New translation project to publish Cardinal Ratzinger’s collected works in English

Some two dozen works of the late Pope Benedict XVI’s pre-papal writings will be made available in English, many for the first time, in a new translation project led by the academic division of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Vatican’s publishing house, has granted Word on Fire the exclusive English-language rights to translate and publish the collected works of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, which were written in the late pope’s native German.

Word on Fire announced the news in an Oct. 24 press release, with the nonprofit’s founder, Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minn., describing the value of the works as “inestimable.”

“They will serve future generations as a great repository not only of theological and spiritual wisdom, but of the history of a particular moment in the life of the Church,” said Bishop Barron in the statement.

Prior to his election as pope in 2005, Ratzinger, a prolific theologian and an expert witness at the Second Vatican Council, had headed up the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as well as the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Pontifical International Theological Commission, and the drafting committee of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The late pope, who stepped down in 2013 and died in 2022, specifically described his vocation as “theological,” according to his Vatican biography.

Yet only half of his works are currently available in English, Jason Paone, editor of Word on Fire Academic — one of Word on Fire’s four publishing imprints — told OSV News.

Of the 25 volumes that according to Word on Fire comprise the collected works of Ratzinger, “roughly half have never been translated into English nor published,” said Paone.

A collection of Ratzinger’s works under the title “Theology of the Liturgy” was released in English by Ignatius Press in 2014, a year after the publisher issued the late pope’s three-volume “Jesus of Nazareth” set.

Word on Fire Academic plans to work with Ignatius, as well as other publishers and institutions, to continue the series to bring all 25 volumes to the market over the next 12 years.

The series will be edited by theologian Tracey Rowland, author of “Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI” and “Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed,” and winner of the Ratzinger Prize for Theology.

Rowland admitted in the press release that the project poses “a mammoth task.”

Paone told OSV News the undertaking will require intensive collaboration among German-language translation specialists and theologians, who will strive to ensure that Ratzinger’s words are reborn into English with precision.

“Ratzinger is a terrific stylist,” said Paone, adding that “German is a particularly difficult language.

“Germans love really long sentences and nested clauses; capital (letters) are everywhere,” he said. “I think that getting any German texts — especially a complex, sophisticated, philosophical or theological German text — fully translated into English is a trick.”

At times, said Paone, “the tendency of some translators, when they’re dealing with a particularly difficult text, is to sort of just translate word for word, and create a word for word equivalence in English, which will result in like a really long sentence and some like really awkward constructions and nested clauses.

“And in English, we don’t like those long sentences … (with) a bunch of nested subordinate clauses,” he continued. “The nature of German is going to be one of the biggest obstacles.”

Ratzinger himself “is a sophisticated thinker and some of his works are particularly difficult, full of citations to works in German, some of which have been translated, others haven’t,” Paone added. “So we’re going to have to sort through all of those complexities.”

He noted that while some of the project’s translators may begin their work using artificial intelligence to render a rough draft of the text before an in-depth manual review, “it will take careful shepherding of the project to make sure we get all the details right.”

Rowland said in the release that bringing Ratzinger’s complete works to English-language audiences will make a “long-term contribution to Catholic scholarship” that will be “immeasurable.”

Paone told OSV News that he suspects that the late pope, as “a self-effacing man,” would be “kind of quietly pleased.”

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