Many famous sentences and phrases came to mind as I read this fine collection of Joseph Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI) writings on his beloved cultural homeland, Europe. Some come from Scripture. A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country; a good shepherd goes in search of lost sheep. I think also of Shakespeare: “His life was gentle; and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’” Finally, a Nietzschean phrase (taken in a non-Nietzschean sense) regularly recurred: “a good European.”
Ratzinger was a good European. The reasons are illuminated in a new collection of his selected writings, The True Europe: Its Identity and Mission.
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