Irish Examiner 20 August 1969

A FUTURE POPE AT MAYNOOTH

When Joseph Ratzinger turned up at Maynooth in August 1969 to address the Maynooth Union Summer School, few would have predicted his eventual emergence as a major figure in church doctrine circles and ultimately a controversial Pope of the early 21st century.

His address, on ‘The Priesthood’, was well received though the contributions of some of the speakers, including Fr. Sean Freyne, were also given attention.

In the 1950s and 1960s staff members at Maynooth were able to avail of scholarships provided by the German Government to carry out post-graduate studies. Former Professor of Moral Theology Vincent Twomey, whose German educational experience came slightly later, remembers that his longtime colleague Enda McDonagh also knew Ratzinger, when Enda spent some time at the University  of Tübingen, “and even heard Ratzinger play the piano on one occasion, which privilege, for all the years I knew him, was not accorded to yours truly.”

But the future pope’s Maynooth visit in 1969 also influenced Vincent’s connection, as student and member of his alumni circle, with Ratzinger, as he recounted recently. 

“Towards the end of the summer of 1970, a short time before I was about to depart for Germany for postgraduate studies after ordination, I happened to run into Kevin McNamara, then Professor of Dogmatic Theology, and later Archbishop of Dublin, in St. Joseph’s Square. He asked me what I was going to do with myself. I told him that I was going to Münster (Westphalia), where my order (SVD) ran a university students' hostel, to perfect my German before moving to Tübingen to study under Walter Kasper. 

"When he heard this, Kevin advised me not to go to Tübingen, as the situation on the Faculty there was so bad that "a promising young German theologian,” who had impressed them all during the Maynooth Summer School the previous year, had moved to the newly established University of Regensburg. That young theologian was Joseph Ratzinger. Apparently, he had told Kevin that the tension on the Faculty in Tübingen was so bad that his academic work was suffering and so he accepted the Chair that Regensburg had offered him. 

"On hearing this, I decided not to go to Tübingen and remained in Münster. There I attended the lectures and seminar of Karl Rahner with the intention of perhaps doing my postgraduate studies under his supervision. But after a frustrating two months or so in Rahner's "Hauptseminar", I realized that I could not work under him; he had become an oracle and was uninterested in what anyone else had to say, least of all a mere student. Then I remembered my conversation with Kevin McNamara, and, having read Ratzinger's' bestseller, Introduction to Christianity, which impressed me, I decided to write to Ratzinger (still relatively unknown in the English-speaking world) to ask him, if I could study under his supervision. He agreed to interview me the following January. Arriving in Regensburg on the night-train from Münster, I got a taxi to his house on the outskirts of Regensburg early in the morning, was interviewed by him - and the rest is history. I wrote about my time with Rahner and Ratzinger in my book: Pope Benedict XVI. The Conscience of our Age: A Theological Portrait (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007)."

The journalist John Horgan, who was Religion Correspondent of the Irish Times from 1965 to 1973 before embarking on a career in politics and university education, remembers that he paid a visit to Enda and Gerry Watson (then Professor of Classics at Maynooth) in the 1960s when they were both in sabbatical in Tübingen. ‘Enda had arranged for me to interview Kung for the IT. It was a great trip. On reflection, I should have interviewed Ratzinger as well when I was there.’

So Joseph Ratzinger can be added to the list of actual (John Paul II) and future (Paul VI) popes who have visited Maynooth (Pope Francis did not include it in his short visit to Ireland in 2018).