Benedikt_XVI
Kontinuitetens hermeneutikk
I denna interne katolske kontrovers om tolkningen av dette kirkemøtet er det som det liturgiske spørsmål innordner seg. Ratzinger var kjent for sin kritikk av flere sieor av liturgireformen under pave Paul V. Joseph Ratzinger, La Mia Vita – Ricordi (1927–1977), Edizioni San Paolo, 1997, s. 110–113 (her i engelsk oversettelseg): «I was dismayed by the banning of the old Missal, seeing that a similar thing had never happened in the entire history of the liturgy. ... The promulgation of the banning of the Missal that had been developed in the course of centuries, starting from the time of the sacramentaries of the ancient Church, has brought with it a break in the history of the liturgy the consequences of which could be tragic. ... The old structure was broken to pieces and another was constructed admittedly with material of which the old structure had been made and using also the preceding models. ... But the fact that [the liturgy] was presented as a new structure, set up against what had been formed in the course of history and was now prohibited, and that the liturgy was made to appear in some ways no longer as a living process but as a product of specialized knowledge and juridical competence, has brought with it some extremely serious damages for us. ... In this way, in fact, the impression has arisen that the liturgy is ’made,’ that it is not something that exists before us, something ’given,’ but that it depends on our decisions. It follows as a consequence that this decision-making capacity is not recognized only in specialists or in a central authority, but that, in the final analysis, each ’community’ wants to give itself its own liturgy. But when the liturgy is something each one makes by himself, then it no longer gives us what is its true quality: encounter with the mystery which is not our product but our origin and the wellspring of our life. ... I am convinced that the ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part upon the collapse of the liturgy, which at times is actually being conceived of etsi Deus non daretur: as though in the liturgy it did not matter any more whether God exists and whether He speaks to us and listens to us. ... But if in the liturgy the communion of faith no longer appears, nor the universal unity of the Church and of her history, nor the mystery of the living Christ, where is it that the Church still appears in her spiritual substance?» Enn mer kritisk var han mot den utvikling mot «avsakralisering» av liturgien som i den vestlige kirke slo inn og ble merkbar fra og med 1960-årenes slutt. For Ratzinger var gudstjenesten først og fremst tilbedelse, og dwrmed utgjør avsakralisering en blindvei. Ettersom Ratzinger samtidig betraktet liturgien som kirkens livsnerve får spørsmålet om kontinuitet og sakralitet i liturgien en aldeles særlig betydning i hans tanke. Under sin tid som kardinal utla Ratzinger sin uppfatning ifølge hvilken Paul VIs liturgi burde tilføres elementer fra den eldre liturgi for å gjøre mer påtagelig gudstjenestens sakrale karakter. Videre fremholdt han vekten av at den eldre romerske liturgi (den tridentiske liturgi) gjenintegreres i kirkens liturgiske liv. Som pave skulle han realisere dette ved skrivet Summorum pontificum (2007).