{"id":219,"date":"2007-10-01T09:08:10","date_gmt":"2007-10-01T09:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/god-and-the-world.html"},"modified":"2007-10-01T09:08:10","modified_gmt":"2007-10-01T09:08:10","slug":"god-and-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/god-and-the-world.html","title":{"rendered":"God and the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

In between the fiction, I’m currently reading God and the World<\/em><\/a>, the third interview book then-Cardinal Ratzinger did with Peter Seewald. I was inspired to read it by a citation from the book that someone quoted on a blog post somewhere:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Church of the first three centuries was a small Church and nevertheless was not a sectarian community. On the contrary, she was not partitioned off; rather, she saw herself as responsible for the poor, for the sick, for everyone. All those who sought a faith in the one God, who sought a promise, found their place in her.
\n“The synagogue, Judaism in the Roman Empire, had surrounded itself with this circle of God-fearers, who were affiliated with it and thereby achieved a great opening up. The catechumenate of the early Church was very similar. Here people who didn’t feel able to identify with Christianity completely could, as it were, attach themselves to the Church, so as to see whether they would take the step of joining her. This consciousness of not being a closed club, but of always being open to everyone and everything, is an inseparable part of the Church. And it is precisely with the shrinking of Christian congregations we are experiencing that we shall have to consider looking for openness along the lines of such types of affiliation, of being able to associate oneself.
\n\u201cI have nothing against it, then, if people who all year long never visit a church go there at least on Christmas Night or New Year\u2019s Eve or on special occasions, because this is another way of belonging to the blessing of the sacred, to the light. There have to be various forms of participation and association; the Church has to be inwardly open” (442).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought this was fascinating.
\nAll the interview books are interesting, but I’m finding this one especially so because of the theological angle of the questions. It will surprise no one who is actually familiar with Ratzinger’s thought, but it might be worth passing on to those who persist in the stereotype of the judgmentaluptightclosedintolerant Scold of a Pope.\u00a0 Fully committed to truth, his mind is open, acknowledges mystery and doubt, and deeply aware of the complexity of the human condition and mindful of how the Church is called to be <\/em>in the midst of that mystery and complexity.
\nSpeaking of Benedict<\/u>, a reader is getting ready to do a parish study group on Jesus of Nazareth<\/em>.<\/a> He’s wondering if anyone has suggestions for resources that might help his group. Doubleday didn’t do a study\/group discussion guide for the book, which is unfortunate. Any suggestions?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In between the fiction, I’m currently reading God and the World, the third interview book then-Cardinal Ratzinger did with Peter Seewald. I was inspired to read it by a citation from the book that someone quoted on a blog post somewhere: \u201cThe Church of the first three centuries was a small Church and nevertheless was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nGod and the World - 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\/10\/god-and-the-world.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God and the World - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In between the fiction, I’m currently reading God and the World, the third interview book then-Cardinal Ratzinger did with Peter Seewald. 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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\/219","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=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}