Salt of the Earth by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger - Spiritual Book, 283 pp.
$15.95
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Salt of the Earth by Cardinal Ratzinger---an important volume which gives an extraordinary insight into the mind and thought of the Cardinal (the "Panzer-Cardinal" to his detractors and "Call to Action" types). There is a touching account of his youth, family life, student days, and even the period when he was an American prisoner of war. Readers will find fascinating this theologian's views of Hans Kung, sexual consumerism, evolution, and Fatima. There are precious comments on liturgy, infallibility and authority, celibacy, liberation theology and other attempts to politicize the Gospel, moral relativism, "fundamentalism," "pathological forms of religiosity," the exodus of Catholics to the sects, and "the dictatorship of public opinion." While admitting that he has "so little knowledge of America," he does not hesitate to refer to the few American bishops "who are perhaps really somewhat extreme." He expresses the "humiliation" he feels that it is "Catholic countries like Rwanda and Burundi which have become the scene of the greatest atrocities." Cardinal Ratzinger emphasizes that the renewal of the Church must come from new movements and groups of Catholics that implement both the spirit and letter of Vatican II. Decrying the false "spirit of Vatican II" that waters down the faith to make modern man more "comfortable", Cardinal Ratzinger, one of the key theologians laboring at the council, insists that the Council Fathers in no way intended to "turn the faith upside down, but, on the contrary to serve it properly."
