From Professor to Pope - The Life, Methods, and Ideas of Joseph Ratzinger

Dear CIOT Participants,

Thanks to all of you who contributed to our agenda meeting in December. The schedule of topics for 2006 has been established! As we agreed in December, the first two months of 2006 will be dedicated to a reading and discussion of two interviews with Benedict XVI that were conducted while he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. We agreed that we would read

• Salt of the Earth. The Church at the End of the Millenium. An Interview with Peter Seewald (Ignatius Press, 1997 & reprinted; ISBN 0898706408) for our January 9 meeting; and
• God in the World. A Conversation with Peter Seewald (Ignatius Press, 2002; ISBN 0898708680) for our February 6 meeting.

For those of you who prefer not to read these books, I have appended four items. The first is a web link to the Ratzinger Fan Club, on which you will find links to excerpts from his works including Salt of the Earth and God and the World. The second is a an interview of Ratzinger by Raymond Arroyo from late 2003, in which he answers some of the issues discussed with Seewald in his books.

The other two items are both articles. The first is a book review of Salt of the Earth by Thomas D. Williams, and it does a good job of summarizing the book's contents. The second is a more ponderous piece by Anthony Grafton (Princeton) that appeared this past summer in The New Yorker. It does an excellent job, however, in presenting Ratzinger's intellectual and theological development in a way that is neither overtly technical nor full of jargon.

Looking forward to seeing everyone!

Yours in Christ,
John