Ratzinger has always been a progressive and is to this day. A truly brilliant, brilliant man after the mind of the early Church fathers.
Here are a few interviews with sources that provide some insight.
(1) O Estado de Sao Paulo - What are the more significant differences between the Ratzinger of Vatican II and the Ratzinger of today? Who changed more: you or the Church?
Cardinal Ratzinger – I do not see a real, profound difference between my work at Vatican Council II and my present day work. While preparing this course for Bishops, I went to review a course of ecclesiology that I taught for the first time in 1956. Naturally, I found elements that needed to be updated. But as for the fundamental vision, I found a profound similarity. What I proposed to the Bishops in Rio de Janeiro (in this trip) was the same fundamental vision that I set out (then).
(Interview with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger by Walter Falceta, Jr, ‘Acao pastoral requer espiritualidade’ in O Estado de S. Paulo, July 29, 1990)
***(2)***If one is looking for a global diagnosis of the text [of Gaudium et spes], one could say that it (along with the texts on religious liberty and world religions) is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter-Syllabus …
Undoubtedly, many things have changed since then. The new ecclesiastical policy of Pius XI established a certain openness toward the liberal conception of the State. In a silent but persevering combat, Exegesis and Church History increasingly adopted the postulates of liberal science; on the other hand, in face of the great political upheavals of the 20th century, Liberalism was obliged to accept notable corrections.
This happened because, first in central Europe, conditioned by the situation, the unilateral dependence on the positions taken by the Church through the initiatives of Pius IX and Pius X against the new period of History opened by the French Revolution was to a large extent corrected via facti. But a fundamental new document regarding relations with the world as it had been since 1789 was still lacking.
In reality, the mentality that preceded the revolution still reigned in the countries with strong Catholic majorities; today almost no one denies that the Spanish and Italian concordats [accords between Church and State] tried to conserve too many things from a conception of the world that for a long time had not corresponded to reality. Likewise, almost no one can deny that this dependence on an obsolete conception of relations between the Church and State was matched by similar anachronisms in the domain of education and the attitude taken toward the modern historical-critical method …
Let us content ourselves here with stating that the text [of Gaudium et spes] plays the role of a counter-Syllabus to the measure that it represents an attempt to officially reconcile the Church with the world as it had become after 1789. On one hand, this visualization alone clarifies the ghetto complex that we mentioned before. On the other hand, it permits us to understand the meaning of this new relationship between the Church and the Modern World. “World” is understood here, at depth, as the spirit of modern times. The consciousness of being a detached group that existed in the Church viewed this spirit as something separate from herself and, after the hot as well as cold wars were over, she sought dialogue and cooperation with it.
(Les Principes de la Theologie Catholique - Esquisse et Materiaux, Paris: Tequi, 1982, pp. 426-427).
(3) The text [of the document Instruction on the Theologian’s Ecclesial Vocation] also presents the various types of bonds that rise from the different degrees of magisterial teaching. It affirms - perhaps for the first time with this clarity - that there are decisions of the magisterium that cannot be the last word on the matter as such, but are, in a substantial fixation of the problem, above all an expression of pastoral prudence, a kind of provisorial disposition. The nucleus remains valid, but the particulars, which the circumstances of the times influenced, may need further correction.
In this regard, one may think of the declarations of Popes in the last century [19th century] about religious liberty, as well as the anti-Modernist decisions at the beginning of this century, above all, the decisions of the Biblical Commission of the time [on evolutionism]. As a cry of alarm in the face of hasty and superficial adaptations, they will remain fully justified. A personage such as Johann Baptist Metz said, for example, that the Church’s anti-Modernist decisions render the great service of preserving her from falling into the liberal-bourgeois world. But in the details of the determinations they contain, they became obsolete after having fulfiled their pastoral mission at their proper time.
(Joseph Ratzinger, “Instruction on the Theologian’s Ecclesial Vocation,” published with the title “Rinnovato dialogo fra Magistero e Teologia,” in L’Osservatore Romano, June 27, 1990, p. 6)
(4) … Ratzinger has always been for an advanced position and openness.
I have known him for a long time, since he was a professor, and I can assure you that he did not change.
Everyone says the opposite, that there are two Ratzingers: one before he came to Rome, and a different one later.
To the contrary, he has always remained the same!
(Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Viaggio nel Postconcilio”, interview with Angelo Scola, 30 Giorni, November 1985, p. 16.
