I missed Pope John Paul II terribly, as if he were my father. I didn't understand Benedict. And though six years passed by since he took office, I really hadn't given him a chance.
So when a friend recommended I read this book, I thought to myself, "perhaps I can see what this man is all about."
The book is a series of interviews by veteran journalist Peter Seewald about every imaginable topic: the state of our natural world, the clergy abuse scandal, and how this man feels about being Pope. If you, like me, had some preconceptions about the pontiff, if you considered him well, clueless about public relations and severe in his approach to life, if you missed the warm media-savvy charm of JP, please read this book.
Suspend whatever impressions of the man you might have picked up from the secular media, from other Catholics (liberal or traditional), from anyone or anything that might have led you to think one way or another about this man. Open your heart and your mind and listen. As you enjoy this Easter day, read the little excerpt here and watch the short book trailer below. Then, buy (or go to the library and check out) this book and let il Papa's words of warmth and wisdom find a place in your heart and soothe your soul. Here is an example of what awaits you,
Seewald asks "What about the Pope? Does he still believe what he believed as a child?"
Pope Benedict XVI answers:
"I would answer in similar terms. I would say: Simplicity is truth—and truth is simple. Our problem is that we no longer see the forest for the trees; that for all our knowledge, we have lost the path to wisdom. This is also the idea behind Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, which shows how the cleverness of our age causes us, ironically, to overlook the essential, while the Little Prince, who hasn’t the faintest idea about all this cleverness, ultimately sees more and better.
"I would answer in similar terms. I would say: Simplicity is truth—and truth is simple. Our problem is that we no longer see the forest for the trees; that for all our knowledge, we have lost the path to wisdom. This is also the idea behind Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, which shows how the cleverness of our age causes us, ironically, to overlook the essential, while the Little Prince, who hasn’t the faintest idea about all this cleverness, ultimately sees more and better.
"What really counts? What is authentic? What keeps us going? The key thing is to see what is simple. Why shouldn’t God be capable of letting a virgin give birth, too? Why shouldn’t Christ be able to rise from the dead? Of course, when I myself determine what is allowed to exist and what isn’t, when I define the boundaries of possibility, and no one else, then of course phenomena like these have to be excluded. It is an act of intellectual arrogance for us to declare that they are internally contradictory or absurd and, for that reason alone, impossible.
But it is not our business to decide how many possibilities are latent in the cosmos, how many possibilities are hidden above and in it. The message of Christ and the Church puts credible knowledge about God within our reach. God wanted to enter into this world. God didn’t want us to have only a distant inkling of him through physics and mathematics. He wanted to show himself to us. And so he was able to do what the Gospels recount that he did, just as he was also able to create a new dimension of existence in the Resurrection. He was able to go beyond what Teilhard de Chardin called the biosphere and the noosphere and to institute precisely a new sphere, in which man and the world attain union with God."
