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Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millenium, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Ignatius, 283 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Richard John Neuhaus, president of Religion and Public Life and editor-in-chief of First Things.

In 1988, Religion and Public Life, a research and education institute in New York, invited Cardinal Ratzinger to give the annual Erasmus Lecture, followed by two days of conversation with theologians, including Protestants of the old-line and evangelical communities. The subject then was the authority and interpretation of Scripture, and everybody came away from those days profoundly impressed by the learning, candor, and gentle civility of this man who is the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Readers of the present book are in for a similarly scintillating engagement with one of the great Christian minds and spirits of our time.

Salt of the Earth is an interview extending over several days with the noted German journalist Peter Seewald, a self-described skeptic. Comparison is inevitably made with another book-length Ratzinger interview that was published in 1985 as The Ratzinger Report, which caused an enormous stir in Catholic circles. At that time the cardinal had not been long in the post of chief doctrinal officer, next to the pope, of the Catholic church, and his relentless critique of the "crisis of faith" at the root of the church's problems startled many readers. More than a decade later, the tone of Salt of the Earth is more tranquil, even autumnal at points, but the critique is no less incisive, and there is no doubt about Ratzinger's continuing belief that all crises are rooted in a crisis of faith, of whether we say yes or no to the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Almost everything a reader might want to discuss with the cardinal is engaged in these pages: his theological formation, how doctrinal development happens in Catholic teaching, the great moral controversies over abortion and euthanasia, whether women can be ordained, the meaning of celibacy, the changing role of the papacy, where and why the church made mistakes, the prospects for Christian unity, and what the church and the world should expect in the next millennium.

Seewald's questions are aggressive and usually incisive; Ratzinger's answers are invariably patient, pastoral, and reflective of his immense learning. Many have observed that, had he not been chosen as prefect by John Paul II, Ratzinger would have made a theological mark comparable to that made by Karl Rahner or, in Protestant circles, Karl Barth. To which others respond that he has achieved greater theological fulfillment and influence as prefect. Salt of the Earth may be submitted as evidence for the second position.

Ratzinger has also written numerous scholarly works, and it is a credit to his scholarship that he is able to turn his thought into prose completely accessible to the nonspecialist. He is not above addressing the issues that preoccupy the popular press. He refers, for instance, to "the canon of criticism"—women's ordination, contraception, celibacy, and the remarriage of divorced persons. On these issues, liberal reformers insist, the Catholic church must change if it is to reach the people of our time effectively. Here the cardinal becomes the skeptic. He notes an obvious factor that is often overlooked: "On these points Protestantism has taken the other path, and it is quite plain that it hasn't thereby solved the problem of being a Christian in today's world and that the problem of Christianity, the effort of being a Christian, remains just as dramatic as before." He sympathetically cites another theologian, Johannes Metz, who says that it was actually a good thing the Protestant experiment was made. Ratzinger observes, "It shows that being a Christian today does not stand or fall on these questions."

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May 18 1998, Vol. 42, No. 6