Passages I underlined when I first read The Ratzinger Report 15 or so years ago

[from Vittorio Messori's first chapter introduction] A young colleague of his in Rome told us of the intense life of prayer with which he checks the danger of being transformed into a bureaucrat who mechanically signs decrees, who does not concern himself with the humanity of the persons involved. "Often", said the young man, "he assembles us in the chapel of the palace for meditation and common prayer. He is constantly aware of the need to let our daily, often thankless work in dealing with the 'pathology of faith' become firmly rooted in a lived Christianity.'"

Are you proposing, perhaps, a return to the old spirit of “opposition to the world”?

“It is not Christians who oppose the world, but rather the world which opposes itself to them when the truth about God, about Christ and about man is proclaimed. The world waxes indignant when sin and grace are called by their names. After the phase of indiscriminate ‘openness’ it is time that the Christian reacquire the consciousness of belonging to a minority and of often being in opposition to what is obvious, plausible and natural for that mentality which the New Testament calls – and certainly not in a positive sense – the ‘spirit of the world’. It is time to find again the courage of nonconformism, the capacity to oppose many of the trends of the surrounding culture, renouncing a certain euphoric post-conciliar solidarity.” [pg. 36]

“I believe, rather, that the true time of Vatican II has not yet come, that its authentic reception has not yet begun: its documents were quickly buried under a pile of superficial or frankly inexact publications. . . .the Catholic who clearly and, consequently, painfully perceives the damage that has been wrought in his Church by the misinterpretations of Vatican II must find the possibility of revival in Vatican II itself. The Council is his, it does not belong to those who want to continue along a road whose results have been catastrophic. It does not belong to those who, not by chance, don’t know just what to make of Vatican II, which they look upon as a ‘fossil of the clerical era’.” [pg. 40]

“But the Church of Christ is not a party, not an association, not a club. Her deep and permanent structure is not democratic but sacramental, consequently hierarchical. For the hierarchy based on the apostolic succession is the indispensable condition to arrive at the strength, the reality of the sacrament.” [pg. 49]

“In reality this kind of ‘emancipation’ of woman is in no way new. One forgets that in the ancient world all the religions also had priestesses. All except one: the Jewish. Christianity, here too following the ‘scandalous’ original example of Jesus, opens a new situation to women; it accords them a position that represents a novelty with respect to Judaism. But of the latter he preserves the exclusively male priesthood. Evidently, Christian intuition understood that the question was not secondary, that to defend Scripture (which in neither the Old nor the New Testament knows women priests) signified once more to defend the human person, especially those of the female sex.” [pgs. 94]

“The man, even the religious, despite the well-known problems, was able to make his way out of the crisis by throwing himself into work whereby he tried to discover his role anew in activity. But what is the woman to do when the roles inscribed in her own biology have been denied and perhaps even ridiculed? If her wonderful capacity to give love, help, solace, warmth, solidarity has been replaced by the economistic and trade-union mentality of the ‘profession’, by the typical masculine concern? What can the woman do when all that is most particularly hers is swept away and declared irrelevant and deviant?” [ pg. 103]

Yet during the interview he gold me, “If the place occupied by Mary has been essential to the equilibrium of the Faith, today it is urgent, as in few other epochs of Church history, to rediscover that place.” [pg. 105]

“As a young theologian in the time before (and also during) the Council, I had, as many did then and still do today, some reservations, in regard to certain ancient formulas, as, for example, that famous De Maria numquam satis, ‘concerning Mary one can never say enough.’ It seemed exaggerated to me. So it was difficult for me later to understand the true meaning of another famous expression (current in the Church since the first centuries when – after a memorable dispute – the Council of Ephesus, in 431, had proclaimed Mary Theotokos, Mother of God). The declaration, namely, that designated the Virgin as ‘the conqueror of all heresies’. Now – in this confused period where truly every type of heretical aberration seems to be pressing upon the doors of the authentic faith – now I understand that it was not a matter of pious exaggerations, but of truths that today are more valid than ever.” [pg. 105-106]