"every theology which no longer facilitates petitionary prayer, and hence thanksgiving, is a fraud."

     Nikolaus Prinz von Lobkowicz, Am Ende aller Religion?  Ein Streitgespräch (Zurich:  Edition Interfrom, 1976), 17, as translated and quoted in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "On the theological basis of prayer and liturgy," in Feast of faith:  approaches to a theology of the liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco:  Ignatius, 1986), 13.  Ratzinger himself:  "we are obliged to state firmly that this [(i.e. the position adopted by Lobkowicz's interlocutor, Fr. Anselm Hertz, O.P.)] is not Christian theology. . . .  To delete prayer and dialogue, genuine two-way dialogue, is to delete the whole Bible" (16).
     I will admit, however, to being rather disappointed with how Ratzinger addresses, in the end, the whole question of "3. Answers to prayer" (31-32).  One would have to read, in more detail, what he has to say on the subject of miracle, I think, to be assured that p. 32 isn't just a dodge akin, in some ways, to Hertz' own (cf. Hasenhüttl on pp. 14-15).  I can see how it wouldn't have to be if the "love-causality" of which he speaks is indeed powerful (it resulted in the Resurrection, after all), if it is capable of "us[ing] and adopt[ing]" "the world's mechanical causality" to great effect.  The problem is just that Ratzinger just doesn't say enough here, doesn't give us a conclusion that has been developed enough to stand over and against his anti-Hertzian introduction.