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IgnatiusInsight.com: How and when did you first meet Joseph Ratzinger? What was your impression of him?
Rev. Twomey: I first met Joseph Ratzinger early in the new year of 1971, when he interviewed me in Regensburg after I had asked him to be my doctoral supervisor. My first impression was of an unassuming man with piercing eyes, a gentle smile, and not the slightest touch of the arrogance of a Herr Professor.
IgnatiusInsight.com: What were some of the essential formative theological influences on Joseph Ratzinger?
Rev. Twomey: The immediate post-war situation of the Church in Germany exercised a huge influence on the fledgling theologian. The Church had emerged triumphant after the persecution under Hitler. There was a feeling of a new beginning, not least in theology, where the neo-scholasticism of the previous half-century was more or less abandoned in the search for a fresh approach. Young theologians such as Henri de Lubac, who had a great influence on Ratzinger, turned to the Fathers of the Church for inspiration and found it. The Munich theologian Gottlieb Soehngen directed Ratzinger's doctoral dissertation on Augustine's ecclesiology and his postdoctoral dissertation on Bonaventure's theology of history. Augustine and Bonaventure are two major thinkers whose profound influence on Ratzinger cannot be underestimated. He came under the spell of Cardinal Newman thanks to his Prefect of Studies, Alfred Laepple, who at the time was writing his thesis on Newman's understanding of conscience and introduced his students to the writings of perhaps the greatest theologian of the 19th century, who was also steeped in the Fathers of the Church. But, ultimately, it was Scripture that formed the basic thrust of all his theology. He once said something to the effect that, in the final analysis, his theology is a form of exegesis. And here his friendship with the great German exegete Heinrich Schlier must be mentioned; Schlier's attention to the precise terms of the original text of Scripture is echoed in Ratzinger's careful exegesis. Josef Pieper, the most important German Catholic philosopher, also exercised a great influence, as did Endre von Ivanka on the philosophy of the early Church.
IgnatiusInsight.com: What attracted him to Augustine and how has his early studies of the great Doctor of the Church informed how he addresses contemporary controversies?
Rev. Twomey: Ratzinger found the scholastics too cerebral. Augustine appealed to him as a man of passion, whose whole life was dedicated to the search to know the truth and articulate it. For neo-scholasticism, everything found its place in the "system", but Ratzinger was instinctively aware that truth is more than any system of thought could encompass, that it has to be discovered anew in all its freshness from one generation to the next. Augustine was more than a controversialist, but he was still a remarkable controversialist, who was not frightened by any attack on the faith, be it within the Church or without. Confident in the truth revealed in Christ, he found the courage to take on all those who questioned that truth or denied it. Ratzinger shows a similar courage. He is not afraid to face up to the most difficult challenges to the faith, knowing that in trying to answer them we discover the truth in all its grandeur and compelling nature. More concretely, Ratzinger's studies of the ecclesiology of Augustine shaped his own understanding of Church--including the role of the Eucharist at the core of the Church--and her mission. They also prepared him for his later theology of political life, since Augustine's ecclesiology also involved clarifying the relationship between Church and State, between civil religion and faith.
IgnatiusInsight.com: What is unique or perhaps even surprising about Ratzinger's theological methodology? How does it differ from some of the celebrated Catholic theologians of the 1960s such as Küng and Rahner?
Rev. Twomey: What is unique to Ratzinger's theological methodology is, in the first place, its originality and creativity. Despite all the influences I mentioned, Ratzinger retained his distance and so retained his independence as a thinker, even with regard to the great theologians he studied. His methodology is to take as his starting point contemporary developments in society and culture, then he listens to the solutions offered my his fellow theologians before returning to a critical examination of Scripture and Tradition for pointers to a solution. He is not satisfied to analyze a topic, but, having dissected the issue, he then attempts a systematic answer by seeing the topic in the context of theology as a whole. Unlike Küng, who is always in tune with the latest fashion, Ratzinger is not afraid to be unfashionable. Unlike Rahner, who produced a full systematic theology, Ratzinger's theology is fragmentary--filled with brilliant insights into almost every subject of theology and yet not a fixed "system". Using the best findings of academic theology, Ratzinger goes beyond them to create something new and original. He is more than an academic. He is an original thinker, whose scattered writings on a host of subjects are "seminal", awaiting development by others. Finally, unlike either Küng or (especially) Rahner, Ratzinger writes with a clarity and, at times, literary beauty, that never fails to impress.
