Faculty News: Fr. Richard Schenk, O.P.

Fr. Richard Schenk recently took part in the colloquium, Revelation and Salvific History - J. Ratzingers Studies on Bonaventure in the Context of Systematics and the History of Theology. Held in Bagnoregio, the birthplace of St. Bonaventure, this conference was organized by the Institute Pope Benedikt XVI of Regensburg, which is responsible for the edition of the complete writings of the current pope. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the content, context and significance of young J. Ratzinger’s second major work, his 1955 habilitation on St. Bonaventure. The faculty of the time at the University of Munich had accepted only the final third of the work dealing with Bonaventure’s view of history. The first sections on Bonaventure’s sense of revelation continued to be of interest and would have an important impact on the dogmatic constitution on revelation at the Second Vatican Council, which began in 1962; three years after the short version of the text had appeared in print. Prof. Ratzinger was present at the Council first as an advisor to Cologne’s Archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Frings, and then as an official expert or “peritus”. Frings made sure that the young theologian’s voice was heard, notably in a famous lecture on revelation the day before the Council opened. It helped move the Council to rework thoroughly its statements on revelation. Fr. Richard Schenk spoke on the ecumenical theological program connected with the interpretation of Bonaventura developed by the young Ratzinger and his theological mentor, Gottlieb Söhngen. The colloquium ended in Castelgandolfo with the presentation to Pope Benedict XVI of this second volume of his collected works, including the first publication of the entire draft of the monograph on St. Bonaventure.