John Paul II sought to steer the Catholic faithful away from what, in the heady days of the 1970’s, was called Liberation Theology. Benedict XVI, also, observes, in passing, the dangers of politicising Christianity. There is a particularly illuminating reference to the release of ‘the concrete political and social realm from theocratic legislation’, and its transferrence ‘to the freedom of man’. He actually sees this (in the chapter on the Sermon on the Mount) in the preceding Jewish context. He could have placed it in the Hellenistic culture to which the development was more centrally related — it was the Greeks whose genius rejected the theocratic monarchies of the East, and who humanised politics. The Pope’s conclusion is correct, however; when he writes that ‘discipleship of Jesus offers no politically concrete programme for structuring society’, and that Jesus’ liberation of humanity involved a recognition that ‘political arrangements are no longer treated as sacred law’ — he leads us, instead, to ‘the underlying communion of will with God’ as the essential core of Christian truth. ‘In our day, of course,’ Benedict XVI adds with regret, because of the wasted opportunities for true spiritual formation, ‘this freedom has been totally wrenched away from any godly perspective.’ This study is lucidly and simply written, and with no sacrifice of intellectual gravitas or accessibility. The author hastens to point out that it is not an exercise of the magisterium: it is not infallible teaching. In that, at any rate, it differs from the certainties which the liberals often claim for their beliefs. The present volume is actually ten chapters, and the rest will be published later — since, as the Pope states bluntly, he does not know if he will last long enough to finish the work. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings with the falling of the dusk.

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