Benedict XVI and the Eucharist

My brief in this paper is a modest one, to expound the distinctive eucharistic views of Pope Benedict XVI. The pope included two paragraphs on the Eucharist in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est,1 but otherwise has written nothing about the Eucharist. Joseph Ratzinger the theologian, however, has been much preoccupied by it, and it is to the views of the theologian I want to attend. The preoccupation, we should note, has largely been focussed on the phenomenon of eucharistic celebration, both as it is and as it ought to be. Eucharistic themes have been prominent in Ratzinger’s work from the start of his career – the epigraph for his dissertation on the people and House of God in Augustine’s doctrine of the Church was ‘Unus panis unum corpus sumus multi’, and as a young theologian he wrote several articles on formal aspects of eucharistic doctrine such as transubstantiation and eucharistic sacrifice, mostly in an ecumenical context in dialogue with German protestants. I shall, however, be ignoring those early writings, and will focus instead on the more controversial views