With the election of Pope Benedict XVI, his theology came into focus within ecclesiological attention. As a result, this work also received renewed consideration. In 2005, a second, corrected, and expanded edition was published in four times the volume of the original edition; just two years later, Ignatius Press released an Anglo-American translation titled Joseph Ratzinger - Life in the Church and Living Theology. The author, who has received multiple awards—including the Cardinal Innitzer Promotion Prize in Vienna and the Johann-Kaspar-Zeuss Prize in Kronach—was honored in 2011 in the Vatican by Pope Benedict XVI as the first German-speaking theologian to receive the Premio Joseph Ratzinger. In the preface to the third edition of his monograph, the author expands the approach to Joseph Ratzinger's ecclesiology by linking it to the political and social realities of modernity. Charting this dialogue is a desideratum to reveal the missionary mandate of the Church.