As did his talk of "dialogue" and the need to build a "just and brotherly future". If this means that the Catholic Church under his leadership will not be immune to change and will listen more to the concerns of the faithful, then those who forecast an ultra-conservative papacy under Benedict's leadership may have been too pessimistic.More immediately hopeful was the manner in which the new Pope went out of his way to speak of reaching out to other faiths, specifically to Jews and Muslims. which will help encourage me in my role and to face the challenges of the future". He said he hoped not only to "enliven their hope", but to "receive something from them ... He chose not to kiss the ground in emulation of his globe-trotting predecessor; instead, he walked purposefully to greet the German reception committee. The new Pope's opening remarks also struck an appropriate note.
Wisely, when he first set foot on German soil yesterday, Pope Benedict sent the first signal that he would be his own man. Pope John Paul II was always going to be a hard act to follow, and the three-yearly World Youth Day was an event that had especially played to his strengths. For his scholarly successor, who lacks his personal magnetism and exuberance, it constitutes a particular challenge. It was Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, who had accepted the invitation to the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne. With his death in April, that duty fell to the former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the first German Pope of modern times. We all use history, and there is no reason why some of those purposes should not be explicitly godly.Frend's own commitment to the Church both as a contemporary institution and as a subject of study outweighs some of his apparently negative theses about its past.Stuart G Hall.
He outlines, with some autobiography interlarded, the work of the great scholars who influenced him and his ideal of freeing scientific history from dogmatic control This laudable ideal now has a dated ring to it. To understand the man, one might begin with his last book, From Dogma to History: how our understanding of the Early Church developed (2003). The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (1982) is similarly notable for its breadth of material, but was criticised for hastiness.The Rise of Christianity (1984) outlines the whole history from the beginning to AD 600, and is a splendid work of reference. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (1965) remains an indispensable compendium, but one secular specialist savaged it for errors in Roman history. In almost every case his breadth and enterprise in putting together disciplines previously kept separate were praised, and the mere scale of his output was admired.The Donatist Church (1952) remains basic, but was criticised by classicists for over-emphasis on Berber nationalism; and by theologians for underestimating the religious nature of the dispute. Frend saw himself as revolutionary: "It may well be that the archaeologist will eventually face the theologian with greater problems than those raised by Biblical criticism in the last [19th] century.