Pope Benedict likes verbal sparring, thinks God has sense of humor

While the 78-year-old German theologian spent 24 years defending Catholic doctrine and moral teaching, there was always a deeply spiritual, quiet, kind pastor behind the pronouncements, they said.

Some may debate whether as prefect of the congregation he always had to act when he did or if advancement in theology requires time and room for debate and correction by colleagues; but when Cardinal Ratzinger put on his scholar’s hat and engaged in public debates with other scholars, there was no denying the twinkle in his eyes and the smile on his lips.

He enjoyed the sparring.

Last October, he and an Italian historian discussed history, politics and religion in a Rome debate.

The cardinal told the scholar and Italian government officials, members of Parliament and Vatican officials in the audience, "We find ourselves in a situation in which it would be opportune to dialogue.

"Our moral capacity has not grown at the same rate as our potential power," especially when it comes to the ability to manipulate, prolong or terminate human life, he said.

His somber assessment of the world’s moral confusion did not outweigh the obvious delight he took in an opportunity to engage in a public debate where theological and philosophical terms and names could be tossed into the conversation with no need for explanation.

Even while serving as the Vatican’s moral and doctrinal "watchdog," a task often covered in silence, the future Pope Benedict continued to be a prolific public speaker, author and subject of interviews.

He has published more than 60 books: scholarly theological tomes; responses to questions; collections of speeches and essays; and memoirs on his first 50 years of life, published in English in 1998 as "Milestones."

The future pope’s father was a policeman, and the family moved frequently during his youth. According to his memoirs, he was only vaguely aware of the poverty and political strife building up in Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War.

He joined his brother, Georg, at the minor seminary in 1939, and said he found it difficult to study in a room with 60 other boys, but got used to that.

"What weighed more heavily on me was that every day included — in homage to a modern idea of education — two hours of sports," he wrote. He was the smallest boy in the class and the games were "a true torture."

The book-length interviews with then-Cardinal Ratzinger — the 1985 "Ratzinger Report," the 1996 "Salt of the Earth" and the 2002 "God and the World" — showed a prelate with clear ideas, worried about the state of the church and not the least bit hesitant to respond to questions.

He told Peter Seewald, author of the 1996 and 2002 books, that he believes God "has a great sense of humor."

"Sometimes he gives you something like a nudge and says, ‘Don’t take yourself so seriously!’ Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly; to see the funny side of it; to get down off our pedestal and not to forget our sense of fun," he said.

Seewald asked the future pope if he had ever been tempted to leave the Catholic Church; the cardinal said it would "never have entered my head," because his whole life has been bound up with the church.

However, he said, "there are things about her (the church), big and little, that are annoying. From the local church, right up to the church’s overall leadership, within which I now have to work," he told Seewald in an interview conducted in 2000.

As the chief defender of Catholic doctrine and morality, Cardinal Ratzinger had a major role in drafting the 1992 "Catechism of the Catholic Church" and, especially, its 1997 revised passages on the death penalty — judged unacceptable in most cases — and on homosexual orientation, which it said was "objectively disordered."

While he has said all people must be treated with love and respect, he said no one can change Christian moral teaching that homosexual acts are sinful and no one can equate a gay union to marriage between and man and woman without denigrating the human, moral, social and religious significance of marriage.

One question on many minds since Pope Benedict’s election was: What will happen to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and to its liturgical reforms?

In "The Ratzinger Report," he said the post-conciliar church "seems to have passed over from self-criticism to self-destruction" with a growth of dissent and more people abandoning church practice.

The cardinal said it was not the fault of the council, but of Catholics who thought that renewal of the church and dialogue with the modern world meant embracing the world’s agenda without any sense of responsibility or limit.

Nevertheless, Pope Benedict told the world’s cardinals April 20: "I want to forcefully affirm the strong desire to continue in the task of implementing the Second Vatican Council."

He gave a similarly pastoral reply when Seewald asked him if the Mass should be celebrated in Latin.

"That is no longer going to be possible as a general practice, and perhaps it is not desirable as such," he answered.

The other big question looming in people’s minds was: What would Pope Benedict’s approach to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue be?

Speaking to seminary rectors two months after "Dominus Iesus" was released, the cardinal said it "expresses with great clarity the central point of our faith, that is that the Son of God was made man and that a bridge exists between God and man."

The document was the focal point of ecumenical and interreligious controversy because of its firm statement that Christ and the church are necessary for salvation, leaving those who do not believe in Christ or are not part of the church feeling like the congregation was denying that their faith offered the possibility of salvation.

The cardinal said at the time he was most disappointed in the negative reaction of Jewish leaders and groups to the document.

"The church," he said, "wants to continue to build an open and sincere dialogue with them, in a search for the true good of mankind and of society."

And while not shy about talking tough, as a cardinal Pope Benedict avoided "fire and brimstone" phrases and cautioned others about attributing apocalyptical threats to God or to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In 1996, four years before Pope John Paul II released the so-called "third secret of Fatima," Cardinal Ratzinger told a Portuguese Catholic radio station that the pope had shown him the message.

"I am certain," he said, "that the Virgin does not engage in sensationalism; she does not create fear. She does not present apocalyptic visions, but guides people to her Son. And this is what is essential."

The Vatican published the complete text of the Fatima message in 2000, interpreting it as a vision of a long war waged by atheistic regimes against the church. It included a figure of a "bishop in white" who falls in a hail of gunfire, which was presumed to be a reference to the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul in 1981.

The reality of evil and of threats against the church are topics Pope Benedict has discussed often.

When the future pope was a child in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, school officials enrolled him in the Hitler Youth movement. He said he soon stopped going to the meetings. But when he was 16 he and his classmates were conscripted into an anti-aircraft unit that tracked Allied bombardments; although in uniform and staying in barracks with other soldiers, the seminarians also continued their studies. Later, young Ratzinger was drafted into a worker’s battalion, then into the army.

In the spring of 1945, when Hitler had died and it appeared the war was almost over, he deserted his unit and returned home. When the U.S. military arrived, he was arrested with other members and former members of the German army and placed in a prisoner-of-war camp for several months.

In "God and the World," Seewald asked the then-Cardinal Ratzinger about Hitler, the devil and evil.

"One certainly cannot say that Hitler was the devil; he was a man," the cardinal said. However, he added, "I believe one can see that he was taken into the demonic realm in some profound way, by the way in which he was able to wield power and by the terror, the harm, that his power inflicted."