Folia Theologica et Canonica 11. 33/25 (2022)

Sacra theologia

POPE BENEDICT XVI AND THE GROWING ECUMENISM

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menical papers (Feuillets spirituels) brought together Catholics praying for unity throughout Europe.

The first half of the 20th century, although amidst social crises, marked the strengthening of ecumenism and the advancement of thinking about the church. Otto Dibelius (1880—1967), a German Lutheran bishop, also stated that “the Church comes alive in souls”.2 Several periodicals with an ecumenical spirit were published on the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox sides.3 In addition, Yves Congar’s (1904-1995) work Chrétiens désunis (Divided Christians), which outlined the foundations of a possible Catholic ecumenism in 1937, had a great influence.4 The World Student Christian Federation (WSCF), which was founded in 1895, was prominent mainly in the Englishspeaking world, and even then it set itself the goal of achieving visible unity. Its president was John Mott (1865-1955), a Methodist committed to Christian unity and the renowned Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Joseph Ratzinger was ordained a priest in 1951, and it was at this time that the Catholic Church as a whole revived the gradual recognition and acceptance of the ecumenical movement. In Paderborn, Germany, the Johann-Adam- Möhler-Institut für Ökumenik, an institution dealing with Christian unity, was founded in 1957 with the support of Bishop Franz Jäger. During his career as a professor starting in the 1950s, Joseph Ratzinger already gained solid knowledge of the Protestant unity effort and the Catholic initiatives of ecumenism. It is thanks to these events and this spirit that the liturgical and biblical renewal, partly linked to Germany, naturally led to January 25th, 1959, when Pope John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, with one of its main goals was the unity of Christians.5

II. Theology and ecumenism in the teachings of Joseph Ratzinger

Joseph Ratzinger’s theological, philosophical and cultural preparation allowed him to deal in depth with the history of teaching about the Church over the centuries. This kind of preparedness was already visible in his first writings (God’s People and House of Saint Augustine, 1954; Saint Bonaventure’s Theology of History, 1959; The God of the Believers and the God of the Philo-2 On the teachings of Otto Dibelius, cf. Dibelius, O., Das Jahrhundert der Kirche: Geschichte, Betrachtung, Umschau und Ziele, Berlin 1927.

3 Irénikon from 1926, Una Sancta from 1945. In Hungary, the monthly newspaper The Way of Unity (Az Egység Útja) was published by the Franciscan monks between 1943 and 1944.

4 Congar, Y., Chrétiens désunis. Principes d’un oecuménisme catholique, Paris 1937.

5 On the unique personality of Pope John XXIII, cf. Melloni, A., Papa Giovanni. Un cristiano e il suo concilio, Torino 2009.