Ratzinger on protestantizing liturgists and their repudiation of Trent

Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, edited by Alcuin Reid, OSB (Farnborough, Hampshire, UK: St. Michael's Abbey Press, 2003) offers many revealing insights into Cardinal Ratzinger's views on the contemporary liturgical scene. Some of his remarks are startling in their implications. For example, commenting on the views of the liturgical revisionists during and after the Second Vatican Council, he remarks:

"A sizeable party of Catholic liturgists seems to have practically arrived at the conclusion that Luther, rather than Trent, was substantially right in the sixteenth century debate.... [O]ne can detect much the same position in the post-conciliar discussions on the priesthood."

Again, he refers to theologians who share Luther's opinion that it is "the most appalling horror and damnable impiety to speak of the sacrifice of the Mass," and remarks:

"It is only against this background of the effective denial of the authority of Trent, that the bitterness of the struggle against allowing the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal, after the liturgical reform, can be understood. The possibility of so celebrating constitutes the most intolerable contradiction of the opinion of those who believe that the faith in the Eucharist formulated by Trent has lost its value."

Again, Ratzinger observes:

"The serious nature of these theories comes from the fact that frequently they pass immediately into practice. The thesis according to which it is the community itself which is the subject of the liturgy, serves as an authorization to manipulate the liturgy according to each individual's understanding of it. So-called new discoveries and the forms which follow from them, are diffused with an astonishing rapidity and with a degree of conformity which has long ceased to exist where the norms of ecclesiastical authority are concerned. Theories, in the area of the liturgy, are transformed rapidly today into practice, and practice, in turn, creates or destroys ways of behaving and thinking.

"...Trent did not make a mistake; it leant for support on the solid foundation of the Tradition of the Church. It remains a trustworthy standard.

"One thing should be clear: the liturgy must not be a terrain for experimenting with theological hypotheses. Too rapidly, in these last decades, the ideas of experts have entered into liturgical practice, often also bypassing ecclesiastical authority, through the channel of commissions which have been able to diffuse at an international level their 'consensus of the moment,' and practically turn it into laws for liturgical activity. The liturgy derives its greatness from what it is, not from what we make of it. Our participation is, off course, necessary, but as a means of inserting ourselves humbly into the spirit of the liturgy, and of serving Him Who is the true subject of the liturgy: Jesus Christ. The liturgy is not an expression of the consciousness of the community which, in any case, is diffuse and changing. It is revelation received in faith and prayer, and its measure is consequently the faith of the Church, in which revelation is received."

Read more below:

• "The Novus Ordo: a workshop of perpetual innovation?" (click here)
• "Vatican II should not have ignored Pius XII's Mediator Dei" (click here)
• "Where art thou, O liturgical beauty and holiness?" (click here)
• "On the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum and the institutionalization of abuses in the Novus Ordo" (click here)