Guntherus de Thuringia
Benedict Was the Outlier on Liturgy

[wherepeteris] Pope Leo XIV’s general audience on Wednesday clarified something that many conservative and traditionalist Catholics have been unwilling to face: the pope believes both that the liturgical reform is a good thing and that the reforms carried out following the Second Vatican Council are “firmly rooted in the living tradition of the Church.”

This really should not be surprising to Catholics. Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Francis all affirmed the reform and presented it as an authentic implementation of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. Statements from these popes make clear that they believe the reform was carried out in obedience to the Council and intended to renew Catholic life.

Among the postconciliar popes, Benedict XVI stands apart in having offered concrete criticisms not only of abuses, translations, or failures of implementation, but also of the process by which the reform was carried out and of aspects of the resulting liturgy. To be clear, Benedict accepted the reform’s legitimacy and holiness. Nevertheless, particularly in his writings before his papacy, Joseph Ratzinger returned to these criticisms often and in blunt terms. On this question, Benedict did not see eye-to-eye with the other popes of the postconciliar era.

I realize that this runs against the conventional wisdom of many conservative Catholics, particularly in the English-speaking world. For years, Ratzinger’s analysis of the reform has often been treated as though it were the settled judgment of the Church: that the reform might have been legitimate, but it was not carried out ideally, departed in significant ways from the intentions of the Council Fathers who debated and approved Sacrosanctum Concilium, and produced liturgical books that required substantial correction. Ratzinger’s reservations were not limited to abuses or poor implementation. As he wrote in his preface to Alcuin Reid’s book The Organic Development of the Liturgy, “It was one of the weaknesses of the first phase of reform after the Council that to a great extent the specialists were listened to almost exclusively. A greater independence on the part of the pastors would have been desirable.” He later described the liturgy as having been “extensively rationalized during the early phase of reform” and wrote that those formed by the earlier Liturgical Movement could only stand “deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.”

Ratzinger also adopted many of the ideas of the German liturgical scholar Klaus Gamber, ...

Read more: Benedict Was the Outlier on Liturgy
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Leo does not believe that the reformed liturgy is a defective product awaiting reconstruction. Certainly, like the other popes, he is open to modifications and refinements and corrections if they are deemed necessary. Clearly, he frowns on liturgical abuse. And like Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and Francis, Leo receives the reformed rites as a positive good and an authentic fruit of the Council. And in this sense he is strongly in continuity with four of the five popes who preceded him. Only Benedict — who nevertheless affirmed its legitimacy and holiness — offered concrete criticisms of the reforming process and aspects of the resulting liturgy, which sets him apart from the broader papal consensus. Catholics who have long treated Ratzinger’s critique as the Church’s default position have the story backwards: on the liturgical reform, Benedict was the exception, and Leo — like Francis before him — stands with the rule.

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