The Theologian the Pope Has Rescued from Oblivion

[Denise]

Franz Michel Willam, the Theologian the Pope Has Rescued from Oblivion

Author in 1932 of a famous life of Christ, he had been forgotten by everyone. Benedict XVI cites him in "Jesus of Nazareth," and an Austrian scholar explains why. Based on unpublished correspondence between the two

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, July 3, 2007 – In the first lines of the preface to “Jesus of Nazareth,” Benedict XVI recalls that at the time of his youth, in the 1930’s and ‘40’s, “there was a series of inspiring books about Jesus.”

And he mentions some of the authors: Romano Guardini, Karl Adam, Daniel Rops, Giovanni Papini, Franz Michel Willam.

The first four, and especially the first two, are still fairly well known and read. But not the last. Franz Michel Willam (1894-1981) is today a name among the most thoroughly forgotten. Fallen into oblivion.

So why does Joseph Ratzinger cite him?

In the “long interior journey” that led Ratzinger to write “Jesus of Nazareth,” Willam would not seem to be an author of reference. Much more so are Guardini, Henri De Lubac, Rudolf Schnackenburg, and the Jewish rabbi Jacob Neusner.

Of the Italian-German philosopher and theologian Guardini, one finds in the current pope the idea of the centrality of the Church in truly drawing near to Jesus, at every time and in every place, through the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

From the French theologian De Lubac, Ratzinger has drawn the profound awareness of the thought of the Fathers and the intuition of the union between the Old and New Testament.

With the great German exegete Schnackenburg, the pope has in common the conviction that the historical-critical method alone is not enough to understand the full identity of Jesus.

The dialogue between the rabbi Neusner and Ratzinger is revived in the pages of “Jesus of Nazareth,” and also afterward, as recounted by www.chiesa in an article from last June 11.

But Willam, on the other hand, is cited only once, at the beginning. And it then seems that there is no longer any trace of him in the book. But is that really the case?

In the latest issue of “Vita e Pensiero,” the magazine of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, an article has been published that solves the enigma.

Its author is the young theologian Philipp Reisinger, an Austrian like Willam.

He cites correspondence between Ratzinger and Willam from the 1960’s, and brings to light how the two shared the conviction that the secret of great Christian theology – which is able to speak to more than just the erudite – is “simplicity,” it is “a clear view of the essential.”

Simplicity and essentiality that Ratzinger wanted to imprint upon every page of his “Jesus of Nazareth.”

Here is the article that appeared in “Vita e Pensiero” no. 3, 2007:


Ratzinger and the "chaplain" theologian. An unpublished correspondence

by Philipp Reisinger


The Austrian Franz Michel Willam is today certainly the least-known among the authors cited by Benedict XVI in the preface to his book “Jesus of Nazareth.”

Who was he? And why does the pope recall him? Only a few know about the correspondence, kept in the convent of Thalbach in Bregenz, Austria, between the university professor Joseph Ratzinger and Franz Michel Willam, who was 33 years older than him.

The two were in particularly close contact in the years 1967 and 1968. One of the reasons was the book by Willam “Vom jungen Roncalli zum Papst Johannes XXIII. [From the young Roncalli to Pope John XXIII],” published in 1967, and the article by Ratzinger “Was heißt Erneuerung der Kirche? [What does Church renewal mean?],” which appeared a year earlier in the magazine “Diakonia.”

The latter text contains the words: “True reform is that which concerns itself with what is authentically Christian, which lets itself be stimulated and formed by this.” True reform and true renewal require simplicity. “Renewal is simplification”: this is how Ratzinger effectively synthesized his thesis.

Willam, who had discovered and brought forth simplicity as the dominant idea in Pope John XXIII, presented in this way • in a letter to Bishop Paulus Rusch – what was for him the central passage in Ratzinger’s article:

“The theory of simplicity finds in Joseph Ratzinger the following formulation: there exists the simplicity of comfort, which is the simplicity of imprecision, a lack of richness, life, and completeness. There also exists the simplicity of the origin, which is true richness. Renewal is simplicity, not in the sense of a selection or reduction, but rather a simplification in the sense of a becoming-simple, of moving toward that true simplicity which is the mystery of being.”

On May 22, Willam wrote to Ratzinger:

“I have studied the concordances in the five volumes containing the discourses and documents of the pontificate. The words ’simple’ and ’simplicity’ are absolutely the most commonly occurring keywords. John XXIII certainly means these the same way you do: to study something in a precise way and ask the question, How must I express this so that the people may understand the result?”

“In these days, I have received your book on Pope John XXIII. I have already read parts of it, and I find it truly thrilling,” was the reply from professor Ratzinger after he received the volume.

Ratzinger, as the new dean of the Theological Faculty of Tubingen, wrote a long and particularly favorable review of Willam’s book for “Theologische Quartalschrift,” no. 6, 1968:

“Without a doubt, this book can be described as the most important by far thus published to illuminate the figure of John XXIII. At the same time, it is of fundamental importance for understanding Vatican Council II. The book distinguishes itself well beyond the multitude of what has been written in these contexts, and does so through the completeness of its information and its highlighting of connections. [...] The author, therefore, deserves unreserved thanks for his patient work, and not least because he was able to say so much in a limited space.”

Willam was truly happy with this review, and he cited it in almost all of the letters that he wrote in the weeks after its publication. He wrote to one friend: “One gets the impression that in his argument, Ratzinger has in mind various dialogues that took place during Vatican Council II, including with non-Catholics like Oscar Cullmann.”

Willam cultivated great admiration for professor Ratzinger, and asked him for advice in many areas, permitting himself to be corrected and counseled by him with simplicity, in spite of the significant age difference. In the letter already cited, from May 22, 1967, among other things he asked the professor for help with a publication concerning John Henry Newman, and concluded the missive with an emotional compliment:

“Because I do not know any theologian as close as you are to the thought of John XXII – the common keyword ‘simplicity’ attests to this objectively – I address this request precisely to you.”

Simplicity, which was so deeply decisive for Willam, is also expressed in the fact that he did not ever feel that he was called to formulate his own particular theology. He desired instead to read the signs of the times and to be a witness to the eternal in the context of all the changes that were taking place over the course of his life.

Here as well, there is a visible commonality with Ratzinger, who once asserted:

“I have never sought to found a particular system, a special theology. I intend simply to think together with the Church’s faith, and this means above all thinking together with the great thinkers of the faith. This is not a matter of an isolated theology originating from myself, but rather of a theology that opens itself in the broadest way possible to the common journey of thought in the faith.”

Franz Michel Willlam was born on June 14, 1894, in Schoppernau in the state of Vorarlberg. He was the son of a shoemaker and boatman, and so grew up in a simple context. He shared a name with his maternal grandfather, the patriotic poet Franz Michel Felder, and also a love for his homeland and people, a flair for writing and research, as well as a nearsightedness tending almost to blindness.

In 1917, Willam was ordained a priest in Brixen, and in 1921 he received a theology degree. After some pastoral experience, he was given the role of chaplain in Andelsbuch, where he was active as a pastor and scholar until his death on January 18, 1981.

Sought out and admired by many, the writer, scholar, and anthropologist always wanted to be called a “chaplain,” because this name expressed what he always wanted to be: a priest and pastor.

Willam lived a modest life among the people, profoundly rooted in the Catholic tradition. In spite of the fact that he lived in the isolated woodland of Bregenz, he remained in continual contact with the world of scholarly theology, and in particular with many Newman scholars. He was capable of discussing mountain agriculture with the persons he met on his many walks, and also, in his study full of mountains of books, to read without problem authors in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, and Greek without the help of a dictionary. He was as familiar with modern students of nature like Heisenberg as with Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle.

Among other things, Willam succeeded in demonstrating that the derivation of Newman’s epistemology was much more Aristotelian than Platonic. This theory - which was at first strongly resisted by the experts - was later universally accepted, and the simple chaplain thus became a recognized specialist on Newman.

Willam’s work embraces 33 books and 372 writings – poems, stories, essays, reviews – published in 79 different magazines.

The 1932 volume “Das Leben Jesu im Lande und Volke Israels [The Life of Jesus in the Land and among the People of Israel],” published in ten editions and translated into twelve languages, is his masterpiece, a real and true bestseller in its day, which made Willam famous internationally.

For the writing of this book, Willam studied Jewish history deeply, and, as an anthropologist, observed for many months the practices and customs in Palestine.

His “Life of Jesus,” written before the assertion of historical-critical exegesis of the Bible, does not address the question of the historicity of the Gospels or the various linguistic and idiomatic sources of Sacred Scripture. Its aim is purely and simply that of presenting to the reader the life of Jesus, and thus also his person, beginning from the Gospels, which he brings to life through the knowledge obtained by his anthropological studies.

When Willam speaks of Jesus, he is at the same time giving us a lesson on “seeing” in the true sense of the word: he makes us see, feel, and perceive how the Lord lived and worked.

Willam was not a mere theoretician elaborating his thought independently from concrete events, and thus withdrawing progressively from reality. He did not write solely for a circle of specialists. His urgency was the religious formation of the people. This urgency was derived from his unique love for and closeness to the common man; he succeeded in uniting a lucid spirit with a straightforward and understandable language.

A biographer of Pope Benedict XVI has written: “Simplicity is part of his nature. Haughty detachment has never been his way, no matter how complex the theological problems facing him.”

The fruit of simplicity is a clear view of the essential. And this is exactly what Willam shared with Ratzinger, who in citing him in the preface to “Jesus of Nazareth” justly spares him from oblivion.