Hans Urs von Balthasar “had not participated in the event of the Council. Considering the contribution that he could have made, one must admit a great loss. But there was also a good side to his absence. Balthasar was able to view the whole from a distance, and this gave him an independence and clarity of judgment which would have been impossible had he spent four years experiencing the event from within. . . . From the very beginning, Balthasar perceived with great acuity the process by which relevance became more important than truth. He opposed it with the inexorability characteristic of his thought and faith. More and more we are recognizing that The Moment of Christian Witness (Cordula oder der Ernstfall), which first appeared in 1966, is a classic of impartial polemics. This work worthily joins the great polemical works of the Fathers, which taught us to differentiate gnosis from Christianity. . . . This book accomplished exactly what Balthasar had described in 1972 as the task of Communio: ‘It is not a matter of bravado, but of Christian courage, to expose oneself to risk.’ He had made himself vulnerable with the hope that these trumpet blasts would herald a return to the real subject matter of theological thinking” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger).