There’s nothing like finding a lost treasure — and it’s all the more exciting when that treasure can enrich your own life and be given to others.
Misplaced for almost 30 years in an Austrian abbey, audio cassette tapes containing lectures by the late former Cardinal Jospeh Ratzinget were finally found and are now being published for the first time in English by Ignatius Press.
The new book, The Divine Project: Reflections on Creation and the Church, includes the lectures that Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, gave in 1985 in Austria. The tapes depict the former Pope and cardinal “walking his listeners, with small, careful but thoughtful steps, through the thick terrain of the theology of the Creation story.” From Ignatius Press’ press release:
The Divine Project is a study of God the Creator and of man as this Creator’s masterpiece. “Ratzinger,” as Professor Matthew Levering writes, “guides us through the most difficult domains of modern theology and modern life: how to read the Bible; the Reason of God and the reasonableness of the cosmos; the meaning of original sin; technology, ecology, and creatureliness; the Cross and the Eucharist; and Vatican II, pluralism, the Magisterium, and the nature of the Church.”
“These lectures are ‘vintage Ratzinger’ — a theological treasure,” said Tracey Rowland, St. John Paul II Chair of Theology, University of Notre Dame (Australia). “Any Catholic could follow them without a formal training in theology. A copy would make a great present for friends, godchildren, students, priests, seminarians and anyone else trying to make sense of the Church and the world.”
With the recent passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, this book of his lost lectures is timely and will be enthusiastically welcomed by all those who know what a treasure Joseph Ratzinger continues to be to the Church.
And today we celebrate...