{"id":2149,"date":"2007-04-14T10:36:16","date_gmt":"2007-04-14T10:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/i-cant-stop.html"},"modified":"2007-04-14T10:36:16","modified_gmt":"2007-04-14T10:36:16","slug":"i-cant-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/i-cant-stop.html","title":{"rendered":"I can’t stop.."},"content":{"rendered":"

…but you’ll want to read Fr. Z’s reflections on the Pope’s book on Jesus, to be released Monday in Italian and other editions. The Doubleday U.S. edition will be released in May:<\/a><\/p>\n

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One of the engines driving Pope Ratzinger\u2019s book was his reading a work 15 years ago by a rabbi, Jakob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks With Jesus<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.  Benedict returns often to his insights.  For example, His Holiness recounts his reading of Neusner\u2019s book, wherein Neusner spends a day with Jesus, following him in an interior dialogue and then returns to his study of Torah with other rabbis.  One rabbi says to the interior Neusner, \u201c613 precepts were given by Moses, 365 negatives ones corresponding to the number of days of the year and 248 positives corresponding to the number of parts of the body.  David comes along and reduces them to 11\u2026 Isaiah reduces them down to 2.  Habakkuk distills them to one only, as it is written: \u2018The righteous one will live by his faith (Hab 2,4)\u2019.  \u2018And so\u2019, a rabbi asks the interior Neusner, \u2018is this what Jesus has to say?\u2019,  Neusner responds, \u2018 Not quite, but almost.\u2019  The other rabbi: \u2018What did he leave out?\u2019  Neusner: \u2018Nothing.\u2019  The other rabbi: \u2018Then what did he add?\u2019  Neusner: \u2018Himself.\u2019  The point being that Neusner will not follow Jesus because of the radical \u201cI\u201d of Jesus\u2019 message.  Neusner cites Matthew 19:21: \u201cIf you want to perfect\u2026 follow me.\u201d  For Ratzinger, this helps create a conceptual bridge: \u201cThe perfection required by the Torah, being holy as God is holy (cf. Lev 19,2; 11,44), now consists in following Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n

This little episode from Pope Benedict\u2019s book is an object lesson in his theological method.  He is always concerned to keep faith and reason in the right perspective, but always in play in their proper roles.  Moreover, Ratzinger has always used interesting non-Christian or non-Catholic, or even errant doctrines as springboards for theological work.  No one who has read enough Ratzinger is surprise that he does this, even though his nimbleness leaves one a bit breathless.  For example, I think it can be argued that Joseph Ratzinger probably knows more about Liberation Theology than anyone.  If might surprise some that he uses points of Liberation Theology in one of his own works on liturgy.  Consider using the image of Christ is \u201cLiberator\u201d when working theologically with liturgical issues.  This is what he did in A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Pope sets out like so many, to search for the Historical Jesus.  Someone is always doing this, of course.  Jesus is usually morphed into someone else every thirty years or so, and always at the expense of Jesus Himself.  These these searches wind up emphasizing one dimension of Christ into order to underscore another.  Understanding that there will always be more to say about Jesus, the Pope offers this work, fully expecting that it will be met with resistance and criticism from some circles.  <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh…and the Pope met with the heads of the Curial dicasteries this morning at 10.<\/a> Hmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…but you’ll want to read Fr. Z’s reflections on the Pope’s book on Jesus, to be released Monday in Italian and other editions. The Doubleday U.S. edition will be released in May: One of the engines driving Pope Ratzinger\u2019s book was his reading a work 15 years ago by a rabbi, Jakob Neusner, A Rabbi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nI can't stop.. - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/i-cant-stop.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I can't stop.. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…but you’ll want to read Fr. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}