destroyed Church” death will not have the last word.
Ratzinger did his part in the Fourth great Greco-Roman renewal. Now it is our task to carry this forward by means of faith, hope, and charity in our own souls and families after his example. Let us be humbled under the mighty hand of God – this time of Babylonian exile – trusting that He knows the plans He has for His Church. The greatest Greco-Roman synthesis has not yet been accomplished between Vatican I and II, but Ratzinger played a critical part in moving the needle in this direction, marrying his own Greek instinct of Christendom for the newness of the Faith with the Roman instinct of the ever ancient Faith. Imitating Joseph Ratzinger, we must hold to this hope that God is in control of His Church, and is bringing about this renewal, even it is means a painful pruning.
[1] Mikhail Emmanuelovich Posnov, The History of the Christian Church Until the Great Schism of 1054, trans. Thomas Herman (Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2004), 210-211.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Pope Leo, Sermo LXXXII.
[4] E. Michael Jones, Logos Rising (South Bend, IN: Fidelity Press, 2020), 192.
[5] Jones, 194.
[6] “Montanism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (11th ed. Cambridge University Press, 1911) , accessed April 7, 2022.
[7] Jones, op. cit., 357.
[8] Joseph Ratzinger, Church Fathers: from Clement of Rome to Augustine (Ignatius Press, 2017), 60.
[9] St. Athanasius, De Synodis, 41.
[10] John Henry Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century (Longmans, Green and Co., 1908), 359-360.
[11] Christopher Dawson, Medieval Essays (Image Books, 1959), 132.
[12] Ibid., Progress and Religion (CUA Press, 2001), 138.
[13] Quinn and Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure’s Philosophy (Pont. Inst. Mid. Studies, 1973), 74.
[14] Ewert Cousins, “Introduction” in Bonaventure (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1978), 1.
[15] Joseph Ratzinger, Church, Ecumenism, and Politics (Ignatius, 2008), 231.
[16] Newman to Ambrose St. John (August 21, 1870), Charles Stephen Dessain and Thomas Gornall, eds., The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (Oxford University Press, 1973), vol. 25 cited by Peter Kwasniewski, “My Journey from Ultramontanism to Catholicism,” Catholic Family News (Nov. 2020-Jan. 2021) , accessed March 28, 2021.
[17] Christopher Dawson, “The Study of Christian Culture,” Thought, vol. 35 (1960), 485-93 in Birzer, Sanctifying the World, 68.
[18] Peter Seewald, Benedict XVI: A Life (Bloomsbury, 2020), vol. 1, 191.
[19] Ibid., vol. 2, 62, commenting on Küng.
[20] Ratzinger, Milestones, 108.
[21] We should note here that this is true of the vulgar Neo-Thomism present in Germany, but not true of the better Thomism practiced in Rome.
[22] Ibid., 112-113.
[23] Ibid., 120-121.
[24] Seewald, op. cit., vol. 2, 46.
[25] Joseph Ratzinger, “New Pagans and the Church” (1958), trans., Kenneth Baker, Homiletic and Pastoral Review (Jan 30, 2017) , accessed August 12, 2023.
[26] Seewald, op. cit., vol. 2, 69.
[27] “Under his sagacious patronage and guidance, first the indomitable Ratzinger and then as the incomparable Benedict, he fought tirelessly and largely successfully against the forces of the zeitgeist within and without the Church. Within the Church, he fought against the spirit of the world in his war against modernism and its worship of the spirit of the age. He restored the splendor of truth in his defense of orthodoxy and the splendor of the liturgy in his restoration of tradition. He fought the wickedness of the world in his unremitting and uncompromising battle against the dictatorship of relativism and its culture of death.” Joseph Pearce, Benedict XVI: Defender of the Faith (TAN: 2021), 155.
[28] Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah, From the Depths of Our Hearts (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2020), 146.
[29] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church Concerning the Reception of Holy Communion by the Divorced and Remarried Members of the Faithful (1994) , accessed August 12, 2023.
[30] “I was dismayed by the prohibition of the old missal, [which]… introduced a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic...There is no doubt that this new missal in many respects brought with it a real improvement and enrichment; but setting it as a new construction over against what had grown historically, forbidding the result of this historical growth, thereby makes the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of erudite work of juridical authority; this has caused us enormous harm.” Ratzinger, Milestones, 146-148.
[31] “It is good to recall here what Cardinal Newman observed, that the Church, throughout her history, has never abolished nor forbidden orthodox liturgical forms, which would be quite alien to the Spirit of the Church… The orthodox forms of a rite are living realities, born out of the dialogue of love between the Church and her Lord.” Joseph Ratzinger, “On the 10th anniversary of Ecclesia Dei adflicta” (Oct 24, 1998) , accessed July 28, 2021.
[32] Benedict XVI, Last Testament (Bloomsbury, 2016), 201-202.
[33] Joseph Ratzinger comments, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Vatican Press Conference on the Third Part of the Secret of Fatima,” trans. Kevin Symonds, in The Third Part of the Secret of Fatima (St. Louis, MO: En Route Books & Media, 2017), 364-410.
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