My Brother, the Pope

by Georg Ratzinger

  In Bogenhausen, Joseph was assistant pastor to Father Blumschein, a very kindly man whom he held in high esteem. He actually felt very much at ease in pastoral work. Above all, religious instruction suited him; he had the gift of presenting even the most difficult subjects so that they could be understood by the simpler children and yet still interested the more demanding students. It gave him great joy. Even though during his first year he already had to take on nineteen sessions a week,1 he always went gladly into the schools as a religion teacher. Of course he taught different grades, so he could not always present the same material but tried to prepare each session individually. Then he also preached in church, which from the start, however, did not give him much trouble. Every morning he sat for an hour in the confessional, on Saturdays for four hours. Several times a week he rode his bicycle across Munich to funerals, and he celebrated baptisms and weddings. In addition, he was in charge of the youth program in the parish. His good relationship with his pastor, but also the good rectory cook they had there, did their part in making him feel very much at home in Bogenhausen. So eventually it was quite difficult for him to give it all up and to devote himself to scholarly work again when the Archbishop called him a year later to the major seminary in Freising, this time as an instructor and confessor. He would gladly have stayed on in a parish as an assistant pastor.

  When he returned to Freising on October 1, 1952, Joseph Ratzinger in fact left his parish community with mixed feelings. The feeling of being needed, the contact with people gave him joy in his priesthood in a more direct way than the rather theoretical job of higher education could. On the other hand, it had always been his desire to investigate the truth further and to continue his theological work. But in Freising, too, he was soon directing a youth group, celebrating liturgies in the cathedral, and sitting in the confessional. He lectured on the role of the sacraments in pastoral work—wherein he could rely entirely on his fresh experiences as an assistant pastor. Furthermore, he was completing his doctoral work. His parents were proud and overjoyed when he came home in July 1953 with a mortarboard and a doctorate in theology.

  His academic career did not change him at all as a person. We saw each other then less and less often, and I would have noticed it immediately if he had become different in some way. Our parents thought at first that once he was a professor he would be a bit pompous and talk down to people, but he was never like that; he always remained natural, unlike Professor Fellermeier, for instance, whom we had both experienced and who served as a cautionary example for him. There was not the least bit of that in my brother; even in private conversation, he always spoke his dialect and was quite himself. I can still remember well the ceremony in which he received the doctorate. At that time I was an assistant pastor at Saint Ludwig’s in Munich—the church is located right by the university—and of course I was present when the whole process was concluded with a celebration. The university employees, in uniform and each holding a staff, led off, and the rector and the deans were all wearing their robes. The young doctor had to give a lecture and defend his theses, which he had composed in Latin, and all this took place in the auditorium of the university. Our parents and our sister had come, too, and were rather impressed by the festive occasion. Afterward, being a young assistant pastor, I invited them to my lodgings in the rectory, and there was bratwurst and rolls and beer, and it all tasted wonderful to us. The other assistant pastor at my parish, Hans Gradl, a simple, pragmatic man without great theological pretentions, joined us and commented drily with regard to the university initiation of my brother: “And you, Hans, I thought to myself, did you really go to a tree nursery?”2 This midday meal together in my room at the rectory in Saint Ludwig’s was a beautiful and happy conclusion to the whole celebration, which somehow put our feet back on the ground after those lofty flights of academic rhetoric.

  In 1953, Joseph and I again went on vacation together, this time a journey through Switzerland. As an assistant pastor, I had become acquainted with a young priest who had written his dissertation with Professor Richard Egenter as his advisor. Doctor Franz Böckle (1921-1991) was his name. Later, he was called to be professor of moral theology at the University of Bonn and finally became its rector and an advisor to the federal government. This Franz Böckle came from Switzerland, from Glarus; he had gone to school in Chur and had served as an assistant pastor in Zurich, and so he was able to put together for us a wonderful tour of Switzerland. On that trip we went to Zurich, Chur, Fribourg, and many other wonderful places. Once we traveled together with him to Belgium, to Brussels, where he was supposed to give a lecture. Actually, we always spent our vacation in places we wanted to see, where we could become a little better informed and educated.

  That same year I traveled with Doctor Böckle and acolytes from our parish to Freising, so as to celebrate with my brother the anniversary of our priestly ordination. While I spent the time with Joseph and our sister, who had also come along, Doctor Böckle looked after the boys.

  Then suddenly the telephone rang; my brother answered it, and my sister, who was present, noticed that he became quite pale. Then he offered the telephone to me. I took the receiver and heard the voice of Gradl, the other assistant pastor at my parish, who said, “Listen, I have something unpleasant to tell you. We received a telegram: Your father died.” We were all shaken! Evidently the pastor had not dared to make the call himself and instead delegated it to the assistant.

  Of course it was clear to us that we had to return home immediately. I asked Böckle, therefore, to look after the acolytes and traveled together with my brother and our sister by train to Traunstein. When we stopped in Bad Endorf, a few stations before Traunstein, our mother suddenly boarded the train. Naturally we went over to her immediately and said, “Mother, we heard that Father died; was he ill?” She was quite exasperated, knew nothing about it, and only reassured us, “No, he was not sick. I left at around noon; he was still well; there was nothing wrong with him at all. We agreed that I would travel to Endorf, and so I did.” In Bad Endorf, there is a folk theater that was founded in 1790 and is considered the third oldest theater in Bavaria. There they always performed religious dramas about the lives of the saints, and she had seen one that day.

  In Traunstein, we got off the train, quickly took a taxi, and arrived home—and there was Father standing in front of the house, shining his shoes! Good Lord, we certainly were relieved! Then it turned out that his younger brother, Anton, had died, who had once inherited the family farm and had been suffering for a long time from intestinal cancer. His family had informed me by telegram, which simply read: “Our father has died.” When the pastor and the assistant opened the telegram in Munich and read it, they no doubt thought that it meant my father, and of course they immediately called my brother’s phone number, which I had left with them in case of an emergency. And so we then traveled to Traunstein in a state of great agitation, while our father was at home shining his shoes in peace and quiet!

  Naturally he wanted to travel the next day to his brother’s funeral. I said to him, “Father, now I am not going to let you go there alone”, and I accompanied him on that trip to Rickering, his birthplace. That same day, the clergy of the deanery met at the parish in Schwanenkirchen, and I was also invited to attend. “You sit here”, they said, and then a wonderful Bavarian snack was served, which I ate with great relish: smoked meat (bacon), bread and butter, and a beer with it. Things like that leave an impression, you do not forget them for the rest of your life! But it all tasted twice as good because I was so relieved that our father was still alive.

  The following day the solemn funeral of his brother took place. I celebrated the Mass for the Dead, although I had an uncle who was also a priest, but he was being a bit difficult. He kept saying that he was too old, he was sick, he was nervous, and therefore could I do it. Of course I agreed and then celebrated the Requiem Mass. Afterward, there was a large reception, too. I was glad that I went along with Father, because in that way I
could become acquainted with his birthplace.

  At the end of the summer semester in 1953, when he was recommended to take the chair of dogmatic and fundamental theology at the College of Philosophy and Theology in Freising, Joseph Ratzinger at first gratefully declined. He wanted to devote himself now entirely to his habilitation3 in Munich. His teacher and advisor was again Professor Gottlieb Söhngen, a lively theologian from Cologne who was the product of a “mixed marriage” and for that reason alone had an open mind for ecumenical questions, too. Söhngen had taught him how important it is to start with the sources themselves and to disregard later interpretations of them. Because Ratzinger had dealt in his dissertation with Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church in late antiquity, the professor suggested that he should now concentrate on a medieval Doctor of the Church; for instance, Saint Bonaventure (1217-1274), who is considered a great mystic and the most important theologian of the Franciscan Order. They quickly agreed on a topic: “Saint Bonaventure’s Concept of Revelation and Theology of History”.

  By the summer of 1954, Ratzinger had gathered the material for his habilitation dissertation and worked out the main outline; now he still faced the difficult task of making a book out of it. In Freising, his plans were already set. The death of an emeritus professor of philosophy from the college had left a nice residence for a professor vacant, and as of the winter semester 1955-1956 he was supposed to take over the chair of fundamental theology. Until then the twenty-seven-year-old was already giving lectures in dogmatic theology as the acting chair.

  At the end of the 1955 summer semester, the handwritten manuscript of his habilitation dissertation was finally finished. All he needed now was someone to type it for him. Yet the typist he found proved to be somewhat incompetent. She was slow, misplaced one sheet of paper or another, continually made mistakes, and mixed up the page references. Ratzinger was at his wit’s end. His battle against the annoying typographical errors that spread like an epidemic and his desperate attempt to correct mistakes page by page exhausted him. Then in late autumn, he thought he had finally mastered the situation. Not exactly happy about its printed appearance, but convinced he had prevented the worst, he submitted the two obligatory copies of his habilitation dissertation to the theology faculty in Munich. He had done the work thoroughly and was sure he would qualify.

  So he had his parents come to Freising, where they were to spend their twilight years. His father had just turned seventy-eight, his mother seventy-one, and, despite the idyllic setting, their life on the old farm outside Traunstein had become arduous. However attached the whole family was to the quiet house at the forest’s edge, it was simply unsuitable as a senior citizens residence. Joseph’s new professorial residence, in contrast, was large enough for a whole family. It was located in a former manor of a cathedral canon, the so-called “Lerchenfeldhof” on the Domberg, right next to the church and quite close to the shops. His sister, Maria, was also thinking of joining the family household.

  The move took place on a foggy day in November; the dreary atmosphere only intensified the sadness of his parents. For them a chapter of their life was coming to an end, which despite the horrors of the war had still been the best of their lives. They sensed that the time of their departure had now begun irrevocably. Nevertheless, they bravely tackled the new challenge. No sooner had the furniture movers arrived than Mother Ratzinger put on her apron to help. That evening she was standing at the stove again preparing supper. Her husband meanwhile was busy giving orders to the army of students who had come to help them move in. Now they looked forward to being able to celebrate Christmas again in their family circle.

  At that time Joseph Ratzinger had no idea that storm clouds were gathering. His teacher, Professor Söhngen, had already read his habilitation dissertation and was so enthusiastic about it that he quoted it repeatedly in his lectures. In contrast, his colleague, Professor Schmaus, who was the other reader and likewise had to approve it, took his time. At some point in February of 1956 he began to read it. At Easter, when he met Ratzinger at a congress of the Working Community of German Dogmatists and Fundamental Theologians in Königstein, he asked to talk with him for a moment. Briefly, to the point, and with no emotion whatsoever, Schmaus informed him that he unfortunately had to reject his habilitation.

  Joseph Ratzinger was utterly crestfallen. His whole world seemed suddenly to collapse. What was to become of him, what was to become of his parents, whom he had in good faith just brought to live with him, thinking they would be able to move into a professorial residence? As a candidate who had failed to qualify, he would have to leave the college like a beaten dog. In any case, he could still apply for a position as an assistant pastor, which also came with a residence. But that prospect was not especially comforting to him.

  Later he learned the reason for Schmaus’ negative attitude. First of all, it was offended vanity. Medieval studies in Munich, of which he was essentially the one proponent, had come to an almost complete standstill in the prewar period. More recent findings, for instance, from the French-speaking world, were ignored. The fact that Ratzinger criticized certain positions with an acuity that was rather daring for a beginner must not have sat well with Schmaus. He resented all the more the fact that Ratzinger had worked on a medieval topic without having entrusted himself to his direction. Then the inadequate printed appearance and various errors in the references, which had remained despite all the efforts during proofreading, served as a convenient excuse for a devastating overall judgment. Schmaus considered Joseph Ratzinger a theological rebel who dared to take a stand against prevailing scholarly opinion and thereby opened the door to a dangerous modernism that would lead to a subjective concept of revelation. Rumors from Freising about the refreshing modernity of Ratzinger’s theology seemed only to confirm this impression.

  Yet although Schmaus was highly respected by his colleagues, he did not succeed in winning over the faculty meeting to reject this habilitation dissertation entirely. The work was not rejected but only given back to be revised. What needed revision was obvious from the marginal notes that Schmaus had written on his copy, which was now presented to Ratzinger. The extent of the reworking that would be required was so great that it would probably take years to do it, the offended professor triumphantly remarked. Yet as Joseph worked through the badly disfigured copy of his book, he noticed that all the criticism referred only to his definition of the concept of revelation. The last part, about Bonaventure’s theology of history, had remained to a very large extent uncontested. So an idea occurred to him that saved the day: he would simply detach this part from the rest and concentrate exclusively on that one theme. After some minor reworking, he was able to submit the now abridged work as early as October 1956. On February 11, 1957, he learned that this time his habilitation dissertation had been accepted. Nevertheless, he still had to give a public habilitation lecture and defend it afterward—a requirement he could likewise fail, and this time publicly. With considerable anxiety, Ratzinger prepared feverishly for that day, February 21. When the moment finally came, the large auditorium that had been selected for the ceremony was bursting at the seams. A strange, almost palpable tension was in the air. After his lecture, the reader, Professor Söhngen, and the second reader, Professor Schmaus, took the floor. The two scholars got into such a passionate debate that Ratzinger soon wondered whether he was still needed there at all. The subsequent deliberation lasted a long time. Finally, though, the dean came out into the corridor where Joseph was waiting with his brother and several friends to tell him quite unceremoniously that he had passed and thus qualified for a professorship.

  He was now, at the age of twenty-nine, a professor, yet he could not really rejoice in the fact. The difficult path to this goal still hung over his head like a nightmare. Only gradually did the anxiety dissipate. Now he could continue his service in Freising in peace, without subjecting his parents to painful uncertainties. Despite the massive firepower deployed by Schmaus, he was finally appoin
ted officially as extraordinary professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology at the College of Philosophy and Theology in Freising on January 1, 1958. The experience had taught him one thing, at least, that he took to heart again and again throughout his years as a professor. Whenever a dissertation or habilitation study was being debated and was in danger of being rejected, he sided with the weaker party whenever possible.

  Actually I only learned later about the turbulent story surrounding my brother’s habilitation. In 1955, I passed my exams at the music college and then completed the master class as well, for which there was no final examination. In 1957, I was supposed to complete my studies, and my brother only said that we would be done then at the same time: he with his habilitation and I with music college. The difficulties probably were due primarily to the competition between Professors Sohngen and Schmaus, since each of them wanted to be the better and more important scholar. As a result, he almost blocked my brother’s habilitation. But I heard about all that only on the day when he was to defend his dissertation, for I had long since not been living in Munich; in late 1953, I had been transferred to Dorfen, at Ruprechtsberg, to Assumption parish with its impressive miraculous image of the Mother of God. I was choirmaster there at the same time—and therefore had to direct both parish choirs—and also curate for pilgrimages as well as a religion teacher and pastoral minister. So I did not have all that much time to follow developments in my brother’s habilitation.