Ratzinger, Joseph. The Spirit of the Liturgy. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2020. ‘Foreword by Cardinal Robert Sarah’, ‘Preface by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’, and ‘Preface by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’.
A little over 60 years ago an event of seismic proportions occurred in the Church, the Second Vatican Council (or ‘Vatican II’). This ecumenical council was the twentieth first gathering of the bishops of the universal Church since Christ founded it.
The first two of these councils, to give an example, took place in the fourth century and provided us with the ‘Nicaean Creed’ that we often say at Mass on Sundays. Vatican II continued on this tradition of the Church. It wasn’t the first of its kind and won’t be the last.
However this council was remarkable for the number of bishops from all over the world it gathered in Rome at the invitation of Pope St John XXIII, around 2,500, for the attention it attracted not only from Catholics but also from other Christians and from many observers interested in how the Catholic Church would face the challenges of our times.
The first document that the conciliar fathers produced, before any other, was also one of the four major, most important documents of the council and it versed on the liturgy: the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy or Sacrosanctum Concilium (for its first words in Latin), promulgated by Paul VI on 4 December 1963.
Why on the liturgy, and not on other, more practical or urgent matters such as evangelisation, Christian unity, dialogue with other religions and the present world, the alleviation of poverty?
Vatican II, in the words of the council fathers, did have several goals: ‘to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church.’1
However, it seemed to them that in the endeavour to attain those goals, nothing was more important, more fundamental than the liturgy. And so their first document dealt with the reform and promotion of the liturgy.
Through the liturgy, they reflected, ‘the work of our redemption is accomplished’. The divine sacrifice of the Eucharist especially, ‘is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church.’2
To accomplish the work of our salvation, ‘Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister ...but especially under the Eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments, so that when a man baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes. He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20).’3
And so, ‘every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree.’4
Sacred liturgy ‘does not exhaust the entire activity of the Church’5, and yet ‘ the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.’6
The liturgy, in other words, is at the core of what the Church is. Our salvation happens, is done by Christ through it. It’s not a memory, it is ‘the actual thing’ happening every time. This explains the importance that the conciliar fathers gave to the liturgy, as well as the relevance for us Catholics to learn what the liturgy means and to overcome confusions and misinterpretations about it that unfortunately were made ‘in the name of Vatican II’.
Joseph Ratzinger was a young priest and a theologian. He participated in the Second Vatican Council as a peritus, a theological expert and advisor to one of the conciliar fathers, Cardinal Joseph Frings. He became a professor in theology in 1958, an Archbishop and Cardinal of Munich in 1977, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, Pope in 2005 and Pope Emeritus in 2013. His perspectives on the council in general, and on the liturgy in particular are therefore unique and of great value for the Church of today.
In his foreword to The Spirit of the Liturgy Cardinal Sarah, then still Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, points out to the importance of liturgical formation so that Catholics don’t end up regarding the liturgy as little more than empty rituals. Following an address to seminarians in Rome by Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Sarah stresses the importance of our assimilation of what the liturgy means to make our whole lives ‘a liturgy’, an exercise of adoration to God.
Ratzinger is very succinct in both prefaces. The more recent one, that he writes as Pope Emeritus, deals more with the big picture of ‘what it means to be a Catholic in the world today’, the ‘spiritual struggle’ which Ignatius Press joined in the English-speaking world. One of the decisive markers of that struggle, especially for theologians and other academics dealing with religious matters, as well as for publishers, is ‘the decision on behalf of faith that always includes the humility of obedience to the Church.’7
That statement indicates there was a camp of very bright Catholic thinkers in the same generation as the ones mentioned (von Balthasar, Bouyer, Pieper; De Lubac could be added) that decided for a different path, of controversy, defiance of the Church’s magisterium and secular popularity. This second camp included Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx, Karl Rahner and Johannes Baptist Metz.
In theology, the two camps broadly coincided with two theological journals, Communio and Concilium, the latter promoting radical post-conciliar reform to adapt the Church to the modern world, founded in 1965, the former founded in 1972 to promote both the implementation of Vatican II and continuity with tradition.
With the benefit of hindsight the pope emeritus adds that theology done with faith―obedient to the Magisterium of the Church―can ‘fearlessly oppose the spirit of the times’ because it is not subject to the constraints of worldly popularity, but also because its scope is open to ‘the full breath of truth’.8 This is because theology, like philosophy, is a discipline that deals with the whole of reality and God, and his Revelation expressed in Tradition, Scripture and Magisterium are a significant and essential part of that whole of reality.
This overall picture in terms of ‘what it means to be a Catholic’ that ensued the close of Vatican II applied even more acutely to the field of the liturgy, given its importance already explained above. The Council had asked for ‘the reform and promotion of the liturgy’9 But did this mean to break with the past and invent something new, or develop, unfold tradition drawing from its own sources?
Ratzinger explains that ‘[t]he postconciliar drama was largely marked by the battle around the correct renewal of the liturgy’ and associated with ‘the collapse of the Church’ that sociologists considered a possibility.10
Cardinal Sarah in his Foreword quotes Ratzinger as writing in 1997, ‘The Church stands and falls with the liturgy...The true celebration of the sacred liturgy is the center of any renewal of the Church...’.11 What does this mean? Do you agree? Why?
Do you think the postconciliar battle around the liturgy was also present in Australia? Which forms did it take? Is that ‘drama’ over after sixty years? Why?
Who would like to explain in their own words the comparison of the fresco Ratzinger uses in his preface to the first edition of the book, when he was still a cardinal?
1. Pope Paul VI, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Rome, 4 December 1963, n. 1.
2. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 2.
3. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7.
4. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7.
5. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 9.
6. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 10.
7. Ratzinger, Joseph. The Spirit of the Liturgy. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2020, p. 15.
8. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 15. See also the review of a recent work by an internationally renowned Australian theologian, Tracey Rowland.
9. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1.
10. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 16.
11. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, 13-14.