As an Orthodox Christian, I am free to ignore Paul VI's self-serving justification. He also was speaking without any benefit whatsoever of seeing the fruit of his works. Maybe the guy really believed all of that "infallibility of the ordinary Magisterium" stuff, and truly believed that it all had to turn out alright.
As Tantumergo points out (and I am not implying that he, as a faithful Catholic, would agree with my above paragraph), the documents of Vat II neither intended the nonsense that we see today, and they specifically say that the formulations of Catholic teaching can be incorrect.
Ratzinger, writing in 1986, was relatively new to the Grand Inquisitor job, and it was his job to defend the order and discipline of the Church. This would of course include the N.O., which JPII most obviously supported without reservation. Even so, Ratzinger's other words in the same section from which you quote are hardly those of a fan:
"Yet, with all its advantages, the new Missal was published as if it were a book put together by professors, not a phase in a continual grown process. Such a thing has never happened before. It is absolutely contrary to the laws of liturgical growth, and it has resulted in the nonsensical notion that Trent and Pius V had "produced" a Missal four hundred years ago. The Catholic liturgy was thus reduced to the level of a mere product of modern times. This loss of perspective is really disturbing."
Allow me to translate: the revisionists basically claimed that Trent had made a liturgy for their time, and now they, in the wake of Vat II, were making a liturgy for the modern era. They claimed that they were doing the same thing that the folks at Trent had done. Ratzinger correctly fingered this as complete nonsense. If one examines the various Western liturgies in use prior to Trent, the close continuity is obvious. On a scale of 1 to 10, the changes at Trent were a 1, and the changes between what was experience in 1950 compared to what was experienced in 1980 are a 10.
Ratzinger has repeatedly articulated the strong belief that this is quite simply wrong. He has repeatedly articulated the belief that the Pope does not have the right to just do what he wants with the Liturgy.
Consider the quotes from Ratzinger's book review that was quoted earlier in this thread. He has, if anything, waxed stronger in his beliefs that liturgical changes should be organic, slow, and with obvious continuity -- and that the post Vat II liturgical changes have been anything but.
Another section that you didn't quote is the following:
"Although very few of those who express their uneasiness have a clear picture of these interrelated factors, there is an instinctive grasp of the fact that liturgy cannot be the result of Church regulations, let alone professional erudition, but, to be true to itself, must be the fruit of the Church’s life and vitality."
Allow me again to translate: The traditionalists are wrong in their insistence that the Tridentine order cannot ever change. Liturgy must be able to change and grow. He cites several examples of things he is grateful for in the new Missal: the vernacular, new eucharist prayers, and an enrichment of prayers and prefaces. Note that he does not praise everything in the N.O. -- only that there are elements that are praiseworthy. BUT, he hones in on the fact that they have an "instinctive grasp" that something is very wrong -- that it isn't enough just to follow the official church "regulations," and that the academic approach to concocting a liturgy is not the right one.
He carefully words his overt criticisms to emphasize the way that the N.O. was presented, but I find it interesting that he speaks of a new edition being needed. Could he merely be talking about introductory material explaining what it is "really" about? It hardly seems likely that a new edition would be needed for that. I would imagine that he has in mind a revision that will emphasize those aspects of the N.O. missal that are in continuity with the liturgical tradition, and that will quietly drop the wilder flights of fancy.
I think that perhaps more to the point is the fact that the N.O was quite intentionally presented as a new thing -- allowing all sorts of things to enter under the guise of "the new mass." Could he have in mind new rubrics -- such as those specifically turning the priest around to face the right direction -- the direction of all liturgical Christian prayer until very recent times? Could he have in mind moving the crucifix/cross to its traditional place in the center, rather than off to the side?
I don't know. I'm merely speculating. But what I do know is that as someone who is deeply involved in the liturgical life of the Orthodox church, I am happy to have someone like B16 around, who seems to understand better than any of his predecessors of recent memory what Liturgy is about.
“In spite of a friendly atmosphere, I strongly felt my Orthodox alienation from all the debates, from their very spirit. Orthodoxy is often imprisoned by evil and sin. The Christian West is imprisoned by heresies—not one of them, in the long run, goes unpunished.”
“I firmly believe,” he writes, “that Orthodoxy is Truth and Salvation and I shudder when I see what is being offered under the guise of Orthodoxy, what people seem to like in it, what they live for, what the most orthodox, the best people among them, see in Orthodoxy.”
“Since the Orthodox world was and is inevitably and even radically changing, we have to recognize, as the first symptom of the crisis, a deep schizophrenia which has slowly penetrated the Orthodox mentality: life in an unreal, nonexisting world, firmly affirmed as real and existing. Orthodox consciousness did not notice the fall of Byzantium, Peter the Great’s reforms, the Revolution; it did not notice the revolution of the mind, of science, of lifestyles, forms of life. . . . In brief, it did not notice history.”
“Once more, I am convinced that I am quite alienated from Byzantium, and even hostile to it. In the Bible, there is space and air; in Byzantium the air is always stuffy. All is heavy, static, petrified. . . . Byzantium’s complete indifference to the world is astounding. The drama of Orthodoxy: we did not have a Renaissance, sinful but liberating from the sacred. So we live in nonexistent worlds: in Byzantium, in Russia, wherever, but not in our own time.”
“Orthodoxy refuses to recognize the fact of the collapse and the breakup of the Orthodox world; it has decided to live in its illusion; it has turned the Church into that illusion it made the Church into a nonexistent world. I feel more and more strongly that I must devote the rest of my life to trying to dispel this illusion.”
“The function of a quarrel is in allowing people to feel principled, to serve the cause, i.e., to feel alive. . . . And free time can be filled with a quarrel. The law of émigré life: those who don’t like to quarrel organize balls and can also keep busy—endlessly—reconciling those who quarrel. And those who enjoy quarrels quarrel! But the function of both is the same.”
“I mainly feel like a stranger in the midst of the typically Russian ‘cozy’ atmosphere of the Church: Russian piety, complete self–assurance, the absence of any anxiety, any doubt, any questioning. They serve well, sing well—but they serve and sing anything well, as long as it was ‘traditional’! One word missing and all would collapse. Russians accept as slaves, or deny as slaves—blindly and stubbornly.”
“To change the atmosphere of Orthodoxy, one has to learn to look at oneself in perspective, to repent, and if needed, to accept change, conversion. In historic Orthodoxy, there is a total absence of criteria for self–criticism. Orthodoxy defined itself: against heresies, against the West, the East, the Turks, etc. Orthodoxy became woven with complexes of self–affirmation, an exaggerated triumphalism: to acknowledge errors is to destroy the foundations of true faith.”
“My point of view is that a good half of our students are dangerous for the Church—their psychology, their tendencies, a sort of constant obsession with something. Orthodoxy takes on a different, ugly aspect, something important is missing, and the Orthodoxy that these students consciously or subconsciously favor is distorted, narrow, emotional—in the end, pseudo–Orthodoxy. Not only at the seminary, but everywhere, I acutely sense the spread of a strange Orthodoxy.”
“What used to be an organic, natural style became stylization, spiritually weak, harmful. The main problem of Orthodoxy is the constraint due to style, and its inability to revise it; a prevalent absence of self–criticism, of checking the tradition of the elders by Tradition, by love of Truth. A growing idolatry.” Seminarians and clergy wear their cassocks and beards as an armor against life and thought. A pseudo–Orthodoxy. A strange Orthodoxy. A growing idolatry.
"I feel myself a radical ‘challenger,’ but among challengers I feel myself a conservative and traditionalist.”
“I cannot identify with any complete system with an integral view of the world or an ideology. It seems to me that anything finished, complete, and not open to another dimension is heavy and self–destructive. I see the error of any dialectics that proceed with thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, removing possible contradictions. I think that openness must always remain; it is faith, in it God is found, who is not a ‘synthesis’ but life and fullness.”
“According to human reasoning, the whole of our Orthodoxy hasn’t got a chance. If the Pope cannot cope, what about us? So, to worry about the Church that so obviously does not want to be saved by my recipes, by our recipes, is sinful in the final analysis: it comes from pride. For God has chosen what is totally meaningless and worthless” (1 Corinthians 1:26ff.).
“I become filled with disgust for the role I have been playing for decades. I have fear and apprehension at having to immerse myself in the affairs of the seminary and the Church. I feel that everybody around me knows what to do and how and what for, but I only pretend to know. In fact, I don’t know anything; I am not sure of anything; I am deceiving myself and others. Only when I serve the Liturgy am I not deceitful. And I will say it again: all of life flows out of—and is connected with—the Liturgy! I feel a collapse of any energy—especially spiritual. I would like to leave!”
“I don’t know how to evaluate these roles, what they are. Maybe simply laziness, maybe something deeper. To be honest, I don’t know. I only know that this alienation does not make me unhappy. I am essentially quite content with my fate and would not want any other. In a way, I like each of these roles, each of these worlds, and would probably be bored if I was deprived of them. But I cannot identify with them. I think roughly this way: I have an inner life, but my spiritual one is kept down. Yes, I have faith, but with a total absence of a personal maximalism, so obviously required by the gospel.”
The greatest anachronism, on a natural level, was to be found in the Catholic Church. Catholicism was possible only while one was able to deny and limit the freedom of the person, the basic dogma of the new times. While trying to change its course, to merge with freedom, Catholicism simply collapsed, and I do not see how its revival could be possible (unless fascism can get hold of the human race and deny the explosive synthesis of freedom and the person).”
“It would be useful to teach a course entitled ‘Great Western Errors,’ following approximately this plan: Rousseau and ‘Nature,’ with a capital N; The Enlightenment and ‘Reason,’ capital R; Hegel and ‘History,’ capital H; Marx and ‘Revolution,’ capital R; and finally, Freud and ‘Sex,’ capital S—realizing that the main error of each is precisely the capital letter, which transforms these words into an idol, into a tragic pars pro toto.”
“So at the end of the twentieth century, here is the power of religion! What else could mobilize so many millions of people; provoke such expectation, such enthusiasm? The power, and, at the same time, the ambiguity of the Ayatollah; not one word about love, peace, the transcendence in God of all petty divisions. And the threat of a holy war. The Pope, in a sense, speaks only about love. Frightening face of Islam . . . hence, this Khomeini in the end will give nothing to his people (who are so happy with him) except grief, hate, and suffering. Whereas from the Pope’s visit, only joy, only hope—even if nothing comes of it.”
“But at that time, the great majority of theologians were ultramontane and the schism was hardly noticed. Whereas now, it is not just a majority but theology as a whole, the whole thought in Catholicism that is against the monolith, against the papacy as it is now. After only a week of the unheard of triumph of the Pope and the papacy these Jesuits and nuns look and behave as if ‘nothing was the matter,’ as if all of it had nothing to do with them. They are not even angry, or sad, or hopeless.”
The Sources of His Thought
In the afterword to the journals, Fr. John Meyendorff, Fr. Alexander’s successor as dean of St. Vladimir’s, writes that Fr. Alexander’s theological worldview was essentially shaped during the Paris years, and under the influence of Catholic thinkers such as Jean Danielou and Louis Bouyer. “It is from that existing milieu,” writes Fr. Meyendorff, “that Father Schmemann really learned ‘liturgical theology,’ a ‘philosophy of time,’ and the true meaning of the ‘paschal mystery.’ If the legacy [of these French Catholics] was somewhat lost within the turmoil of postconciliar Roman Catholicism, their ideas produced much fruit in the organically liturgical and ecclesiologically consistent world of Orthodoxy through the brilliant and always effective witness of Fr. Schmemann.” The journals leave no doubt that Fr. Alexander was not nearly so confident of the effectiveness of his witness, and certainly had no illusions about his vision flourishing in Orthodoxy.
end of quotes from Fr. Neuhaus, "First Things" article.
Each of our Churches have brilliant theologians whose personal opinions can cause each of us to sit-up and take notice.
I have no problem with your personal opinions about Liturgy, brother. I do have a problem with you casting as self-justification an offical explanation by the Pope. It would be like me asserting all your opinions are advanced to justify your Orthodox Ideology.< P>Vatican Two does NOT say formulations can be incorrect. That is what Tantumergo alleges. It clearly says there can be deficiencies in they way they are written etc. Deficiencies are not errors.
I have a problem with your dismissive approach to Card Ratzinger's words I posted. You think they are dissolved by what you quoted. They aren't. The fact remains the MAgisterium DOES have authority over the Liturgy < Mediator Dei and if it doesn't then who the heck has made the dramatic changes in the Liturgy, including our Canon and your original Liturgy of St. James?
Those objections aside, I too am grateful for Pope Benedict. Prior to the conclave, and during it, his elevation to the Papacy was part of my dialy rosary intentions. However, let's step back just a bit.
The personal opinions of any theologian are just that - opinions. Until they are "baptized" or accepted as part of the Magisterium they are theological speculations. The Pope and the Bishops in union with him are Teachers. Theologians are not Teachers. Remember that even the great Aquinas could't figure out how to explain the Immaculate Conception and it took the, still unknown, William of Ware (I am doing this from memory, I hope I am right) to fix the theological justification.
So, let us wait to see what Cardinal Ratzinger does in his ofical, not speculative, acts. I have every confidence in him.
Catherine of Sienna referred to the Pope as "our sweet Jesus on Earth."
That is the way I think of Pope Benedict.
"As an Orthodox Christian, I am free to ignore Paul VI's self-serving justification. He also was speaking without any benefit whatsoever of seeing the fruit of his works. Maybe the guy really believed all of that "infallibility of the ordinary Magisterium" stuff, and truly believed that it all had to turn out alright."
Apart from the fact that Paul VI's allocution here probably would not be viewed as part of the Ordinary & Universal Magisterium, I would agree with your above paragraph. Self-serving justification would seem a very apt way of putting it, although we have the benefit of hindsight, of course.
However, many Cardinals at the time, (notably Cardinal Heenan of Westminster) thought the radical innovations would do great damage, and so they proved to be right.
While I agree with you (and the then Cardinal Ratzinger) that liturgy cannot be fossilised and there is a natural (spiritual) process of gradual development, I would be interested to know how the Orthodox would view the idea of creating new Anaphoras or Eucharistic Prayers. Could you ever imagine an Orthodox Church creating a whole new Anaphora from scratch or would this just not be acceptable to the faithful?
Although the Roman Rite went through incremental changes from the 5th to 20th centuries, the Eucharistic Prayer was extremely stable for that 1,500 years (possibly longer) and it was commonly thought that this could never be changed - until 1969 that is! While Cardinal Ratzinger was probably thinking of the four main Eucharistic prayers we have as being a benefit of the N.O., I am sure he was not praising the situation that exists in France where there are now over 300 E.P.'s in use! Any sense of unity and coherence that might have remained in the N.O. in some countries was totally shattered in France by this ridiculous state of affairs. The variation is so bad that the French cannot even put a Missal together because the book would be too big and too expensive to use - most parishes there seem to work from loose-leaf folders or loose sheets of paper (not that their services are recognizable as Masses to most Englishmen anyway.)