Pope Benedict XVI awards "Ratzinger Prize"

Pope Benedict XVI awarded the "Ratzinger Prize" to three renowned theologians on Thursday. A project of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation, which was funded by Pope Benedict with the royalties he has received from his books, the Ratzinger Prize was established last year to promote theological studies on the writings of the Pope, and to reward promising scholars.

This year’s winners are three: a retired professor from Rome’s "La Sapienza" University, the renowned 85 year-old expert in the writings of the Church Fathers, Manlio Simonetti, who is also a lecturer at Rome’s Augustinianum institute for studies in patristics; Olegario González de Cardedal, the 77 year old Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Pontifical University of Salamanca; finally, there is the 50 year-old Cistercian Abbot of Heiligenkreuz, Maximilian Heim, who, as professor of dogmatic and fundamental theology, has focused his own work principally on the work of the of Prof. Joseph Ratzinger.

In remarks on Thursday at the award ceremony, Fr. Heim spoke of the peculiar freedom of the theologian, saying, “As theologians we are free to seek truth in a fearless manner.”

“[I]t is not the theologian who forms truth,” he said, “truth forms the theologian.” This was a theme that ran through the Holy Father’s own remarks as well.

“If Christ is the Logos, the truth,” said Pope Benedict, “then man must correspond to Him with his own logos – with his reason.” The Pope went on to say, “In order to reach Christ, one must be in the way of truth, must be open to the Logos, to creative reason, from which human reason is derived and toward which it tends.”

“From here,” continued the Holy Father, “one can see that the Christian faith, by its very nature, must give rise to theology, must inquire into the reasonableness of the faith, though of course the concept of reason and that of science embrace many dimensions: so it is that the concrete nature of the nexus uniting faith and reason can be and should ever be explored anew.”

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