Pope Benedict XVI on the Postconciliar Liturgical Reform: An Essay in Interpretation

Abstract

Pope Benedict XVI on the Postconciliar Liturgical Reform: An Essay in Interpretation William H. Johnston Fifty years ago the Second Vatican Council, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “launched the most extensive renewal of the Roman Rite ever known.”1 What was Pope Benedict’s assessment of and response to that renewal and the way it was carried out in the Church in the years since the Second Vatican Council? Many see that assessment as fundamentally negative. Shortly after Cardinal Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) published in 2000 his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, John Baldovin described it as a “powerful indictment of the last thirty-five years of Roman Catholic liturgy,” finding that “almost no aspect of liturgy escapes his wrathful pen.”2 More recently, Massimo Faggioli portrayed Pope Benedict’s establishment of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite through the 2007 Motu proprio on the liturgy, Summorum Pontificum, as “not far from renouncing Vatican II as such, stopping every pastoral effort aimed at receiving the liturgical reform and Vatican II through the liturgy.”3 James Sweeney also interpreted Summorum Pontificum as an action “reversing the thrust of the liturgical renewal.”4 Helen Hull Hitchcock held that Cardinal Ratzinger (and John Paul II) 1 Benedict XVI, Video Message for the Closing of the Fiftieth International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin (June 17, 2012), available at http://www. vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/pont-messages/2012/documents /hf_ben-xvi_mes_20120617_50cong-euc-dublino_en.html. 2 John Baldovin, “‘Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice’: On the Seriousness of Christian Liturgy,” Antiphon 7 (2002) 10–17, at 13. 3 Massimo Faggioli, True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2012) 144. 4 James Sweeney, “How Should We Remember Vatican II?” New Blackfriars 90 (2009) 251–260, at 254. Antiphon 17.2 (2013): 118–138 119 Pope Benedict XVI on the Postconciliar Liturgical Reform: An Essay in Interpretation judged “the post-Conciliar liturgical reform” in need of “a thorough re-evaluation.”5 The list could be lengthened. Are these views sound and accurate? It is certainly true that various of Joseph Ratzinger’s writings and statements, especially before but also after becoming pope, communicated a critical judgment regarding the liturgical reform. In his memoirs, for example, he described “the crisis in the church” in the postconciliar era as due “to a large extent…to the disintegration of the liturgy.”6 A search through his body of work for words describing results of the liturgical reform or features of its implementation can produce a strikingly negative lexicon, ranging from “banality,” “superficiality ,” and “deficiencies” to “fragmentation,” “frightening impoverishment ,” “wretchedness,” “deformation,” “disintegration,” “destruction,” “devastation,” “anarchy,” “chaos”—and the like.7 Many strong words, all pointing in the same direction. 5 Helen Hull Hitchcock, “Pope Benedict XVI and the ‘Reform of the Reform,’” in Benedict XVI and the Sacred Liturgy, ed. Neil J. Roy and Janet E. Rutherford (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010) 70–87, at 81. 6 Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998) 148. 7 For “banality,” see Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986) 100, 120–121; idem, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (New York: Crossroad, 1996) 39, and elsewhere; “superficiality,” idem, New Song, 198; “deficiencies,” idem, “The Spirit of the Liturgy or Fidelity to the Council: Response to Father Gy,” Antiphon 11 (2007) 97–102, at 99; “fragmentation,” idem, “Assessment and Future Prospects,” in Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, ed. Alcuin Reid (Farnborough: Saint Michael’s Abbey Press, 2003) 145–153, at 148; “frightening impoverishment,” Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori , The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985) 128, also Joseph Ratzinger, “Zur theologischen Grundlegung der Kirchenmusik,” in idem, Theologie der Liturgie: Die sakramentale Begründung christlicher Existenz, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 11 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2008) 501–526, at 503; “wretchedness,” idem, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000) 130; “deformation,” idem, New Song, 174; “disintegration ,” idem, Milestones, 148; “destruction,” idem, “Assessment and Future Prospects...