Being a scholar is not a necessary qualification for a pope but it does not hurt either. Popular assessments of Pope Benedict have often reflected a vulgar ignorance of the sophistication of the man.

During two separate events on the eve of his election, Joseph Ratzinger displayed a typically calm acuity in his critical reading of culture. In Subiaco, the place where St Benedict died, and, later, during the Mass which inaugurated the conclave that made him pope, he reflected on the lamentable futility of war, the dangers of an Enlightenment project gone wrong and the attempts of scientism to make God redundant.

If modern societies are in principle no longer agitated by religion, the “dictatorship of relativism” immortalised in that homily was the convinced fruit of vintage wine. Not in the least trivial and never trite, Benedict reminded us that the Enlightenment project sought to exalt human reason unaided by faith.

Promises of a synthesis bet­ween science, philosophy and theology had long since caved in under the Enlightenment’s urgent war on religion and the authority of the Church. The paradoxical result was a loss of trust in our ability to even share a desire for truth on all levels, within Christianity not any less. Thus, he spoke of “the small boat of the thought of many Christians […] tossed about by these waves, flung from one extreme to another”.

A stinging critique of capitalism ensued in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate. There he explained why some defining ingredients of capitalism, namely, the lionisation of will, insatiable greed and the destruction of ecologies, cause it to fail at its core. While applying traditional views on stewardship to environmental concerns, he called for drastic international action to avert further damage to the planet.

The second snapshot comes from his critique of theology, particularly modern Bible studies. The dramatic auda­city of his thought can only be fully appreciated when one keeps in mind the resentful attitudes toward the methods and conclusions of modern criticism in certain Catholic circles.

Ratzinger argued that the Gospels present us with a faithful portrait of the real historical Jesus- Fr Christopher Caruana

That the delicate issue concerning the relationship of the Magisterium and exegesis was always close to his heart is evident in the address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission on the occasion of its 100th anniversary.

This was, he said, “one of the problems of my own autobiography”. Later on, as pope he would say that Catholic exegetes prior to Vatican II “felt themselves somewhat – shall we say – in a position of inferio­rity with regard to the Protestants, who were making great discoveries, whereas Catholics felt somewhat ‘handicapped’ by the need to submit to the Magisterium”.

As expected, one of Ratzinger’s keenest intellectual leitmotifs addressed the principles needed for a robust apologia of Catholicism’s engagement with modern biblical scholarship. As a young theologian he had already protested the crippling effect caused by “anti-Modernist neurosis” in certain Catholic circles.

His scholarly discussion of the two-source problem in the Synoptic Gospels, the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, as well as the authorship and composition of the Book of Isaiah, among others, showed an enviably independent mind unhindered by fear.

The overall context of this contribution must also be inscribed within Benedict’s evolving ‘hermeneutic of reform’ which consciously combatted the false dichotomy between the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church and forged a balance that would only credibly consider the presence of both continuity and discontinuity in Catholic doctrine through the ages.

Benedict stands in pointed contrast with Leo XIII and Pius X concerning the question of whether higher criticism could be beneficial or detrimental to Catholic teaching. In his ponderous Christmas address to the Roman Curia the year he became pope, Benedict stated that “the one-subject Church… increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same”.

With one fell swoop, and unafraid of Newman’s dictum that “to live is to change”, Benedict transcended the radically hostage-keeping categories of traditionalism and progressivism.

Thirdly, is Jesus Christ a historically reliable character? “Even if the details of many traditions have been expanded in later periods, we can trust the Gospels for the essentials and can find in them the real figure of Jesus. It is much more real than the apparently reliable historical reconstructions.” His refreshing trilogy on ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ was sensitive to the scholarship as well as accessible to the lay reader.

Ratzinger argued that the Gospels present us with a faithful portrait of the real historical Jesus. What they wrote was composed with “painstaking fidelity”, allowing for organic development, “without influencing the essentials”.

Finally, in the second volume of the same trilogy, Benedict wrote that “Israel retains its mission […] it is in the hands of God who will save it as a whole”. Ratzinger invited the world to reconsider its relationship with the Jewish faith, whereby “a new reflection can acknowledge that the beginnings of a correct understanding have always been there, waiting to be discovered, however deep the shadows”.

Ostensibly, it was Benedict XVI, a German pope, who could express an authoritatively contrite hope of healing festering wounds from barbaric violence and hate. It was at Auschwitz, in 2006, that he made reference to the Third Reich which “wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth”.

In that deeply emotional speech, Pope Benedict highlighted Israel’s vocation as the living witness to the one personal God while also acknowledging the patrimony of Israel’s faith as the “taproot of our Christian faith”.

In so doing, he reminded the world and the Church of what Paul VI had tried to say in Nostra Aetate. The newness of Jesus Christ, Christianity’s unbreakable bond with Israel, rests upon the causal and historically decisive relationship of Testaments Old and New, both united by one Covenant brought to its intended end.

Fr Christopher Caruana, OP, lectures at the University of Malta and is a member of the Inter-diocesan Doctrinal Commission.