Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger Appoints Dr. Michael Waldstein
to Vatican Lectionary Working Group
(Winter 1998-1999 Newsletter)
 The
editors of the National Catholic Reporter thought he
was somebody people should know about. They put him on the
cover of their September 25, 1998 issue and declared that
most of America's 60 million Catholics probably never had
heard of him. He will "touch their lives every time they
go to Mass." Indeed, "beginning in Advent, when
the word of God is proclaimed from American pulpits, it will
be a version of the word strongly influenced by the 43-year-old
Austrian intellectual." The scholar in question: Dr.
Michael Waldstein, a 1977 graduate of Thomas Aquinas College.
Waldstein served on the elite Vatican working
group that approved the final version of the American Lectionary,
that is, the collection of Bible readings for Mass. The work
of the group was pivotal, because it had rejected a number
of proposed translations recommended by a group of American
scholars appointed by the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops. Many of the proposed translations were seen as vehicles
to impose a gender-neutral view of Scripture. The Vatican,
led in part by Waldstein, made its own independent review
of the translations.
Waldstein is President of the International
Theological Institute on Marriage and Family, in Gaming, Austria,
an academy initiated by Pope John Paul II himself. Waldstein
had befriended Cardinals Joseph Ratzinger and Christopher
Schönborn while pursuing his license in Sacred Scripture
at the Biblicum (or Institute for Biblical Studies) which
he completed in 1984, graduating summa cum laude. Cardinal
Schönborn had been one of the chief architects of the
Catholic Catechism before his appointment as Cardinal Archbishop
of Vienna.
Following his graduation from Thomas Aquinas
College, Waldstein obtained his doctorate in philosophy at
the University of Dallas before heading to the Biblicum. From
Rome, he enrolled in the highly-selective Th.D. program in
New Testament and Christian Origins at Harvard University.
After finishing his doctorate in Theology at Harvard in 1988,
he was hired in the University of Notre Dame's Liberal Studies
program, where he earned tenure in 1996. He left to assume
the helm of the Institute in Gaming, and it was from there
that Cardinal Ratzinger asked him to serve on the Lectionary
working group.
Waldstein's connections with the College
are still strong. He gave a lecture at the College in December,
and his oldest child, Johannes, is currently a freshman. His
wife Susie (née Burnham) graduated in 1978. They reside
in Gaming with their seven children. Waldstein credits the
College with giving him the intellectual habits that have
allowed him to succeed in modern biblical scholarship. He
consulted closely with College faculty in forming the curriculum
for his Institute and many graduates of the College have pursued
graduate studies there. We should expect him to be on more
covers of more periodicals in years to come.
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