Cardinal Ratzinger on true consciousness in liturgical matters

 

"For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this [older] liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one trust her at present if things are that way?"

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), p. 416.

Cardinal Ratzinger on the 9th Station of the Cross

 

 

NINTH STATION

Jesus falls for the third time

V/. Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi.

R/. Quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum.

From the Book of Lamentations. 3:27-32

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when he has laid it on him; let him put his mouth in the dust - there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off for ever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

MEDITATION

 

by Joseph Ratzinger

What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us?

 

We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church?

 

How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts!

 

How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there!

 

How often is his Word twisted and misused!

 

What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words!

 

How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!

 

How much pride, how much self-complacency!

 

What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall!

 

All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison ­ Lord, save us (cf. Mt 8: 25).

PRAYER

Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side.

 

In your field we see more weeds than wheat.

 

The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion.

 

Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures.

 

Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall.

 

When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered.

 

But you will rise again. You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up.

 

Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all.

Cardinal Ratzinger, Via Crucis, 25 March 2005, Rome.

Cardinal Ratzinger on Papal primacy

 

"Although it is not given us to halt the flight of history, to change the course of centuries, we may say, nevertheless, that what was possible for a thousand years is not impossible for Christians today.... In other words, Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on 25 July 1967, on the occasion of the Pope's visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one also presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more.

Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had."

Report: Cardinal Ratzinger Admitted Third Secret Not Fully Revealed

 

Report: Cardinal Ratzinger Admitted
Third Secret Not Fully Revealed

Secret Warns of "Bad Council and Bad Mass"

by John Vennari

Father Ingo Dollinger is an elderly German priest, professor of theology in Brazil, and a personal friend of former Pope Benedict XVI.

Father Dollinger stated on more than one occasion that Cardinal Ratzinger admitted to him the full Third Secret is not yet revealed, and the Secret warns against a “bad Council and a bad Mass.”

The Fatima Crusader reported this on a number of occasions, most pointedly in 2009. This news regarding the Third Secret was recently re-confirmed by Dr. Maike Hickson on May 15.

Dr. Hickson, who knows Father Dollinger, telephoned the priest on Pentecost Sunday, and he gave her permission to publicly report the following facts:

“Not long after the June 2000 publication of the Third Secret of Fatima by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told Father Dollinger during an in-person conversation that there is still part of the Third Secret that they have not published! ‘There is more than what we published,’ Ratzinger said. He also told Dollinger that the published part of the Secret is authentic and that the unpublished part of the Secret speaks about ‘a bad council and a bad Mass’ that was to come in the near future.”

This statement by Father Dollinger was formerly related in the May 2009 issue of The Fatima Crusader by Father Paul Kramer.

According to Father Kramer’s account, Cardinal Ratzinger revealed to Father Dollinger as far back as the early 1990s that the Secret warned against a bad Council and against changes in the Mass.

Yet the text published by the Vatican on June 26, 2000 makes no mention of these specific warnings.

Father Kramer explained: “The elderly German priest, Ratingzer’s long-time personal friend, took note of the fact that when the vision of the Third Secret was published it did not contain those things, those elements of the Third Secret that Cardinal Razinger had revealed to him nearly ten years earlier. The German priest – Father Dollinger – told me that this question was burning in his mind.”

Father Kramer continues, “Father Dollinger said to me, ‘I confronted Cardinal Ratzinger to his face: ‘How can this be the entire Third Secret? Remember what you told me before?''”

Cardinal Ratzinger replied, “Really, there is something more there,” meaning there is more in the Third Secret than what the Vatican revealed.

Father Nicholas Gruner referred to this episode from Father Dollinger on more than one occasion, including a speech published in The Fatima Crusader in Autumn, 2009.

Crisis of Faith

Even if one wants to question whether the Third Secret actually mentions the Mass and the Council, there appears to be no doubt that the missing part of the Secret speaks of "dangers threatening the Faith." For years prior to the Year 2000 release of the vision of the Secret, Father Gruner’s Fatima Center repeatedly published testimony from Fatima experts and witnesses who relate that the Third Secret predicts a great crisis of Faith in the Church. Here are but a few examples:

Father Alonso

Father Joaquim Alonso, who was the official archivist of Fatima and had many conversations with Sister Lucia, said the following prior to his death in 1981:

“It is therefore completely probable that the text makes concrete references to the crisis of faith within the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves [and the] internal struggles in the very bosom of the Church and of grave pastoral negligence of the upper hierarchy.”¹

And further,

“Does the unpublished text speak of concrete circumstances? It is very possible that it speaks not only of a real crisis of faith in the Church during this in-between period [that is, prior to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary], but like the secret of La Salette, for example, there are more concrete references to the internal struggles of the Catholics or to the fall of priests and religious. Perhaps it even refers to the failures of the upper hierarchy of the Church. For that matter, none of this is foreign to communications Sister Lucia has had on this subject.”²

Cardinal Ratzinger

Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave an interview in Jesus magazine on November 11, 1984. In this famous exchange, titled “Here is Why the Faith was in Crisis,” Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of the crisis of faith and of the Third Secret. Here he revealed that the Secret refers to “dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian and therefore [the life] of the world.”

The Cardinal further noted that “the things contained in this ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and what has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions…”

Bishop Amaral

Bishop Amaral – the third Bishop of Fatima – likewise relates that the Secret warns of dangers to the Faith. In a speech in Vienna, Austria, on September 10, 1984, the bishop said,

“Its contents concern only our faith. To identity the [Third] Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of nations; and it is true that the faith is continually diminishing in Europe.”³ [emphasis added]

Cardinal Oddi

Silvio Cardinal Oddi gave the following testimony to Italian journalist Lucio Brunelli on March 17, 1990, for the journal Il Sabato:

“It [the Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against the apostasy in the Church.”

Cardinal Ciappi

Then there is the oft-quoted testimony of Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi, who was personal papal theologians to five popes – Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II. The Cardinal wrote the following in a personal communication to Professor Baumgartner in Salzburg:

“In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”⁴

Warnings from Sister Lucia

We close with some quick observations from Sister Lucia, where she warns of the diabolic disorientation of members of the upper hierarchy, and she calls upon Catholics to “stand up against it.”

The full Secret, Sister Lucia had told us, was supposed to be revealed at the time of her death or in 1960, whichever came first.

In 1960, however, the Secret was not released, and Sister Lucy was silenced. She was not allowed to speak about anything not yet published on the Message of Fatima without prior authorization of the Vatican.

Yet, in 1957, and in the late 60s and early 70s, the years “bracketing” 1960 wherein the Secret should have been released, Sister Lucy seemed to indicate what the Secret contained. In these statements, Sister Lucy speaks of the devil gaining power over priests and consecrated souls. She speaks of the diabolic disorientation infecting the upper hierarchy.

In her 1957 conversation with Father Fuentes, her last public interview that was not pre-approved by the Vatican, Sister Lucy said: “The devil is about to wage a decisive battle with the Blessed Virgin, as he knows what it is that offends God the most, and which in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything to overcome souls consecrated to God, because in this way he will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.”

More than a decade later, Sister Lucy denounced the progressivist forces in the Church seeking to downplay and suppress the Rosary. “This campaign is diabolical,” she wrote in 1969 to one of her priest-nephews, “do not let yourself be deceived.” This is from the 1973 book, Uma Vida ao Serviço de Fátima, Chapter 6, “Um Pequeno Tratado, da Vidente, sobre a Natureza e Recitação do Terço”, containing excerpts from letters of Sister Lucy written between 1969-1971.

In these letters, she also voiced strong words about the leadership in the Church following Vatican II. She wrote in 1970 to Mother Martins, a former companion in the Dorothean Sisters: “It is painful to see such a great disorientation in so many who occupy places of responsibility ... the devil has succeeded in infiltrating evil under cover of good, and the blind are beginning to guide others, as the Lord tells us in His Gospel, and souls are letting themselves be deceived.”

It is noteworthy that in 1957, Sister Lucy said the devil was about to wage a decisive battle. By 1971, she says the devil has begun to succeed.

“Gladly,” Sister Lucy continued, “I sacrifice myself and offer my life to God for peace in His Church, for priests and for all consecrated souls, especially for those who are so deceived and misled ... he (the devil) has succeeded in leading into error and deceiving souls having a heavy responsibility through the place which they occupy ... They are blind men guiding other blind men.”

“Stand up to it”

It is no mystery why Sister Lucy was silenced. A voice as powerful as hers making such statements, a voice loved and respected as Our Lady’s chosen vessel, would threaten the entire post-Conciliar aggiornamento.

The contemplative Carmelite accepted her imposition of silence. She understood it as Heaven’s chosen path for her. “I must remain in silence, in prayer and in penance,” Sister Lucy said in a 1970 letter to her friend Dona Maria Theresa da Cunha. “In this way, I can and must help you the most ... such is the part the Lord has chosen for me: to pray and sacrifice myself for those who struggle to work in the Lord’s vineyard and for the extension of His Kingdom.”

Those of us outside the Carmel, however, she exhorted to battle: “This is a diabolic disorientation invading the world and misleading souls! It is necessary to stand up to it …”

Sister Lucia’s marching orders reconfirm our duty as Catholics. We keep the true Faith, the true Mass, the daily Rosary, and publicly resist the destructive Conciliar aggiornamento in any legitimate manner we can.

¹ The Whole Truth About Fatima, Vol. III, p. 704.

² Ibid, p. 705.

³ Fatima, Tragedy and Triumph, pp. 243-244.

⁴ Referenced from The Devil’s Final Battle [Second Edition, 2010], p. 36.

Ratzinger on the Church of the Future

"From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much.

 

She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

 

She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity.

 

As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision.

As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.

 

Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion.

 

Alongside this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly.

But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world.

 

In faith and prayer she will again recognize her true center and experience the sacraments again as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right.

 

It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystalization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy.

 

It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek.

The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed.

 

One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism of the eve of the French Revolution—when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain—to the renewal of the nineteenth century.

But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.

Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty.

 

Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new.

 

They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times.

 

The real crisis has scarcely begun.

 

We will have to count on terrific upheavals.

 

But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already with Gobel, but the Church of faith.

 

She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death."

Father Joseph Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, (published originally in German in 1970 as Glaube und Zukunft), republished by the Vatican Press in 2006.

Ratzinger on Kneeling

It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture—insofar as it is a culture,
for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the One
before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture.
The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no
longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost,
kneeling must be rediscovered, so that, in our prayer, we remain in fellowship
with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in
union with Jesus Christ Himself.

Joseph, Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 194.

Ratzinger on the resurrection of the body

 

“It now becomes clear that the real heart of faith in the resurrection does not consist at all in the idea of the restoration of bodies, to which we have reduced it in our thinking; such is the case even though this is the pictorial image used throughout the Bible.”

“The foregoing reflections may have clarified to some extent what is involved in the biblical pronouncements about the resurrection: their essential content is not the conception of a restoration of bodies to souls after a long interval…”

 

“To recapitulate, Paul teaches, not the resurrection of physical bodies, but the resurrection of persons…”

Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity, 2004, pp. 349, 353, 357-358

Cardinal Ratzinger on ad orientem

“To the ordinary churchgoer, the two most obvious effects of the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council seem to be the disappearance of Latin and the turning of the altars towards the people. Those who read the relevant texts will be astonished to learn that neither is in fact found in the decrees of the Council. The use of the vernacular is certainly permitted, especially for the Liturgy of the Word, but the preceding general rule of the Council text says, ‘Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36.1). There is nothing in the Council text about turning altars towards the people; that point is raised only in postconciliar instructions.”

Uwe Michael Lang, “Turning towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer,” Foreword by Joseph Ratzinger, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2004.

Cardinal Ratzinger on the Logos

"Christianity must always remember that it is the religion of the Logos. It is faith in the Creator Spiritus, (Creator Spirit), from which proceeds everything that exists. Today, this should be precisely its philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not, therefore, other than a 'sub-product,' on occasion even harmful of its development, or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal. The Christian faith inclines toward this second thesis, thus having, from the purely philosophical point of view, really good cards to play, despite the fact that many today consider only the first thesis as the only modern and rational one par excellence. However, a reason that springs from the irrational, and that is, in the final analysis, itself irrational, does not constitute a solution for our problems. Only creative reason, which in the crucified God is manifested as love, can really show us the way. In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the Logos, from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational." 

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1 April 2005.

Cardinal Ratzinger on Liturgy - 3

Missale Romanum

"I was dumbfounded upon hearing about the interdiction of the old Missal, since such a move had never been seen in the entire history of Catholic liturgy. The impression was given that this was all quite normal. The previous Missal had been realized by Pope St. Pius V, in 1570, immediately following the Council of Trent (1545-1563); it was therefore considered normal that, after 400 years and a new Council, a new Pope should therefore also publish a new Missal. However, the historical truth is another matter altogether. Pius V had limited himself to republishing the Roman Missal then in use just as it had always been down through the centuries of history. Also, many of his successors, following his example, had also had the Missal republished, without ever opposing one Missal to another. It has always been a continuing process of historical growth and purification in which, however, essential continuity had never been destroyed. There does not exist, nor has there ever existed, a Missal completely made up by Pius V. There was only a new elaboration ordered by him, constituting merely a phase in a long process of historical growth.

Following the Council of Trent, the new reality was of a quite different nature: the eruption of the Protestant "reform" had occurred especially under the form of liturgical "reforms"...; so much so, in fact, that the limits between that which was still Catholic and that which was no longer so, were often difficult to define. In such a confused state of affairs, resulting from a lack of uniform liturgical norms, together with a liturgical plurality inherited from the Middle Ages, the Pope decided that the Missale Romanum, that is, the liturgical text then in use in Rome, was to be introduced everywhere that there existed a liturgy dating back to less than 200 years previously. The reason for this was that the timeless Roman liturgy was most assuredly Catholic in every sense of the term. Wherever it could be done, the preceding liturgy (i.e., that dating back 200 years or more) was allowed to be maintained since its truly Catholic character could be considered to be absolutely certain."  - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, La mia vita, pp. 111, 112.

Ratzinger on Modernism

“The text was, if one may use the label, utterly the product of the 'anti-Modernist' mentality that had taken shape about the turn of the century. The text was written in a spirit of condemnation and negation, which ... had a frigid and even offensive tone to many of the Fathers. And this despite the fact that the content of the text was new to no one. It was exactly like dozens of text-books familiar to the bishops from their seminary days: and in some cases, their former professors were actually responsible for the texts now presented to them.”

...

“The real question behind the discussion can be put this way: Was the intellectual position of ‘anti-Modernism’ — the old policy of exclusiveness, condemnation and defense leading to an almost neurotic denial of all that was new — to be continued? Or would the Church, after it had taken all the necessary precautions to defend the Faith, turn over a new leaf and move on into a new and positive encounter with its own origins, with its brothers and with the world today?”

Father Jospeh Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, (1966, pp. 17-18)

Ratzinger on Gaudium et Spes

If it is desirable to offer a diagnosis of the text (Gaudium et Spes) as a whole, we might say that (in conjunction with the texts on religious liberty, and world religions) it is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of countersyllabus ... Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. … the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was, to a large extent, corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789. In fact, an attitude that was largely pre-revolutionary continued to exist in countries with strong Catholic majorities. Hardly anyone will deny today that the Spanish and Italian Concordat strove to preserve too much of a view of the world that no longer corresponded to the facts. Hardly anyone will deny today that, in the field of education and with respect to the historico-critical method in modern science, anachronisms existed that corresponded closely to this adherence to an obsolete Church-state relationship.

 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381-382.

Cardinal Ratzinger on Liturgy - 2

“For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one trust her present if things are that way? I must say, quite openly, that I don’t understand why so any of my episcopal brethren have to a great extent submitted to this rule of intolerance, which for no apparent reason is opposed to making the necessary inner reconciliations within the Church.”

God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002, p. 416.

Ratzinger on Silence in Liturgy

"We are realizing more and more clearly that silence is part of the liturgy. We respond, by singing and praying, to the God who addresses us, but the greater mystery, surpassing all words, summons us to silence. It must, of course, be a silence with content, not just the absence of speech and action. We should expect the liturgy to give us a positive stillness that will restore us. Such stillness will not be just a pause, in which a thousand thoughts and desires assault us, but a time of recollection, giving us an inward peace, allowing us to draw breath and rediscover the one thing necessary, which we have forgotten. That is why silence cannot be simply “made”, organized as if it were one activity among many. It is no accident that on all sides people are seeking techniques of meditation, a spirituality for emptying the mind. One of man’s deepest needs is making its presence felt, a need that is manifestly not being met in our present form of the liturgy. For silence to be fruitful, as we have already said, it must not be just a pause in the action of the liturgy. No, it must be an integral part of the liturgical event." 

Josef Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p. 209.

Ratzinger on Spontaneity and Creativity in Liturgy

The great­ness of the liturgy depends — we shall have to repeat this frequently — on its unspontaneity (Unbeliebigkeit) …. Only respect for the liturgy’s fundamental unspontaneity and pre-existing identity can give us what we hope for: the feast in which the great reality comes to us that we ourselves do not manufacture but receive as a gift. This means that “creativity” cannot be an authentic category for matters liturgical. In any case, this is a word that developed within the Marxist world view. Creativity means that in a universe that in itself is meaningless and came into existence through blind evolution, man can creatively fashion a new and better world.

Modern theo­ries of art think in terms of a nihilistic kind of creativity. Art is not meant to copy anything. Artistic creativity is under the free mastery of man, without being bound by norms or goals and subject to no questions of meaning. It may be that in such visions a cry for freedom is to be heard, a cry that in a world totally in the control of technology becomes a cry for help. Seen in this way, art appears as the final refuge of freedom. True, art has something to do with freedom, but freedom understood in the way we have been describing is empty. It is not redemptive, but makes despair sound like the last word of human existence. This kind of creativity has no place within the liturgy. The life of the liturgy does not come from what dawns upon the minds of individuals and plan­ning groups. On the contrary, it is God’s descent upon our world, the source of real liberation. He alone can open the door to freedom. The more priests and faithful humbly surrender themselves to this descent of God, the more “new” the liturgy will constantly be, and the more true and personal it becomes. Yes, the liturgy becomes personal, true, and new, not through tomfoolery and ba­nal experiments with the words, but through a coura­geous entry into the great reality that through the rite is always ahead of us and can never quite be overtaken.  

Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p. 170

Ratzinger on the Orthodox Church

“Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than what had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium . . . Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.”

Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, San Francisco, Ignatius, 1987, p. 199.

Ratzinger on Latin in Liturgy

I would be in favour of a new openness toward the use of Latin. Latin in the Mass has come meanwhile to look to us like a fall from grace. So that, in any case, communication is ruled out that is very necessary in areas of mixed culture... Let's think of tourist centers, where it would be lovely for people to recognize each other in something they have in common. So we ought to keep such things alive and present. If even in the great liturgical celebrations in Rome, no one can sing the Kyrie or the Sanctus any more, no one knows what Gloria means, then a cultural loss has become a loss of what we share in common. To that extent I should say that the Liturgy of the Word should always be in the mother tongue, but there ought nonetheless to be a basic stock of Latin elements that would bind us together. 

Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World, SF, CA: Ignatius, 2002, pp. 417-18

Ratzinger on Liturgical Dancing

Liturgical dancing group for girls, at Sacred Heart Cathedral, New Castle, Australia (May 2014).

Dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy. In about the third century, there was an attempt in certain Gnostic-Docetic circles to introduce it into the liturgy. For these people, the Crucifixion was only an ap­pearance. Before the Passion, Christ had abandoned the body that in any case he had never really assumed. Danc­ing could take the place of the liturgy of the Cross, be­cause, after all, the Cross was only an appearance. The cultic dances of the different religions have different pur­poses—incantation, imitative magic, mystical ecstasy— none of which is compatible with the essential purpose of the liturgy of the “reasonable sacrifice”. It is totally absurd to try to make the liturgy “attractive” by introducing dancing pantomimes (wherever possible performed by professional dance troupes), which frequently (and rightly, from the professionals’ point of view) end with applause. 

Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attrac­tiveness fades quickly—it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation. I myself have expe­rienced the replacing of the penitential rite by a dance performance, which, needless to say, received a round of applause. Could there be anything farther removed from true penitence? Liturgy can only attract people when it looks, not at itself, but at God, when it allows him to enter and act. Then something truly unique happens, beyond competition, and people have a sense that more has taken place than a recreational activity. None of the Christian rites includes dancing.  [The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p. 198]

Cardinal Ratzinger on the Christian Faith

The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time. “Always” can only come from “once for all”. The Church does not pray in some kind of mythical omnitemporality. She cannot forsake her roots. She recognizes the true utterance of God precisely in the concreteness of its history, in time and place: to these God ties us, and by these we are all tied together. The diachronic aspect, praying with the Fathers and the apostles, is part of what we mean by rite, but it also includes a local aspect, extending from Jerusalem to Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Rites are not, therefore, just the products of inculturation, how­ever much they may have incorporated elements from different cultures. They are forms of the apostolic Tradition and of its unfolding in the great places of the Tradition

Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA, Ignatius, 2000), p. 164.

Order of Saint John - useful documents

Starting from this month, this Blog will provide a number of documents from the Archives of the Order of Saint John, also known as the Knights of Malta.

Quotes from Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI will continue to feature from time to time.