The Vicar of Orthodoxy

摘要

He is an intellectual opposed to questioning doctrine. He is a shepherd with scant pastoral experience. He is a creature of the 20th century deeply opposed to the modem world. In these seeming contradictions, you can begin to see the contours of one of the most unusual, gifted men to become Pope. For the young Joseph Ratzinger, struggling out of the moral abyss of Nazi Bavaria, St. Augustine was a guiding light. "Augustine has kept me company for more than 20 years," Pope Benedict XVI once wrote. One of Augustine's key arguments was that human beings were so profoundly flawed they couldn't begin to figure out the meaning of life on their own. They needed something transcendent to bring them up from their knees.